Marketing On the Internet: Effects On Your Business
Posted on August 26th, 2008
What happens when you search on the Internet? How do you get to what you want? Most likely, you’ll skip all the banner ads, and enter your own search term. You’ll skip the “sponsored search engine results.” Maybe at this point, you can’t even see them. You probably don’t even see the shaded results on the right, or any of the advertising or web infomercial type results. It’s a lot like television: if you don’t have a video recorder, you just tune out the commercials mentally.
Clearly, if you’re marketing your goods or services on the Internet, those sorts of sponsored results and banner ads give you a really dismal return on investment. Sure, they’ll generate some clicks, which will in turn generate some sales, but they’re only worthwhile for big, relatively rich companies.
Ideally, you want to optimize your site so that it naturally shows up high on the list. The playing field is much more level than in any other form of marketing. Small companies can own their much larger competitors.
In case it’s still not quite clear what ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ search means, its’ just the ‘editorial’ rather than ‘sponsored’ search results for whatever search engine you use. If you can fine-tune your site to land high in the list of organic search results, your marketing on the Internet will have the desired effects on your business. Unlike the paid advertisements, you can’t buy your way in. The only way to punch your ticket for this dance is natural search engine optimization.
The playing field is relatively level, but large companies do have some advantages when it comes to natural search engine optimization. They tend to have large quantities of inbound links. This affects search engine results substantially. Vendors, affiliates and partners often link freely and unbidden to the corporation’s site.
Smaller companies, on the other hand, have some advantages too. Smaller companies tend to be more willing to pursue optimizing their site to generate results organically. Smaller companies also have little or no red tape to sift through in order to get a decision made on optimizing their sites. Smaller companies tend to be more willing to outsource, perhaps because they tend to not have significant resources internally. Natural search engine optimization is both a technical and non-technical problem. Simple steps like figuring out what keywords people will search for are important, as well as understanding the technical aspects of how a search engine indexes pages.
Huge corporations, tend to view natural search engine optimization as a very small piece of an enormous puzzle. Not only that, they’ve been doing without it for years. Quite possibly, they’ve even been doing without the Internet for years. The necessary steps to successfully marketing on the internet in order to get the desired effects on your business are often too much to get through committee after committee and miles of red tape. Smaller, leaner competitors can thus swoop in and take full advantage of organic search engine optimization and get better search engine results.
Tags: Marketing On the Internet: Effects On Your Business
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The Big Benefit Of An Internet Marketing Forum
Posted on August 22nd, 2008
The Internet is amazing. Quite possibly, everything that human beings have ever known will eventually find its way onto the Internet. Unfortunately, a great deal of wildly inaccurate information and even deliberately misleading information; has also found its way onto the Internet.
It’s great, and it’s useful, to read articles from site after site after site, but maybe sooner or later you’d want to ask a question or two, and you’d want someone out there on the Internet to actually answer them. Guess what? You can ask. You can get an answer. You don’t even have to pay for it. How? Easy. Sign up for an Internet marketing forum.
In case you’ve never joined one, an Internet forum is a website, or area of a website, where the site’s members can post information and discuss whatever interests them. These forums are essentially public—that is, all members can read them. Forums are generally organized by topic.
Within each broad category, the individual members create the topics. One member starts a ‘thread’ by making a statement, or more often than not, asking a question. Someone else responds to the question, and someone responds to the response, etc. This can go on for page after page.
You can get valuable information this way. You can also get complete nonsense, and can quickly realize that just about every wing nut on the planet has access to the net and loves forums. Some of these wing nuts can be extremely belligerent. Fortunately, most forums are moderated. That is, the site basically hires a referee to keep members from abusing each other, and depending on the site’s policy, maybe even keep them on topic.
Not surprisingly, an Internet marketing forum is a forum devoted to marketing goods and services over the net. Such forums enable you to interact directly with other Internet marketers, and would-be net marketers, getting answers to your questions and in turn, perhaps answering some of theirs. Quite possibly, you might even be able to market your goods and services this way, and quite organically; you go on the forum and just happen to find out that someone needs what you have, or what you do.
Another benefit from net forums is that they tend to be populated by regular members. This means that over time, the regular members get to now each other, and a sense of community grows. This can be a valuable source of moral support for someone trying to market a product or service over the Internet. Chances are, even though marketing over the Internet involves reaching out to potential customers and providing goods or services to existing customers, you can end up feeling isolated. It’s good to have an informal environment where you can talk shop with other like-minded individuals.
Got a question about Internet marketing? Just starting out and have a lot to learn? Or maybe you have a lot of experience and want to share? Join an Internet marketing forum. Not only can you do all that but you might just find that you enjoy being part of a net community of like minded people.
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The Main Key To Internet Marketing For Online Businesses
Posted on August 21st, 2008
The main key to marketing for online businesses is simple: branding. Branding has been a marketing buzzword for a very long time. It has caused a flurry of redesigned corporate logos, spiffy new letterheads, mission statements, rewritten mission statements, and even theme songs, and an endless stream of focus groups to guide the process. All of this can play a role, but branding is simpler than that, really. It’s letting customers know who you are, what you do, and how you do it (and it doesn’t hurt if they come away believing you’re better at what you do than your competition).
If you want to create an identity for your online business, you need to define your brand up front. When customers arrive at your website, the first thing they should see should be what you do and why they should care. There are way too many websites that bombard you with flashy graphics and catchy slogans, yet leave it to you, the potential customer, to figure out what the heck they actually do! This is wrong, dead wrong. The best thing you can do is spell it out. Who you are and what you do should be immediately clear and unmistakable.
A potential customer doesn’t know who you are. The best way to make them care about who you are, is to start with what you do, not who you are. This may not make sense at first, but the most important concept of Internet marketing for online business is that your message should always start with stating a benefit for the customer. What’s in it for them? Then, once they know what you can do for them, you can tell them who you are, and introduce your spiffy logo or flashy graphics.
Rather than trying to get readers, visitors or users, think in terms of creating fans. “Users” visit your site, maybe subscribe to your newsletter, and buy your products or services. “Fans” are better—they rave about how great you are to their friends, cheer you on, and breathlessly await news about what you’re up to professionally. It shouldn’t be too hard to see why fans are better than users.
As much as you love that spinning flash graphic that takes ten minutes to load, the word’s the thing on the internet. What matters most online is what words you use. Don’t believe it? Fire up your search engine. Go on, do it. Ready? Good. Now search by really cool flash graphic and let me know what you come up with. Don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath. If you want online fans, you need to give useful, interesting brand-related content. A conversational tone is best. Write like you’re talking to someone. After all, would you rather listen to a real person talking, or a list of bullet points?
Words are supreme, but visual elements are still important. (You can sigh in relief now, knowing you’ll still be able to use your spinning flash logo). The visual elements should reinforce your identity and message. In other words, don’t decorate. Communicate.
The key to Internet marketing for online businesses is simple. It’s branding. And all branding means is letting them know what you do, how you do it, and who you are.
Tags: Internet Marketing For Online Businesses
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Is The PHP Include Function SEO Friendly?
Posted on August 19th, 2008
I’ve begun using PHP includes in my web coding to relieve some of the burden of editing mutiple web pages. My concern was if these pages with PHP Includes would be SEO friendly for Google and other search engines. After researching the issue I can safely say that using PHP Includes are safe for search engines because they are server side, so search engines see the complete output, not the Include statement. Hope that helps someone out there!
Tags: PHP Include Function SEO
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What An Internet Marketing Center Can Do For Your Business
Posted on August 19th, 2008
Internet marketing centers are basically consultants and clearinghouses of marketing information on the Internet. They test, develop and forecast what tools and resources will be needed for small and medium sized businesses to successfully market themselves on the Internet.
Starting an online business? You need more than just a website to succeed. You need a plan. You need strategies for driving potential customers to your site. You need a site designed to sell effectively. You need strategies to convert site traffic into money in the bank. An Internet marketing center is a valuable resource you can use to successfully start, build and grow your own online business on a small budget.
Internet marketing centers vary in scope and purpose. Some provide free information and articles. Some are consulting firms you can hire to help you build your online business. Others have dodgy looking websites guaranteeing you wealth, fame and power almost over night. Needless to say, evaluate them carefully, and use common sense. Business on the Internet is still business, and there’s no magic secret to easy success.
Many Internet marketing centers focus on particular types of business. For example, some advise lawyers, some advise manufacturers of after-market parts for motorcycles, and everything in between. Many sites advise entrepreneurs providing services, rather than goods.
Are you an eBayer? eBay has become a way for small retail businesses to generate big money. More than 2 million people scour eBay every day looking for stuff to buy. It’s the most visited e-commerce site on the whole Internet. In fact, approximately 1/3 of all US Internet users visit eBay. Internet marketing centers are sites where you can learn strategies for growing a real business on eBay.
Before you consult a site for the specific type of business you plan to start, it may be advisable to learn more about marketing on the Internet. There are many excellent websites full of free articles on marketing on the Internet. Some also provide broader background information about marketing, in case you didn’t happen to go to business school. Even if you are planning on hiring one of the consulting firm styles Internet marketing centers to help you build your online business, it is sensible to book up on the basic principles before you do.
The consulting firm style internet marketing centers can help you develop, step by step, practical, cost-effective strategies to build your business, no matter how small you are starting out. Even home-based businesses might consider using their services to develop profitable strategies. They often provide training services as well as hands-on, individual counseling. Some even develop custom software to aid you in your Internet marketing endeavors.
There are many types of Internet marketing center. Some are free clearinghouses of general marketing information. Others provide consulting services to your business. Some of these firms are surprisingly affordable. No matter how small your business, even if you’re working from your garage, they may be able to help you grow a profitable business. Use your judgment and beware of scammers, and your business can benefit from the information and services provided by internet marketing centers.
Tags: Internet Marketing Center
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Micro Niche Finder Review - Should You Buy This Keyword Tool?
Posted on August 19th, 2008
Micro Niche Finder is a software tool that claims to uncover hidden niches and keywords that you can use in your marketing efforts. Bold claims, for sure, but can this keyword tool really find small niches that haven’t been saturated yet? And how easy is it to use? This review of Micro Niche Finder aims to find out, so read on!
Micro Niche Finder Interface
Let’s face it. One of the biggest hurdles that online marketers face is trying to find a niche that hasn’t been attacked by other marketers already. Your niche can make all the difference in your profitability, so this research is essential to the survival of your online business. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories of a marketer locating a fresh niche and making healthly sales from it. But sometimes that seems like such a tough task. Trust me…I’ve done a lot of keyword research to try to hunt down those long tail keywords that can make or break a campaign. It takes time and it takes effort. Can Micro Niche Finder really make locating untapped niches and unused long tail keywords easier?
Micro Niche finder is on version 3 as of right now. I purchased Micro Niche Finder and began putting it to the test. I found that it made locating good keywords so much more intuitive. I entered my keyword to start and Micro Niche Finder returned quite a large list of related keywords that I hadn’t even considered. From there it was easy to dig down even further to locate those long tail keywords that are so sought after.
When you enter a keyword into Micro Niche Finder it hits the web and searches for any related results. The list that comes back provides you with numbers of searches per month (please note that number is per month…I was confused at first until I realized that) and you will have to divide by 30 to get an approx. number of daily searches. Then you are able to check the competition to see exactly how much the keyword has been targeted by other marketers. Micro Niche Finder has a really easy feature for beginners that will tell you if you should even bother trying to target those keywords. A green light means go for it, yellow means you will have a tougher time trying to have your pages, posts or articles appear in Google for that keyword, and red means don’t even bother. This feature alone is a true time saver.
How much time do you spend researching keywords? If you are anything like me, that’s quite a bit of time spent just on keyword research when I could be working on other parts of my business. It is worth its weight in gold.
The other fantastic feature that I loved as an article marketer is being able to right click on a keyword and instantly check EzineArticles for articles that are already using that keyword. Yet another time saver as I used to do a ton of research at EzineArticles trying to determine if someone has already written an article with the keywords I am looking at.
Things I don’t like about Micro Niche Finder? When I checked a word and then double-clicked that word to see all the small keywords that made up that phrase it wouldn’t remember that I had checked that keyword for export. Speaking of exporting, that is one of the best features. Found the keywords you like? Check them off and export them to Excel for easier tracking and further manipulation. Love it!
The other things I wasn’t totally happy with was I felt like I expected more frequent updates, but really, maybe that is just because I am used to other, more buggy software getting frequent patches. There also seem to be a few odd keywords that show up when searching from time to time, as if the software is trying to find relevant keywords but doesn’t always succeed. Micro Niche Finder does what it does well, and that is reduce the amount of time you spend hunting down good, viable keywords to use in your marketing campaign…and how valuable is that to your bottom line?
Tags: Micro Niche Finder Review
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Who is the Internet Marketing Attorney? - Micah Buchdahl
Posted on August 18th, 2008
The “Internet Marketing Attorney” is the pen name of Micah Buchdahl, the attorney who runs www.internetmarketingattorney.com. The site is a resource for lawyers to market their services and firms. The site hosts the Internet Marketing Attorney Awards, and the Nifty 50 Web Site Review. Buchdahl also has a blog, www.MarketingAttorney.com. On the blog, he often answers reader questions.
Buchdahl is involved in HTMLawyers Inc, but the Internet Marketing Attorney site appears to be intended to be helpful, forthright and informational rather than an attempt to ham-handedly steer potential customers toward his consulting services. In fact, the site doesn’t allow advertising sponsorship or vendor affiliations at all. In effect, Buchdahl has created a helpful, well thought out, informative site, not a sales pitch. This, in itself, is good Internet marketing strategy, and suggests Buchdahl probably knows what he’s doing in terms of marketing law firms and lawyers on the Internet.
One of the cornerstones of the site is “Micah’s Nifty 50. It was introduced in January 2001, and is now a reference source for successful law firm web sites. Inclusion in the “50” doesn’t necessarily mean the site is outstanding, but rather that it has an outstanding feature or component. The list is updated periodically, with previous lists still available online. Thus there are now over 200 examples on the site.
The Internet Marketing Attorney rates the sites of each of the 250 largest law firms in the United States. Buchdahl reviewed the sites by surfing each site for an average of 20 minutes and then evaluating them. He gives awards to the top 30 sites: The top ten are platinum, next ten gold, and the last ten, silver.
He evaluates the sites by giving them numerical scores on a scale of 1 to 10 in various categories, and generally avoids giving out a ten—or a zero—unless it is really, really deserved, and describes five as a solid average. The categories are:
• Design, which encompasses the look and feel of the site, not just the graphics. Not surprisingly, some of the most effective designs had few graphics. After all, they’re selling legal services, not flash animation.
• Content, including attorney bios, practice area descriptions and publications
• Usability, which basically has to do with how easily a user can find what they’re looking for. Consistent navigation is the lynchpin of this category. He considers usability, sensibly enough, from the point of view of those who most likely would use the site.
• Interactivity had to at least include a bunch of email links. Good online forms help improve the score as well
• He also rates the sites for intangibles. Obviously, that is highly subjective. An example of an intangible that matters is smart domain name use.
These scores were then added up. Many firms, not surprisingly, tied, with top tier being in the 40s. He also reviews and rates mid-sized and smaller firms.
The reviews are limited to brief synopses. Buchdahl states that he put more than 150 non-billable hours over the course of six months into the process. Now, my brief review of Buchdahl’s site: Internet Marketing Attorney is a useful tool for law firms trying to market themselves on the net.
Tags: Internet Marketing Attorney, Micah Buchdahl
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Proven Tips for Internet Web Marketing: Search Engine Ranking
Posted on August 18th, 2008
The most important goal of internet web marketing is to increase traffic to your web site. You can think of your web site as your shop front; and the more people you can entice to come into your shop front, the more customers you will have. The best way to increase traffic to your website is to increase your search engine rankings. This can be a challenge, but with some work and persistence you shouldn’t have too many problems.
The first internet web marketing tip for increasing search engine ranking is to build your internal and incoming links. Internal links are simply links on your site that link to other pages on your site. It is important that each of your pages contains links to the all of the other pages on your site.
This will increase the page rank of every page on your web site. Incoming links can be placed on other, smaller websites that you have built. These other sites will be smaller and you will only need a few pages for them. Now, put links on these pages that link to your main site and cross link them using the same keywords.
Another thing you should keep in mind in internet web marketing is that you can improve your search engine ranking using some simple HTML tricks. You know that the Title tag goes directly under the Head tag. In this Title tag you have an excellent opportunity to place some keywords.
Don’t just put them in a list though; make a coherent sentence that explains what your site is and what it can do for the visitor. Put 4 or 5 of the best keywords in this sentence. Make sure you have 1 or 2 keywords in each of your Heading tags (H1, H2) as well.
Next, you should know a little bit about Meta tags. These tags used to be search engines’ most used method of ranking webs sites. Today, they are barely used as search engines have moved on to use different methods.
Meta tags are still used occasionally and it will only take a few seconds to put them in, so most people agree that you should have Meta tags in your web page. Use the META NAME=”description” tag directly under your title tag and make a list of the most relevant key words for your site. Don’t use popular key words that have nothing to do with your site; search engines do not like this.
The final thing that needs mentioning regards the keywords on your site. The text on your web pages should have some keywords in it. Just use them sparingly. Put 1 keyword at the beginning of your major paragraphs.
This is enough. If you put too many keywords on your web site then search engines will just see it as spam and ignore it. Also, never put keywords in where they don’t make sense. If you keep these and other internet web marketing tips in mind, you are certain to have great success in the promotion of your website.
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Tags: Internet Web Marketing, Search Engine Ranking
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