The Top Priority For An Online Business!

By Stephen Beck

As an expert in teaching families to start online businesses, I am asked a lot of questions about selling on the Internet. By far the most common question is, "What do I sell on the Internet?" or "What types of businesses have been successful in e-commerce?"

The answer is...you are asking the wrong question. Why? Because products come and go, but the people you are marketing to remain forever. Meaning, the product you are selling this year may not be the same product you are selling next year, but you will be selling to the same people. That is, if you are collecting their name and email on your web site.

That is why your top priority as an online business owner (after you determine what your niche is) is to collect the emails of your visitors. This can be done with a simple email capture form available with any autoresponder service. Then you can use that autoresponder service to send sequential messages to the people on your email list.

For example, if Bob joins your email list (via your email capture form at the top of your home page) on Monday, he will begin receiving an email every 7 days about who you are, what your credentials are, what you are selling, why they should buy from you as opposed to the other guy, and so on. If Sally joins a month later, she will start receiving your messages in the order she needs to receive them.

Sally will not receive the same message 17 that Bob is receiving because she needs to receive messages 1 through 16 first! The messages that Bob is receiving since he joined a month before will not make sense to her. That is why you need to send sequential emails through an autoresponder.

Think about that! How many of your products require more than one email to answer all the objections your customers have? Or how many of your products require some basic knowledge before your customers realize they can't live without it? Nothing is better than sequential emails for getting the job done.

Another benefit of sequential emails is that people will see them eventually, even if they join your email list at month later. This catches the missed sales that are so prevalent when online business owners have a single promotion that misses everyone who came to the web site after the promotion is over.

So, get an email capture form and place it front and center on your home page or most popular page. Offer something really valuable in exchange for their first name and email. I offer mini-courses for marketing online. It doesn't have to be expensive, a downloadable report, mini-course via email or a link to a video will do, but it should be something that your customer really wants to entice him to give you his most prized possession: his email address!

Concentrate on building that list of email subscribers and you will have an online business for years to come. Neglect building an email list and you are at the mercy of products that may not last through year's end!

About the Author:

Stephen Beck teaches you how to write an ebook http://www.8weekstoprofits.com/ and Create a "cash on demand" online business by watching his free video about information marketing products http://www.8weekstoprofits.com/.

Online Strategies & Tips for Website Development

By Paul Majestyck

So you want to be an internet star? You have an idea or product or service to sell, or you simply feel you must have a website of your very own. And now that you've decided, you really have no idea where to start.

So you're casting about online for strategies and tips that will tell you how to build a website that is attractive and functional, one that really expresses what you are all about.

This article aims to give you just that, and more. Read on and you will not only find some great online strategies for your website, but also some great tips for moving forward with your online business marketing plan.

Building blocks of the website:

The first thing you want to determine is your niche market. You want to find a little corner of the net world that you can make all your own, or as close to your own as possible.

Try to hone in on a product or service that you think there is a need for, but one that isn't wildly popular. That way, you'll be creating a comfortable playing field for your website without too much competition, but with enough attraction to do you some good.

A very good suggestion might be to hang out in online discussion groups with an eye toward discovering your niche market. What do people want? What are they looking for, especially online? Ask them!

Now that you have your niche, figure out what makes your website unique. Think of at least one reason your potential customers would buy from you, and not others.

From this position, build your list of keywords and phrases, the tools you will use to be found by your potential clients. Always remember, it's easy to get swallowed up in the internet ocean. It's hard work to find just the right combination to make your ad come to the surface, thus providing the visibility your website requires to sustain itself and your online business. But it is those web marketers who do the hard part that take home the bulk of the spoils.

Prepare your marketing tools, as many as you can think of. The list is practically endless: web content, newsletters, autoresponders, blogs, articles, and banners...and anything else you can think of.

Don't forget the follow-through. Test your system to see if it works. Keep trying various combinations until you find the one that clicks.

And never forget: Do it right once, and you can do it again and again...a whole lot easier! Website marketing is not for the meek of spirit. But those who stay the course usually wonder how they ever lived without it.

About the Author:

Paul Majestyck is the publisher of Global Entrepreneur http://ibuildempires.wordpress.com/ EZ Affiliate Profits - 100's of Great Articles Top Notch Resources Product Reviews Free Downloadable e-Courses & Videos To Help You Shorten The Online Learning-Curve And Start Generating Income . Visit : EZAffiliate Profits
http://ezaffiliateprofits.blogspot.com/. Also be sure to visit The #1
Digitital program and product store on the internet eNetMall http://www.enetmall.net/

When an Affiliate Marketing Myth Threatens To Steal Your Thunder

By Paul Majestyck,

Affiliate marketing is a potentially highly lucrative money maker if you have the right understanding of the process and also do not mind applying time and effort to guarantee success. Unfortunately, when an affiliate marketing myth threatens to steal your thunder, the odds are that you might have fallen for a slick sales pitch or have made some unrealistic plans with respect to your marketing efforts. Avoiding this permits you to succeed while succumbing to it will cause you to lose your momentum and in many cases results in a marketer giving up on the prospect altogether.

Problem the biggest myth that has stolen more thunder from gung-ho marketers than anything else is the notion that you can get rich overnight. Known as "get rich quick" schemes these affiliate marketing opportunities are often sold as being the brainchild of an Internet millionaire who is now training a finite number of apprentices in his craft and you are admonished to act quickly so that you will be among their number. (Check back with that website in a year or two, and you will be surprised to notice that it is still there with the exact same pitch.)

Even though anyone and everyone would love to have a part in something that promises a lot of money in return for little work, it is vital to understand that nothing comes from nothing and even though you might get lucky and have one or two attempts at something pay off big, by and large you will need to work hard for each and every sale and this requires hard work, long hours, dedication, and the knowledge that building an affiliate marketing business will take time.

Another myth that is often propagated by opportunity clearing houses is the notion that the more affiliate marketing programs you are signed up with, the more money you will make. Although in theory this sounds great, once you have devoted time and energy to getting one program off the ground you will understand just how intricate a process this can be!

Considering how much you have to invest to do justice to one program, imagine how much more time and effort you will have to spend on two, four or more! Experienced marketers will only take on another opportunity when their primary opportunity has become a money maker and
systems are put in place that permit for the program to more or less run itself. This, however, usually does not happen until after several months or even years of working the affiliate marketing opportunity.

Of course, by far the worst myth is the one that affiliate marketing is easy. Usually this stems from a combination of hype from the originator of the program and your inability - or unwillingness - to properly ascertain the time and effort it will take you to get this opportunity off the ground. When an affiliate marketing myth threatens to steal your thunder, remember that you are not the only person to have misjudged or underestimated the intricacy of the business, and in the same vein you are not the first one to go ahead and make it work in spite of some early misconception. Do not give up but give it your best!

About the Author:

Paul Majestyck is the publisher of Global Entrepreneur http://ibuildempires.wordpress.com/ EZ Affiliate Profits - 100's of Great Articles Top Notch Resources Product Reviews Free Downloadable e-Courses & Videos To Help You Shorten The Online Learning-Curve And Start Generating Income . Visit : EZAffiliate Profits http://ezaffiliateprofits.blogspot.com/. Also be sure to visit The #1 Digitital program and product store on the internet eNetMall http://www.enetmall.net

Get Free Downloadable copy of Big Affiliate Marketing Pay Days & Affiliate Marketer's Handbook http://ezaffiliateprofits.googlepages.com/

Fwd: AdSense And The Marketer

By Paul Majestyk

There is Cheech and Chong, Beauty and the Beast, and then there is AdSense and the marketer. In some ways it is a marriage of convenience, while in other cases it is a mutually beneficial relationship that makes a level of exposure possible that few had considered achievable.

In simplest terms, AdSense is Google's brainchild and is a program destined to remain in place. Website owners turn into marketers by placing the AdSense code onto their sites, and Google will populate the allotted fields with ads targeting the webmaster's niche by being relevant to the site's content.

Webmasters sign up for the AdSense banners and then receive a bit of code which is quickly and simply incorporated into the site. As visitors come to the marketer's site, the meter ticks and each and every time an ad is displayed or a link is clicked, there is a credit put toward the
marketer's account. Webmasters may earn per click rewards but also impression based revenue which is usually calculated on a per-thousand ad display.

Remember that as a webmaster you still have a lot of power in regards to the way the ads are displayed. For example, you may choose the colors, and even the drop down menu option! This permits for seamless integration in your site as well as a congruent display of information that is a far cry from the flashy banner ad of yesteryear that has added little content and instead detracted a lot of class from a number of otherwise well designed websites.

It is noteworthy that even those who in the strictest sense of the word are not webmasters have found a way to cash in with AdSense. In some cases there is the opportunity to use the program for revenue generation on a social networking site, blog, forum, or even within articles! While this might not be the vehicle to riches and independent wealth, it is a means to generate a little income via an under served medium.

Conversely, if you are a marketer who is seeking to advertise a product or service via AdSense, the program enables you to fund an account that determines how much click through and per thousand impression advertising you are willing to pay for and once the funds are exhausted you may choose to continue the contract or you may opt out and search for other marketing opportunities.

A word of warning to the webmaster using the AdSense program: it is not foolproof! Even though by and large the ads displayed on your website will be relevant to the content of your site it is not a guarantee that once in a while an ad that is objectionable to your visitors will slip in. Visit your site frequently to monitor the ads and if you receive emails complaining about any ads displayed, take them seriously! Fortunately, with a simple communication to AdSense, this may be fixed and your website as well as its message will once again be harmonized with the ads.

About the Author:

Paul Majestyck is the publisher of Global Entrepreneur http://ibuildempires.wordpress.com/ EZ Affiliate Profits - 100's of Great Articles Top Notch Resources Product Reviews Free Downloadable e-Courses & Videos To Help You Shorten The Online Learning-Curve And Start Generating Income . Visit : EZAffiliate Profits http://ezaffiliateprofits.blogspot.com/. Also be sure to visit The #1 Digital program and product store on the internet eNetMall
http://www.enetmall.net/

Your Target Market Is YOU

By Elizabeth Davis

A fun thing I've discovered is that my niche as a hand analyst is helping primarily women entrepreneurs figure out THEIR NICHE and target market. Now that's what I call a niche among niches!

"What's my niche?" you ask. Your niche is your special place, position or forte. It's the "thing" you do that sets you apart from the competition. Among hand analysts, my niche is business clarity and business marketing. Some hand analysts I know focus on relationship harmony while others focus on healing or creating more organization in your everyday life.

Once you determine your niche, you then need to figure out the market that wants what you have to offer. This is your "target market."

The Clue Phone is Ringing - and it's ringing for YOU!

That's right! YOU are your target market. Finding people like you, with similar interests and similar problems they want solved, takes a lot of the guesswork out of figuring out whom exactly you are here on the planet to serve with your business. And make no mistake - the PURPOSE of this human experience is to SERVE - serve yourself, serve your friends and family, serve your clients and serve the planet.

To delve deeper into the specifics of your target market, write out your own biography in long hand, including your age, physical description, hobbies and relationship status, and take some time to study it. Where might you find other people like you whom have had similar experiences and have similar hobbies? Are you single or married? Childless or a parent? An athlete, bookworm, cook or all of the above?

Now, choose your two FAVORITE activities and set out to meet similar people who engage in these activities. I'll give you an example. I am a spiritually-oriented entrepreneur and I love to learn by going to information marketing seminars. Where do you think I find my target market? At seminars attended primarily by spirit-minded women entrepreneurs who want to use information marketing in their businesses. Basically, when I do what I love to do, I find the people who love to buy what I have to offer. Make sense?

Easy as 1-2-3. :-)

Here's my Coach's Challenge for you this week: Make that list of your 10 favorite books I recommended earlier to see what your niche interests are. Then make a list of where you can meet people like yourself to share your business with. Finally, GO to one of those places and observe, mix and mingle.

About the Author:

Beth Davis, "The Hand Analyst," is a professional hand analyst/palmist and winner of the 2007 2008 Glazer-Kennedy Information Marketer of the Year Award. Get her free special report, "The 5 Massive Mistakes Spiritually-Oriented Women Make in Business and how to avoid them!" at http://www.handanalyst.com

Making Your Home Business Web Presence Count

By Dustin Heath Cannon

Today it is virtually unthinkable to run a home based business and not have a website. In a day and age where the local telephone book is rapidly being replaced with online directories, more and more consumers want to see what kind of products and services you are offering and what you can do for them before they will ever call you. Similarly, many a business mom or executive will not take the time to visit your store, call you, or otherwise query you on your services and you will be wise to display your wares online so that at a glance a person can decide that your business fits their needs.

To this end, you will need to have a great looking, professionally done website. Stay away from the home jobs done with the free website builder that demands a link back or forces your visitor to endure a pop up. Instead, bite the bullet and register your domain name. In the same way, have an email address that reflects that domain name. You home business will not be taken seriously if your email address goes to Hotmail or Yahoo. A customer will not consider spending a couple hundred dollars on a refurbished television if the contact information is a post office box, a generic email, and the website little more than a freebie site hosted by Yahoo.

Resist the temptation to build your own website. More often than not the newbie will be so enthralled with their ability to build a site that more often than not the site gets over-built and unnecessary add-ons, such as visitor counters, guest books, and web rings are added – none of which belong on a professional business site. Similarly, beware the broken link that leads nowhere! Nothing makes your site look more unprofessional than a link that does not work. When you take the time to actually do it right, you may be wasting precious working time. Some people think the most productive people in the world are those that only focus on what they're good at and hire out people to do the things they are not as good at.

All these problems can be avoided by paying a professional web developer to create your site and set it up so that it will meet your current needs and grow with you as your business takes off. In the same way, ensure that you will have your domain name properly registered. Your web address should in some way reflect your business name, but at the same time be short and to the point. If your name is lengthy, you might just want to opt for a descriptive web address. For example, if your business specializes in dog grooming for Pinchers less than 35 pounds, you could name your online address Pinchers in the Tub. If the business' regular name is New York Pinchers in the Tub, you will do well to leave out the name of the city simply because it is too long to be memorable.

About The Author:

Dustin Cannon, of Next Level Enterprises, LLC is a successful Internet marketer working with top leaders in the home business and Internet marketing industry. For more information on the Next Level Wealth Team visit http://www.nextlevelwealthteam.com/

Autoresponders Are a Publishers Best Friend

Article by Bill Platt

How many times have you subscribed to a new ezine (online newsletter), and then when the first issue of the ezine arrived, you were scratching your head as to how your email address ended up on the list? Our lives are often so tedious that little details often slip right from our memory.

The point is this. If it happens to you, you can rest assured that others have the same experience as well.

Sometimes when this happens to us, we just unsubscribe from the list after that first issue. We cannot remember what compelled us to subscribe in the first place, and the first issue of the ezine does little to rekindle our initial enthusiasm for the ezine.

As publishers, autoresponders can serve us well. When used correctly, autoresponders can strike while the iron is hot, cementing the subscription for the new subscriber.

If your ezine has been around for a while, or only for a few issues, seriously consider taking the time to compile a "Best Of" issue.

Be certain to list subscription instructions near the top of your "Best Of" issue, and also ask people to forward it to their friends.

Your "Best Of" issue should be placed into an autoresponder email address, and then given away at every opportunity. The moment the issue is ready, you can notify your subscribers of the existence of the issue. In the ezine information area of each issue, you can also remind subscribers that the "Best Of" is available at such-and-such email address. Ironically, some of your subscribers will download your "Best Of" several times.

The most important reason for building the "Best Of" issue is not for the benefit of your current subscribers, though most of them will appreciate your making it available to them. The best reason to implement the "Best Of" autoresponder is for your new subscribers!

When someone subscribes to your ezine, they will receive their "Welcome to My Ezine" notice. As they are reading the "Welcome" message, their enthusiasm is bubbling over. Waiting for that first issue will be tough unless there is an invitation to receive their first issue NOW.

In your "Welcome" message, you should let them know that if they would like to get started right away reading your ezine, then they should send a blank email to your autoresponder address for the "Best Of" issue.

New subscribers will gorge themselves on your "Best Of" issue, and they will remember your ezine when the first new issue arrives in their mailbox. If the "Best Of" issue was precisely what they were looking for, you can rest assured that they will eagerly open each subsequent issue of your ezine, with delight in their hearts.

If you do not have the ability to set up autoresponders on your own domain, one company that offers a free autoresponder service is: http://sendfree.com/

If you take the time now to implement the "Best Of" autoresponder, the rewards will most certainly be long-lasting. Remember, the best time to get a new subscriber to fall in love with your ezine is when their interest is the highest --- at the very moment they subscribe to your ezine.

About the Author:

Bill Platt has been engaged in article marketing since 1999 and has offered his services to others since 2001 as a article marketing service provider. He offers article ghost writing and article distribution services, to his clients, many of whom have been with him since early 2002: http://www.thephantomwriters.com has written an ebook to teach people how to be as successful with article marketing as he has been. Bill's Article Marketing ebook has received many excellent reviews.
http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Blast Through These Four Obstacles And Let Your Online Business Soar

Article by Casey Moher

It's vital that you surmount a series of resistance points on your way to establishing a customer.

Your obstacles are:

1. No TRUST for you on the part of your visitor.
2. No NEED for what you have.
3. No perception that you can HELP them.
4. They are in no HURRY to act.

Let's take these one at a time:

On-line, you are a stranger to everyone. The most difficult part (establishing instantaneous rapport) is also the most important part of your business plan.

Doubt quickly evaporates from the mind of your visitor if your initial approach is to provide them with something of high perceived-value absolutely free. As your site visitor begins their visit, there are more questions than answers going through their mind.

If the first thing you do is to offer something free, it goes a long way towards reducing that sales resistance and that lack of trust they intrinsically feel. A good item to give away would be a report on a popular and good-selling internet-based product or service that you have something about.

Good-selling products and services are a great place to start with your plans to produce a report to use as your free gift. You'll find that this approach is the best way to overcome the obstacle of NO TRUST! Obstacle number TWO is the one of NO NEED.

A great approach to blasting past no-need is to select a product for your review that has some strong testimonials from customers who have purchsed it. The more your visitors appreciate the value of your free information, the more receptive they will be to your sales message.

It is when you begin to present your offer that obstacle number three (NO HELP) starts to nag at the back of your customer's mind.

The mind-set of NO HELP is a stubborn one and hangs in there even though you have built up a good amount of TRUST with your site visitor. Here, too, it is third-party testimonials that are your best tool for cracking through this obstacle. By now you should be getting a feel for how helpful and easy it is for you to establish yourself as an affiliate marketer for a useful product.

There are a huge number of things that are done for you when you are an affiliate. Order taking, shipping, complaints and returns. Moreover, a great and proven sales letter together with testimonials are in place for your use in obstacle-busting.

Also, getting your business started and getting past the obstacles we are talking about today are all much easier when you begin as an affiliate marketer for a useful product.

You are now in the position of three hurdles down and one to go. Getting someone 'off the dime' and settling on a decision is your fourth obstacle. This individual is plagued with inaction and the attitude that there is NO HURRY. To move your customer out of the comfort zone that your product will always be available to them, they need a reason to act right away! Scarcity or limited availability of the product is one good way to do this.

Additionally, you can use the concept that the product may indeed be available for the foreseeable future, but the price could well be quickly climbing very soon. Also, in all reality, the product itself will go away at some point and you won't be promoting it any longer.

Use both the notion of approaching scarcity together with the possibility of loss to effectively contain the obstacle of NO HURRY.

Building an ever-growing list of responsive customers is the key to financial stability and growth for you and your family. You can build a responsive list of loyal subscribers if you apply yourself and follow the concepts outlined in this article. Getting past the four obstacles we've been discussing can help you greatly in cultivating a list of responsive customers.

About the Author:

Mr. Casey Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by
visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com

How to Get Your Business Tasks Completed with Less Effort and Excellent Results

Article by Acey Gaspard

Getting your most important tasks completed is not always the easiest thing to do. You may even be putting off important tasks for the unexpected issues that pop up in front of you during the day.

It's hard to stay on track, especially on demanding days. You may have more tasks for the next day and feel guilty because you didn't complete all your work today. Then you start the next day with a sense of being overwhelmed rather than starting the day fresh and energetic.

Janice likes to have her day planned out ahead of time. She would start off feeling comfortable, knowing what to do. Her problem was that she would begin her day by doing tasks such as checking her e-mail, checking her sales, and looking at her finances. Even though she had a to-do list, she didn't get to it right away. She got sidetracked many times during the day with unexpected issues that popped up. She ended up with a lot of work that needed to be done but was not as important as her daily tasks.

Self-employed people often find themselves behaving this way. With no one watching over you, you get sidetracked. This article will help you move in the right direction.

If you want be on a daily routine, then plan it in advance. If you don't plan, you'll end up getting sidetracked with anything and everything that comes up. I'm not saying that you should ignore those issues, but you have to determine the difference between issues that should be taken care of immediately and issues that can be postponed until later.

A simple plan works best

Step One:
Start by creating a list of tasks you must do every day.

Step Two:
Set the priority for each of the tasks on your list.

Step Three:
Rewrite your list in priority order, and leave a space for a checkmark by every item you complete. In the upper right-hand corner, leave space for a date.

Step Four:
Make copies of your new daily to-do list.

Step Five:
Each new workday, take a copy of your schedule and write the date in the upper right-hand corner.

Step Six:
Start on the task with the highest priority. Complete that task in its entirety, or at least all that you can do for this task on this day. Don't start a new task until you have completed all you can of the task you're working on.

When you've completed the current task, put a checkmark next to it and go to Step Six. It's a simple procedure, but don't let its simplicity fool you. It's powerful. It keeps you on track.
It gives you a new approach to getting your work completed and it works. You don't need to complicate things, and you don't need to overwhelm yourself. All you need to do is stick to the list. After a few weeks of using this idea, you'll find yourself becoming more productive and free from wasted time as well as feelings of anxiety and guilt.

What do you do when something comes up and you're between tasks? This will happen and, depending on your job, it might happen every day. Aside from a crisis that pops up, here's what you can do to tackle those issues. You can approach this in two different ways:

1. You can pause between tasks and complete the issues that pop up. I recommend this for issues that only take a few minutes to complete.

OR

2. Between tasks, you can have one of your designated tasks as taking care of issues that pop up during the day. For example, you would complete Task 1. Task 2 would be taking care of issues that pop up. Task 3 is then completed. Task 4 would be to attend to issues that pop up, and so on. It's a matter of preference for how you work best and what works best for you.

Working with a schedule will help you keep on track and help you complete your important tasks while cutting out wasted time. Try this for a few weeks, and I'm sure that it will help you move through each day quickly and effectively.

Action Steps To Help You Get things Done

1. Create a to-do list.

2. Photocopy it.

3. Keep a fresh copy on your desk for each new day.

4. Complete the tasks as outlined in Step Six.

Important Points to Keep in Mind About Getting Things Done

* With no one watching over you, you can get sidetracked.

* If you want be on a daily routine, then plan it in advance.

* Each new workday, use your schedule

* You don't need to complicate things, and you don't need to overwhelm yourself.

* After a few weeks of using this idea, you'll find yourself becoming more productive and free from wasted time as well as feelings of anxiety and guilt.

* Working on a schedule will help you stay on track and help you complete your important tasks while cutting out wasted time.

* Try this for a few weeks, and I'm sure that it will help you move through each day quickly and effectively.

About the Author:

Acey Gaspard has over 20 years of business experience. His site, A Touch of Business.com, http://www.atouchofbusiness.com is steadily growing with well over 1,100 original pages to help you run and market your small business. Get Tips you can use today!
http://www.atouchofbusiness.com/tips.html

Business Plan for an Online Business

Article by Stephen Beck

Over the past twenty years, I have owned several businesses. In my experience, an online business is the best small business that kids and families can start together. When compared to traditional business (like retail or service industries), online businesses offer several advantages:

-You don't need to go into debt to get started. You don't have to go into debt to create a powerful online business. Debt is the main reason that most American businesses fail - a perfect reason to avoid it!

-You can start small. You don't need ten employees and a huge office/warehouse complex. Everything you need is at your fingertips.

-Teach your kids entrepreneurial skills. There are plenty of small businesses that kids can start, and the whole family can get involved. It's a great way to learn business skills and teamwork, while building a strong bond with your family!

-You don't need much capital. Family businesses are inexpensive to set up, and offer great rewards.

-Spend as much, or as little, time as you want on your business. It's up to you.

-Earn money, even while you sleep! Your online business is open 24/7, no matter where you are.

-Small risk, huge rewards. Since you're not investing a lot of cash, the risks are minimal. And with a bit of care and attention, you can make amazing profits with your online business.

Use this business plan for online business to discover your niche. There are dozens of advantages to starting an online business. We'll offer you the information you need to make it all happen.

A disclaimer - I'm not talking about connecting with some huge multi-level marketing scheme. This is about YOU starting YOUR OWN business, one that will succeed because of YOUR efforts. Stay tuned for more articles that will help you develop your business for maximum profits.

About the Author:

© Copyright 2008 Stephen Beck

Stephen Beck teaches you how to write an ebook
http://www.8weekstoprofits.com and Create a "cash on demand" online business by watching his free video about information marketing products
http://www.8weekstoprofits.com.

Working A Home Business: The Most Convenient Employment Oppurtunity On Earth

Article by Kevin Buckley

Working a home business is becoming a widespread phenomenon in the world of employment, and for plenty of good reasons. Among these reasons, of which there are many, are a multitude of new career opportunities, flexibility in scheduling, low or non-existent overhead, no coworkers or (in most cases) employer, around-the-clock business and instantaneous networking and interpersonal contacts, quick and easy research and cross referencing, and, most importantly from a home business standpoint, a global economy for every home business owner situated along the cyber highway. Because of these many convinces, there is no wonder why so many people are getting in on the Internet game, including corporate and big business.

Prior to fifteen years ago or so, many of the employment opportunities related to the Internet didn't exist. Some examples of these would be web construction, computer analysis and software designing. Because of the evolution of the Internet and and the many conveniences that it offers, a whole new generation of home business workers now have a new arena for utilizing their skills. As a matter of fact, many universities now offer a wide array of programs revolving around computers and the Internet, even programs, such Computer Science, now exist, and thrive, as a result.

An obvious advantage for those who work their own home business is the flexibility in scheduling. Those who work out of their home engage in around-the-clock business, and so web owners are able to set their own hours and conduct their affairs as they see fit, which is not too difficult, since online interaction is more or less instantaneous or literally overnight. Some people
work throughout the day, while others are night owls, and yet still others work only a few hours each day, every other day, or solely on the weekends, depending on the needs of each home business. This allows a more relaxed approach to working.

Minimal or non-existent overhead is very attractive to many home business people, especially beginning entrepreneurs who have a limited budget. Working from home, and online, eliminates
the need for space rent fees, land tax, (for some) business-related taxes, electricity and heating normally associated with the brick-and-mortar establishments, and even (for smaller one- or two-person setups) payroll. Most expenses are usually limited to monthly hosting fees, telephone or cable bills, the cost of essential software, and website design, depending on the web owner's level of knowledge and skills pertaining to website construction. Advertising is also a
necessity, but it is cheaper than offline ("real-world") marketing. Such expenses would likely fall well under $5,000 total.

Networking, research and referencing, as inferred, are instantaneous and easy. When newcomers find others in their field, they distribute themselves and can become familiar with others, and others with them, in no time.

Finally, the global economy allows any entrepreneur to interact with a worldwide audience. In this way,your home business is not restricted to locality, and income and profit gain can become higher than brick-and-mortar businesses. Home business owners can quite possibly earn a living without living the house.

In the end, working at home is the ultimate convenience people effort is minimal and financial gain more exponential than the offline venture. This is among the greatest of world dreams!

About The Author:

Kevin Buckley is owner of http://HomeBusinesessThatWork.com and writes on a variety of
Home Business subjects. To learn more about this topic Kevin recommends you visit: http://www.HomeBusinesessThatWork.com

Keywords Are King For A Home Based Business

By Kelly Walker

There are many diverse sales tactics that people use in the promotion of their online business, but there is virtually always one thing that ties all of these tactics together. Every single successful home based business is successful primarily because somewhere in that method there are keywords that make the approach work. When it comes down to it keywords determine almost everything possible on the internet and that is exactly why when it comes to the land of online internet marketing and home based business keywords are king.

The Significance of Keywords

Why are keywords significant to a home based business? Well it all has to do with internet search engines. Try to think about how many times you have been interested in a particular topic, and as a result you have gone online and used a particular search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN? If you are like the majority of people that have used the internet, the answer is quite frequently. Although there are some people might exclusively search the online encyclopaedias and other similar products, the vast majority of internet users will use search engines to look over the millions and millions of online sites. When you take into account the amount of internet users all over the world this amounts to hundreds of millions of people conducting billions of searches each day. The phrases that people submit to search engines when looking for items that relate to your online business should be the same as the keywords that you use on your website. If your keyword placement has been done correctly it will ensure that your website is directly linked to search engine results. It is for this exact reason that when it comes to home based business success, keywords are king.

Plan of Attack

It is always a good idea to have an implementation plan for your keywords before you begin to set up your home business website. The best way to put together the plan is to first think of all the keywords that are directly related to the website that you are building.

For example, an all inclusive website on affiliate marketing would greatly benefit from keywords like "work from home" and "make money online". Once you have compiled your list the next
thing you need to do is run those keywords through keyword tools to ascertain the volume of searches per month conducted on each keyword set and rank them accordingly. Then, brainstorm a list of synonyms for your keywords and search for those. It is preferable to have at least 100 keywords that relate to your website before you formulate your plan of attack. By carefully following this process you will most likely find that you will end up with a lot more.

Search Engine Optimization

An important segment of your attack plan has to revolve around placing your chosen keywords into places on your website where they will attract the attention of the search engines. The procedure for doing this is known as search engine optimization. In essence Search engine optimization means getting important keywords that relate to your home based business into the titles and sub-titles of the website pages that you have as well as making sure that keywords are sprinkled throughout the text in appropriate percentages. This process, although easy to learn the basics of, is very difficult to master. If you are putting together your own website, it is a very good idea to learn the basics of search engine optimization.

About The Author:

Kelly Walker is a successful internet marketer and the owner of http://reklaws.com. Kelly writes on a variety of topics on buisness and marketing. To learn more about this topic and other ways to make money online Kelly recommends you subscribe to her free newsletter at: http://www.reklaws.com.

Multiple Income Streams Are The Ultimate Affiliate Internet Marketing Tip

By Alex Picard

If you are looking for a tried and true affiliate Internet marketing tip that not only promises to bolster your bottom line considerably but might even bring into play the most coveted of all revenues, residual income, you are not alone! The `Net is filled to brimming with e-books and e-zines that promise the skinny on how to strike it reach and if you are willing to part with dollar amounts between $9.99 and $199.99, you may be surprised to find that savvy online marketers are selling you a simple truth that could be summed up in three simple words: multiple income streams.

The wisdom behind that approach cannot be denied and if you remember the folk wisdom that warns against putting all your eggs in one basket, you will appreciate that multiple income streams are the ultimate affiliate Internet marketing tip. Taking advantage of this concept is simpler than you imagine!

First and foremost, remember that getting website traffic to your site is no longer as simple as it once was when the number of websites in your niche was heavily curtailed. At this point in time even teens own their sites and competition for marketing space and consumer eyes is ferocious. Increasing your online presence by appealing to a variety of niches due to the various products you carry is one way of keeping up your online visitor numbers. Diversification no longer just applies to a stock portfolio but also works in favor of those who trying to generate the maximum amount of income from one website.

What makes this affiliate Internet marketing tip so priceless also rests in the fact that it works on a number of different levels. For example, while product diversification ensures that your business experiences a heightened appeal across the board, the diversification of affiliate campaigns – pay per click, pay per lead, pay per imprint or pay per sale programs – points to the ability to make money from any website visitor, whether or not they click on a link much less by anything or note.

At the very least you stand to make money just from the display ads that got some play on your site and this, as you may well imagine, is a lot more than affiliate marketers who may only have signed up for one affiliate program may hope to garner. As you can see, multiple revenue streams are the ultimate affiliate Internet marketing tip and truly the only way to ensure that you still have an opportunity to make money from online sales opportunities in spite of changes, downsizing, inflation, recession, and a tightening down of loopholes that in the past permitted so many webmasters to make some good money from their single stream online marketing efforts.

Read up on the subject not by purchasing any materials but instead peruse the various educational materials that are available for free online and look around until you find a program structure and setup that works for you. True, you will not get rich overnight, but when following this affiliate Internet marketing tip, you have a shot at making decent money nonetheless.

About The Author:

Alex Picard recommends you visit http://www.opacid1.com

Starting An E-commerce Business Is Surprisingly Simple

By Manfred Roehrig

The Internet is the playstation for the so called would-be entrepreneurs but also the consumers with many credit cards in the ready position. The challenge is to combine the two targets in such a way that they will form a mutually beneficial business relationship. While this may sound like a tall order for many newcomers, you may be stunned to find out that the surprisingly simple steps of starting an e-commerce business are actually achievable for anyone with a link to the Net!

There is nearly nothing that cannot be purchased or sold over the Internet, and houses, cars, durable medical equipment, jewellery, clothes, pets, and even stamps are enjoying an open minded business community that is devoted to them 24 hours / day. Of course, with so much open cyber space, you might surmise that the market by now is fully saturated and that new entrepreneurs have to let go of their dreams forever, but nothing could be further away from the truth!

As there are so many eager vendors online that are vying for the attention of the consumer, the latter has the luxury of being highly selective and no longer has to settle for second best but instead may wait and pick and choose until she or he finds precisely what they are looking for. This opens the door for the real savvy business owner who has the capacity to offer any product with a twist, who can enter a niche by giving the consumer something special the other vendors simply have not thought of, hear of, or were unable to obtain, and who is willing and capable to work hard at making her or his web presence widely known.

No longer does the entrepreneur feel shackled to the so called goodwill of a bank for the money needed to open a brick and mortar store, but instead the enterprising person will find that e-commerce makes it possible to sell goods without having to maintain an inventory, employing a sales force, and even dealing with the some times complicated shipping!

Starting an e-commerce business begins with a detailed business plan that outlines what will be sold to whom, and how the entrepreneur will make advertisement for his business to reach the target consumer group. Once this plan is ironed out and some benchmarks for performance reviews are set, the next step is really as simple as the first one, but just as vital: you need to set up a website.

Oh sure, your temptation of doing it yourself is undoubtedly there, but unless you really know exactly what you are doing and how to do it, you will be wise to let someone else, an expert, handle this aspect of the business. By far too many small home based businesses are unfortunately doomed to failure because of a website that looks as though a novice had put it together in a time crunch. Broken links, text that does not line up, graphics which make the site too slow for loading, and other problems cover the web presence of many entrepreneurs and thus at least at the onset you will be extremely wise to let the real professionals take care of your important business' online face and success is but a few clicks away!

Making money with residual income opportunities is a premier way of increasing your overall online earning potential. Take a good look online and you will be amazed to find the cornucopia of programs currently inviting participants that offer as part of their remuneration scheme a well thought out residual income option.

Those looking for the cheapest and easiest programs on the Internet today, the obvious answer are affiliate marketing opportunities.

About The Author:

Manfred Roehrig is owner of http://www.Online-Profits4You.com and writes on a variety of
subjects. To learn more about this topic Manfred recommends you visit:
http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-21228/reversefunnelindex.html

Viral Strategies for Internet Marketing

Article by Christian Fea

First of all, I realize that anything with "viral" in the name doesn't conjure up images of something you want close by, but there is a new type of Internet marketing known as "viral marketing" is worth investigating. Despite its unflattering appellation, it is an effective Internet collaboration marketing tool, and one that is important to understand if you want to expand your business.

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing is a strategy that encourages your business to carry a marketing message via e-mail, and to partner with other businesses, which will attach your marketing message to their emails. This is ultimately another form of collaborative marketing for your company, but one that lends credibility because your message is passed on through other companies. The name viral marketing was chosen to indicate the way a virus can rapidly multiply within a cell, and ultimately taking over the cell, bending the cell to the whims of the virus. This aggressive expansion and growth is the target of a viral marketing platform.

The strategy ultimately uses a network of relationships that you have developed, as well as the relationships and resources of the companies with whom you are collaborating, which are attaching your message to their emails. This can work both for your own business, as well as a collaborative marketing partnership with other companies.

You can include a marketing message in the emails that your company sends to its clients and customers, and you can contract to have your marketing message sent by other companies, via their emails. By creating collaborative relationships with secondary companies to pass along your email advertisement, you will be able to reach out to a whole new client base that, perhaps otherwise, you would not have been able to target.

This may sound a little confusing at first: am I sending marketing messages along with my companies emails, or are other companies sending my advertisement along with their emails? The answer is either, or both—both are good ways to get a marketing message broadcasted. Using an outside company often involves a fee, but may be a worthwhile investment due to the sheer volume of people you'll be able to reach, as well as the range of customers you'll be able to target, because it differs from your typical client base.

A Few Examples

You have undoubtedly been exposed to viral marketing, yet have not realized it or registered the fact. One of the most classic examples of viral marketing is used by the free email website, Hotmail.com. If I have a hotmail account, automatically attached to each email message I send is an accompanying by a message from Hotmail.com, encouraging the recipient to sign up for an account. In this way, Hotmail is advertising its own business through the emails that each of its existing clients sends.

Another clear example is that of e-greeting cards. Each greeting card that is sent carries the company's marketing message, encouraging the recipient to send a card using this service. If I receive an electronic greeting card from a friend, I will automatically be prompted to send a card using the site from which I've just received mail.

Viral marketing is a newer Internet marketing strategy that was more recently developed and is quickly becoming popular. It is a strategic way to advertise your business and services, as well as to partner with other companies to help you form a broader collaborative marketing platform.

About the Author:

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A strategic Collaboration Marketing consulting firm. He empowers business owners to discover and implement Integration, Alliance, and Joint Venture marketing tactics to solve specific business challenges. He demonstrates how to create your own Collaboration Marketing Strategy to increase your sales, conversation rates, and repeat business. Contact: christian@... http://www.christianfea.com

Online Article Marketing

Article by Niki Camus

Article marketing is a revolutionary way to inform potential customers about your business. By writing an article about your specific expertise and posting it on the internet, you can successfully inform hundreds of thousands of potential customers. Article directories list hundreds or thousands of articles posted by their users. The articles are picked up by search engines and web surfers now become potential customers.

One of the most common questions asked is, "How effective is article marketing?" Well, I can't tell you how many times I have searched the internet and got to someone's website by reading their article. So my answer is, Of course it is effective! Web surfers search for anything on the internet, and the volume of people using the internet is significant. One of the most important aspects of article marketing is that it is purely targeted. This means web surfers will most likely access your information by searching for words that are in your article. This means they already have an interest in your product, which will increase the likelihood of them visiting your website.

Everyone is aware of the advantages of article writing so the internet is flooded with their articles. While this may seem like the best thing, search engines may not think so. Search Engines such as Google strive on making their users receive the best quality results. As a result, they filter duplicate content and will not display results that are exactly alike. If the same
article gets flooded on the internet it may not improve the effectiveness as much. It is important to write unique articles, which will increase your chances a lot more.

Article Marketing when approached appropriately can be very effective. It may not work overnight, but in time the traffic will increase. Submitting to several article directories will surely improve your chances, and the more unique they are, the more it will make a difference. Thirty percent uniqueness or more should be enough to not be filtered by search engines.

It probably sounds harder than it is to actually rewrite different articles but it is really not that difficult. You can keep the ideas the same, but finding different ways to write your sentences can create a big difference. First, replace words as appropriate. Not all word synonyms will actually make sense, so be careful with that. Next, try to rephrase a part of a sentence and then you go from there. Creating unique articles does not necessarily mean, you start completely from scratch, now that will be difficult. Take baby steps and in no time you'll create so many versions of your article, you'd be amazed how simple it is to get it done.

When you have created different versions of your article, the next step is to distribute them. Article directories are usually free and willing to accept your articles. Submit your articles to as many directories as possible, the more the better. Directories usually give you an Author Resource area. This is where you include a biography of yourself, as well as the link to your website. It is also important to not fill your articles with links, especially links that are not related to your article. A simple link, to your website is enough. Remember, it's important to concentrate more on informing your potential customers, rather than flooding them with unnecessary links. If you do, they'll most likely click the back button and go elsewhere on the web.

About The Author:

I am the owner of an article directory and web blog at http://www.123estuff.com. I dedicate my time to learn about and help with online marketing. My article directory exists mainly to assist marketing efforts. Also I provide daily marketing tips and information at http://www.squidoo.com/estuff.

Give Your Career Search a Boost With Blogging

Article By Allen Voivod

Even if you're not looking for a job right now, it might be time to consider starting your own blog.

I've been reading Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, and it's got advice that's helpful not just to businesses, but to professionals as well. Specifically:

* C-level executives

* Senior managers

* Mid-career professionals, and

* Anyone business person with lots of experience to draw from and share with an online audience

If Google is not just a search engine, but a "reputation management system," as you'll read in the book, then using a blog is vital to you as an expert and executive in your field.

When a headhunter or recruiter gets your resume and Googles you - and more and more of them will as time goes on - what will they find?

If you're blogging, they'll find someone who's intensely passionate about their industry, their vocation, their business savvy. And wouldn't that be a great thing for a recruiter to find?Especially in the midst of hundreds of other candidates for a position? Wouldn't a recruiter be able to do wonders for you with that kind of information to share with a target company?

Not to mention how good it's going to make the recruiter look in front of their client on the employer side of things. So you land a great job, the employer gets a great addition to their team, and the recruiter looks great in the process. It's one of those rare situations where everyone wins.

In addition, a blog is a great networking tool, "a way to connect with other like-minded professionals," as Lani Voivod at "The 'A-Ha!' Blog" puts it. It's just one more way of extending your network, and well beyond the local business groups you may already frequent.

Need more convincing? GoDaddy's CEO Bob Parsons blogs. So does Bill Marriott - yes, he of the hotel chain. The GM FastLane Blog is a team effort which includes Vice Chairman Bob Lutz and other GM VPs, executives, and general managers. And those are just three of the bigwig blogs. You could be in there, too.

To learn more about blogging as a business person, an executive or manager, check out Naked Conversations, and also have a look at "BlogWriteForCEOs," Debbie Weil's excellent website for corporate blogging resources.

Then take a crack at your own blog - once a month to start, work your way up to once a week, then maybe twice or three times, and enjoy yourself while you blog your way to a new position.

About the Author:

Allen Voivod is the Chief Blogger for ResumeMachine.com, the leading resume distribution resource for managers, executives, and professionals looking to accelerate their job search results. Get the attention of thousands of hiring agents with the largest and most frequently updated recruiter database on the web, and dive into a wealth of immediately useful career articles and blog posts - all at http://www.ResumeMachine.com !

Why Online Businesses Should Be Blogging

By Kalena Jordan

Last weekend my husband and I were having a conversation with some friends over a bottle of wine. The wine was a delectable New Zealand chardonnay and the friends were a husband and wife team who run a small but highly successful web/graphic design firm.

The conversation veered towards blogging and whether or not it was a viable marketing activity for online businesses. My friend Wendy was lamenting that most of her clients couldn’t see the value in blogging. An avid blog reader herself, she could see it had value but she wasn’t sure whether it would work for her clients or how to implement it in a way that would be worthwhile for her own online business.

I suggested that she start a blog about environmentally-sustainable business, as this is her company’s unique selling proposition and something she is particularly passionate about. I think a lot of small businesses would like to take steps to be more environmentally responsible but aren’t sure where to start. A blog about the subject could gain readership quickly and also gain attention for her own company.

This led to a discussion about what types of businesses would benefit from a blog and what THEY could blog about. The potential number of blog niches and opportunities we thought of was incredible. Here are just some of the ideas we came up with:

1) Web Design Firms could blog about:
Unique business practices
Customer success stories
Web site tips
Staff success stories
Web site usability issues

2) Travel Related Businesses could blog about:
Last minute travel deals
Customer travel stories
Staff travel stories
Travel tips
Flight details
Breaking news in the travel industry


3) Government agencies could blog about:
Changes to Government regulations
Communication between Government agencies and the public
Government issues and news
Legislation affecting various industries

4) Marketing agencies could blog about:
Marketing trends
Successful client case studies
How to reach different target audiences
Tips for marketing offline and online
How to create effective marketing campaigns

5) Retail businesses could blog about:
Products and services
Customer service issues
Special offers and discounts
Industry news
Product recalls

6) Sport-related sites could blog about:
Latest game results and scores
Team news and updates
Individual team member diaries
Nutrition and weight loss/gain

7) Public relations and advertising firms could blog about:
Advertising trends
Successful client case studies
Press release writing
Successful advertising campaigns
How to deal with the media
How to create effective advertisements

8) Telecommunications firms could blog about:
Industry trends
Products and services
Communication legislation
Tips for getting the most out of phones and related equipment


9) Law firms could blog about:
Understanding contracts
Case histories
Tips for court appearances
Understanding legal jargon
Court and case schedules

10) Insurance firms could blog about:
Changes/updates to premiums
News of insurable events (e.g. flood, fire)
Tips for protecting your house from burglary
Tips for getting the most from your premiums
Fire prevention tips

The entire discussion made me realize that blogging is not the answer for every business and in fact, some companies should steer clear of it. But for the majority of online businesses, particularly small businesses, there ARE terrific incentives to blog.

Blogging can provide unprecedented opportunities for new business, media exposure, networking, traffic, customer feedback and interaction. Plus business blogs don’t have to be boring. Just glance at the topic range of some of the most successful business blogs, based on Technorati rankings:

Kotaku – a blog for gamers and persons working in the video gaming industry.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog – news and views relating to Apple Macintosh business and products.
The Pharma Marketing Blog – a blog for persons in the pharmaceutical marketing industry.
TechCrunch – a blog that profiles and reviews new Internet products and companies.
Advertising for Peanuts – a consumer’s guide to advertising and media.
The Consumerist – consumer rights blog where people can lodge complaints about products and businesses.
TreeHugger – a blog trying to bring environmental sustainability to mainstream business and media.
Construction Marketing Ideas – Information and ideas for marketing and promoting construction-related businesses.

Business blogging does take time and commitment, but the rewards are well worth the investment.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Web 2.Overwhelming: 22 Ways to Frustrate Your Site Visitors

By Kalena Jordan

Damian Conway is known as the "Mad Scientist of Perl" and he was my favorite speaker at Webstock 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and until recently was an honorary Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University Australia.

A popular speaker and trainer, he is a former columnist for The Perl Journal and author of two books about Perl. He also runs an international IT training company which provides programmer training throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia.

Damian kicked off his presentation by revealing that his wife is responsible for him being at Webstock. A few months ago, she was trying to buy a DVD on the Internet and was yelling expletives. He went to help her and after several minutes of frustration he finally gave up. Her response was "Are they deliberately trying to make it impossible for non-geeks?" His reply was "Yes". Damian's impression is that mankind has evolved into two distinct species - typical web users / typical web designers.

Damian then showed the Irony Ahead symbol. The sad truth, he says, is that the web designers are losing the battle to the masses. There are now normal humans who can almost use web sites on a daily basis! His sacred promise is to protect your web sites from infiltration by the terrible general public.

In reverse order, here are Damien's top 22 web design ideas to fend off the non-geeks and prevent Web 2.0 from taking hold:

22) Use Zen: Confuse them with anime and odd artistic blobs that are a complete mystery. Is it a web site? Is it art? Is it impossible to enter?

21) Use yellow or black and yellow: This signals danger as in wasps and Star Trek uniforms.

20) Use xenophobia: Try geo-location as an instrument of torture. Show only products not available in their country or illegal in their country e.g. "show me products I can't buy with a credit card issued in my country".

19) Get a site that requires the "www" to work: This is known as a canonical URL to us normal people. Make the www necessary and confuse the heck out of them when they type in the domain name without the w's and get shown an error page.

18) Use variable navigational layout (VNL): Use the previous and next links as people hate them. Let's replicate it for the entire web!

17) Throw usability out the window: Navigability is the pre-requisite for usability. So let's create navigation buttons that don't go anywhere. The non-geeks will be occupied for at least half an hour. Use Javascript to turn the navigation into confusing shadowy arrows. Javascript your scrollbars so they don't look anything like regular browser scrollbars. Use back buttons that embed links that take you up a level rather than actually taking you back. Your visitors will get lost in the hierarchy. Inconsistency is important.

16) Terrorize them with typography: Most non-geeks don't care about typography. They don't even have a favorite typeface! If they do, it's comic sans. Or Impact! All they care about is whether they can read it. Therefore, typography DOES matter. Go with something unreadable! Go with Abduction 2 font or something just as annoying. Fonts are not toys people, fonts are weapons!

15) Make shipping a last minute surprise: Shipping is a powerful tool to dissuade purchasers. It delays their instant gratification. Don't let them calculate the shipping cost in the cart otherwise they can go and comparison check on other sites. Instead, use the W3-recommended 34 step method and make all these fields compulsory:

product selection
shopping cart
checkout
purchaser address
phone number
fax number
email address
social security number
payment method
billing address
shipping address
shipping method
shipping costs
income bracket
referral source
etc.

With any luck, they'll abandon the cart in total frustration.

14) Make them register and login before they purchase: They'll be naturally terrified and run off. Even better, make them register before they can even view the web site!

13) Reduce the quality of site search results: How can you minimize the quality? Don't provide site search facilities at all! Or make the options highly improbable. Don't let them search for the product. Make them search by date of manufacture, or the name of the manufacturer. Or, make them search for the type of person that they are. Or what type of person YOU think they are. Pure genius.

12) Add pages ad infinitum: Don't return more than 10 results for a search at one time, even if you have to list 250 pages of search results. God put the fold there for a reason. If you don't follow this rule, it can result in scrolling! Protect the kids from scrolling!

11) Delay their gratification or their dis-gratification: Show items that aren't in stock, services you used to provide, options that won't work for them. Only tell them a product is not available AFTER they click through to the shopping cart total. This builds up a sense of hope so you can dash it immediately.

10) Don't allow them to sort search results: This non-sortability of results preserves the natural social order. Sort things in random order. For example, don't let them sort by product type, or price. Provide an alphabetical sorting option only. Or sort according to the web designer's favorite items.

9) Use background music and lots of it: It's a sure way to irritate your users. Your music choice probably sucks if you choose it carefully enough. Don't provide a stop button. Make it restart again on every new page. They'll soon leave.

8) The little things count: Like tiny little font. It's the most effective deterrent for anyone over the age of 20. Damian finds size 4 or 3 point is pretty good. Government and news sites use it all the time to great effect. Some browsers have the ability to change text size. Thankfully, most web users Damian surveyed didn't know this until it was pointed out to them. But it's ok! Because 2 weeks later, they'd forgotten again. Tiny text is the web designer's ally.

7) Use Cute Kitten Aversion Therapy: There are some web sites that you don't want your kids to see, Damian says. One of these is the W3 HTML Validator. AAARGGGGHH! It means that solutions for non-valid HTML code could be discovered by anyone and you don't want that. So spread the message, every time you validate, someone kills a kitten!

6) Use J-version therapy: The non-geeks have a strong aversion to the letter J and things like Jscript, Javascript etc. These J languages create fear in the non-geek. Online security companies have scared them into avoiding sites with Javascript or other items starting with J because hackers use them to distribute viruses. If you're lucky, they're so convinced by these fears that they've turned off Javascript in their browsers. This means that if your site uses Javascript menus, they can't be navigated! Brilliant.

5) You can never use too many images: Encode your important data and text in an image so it can't be cut and pasted and make the images huge and dark so that they can't be printed out. Or they can be printed but they use up masses amounts of printer toner. It's a great way to scare off even the most persistent of non-geeks.

4) Play hide and seek with your site visitors: They don't like to wait, so make them. Information that is impossible to find is safe. Don't use a sitemap and make sure there is no rational hierarchy to your site. Hide your most important data on a page that has no links pointing to it!

3) Use gray: It's the new black and it goes so well with black or darker gray. When using gray, make it impossible to read. Use nano-text in gray or even gray text on white. The site visitors run away! Even better, use gray on darker gray - it's the low contrast approach. This is even more effective for site visitors with a color impairment. If all else fails, use intestinal beige. It's apparently the new gray.

2) Flash is very important in our defense against web-mortals: Clocksucking Flash they call it. Some non-geeks even have their Flash facilities turned off so make your site entirely in Flash. Once visitors arrive at your Flash page, they see - "loading 1%". This is delayed gratification at it's best! Also, don't provide a "skip intro" button. Or if you do use it, make the link move away from the mouse. Over and over again. If the visitor persists, then make it disappear entirely. If the visitor without Flash is determined to view your Flash site, provide the "You Need Flash" link. Then make them download an enormous file that maxes out their bandwidth limits. Even better, use a Flash-based installer that requires them to have Flash installed first.

1) Combine all of the above for optimum effect: This is Damian's number #1 best way to scare away non-geek visitors. His favorite example of this in action is the World Glaucoma Association. Scroll down and place your mouse over the eye for the full effect. [My own personal favorite is Fred Frap and Friends where the pink text on the purple background asks you to click on the non-existent image to enter. Nice!]

But seriously folks, Damian says, the non-geek level is the SAME LEVEL as the MAJORITY OF YOUR WEB SITE USERS. Remember this. The typical experience for web-mortals is bad. He's here to plead with us all to build software for how people really ARE. The non-geek users.

The single biggest mistake that web designers make is not doing accessibility testing on their grandparents. Your grandparents are the typical Internet users. Use the Grandma usability metric. It's not about what your client wants. It's about what your client's customers want. It's not about clever, it's about comprehension. It's not about style, it's about usability. It's not about searching. It's about finding. It's not about ambience it's about the outcomes for people visiting your site.

Web 2.0 is Web 2.0verwhelming for most people. So make their experience measurably superior.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

SEO Basics in 45 Minutes

By Kalena Jordan

As most people who read this newsletter will know, Jill Whalen is a pioneer in search engine optimization. Nicknamed the First Lady of Search, Jill founded the site HighRankings.com in 1995. Today High Rankings has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the US. Jill's company is dedicated to educating its clients and sharing its knowledge with the industry at large through the High Rankings Advisor newsletter, the High Rankings Forum and her in-house seminars.

In her presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. First up, Jill discussed what SEO isn't. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:

PPC Myths:

• PPC ads will help organic rankings


• PPC ads will hurt organic rankings

Tag Myths:

• you must have a keyword-rich domain


• you must have keyword-rich page URLs


• heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)


• you need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use keywords that are included in your page content. Jill says that it's actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don't have in your pages.


• using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:

• page copy must be a certain percentage of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.


• that you need to bold/italicize your target keywords.


• that you must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous.


• that you must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.


• that you need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don't generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.


• duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:

• your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!


• your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.


• you can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.


• certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:

• that Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful tool. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.


• that reciprocal links won't count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.


• that pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They're not. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.


• you must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:

• that you need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.


• that you need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won't change your site rank.


• that you need to update your site frequently.


• frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true


• that you need multiple sites. This won't help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.


• that you need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!

SEO Company Myths:

• that a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.


• that the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they're using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.


• that your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!


• that they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They're lying!


• that they have a "special relationship" with Google. Again, they're lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.


• that they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is "making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines". She made the point that search engines need to:

• Find


• Crawl


• Index


• Determine relevancy


• show results

So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don't know you. So you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search engines want is good content. If you're not getting good traffic from your pages, they're broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best keywords and phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:

1. General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.


2. Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO for.


3. Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.

Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:

• anchor text


• clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)


• headlines


• body text copy


• title tags (Don't make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)


• meta description tags

Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased targeted traffic to your site and more conversions. Use your web stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO is working.

As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is dead, Jill doesn't think that the big engines will switch to exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links) will always be important.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

SEM Industry Standards: Nonsense or Necessary?

By Kalena Jordan

A storm in a tea cup has been brewing in the search industry over the past few days. It was prompted by Jill Whalen's recent blog post titled We Don't Need SEO Standards where she came to the conclusion that she didn't think the search industry needed standards or regulation, at least in relation to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Here are Jill's top 4 reasons why she believes we don't need SEO standards:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat.


2. We can't even agree on the definition of search engine optimization.


3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scams.


4. There's no such thing as "cheating" in SEO.

The post got a few people fired up and they blogged fiery rebuttals pushing their case for standards. Their reasoning included:

• That the industry has a black eye and needs a regulating body.


• That industry-wide standards need to be put in place to protect the public from unethical SEM operators.


• That SEM practioners need to take responsibility for their own profession.


• That it's about time the industry adopted a set of agreed best practices.

Yadda yadda.

Passionate commentary ensued on Sphinn, proving that the industry is divided on the issue. But the truth is, we have been arguing about this very subject for years.

Personally, I agree with Jill's post.

As an educator, I can understand the frustration at the lack of industry standards. But do we "need" them? Are standards going to solve the problems people perceive as dogging the industry? I think not. Creating standards is not going to get rid of shoddy SEOs or make them switch hats. Creating standards is not going to prevent the general public from being ripped off by SEM cowboys. Industry veterans will understand this. Education and publicity has always been the solution but it just took some of us years to work that out.

This industry has unspoken standards and they've worked well for 10 or more years. We white-hat educators promote the unofficial standards and search engine guidelines already. The creation of official standards would, in my opinion, just spawn more problems.

It's interesting to see how personally some people are taking this issue. I too recall the days when I took SEO scamming quite personally and made it my own little agenda to hunt, expose and ridicule dodgy SEO firms in an effort to save the great unwashed masses from themselves and rid the industry of it's shoddy reputation in the media. Now I simply educate as many people as I can about what tactics to avoid rather than who to avoid. I think this is more of an issue of buyer beware than anything else. Standards are a nice idea, but they can't be discussed in isolation when we don't have a governing body to determine or implement them.

I used to get so annoyed at the black eye given to the industry thanks to dodgy operators and ignorant journalists, but the tide has turned so we must be addressing the problem. These days, the general public and the media (with the exception of American Express perhaps) *get* that most SEOs aren't out to rip them off.

As for best practices, these can't be created from the outside in, they have to be generated from inside out - and that means with involvement from the very top - from the search engines themselves and possibly an independent regulatory body. No search engine or government body has imposed formal regulations on the industry so right now we just have guidelines and ethics and semantics. We white hat advocates can all pat each other on the back for following Google's Webmaster Guidelines and not spamming, but we can't be too hard on the black and gray hats for breaking the rules when there are no clear rules to begin with!

So who should be entrusted with the creation and regulation of SEM industry standards or best practices? Some are suggesting an existing organization or SEM firm should be given the job.

Within the Sphinn commentary, Jill said: "...those that would create the standards all have their own agendas."

She's got a point. I for one would balk strongly at one of the existing search marketing organizations or firms being given the power to determine best practices for the entire industry. The conflict of interest rumpus that would create would be unbearable and accusations would taint the reputation of those involved, even if their intentions were honorable - remember the drama relating to ethics in SEMPOs first year? Until we have a completely independent board/panel consisting of government officials and nominated representatives, the argument for standards is circular.

Meanwhile, we have to rely on our interpretation of the search engine's guidelines, our own experience and our voices to educate webmasters about SEM best practices, as we see fit. As an industry, we're doing this already via the many channels we have access to: forums, blogs, articles, webinars, media, training, conferences and the like. Do we need standards in order to educate? Nah. I think we're doing a pretty good job without them.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Planning for Web Site Disaster

By Kalena Jordan

When you have a business web site that multiple people work on, one of the most difficult tasks is to manage and allocate responsibilities. For example, you might have a corporate site where the content is written by various in-house staff members, the pages are managed by your freelance web designer and your outsourced SEO is responsible for ensuring the content and code is search engine friendly.

But what happens when communication breaks down between all the stakeholders or a miscommunication occurs? It's more common than you might think and it can result in disaster for your web site. Here's a true story of how it happened to one of my clients:

The site in question was being re-designed by the client's 3rd party web designers and the client asked me (as their SEO) to send them a list of instructions to follow during the re-design and launch that would ensure they didn't lose search engine visibility. Naturally I sent the client a list of the usual things to watch out for, including:

• Ensuring that any URLs being replaced or moved had 301 redirects placed on them to their new locations.


• Transferring the optimized title and meta tags to new page versions.


• Implementing a custom 404 page; and


• Building a replacement XML sitemap for Google and Yahoo.

So a week later the client tells me that the new site is now live and would I have a quick check to see if everything is ok? I opened the site and typed in each of the URLs for the pages I had carefully optimized months before. The first one came up with a big ugly 404 Not Found error. Not a custom 404 error page, but an ugly white server-generated one with no design, no branding, no apology and (more importantly) no links back to the main site. So I tried the next one. Same story - 404 error.

As I went down the list, I became more and more concerned. Less than half of the pages I optimized had been transferred to the new site. When I checked their site logs in ClickTracks, I noticed that around half of the page views generated since the site re-launch were 404 errors. Not only that, but a quick check of Google Webmaster Tools showed a small fraction of the original number of site pages as being indexed. Obviously Googlebot had been shown the 404 errors too and had promptly removed the old pages from the Google index. Disaster!

I contacted the client and told her to get a custom 404 page implemented as soon as possible and to double check that 301 redirects from their old page URLs to the corresponding pages on the new site had been put in place by the design team, as per my instructions. Turns out the designers never received explicit instructions about this from the client and didn't know that:

a) a custom 404 page was important

b) 301 redirects were necessary to ensure the continuation of search engine indexing.

I found this news quite shocking - what web designer/programmer doesn't understand the need to redirect old URLs to new ones?

Plus, we found out later that the few pages that the designers HAD successfully transferred to the new template did not have the carefully optimized Title and META Tags transferred, meaning that all the hard-won rankings we had earned for the client had now vanished. The designer's excuse? They weren't SEO experts so didn't know tag transfer was necessary. I found this excuse pretty flimsy considering they managed to transfer the rest of the page HTML code intact.

This started a chain of urgent emails back and forth between the client, the designers and myself, with the designers blaming the client and me for not providing clear enough instructions, me blaming the designers for not taking the initiative to protect the client's site traffic during the move and the client caught in the middle trying to appease everyone. The emails escalated until finally the designers admitted defeat and acknowledged that they should have paid more attention to the client's instructions.

It took a couple of weeks for the designers to upload a custom 404 error page and I still had to manually login to the client's CMS to replace the optimized Title and META tags. As this goes to press, the client site has started to recover in the rankings, the 301 redirects are back in place, the number of pages indexed by Google is increasing, but the site stats are still showing a large number of 404 pages delivered to searchers. I expect it to take upwards of 3 months for the site to fully recover from the disaster.

The whole saga just goes to prove that you can't assume your site is in capable hands. If you are about to make extensive changes to your site design or move it to a new domain, you absolutely have to have a rollout plan in place with crystal clear instructions and tasks allocated to a team so everyone knows who is responsible for what. Otherwise you will be paying the penalties for months to come.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

How Google Applies Science to Search

By Kalena Jordan

Dr. Craig Nevill-Manning is a New Zealander who joined Google in 2000 as a Senior Research Scientist to develop more precise search techniques. Previously, Craig was an assistant professor at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University, where he conducted research in data compression, information retrieval and computational biology. Before that, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University, where he developed a software suite used by pharmaceutical research laboratories to identify the role of particular proteins within cells.

A scientist at heart, Craig is probably best known as the developer of Froogle (recently re-named Google Product Search) and the founder of Google's software engineering center in New York City. Google New York is responsible for developing products including Google Maps, Google Finance, Google Spreadsheets, and many important features in web search and advertising. This article is a summary of his presentation at Webstock 2008.

Google's Spelling Bee

Craig started his presentation by talking about one of his first challenges: Google's spelling correction tool. As the popularity of the search engine grew, Google needed to be able to spell-correct lots of obscure words. So his solution was to take a sampling of content from the entire web. Craig's team came up with a algorithmic model and ran it over the web. He discovered that there were several correct answers to the same question. For example, words like “kofee” could mean either the searcher is seeking a cup of java or information about Kofee/Kofi Anan.

To combat this, Craig came up with an interesting solution: the "Did you mean?" alternative spelling option, based on predictive examples of searcher spelling patterns. You can see this in action if you type in "kofee anan" in Google. Above the search results is a line that reads: "Did you mean: kofi annan" and links to the search results for this spelling variation too.

But the research went even further. Craig's team worked out how to take into account the context of the search query by studying the 2 or 3 other keywords surrounding the query, for example "kofee cup" or "kofee anan". The research used the science of bigrams and trigrams to better understand how people search. Bigrams are groups of two written letters, two syllables, or two words, very commonly used as the basis for simple statistical analysis of text. So Craig and his team applied this knowledge to Google's spelling correction system and now, Google's algorithm can determine the searcher's intent with much more accuracy, based on the context of the search query.

As an example of the spelling challenges that Google face, Craig showed the audience the huge number of ways "Britney Spears" is misspelled on the web. He said it's encouraging to see that the most popular spelling is also the most correct one. Scale is important!


Google Maps Lead to Apps

The Google team wrote the code for Google Maps many years ago but the code was actually built into your browser. When Google maps first launched, people took the dense data-script and worked out how to reverse engineer it for their own use. Google engineers decided to release an API key to make these mash-ups easier after seeing so many people reverse engineer Google Maps without Google's help. Now people can mash-up Google maps within minutes to create their own applications.

To show how easy this is, Craig took the audience through the steps to create an interactive application with Google Maps. In the space of about 2 minutes, he signed up for an API key, grabbed the HTML code and pasted it into his page. He then hacked the map to show Wellington Town Hall (our location) and made the point how easy it is to create really useful tools out of technology that is already available.

As an example, Craig showed the audience Seattle Bus Monster. This site used an API key for Google Maps to make Seattle bus data and tracking available 24/7. Anyone who needs to catch a bus can look online and instantly find their nearest bus location and run to the bus stop in time to catch it. It's these type of interactive applications that add value to both corporate and government sites. Craig referenced Rodney Brooks from MIT whose provocative paper "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" offered new logic and a completely different view of machines. The idea is that there is no center of control among robots so you should make lots of them; don't treat them so precious. Craig said developers should use this logic to create lots of small apps that you can replicate and tweak, rather than one big expensive app that can go horribly wrong. Scale trumps smarts every time!


Experiments in Scale That Have Impacted Google's Operations

Precision vs. Recall

Back in the early 90's, information retrieval on the web was limited to things like Lexus/Nexus. So at that stage, Google would take queries and apply it to the broadest possible search. This was great recall at the cost of precision. But Larry and Sergey wanted something better so they decided to use Boolean search. At the time it was heresy because everything was focused on recall. But the Google founders knew that things had to be super relevant so they developed an algorithm - the core algorithm. It was very simple and relied on Boolean search to determine relevancy.


Genomic Sequencing

In the mid 90's a large project - the Human Genome Project - was underway. The race was on to sequence the genome. Scientists decided to feed this out to a bunch of different people. They chopped up the genome for researchers everywhere and allowed it to replicate. The researchers mapped each chunk with genetic markers and computed a tiling path of tiny fragments.

Sequencing was very expensive, so the data was computed based on a minute number of chunks - very labor intensive. The sequencing took forever and reassembling was a long way off. But then a company came along that said they could do it faster. Sequencing becomes cheaper by automating the job using machines rather than individual people so this company used a clever computer algorithm to conduct the sequencing. This reduced the cost and the researchers were therefore able to reassemble more fragments and achieve a rough draft of the genome in 2000. This sequencing approach was the shotgun approach, where accuracy is lower, but the larger scale allowed the impossible to become possible.


Web Definitions

Google used to do a terrible job of defining terms. Craig noticed people were searching for "definition of...", or "what is a...." etc so he wanted the search engine to provide better results for these searches. He found lots of web pages that contained glossaries and definitions, so he hacked up a Perl script to get the glossary formats.

The first recall results were only 50 percent accurate. He wanted to improve this rate, so he did some experiments with the data. But he could never reach an accuracy level he was happy with. It was later he realized that most of the questions people actually needed answers to could be answered with his crappy little Perl script. He concluded that 100 percent accuracy is not important, that scale is much more important.

Now Google allows you to use the "definition:" query and the question format to get definitions from around the web. Type in "what is a blog?" and you'll get lots of results from Craig's original script.


Protein Sequencing

In biology, Craig says, you're constantly producing proteins. The proteins fold up with particular sequencing. Within computing, you can use this knowledge to do amazing things. You can conduct computations with this type of data but it's time consuming. Somebody at Stanford University noticed that proteins spend a lot of time moving about before folding into an alpha helix. So it was suggested they start the computations with lots of configurations. In this way you can parallelize the data by scale and one will be magically close to a folded protein. So they worked out a way to reduce the problem to a simple process based on mass scale. This is why Google uses maximum scale to conduct algorithmic computations.


Chess vs. Go

You can now compute the value of any potential move in chess. Based on that information, you can compute your projected probability of wining the game from any move. Chess grand masters put a lot of time into this knowledge. But the opposite is true for the game Go, because there is more randomness to the game play.

The smart way (Chess)

- study lots of past games
- compute the probability for each position
- compute far into the future

The stupid way (Go)

- pick moves at random
- re-create the Monte Carlo simulation (a computational algorithm that relies on repeated random sampling for results)
- play like a human

Curiously, the stupid way works better for Go players because it's more logical to compute the data based on the game's inherent randomness.


How Google Applies the Lessons of Scale

So how does Google apply these lessons of scale? For starters, Google does not buy expensive hardware. PCs are unreliable, especially if you have thousands. However, they are cheap and fast. So what's Google's strategy? Craig says they exploit the processing power of off-the-shelf PC hardware and simply make the software more reliable.

Craig revealed that Google buys cheap hardware on a mass scale. The problem is that these cheap processors are notoriously unreliable because they are packed into datacenters by the thousands and they are running 24 hours a day so they get very hot. Commodity hardware therefore fails at an accelerated rate. Once you cope with that realization, you need to design recovery situations to deal with the problem. So Google's software understands that their data can fail at any moment and works harder to cope with that.

For every server at Google, there is another with exactly the same data on it, the same configuration, the same everything: a clone. Replication is needed for scalability so that if requested data isn't fetched instantly, the backup or clone computer is searched instead. The result is that failures don't hurt Google, they only reduce capacity. When hardware crashes or software hangs, there is a time out and a re-issue request. Google has a central control system in place to manage all this.

Cooling failures at Google can be exciting!. Craig recalls the time when the air conditioning failed entirely at one of the datacenters and the monitoring system recognized that the centre was heating up, so they were able to shut down remaining PCs at the datacenter within minutes. The fire brigade turned up and it was quite a big event internally. But the best thing was that nobody using Google even noticed! Because of Google's scalable solution, searchers were unaffected by the major hardware outage.

Craig says that once a week, a person at each data center has a list of all the failed hard disks and walks around the datacenter with a pile of hard drives, replacing them one at a time. Velcro is Google's secret weapon! All Google's hard disks are velcroed in. This allows super quick service and replacement time. So curiously, there is no downside to hardware failures at Google, because they are expected and managed via scale.


Google: The Startup

Craig showed the audience a photo of Google's original PC configuration put together by Larry and Sergey at google.stanford.edu. It consisted of three hard drives and a couple of monitors. Larry and Sergey used Lego to enclose the hard disks and when Lego became too expensive, they used cheap Lego knock-offs! He then showed a picture of Google's first office inside a residential garage and the hard drive racks that they built in a rented datacenter to save money. Larry and Sergey packed the racks together and used layers of cork between the motherboards so they wouldn't explode. Eventually they hired people who knew about safe wiring, but they still used floor fans in the datacenter to try to keep the PCs cool.


Google and the Brady Bunch

Google's Zeitgeist pulls together interesting search trends and patterns generated from the billions of searches conducted on Google. Craig is consistently fascinated by search trends and recalls a particular event that sticks in his mind. On the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the competitor got down to the final question for $1 million and it was: "On the TV show The Brady Bunch, what is Carol Brady's maiden name?" The competitor used his phone-a-friend lifeline and his friend was able to look it up live on Google and provide the competitor with the correct answer, earning him a million dollars.

The next day, out of interest, Google staff looked at the logs for "carol brady maiden name" and saw a huge spike in traffic when the show aired on the West Coast, then another spike when it aired on the East Coast and then a tiny spike when it aired a few hours later in Hawaii.

So Google Trends is a useful tool to study data patterns, but Google keep a bunch of statisticians on staff who check that random effects aren't making the data significant. Craig says that in the same vein, you should look at your site logs and react, but be careful about jumping to conclusions about what the trends say.

At the end of his presentation, I asked Craig whether he is concerned that Google's PageRank algorithm will gradually become less accurate due to the demands of scale. Craig acknowledged that as Google's indexed data grows, user input and search patterns will become increasingly important. He says PageRank will need to learn to become better at providing search results and scale up accordingly. But scale makes things interesting!


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Ambient Findability and the Future of Search

By Kalena Jordan

Peter Morville is widely recognized as a founding father of information architecture. He co-authored the best-selling book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and has consulted with such organizations as Harvard, IBM, the International Monetary Fund, Microsoft, the National Cancer Institute and Yahoo! Peter is president of Semantic Studios, co-founder and past president of the Information Architecture Institute and a faculty member at the University of Michigan. Peter's latest book, Ambient Findability, was published in 2005.

In his presentation for Webstock 2008, Peter called himself a crazy librarian who fell in love with the web. Peter designs sites so that people can find what they're looking for. It's not just about findability, Peter says. The structural design of shared information environments is important. The vast majority of Internet architects don't even know the term Internet architects. Content authors, bloggers etc. have a responsibility for shared information. One lesson Peter says he constantly needs to give clients is that it's not enough to provide a single taxonomy. You can bring multiple ideas and formats to a single document to a wide audience with different needs. The Stanford University site is a good example of a usable site. When you design for the web, you should provide usable navigation and a site search facility at the very minimum.

The Consumer Reports site is another good example. It doesn't stop with global navigation but gives a couple of information sub-sets to tell the user what the site database consists of. One size does not fit all in taxonomy. The Mayo Clinic use a more user-friendly design by listing all diseases by their most common name rather than the formal medical terminology. The site was re-designed with users in mind and has positively flourished as a result. It demonstrates that you need to design site taxonomies for specific audiences and users.

The elements of the user experience are multilayered. Peter is sick of the word "usability" as it means different things to different people. Depending on who you talk to, usability could mean:

useful
usable
valuable
findable
credible
accessible
desirable

All these elements are important. Peter recommends asking these three questions when designing a site layout:

1) can users find your web site?
2) can users navigate your web site?
3) can users find your products and services despite your web site?

He also claims that not enough attention is paid to accessibility these days. Your web site needs to advance your business goals and inspire trust. Peter mentioned Google search as an example. People tend to trust results that are listed high in Google. Findability and credibility are therefore increasingly connected.

Peter has provided site usability services for the National Cancer Institute. When he began working with the site, 90 percent of traffic was from the general public who had been diagnosed with cancer and were seeking specific information. Peter helped re-design the site to make sure these people found the information they were seeking about specific cancer types. At the time Peter worked on the site, an amazing 70 percent of searches on the major search engines were for specific types of cancer so the Cancer Institute used this information to improve the findability of their specific cancer pages.

We can talk about findability at the level of the object and the system, says Peter. What are the ways the object/data can be found? How do we make it easier to be found? How does the environment support the navigation and retrieval of the object/data? What he calls ambient findability is the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime. The destination is never quite reached because perfect findability is impossible.

We're now drowning in information and suffering from information anxiety in the information age. "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." says Herbert Simon (Nobel Laureate Economist) or the Dilbert version of this is: "Information is gushing toward your brain like a firehouse aimed at a teacup". We are creating alternate ways to receive information via our digital networks, Google Earth being a good example. Another example is the "kid tracker" which is a GPS wristwatch your kids wear so you can know the location of your kids 24/7. Soon, people will be able to track other people every second of every day. This raises privacy concerns.

Peter showed a couple of examples of findability technology available now. Within a wireless network area, you can now use the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance to add electronic tags to items so you can locate them at any time. Hospitals use the technology to tag wheelchairs so they can be found instantly and save staff time and money searching for them. It's claimed this saves one hospital $28K per month. Another example was the keen couple who had tagging devices embedded in their hands so they could open each other's apartment doors and access each other's computers. How romantic!

So in a world where the information haystacks are getting larger, how do we create information needles? How do we solve the findability question? We need to think about business intelligence, visualizing patterns etc. Back in the 1980's Peter wrote an article claiming that the Internet will turn everyone into a librarian and now it's happened. We can't stop talking about meta data, social media labels, bookmarks and Flickr tags! In 5-10 years, Peter thinks that many sites will become like Amazon in terms of findability.

Search is one of the most important ways we learn. "Search has become the new interface of commerce" says John Battelle. Search startups such as Endeca and Trexy are pioneering new ways to search. Everyzing is a search engine that allows you to search audio files by individual words within the transcript. Buzzillions is an example of a site using both structured meta data and tag search. Hybrid search solutions are launching all the time. Google is struggling with how to provide data the way people categorize it. Google Book Search is an example of a site with usability issues. Flickr solved this issue by using clusters to sort photo tags, with huge success.

Peter says that we need to focus on usability in the future. Everyone working on your site needs to have the same goals in mind. He completes his presentation with the story of the three stone cutters. There is a guy wandering in the wilderness and he comes upon a quarry and asks the workers there what they're doing. The first stone cutter is working at a slow pace and says "I'm making a living". The second guy is working really hard and fast. He says "I'm doing my very best". The third guy is working at a pace somewhere in the middle but with a smile on his face. He says "I'm building a cathedral".


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

A Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Marketing

By Kalena Jordan

Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine marketing refers to a specific type of advertising where you pay a search engine every time a potential customer clicks on your ad. These ads appear on search engine results pages and sometimes on sites within a search engine's network of partners.

How do Pay Per Click Ads Work?

If you look at a search engine results page (SERP) carefully, you can generally distinguish between search results that are regular algorithmic or "organic" search listings and PPC search results which are actually paid advertisements. The latter are generally listed under the headings "sponsored results" or "featured listings" and consist of specially designed text, image or video ads that are triggered to display when your target keywords are used in a search query. The PPC ads generally appear on the right hand side and/or at the top of the search results pages.

To appear in the PPC results, advertisers sign up for the PPC program of their choice and create short text ads, image ads or videos describing the product or service available on their site in a way that will best entice searchers to visit it. During the program setup, an advertiser will decide which trigger keywords/phrases they wish to bid on and how much they are willing to pay when a visitor clicks on their ad. Generally, the higher the bid, the more likely their ad will show above their competitor's.

The Origins of Pay Per Click Marketing

The PPC industry was pioneered by GoTo.com (later re-branded as Overture before it was purchased by Yahoo! in July 2003). Despite their enormous success, GoTo's PPC model was met with a lot of skepticism in the industry following their IPO in 1999. Their eventual purchase by Yahoo put to rest any doubts that pay per click advertising was here to stay.

In October 2000, Google which was eventually to become the world's most popular search engine, launched their own keywords advertising model (Google AdWords), blending algorithmic search results with pay per impression ads.

In 2002, in an attempt to compete more successfully with Overture, Google expanded AdWords to include the pay per click pricing model we are familiar with today. This model provide both more popular and more successful and eventually replaced the pay-per-impression model as the default system.

By 2002, GoTo (by then rebranded as Overture), had distribution deals with an impressive range of search engines including Yahoo!, MSN, AltaVista, InfoSpace and a number of meta search engines including MetaCrawler and Ixquick. Overture's powerful distribution network guaranteed advertisers placement of their ads in front of a LOT of eyeballs and it became clear that many were willing to pay big bucks for the privilege. Other major search engines also formed successful distribution partnerships with PPC providers during this time, noticeably AOL, AskJeeves and MSN with Google AdWords. The pay per click industry had officially arrived.

Scores of PPC search engines began to spring up following Overture's lead, however the PPC industry continued to be dominated by the two big PPC players, Overture and Google AdWords, while Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and Google fought it out for dominance in the general search market.

In July 2003, in a move that shocked the industry, Yahoo! purchased Overture to enable them to better compete with market leader Google. In April 2005 they rebranded the PPC engine as Yahoo! Search Marketing and in 2006 they launched a revamped version of the service, code-named Panama.

Meanwhile, in October 2005, Microsoft quietly launched their own PPC service called MSN adCenter. An official launch in the US, together with a name change to Microsoft AdCenter occurred in May 2006. In May 2007, Microsoft revamped AdCenter with new features and rolled it out to advertisers worldwide.

Currently, Yahoo and Google continue to dominate the PPC landscape, although Microsoft AdCenter is beginning to make an impact. Second tier PPC engines such as MIVA (formerly Espotting and FindWhat) and Kanoodle are fast catching up to the majors.

There are now hundreds of PPC search engines worldwide, servicing global, regional and niche markets, but only a few that have achieved a significant market share of advertising revenue. A summary of the majors are listed below.

Yahoo! Sponsored Search

Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the current name for what was originally called Overture Precision Match. Yahoo! Sponsored Search prominently displays your site in search results on some of the top U.S. search properties that Yahoo! partners with. With Sponsored Search, you set the price you're willing to pay for each customer who clicks on your listing. Your ads appear at the top, bottom or right hand side of Yahoo search results pages under the heading "Sponsor Results". Your ads are triggered on search result pages when searchers enter the keyword combinations that you've bid on. Your ads can be targeted by language and country.

If you create a keyword campaign and you use the ContentMatch option, your bid also buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites AltaVista, InfoSpace, eBay, CitySearch, AllTheWeb and a range of news and content portals, such as USAToday, National Geographic, iVillage and NBC.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords gives web site owners the ability to promote their site when particular keyword or phrase searches are conducted at Google and partner sites. Your ads appear at the top or on the right side of search results pages in a "call out" box under the heading "Sponsored Links". Your AdWords text, image or video ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be targeted by language and country. With Google AdWords cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. Google adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the lowest possible price. Google AdWords results appear on Google search results pages, Google's distribution partner sites, Google Gmail, and numerous content sites which are syndicated through the Google AdSense program.

Microsoft AdCenter

Microsoft adCenter is the newest kid on the Pay Per Click block. It includes the ability to target your ads to MSN Live Search users who match your target regional and demographic criteria. Microsoft adCenter allows you to submit base bids for keywords or phrases you associate with your ads. This base bid is the maximum amount you are willing to pay if any Live Search user searches for one of your keywords and clicks your ad. You can also increase your bid in order to reach specific audience targets, which help increase the chance your ad will appear for a user who fits your buyer profile. Targeted bidding in the Campaigns tab allows you to add amounts to your base bid to increase the possibility that your ad will show to searchers who fit your optimum buyer profile. You can use your bid amounts to influence your ad's position in the Live Search results. In general, the more you bid, the higher the position your ad will have. You can use Microsoft's Intelligent Targeting feature to adjust your ads to match these variables:

• Geographical location


• Age and gender


• Day of the week


• Time of day (morning, afternoon, or night)

Interestingly, Microsoft pitch the ability to "build brand awareness" with their PPC program, due to the continued exposure of your ad and brand to a large market, regardless of whether that ad attracts clicks. This is an important feature of all major PPC programs but one that is rarely promoted by Google or Yahoo! Perhaps brand-building is adCenter's Unique Selling Proposition (USP) because Microsoft claim to reach more potential eyeballs than their competitors: over 99 million people per month have access to their Live Search tool across MSN and Windows Live.

The Advantages of Pay Per Click Advertising

The growth of the search industry worldwide has created a huge market for paid search advertising and most search engines and directories now have some type of Pay For Performance or Pay Per Click (PPC) element to them.

Pay Per Click advertising:

• Enables webmasters to target geographical and niche markets more precisely via specific search queries.


• Enables webmasters to have their page URL displayed at the top of the search engine results pages without having to figure out complex search engine algorithms or pay an SEO expert to tweak their site for higher rankings.


• Enables webmasters to receive new traffic instantly.


• Enables a website or offline store to be found by search engine users even if no site exists or the site is not search engine compatible.


• Enables small businesses to operate globally and compete on an equal footing with much larger competitors.


• Enables instant sales and more measurable ROI via conversion tracking.


• Enables more precise visitor pathways to be plotted (e.g. by leading visitors to specific landing pages).


• Enables campaigns to be switched on and off on-demand to meet specific needs, search trends or specific events (e.g. Christmas sale).

About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Should You Change Your Copy When Rankings Fall?

Article By Karon Thackston

I've been on a seesaw for the last year. I have a client who, for almost 12 months, has been asking me to rewrite their home-page copy because they dropped from the top 10 to position #11 (the dreaded second page!). My question to her was always, "Is your copy still converting the way you want it to?" She answered yes every time, to which I advised, "Leave the copy alone."

"But what about my rankings?"

"Is business suffering?"

"No, we're swamped."

"Leave the copy alone."

"But it's over a year old. Don't you think it needs to be refreshed?"

"Is your copy still converting the way you want it to?"

"Yes."

"Leave the copy alone."

We'd have this same discussion every 3 or 4 months. Some people just get hung up on being in the top 10, and their tunnel vision can cause them to make decisions they otherwise would not make. Others think that, because they are tired of seeing their website copy, others are too. This is usually not true.

My suggestion was to enhance her linking campaign with some quality articles through an article distribution campaign, but to leave the copy alone since it was still doing its job. Search engine positioning isn't the whole ball of wax. Getting top 10 rankings shouldn't be your primary goal. Attracting and keeping more business is what it's all about. If that means using search engine optimization as one tool, so be it. But too many times, website owners bow to the SEO gods and sacrifice conversions and their best business sense all for the sake of saying they are #1. Not advisable, if you ask me.

I am happy to report that, after holding at #11 for many months, this company's site is now back in spot #5. While we can't say with any certainty that it has driven any more business to their site than being at #11, the managers are quite pleased.

Never Change Your Copy?

Is this my advice in every case where rankings drop? No. There are instances where you do need to change your copy if your rankings decrease. Ask yourself (or your client) these questions:

1) Are conversions suffering?

If you're experiencing a decline in conversions, by all means take a look at your copy. It might need some help. But keep in mind that decreasing conversions may also be due to a new and more complicated shopping cart, recent design changes that impaired usability for your visitors or a dozen other reasons.

2) Have products or services changed?

If you have products or services to add or remove, certainly you'll want to change your copy to reflect that.

3) Has business fallen off?

If, due to the decrease in search engine positioning, you've tracked a definite lag in business, then yes, you'll want to make an effort to gain the lost rankings back. But, changing the copy isn't the only way to do this. If you answer no to the other questions, I'd leave the copy as-is and opt for an article distribution campaign first.

4) Other than hoping to appease the SEO gods, is there any other reason that the copy mandates changing?

If the answer is no, don't change the copy.

With all of the above, if the answer to each question is no, leave the copy alone.

There are as many reasons for your positioning to change as there are days in the month. Guessing at and trying to adjust for mysterious shifts usually does little good. Plus, while you're chasing the golden ring, you may be losing sales.

About the Author:

Learn to write emotionally driven SEO copywriting with Karon's Step-by-Step Copywriting Course at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Read Karon's copywriting blog at http://www.marketingwords.com/blog.

Thirty-Two Tips in Writing Articles for the WWW (Updated)

Article by Craig Lock

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to use the Internet and he won't bother you for months...or perhaps even years! (Sorry men... however, I presume this principle also applies to our women-folk!)."

Articles are an incredible source of traffic and free advertising for your online business, as they create LINKS (which are a vital criteria for the major search engines in their rankings of your web- site). Writing articles can provide you with enormous amount of exposure on the Web (sounds "rude, that). You are branding yourself on a shoestring budget - it hasn't cost you a cent, but a little time and effort.

People want quality content for their ezines and their web sites; however, the competition for content is fierce. Every Web site owner wants content and hundreds of writers want their content visible on the Web. It's FREE promotion through your signature file at the end of your article*.

If you can write an article about your business, you can increase your links in 24 hours! As the internet adress in your resource box at the end of your articles gets picked up by the main search engine spiders, like Google and Yahoo.

Writing a free content article is simple and follows a similar professional approach as an article for a standard, paying market. Here are some pointers in writing articles for the www:

Firstly,

1. Offer Something of Value, a Real Benefit to people. Articles that give good helpful information or explain how to accomplish something are usually best, and will be read most often.

2. Try to get into the publishers mind. See things from their point of view - why should they publish your article? In what way will it benefit their readers?

3. Accept that writing for the web is different to writing for the off-line world. People tend to skim and scan (note alliteration) when reading online. They read quickly scrolling down the page.

4. Identify your target audience.

5. Give your article a catchy title that will grab attention and make people want to read.

6. Keep your title reasonably short. Put some thought and effort into your heading - again to get your reader's immediate attention.

7. Be professional and take your article writing seriously. Write about something you know professionally. Don't be overly casual in your writing (ie. don't write exactly as you speak)

8. Keep your paragraphs short.

9. Be Clear and Concise. Get to the point quickly (enough waffle with maple syrup, Craig!).

10. Target your article to your audience with "focused information".

11. Be brief, if you are a "waffler", like this writer. People want immediate information online and have limited time usually - it's the "instant coffee, sorry generation.

12. Write briefly and concisely (redundant words, meaning the same thing, Craig!) Try to keep your article under 1,500 words. Most paying markets usually only accept between 500 and 2,000 words... and with a bit of luck they may even "pick up" your great article. Try to be concise in your wording. Brevity is the hall-mark of good writing...or so say many of the teachers of writing!

13.. Use the OCCASIONAL exclamation mark (!) to get your readers attention. Forget the ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!!

14. Be credible (big word, eh?) at all times.I try to write my articles in a "conversational style with dashes of my funny humour".

15.. Use HUMOUR. People like to have a bit of fun with the occasional laugh, whilst being informed on a serious subject. At least I believe so!

16. Write from "your heart", so that you come across as a REAL person. Just write what comes naturally with INTEGRITY...and BE YOURSELF.

17. Be totally honest in your writing and don't "borrow" too much from others content. It's so easy to "steal" on the www - so do your own work and if you "borrow ideas or material, ACKNOWLEDGE. "Incidentally, I have borrowed some ideas in this article from some good writers and well-known internet marketers - thanks a lot, David, Michael, John, Meredith, Joe, Edward, Ken and Mark).

18. Be humble.and don't talk down to your readers.

19. Use bullets (not live, please, oops er sorry, bad taste) in your articles - it makes the points easy to follow.

20.. Don't forget your byline ...or your "business card". Make sure that you resource box at the end of the article provides enough information to identify yourself and provide contact information. It's FREE advertising.

21. Offer a free report with your article - this is an easy way to collect a list of adresses for marketing your product(s). An instant target market.

22. Check all the links in your article before submitting it.

23. Offer your articles by autoresponder

24. Conclude with a strong message. Your final point (and paragraph) should be a message that summarises your article or gets your reader to take further action, like "GET STARTED" (as I've done in this article).

25. Pay attention to feedback you get for your articles. Getting constructive feedback about your articles can help you to write better through encouragement. A very powerful motivator to write more articles..

26. Finally, make sure your layout is good (not one of my strong points!), as this greatly enhances your prospects of getting published Use plenty of white spaces, as this makes your piece more easily read.

27. Proof-read. Double check your articles for errors: spelling, grammar and punctuation. Use a spell-check. Go over your article carefully and be an editor yourself.

28. Make sure your article flows properly.

29. Re-read and re-read, until you get it "just right."

30. Keep a file of articles you've written or ones that lie unfinished. You may have many new ideas since then. Set aside time to work on them. You may even put them in the form of an ebook, as my "techno-friend", Stefan has done.

and finally...and most importantly

31. Remember the "kiss" principle: Write simply and keep your meaning (message) clear (As Ernest Hemingway advised). Never use a big word, when a dimunitive will do (get it)!

Self discipline is the key to writing success. "Aim for perfection, but settle for excellence" in your article writing... then just "give it a full go with all you've got".

and finally (and most importantly)

32. Don't treat writing articles for the www. as a loborious and necessary chore of internet marketing, but some FUN in your writing (as I have done in this article)

SUMMARY:

The internet is such an amazing medium for communication and SHARING information. I've just submitted this article and it's been published almost instaneously (big word!) in a few places. So YOU TOO can write articles on your chosen subject in your internet marketing efforts, as the more articles you write and submit, the more you will find web sites LINKING to yours (as many of the major search engines use the number of links as a factor in placing your web site in their rankings).

It's a "numbers game": MORE TRAFFIC = INCREASED SALES ("the more you tell, the more you sell")

Share YOUR unique knowledge and skills to help others "out there in cyberspace."

Writers and internet marketers - Grab this moment in history well. "Carpe diem" (seize the moment!).

Why not start writing articles for the www in your unique area of interest, knowledge and or expertise?

YOU CAN DO IT by writing articles for the www ... and so and "by giving, you receive" (far more).

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe (German philosopher)

Happy writing

Craig Lock (Eagle Productions Books)

P.S: We hope that these tips help in your article writing. In my opinion it's the best internet marketing strategy. To your internet marketing dreams in 2008...and beyond.

As the ancient Chinese philosopher said so well, "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a ... broken fan belt and a flat tyre"... er sorry... a single step.

About the author:

Craig is a writer, who believes in sharing information with a 'dash' of humour, as well as encouraging people to believe in themselves and helping others to find their talents and gifts, to strive for and accomplish their goals and dreams in life - whatever they may be.
http://www.selfgrowth.com/experts/craig_lock.html
http://www.myspace.com/writercraig+ http://www.craiglockbooks.com

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe (German philosopher).

Managing AdWord Campaigns Properly

Article By Andrew C Clacy

Lately, the ads associated with various Adwords are being used for the product marketing. With the help of your Adword campaign, you can gain profit in Dollars only by working few hours and now it has become a good business proportion in Australia.

So, it becomes essential to manage Adword or PPC campaign at the first place. To manage PPC campaign, we require an abundance of management personnel.

The first thing you need to manage is the database to discover the keywords that are popular among the latest search. The next step is to write down all the keywords that are appropriate for your product and services.

You can simply perform this step by entering the keyword in the search engine that you think as relevant for your product. After getting the keyword, you need to select the bids that you have to put on them. That doesn't mean that you write an e-mail to the search engine telling that you will use these keywords because you bid for them. That is just impractical.

The standard operating procedure is that search engine handles the ads by displaying the ads that are most likely to bring maximum profit first and makes their baseline more frequent and much stronger. Adword is also known as PPC (pay-per-click) operation.

It means that the marketer wants the user to pay a fee each time when there is a click on the ad and even if the searcher visits his website using that ad or link. Anyways, this does not mean that the product has been sold.

An advertisement which is clicked a number of times is chosen as the one that brings maximum profit to the PPC. Therefore, it is placed at the top of the list to the users who are willing to pay substantial amount of money per click.

The moment you place the bid, the ad start running. Then it becomes necessary to monitor it successfully on each and every step. It is essential for you to keep the track of the charges that may incur pertaining to the popularity of the keyword associated with it. It is also important to replace those ads and keywords that have lost their popularity against the current and latest keywords.

Adword is an effective tool for online advertising especially, for medium-sized Adword or PPC campaigns and of late has become a chief source of revenue. Its advertising is accounted for almost 99% of total revenue. Adword offers many services such as managing your accounts, reviewing your campaigns and making necessary enhancements.

It also helps in mastering of ads, creating new ad groups and test reports. Apart from this, it is a targeted form of advertising making you pay for per click. Due to all these, the management of Adword or PPC has become the need of the hour. To manage Adword, there is an account known as EPS account which helps in managing Adword campaign. EPS account manager will make the management of PPC campaign easy.

It gives the information about the number of clicks that you receive on every PPC campaign. This also helps you to identify your target audience and generate a list of keywords for approval. Once the keyword list is approved, your account is established and your ads start appearing within few minutes. Then your PPC campaign will be clearly monitored by your EPS account manager. It should also ensure that your Adword remains optimised to earn maximum profit for your business.

About The Author:

Australian Adwords Management is a service that Andrew Clacy provides to his clients. He has helped many Australian businesses with http://www.australianonlineseo.com/adwords.html

Boost Your Business with Target Marketing

Article by Sandy Reed

Often the most profound bits of wisdom are revealed in mundane situations. This morning I finished up a bottle of body oil and noticed that it felt really good to know I had used it all up, wasting none of its contents. This led me to think about my life. When I get to the end of my life, I want to feel really good about having used it all up, and know that I wasted none of the gifts inside of me. What a terrible waste it is when any of us leave this world without taking the time to discover our gifts and use them in a way that can benefit our world.

That's what your business truly is. It's a love offering to the world. It's an expression of your soul in such a way that it brings value and happiness to your life and to all your clients, whose life it benefits. It is your privilege, and responsibility, to find ways to let people know what you have to offer them.

What you have to offer will be unique and will express your gifts and talents, that come from expressing what is in your soul.

My definition of a successful business is - a business that provides a vehicle for you to express in the world what makes you happy. It expresses your unique gifts and talents, and provides the means to create the lifestyle you long for in your heart and soul.

As I mentioned, in order for this lifestyle to come to fruition, the right people must know what you have to offer. So, the question becomes, who are the right people? Do you know who your ideal client is?

You may ask, "why should I care about who my ideal client is?"

Here are 3 reasons to take the time to discover the identity of your ideal, or preferred, client. Choosing an ideal client will help you:

1. Market your products and services. If you don't know who you're serving, how do you know the right advertising venues to utilize? For example, if your preferred client is 25 - 35 years old, you would choose a very different marketing approach than you would if your preferred client was 45 - 55.

If you decided to place an ad in a magazine or online publication with readers who are 25 - 35 years old, you might choose Cosmopolitan or Working Mother or New Lifestyle Magazine.

If you were targeting 45 - 55 year old readers, you might place an ad in AARP Magazine, Grandparents, or Slate Magazine.

2. Get a clear vision of where your company belongs in the market place. Take home buyers for example. New home buyers have very different needs than retirees looking to downsize. You would use a different marketing strategy in both cases.

3. Helps you write your ad copy when you can address it to one person who represents your ideal client. For example, the verbiage and images you use to reach a real estate agent is very different than the words you would use to communicate with corporate executives.

If you know who your ideal client is, it will help you decide how your gifts and talents can best benefit them. So, when it comes to the end of your days, you'll have a feeling of satisfaction and completion knowing that you've expressed your talents and gifts to the people who needed it the most - your ideal client.

About the Author:

Sandy Reed is a Professional Certified Coach and small business owner with 30+ years of corporate and business building experience. She publishes business building articles, and has been featured in True Wealth and Simply Home Magazines. Visit her website at
http://www.SoulpreneurSuccessStrategies.com to get more information about upcoming Soulpreneur's Get Clients Now Teleclass Workshops and to check out her free resources.

Radio is the Most Intimate Medium. Use It to Boost your Public Relations

Article by Robert Deigh

Comedian Bob Newhart -- in his TV sitcom ages ago -- did what I consider to be the best routine ever about a hapless guy being interviewed on TV for the first time.

Before the interview, the female host assures him that he'll get softball questions about how he helps people as a psychiatrist. They joke around and make small talk before the show. But once the cameras are on, the interviewer fires off one blistering question after another, leaving Newhart confused, defensive, blushing and, finally, speechless.

It's hilarious when Newhart does it. Not so funny if it happens to you. Executives who want exposure on television -- but who have not had much experience in front of the camera -- should first consider landing a radio interview or two as a way to hone their voices and practice answering questions effectively live on the air. Radio should be part of your public relations activities.

There are two reasons. First, of course, radio is great exposure. Nothing has diminished the impact of radio as a means of delivering message. Particularly in drive time (radiospeak for "traffic jams), you have a captive audience.

Give them a reason to listen and they'll stick with you. Also, radio is an intimate medium that allows you to speak directly to the listener -- and paint a picture in their imagination about your issue, product or service -- with little distraction from visual images.

Second, it is a great way to build your media chops doing live, on-air interviews without the distractions of the television studio. They include lights, makeup, the stare of the camera, your posture and clothing, floor-manager signals and the need to appear rested and physically engaged -- even if it is 8 p.m. after a 12-hour workday.

Appearance counts for a lot on television. The way your clothing "reads" on camera, the size of the bags under your eyes, razor stubble, body language and the distractions of jewelry are a few pitfalls. And if you're like me, with a great face for radio, you'll especially welcome the opportunity to do an interview in shirtsleeves, late in the afternoon, and not worry that you look like Richard Nixon at the first televised presidential debate.

You should consider a few basic things before and during the interview:

Listen to the interviewer's program a few times before it's your day in the studio. Know the host's style -- and whether it is confrontational or supportive.

Call the interviewer to find out generally what kinds of questions you'll get.

Nail down your messages. Be prepared with three "must-say" messages, the things you will convey during the interview under any circumstances. Practice "bridging" to those messages.

Arrive a few minutes early so you are not running into the studio huffing and puffing. Get comfortable in the green room, practice your messages.

Relax. It will show in your voice at the interview.

Keep these guidelines in mind during the interview:

-- Radio provides a number of natural advantages for the interviewee. One of the most important is the freedom to look at detailed notes while on the air, something that would be a no-no on TV. Nothing takes the place of preparation -- knowing exactly what you want to say and having your key messages nailed down. But having notes in front of you -- as long as you don't read them verbatim -- ensures that you will not forget any of your key points.

-- Be interesting. Explain why what you have to say is of consequence to the listener. Use figures sparingly. Save the jargon and the reams of data for your next staff meeting.

-- Remember that the silence belongs to the interviewer, who will do whatever it takes to avoid "dead air." Listen carefully to the question, answer it succinctly and then shut up. Don't get trapped embellishing your answer unnecessarily -- or worse, boring the listeners by being windy -- just because the interviewer is silent for a few beats. This is much harder to do on television. When the interviewer is not talking, the camera is on you and, unless you're good at this stuff, you end up shifting around. Very awkward. Watch what anchors do before they go to commercial -- they just look straight into the camera and wait! Do the same.

-- If your schedule is tight, suggest a telephone interview. You can do a phoner from just about any quiet spot -- your home, office or hotel room on the road. Forget using the cell phone. Most radio programs will not let you use them because of the invariable poor reception.

Good luck!

About the Author:

Robert Deigh is president of RDC Communication/PR and author of the upcoming PR book "How Come No One Knows About Us?"(WBusinessBooks, May '08). For a free full chapter, "16 Ways to Come Up With Story Ideas That Will Attract Press," contact rdeigh1@... http://www.rdccommunication.com

Automatic Online Income - Myth or Fact?

Article By Titus Hoskins

Nothing excites the mind more than receiving automatic online income, day-in, day-out for all 365 days of the year. A true marvel to behold and the perfect solution to all your money worries.

It is totally liberating.

It gives you the freedom to pursue your life's goals, no matter what they may be. It gives you the freedom of mobility; you can live anywhere in the world. Moreover, it gives you the time to do the THINGS you want to do, whether it's sailing solo around the world or staying home to raise your kids.

Simply put, it gives you choices, plenty of choices. You are no longer tied down by a 9 to 5 job. You are your own boss. You decide when you work or even how much work you do.

But is automatic income from the web a myth or fact?

Are there really people making money 24/7 while they're sleeping, enjoying a delicious restaurant meal or even while on vacation?

The answer is YES!

Computers and the Internet are relatively new inventions. Like anything new, many people don't fully understand how they work or what excellent opportunities they offer. Most people just can't comprehend how someone can earn automatic income from the web.

To understand how this income is possible, you must first understand how the Internet works. Basically, at its very core, the Internet is simply information. We use the web to find information. We use it to find what we're looking for - whether that "something" is in the virtual world or in the so-called real world. Whether it's a pizza with the works or the theory of relativity explained in full... you can find it all on the net.

We use the Internet to solve problems, find a friend, buy a condo, book a vacation, write a book report... and the list is endless. But how do you earn income from the web, automatic or otherwise?

Again, the answer is quite simple, you just have to give web users what they're looking for and in most cases that "something" is information. They want information, neatly packaged and accessible at all times. They want things explained and pointed out to them in a direct manner. They want easy solutions to solve their questions or problems.

Information Is The Key

If you want to earn income from the web, you must place your website or sites squarely into this "information mix." You must offer something of value to your site's visitors, whether it's how to make the perfect angel cake or tips on buying a new laptop. You must offer valuable content, special deals, bargains... you must give people a good reason to use your site. They must benefit from using your site.

Just look at Google; they have built a billion dollar company by simply telling people where they can find information on the web. Their homepage is one of the simplest pages on the web and hasn't changed much since they started in 1998. But they offer the visitor valuable content/information which is needed and appreciated.

Granted you're not Google, but even the smallest webmaster can offer valuable information to their visitors. Everyone is an "expert" on something - just take your favorite hobby or pastime and run with it. Build a site, offer tips, give advice, gather information... create an online presence for your chosen topic or hobby and you're in business.

Once you have built a reputation for useful content, the search engines and your visitors will spread the word about your site's content. Then it is simply a matter of monetizing that content with affiliate links or thru advertising, such as Google Adsense.

There are countless ways or models of making automatic income on the web. The above example is just one of the simplest ways of earning income from your website. If you have your own product and an army of affiliates, then the above scenario is multiplied a hundredfold.

Automation Is Your Friend

You must keep in mind: computers and the internet are tailor-made for automation. Once you create your sites and content, they run 24/7 without any help from you. Once you set up your follow-up autoresponders, they run 24/7 without any help from you. Once you set up your affiliate links and/or Adsense Code, they run 24/7 without any help from you. Once you have set up your viral marketing systems, such as free videos, free buying guides, free downloads, free articles and ebooks, they run themselves 24/7 automatically.

Of course, it is a good idea to monitor your site and your whole online operation. Plus, it would be wise to keep adding valuable content to your site or sites on a regular basis. But once you have set up your automatic income streams, they pretty much run themselves without much help from their creator.

Then you will see for yourself that regular automatic income from the web is indeed possible and not a myth. You will earn revenue, like clockwork, day-in, day-out; it is a true beauty to behold. Besides, there is no greater joy than coming back from a computer-free vacation only to find you have earned enough money to pay for your vacation and then some... all the while you were away enjoying the sun and the company of friends.

That's just one of the many joys having an automatic online income will give you. Many more await you...

About the Author:

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: (http://www.bizwaremagic.com) If you want to create your own automatic income from the web, try these free courses from Ken Evoy's SiteSell: (http://www.bizwaremagic.com/Free_Marketing_Courses.htm) Internet Marketing Guides.

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

"Houston, we have contact." Attracting Clients at Expos!

Article By Kim Schott

There are some self-employed professionals who spend a lot of time and money attending Expo's. They'll grab 5,000 business cards, get tri-color brochures printed, and network at every booth until their feet wear out. But, they still don't attract the exact target audience that will do anything and pay anything to work with them. You know this type of person, because they'll tell you that their doing all the "right marketing" and yet producing no real results at the Expo. (Hey, is this you I'm talking about?)

You might say to yourself, "Well, what am I doing wrong?" Since I actually get asked this a lot, here is what I've discovered. Expo's differ from networking events in that most of the adults at the event will want to do business with one another, but most of the time not. Most of the time they are your direct competition or your strategic alliance. But keep in mind...you will find a few clients in all this activity.

So, The Key to Client Communication at these events is to know something new about the industry that the average professional does not know. Most folks who attend Expo's make a CLIENT KILLER mistake by talking about themselves, before asking engaging questions. Yak...yak...yak. So your chance for a high-trust connection just went down the drain.

You've heard me say it before, that there is an outer strategy of marketing, and an inner strategy. If you got the brouchures, the business cards, the suit, the haircut, the bright white teeth, but you don't have a set of memorized engaging questions to ask...then you are going to blow your opportunity to connect with clients at an Expo.

This by far is my most effective strategy to work on with my clients. Why? Because when you begin a conversation at an Expo with: Have you heard about so-in-so? How has X or Y affected your business?.....you are asking someone for their advice or their wisdom. And, when you ask an adult for their professional experience, you ALWAYS have a greater chance of making a connection that attracts clients.

Remember, the key here is to cultivate relationships first, then shift to explaining what line of work you're in and the results your clients get.

So, here's an Expo strategy that will leave you feeling energized, instead of burnt out:

1. First, seek out the vendors who are your exact target audience to visit. Do not market yourself to everyone!

2. Then, connect with the speakers to hear their experience and how it has impacted your line of work.

3. You could ask the speaker who the organizer is, so that you can determine if you can speak the next time around.

4. Why not seek out the media, and take advantage of an interview?

5. Last but not least...trade your business cards and information with other Expo attendees who are not your ideal clients.

One final thought. Depending on the ethnic or regional culture that is attending the Expo, don't be fooled if adults seem to be interested in your business. For example, there are Asian cultures who will politely listen to you, in order to save face, and then do their best to forget about you when you walk away. Just remember to seek out your target audience first, then watch their body language as you ask engaging questions. If they appear to enjoy speaking with you, then you have a connection.

About the Author:

Kim Schott, your Global Client Communication Expert, is the author of the Keys to Client Communication System, the step-by-step, paint by numbers client communication program to attract more clients in less time. To receive your weekly how-to articles on consistantly attracting more local and global clients in less time, visit http://www.SchottCulturalConsulting.com

The Secret to Raising Your Rates Without Turning Away Clients or Prospects!

By Kim Schott

QUOTE: "If you know what to do to reach your goal, it's not a big enough goal." Bob Proctor, Author and Speaker

Now, I know from experience that great Client Attraction Marketing has no regard for price. The good news is that you have so many different options to raise your rates for your local and global clients.

Let's first look at five reasons for wanting to raise your rates.

Number One - Perception is reality. If you're giving your item away, you better be doing it because you have a client attractive backend product or service. And, you better be able to do lots of volume.

Number Two - You have too many clients and not enough time.

Number Three - Catching up with the marketplace.

Number Four - Creating exclusivity in the marketplace.

Don't make your client justify your cost for herself/himself. If you think your global clientele is
going to gasp from "sticker shock" then you need to set them up with a client attractive headline, "Before I tell you how much this is, let me ask you a question..."

Number Five - You want to make more than you're making now within the hours that you have.

People are sensitive to price in an absolutely crazy way. They'll shop clear across town to save 30 cents on a six-pack of bottled tap water, and then drop an insane amount of cash for a new car that loses half its value the second it's driven off the lot.

Why do adults from every culture around the world do this? Clients who study my Keys to Client Communication System know. It's in our mental software, which shapes our cultural values. Finding a store with cheaper bottled water feels like a small victory. Buying a new Mercedes or Rolls Royce is more like joining a special club, or adopting a new identity.

People will pay what it costs to get what they want. And it's not the deal you get... it's the deal you think you get. All we need is a good reason, and we'll buy your stuff. With 100% clarity, you need to be confident about the results you bring your local and global clients. Then raising your rates is not a big deal.

This week, consider these three tidbits from the trenches:

The quickest and easiest way to raise or even set your rates is to model your prices after a successful colleague in your industry.

Try bumping up your prices incrementally. Let's say, just for a round number, if you're charging $400 (or, 300 EUR) a month or $400 a session, then maybe you just bump it up an extra $100 every few months.

Try offering three different programs or infoproducts with three different prices. If you are a Direct Marketing, Network Marketing, or independent consultant, consider using my system to create a infoproduct around what you sell. For example, if you sell financial products, then create an audio CD or downloadable document that contains 10 reasons why the average person needs to become financially savvy.

About the Author:

Kim Schott, your Global Client Communication Expert, is the author of the Keys to Client Communication System, the step-by-step, paint by numbers client attraction program to attract more clients in less time. To receive your weekly how-to articles on consistantly attracting more local and global clients in less time, visit http://www.SchottCulturalConsulting.com

Does the cutting edge of social media really pay?

Aritcle by Mark Silver

Does the cutting edge of social media really pay? So someone asks you: "What's your Twitter name?" And you look at them like they are a loony. Twitter? Huh?

And then the next person asks you, "You blog, right? What's the URL?"

Hold it. What happened? In the seeming blink of an eye, suddenly there's all this new so-called 'social media' on the web, and you know nothing about it.

What's worse, is that everyone else seems to be there already. It's like you went to the bathroom, and when you came out, the party moved on, leaving you in a dark room with empty glasses all around you.

Time to drop everything and catch up with the party... quickly! Quickly!

And let's say you catch up with the party...

You've got your blog, your Twitter name, and all of those things. And no matter how fast you run with it all, it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference.

The world IS moving, you can't safely ignore it. And yet chasing after it isn't working. What to do?

Innovation is a no-no.

There is a teaching in Sufism that speaks against innovation. Well, not all innovation, and only in certain circumstances.

This is sometimes where people get the idea that Islam is anti-science or anti-progress. Not true.

In the twelth century, during Europe's 'dark ages,' Islamic culture had some of the most advanced universities, scientists, and doctors in the world, at the very cutting edge of modern technology. The problem with innovation is that it can feed on itself.

Innovation is forbidden when it becomes a false idol.

We've come to think about technology as 'computers' or 'science.' But, the word 'technology comes from the Greek 'tekhnologia' meaning, an interest in an 'art or craft' (Oxford American Dictionaries).

The problem comes when someone studies technology for its own sake. For our personalities, our egos, the lure of 'newness' is strong. New sensations and learnings can encompass all of our attention, immerse us in the experience.

This can be a good, because immersion is a great way to learn. The problem is that with something like all the innovation happening in web technology, is that there is no defined 'end' point. There is no way to tell externally when you've done enough.

If you get caught in this loop, you can emerge months or years later, having totally lost track of the path you are on.

The irony is- people want connection. The irony of web-based social media like blogs and Twitter is that it's coming out of the deeper hunger to connect to community, to love, to Source. Yet all of this innovation in the internet can leave you exhausted and isolated- even if you're good at it and like it.

As you may already know, that connection you're yearning for is in your heart, not Twitter. It's in the hearts of other people, not in the technology. If you forget that, you'll be lost. By remembering your true intention, then technology can be useful to you.

So do I blog and Twitter, or not?

Well, I'll give you a definitive answer: it depends. :) It depends on your business, and the hearts of the people you are trying to reach.

If you work with younger adults or teens, or with engineers or gadget geeks, then yes, you're going to want to meet them where they are, which is usually on the cutting edge of the latest toys. If you don't, it may not be as critical. And, even if you suspect that a good portion of your audience is found in the 'blogosphere' as it's sometimes called, there's still no need to be so urgent about it.

How do you proceed? Well, take breath, connect to your heart, and let's take a look.

Keys to Technology

• Your current website and newsletter is not obsolete!

Don't panic and discard what you've got now. Just because all of this new stuff is out there doesn't mean what you already have isn't perfect for what you're doing. My bicycle is more than fifteen years old, and it gets me around just fine. And, if you haven't even gotten your website done yet, it's still more than worthwhile to finish.

• You don't need the latest, just adequate. Unless your business is about social media and cutting-edge web technology, in which case you probably aren't even reading this article (hiya!), then forget about Twitter, Pownce, Digg, Stumble-Upon, del.icio.us for right now. You don't need anything but entry-level basic. Just start reading some blogs, without being in a rush. Here's a few to start with:

Dawud Miracle

Michael Martine

Adam Kayce

• Set a 1-3 month 'safe zone' of learning.

As you begin to learn, tell yourself that you don't have to do anything about it for one to three months, that you are just going to learn. It will work even better if you find a friend or colleague who can give you an hour or three for a personal guided tour of this stuff.

This approach doesn't just apply to blogs, but it applies to most anything new you need to learn about your business. And, once you understand the basics, the more obscure pieces will come MUCH more quickly.

You might actually find yourself enjoying the technology. :)

With blogs and other social media, remember that technology is just a tool, and that the craft you are studying is not blogs. You are involved with the craft of connection, and you're just learning a new tool to do what you already know something about.

Don't let gurus rush you. Take a breath, and dip in. You may find that all of this innovation and technology can actually increase your connection to what you care about most.

About the Author:

Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com

What To Do When Your Website Does Not Rank Well In Google

Article by Bill Platt

Online marketers frequently struggle with the question of how to compete when Google fails to look positively upon a particular website. In this article, I will focus on how to build rankings and drive traffic to your website, using Google and the other search engines.

What Motivates Google's Algorithm

Over the years, many have tried to claim, even in court, that Google was unfairly keeping their website out of the top of Google's search results. But, the truth is that Google is not beholden to the needs and desires of the webmasters who want to be on page one of Google's natural search results.

Instead, Google is beholden to its stockholders and its need to earn profits. Google has determined that the best way to keep profits high is to keep Internet users flocking to its websites. Google accomplishes that by giving its users the kind of information they are looking to find, and Google weights its search algorithm towards what Google believes its search audience wants to see in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

It is important for online marketers to understand that it is not always in Google's best interest for our websites to rank well in Google.

How Important Is Google In Search?

Worldwide, Google is currently providing 78% of all searches
(http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=4).

But in 2007, Google only provided 52% of my website's total search traffic. Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask, and MSN provided the next 42%. The remaining 6% of my website's search traffic came from another 55 smaller search engines.

On my website, only 48.8% of my 2007 traffic actually came from search engines. The remaining 51.2% of my website's quarter million visitors came directly from article placements on other websites, recommendations from other people, forum posts, and from people who have bookmarks for my website.

Tips For Ranking Well For Specific Keywords

It has been my experience that it is easier to rank in 1) MSN / Windows Live, 2) Yahoo, and then 3) Google, in that order. Quite frankly, I have always ignored the role of Ask in the search market. While MSN is the easiest search engine to rank in, it only delivered 4.6% of my total search traffic in 2007.

I read a question in a forum, where the poster was asking how he could get his website to rank well in Google for the search term, "software".

The truth is that it is nearly impossible in nearly every search engine to rank well in the natural results for such a singular keyword, such as "software". In a nutshell, if you want to rank well in Google, you need to build inbound links (IBLs) to your website with your targeted keywords in the links.

But, you don't want to put all of your links together with one keyword phrase. One of Google's red flags is when they notice a link to a particular website appearing more than 60% of the time with one specific keyword phrase.

Utilizing a variety of long-tail keywords will actually serve you better in the search-engine ranking puzzle, in more ways than one. After all, when I do a search for software, I don't type in the search word, "software". I type in search phrases like: "accounting software", "small business accounting software", "windows software accounting small business", "windows image
editing software", "windows software image editor", "window xp photo album manager", etc.

People searching the keyword "software" have yet to figure out that they are looking for specific kinds of software. Once they do an initial search, they are going to type in more specific search terms to find what they actually want. So, once you start targeting a variety of long-tail keyword phrases, then you will start seeing more success in your search marketing efforts.

How To Start Your Search Engine Optimization Journey

If you are wanting to get into the natural search results of Google and the other search engines, you must know before you dive into the project that getting good rankings in the search engines for your chosen keywords can take a really long time, before you begin seeing results.

While inbound links to your website, targeted to your chosen keywords, will help your website climb in the search results of your favorite search engines, it may be a frustrating journey.

Your competitors want to rank well for the same search terms you do. And since only ten of you can be on page one of the search results, you may have to work really hard to topple those guys already on page one of the results, and you will have to fight to keep your ranking once you get it.

There are some keyword phrases that are nearly impossible to rank for, even if you have really deep pockets. For example, most every keyword phrase for the financial industry will be extremely difficult to rank for in Google. Competition in this industry is fierce, so achieving top search rankings will be tough to say the least.

This is the reason why so many SEO experts encourage marketers to target "low-hanging fruit". It may be fairly easy to rank well for a four- or five-word search phrase, and extremely expensive to target a two- or three-word search phrase.

My personal approach has always been to rotate through a list of more than 100 target keyword phrases, over a longer period of time. In doing so, I capture a lot of low-hanging fruit quickly, and at the end of the loop, I am a bit closer to snagging the fruit in the upper branches of the tree. At the end of my list, I analyze my keywords again to see where I am strong and to see where I am still weak, and then I begin the process again. (According to SEOdigger.com, I have better than 950 keyword phrases in the top twenty results of Google.)

How To Get Links

The challenge most people face when they begin building links to a website is where to get those essential links.

Article marketing is my chosen method for getting inbound links.

Because of Google's news feed strategy, the initial placement of your article might appear immediately in the SERPs, but then it will disappear. During the news cycle phase of the Google algorithm, new materials are given an added boost in ranking. Once the news cycle is done, any new pages will sink back down to where they would be based on the general Google algorithm.

If you are honest with yourself, you know that every page on the Internet started life with a PageRank Zero, but given enough time, many pages will gain in PageRank, as they begin to be linked. For a more detailed look at the process of how reprint articles gain value for a website in Google's search index, see my article about "Fishing for Links in Google" at:
http://article-blog.thephantomwriters.com/whitehat-vs-blackhat-fish- for-links-or-die-trying/2008/06/10/

Utilizing article marketing as a link building method, I have put one website on the map in as little as eight weeks, with only three articles. This website has one #1, one #2, eight results on page one, and twelve results in the top twenty listings of Google. Most of those keywords also rank well in Yahoo and MSN.

On the other hand, on my main website, I started looking at the keyword phrase "article marketing" just eighteen months ago, when my website sat at #79. Today, my website sits at #12 in Google for that keyword phrase.

I believe that given enough time, investment and commitment, I can use article marketing to elevate any web page on the Internet to multiple page-one listings in Google. But, not everyone is willing to make the kind of investment and commitment one needs to get to the top of Google's search results...

What To Do When You Need Results Now

If you simply cannot wait as long as it takes to build top rankings naturally, then you need to look seriously at Pay-Per-Click advertising models, such those offered through Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com) and Yahoo Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com).

About the Author:

Bill Platt offers Article Distribution and Article Ghost Writing services through his website at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com He has written an ebook that has been designed to help people create more effective articles. One customer said of his ebook, "I've read almost every ebook out there on article writing and article marketing and this one tops it all." To learn more about Bill's ebook or to get your own copy, please click this link: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

How To Get Massive Free Website Traffic

Article by Willie Crawford

There is only one real secret to getting a lot of visitors to your website. That is merely figuring out where lots of your ideal visitors are, and standing in front of them.

When you think of it in those terms, it's really simple.

There are also only three real ways to get in front of the traffic flow. You can buy traffic, borrow traffic, or create traffic.

You buy traffic using pay-per-click search engines. It's very dependable, and can give you a steady flow of consistent traffic.

The big drawback with using pay-per-clicks to generate traffic is that it can be very risky. Those who use pay-per-clicks to generate 100% of their traffic, and are considered the best of the best, will tell you that as many as 7 out of 10 campaigns that they set up will lose money. The professionals very quickly shut off the losers, and their winners more than make up for the losses, but it's really not a game for someone not properly trained.

You can also buy traffic using an affiliate program. Since you only pay for the traffic when a sale is made, it's a very low-risk method. Since your affiliates are sending you their best customers, you can also think of it as borrowing traffic.

I love the affiliate program model, and have numerous products sold via affiliate programs. I also sell a lot of others' affiliate products. It's win-win.

You can also create traffic by putting things on the Internet that people are attracted to. You can create content by writing articles or blogging for example. I love content creation and have written over 1100 different articles. My articles teach people how to solve pressing problems, and at the same time point them to me (my sites) as a great resource.

When you create content your big challenge is to get it noticed and indexed by the search engines, so that people can follow links from there to your site. It's actually fairly easy - but time and labor intensive.

If your content is "viral" it will be something that others will happily share. Examples include in-depth articles, essays that touch people on a deep emotional level, or humorous videos that you post on YouTube.

Of the three methods of getting traffic (buying, borrowing, and creating it) my favorite has to be borrowing it... with creating it second. I generally only buy traffic when I need a really quick surge to test my website's conversion process.

The key to generating an absolute flood of free traffic is getting noticed, getting backlinks, etc., from high traffic websites such as Google, Craig's List, Yahoo, YouTube, and the various bookmarking and social networking sites.

This can be as simple is searching through Yahoo Answers for questions on your area of expertise, and then posting a great answer - along with an appropriate link to your website or product.

It can be as simple as searching through YouTube for videos on your area of expertise, and then leaving a comment along with a link sharing that they can find more information on the topic at your site.

It can be as simple as using the search engines to locate dozens or even hundreds of blogs and forums in your niche, and then interacting with these communities.

There's only one problem with most of the methods that I just mentioned. They can be time consuming and labor intensive. Just locating active communities in your niche can literally take hours.

I do have a secret. I use automated software to monitor and notify me of active blogs, forums, and communities in my niche. I use automated software to notify me when they are discussing my area of expertise or there is a new video posted pertaining to my area of expertise.

When I discover a new resource, I then analyze it, and if appropriate, I interact with that high traffic site, and leave a link back to my site, which is a perfectly acceptable practice.

So there you have my secret for generating literally hundreds of thousands of free hits to even my newest sites. Of course, your site has to be about something that people are interested it. I do strongly advocate using software to automate many of the mundane processes such as just finding these sites.

Many webmasters really struggle with website traffic generation, and there is absolutely no need to. You merely find the huge pools of traffic interested in your topic, and then you stand underneath the waterfall, and enjoy the cool, refreshing flow of new visitors.

About the Author

Willie Crawford has been marketing goods and services online since 1996. With very busy websites in dozens of niches, he teaches that the secret is automating the flow of traffic, since without traffic you don't really have a web business. His favorite traffic generation software is at Stealth Traffic Tools: http://IncredibleWebsiteTraffic.com

Driving Traffic And Getting List Profits

Article by Casey Moher

A great number of tested ways for sending traffic to your site exist today. You can spend time, money and considerable effort getting variable results with many of them. Much of my time has been spent in trying many of these. This is an approach that works very well.

Give before you try to GET!!! Provide a free gift for your visitors.

There is a high perceived value on the part of your visitor if you can provide them with useful information. Information has a high perceived-value and can truly change lives.

It is important that you realize there is a huge credibility gap between you and the folks you would like to have as visitors to your site and, ultlimately, customers. This level of mis-trust MUST be overcome before you can succeed in your efforts.

Finding and sharing information is your initial step. An on-line approach is the most efficient way to find and distribute valuable information. Key-word searches give you the quickest feedback on the subjects that people want to know. These subjects are what people want to know and are the ones you want to include in what you give away to your visitors.

Rather than simply sending off an e-mail or two when you provide the information, it is much better to turn it into a study course lasting several days. You will find more success if you spend the time necessary to make this a high-quality gift. This will return to you many times over in the form of a valuable list of quality subscribers. Very little cash takes you a long way in this project.

You give the information if your visitor will simply provide their name and e-mail address. The best way to perform this information capture function is to use a 'squeeze page'. Getting a squeeze page set up can be done simply and without much cost.

It's quick and affordable to get professional, quality work done. In a very short time, your own squeeze page can be activated and running.

You can have your own squeeze page up and running fast, just let me know. Use this excellent starting point to build your own profit machine.

Profitable long-term relationships, based on trust, can be built with these strategies and techniques. These methods can build your long-term relationships and ongoing profits.

Seeking to help your customer base and striving to be of value to them will pay off in any business, on-line or off-line. As you move forward, you can be well-rewarded. The optimal time to provide valuable information is long before you ask any prospective visitors/customers to do anything. The list is long when it comes to the types of information you can provide free. When you focus on quality of information delivered in a professional manner you will be taking giant steps on the road you wish to travel.

Information need is the primary thought process going on in the mind of the internet user you wish to reach. If you have the best interests of your reader at heart, it will show through in what you say and do. This is important! You have to overcome an always-present barrier of doubt in your visitor's mind. Provide valuable information at no cost and you will quickly erode the doubts. Writing and submitting articles on topics of intertest to a wide number of folks is a great way to attract the interest of internet travelers. You can pick article topics based on your own interests as well as a review of what key words people are seeking on the internet.

Articles work best at driving traffic to your website if they are not self-serving or blatant efforts to sell something. Use your articles to tell, not sell! The biggest role your articles perform is to inform. After your article has presented the information, it's fine for you to include a resource box at the end. The resource box gives your name, website address and what the reader will benefit when they visit it.

The process of article writing and production has taken some forward strides lately with new software that automates everything. A lot of the grind and struggle of article-production has been made much easier now that the industry has taken this step forward. Everything has gotten much simpler lately with all this. Articles can be written, produced and distributed to thousands of people at very reasonable rates.

Recent advances in computers as well as in writing and publishing services help you make articles an integral and ongoing strategy. If you want more information on these useful tools (or anything else in this article), just contact me.

About the Author

Mr. Casey Moher is a Registered Pharmacist and Life-Long Marketing and Sales Professional. You Can Get His Free Five-Day Mini-Course on Building Targeted Website Traffic by visiting: http://www.newtrafficmaster.com

Exhaustion is Not Client Attractive

Article by Kim Schott

It seems that every time I turn on the radio or television these days, you hear people talking about the American economy in a negative way.

What's interesting is that some self-employed professionals are ready to close their business due to the economy, while other global entrepreneurs couldn't be happier. While I am not an economist or an accountant (I have team members thathandle all that financial forecasting 'stuff' for me), I do know one important fact that most 6 and 7 figure entrepreneurs live by. In America, the economy is the same for everyone; it's how you persevere and seek out fun activities that determine how successful your business will be. Perseverance and creativity can turn a small investment into a huge fortune.

And this is exactly what millionaire author, Jack Canfield has been teaching for years. E + R = O (Events +Responses = Outcome). The basic idea here is that is that every outcome you experience in your business life (whether it's wealth or poverty, fun or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event (or events) in your business life. So, are you having fun today? If not, here's something I'd like you to try: turn away from this eZine, and go do something fun for 15 minutes. I don't care what it is. Login to a funny website, watch a hilarious DVD, go play with your pet, or call a friend who always lifts your spirits. Even funnier yet: pull out your high-school year book and look at the hairstyles and clothing that you and your friends were wearing. Remember that? When life was fun? Go do it now. Fifteen short minutes. I'll still be here.

You back? You in a better mood yet? Good. If you had trouble coming up with a fifteen-minute fun activity, or had to stretch to find that happy memory, then you are teetering on the edge of burn-out and exhaustion my friend. And exhaustion is not client attractive. One of the very first things you gotta get straight in your head is: clients are attracted to optimists. Clients want to hear how you persevered through this economy, and that your business is now stronger as a result. They want you to be a beacon of hope. Hope is very client attractive.

Here is what I have learned from top 6 and 7 figure income earners: Great small business marketing means working smart, not working hard. Savvy business owners love shortcuts that work, love to use systems, love to delegate, and they love life. They love people, and use money. Not the other way around. It's a cruel joke to think that that money will bring you happiness. Money was never intended to bring you happiness; money only brings comfort. Getting those two confused will lead you towards exhaustion. So...tomorrow morning when you begin this entrepreneurial gig all over again, I want you to have a happy memory to indulge in for fifteen minutes. Cherish that memory through out the day. And get your butt in gear creating more of them. Okay? Now let's get going on creating the business of your dreams.

Here are four steps to help you persevere, increase your small business creativity, and attract more ideal clients:

* Avoid the "rut thinking" that happens as we get older. Humans operate 92% on autopilot, and only 8% consciously. Sadly, those entrepreneurs among us who are suffering economically have developed a herd mentality. When presented with a problem, they tend to go with the first thought that pops into their head because that is whateveryone in their industry is doing.

* Determine what will make you happy. Once you discover what makes you happy, and for some folks this is going to take a lot of research by consciously living their life, then you go for it as if your life depended on it.

* Set aside a time each week to generate ideas, and a completely different time to evaluate each idea. Don't mix the two, or you may be killing those ideas before you know what they might grow up to be.

* Risk being silly. What might be considered silliness when juxtaposed against the serious job of building a small business - humor, giving a child piggy back rides, or finger painting - might actually work to loosen you up in times of stress. After all, it takes a lot of passion to act silly -and to create a thriving company where you work less, and make more money.


About the Author:

Kim Schott, your Global Client Communication Expert, is the author of the Keys to Client Communication System, the step-by-step, paint by numbers client attraction program to attract more clients in less time. To receive your weekly how-to articles on consistantly attracting more local and global clients in less time, visit http://www.schottculturalconsulting.com/

Write For Robots Write For People

Article by Andy Crestodina

Without good web copy, the best team of designers andprogrammers in the world can't help you. The goal is good writing and a clear, concise message that speaks to the target audience.

But let's assume that you already have that: Maybe you're re-purposing some amazing copy that you've used for another medium—a print piece, perhaps. How can you adapt it to work well online?

If you want people to find you, you have to speak to search engines. But if you want them to stay, you have to speak to people. Writing for search and writing for visitors are often competing endeavors.

Write for people

Think of how you look at a newspaper: skim headlines, take inthe first few sentences of interesting articles, and if anopening captures you, read on to get to the meat of the piece.

Feature journalists and copywriters often strive to evoke emotion and pique your curiosity early on. Once they've captured your attention, they develop the central themes of the story.

Web writers, on the other hand, structure content in a sort of inverted triangle: meat first, details later. Why the stark contrast?

Well, think of how you look at web sites: Click, glance, click, scan, read a little, click, next page, click, click. Your eyes quickly gather an idea of what the page is about, your brain decides if you're interested, and then you read a bit or move on. The entire process takes only a few seconds.

To support this quick-to-click behavior, web copy should be easy to scan and understand at a glance. It should include plenty of:

* Bulleted lists (like this one)
* Captions
* Headings and sub-headings
* Bolding
* Short paragraphs
* Links

Write for robots

If you're concerned with your rank in search engines, this next part's for you. Targeted web content is one of the keys to successful search-engine optimization (SEO) . There are 3 basic steps for creating web copy that will boost your search position:

1. Research the optimal phrases for your business
2. Select your keywords through careful analysis
3. Show your relevance with optimized copy

Let's look at an example: Say you're creating a site for your Chicago-based knitting store. To show search engines that you're relevant, you'll have to boost your keyword frequency — which means that you might have to bend the rules of writing for people.

Ideally, your key phrase will appear 5 – 7 times in the body text of the page (links and headers don't count here—although your keyword should definitely appear there as well). So you start with this:

"Learning to knit is easy. Just sign up for our convenient classes."

But, since "knitting classes" is the target phrase, you change it to this:

"Knitting is easy to learn when you sign up for our convenient knitting classes."

In the first case, "knitting classes" never appeared as acomplete phrase. In fact, the word "knitting" didn't show up at all. As a bonus, "knitting" appears twice in the revised sentence.

True, the first example sounds better. But if you're competing for search-engine ranking, you're better off with the second version.

Ready for a real challenge? Work the word "Chicago" into the page 5 – 7 times—and keep it next to "knitting classes" if you can. This is where it gets tricky. After all, you might lose visitors if your copy is too clunky and repetitive, like this:

"It's easy to learn knitting in Chicago if you sign up for Chicago knitting classes."

Or even worse: "A new class of Chicago knitting classes is now available in Chicago for those interested in a knitting class."

This is called keyword stuffing, and I don't recommend it. It goes too far. Instead, spread out your phrases so the text makes sense for humans. This is easier to achieve if you have a few hundred words on the page. (After all, search engines love text-heavy sites.)

It's all about striking a balance. Don't sacrifice your message for your rank. Instead, focus on getting people to your page and keeping them there with targeted, concise content.


About The Author:

As a principal and strategic director at Orbit Media Studios, Andy draws on his knowledge of marketing, usability, and interactive design to lead strategic planning for the firm and its clients. Orbit specializes in web, print, and video design & development http://www.orbitmedia.com .