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Does Your Marketing Stop When Your Content Starts?
Your website's content will get noticed, get read, and get customers if you use your headline and first paragraph to let readers know what is in it for them. Here, I'll introduce you to some techniques you can use to make that happen.This article is an edited version of a chapter of Wordtracker's The Website Content Recipe Book - 21 irresistible content ideas to wow visitors and boost your search engine optimization.Don't Stop Marketing - Every Page is a Marketing PageVisitors may first enter your site through almost any page. And for various reasons no matter what you do, many will not read more than one page. Therefore, to maximize response you must treat every page as a marketing page. So add adverts to where they will be seen - a subject I plan to write about next week (look for 'How to make your articles sell'). But only a...
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Top 10 Google Search Features for Your Business
The people at Google are truly inspired! They are evolving their search engine into something that can be an incredibly powerful tool for business. There are a zillion things that Google can do for different parts of your business and in this post, I will highlight the top 10 Google search tools that will help your supply chain.Since Google is just a click away, I think it's a very useful for everybody involved in the supply chain to be aware of how much easier it can make their lives. Everybody from traffic managers, to purchasing people, to accounting people and customer service will likely need to reference what Google can do during the course of the week. There are a lot of people who don't even know all of Google's capabilities. So without further ado, here is your: Top 10 Google Search Tools That Will Help Your Supply Chain1. Package...
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6 questions to ask when choosing CMS for your e-commerce platform
A CMS is just about content so it doesn't need much attention, right? Wrong. In an e-commerce environment CMS means so much more than being able to edit and publish content. E-commerce pages have dynamic content served by code and this content can change depending on the visitor session; given such variation, how can you weave static content into dynamic pages without screwing the display? As the sophistication of consumers and online technology has risen, so have the demands on e-commerce managers to understand which tools are the best-fit for the business. Having worked on many CMS implementations and seen the pitfalls, I thought I'd share some advice on what questions you need to be asking. Before I start, indulge me in a CMS definition. CMS is a rather generic term for a myriad of things. For this blog I'm defining CMS as the toolkit that enables web teams to...
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10 Business Blogging Tips to Improve Your Blog Performance
Business blogging is a different kettle of fish to blogging for money and that, in turn, is entirely different to blogging socially. The type of blog you manage will determine the voice, design, and style of your blog as well as the efforts you're likely to put into promoting it. A business blog needs to be professional as well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that your readers will genuinely find interesting can promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can keep the line of communication between you and potential customers open. It enables you to post relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage new traffic and help build your client base. It's far from an exhaustive list but below are ten tips to remember when blogging for business: 1 - Set Your Goals Early In just about every guide you ever read it says "set your...
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"Are You Human" Tests Go To the Dogs, and Cats
A new "are you human" test uses easily discernable photographs to protect comments and product reviews from eager spam bots, offering an effective replacement for third-party solutions like reCAPTCHA. Many spammers use programs or bots to automatically fill out comment or product review forms, and then add links to malicious or scam sites designed to either infect or bilk users. To fight this sort of spam, some developers and designers use third-party solutions like the aforementioned reCAPTCHA. But for the most part, these would-be solutions are nearly untenable, since they are generally unintelligible even to real humans, a significant hurdle to accessibility, and relatively easy to hack. AnimalCaptcha BackWritten's solution to at least some of these captcha challenges is to use public domain pictures of dogs, cats, and other animals to test a user's humanity. Preview Animal Captcha The solution is implemented using JavaScript and server-side scripting. So it will...
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The Big Six: mandatory sites for local bricks-and-mortar businesses
If you're a local merchant with a bricks-and-mortar presence, it's time to kiss the yellow pages goodbye. There's no longer any excuse for not having a web presence or for ignoring digital marketing. Eighty-two percent of people use search engines to find information about local businesses - more than any other media. Even if you don't have a website (you should, but that's another story), there are six sites no local business can afford to ignore. Not only is getting listed dead simple, it's a great leveler. If you own a pizza place, you can compete head-to-head with national chains like Dominos. Hardware? Go up against Home Depot and Lowes. You get the idea. Claiming your business and getting listed and on all five of the Big Six should only take an hour or so (though most require you wait for a postcard or phone call o verify that you...
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SEO Tips: Get More Traffic with these 10 Important Inbound Links
Don't overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site. The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.Why are these links to your site important? They can can...• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link• boost the number of visitors to your web site• dramatically improve your search engine rankings Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That's a hard fact to swallow, given how I like...
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URL Shortening Services are Holding You Hostage - Fight Back!
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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The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy
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...
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Free and Easy Link Building Tips
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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