Anyone who knows anything about SEO knows how important external links to your website are in getting you ranked high in the search engines. So, just how do you go about getting these links?
Well, if you have a ton of money to spend there are always PPC and banner ads but the small return rarely warrants the high cost. There are always “link exchanges” where you put links to somebody on your site in exchange for them putting links to your site but who really wants to put a ton of links on their site that could potentially lead to a competitor? Besides, it’s the “one-way” links that are the most important to get. BTW, buying links is a good way to get you banned from Google and most others for life so don’t even think about it.
This week I have 3 Tips to get you lots of quality one-way links to your site for little or no cost.
1- Article Directories: There are hundreds of free article directories always looking for new articles to post. That means hundreds of quality, one-way links to your website with just one good article. www.ezinearticles.com and www.articledashboard.com are just two of the many directories available.
2- Online Press Releases: Write a press release and submit it to one of the top press release services such as www.prweb.com and they distribute it to multiple online media channels and websites for you. Some charge a small fee but others are free. Don’t forget your local papers too.
3- Blogs: I know it seems like I’m repeating this a lot but blogs are just an excellent way to get hundreds of quality one-way links to your site for no extra cost at all. For example, here’s a link to my website Concepts ‘n’ Creations, and you’ll find at least one in every article I write.
Bonus Tip: The grand daddy of all links is the “Natural One-Way Link” which is when people like your website so much that they just put a link to it on their website, sometimes with a very valuable “descriptive text link” and positive comments. Of course, you already know how to get these links. Always provide fresh, informative and useful content that people are really interested in and you’ll never have to worry about trying to get links to your website again.
For more information about these and other ways to help build your business, just contact us at Concepts ‘n’ Creations to see how We Make Your Website Work For You.
June 24th, 2010 in
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Internet Marketing,
SEO,
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That’s certainly a fairly common sentiment when the economy slows down. Suddenly people become fearful that they may not have enough money to eat so they start cutting back on everything and your left with an empty business. So, what can you do about it?
Well, first of all, your primary goal should be to keep the customer’s you already have. It’s far more expensive to attract new customers than it is to keep the one’s you have. So, to use your marketing dollars wisely, concentrate on what added value you can offer to your existing customers to not only keep them but to have them buy even more. Learn who your customers are and what their needs are. What do they want? Build a strong trusting relationship with your current clients and they are much more likely to stay and purchase more. Good communication is essential to building strong customer relationships. To stay in touch with our customers we use e-Mail Marketing.
Second, use your current customers to do your marketing to new customers for you. No marketing strategy is more successful than referrals and in a slow economy, referrals are your best friend. Offer your existing customers generous rewards through a formal referral program to bring in new customers. It’s much easier for potential clients to trust their own friends when it comes to where they should spend their money and when you have built that strong trust with your customers, it’s even easier for them to convey that trust to their friends and bring them in as new clients.
Lastly, look to your past customers. There could be hundreds or even thousands of potential customers that just need a little coaxing to come back. I hope you still have them on your contact list. If not, get one started now with our proven effective e-Mail Marketing System. Contact them by phone, by email and by regular mail (all three). Why did they leave? Did they have an issue that you have since resolved. It could even be they simply didn’t come back because you just never contacted them again (boo you). Whatever the reason, entice them to come back by offering them an even better value or better results than before just for coming back.
See, I bet you didn’t know you already had all of those customers without even spending a penny of your marketing dollars to find new one’s. In case you haven’t noticed yet, e-Mail Marketing is by far the most cost effective method of getting and keeping clients. Try it now for FREE.
Good Luck,
Chris
Maybe you’ve heard about some of these ways to help promote your business? Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. So, you say you don’t know how to use them? It’s as easy as going to a cocktail party.
Some may remember (most may not) a time before computer social networking when cocktail parties were the way to network your business. Well, believe it or not, it’s exactly the same using these new tools but, now it can be a 24/7 cocktail party with literally millions of people invited. So, how do you start?
1- Start conversations and meet new people naturally just as you would at a party.
2- Help other’s by answering their questions or offering advice.
3- Make sure to ask others questions or ask for their advice.
Just remember to keep it personal and speak just as you would speak in person to somebody at a party. Remember, you wouldn’t start off a conversation at a cocktail party with a sales pitch (unless you’re looking for a very short conversation) so don’t do it on Facebook either. Make sure that you add value to the community by asking and answering questions honestly then, feel free to work in your sales pitch or link to your business naturally as part of the conversation. If you help make people feel comfortable with you before you try to make the sale, they’ll trust you enough to gladly make the purchase and more.
Most of all, have a drink, relax and have fun with it! For help with these and more ways to help your business grow, contact me at Concepts ‘n’ Creations. We Make Your Website Work For You.
See you at the next online cocktail party,
Chris
June 10th, 2010 in
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Internet Marketing,
Social Networking,
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Well, I’ve been saying for a while now that when it comes to losing important files on your computer, it’s not if it will happen, it’s when. So, I suppose it was bound to happen to me eventually and it did just a week ago.
I was simply moving files and cleaning things up a bit when all of a sudden I noticed that all 3500 of my photos were gone, just gone. Now, before you say “you should have backed them up”, I do, which is better than most people. But, that still doesn’t save the one’s added since my last backup and with recent trips and vacation there were quite a few once in a lifetime pics that didn’t make the backup.
Luckily, Carbonite backs up every file as it’s added and continues to back them up automatically without me having to do anything or even think about it. Not only that, my files are all securely encrypted and saved on multiple drives in multiple locations so no matter what happens, my files are always there, safe and secure.
I just went to my Carbonite back up, found the photos and clicked restore. Within minutes my lost photos were safely returned to their place on my PC. That was the best $50 I’ve ever spent.
I have Carbonite installed on all of my computers and I highly recommend it to everyone I talk to. It is well worth the $54.95 annual fee to know that all of my files will always be safe without me having to even think about it at all.
Visit us at Concepts ‘n’ Creations to learn more about Carbonite and other ways we can help your business and your home.
Have a great day,
Chris
You’ve taken the time to define your purpose and to define your customer and you’ve designed your website so now your done, right? Wrong!
Now comes the most important part, monitoring the actual visitors to your website to see what they are doing while they are there. Since you went to all the trouble to define your purpose and your customer, the next logical step would be to see if you are attracting those customers and if they are helping your site to fulfill its purpose.
Do you get a ton of visitors but they all just leave immediately? Maybe your content is not clear or your search terms or tags are attracting people who are really not interested in your product or service. Are your visitors looking around a lot but then not buying anything? Maybe your “call to action” is not clear or you don’t have enough information to base a decision on.
The main thing is to make sure that somebody is keeping track of what’s going on so that corrections can be made if needed. This process also needs to be ongoing to keep up with changes in search engines and with changes in your market.
There are various different services and programs to purchase that will help you collect all of this information and figure it all out. At Concepts ‘n’ Creations we help you answer all of these important questions with our monthly site statistics report included FREE with your monthly maintenance service. We also offer additional assistance and more specific information upon request. We always work with you to help make sure that you’re getting the results you want. Contact Us today to see how we can make your website work for you.
Chris
Now that we’ve covered defining your purpose before designing your website, we will discuss another important aspect of your design, defining your customer. Who is your ideal target customer that is most likely to purchase your product or service? Once again, be specific.
Next, here is an important exercise for you to try, actually become the customer that you just defined. What are your needs? What words or phrases do you use to find your product or service? Now, actually type those words or phrases into a search engine and look at some of the top sites that show up. Take note of what design, colors and layout attract you. What about the content interests you? Just as you note all the positives, also note what turns you off. Also make a note of the websites that are showing up at the top for those search words and phrases. When you start your SEO, these will be your competitors you’ll be trying to beat. All of this is valuable information when helping to design your website to attract the customers that you want.
Remember to do this exercise NOT as the owner of your business but as your target customer you’ve defined and note what you as your target customer like and dislike. Make sure to check back next week for the 2nd and even more important part of defining your customer. Subscribe to this blog today so you don’t miss it.
Concepts ‘n’ Creations works closely with you to help you properly define your purpose and your customer. Contact Us to see how we can make your website work for you.
Until next week…
Hopefully, you’ve already read Part 1 and you have defined your purpose for your website. If not, go back and read part 1 first and then come back here.
So, what’s even more important than your purpose? Your visitor’s purpose, of course. Fortunately, your visitor’s purpose is quite a bit easier to define. First of all, accept the fact that 99.9% of your visitors really don’t care about you or your website and just get over it. Unless you are running an online game site, your visitors are at your website for one reason and for one reason only, to get information, period. Either you give them the information they are looking for or they go somewhere else. It’s really as simple as that. The easier that you make it for them to find what they are looking for, the happier they will be and the more often they’ll come back for more. Remember, your competitors are only a click away.
Now, the real trick is to combine your visitor’s purpose with your purpose that we discussed last week. Don’t worry, it can be done and it’s really not much of a trick. Contact Us at Concepts ‘n’ Creations to see how easy it can be.
So, to sum it all up, your purpose is probably the most important thing to have in virtually everything you do so take the time and define it before you start. Pause every so often to make sure that you’re on track or to re-examine your purpose (it’s okay to change if you need to). Your purpose keeps you focused but more importantly, it lets you know when you have succeeded. Remember, just as important is your customer’s purpose. So don’t forget them or they’ll soon forget you!.
Oh, and the meaning of life? It’s 42, of course.
Until next time…
No, this is NOT a blog about the meaning of life.
In order to build a successful business, virtually everything that you do must have a clear purpose and every task that follows must lead you to that purpose. This is especially true with your website.
Before you even begin to think about uploading all of those cute images and animations to the internet for all to see, STOP, take a moment and really define the purpose of your website. Why do you even have a website? If you answered, “because everyone else has one”, sorry, that didn’t work when we were kids and it doesn’t work now. Seriously define exactly what it is that you want your website to do for you and be specific (to make a lot of money is not specific). Then, make sure that every design element on every page follows your purpose.
For example, if your purpose is to collect email addresses then make sure your design leads your visitors into giving you their prized email address. If you want them to register or sign-up for a class then make sure it’s very easy to find all the information they need to make a decision and even easier to sign-up immediately while it’s fresh on their mind to do so. Give them incentives to sign-up now! Also, always give them multiple contact methods such as forms, emails, and phone numbers.
But don’t forget that each page is also its own website in the search engines so while all of your pages should follow your site wide purpose, each individual page should also have its own purpose with the content on the page following that purpose.
More about purpose to come next week… Subscribe to this blog so you won’t miss it or
Contact Us or visit Concepts ‘n’ Creations to see how we can help you today.
Chris
I was just thinking the other day that everything I needed to know about SEO, I really learned in Kindergarten. That’s right, you can have your site listed at the top of all the major search engines just by following the same rules you learned in Kindergarten. Here are just a few that I use and they work perfectly.
1. If the teacher likes what you do, you get a gold star. This is probably the most important thing to learn. If Google is considered to be the teacher, then follow the rules and give Google good, easy to find content that is directly related to the keywords being searched for and you will get the “Gold Star” of higher search engine rankings. It’s really that simple.
2. Play fair. If you try to cheat your way to the top, you WILL be caught and severely punished with lower rankings or by even being banned.
3. Don’t take things that are not yours. Stealing other people’s content is not only illegal, it’s just wrong and you will be punished for it. Duplicate content actually hurts your rankings.
4. It’s nice to share. It is nice to share and the more relevant information and links to relevant information that you share with the world, the higher your rankings will be. Notice I specified information that is relevant to your keywords.
5. When you plant a seed, and nurture it, it grows. Think of SEO as planting seeds all over the internet that will grow into site traffic and customers as long as you continue to nurture them and keep planting more. But, if you neglect them, they will die as will your traffic.
It’s amazing how many things in life can be broken down into the simple things you learned in Kindergarten. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help make your website work for you, contact Concepts ‘n’ Creations today.
Until next time…
Chris Miller
Your “bounce rate” is an important statistic in tracking how your website is performing. Bounce rate, simply defined, is the percentage of people who come to your site and then immediately leave without viewing any of the inside content pages. If you’re using Google Analytics, the bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits or visitors who enter and leave from the same page.
Your visitors may “bounce” for several reasons. Your SEO strategy may be misleading or too broad so you are attracting the wrong people for your product or service and they are simply not interested. Your landing page may take too long to load so they click off to the next site before they even see it. Your landing page may not let them know, in the first few seconds, that your site is exactly what they’re looking for. Your landing page may be so annoying that they can’t bear to look at it for more than a few seconds. Maybe your navigation is so confusing they can’t figure out where to go or how to get there.
Also, keep in mind that while most people enter your “home page” every single page on your website has the potential of being a “landing page” and every page has its own bounce rate. Therefore, each page has to clearly let your visitors know where they are, why they’re there and where to go next.
Obviously, a lower bounce rate is better but there is much debate over exactly what bounce rate constitutes good or bad. Plus, depending on the page, a high bounce rate may be expected such as a blog where the visitors generally get all they need to know on the first page. The general consensus agrees that you should be looking for something less than 50%. But, you need to track the rate over time to see if changes that you make improve it or make it worse.
To figure out what’s making your visitors bounce, you’ll need to look at other metrics such as the amount of time your visitors stay before they click away and also where are they are coming from. At Concepts ‘n’ Creations we monitor all of your important website statistics and report them to you every month in a free report. We also make adjustments as needed to help increase the performance of your website. Contact Us today to see how We Make Your Website Work For You.
Until next time,
Chris
Anyone who knows anything about SEO knows how important external links to your website are in getting you ranked high in the search engines. So, just how do you go about getting these links?
