One of the most useful tools to come along in recent years for online marketers is URL shorteners.There are sites where you can paste a long, ugly URL into a form, and the site will give you a much shorter URL to use in your emails, newsletters and promotions.There are also scripts that you can install on your server, that allow you to generate shortened URLs, which is what I prefer, due to the great control it gives you.In case you are not using the tiny urls, you're probably losing a lot of sales and traffic. The benefits of using shortened URLs typically include: • They allow you to conserve space when posting to micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter, where each of your posts is limited to a mere 140 characters. • They look more professional than long, unwieldy affiliate URLs (especially if they have your domain name in them)....

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Throughout my research, I'm always surprised when I stumble onto websites that are professionally designed and seem to offer great products and services, but lack or fail in certain important elements.Elements that, with just a few short changes, can help multiply the results almost instantaneously.Generally, I have found that there are seven common mistakes. I call them the "Seven Deadly Sins." Is your website committing any one of these? 1. THEY FAIL TO CONNECTTraffic has been long touted to be the key to online success, but that's not true. If your site is not pulling sales, inquiries or results, then why would it need more traffic?The key is to turn curious browsers into serious buyers. Aside from the quality of the copy, the number one reason why a website doesn't convert is that the copy is targeting the wrong audience or fails to connect with them.First, create a "perfect prospect profile." List all the...

Continue reading The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy

Okay, you're the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn't like the movies - just because you built it doesn't mean they'll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.If you've spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks - links that point to your...

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So much SEO.You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization - SEO - that it offers a cure for all the world's business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google's own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.So Why All The Hubbub?The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means "free advertising", that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO "experts" that, variously, all claim to ......

Continue reading Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation

If you are online and are not already using article directories to promote your website, you are missing out on a free and highly effective marketing option. Article directories are great ways to draw traffic to your site without paying for advertising. However, to get real traffic to your site using an article directory, you must know how to use them correctly. What Article Directories Are Before you can use an article directory, you have to know what one is. Article directories are websites where thousands upon thousands of articles on just about any subject are posted. They are generally categorized to make it easier for readers to find information they want. They are also linked together, so a reader reading about "Hawaii travel" will naturally go from article to article on that topic. People can use the articles they find in the directories on their own websites, either for...

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When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line. If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don't. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works. What are these basic reasons? What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If...

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When you hear the word "bounce", you're probably more inclined to associate it with a checking account, not your website. But for those who study and understand website statistics, they understand that "bounce rate" is an important measure of your website's effectiveness. Bounce rate, simply put, is the percentage of people who come to your site, then immediately leave without viewing any of the inside content pages. Think of it like window shopping. Say you browse by a shop and don't really care to enter based on what you saw at first glance through the window. The window in this case is your home page. A bad first impression, or irrelevant content, can chase away a visitor and stop them from freely investigating the full content of your site. Google Analytics defines bounce rate as: "The percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from...

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Twitter is the current top "hot property" on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business. First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a "must have" application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit...

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Throughout my research, I'm always surprised when I stumble onto websites that are professionally designed and seem to provide great products and services, but lack or fail in certain important elements.Elements that, with just a few short changes, can help multiply the results almost instantaneously.Generally, I have found that there are seven common mistakes. I call them the "Seven Deadly Sins." Is your website committing any one of these?1) They Fail to ConnectTraffic has been long touted to be the key to online success, but that's not true. If your site is not pulling sales, inquiries or results, then why would it need more traffíc? The key is to turn curious browsers into serious buyers. Aside from the quality of the copy, the number one reason why a website doesn't convert is that the copy is targeting the wrong audience or fails to connect with them.First, create a "perfect prospect...

Continue reading The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy

"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here)." It's usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it's usually all about improving their rankings and positions...and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you'd think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy. Vastly improved (or even #1) rankings are rather easy to achieve in an SEO campaign, even...

Continue reading Peeling Back the Onion: Metrics that Matter to a Good Search Engine Optimization Company