With today’s technology driven society, having a website for your business is a necessity. Customers expect to be able to search the internet and find their preferred business online. However, simply just owning website is not sufficient. You need to expose your website to your potential customers such that they are able to find it when searching online. The ultimate way of achieving this is through internet search engine optimization (SEO) which allows your website to rank in search results.

A well designed internet search engine optimized site will provide you with the opportunity to rank on page 1 of the search engines, expose your business to your potential customers, drive targeted web traffic to your site and ultimately improve your profits. The higher your site ranks, the more likely your potential customers will click on it, thus your aim is to rank as high as possible.

3 WAYS TO PROGRESS YOUR INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

1. Keyword Research for SEO

Choose the keywords you want to rank for carefully. When a customer searches using one of these keywords, you want to display on page 1 of that search engine. Your internet search engine optimization strategy should include multiple keywords for each page in your site. Furthermore, your keywords should be at least two words in length as this drives more targeted web traffic to your site. For example, rather than optimizing your site for “marketing”, consider using “internet marketing specialist.”

There are both paid and free tools available to conduct a thorough analysis of the most relevant keywords to use in your internet search engine optimization efforts in order to direct targeted web traffic.

2. Keyword Frequency and Location

Keyword density and location on your website play an important role in internet search engine optimization. The higher your keywords are on your page, the better your ranking and the more targeted web traffic you will receive. Include your keywords in your page title and in the first few paragraphs of the page.

Another thing to consider is your keyword frequency. Search engines observe how often you mention the term relative to the rest of the words on the page. The higher your keyword density percentage, the higher your page ranking. It is important to note though, that search engines pay attention to keyword spamming (excessive use of a keyword) in an attempt to rank for that keyword just to get targeted web traffic. Search engines that detect spamming are likely to exclude your site in their results and may even ban your site permanently. Deliberate spamming is ethically incorrect; therefore exclude it from your SEO strategy.

3. SEO Rewards Relevant Content

Be sure that your page reflects the keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Your content should also be of sufficient value that customers find it useful in relation to their search.

The use of large graphics is not recommended as this reduces the open speed of your website. Whilst they may look nice, they inhibit your internet search engine optimization efficiency.

Relevant content also refers to the use of alternative keywords, or keyword variations. For example, when using “internet marketing specialist” you can also use “online marketing expert”. This approach keeps your website relevant yet reduces your risk of spamming.

Implementing a well thought out internet search engine optimization plan can have a massive impact on your business by directing more targeted web traffic to your site. Remember though that you are not only trying to please the search engines, but also the customers that are visiting your website. Aim for a balance between the ultimate customer experience and what the search engines want.

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Every day millions of people use the internet just to chat.  Chatting is rated as one of the most popular internet activities today, as once you begin chatting, you’re likely to become addicted to it. On average an online “chatter” logs on at least once a day to chat.  There is no crystal clear understanding why people are so attracted to this method of communication, but there are lessons to be learned by their behavior. You can take advantage of this chat “addiction” to increase site traffic to your website. 2 Ways To Use Chatting To Increase Site Traffic.

One requires less time to get started, but more maintenance time by you.  The other is the reverse, a longer startup time, but less maintenance thereafter. Consider these ideas and begin implementing chatting to drive targeted web traffic to your website instantly.

1. Free Web Site Traffic by “Chat Advertising”

If chatting appeals to you then you can certainly dedicate a few hours a day delivering “adverts” to chatters.  This involves visiting chat rooms with the intention of posting your website link into the chat. This can be done at random, visiting a chat room, posting your link without prompts from other chatters, then leaving and moving on to another room.  This approach allows you to reach the largest audience of chatters.  The best way to achieve this is to join rooms that are related to your website and its content, thereby driving targeted web traffic.

However, this approach is likely to irritate some chatters, which may have a negative impact on your efforts to increase site traffic. You need to decide whether this risk is worth it for you or not.   Alternatively, you can be more personal with your adverts. This involves selecting chat rooms that are more targeted to your ideal audience. For example, if your website is about dogs, then you will visit chat rooms that have a dog theme. Once you have engaged in conversation for a while, then you can begin to freely and more casually bring your website link into conversation. You will receive more respect using this approach but the probability of as large an audience as with the random posts is less likely. If you are a keen chatter, then it’s a good idea to include your website link in your chat profile, for others to review.  This is a subtle, yet effective way to utilize chatting to increase site traffic.  Those that review your profile may be inclined to visit your site and may refer others to it as well, providing free web site traffic.

2. Drive Targeted Web Traffic

With a Chat Feature Another form of implementing chatting to increase site traffic is to add a chat feature to your website.  This is not a simple process and may take a while to set up.  However, it’s a great way to draw targeted web traffic to your website.   This is particularly true if your website is about a specific interest, passion or job as it encourages conversations and the sharing of information amongst like-minded people. This increases the possibility of your visitors and their friends coming back frequently. It’s good practice to monitor your website’s chat area frequently to ensure chatters are using your room appropriately and are not breaching certain policies you have put in place. Such activity makes your website look unprofessional and has the reverse effect of increasing site traffic. Using chatting is an extremely effective way to drive free web site traffic, thus you will notice other chatters making use of the opportunity as well. When you observe others doing it, take note of those chat delivery techniques that are most attractive to you. This allows you to create a perception from both angles and assists you in developing an effective plan for yourself. The more time and effort you dedicate to this strategy, the faster you will achieve results, so go ahead and start immediately!

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There is no question that many industry sectors manufacturers have been hit hard in the past few years.  First hit by skyrocketing commodity driven prices by and consumer shift in preference, then by the crash of the global economy.  All of these events have left those businesses that are still open for business stinging and closely watching the bottom line.

So how do you continue to promote your business and maintain your tight advertising budget, in this challenging environment?  These goals can be accomplished by tapping into the power of online advertising.  Adding online advertising channels to your marketing mix can help you:

•  Keep traffic coming through your doors

•  Measure the effectiveness of your ad dollar

While traditional advertising is capital intensive, difficult to measure in terms of return on investment and requires a significant lead time, online advertising can be quite affordable and can be measured and optimized for effectiveness.  Once you have learned the principles, online marketing is simple enough to be managed in-house or it can be outsourced to agencies or consultants.

There are a few areas of online advertising that you can add to your marketing mix:

• Paid Search text ads, also known as pay per click (PPC) or Adwords
• Paid Display ads, which run as  a PPC ad and sometimes also called Image ads or Banner ads
• Social Media
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), this is a method by which you attract web traffic from the organic search results on Google and other search engines

Paid Search

Paid Search ads are highly powerful in that they place your ad in front of your audience when they are in the purchase mindset.  The best part?  Each time your ad is displayed you increase your mind share with that individual and you only pay for your ad when it is clicked on. Paid Search ads are highly targeted and are extremely optimize-able to meet your business goals.

Display Ads

Also a form of Paid Search advertising, display ads can be as affordable or costly as your resources allow.  For instance, Google allows you to upload some of your existing creative media and distributes your display ads across their network. You can target your ads to geographic locations and to publishers that are relevant to your community or audience. Google AdWords uses an auction based payment system and also offers affordable CPM’s (cost per 1000 impressions).

Social Media

One of the newcomers to the online marketing space is Social Media advertising. Social Media advertising leverages the natural conversation happening between people on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs and other online communities to extend your brand and share your dealerships offerings. Your customers are already using Social Media to share with each other their experiences around your service, your business and your competitors.  By using Social Media marketing you are able to tap into these conversations and build a feedback loop with your customers.  The search engines are starting to pay a lot more attention to the Social Media space.  In the near future if not already, the content and context of social media traffic will influence Google and other search engines in determining relevancy and in turn search results. This will increase as social media becomes even more widely used.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Yes, adding online advertising to your marketing mix has very low barriers to entry, will allow you to get the most value from your ad dollars, while monitoring and growing your reputation within your base.  Now consider Search Engine Optimisation as a strategy.  As a business you are easily able to obtain and build SEO skills via readily available resources.  You may be able to identify a particular staff member who could be up skilled to take on this responsibility, you could contract in some or all of the skills, or you could decide to learn the skills yourself.

Consider this SEO reality:

• SEO (if done correctly) can yield around 4 times the amount of traffic than paid search  advertising!
• Once implemented SEO incurs far less cost to maintain the results than paid advertising does.
• SEO derived traffic is far more targeted and likely to convert.

Search engine marketing (SEM) or online advertising is a powerful and rewarding medium.  As the search engines and social networks continue to evolve into even more pivotal parts of the whole internet, marketing on this platform will become more critical, and if you can master it, particularly with techniques such as SEO you will be well positioned to reap the rewards.

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There is more than just playing hardball……

I have recently started my own business and would like to know how much hardball to play during negotiations. I don’t want to be taken advantage of.
Fortunately I did spend a good few years in a sales role in the corporate world so I have been drawing on this experience quite a lot.

You may also be new to business, but you ask an age-old question. When it comes to deal making, what is the right amount to leave on the table? There is no exact number or percentage, of course, but generally speaking, the answer is, enough to make another deal another day. This ultimately is a foundation of a relationship, at the very least by intention.

Given your new role as an entrepreneur, I’d guess you’re hoping to build both a career and a reputation. And that just can’t happen if, after every negotiation, the other person feels completely taken to the cleaners. You’ll never get another deal sent your way. On the other hand, you don’t want to give away so much that you’re the one who’s taken—for a fool. Your challenge then, is to find the middle ground. And you will—with experience.

Like life, business is built on relationships. Err on the side of fairness, and you’ll be richer for it in every way. Always put more in than price dictates and the returns will be richer than you expect.

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Online social media is place where most of the western world now hangs out. YouTube is the world’s second most trafficked website.  It follows that this represents a huge opportunity for marketing, much like television did back the middle of the 20th Century.  There are however a few things to know when venturing into this space.
Here are 5 essential facts to understand about advertising on YouTube…

Youtube Fact 1:

YouTube is not limited to short-form user-generated content. Thousands of premium content partners, from Sony to Disney to Universal Music, and fans can find hundreds of full-length feature films and thousands of full-length TV episodes on YouTube.  The world premiere of Joy Luck Club director Wayne Wang’s film, “The Princess of Nebraska,” was viewed 165,000+ times during the first 48 hours — the equivalent of landing the 15th spot on the Hollywood box office charts.

Youtube Fact 2:

YouTube videos are NOT grainy & of poor quality. Full HD videos are on YouTube, already more HD videos than any other video site.  Hundreds of thousands of HD videos are uploaded to the site every month, and tens of millions are viewed every day. Earlier this year, CNET’s WebWare called YouTube the best HD video service on the web.

Youtube Fact 3:

Traffic, growth, and uploads are good for YouTube’s bottom line. There’s been a lot of speculation lately about how much it costs to run YouTube.  With revenue estimates ranging from $120 million to $500 million, and costs on an equally large spectrum, it seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about this business. The truth is that all the infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to bandwidth and similar costs. YT is at a point where online advertising growth is definitely good for the bottom line, not bad.

Youtube Fact 4:

Advertisers are not afraid of YouTube. Over 70% of Ad Age Top 100 marketers ran campaigns on YouTube in 2008. They’re bought the home page, Promoted Videos, overlays, and in-stream ads.  Many are organizing contests that encourage the uploading of user videos to their brand channels, or running advertising exclusively on popular user partner content (see Carl’s Jr.). Advertisers just want control, so YT is continuing to develop tools and targeting products that give advertisers more control over where their ads appear on the site. More will follow on that front soon.

Youtube Fact 5:

YouTube is only monetizing 3-5% of the site. This oft-cited statistic is old and wrong, and continues to raise much speculation.  In my view, the percentage is far less important than the total number of monetized views, and YT is now helping partners generate revenue from hundreds of millions of video views every week in the US (and billions worldwide), more than any other video site has total views. Monetized views have more than tripled in the past year, as they’re adding partner content very quickly.

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Your entrepreneurial flare is awake and you’re looking for the top home business to propel you to success and enjoy some flexibility in your life. There a lot of choices in this genre on the market today, and logically it follows that not all of them can be as good as they profess to be. To help you quickly perform a high level evaluation, here are three key items to quickly focus on and not become overwhelmed as a business opportunity seeker.

Training & Support

Does the organization provide holistic training? Many an internet based business opportunity talks of ‘simple systems’ and ‘making money in your sleep’ but unless you invented the system or enterprise, someone or something is going to have to provide you information to understand it implicitly.

This training must be structured for presentation and ease of reference. If your enquiry in this regard is not met with a confident conveying of a solid training system with material and structure, be cautious. Ultimately you want to see how you’re going to get into profit quickly and your knowledge of running the business is going to be paramount to achieving this.

Similarly in terms of support.

You should ask upfront about ongoing support, mentor-ship, product updates etc. You must know firstly that a supportive point of contact is available and reliable. Preferably, in fact definitely this should not be an individual persons cell phone number. Secondly, the support system must be dynamic enough to be adaptive to the market needs and market changes as they occur.

Company History and Credibility

If you’re going to be reselling someone else’s products you have to make sure of that particular source’s reputation and track record. You don’t want to get into a ‘sunset business’.

The company must have a reasonable history and demonstrate that it has been able to innovate and develop in its lifetime to stay ahead in its market. Likewise the overall reputation must be clean with no credibility issues.

Do not be overly concerned with a hugely lengthy track record of years and years. It is not uncommon for products and/or companies to be a prime opportunity if they are less than a year old, provided the of course the ot6her point mentioned are solid.

An important point to note when doing your research is that everyone professes to have the top home business, they often do this at the expense of other competing organizations and often they do this falsely.

Don’t take everything at face value especially on the internet. Unfortunately it has become a sordid place of slander often at the expense of the multitude of business opportunity seekers out there. Get a more factual basis by personally contacting people involved.

Compensation plan.

The reason most people want a business – MONEY. Home businesses are usually no exception, however many will only offer partially of what you should look for. Any successful businessman will tell you that annuity or residual income is the bread and butter of a business, it allows you pay the bills and focus on growth strategies.

Not to mention a solid residual income is an saleable asset, which you can sell off in time to come if you wish. Similarly though, you also want good upfront profits so you can reinvest and also enjoy the fruit that you have worked for.

Look for all of these when doing your research: Upfront profits, residual income and how you will create and grow a valuable asset.

Ticking (or not ticking ) these three boxes early in your research process will enable you not to waste time and effort when undertaking your due diligence. It should quickly reveal a short list of the more solid opportunities which you can pursue further. Compromising on any of these will however, increase your risk substantially.

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