Friday, March 6th, 2009

7 Effective Tips for Surviving In an

Ultra Competitive Internet Market

WSpider

1. Be a leader in your niche. When you truly know your niche inside and out, forwards and backwards, that knowledge really does shine in the eyes of potential customers. As vast as the realm of e-commerce might be, there is only one unique you. What are you better at than anyone else? Take that direction and run with it online and you’ll be the leader of your niche.

2. Play an active role in your online business. Have you ever placed an order for a product or service online and then never received any type of response for days? Unfortunately, in many cases, this exact scenario is the norm. Be different and watch your level of online success soar.

3. Take advantage of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a website owner’s best friend. Not only is it extremely effective at bringing in scores of traffic, but it also helps organize your website in a logical, visitor friendly fashion. And the alternatives to SEO are bleak—one is having practically no traffic at all, and the other is paying costly fees for Pay Per Click style advertising.

4. Realize the benefits of blogging. Blogging about topics that would interest your target customer is a great way to educate potential customers, communicate with them effectively, and build trust. At the same time, making regular expert-level updates to your blog will be racking up all kinds of awesome points with the search engines.

5. Have multiple streams of income. Many online businesses put all of their eggs in one basket. This is fine for some, but to increase sales and publicity to your website at the same time, use multiple methods of marketing your products—or in other words, multiple streams of income. Combine traditional e-commerce with online auctions and other creative venues and watch the sales grow.

6. Turn your site into a sales converting machine. Often, the very best converting websites are some of those that you would least expect to be so successful. High converting online businesses tend to be those that share plenty of relevant information and have tons of catchy, well-organized content instead of just peddling their products and services alone.

7. Don’t be too professional. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It’s important to have professionalism across all of your business operations, but do understand that a good majority of customers are looking a personalized, individual level of service. Some businesses take the professional image too far—ultimately becoming cold to their customers.

WSpider is a full turn-key solution to increasing your online effectiveness and exposure needs at an extremely affordable cost. Simply put, WSpider is here to help people find your business online, “If they can’t find you ─ how can they buy from you?”…That’s where we come in. The process is Fast, Effective, and Easy to Use. We get you the exposure your company needs. Gaining exposure and maintaining traction on the internet is a very complex task, trust someone with the experience to guide you through the process. We deliver results! www.wspider.com

Posted in 7 Effective Tips For Surviving In An Ultra Competitive Internet Market, Search Engine Optimization | 23 Comments »

Friday, March 6th, 2009

7 Effective Tips for Surviving In an

Ultra Competitive Internet Market

WSpider

1. Be a leader in your niche. When you truly know your niche inside and out, forwards and backwards, that knowledge really does shine in the eyes of potential customers. As vast as the realm of e-commerce might be, there is only one unique you. What are you better at than anyone else? Take that direction and run with it online and you’ll be the leader of your niche.

2. Play an active role in your online business. Have you ever placed an order for a product or service online and then never received any type of response for days? Unfortunately, in many cases, this exact scenario is the norm. Be different and watch your level of online success soar.

3. Take advantage of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a website owner’s best friend. Not only is it extremely effective at bringing in scores of traffic, but it also helps organize your website in a logical, visitor friendly fashion. And the alternatives to SEO are bleak—one is having practically no traffic at all, and the other is paying costly fees for Pay Per Click style advertising.

4. Realize the benefits of blogging. Blogging about topics that would interest your target customer is a great way to educate potential customers, communicate with them effectively, and build trust. At the same time, making regular expert-level updates to your blog will be racking up all kinds of awesome points with the search engines.

5. Have multiple streams of income. Many online businesses put all of their eggs in one basket. This is fine for some, but to increase sales and publicity to your website at the same time, use multiple methods of marketing your products—or in other words, multiple streams of income. Combine traditional e-commerce with online auctions and other creative venues and watch the sales grow.

6. Turn your site into a sales converting machine. Often, the very best converting websites are some of those that you would least expect to be so successful. High converting online businesses tend to be those that share plenty of relevant information and have tons of catchy, well-organized content instead of just peddling their products and services alone.

7. Don’t be too professional. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? It’s important to have professionalism across all of your business operations, but do understand that a good majority of customers are looking a personalized, individual level of service. Some businesses take the professional image too far—ultimately becoming cold to their customers.

Posted in 7 Design Flaws Every business Website Must Avoid, Search Engine Optimization, Website Development | 80 Comments »

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

What’s The Difference

Between SEO and SEM?

WSpider

All these acronyms in the crazy world of online marketing—SEO, SEM, PPC, CTR, CPC, and the list goes on and on—it’s no wonder things get so confusing when simply trying to hash out a plan to make your website rock and roll. Why does it have to be so complicated?

Well the good news is that it doesn’t. Here’s a simple guide to some of the most common lingo used prolifically within the online marketing industry… Enjoy!

SEM – Let’s start with the granddaddy of them all, SEM. Standing for Search Engine Marketing, basically this term covers SEO, PPC, PPM, and all the other three letter words surrounding web traffic. SEM, for the most part, is used to universally describe the practice of advertising online.

SEO – Here’s one that you’ll see over and over again around here. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and refers to the practice of improving a website’s organic (unpaid) search engine rankings through a variety of onsite and offsite strategies. There’s white hat SEO, which means playing ethically by the rules and being one of the good guys, and then there’s what’s known as black hat SEO—the practice of being deceptive and using spammy tricks to attempt to boost a site’s search popularity. Remember, the good guys wear white hats.

PPC – This is the practice of bidding on and purchasing clicks to a website, usually from within the search results themselves. Standing for Pay Per Click, it’s a common tactic for attaining visitors to a site and works very effectively. Results are nearly instantaneous, although the per click costs can really add up to be significant, especially when bidding on the more popular competitive keywords. Some of the most popular programs today commonly referred to as PPC—like Google AdSense—are not technically really PPC, but the term is still used widely regardless.

Those are the big three when it comes to online marketing, but as you dig deeper into the topic, you’ll also run into terminology like:

CTR – This little acronym simply stands for Click Through Rate, meaning the percentage of visitors that actually click to your site from a PPC ad or from within organic search also.

CPA – Standing for Cost Per Action, CPA in web marketing is not used to represent a licensed accounting professional, but rather how much it will cost you on average each time a visitor clicks a paid ad to your site. It can also be used to describe the average cost of finally achieving a sale or conversion on your site.

CPC – This one is very similar to CPA in concept, simply meaning Cost Per Click.

The lingo of online marketing doesn’t have to be overly complicated. And even if it does seem a bit overwhelming at first, don’t worry too much—before long, and with a little practice, it will all be second nature.

Tags: What's the Difference Between SEO and SEM?
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, The Difference Between SEO & SEM | 105 Comments »

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Keyword Hotspots

Written by: Andrew Kim

November 23, 2007

“How can you put in keywords and place them strategically when you already have your sales page developed and your website up and running? Does this mean we will have to change the wording of the sales pitch again to get the right keyword density etc?”

If your site isn’t optimized for your top-performing keywords, then it’s attracting only a fraction of the qualified visitors it should be getting. That’s why you need to put in the time necessary to rewrite your salescopy and optimize your site for your keywords.

It’ll take you some time to accomplish this… but I promise you, the payoff will be HUGE.

By placing your top-performing keywords in strategic places on your website, you tell the search engine “spiders” that those keywords describe exactly what your site is all about. And that’s what convinces the search engines to include your site in the search results for those keywords.

So… where should you put your keywords on your site?

Here are the strategic “hot spots” that are considered most important by the search engine “spiders”:

Keyword hotspot #1: Your domain name

The search engines REALLY like URLs that are saturated with keywords! Sites whose domain names include keywords will likely rank higher in the search engine results for those keywords than sites that don’t.

Brainstorm a list of URLs containing some of your hottest keywords.

Next, check if the domain name is available by entering it into www.DomainTools.com.

Did you find a keyword-rich domain that’s available? If so, you should definitely consider snapping it up! (Even if you already have another URL, you can set this new domain up to automatically forward visitors to your existing URL.)

You want to get that domain working for YOU — instead of your competitors!

Keyword hotspot #2: A well-written title tag

Your title tag is a simple piece of HTML code that’s located in the “head,” or top, of your Web page.

Within the source of your web page, it looks something like this:

<title>Insert keyword-rich site description here</title>

In your title tag, include a descriptive, accurate bit of text that describes your business clearly, letting potential visitors know EXACTLY what they can expect to find on your site.

For example, if “discount yoga mats” is your main keyword phrase, then in your title tags you could write something like:

<title>Discount yoga mats - Great selection of discount yoga mats for all yoga levels and all types of yoga</title>

As you can see, your main keyword phrase “Discount yoga mats” is in there twice, and the word “yoga” is used a number of times.

Keyword hotspot #3: Your headline tags

A headline tag is like a brightly colored post-it note within your HTML source code that alerts search engine spiders to your headline and subheads - places that contain important information, according to the search engines.

HTML <h> tags look like this:

<h1>, <h2>, <h3>

As you can see, they always contain a number, since the search engine spiders view them in order of importance - an <h1> tag is more important to note than an <h2> tag, for example.

Framed around a headline, an <h> tag looks like this within your source code:

<h1>Looking for a great selection of discount yoga supplies for all yoga levels and all types of yoga?</h1>

You should use an <h1> only once around your main headline, and <h2> tags around your subhead, like so:

<h1>Looking for a great selection of discount yoga supplies for all yoga levels and all types of yoga?</h1>

<h2>We’ve got the best quality yoga mats, yoga videos, and yoga gear at the deepest discounts!</h2>

(Notice how we included more “yoga” keywords in the subhead? This is another keyword hotspot opportunity you shouldn’t pass up!)

Keyword hotspot #4: Your image tags

The only thing search engine spiders can “digest” as they crawl your web page is text. Spiders can’t index images so they skip right over them. But by placing keywords within the source code of your images, you can transform them into spider bait!

Here’s an example of what a regular image looks like in your source code:

<img src=”myimage.jpg” height=”120″ width=”476″>

As you can see, this piece of HTML code identifies the location of the image - “myimage.jpg” - to ensure it gets loaded to your web page.

But by adding an <alt> tag, which is simply a place to insert text within this image HTML code, you can add more of your keywords to your web page, like this:

So instead of finding boring old source code attached to your image, the search engine spiders will find more keywords to index!

Keyword hotspot #5: Your description “meta tags”

A description meta tag describes the purpose of your web page and ideally sits just below the title tag in the source code of your web site.

Description meta tags look like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”Blowing Bubbles Bubble Gum Factory: your one-stop homemade bubble gum kit source offering entertainment for the whole family!”>

The text you include in your description tag usually appears as the blurb that’s included in your listing in the search results. This blurb gives searchers an idea of what your site is about before they click through to it.

However, not all search engines use your description meta tag to summarize your site - some will generate a random description from your web page content!

Even still, it’s worthwhile to include the tag in your source code for the ones that do feature it in the listing.

Keyword hotspot #6: Your keyword “meta tags”

A keyword meta tag usually sits right under your description meta tag. At one time the keyword meta tag was essential for letting the search engine spiders know the keywords a web page was optimized for.

Keyword meta tags look like this:

<meta name=”keyword” content=”homemade bubble gum kits, make your own bubble gum, making bubble gum”>

Here are a few guidelines for writing spider-friendly keyword meta tags:

List the 2-3 keywords you’re optimizing that particular page for in order of importance, with your main keywords appearing first.
Separate keywords with a space comma or space, but avoid words like “and,” “or,” and “but” which take up room and are ignored by the spiders anyway.
Don’t overdo it on your keywords. If search engines think you are “keyword spamming,” you run the risk of being penalized.

And last, but certainly NOT least…

Keyword hotspot #7: Your salescopy

In the search engine’s eyes, your web page content is a VERY important element of your web site.

… This because search engine spiders “crawl” through your site looking for text that tells them how to categorize your material.

The spiders also check how relevant your site is to certain search terms, so you’ll want to be sure to pepper your top-performing keywords strategically throughout your salescopy.

The optimal spots to put keywords on your web pages are:

At least once in your first paragraph of content (two or three times, if possible)
At least once in your last paragraph of content (again, two or three times would be better)
A few more mentions in the body of your content if you can get away with it

In addition to your main keywords, you should also use slight variations and synonyms of them.

For example, if your keyword phrase is “legitimate home business opportunity,” be sure to include similar phrases, such as “legitimate home business opportunities,” “legitimate business opportunity,” and “work-at-home business opportunity.” Not only will your content read better, the search engines will love it!

… Finally, I just want to point out that you should only try to optimize each page of your website for 2-3 keywords MAXIMUM. (That includes your main keyword and one or two secondary keywords.) You simply won’t be able to do an effective job if you try to optimize your site for too many different keywords at once.

(However, you CAN optimize each page of your site for 2-3 different keywords — and I highly recommend you do exactly that! But that’s a topic for a different newsletter…)

It will take some time and effort on your part… but the resulting flood of qualified traffic you’ll get from the free search engines will be well worth it!

The Internet Marketing Center specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/1194343

Tags: Keyword Hotspots
Posted in Keyword Hotspots, Keywords, Search Engine Optimization | 167 Comments »

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

4 Steps to Building More Profitable

Pay Per Click Campaigns

WSpider

Building more profitable pay per click (PPC) campaigns is something every online business can achieve at very little additional cost. In fact, most of the time, optimizing a PPC strategy will actually increase sales while decreasing ad expenses at the same time. Here are four steps towards building more profitable pay per click campaigns:

1. Track Return On Investment (ROI) – By precisely keeping track of the traffic funnel—or in other words, the complete visitor trail from PPC ad click to final sales conversion—you’ll be able to clearly determine which ads and keywords are working and those that just aren’t cutting it. Because of the immediate ability to change and adjust PPC listings, educated experimentation is often a great way to increase ROI. Tracking every click from start to finish is essential for PPC success.

2. Shift Focus Further Down The Long Tail – PPC Management experts, like those at WSpider, have access to comprehensive online marketing tools, making it possible to generate a massive list of highly effective, low cost keyword phrases to use. Instead of paying top dollar for an extremely competitive primary keyword, bidding on highly specific niche keyword phrases is much more effective; the cost is much lower, and due to the very targeted nature of the search terms, the conversion rate will also be much more attractive.

3. Try Multiple PPC Ads – Most of the popular PPC services allow multiple ads to be set up on automatic rotation for individual search terms to be bid on. Sounds complicated, but basically this just means the calls to action within the advertising text can be compared over large range of clicks to determine which copy attracts more clicks and ultimately draws a higher conversion rate. Because every PPC ad click costs a specified amount, sometimes the goal is to discourage most casual visitors from clicking and instead find the right copy to only attract motivated visitors.

4. Consult With Experts – PPC management often appears easy enough to handle in-house, but perceptions can definitely be deceiving. PPC is incredibly competitive, but the good news is that this also makes it possible for a small business to effectively compete directly against Fortune 500 companies. While basic PPC might appear to be quite effective right off the bat, savvy experts can easily double or triple the ROI—sometimes exponentially. Reduce stress and increase profits by outsourcing PPC to the experts.

The bottom line is that your business’s bottom line could be enhanced greatly by taking just a few simple steps toward building more profitable PPC campaigns.

Tags: 4 Steps to Building More Profitable Pay Per Click Campaigns
Posted in Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization | 95 Comments »

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

5 Secrets to Building a Website

That Works

WSpider

What is a website that works? Well, the simplest way to define a website that works is to take a look at whether it is attracting the visitors you’d like, and then convincing them to take the specific action you’d like them to take. For each and every website and business online, the actual target numbers and desired visitor actions will vary substantially. The key is making sure your website works as effectively and efficiently as possible for your unique niche. How?

Secret #1: Keep It Visually Simple.

So often, people get way too carried away with trying to make their websites graphically stunning. Seems like a nice enough goal—however, most visitors are attracted to a website by its written content and the relevant information it provides them. Attractive, clean graphics are great, but going overboard is distracting.

Secret #2: Less Is Often More.

There’s no need to make things complicated for visitors. By providing a clear, easy to use navigation system linking directly to the information they’re searching for, you’ll be right in tune with the “less is more” mantra. Think of what you’d like to see as a visitor—anything more is likely to overwhelm your customers.

Secret #3: Narrow The Focus.

By narrowing down the niche you aim to serve online as tightly as possible, you’ll be seen as more of an expert resource on your specific area of knowledge. On the other hand, some websites put themselves in a constant cycle of treading water to try and be everything to everyone. By keeping a tight, narrow focus, you’ll be able to dominate your niche.

Secret #4: Ensure The Website Is Error Free.

Perfection is a noble goal when it comes to web coding and standards compliance. Of course, it’s not always easy to achieve total perfection—but with the help of the right web professionals, you’ll be able to eliminate all major distractions from your site’s overall performance. And also, don’t forget about spelling and grammar errors.

Secret #5: Give A Little To Get A Little.

In the digital information world of the internet, visitors who use search are looking for information. It’s plain and simple. Instead of just trying to hard sell goods or services, give them a few answers to what they’re searching for first. This is called pre-selling in the world of online commerce—and the best part is that it really works!

Tags: 5 Secrets to Building a Website That Works
Posted in 5 Secrets to Building a Website That Works, Search Engine Optimization, Website Development | 68 Comments »

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