Free Online Marketing Newsletter

Is Your Widget Popular?
by Esther Kane

If your Internet sales from your website are not what you had hoped they would be, you have to ask yourself...

"Is my "widget" popular?"

In other words, is your product / service popular? Are others looking for it? Do they need it? Do they want it? Is the cost competitive?

How can you tell if it's popular?

Well, on the Internet, you can tell by doing some keyword research yourself.

Go to Google (cause it's the biggest) and type in the name of your product or service. Type it in quotes.

How many search results do you get?

100?

2000?

500,000?

More?

There are no hard core numbers to tell you whether your "widget" is popular or not, it depends on your widget and your audience. But, this technique at least gives you an idea of the number of people selling what you sell online and that information gives you an idea of the popularity of your "widget".

21 Ways to Use Articles to Build Your Business
by Denise Wakeman

Using articles to drive traffic and build your business has been around for years now on the Internet. However, for some reason it's really getting popular now as people are getting more savvy about creating inbound links to their website or blog and using keywords to rank high in the search engines.

Last night I attended a teleclass with my mentor, Tom Antion, about how to use articles to get more visibility for your business. I always learn a lot from Tom and this class was no exception. First off, he listed 21 ways you can use ONE article to increase traffic to your site. This is called "repurposing" your content.

21 Ways to Use One Article

1. Post on your own website
2. Post on other websites you own
3. Use in your ezine (and archive on your website)
4. Use on your blog
5. Submit to other people's websites
6. Submit to other people's ezines
7. Submit to other people's blogs
8. Use in ebooks you create
9. Use in print books
10. Use it for an audio recording for a CD or podcast
11. Use it for a DVD - great for how-to articles
12. Adapt it for a teleclass
13. Adapt for a webinar
14. Use as the basis for a press release
15. Submit to traditional print publications
16. Use it as a press kit stuffer
17. Use it as a product stuffer
18. Sell your articles
19. Submit to article directories both free and targeted in your field
20. Use in autoresponders as part of an ecourse
21. Create your own article directory on a specific niche topic

The class covered the details on each of these ways to use articles, as well as how to obtain articles, how and where to submit articles, how to choose topics and how to hire people to do this all for you for a low cost.

One of the BEST ways to market your web site is to show the Internet audience that you KNOW your stuff!

If you would like to write an article about any of the following topics and submit it to our Newsletter, we would love to review it for inclusion in future issues.

Our topics of interest are...

Marketing (General)
Internet Marketing
Small Business Issues
Web Design
Web Hosting
Web site Programming

Contact us today about your article(s) and get yourself promoted!!

A Report From A Happiness Guru

Since we know that people who are happy live longer, are healthier and have the capacity to fully enjoy life, Dr. Ann Moliver Ruben, an 81-year-old psychologist, decided she had to do something about teaching people the importance of happiness.

So she fashioned herself into a HAPPINESS GURU and published a tiny book with tremendous ideas called The Memoirs of a Happy Psychologist.

People who read it learn that it is crucial to look at the bright side of life and demand that the doom and gloom side disappear immediately. They are encouraged to greet each day with thanks to God for giving them another day so they can bring joy into their lives and joy into the lives of others. They learn that money alone does not bring happiness. They appreciate the power they have to change negative attitudes into positive ones.

The HAPPINESS GURU reports rave reviews. One said, "Your book is a masterpiece." It can be yours for $10.00, plus $2.00 mailing charges, by contacting Women Are Wonderful.

Contact us today about your article(s) and get yourself promoted!!

Hello Everyone!

I'm exhausted! Moving from south Florida to the Atlanta area didn't seem as if it would have been so strenuous! But, it's true what they say, you never realize how much "stuff" you have until you have to move it!

I'm just extremely grateful that I didn't have to carry bedroom furniture upstairs!!

Setting up shop in a new area is always extremely time consuming and frustrating and confusing and exasperating so I very much look forward to getting settled in and being able to just perform my work without having to stop and search for things!!

Which brings to mind the concept of "organization". I know it's difficult, it's almost as difficult as sticking to a diet (although I'm positive sticking to a diet is much more difficult), anyway, I'm straying. I know it's difficult to get organized and then to stay organized. I love those shows on HGTV and other networks that show how a crew of people come into your house and clean it up and organize it for you. I would love to see what that house and family looks like 6 months later. I mean, how many of them stayed that way?

I do admit, being organized has helped me very much in my work. There's no way that anyone can do SEO without being a bit anal. The job itself is extremely detailed and there are many, many factors to consider with each and every website so even though I make mistakes now and then I can honestly say that if I weren't organized or anal there would be MANY MORE mistakes made daily!! So, I am grateful for my organizational skills and I encourage all you business owners to stick to it!! I know, as I said, it's not easy. But it's SO WORTH IT!!!!!


Sincerely,
Esther C. Kane
Eckweb Designs, Inc.
678.765.0120
Improved Search Engine Rankings

I can't tell you how many times I'm asked "What's the real secret in internet marketing?"

And my answer is always the same, "Write, write, write!"

With the economy in a possible slowdown (at least it seems that way since April 2006!) many of my clients are looking to beef up traffic to their websites. Barely a day goes by without an email by someone looking for where to spend more money to get more traffic.

So, I'm going to tell you the very best bang for your buck when it comes to Internet marketing and I'm going to give it to you step by step!

Here goes...

Step One:

Understand that people going to the Internet do so first and foremost for INFORMATION. That means that the majority of people going to Google and any other search engine go there for INFORMATION to help them make the decision to buy.

For a website owner, this means that the website MUST provide INFORMATION, all kinds of information that their clients may be looking for.

Step Two:

Understand that the search engines are just machines. Their basic job is to match up the keywords that people are typing in to the search engines with the keywords that are on the website pages. Okay, I know, this is a very simple explanation. And yes, I know there are over 100 key factors that Google looks at when deciding which websites come up but basically, they match websites to the keywords being typed in. That's enough for you to know when it comes to using the Real Secret To Getting Website Traffic!!

Step Three:

So, now you know that you have to give INFORMATION and you also know that you need to use the KEYWORDS that your potential clients are using. This is where the technical stuff comes in. Contact your Internet Marketing Guru, ask him (or her) to give you keyword phrases (it should come as part of your marketing campaign) that you can use.

Understand that the research information your Internet Marketing Guru uses (all Internet Marketing Gurus use) is based on the last 30 days so naturally, every 30 days that information changes! So, this means that you should get a new phrase (or more) every 30 days!)

Step Four:

Okay, so let's say you have a keyword phrase. Now what?

Now, you write about that keyword phrase. So, let's use an example. My example is going to be...

Professional Wedding Photographer. Last month 6542 people typed in "professional wedding photographer" and there are only 751 websites marketing that keyword phrase. This is good. This means there are ALOT of people typing this phrase in but not that many websites competing for it. That means the chances of getting into the top 10 of the search engines for this phrase is very good.

So, you want to write an article about "professional wedding photographer".

Step Five:

How do you write about this phrase? Well, I keep it simple and to the point.

Answer some questions.

1) Where is this professional wedding photographer?
2) Why is this professional wedding photographer any good?
3) What does this professional wedding photographer cost?
4) Who has used this professional wedding photographer?
5) What can this professional wedding photographer do that others don't?

You get the point. You can even write the article by just posting a question and then answering it! It's that easy!

Step Six:

The NUMBER ONE factor you need to remember when writing your articles is that the keyword phrase you have chosen must be in the title of the article, it must be in the body of the article several times and it must be at the end of the article.

The NUMBER TWO factor you need to remember when writing your articles is that you MUST link back to your website using the keyword phrase of the page you are linking back to!

So, using our example above...

The title of my article would be...

UNIQUE BOCA RATON PROFESSIONAL WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

The body of my article would be something like...

The unique wedding photography of Jeff Kolodny will bring your wedding to life every time you look through your wedding photographs! His unique and professional style will entrance you for years to come.

Professional wedding photographer, Jeff Kolodny, works in the south Florida area of Palm Beach County and Broward County. He has provided photography services in Boca Raton, Coral Springs, Ft Lauderdale and other cities throughout the south Florida area.

The unique style of professional wedding photography includes Photojournalism Wedding Photography, Wedding Collages, Destination Wedding Packages, and much more. Just take a look at some of the beautiful wedding photographs that have been created by Jeff Kolodny!

Then I would end my article with a statement such as...

If you have any questions for professional wedding photographer, Jeff Kolodny, contact him today!

So, you see? I put the phrase in the Title, I used the phrase in the body (although of course this article would be longer than what I wrote!) and then I used the phrase at the end of the article!

And I also included links to the website using the keyword phrase for the page that I was linking to. I did this as much as possible (not every phrase matches the page).

Step Seven:

Once you've written your article, guess what?! You can put it all over the Internet! You can add it to your own website as a page (if you want), you can add it to your blog, you can add it to your newsletter, you can submit it to Free Article Submission sites.

Yes, one article can go to all those places!

Does it take a little time? Yes, but you know what. Once you've submitted it to a few sites, you'll be flying through that process quickly. Basically, you'll end up bookmarking several sites to submit to, anywhere from 10-20 sites and every month you'll submit an article or two to those sites. For 1-2 hours worth of time, it's completely worth it!


So, how do I know this works? I've been doing it for my own website, www.eckweb.com for almost a year now. In June, July and August of 2005 I was averaging 1400 new visitors to my website every month. April, May and June of 2006 I've averaged 2800 new visitors to my website each month. I've done no other marketing except to submit my website to search engines (the same ones I submit my clients' websites to) and write articles.

So, that's it. The REAL SECRET to Internet Marketing!

Not Your Usual Marketing Tips

Not Your Usual Marketing Tips
Vol. 4, No. 7
July 4, 2006

Yes, I know it’s July 4th. But it’s also the first Tuesday of the new month, and it’s a promise I make (if only to myself) to get this e-zine out on schedule. Which reminds me of another medium for which a timely “schedule” is even more crucial. If you’re contemplating running an ad campaign, keep in mind the importance of giving it time and frequency to do its thing.

Welcome to another edition of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips from JDK Marketing Communications Management.

Once is not enough.

Now, of course, if you’re appearing in some one-time publication as an industry or civic booster, once is all you’ve got. But if you’re thinking of running in a pub that significantly reaches your market, think of it as an ongoing relationship. “Going steady,” if you will.

That’s because it’s frequency that eventually aids the message in burrowing its way into the consciousness of the reader.

Conrad Levinson writes in his Guerrilla Marketing series of books that it actually takes nine (9) times for the ad’s message to run before it sinks in. Generally speaking…

The first time, the prospect pays no attention to the ad.

The second time, it’s still virtually “invisible.”

The third time, there is a flicker of recognition by the prospect.

The fourth time, the prospect acknowledges the ad by viewing the advertiser as “successful.”

The fifth time, the prospect reads the ad copy more intently, with more scrutiny.

The sixth time, the prospect begins to consider purchasing the product.

The seventh time, the consideration to purchase becomes more serious.

The eighth time, the prospect plans the time to actually make the purchase.

The ninth time “is the day you’ve been waiting for…your prospect actually makes a purchase, often with little sales resistance because the time you have taken for the prospect to notice your marketing has earned their trust in you.”

Levinson goes on to say that “experts recommend advertising three times for credibility and seven to nine times for people to buy from you.”

And, naturally, if you need help with conceptualizing as well as constructing and placing that ad campaign…consider the capabilities of yours truly.

In the meantime, we’ll see you again the first Tuesday of next month – the eighth time this year – for another patriotic sampling of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips.

Joel Kweskin
JDK Marketing Communications Management
704.846.4835, office
704.575.8850, cell
704.841.2746, fax
www.jdkmarketing.biz

Real Small Businesses, Real Big Ideas (This Time, It's Personal)
By Jennifer Laycock - June 29, 2006

The Internet was supposed to be the key to success for the small business owner. It was supposed to level the playing field and allow the innovative small business to go head to head with a Fortune 500 company because "on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Unfortunately, as time has passed and the Internet marketing industry has matured, it's become more and more difficult for small businesses to not only figure out how to compete, but to come up with the dollars so that they can afford to compete. In fact, some could argue that the wide variety of online marketing options makes it MORE difficult for small businesses to compete. After all, it's a lot harder to decide between choices A-Z than it is to decide between choices A, B and C. Far too often, small businesses are left paralyzed with the fear of making the wrong decision and end up making NO decision.

That's one of the primary reasons that Search Engine Guide exists. The world of search engine marketing, link building, online reputation management and all of the other search related disciplines can get complicated. Small business owners don't have time to become experts in each of these areas and they rarely have the dollars to afford the several hundred dollars an hour that consultants can charge. Thus, we spend every day trying to come up with new ways to help filter things down to a level of "this is how it impacts you and this is what you can do about it." Perhaps the best example of this was the 30 Day experiment that showed how many "little" things have to be done and considered when marketing a site online. That series clearly struck a chord with readers based on both email feedback and the fact that the free ebook has been downloaded over 3300 times.

Last week I alluded to the next big project that I'll be launching here at Search Engine Guide. Since I had so much fun working on the 30 Day project and we've had so much positive feedback about the "real-to-life" style of both the experiment and the writing, I've decided that we need to aim for something similar this time around. Thus, we're going to be launching a new series of articles that once again focuses on the realities of life as a small business owner and that provides practical (re: affordable) advice that can be implemented by our readers on their own sites.

The difference is that this time, it won't be just me with an admittedly niche site. I'll be working with a team of volunteers from different areas of the industry in order to help an existing small business figure out the next steps that they need to take in order to get their online business moving. This isn't simply a hand-out of free marketing services, this will be a transparent project that aims to help readers understand what needs to be done to a specific type of site and why.

Each month, I'll be writing a four-part article series focusing on one small business. The articles will be written interview style to mimic the back and forth conversation that goes on between a small business owner and a consultant. The first article will provide some background on the current business including how they got started and why along with more pertinent information like what their biggest challenges are and what they've tried in the past. The second article will move into issues like design and usability along with learning how to use web analytics to figure out where improvements need to be made. The third article will focus on content development and search marketing and the final article of the month will focus on things like link building, viral marketing ideas and anything else that hasn't yet been covered.

It will be up to the site owners to implement the plans, but they will have access to a variety of industry experts to help them work out the best and most cost effective way to tackle each of these areas. We'll also run a dedicated forum thread for each small business so that readers can follow along, ask questions, offer up their own suggestions and even ask how things are going a few months down the line.

The series will be starting up soon, but in the meantime, feel free to drop me an email if you can help out. I'm still open to finding a few more industry experts to add to the team, I'm also looking for a few more companies that might want to donate some products or services that would help out and of course I'll need to find a dozen really interesting small busineses to feature over the next year.

Discuss this article in the Small Business Ideas forum.

Looking for a down-to-earth, easy to understand guide to all things search marketing? Check out the Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing. It's the first search marketing e-book specifically written for folks that know almost nothing about search marketing. It even includes access to a private support forum where you can ask the author questions.

I found this great How To guide on SEO for web designers...

Basic SEO For Web Designers

Introduction to Code-Level SEO

Search Engine Optimization Guidelines for Designers and Content Writers

Ultimately high rankings on search engines come down to content (having great and unique content on a specific topic) and link popularity (both the number of inbound links and the quality of sites those links are coming from). But these topics are beyond the scope of this document.

The aim of this document is to provide web designers and content writers with fundamental best practices guidelines to ensure that your web pages are optimized at code-level for search-bots (aka "crawlers", "spiders", etc.).

Optimized code and content lead to more crawlable pages. Writing easily crawlable pages leads to getting more of your content indexed. And pages that are fully and more accurately indexed have better chance of ranking well for your target keywords and phrases.

The focus of this document is on the code-level optimization: basic techniques that can help the search engines locate, crawl, and index your content — as much of the information as they can and as relevant to your content as they can.

Listed below are some of the most important code-level optimization techniques and checklists before publishing you pages. If you have trouble understanding any of these techniques just remember what always works the best: focus on being as clear, simple, specific, descriptive, relevant, accurate, and valid as possible with your code and content.

Optimize Your Page Titles for Search Engines

Page title is arguably the single most important aspect of code-level optimization. Their contribution to how your pages are indexed and ranked by search engines is significant. The search-bots use the keywords and phrases contained within the page titles to match up against the page content when determining relevancy of the pages and ranking them accordingly.

More details on how to optimize page titles for search engines

SEO Checklist for your page titles:

1. Make sure the page title is not empty.
2. Included relevant keywords and phrases that are indicative of content.
3. Page titles are supposed to be unique for each page — Don't use generic, repeating page titles. The point is to optimize for keywords and phrases, not to dilute them
4. Whenever possible, phrase the page titles as close to how people would query for information on search engines.
5. Page titles should be short and descriptive. Try to limit it at 7-10 words or less if possible.
6. Ideally, the page titles should only contain essential descriptions of the page. — If you need to include branding or section titles in the title tag, consider putting them at the end of the page title.
7. Place the <title> tag at the very top of the <head> section of your code.
8. Avoid writing titles in all uppercase — Some argue your site is more likely to get caught on the spam filter if you use all caps in your page titles.
9. Avoid using special characters or stop words in page titles.
10. Don't forget that it's the page titles that's going to show up as clickable links on the search engine results pages. Write interesting titles you would want to click on.

Optimize Your Headings for Search Engines

Other than page titles, writing good headings for your content is one of the most beneficial practices of code-level SEO. Much like page title is an indicator of overall theme of the entire page, headings should provide a clear indication of what type content can be expected in sections of your copy.

SEO Checklist for your headings:

1. Ideally your page should not have more than one <h1>.
2. Include relevant keywords in your headings.
3. Keep the heading text short and descriptive. — Think of instructional manual's chapter headings.
4. Logically break up your content with sub-section headings: <h2>'s, <h3>'s, etc. But do not use/overuse headings when they are not appropriate.

Optimize Your Meta Tags for Search Engines

The current consensus on meta tags (such as "meta keywords" and "meta description") is that they largely do not matter. Due to years of 'Spamdexing' abuse, search engines such as Google now completely ignore meta tag information. Think of it this way... in today's search engine algorithms, using meta tags is not likely to help your page rank better but it can hurt your ranking if you abuse keywords in them.

SEO Checklist for your meta tages (IF you decide to use them):

1. Make sure your meta keywords and meta description are not empty. Use them or don't use them, but do not leave them empty.
2. Make sure your target keywords and phrases used in meta keywords and meta description appear at least once in the body of your content.
3. Do not stuff unrelated generic keywords you are trying to rank for. Be as specific to the content of the page as you can.
4. Do not repeat the same keywords over and over again in meta description.

Optimize Your Links for Search Engines

The most important factor when it comes to maximizing SEO benefits of links is to write relevant and contextual link copy.

More details on how to optimize your links for search engines

SEO Checklist for your links:

1. Use relevant and contextual copy in the anchor text. Try reading the anchor text without the surrounding text. If it doesn't make sense on its own, you need more descriptive anchor text.
2. Do not stuff keywords into anchor text. This could appear suspicious to search engines and affect your ranking.
3. Remember that non of the javascript links will be followed by the searchbots. Period. You want the linked page to be crawled and indexed, then you need to stop using the javascript links.
4. Try to place all essential links near the top of the code to increase the likelihood of those links followed by the searchbots.
5. Google's Webmaster Guidelines suggests that you limit the total number of links to less than 100 per page.

Optimize Your Images for Search Engines

Image search is one area of search engine optimization where there aren't many well-established guidelines to follow. However it's becoming an increasingly important space where you can generate incremental gains in organic search engine traffic.

More details on how to optimize your images for search engines

SEO Checklist for your images:

1. Name your images using words that describe the image. — Image search engines heavily favors images that contain search keywords. Keep your image names simple in syntax and always include the keywords that describe the image. If possible remove prefix's and suffix's from the image names.
2. Provide alt attributes for images unless they are purely presentational. — Like the image names, the alt attribute should describe the image, not what you want to convey through images.
3. Do not practice "alt spam" ("stuffing" irrelevant keywords inside the alt attribute). — This could lead to your site being penalized by the search engines.

Optimize Your Code Weight for Search Engines

Although people disagree on the exact number, many believe that there's only certain amount of code searchbots will crawl per page. Common belief is that this number is somewhere between 100K to 150K. It's a zero sum game between code vs. content. Any bits you can squeeze out of your code means that much more content can be indexed and contribute towards overall score of the page. The goal is to strike a right balance between removing all non-essentials from the page while still keeping the code clean and easy to develop and maintain (with inline scripts, styles, white spaces, comment tags, etc.).

SEO Checklist for code weight:

1. Whenever possible, remove all javascript and CSS code from your source document and save them out as external files. — If removing scripts from the source document is not possible, explore ways to move them below the content
2. Minimize the amount of code before reaching the content of the page. — Only the first 100K or so of your rendered source code will be indexable. You want to remove as much code "cruft" from the top of the page as possible to expose more of your content to the crawlers. You may also want to consider (re)ordering your content so that essential data are given priority by placing them near the top of the page.

Validate Your Code for Search Engines

With today's sophisticated searchbots, code validation is becoming less of a factor it once was in hindering crawlers from being able to fully parse your documents. However more severe coding errors (such as missing </a>) can still have a negative effect on how certain elements on your page are weighed in the overall score.

SEO Checklist for code validation:

1. Have you declared a proper DOCTYPE for you documents you can validate against? — In order to fully validate your document, you need to use a proper DOCTYPE to validate your code against. Whenever possible use "strict" DOCTYPE mode instead of "transitional" mode for better webstandards complaince.
2. Have you validated your HTML pages and style sheets for any coding errors? — Most modern code editing software offer code validation tools you can use within you editing environment, but there are also excellent HTML validation and CSS validation services via w3c.

Avoid the Dead Ends for Search Engines

There are certain things that will stop crawlers cold in its track.

1. Javascripted links
2. Extremely long or extremely complicated URL with multiple parameters.
3. A password protected page
4. Flash files