Website Design and Internet Strategy for Business Owners » Website design

Google, Galileo and Our Tributes

Ajay Prasad — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:54:59 +0000

Google recognizes the role of Galileo in modern science as indicated in its display logo today. This day Aug 25 1609, 400 years ago, Galileo opened a new universe to a small community of Venetians challenging conventional views.

The world has never been the same since. We pay our tributes to this astronomer who changed the way we see the world. Though it’s been a long journey from Galileo’s Telescope to the Hubble…pioneers will always be remembered. Thank you Google for this wonderful logo.

Sangeeta Kumar

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Outsourcing

Ajay Prasad — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:48:56 +0000

Outsourcing as a business strategy was started in mid 1990s to manage workload and cut costs using tools of information technology. With the passage of time, wider use of the internet and much improved connectivity and communication has made outsourcing an easy tool for solving business problems, management of excessive workload and shortage of skilled workers. Although outsourcing is mainly used by the IT enabled industry, it is interconnected with all other businesses and influences other sectors by various means. Based on the dramatic growth in outsourcing by businesses in last few years, it seems that in future outsourcing will permeate all Services-Provider industries in the world.

Outsourcing has a new impetus in the current financial recession when companies are facing all round pressure to cut costs. They need to be leaner and smarter to emerge unscathed from this storm. The ones are able to leverage outsourcing competently will have a better chance of survival.

Outsourcing, which started with doubts of incomplete tasks, quality, quantity and turn around time issues and with a great risk to confidentiality, has proved successful in the past decade. Outsourcing has a secure future and will remain essential for businesses all around the world.

Mark

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Should You Fire Your SEO Company?

Ajay Prasad — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:47:17 +0000

Search engines algorithms are shrouded in total secrecy. So what works in SEO and what does not is merely the result of an analysis of sites that make it to page #1. Some times the keywords show up sooner than expected, at times they do not. It’s very difficult to measure the effectiveness of an SEO campaign because the time frame for results is prolonged. With the mushrooming of SEO companies and the vagueness of operations finding the right company can be an issue.

True, SEO is no science, but it can have a scientific approach. The results are not instantaneous like PPC but results should be visible after 3 months onto a program. Okay… give and take a few months for the vagaries of Search Engines who like to alter their algorithms just when your site is all set to take off!

The problem with SEO is that it is too vague a field. We can only guess what works and what does not. Broadly there are five factors that are said to do 70% of the work.

A well optimized code
Well Optimized Metatags
Header Tags, Alt tags
Keywords in the URL
Backlinks to the site

If your SEO company is smart enough to integrate all these together chances are that by the fourth month your SERPs should be somewhere around rank 10-12 for moderately competitive keywords. Competitive keywords take much longer and the effort for increasing the positions in page 1 increases proportionally with every position.

There are two ways in which you can check if your company is really working on your website.

Set up Google Alert on your company’s name. Once an alert is set up, every time a directory picks up your link or a blog picks up your article or the company does a press release Google will pick it up and deliver it into your mailbox. The larger the number of alerts the more your SEO company is working.
Use a tracking account. Google Analytics is free and is improving with feedback. Ask you SEO company to set up a tracking in analytics and get your account id and password so that you can check occasionally.

SEO is unfortunately a long drawn process. How long should one wait before deciding that the SEO company is taking you for a ride? When you are six months into an SEO program and you face any of the following scenarios it’s time to fire your SEO company.

Scenario #1: Six months into the campaign there is no increase in search traffic

Scenario #2: Your traffic has increased but you are not getting any conversions.

Scenario #3: You have not even made it to page 2 for your targeted keyword.

Scenario #4: The company’s report shows a lot of increased links but there is hardly any increase in ranks.

Scenario #5: Your keywords are stagnated where they were.

Scenario #1: Six months into the campaign there is no increase in search traffic
Why is it so?
Maybe they are not working at all
OR
Maybe they are targeting all the wrong keywords. Very competitive keywords may bring in more traffic volume but they take longer (read upto 12-24 months) to optimize. To maximize your ROI professional SEO companies choose a mix and match of low competition, moderate competition and high competition keywords. If your SEO company did not take this approach it’s time to fire them.

How to Check: Insist upon adding Google Analytics (a free tool) to your site and visit it regularly.

Scenario #2: Your traffic has increased but you are not getting conversions
Maybe it’s a genuine mistake which can be rectified
OR
Maybe you are getting a lot of spam traffic because the company has posted the site at improper places just to show stats of increase in traffic. Believe me this happens quite a lot with unprofessional companies who want to gain SEO credibility. The unknowledgeable client gets taken in.

How to Check: Visit analytics. Click on traffic sources. Check all the traffic types- Referral, search engine and direct. Check the type of sites the referral traffic is sending, check the type of keywords. If all of these are okay, then you need some serious website marketing not just SEO

Scenario #3: You have not even made it to page 2 for your targeted keyword
Maybe the targeted keywords are too competitive
OR
Maybe all the aspects of SEO are not being covered by your company. This is a tricky issue. If you are satisfied with your keyword movement over the months maybe just a push is needed. Otherwise you need to check what the company is doing. You can read more about it here- http://www.gmrwebteam.com/blog/index.php/website-design/trust-your-seo-company-with-open-eyes/

How to Check: Simply type your keyword in the search bar. Check page #1 for your URL. If it’s not on page #1 it should be on page #2 after 6 months of campaign for at least some of the keywords. It should show up. If it isn’t there call up the SEO
company and demand an explanation.

Scenario #4: The company’s report shows a lot of increased links but there is hardly any increase in ranks.
Maybe the ranking will improve gradually
OR
Maybe the company is trying to impress upon you that it has increased your links. This is false reporting and not genuine SEO. In the long run these links will harm your site. Keep away from the company.

How to Check: Occasionally, in the Google toolbar type the following to see the number of links to your website-
links:www.domainname.com
Analyze the relevancy of the site linking back to your website. If the links are from spam sites fire the company.

Scenario #5: Your keywords are stagnated where they were.
Suppose you were already on page #3 or page #2 for the keywords and approached a company to take you to page #1. But you haven’t moved.
Maybe the company’s taking you for a ride
OR
There is no other reason. Just fire the company. They are showing no results

There may be other scenarios which have not been covered in this article. It’s very difficult to know if the company is working hard enough to get you on page #1. Keeping constant contact with the company is a good idea. Ask for a monthly comparative report and track the increase in links, traffic and keyword positions. Get an action plan of the month by the company. Track the action plan. You will see results soon enough!

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Trust Your SEO Company With Open Eyes

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:48:30 +0000

In business we have to trust our service providers. SEO companies are our gateway to online success. But it’s a good idea to keep a tab on what they are doing on our websites. Remember in the online world the website is your business store and you wouldn’t want a wrong description or profile projected! Or worse you wouldn’t want to be taken for a ride after paying those dollars!

Ask them for a keyword list and make sure that they get them right.
This is important. Take time off for it or you’ll spend five times over trying to rectify the error. You may not know what words your potential customers are using in search engines to try and find a business like yours. That’s why you’ve hired a SEO company in the first place. But instead of appearing stupid

Ask them for examples of your competitor’s sites
Ask them for a keyword list.
Select a mixture of keywords. Remember that the single word keyword will be the toughest to optimize for and they may not be the most suitable. Though there may be 5040 searches for ‘insurance’ per day there is no point in spending money optimizing for it. ‘Auto Insurance’, or ‘health insurance’ may be more suitable. Some thing like ‘dental insurance’ may be more specific. However, “call center” (treated as one word) can result in huge business.
Ask them the difficultly level of keywords. 45% or less are relatively easy to optimize for and higher the difficulty, the toughness of optimization increases.
Ask your SEO company to prepare a list of existing web pages on your website which target suitable keywords. That way you will know which page targets what keywords and how many more pages of content will be needed on the website.

So you get to control the costs.

Your chance of appearing at the top of search engine results is greatly enhanced if you focus your website optimization efforts on two/three word phrases instead of single words.

Check your webpage title
Now that you know what phrases which webpage is targeting check the title of the l page. You can view it in the top browser bar when you open your website. Your page title on your home page is the biggest indicator to search engines of what your website is all about. The page title originates in the Meta Tags, which are not displayed in the normal view of your website.

A page title should be between 10 to 60 characters long including spaces.
It should preferably be in the format
, _,

Remember that the company should optimize each page title on each page to get the best result. A random check is sufficient.

Get the Description Right
The description that appears below your URL in Google search engine is the metatag description that was included in the source code of your page. The Description should contain an enticing and informative snapshot of what the website is about and it should appeal to all search engines to appear. While Google takes a page description of 150 characters, MSN often takes the initial 100 characters from the Meta Description. The description should make sense, convey all relevant information about the web page and entice the reader to read the page. It is also worthwhile placing one related keyword phrase within the Meta Description. If possible add a phone number in the description metatag

Web Page Names
If your SEO company is a genuine company, they will most probably get it right. But step in here to ensure that the most important pages of your website can be told over the phone. After all it’s you and your team who will conduct the business. It should not be too long to fit in the business card. There are times when it is technically not possible. Ask them for a redirect.

Let People Find You
Add your contact number and office address prominently. Let people know that you have an office space. Give visitors a number to enquire for business.

Consideration for the Media
You may not be a big company right now, but as your business grows and your brand becomes recognizable the press may decide to follow you. Create a media corner. Put all your press releases, speeches and videos over there all at one place. Keep adding the latest press release to the site. Post your press release on the site a day or two earlier that the official press release.

Some Questions To Ask Your SEO Company To Keep Them On Their Toes

What ‘H’ Tags are you using? H Tags or ‘Heading Size’ were originally introduced to aid the formatting of HTML documents. Because their presence indicates page heading with larger text, many search engines have decided to count this as a significant part of their ranking. Websites should not be designed just for their look and feel. Equally they should not be designed only for search engines. However, with a bit of thought and creativity, web pages can be built with both visitors and search engines in mind.

Are you using the keyword in Alt Tags? Alt tags short form for Alternative Tags were originally designed to contain the text to be displayed on web pages instead of images if a user’s computer did not have the capacity to be able to display images. Alt Tags on images provide a great way of getting your keywords near the top of your pages without reducing your website readability. Alt Tags can also positively impact your internal website keyword linking. For a website to be successful, you have to create a new site entrance by adding Alt Tags to each image to appeal to search engines more effectively. With this, not only you are appealing to more users by using Alt Tags to your images, you will also be complying with website design standards for disabled users of your site.

Is the site navigation in text? As said earlier if your SEO company is genuine they will insist on text navigation and even navigation without menu. Generally, websites have their navigation links on the top or side of each web page. Unfortunately, many website navigation menus are image based. This means that search engines often won’t spider the linked pages as they do with text-based menu links.

Are you using the keywords to link to webpages? In technical parlance the phrases used to link to a particular webpage is called anchor text. They are given a lot of importance by search engines

Are all pages on the website linked by some page? Is the internal linking 100%? Well, we do not like loose ends, neither do search engine because they have been made by human. Make sure all the pages on your website can be reached by some page.

Work In Tandem
No SEO company can work effectively in isolation. They need your feedback, your suggestions (off and on). Ask for a monthly report to check your website’s keyword progress. Remember SEO is a long drawn process. Competitive keywords may be harder to optimize for. Once you reach page 1, the progress becomes slower. If you have found a good company all you have to do off and on is an occasional nip in the toes to ensure there is no scope for complacency.

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Making Market Testing and Analyzing a part of your Internet Strategy

admin — Mon, 18 May 2009 06:41:12 +0000

Overnight online success is extremely rare. Most successes are a culmination of the testing, analyzing, improving and testing cycle.

If you really want online success, or even offline success, then you must understand the importance of correct marketing testing.

Ask yourself these questions as a starting point:

Do I have a website strategy?
What is my ROI on each strategy?
Am I you split testing your content?
Is tracking installed on each page of my website?
Am I monitoring my squeeze pages? If yes, Am I monitoring the results scientifically like following modifications of term and phrases, content and layout and other 2.0 web techniques? Which pages gives give me better returns? Can you analyze why?
Which form placement works better?
What site links are better exchanges?
Do I know the unique visitors, hits, time spent, page hit, etc., etc., etc. for your website?
Do you know all the measures for your website traffic?

This is just the beginning.

Scientifically track headlines, home page, navigation settings, Changes in pictures and graphics, location of certain offers, features, buttons, etc.

Monitor your links- both incoming and outgoing and your automated business functions and above all your list building and lead generation methods.

Always update your prospect and customer communication system and shopping cart.

In his free report on testing Ajay talks about some of the tracking measures and following the visitor profile.
“Here are some of the tracking measures you should be talking to your web designer/builder about. In fact, they should be talking to you about these things. If you have to bring them up you are already in trouble, with a capital T.
How many visitors are coming to the site?
How many of the visitors aren’t visitors (i.e. spiders, crawlers, etc. from search engines)
How many visitors are new vs. old?
How long does each visitor stay on your site?
What does each visitor look at?
What graphics, words, pictures, etc are generating the most responses?
Which search engines are getting you the best prospects?
Where else are your customers coming from
How many pages does the visitor look at?
What are your website rankings?
How much money have you made from the average visitor?
Who are your biggest money-making customers?
If you use PPC is it working and paying for itself?
Which links are bringing your visitors and are they converting to customers?
And so on…”
You can read the total report at http://www.gmrwebteam.com/images/FreeReportTestTrackMeasure.pdf

FUNDAMENTAL: your website should bring in more money than
it costs to maintain it!

Some Tools:

Website Traffic Related:
Quantcast
Google Analytics
Compete
Hitwise

Split Testing Tools
http://www.1shoppingcart.com (paid)
http://www.adwords.google.com (free if using analytics version)

Market Testing Tools and Websites

Google Insights (free)
Google Trends (free)
Survey Monkey (free and paid)
Dneero (paid)

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Building Links?

admin — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:18:07 +0000

Link building continues to be an important part of online marketing and optimizing websites. Google, the most popular search engine, relies heavily on the link popularity of websites to determine the page rank of the site. If your website does not have inbound links from other websites, it will not achieve high rankings in highly competitive categories. Boosting the link popularity of a particular web page or website is known as off-page search engine optimization.

One of the biggest criteria for your website popularity and enhanced ranking in search engines is the quantity and quality of incoming links to your website. Incoming links are links leading to your site from other sites are an important factor affecting how well your site ranks in search engines. It is important to know how many incoming links your site has, their page rank and what anchor text is used in these links.

Probably, the best way to get link to your site is by offering to exchange reciprocal links. This is the process of exchanging links with the webmaster of another site. The procedure is that you place a link to their website and in return, they will place a link to your website. Reciprocal linking is an effective way of generating targeted, topic related traffic to your website. It is beneficial to both webmasters as both the sites benefit from the new-targeted, relevant links. Over time, Search engines will also increase rank after seeing new links pointing from other quality and relevant sites to your website.

But, Google values more on organic link building-building links that progress naturally rather than appearing artificial. One of the biggest things you can do to create more traffic to your website is to create back links from other sites. If you can get hundreds of relevant one-way back links to your website, then you are not only going to get traffic from the links, but also from the increased ranking in search engines.

Link building determines a site’s page rank in search engines. The higher the page rank on the web, the better your placement would be in search engine results.

Tips to build links for website optimization-

Submission to web directories- You can start your link building strategy by submitting your website link to web directory services on the net. There are thousands of directories ranging from the well-respected DMOZ, topic-specific directories to paid-inclusion directories. If you are on a limited budget, you can start submitting your links to free web directories. For example, DMOZ is a free directory, but has a somewhat lengthy process and it takes patience to get a link. On the other hand, if you are willing to pay, Yahoo! will add you to their directory within a week.
Article submission- A great way to build natural and permanent links to your website is through submitting articles to other websites, each of which contains one or more live links pointing to your business site. The fastest way to get your website indexed in search engines is by writing articles and submitting them to other website. Publishing quality content with your site’s link is a good internet marketing strategy for online businesses.
Publishing in social book marking sites- An easy way to propagate your links on the web is to use social book marking sites. You can submit a brief description of your site along with your links to social book marking page. If they find your page useful, they can bookmark it as well.
Press release submission- Just like article submission- you can do press release submissions to all the major press release sources to build links and create more traffic to your website. You don’t have to do press releases on a daily basis, but doing them in a weekly basis will go a long way to getting your website indexed quickly.
Forum Participation: This is another way of getting your link known to the right people and you gain the status of an expert here. Most forums allow a link back to your site after 15 to 30 forum posts.

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When Should You Fire Your Website Designer

Ajay Prasad — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:54:02 +0000

When he doesn’t know your business. You may say that it isn’t his job. But you are wrong. Your online business is not a wild crazy idea, but a source of your income. Trust the right people to design your website. Your 17 year old nephew may be able to create your website or you can get a free one from several services…they might even be kind of pretty. In my research and experience, less than 2% of businesses that have websites have planted the seeds to online success. Many of them are your competitors.
The problem is web designers focus on the technical aspects of the site. They don’t have a clue how to build a website that makes you a ton of money, drives floods of traffic, and gets you top placement on search engines.

Why Do You Have a Website?

Just one simple fact. The reason you have a website for your business, no matter what business you are in, is you want to rake in bundles of cash. May be not now but definitely later it should be bringing returns on the investment. .
How does a website make money for your business?
Well, there are only 5 things that matter if your site is going to be a cash magnet:

You have to be “findable” on the web
You have to generate leads = people to your site
The leads need to become prospects
The prospects have to be converted to buyers = sales
You should save bundles of money that you are spending now, on things like customer service, order fulfillment, delivery tracking, automating offers…anywhere that information is provided without getting a bunch of humans involved.

That’s all there is to it! If your web designers know these well and fine, BUT most do not. Worse, website maintenance costs money. And you are losing business to competition. That is BAD.

Your Website is Like Your Business.

You Want It to Make Money. And Save Time. All the Time. Years ago I took one of my own ideas and created a $1 million+ online business from scratch. It is now on the first page of the search engines. And it’s my business and livelihood. Make sure that your web designer owes a successful online business and knows about how to run it.

Your sole purpose in having a website should be to use it as a marketing and communications tool. It is not there to be pretty. It should not be there to win awards. It is there to make you money. Even if you have a better product or service than your competition, the one who attracts more prospects and customers – wins! Being the best at marketing is all that matters.

Online Marketing Is Completely Different Than Marketing Offline

All of the tools, techniques, communication, etc. in the online world are different than those offline. A very common mistake is to think because it works offline you can just put it on the website! It’s important to realize the reader of offline thinks and processes information in a different way than someone reading online copy. What works offline may be a complete flop online.
They are two different worlds. For example, online marketing REQUIRES you to know how to get your site ranked high, very high, in the search engines like Google and Yahoo….so you routinely appear on the first page for the optimal search terms for your business.
Of course, this assumes you know how to find the optimal words for your business, your marketplace, your niche, etc. Just so you know, the “include all words” strategy has proven to be a total failure.
And, most designers and businesses do not know that SEO (search engine optimization) is not SEM (search engine marketing). If you do one and not the other you will probably be very disappointed with your results.
Studies have shown that you need to be on the first page of search engine results to get enough people coming to your site. SEO and SEM are not optional for online success – they are mandatory!
62% of users searching on the internet select a result within the first page of results. More than 90% click within the first 3 pages of search results. Beyond that you are toast.

Increase your ROI: Only Work with People Who Know Websites and Online Marketing

When you are planning your financial future you hire a financial planner or an attorney who specializes in that area of law. When you want plastic surgery you don’t go to a podiatrist, unless you want to end up with your nose looking like a foot.
So why wouldn’t you hire someone who specializes in creating money-making websites to build your website? Why would you hire a techno-wizard who knows nothing about businesses? I know this sounds silly but I have to say it because that is what the great majority of people do – pay someone to build a pretty site and slap it online and hope for the best.
Did you know that 99% of web design companies don’t know how to devise online sites that actually market your products or services?
So what you need is someone who can do more than build a website. Much, Much More!
You need people who can help you with how to create “hot” products or services that your customers really want.
You need people who make it possible for you to have a “money tree” business. People who can produce money like it grows on trees. People who have the communication skills you need to capture the attention and “cash the order” with your customers. Online or offline. (That means using multiple marketing channels and starting with the lowest cost = online!)
You need people with real world experience as well as online experience that can combine the two for the benefit of…YOU.
No one has the time to learn everything about their business, the internet, marketing, copywriting, finances and so on. That is why…

“The price of ignorance is paid forever!"

Successful entrepreneurs value all the real-world experience they can get. Where do they get it? By surrounding themselves with a team of experts who can provide the knowledge, guidance and successful experience for a wide variety of businesses.
One of the many beauties of direct marketing online, you never are face-to-face with your prospects, you never, ever experience a single “No” response! No one enjoys hearing “No.” At first it seems like a personal rejection.
For lots of people, never hearing anything but “Yes” is a lot of fun too!

Always Remember Your Website is your Marketing Machine

I just talked about how a good looking site can be totally useless and invisible to the public. I talked about how and why you want to be on the first page of the search engines.
Now, about driving people to your website. This is more than “being found” for the right search terms. This is about having a comprehensive strategy that links your offline and online marketing together to create leverage for your business and get maximum results.
Everything you do must have synergy, leverage and scalability. If not, don’t do it.
You need to be sure your online partner can:

Create a site that entices visitors to convert from information seekers to paying customers
Generate a stream of online and offline leads
Show you what functions of your business can be automated to save you money…and put that savings to good use…getting more customers
Show you the secrets of capturing information and how to utilize it for easy access and follow up
Show you how to make more sales with your existing customers
Help you set up marketing campaigns that get real results and build customer loyalty
Help you use email marketing ethically and effectively

Seriously, if your web designer/dungeon master/graphic zulu can not do ALL of these things and more, FIRE them now. You are wasting time and money! And time is often worth more than money!

Test, Test, and Test Some More & Collaborate Results and Changes

If you really want online success, or even offline success, then you must understand the importance of successful marketing testing. It is Crucial.
Start with these questions:

Have you tested each of your offline campaigns?
Do you know the return on investment for each offline strategy?
Do you know the speed of the return investment?
Do you know all the measures for your website traffic?
Do you know the unique visitors, hits, time spent, pages hit, etc., etc., etc. for your website?

Track and Measure…Correctly

You want to know everything that is happening on your website, or not happening. All of that testing will do you no good if you are not measuring and tracking all of the data associated with it.
Here are some of the tracking measures you should be talking to your web designer/builder about. In fact, they should be talking to you about these things. If you have to bring them up you are already in trouble, with a capital T.

How many visitors are coming to the site
How many of the visitors aren’t visitors (i.e. spiders, crawlers, etc. from search engines)
How many visitors are new vs. old
How long does each visitor stay on your site
What does each visitor look at
What graphics, words, pictures, etc are generating the most responses
Which search engines are getting you the best prospects
Where else are your customers coming from
How many pages does the visitor look at
What are your website rankings
How much money have you made from the average visitor
Who are your biggest money-making customers
If you use PPC is it working and paying for itself
Which links are bringing your visitors and are they converting to customers
And so on

This is not a comprehensive listing, rather, it gives you an idea of how many things you could or should be tracking when it comes to your online marketing.
If you are like most people, you are thinking “there is no way I could remember all of that, much less do it.” You would be right. Remember, that is why we all need a team of experts around us to do the things we either don’t know or don’t have time for.
But, if you use these kinds of tools and tracking you will join the 1-2% of successful online businesses. You do want to make money with your website, right?
It is simple, your website should bring in more money than it costs to maintain it!
What I see everyday is that our clients do not have any idea about virtually any of these statistics. So, they are not making good decisions about what to do next. Most are just leaving the website as-is and hoping for the best.
You should get measurements for every aspect of your business including offline so that you make informed decisions based on facts, not fiction!

Some Final Thoughts

Today, you must be ONLINE with a WEBSITE to be successful. Research has shown that people are abandoning the yellow pages and many other ‘traditional’ forms of advertising. The internet is the #1 SOURCE for information on virtually every topic or subject you can imagine…and still growing rapidly.
It is as it has always been – survival of the fittest. Those businesses which combine their offline and online strategies to maximize their effectiveness are going to survive and thrive. The others will die. And in these times there will be more deaths than usual. You see it, the ‘for lease’ signs appearing everywhere, the ‘announcement’ each week of another big business failure, the empty spaces in office buildings.
Now is not the time to sit by in the corner huddled with fear. If that is you then you will soon join the ranks of dying businesses. There are a select few who are taking action, gaining market share, taking in those customers from those dying businesses, and thriving! And they are positioned to be even bigger winners when the economy recovers.
Which one are you?
Hopefully you have gained some valuable insights that will help you achieve outstanding results with your business online and offline.
Our goal is to grow our business by helping people like you grow yours. The more you learn about us the more you will see that we run our business with the same ethics, values and business building tools we recommend to you.
The key to lasting success is to create lasting value. Turn transactions into relationships. In fact, the last sentence may be the most important and valuable one you read.

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Forum Marketing: Internet Strategy for Businesses

sangeeta — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:50:12 +0000

If you are expert in an area and if you have a niche market, forum marketing is suitable for you. This form of marketing is one of the oldest and most subtle forms of indirect marketing. The main purpose of this form of marketing is to establish your expertise, build brand awareness and create visibility.
Forum builds an online community too. However forums are different from social media marketing because SMM is mostly about networking while forums are for problem solving. Here, people ask questions and get answers. It is also a place where animated discussions take place.

There are 2 ways in which you can opt for Forum Marketing:

Get a forum on your website: Websites need fresh content and a forum is a great way to attract traffic to your website. Quite a lot of forum software are available for free over the internet.They are popular in 2 versions of software PHP and ASP. In most cases they require a database, available with the web host. They are compatible with MYSQL, Oracle and so on. Most forum software installation process is self explanatory. You can do it yourself if you are adventurous enough! Otherwise contact your web designer. They will do it for a small fee.
Managing a forum involves a lot of hard work because no user wants to post in an empty forum. So you will have to create discussion threads and topics and categories. Worse forums these days are targets of severe spamming, so increase your security and block automated signing.
Join a forum: If you are not interested in getting direct traffic volume to your website, or if you are short of time you can post regularly on reputed forums. There gradually post, post and post and you become a sort of expert and users and readers visit the links to your website.
Before joining a forum research well. Do a check
What is the page rank of the forum?
What is it’s policy of sending a link to your website
What is the level of expertise of the forum?

Do not join every forum related to your business. We suggest that you join the best 2 or three. Post almost everyday in each forum. Most forums have a rule of 15 to 20 posts before linking to a website. Post frequently and you have a great related traffic to your website.

How Does It Work?

Usually each subject has it’s own forum for example real estate, web design, travel or wine making. A forum like say real estate maybe divided into further categories like say-
Real Estate Forum may be divided into real estate marketing, real estate for sale, real estate lead and so on. ‘Real estate for sale’ may be further subdivided state wise or country wise and so on.
Any new post becomes a thread when it receives replies.

Helpful Hints and Guidelines:

Your address should be genuine
Mention your website URL.
You need to establish your credibility and expertise on a forum, act like an expert.
Use your site’s keywords in the forum post title
Ideally the post body should contain the keywords in the first 50 words
The forum title should mostly be in such a way that it asks opinions from others. For Example

Online Customers: Incorrect
Are Customers Really Online? : Correct

The tone should be formal yet conversational
At no time should slang words be used, remember you are professional!
If your post receives criticism, accept it gracefully and tell your critic why you think you are right. For Example

Cindy, criticism accepted. But, honestly all of Mexico isn’t all that unhygienic as NOT to go for surgery. While there have been a few cases of infection, there have been cases of surgery going the right way too. It’s just a matter of knowing the right doctor and his team. Moreover who says that there are never ever infections in surgeries in the US?

Never berate your critic. If your critic is really rude, take the humorous way out
NEVER post the wrong answers on a forum.
If you are late to respond to a personal or urgent query, apologize.
If you are answering back to a particular person, use that person’s forum name.
Observe the etiquettes of old members of the forum, follow them.

How Do Forums Help In Marketing?

They bring traffic volume to a website
People have to register in a forum, so you get to build a list
You gain credibility
You develop a relationship with the forum users
You upgrade your knowledge base.
You get a link back to your website

There is a lot of discussion these days of blogs over forums. But forums have 2 distinct advantages.
Firstly they are well categorized. For example a travel forum will be categorized, continent wise, country wise and city wise. Therefore searching for information or posting queries on that forum is easy.
Secondly, forums make sure you are addressing the right people, not general public at large. People who visit the forum are interested in the topic and seek information on it. This addresses the issue of following blind leads.

Forum Marketing will give to traffic but not plenty of traffic as far as numbers is concerned. But yes, experience says that forum traffic to a website results in better conversions.

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Other Issues in Internet Strategy

sangeeta — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:48:21 +0000

After getting the onsite done properly for your website to make impact you need to get things done properly offsite too. There are certain aspects of internet strategy that you may consider as most appropriate for your business, but the 9 steps below are fundamental offsite steps.

1. Article Marketing
2. Blogging
3. Forum Marketing
4. Directory Submissions
5. Press releases
6. Social media marketing
7. Online profiles

You can watch our Offsite SEO Technique Video for an overview.

There are 2 newer methods that appeal to online users

Podcasting
Vlogging or Video Blogging

For the next coming weeks I will discuss each aspect in detail.

Meanwhile you can check out these free business resources given by GMRWebTeam.

Until next week
Sangeeta

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Website Design and Internet Strategy

admin — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:53:59 +0000

Last week we talked broadly about website design and how to integrate it with your internet strategy. We also saw the significance of good original content and how it acts as a unifier for all aspects of internet strategy. This week we will go a step further and discuss onsite aspects of internet strategy. I will try to provide you with a checklist and a list of don’ts.

Zero on a website design company in your area that has a good aesthetic sense coupled with excellent programmers and experience in website marketing. Ask around. Do not cut costs at this stage. Ask the number of pages and the rates for additional pages. Make sure that there are no hidden costs. Try to go for companies integrating three aspects -design, marketing and maintenance; it’s easier and more convenient. Though initially expensive, you eventually end of saving costs because basic SEO of your website is done.
Decide on your website design requirements before hand. If you need a database to show information to your visitors offer two or three search options like search by city, search by type, search by requirement (may have 2 or more options hence will require more programming expertise). These factors make your website popular and user friendly encouraging visitors to come back.
Research your keywords and identify a keyword for each page: You can do it yourself or take the help of a website marketing company. Do not identify more than 3 keywords per page.
Good website architecture: The file should not be more than 3 levels deep, filenames should be relevant, main navigation tabs should be clearly visible and all pages should be linked. This inbound linking is a very important factor in SEO.
Make navigation easy for online visitors and search engines. Logically group your pages.
Original and relevant content: If you cannot write hire a copywriter. Be involved at each step. The content enables visitors to convert into customers.
Optimized and verified HTML code: This topic was covered in the following post: Website Design, Keywords, SEO and your Business
Acceptable code to content ratio: This tells us how much code is there on a page and how much of content. More the text the better. You can check your website at the link below
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/code-to-text-ratio/

Media Section in the website: check that it can includes video and podcasts abilities. These are the latest forms of media marketing
Build a list: One of the most important steps of internet strategy and most often ignored is a visitor capturing form. Most often it is a short form containing the first name and the email id. Visitors to your site may give you this information if you are offering a newsletter or a free download of a whitepaper or something equally interesting. These lists are important when you are launching a new product or have something special to give to your old clients.
Try to have a blog on your website. And update it frequently, at least once a week. The blog is good for feedback and information and attracts visitors. Search engines like blogs too as they always add fresh content to the site.
Sitemap: Ask for XML version to be submitted to search engines and HTML version for your visitors
Robot.txt tells the search engine where to go and where not to go.

Some Don’ts

I will not give a big list but avoid the 5 below:

Avoid flash
Avoid iFrames
Never use a login to access content pages, remember SE cannot login
Avoid duplicating your content across pages on your website.
Don’t use black hat SEO, avoid companies that promise instant results.

Resources for Internet Marketing Strategies

For Marketing tips: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
For Blogging tips: http://www.problogger.net/blog/
For Internet Marketing tips: http://www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/
For Free Copywriting Tips: http://www.sellingtohumannature.com/articles1sc.html

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