internet.marketing

"Three things you must know if you are selling or providing service in online"

2006-05-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

The three big changes that you absolutely must know about if you're planning to make money online!

1. Keep Your Google Listings from Dropping out of Sight!

If you rely on search engines to drive traffic to your site -- and especially if you're using search engine optimization strategies such as link popularity -- then you've probably already heard about the changes to Google that have been nicknamed "The Florida Dance."

Back when Google used to update their servers with new web pages once a month, the monthly changes came to be called "Google Dances" because site rankings "danced" up and down the search results pages. Now that Google makes updates on an ongoing basis, the big "dances" only happen when Google makes major changes to the way they evaluate pages. And the latest one has damaged the rankings of so many web sites that it's been nicknamed "Florida" after the destructive Florida hurricanes!

So if you haven't checked your Google listing recently, you might want to do it now... because even if you've been ranked well with your Google keywords, your site might have dropped by hundreds of positions -- literally overnight!

One marketer we know told us that her thriving online business had seen a tenfold increase in sales until the changes in Google dropped her web site listing from a #9 position to somewhere below #999! Now she's doing very little business, and she's desperately looking for a way to bring her listing back up.

Here's why these changes are occurring: Like all search engines, Google uses a variety of programs called filters and algorithms to rank web pages in its search results. The company is constantly changing and updating its programs to ensure that listings are "relevant," meaning that they are actually related to the keywords people are searching for.

Now, if search engines don't make these changes regularly, "search engine spammers" can actually trick search engines into making unrelated sites appear in the top listings. (Imagine searching for "affordable gift ideas" and finding that all the top listings link to gambling and adult web sites!) But the newest changes to Google have done more than penalize "search engine spammers." A lot of online business owners who have been using ethical, commonly accepted techniques to improve their search engine rankings are finding that their Google listings have dropped right out of sight.

The new changes have caused headaches for a huge number of online business owners by penalizing "over-optimized" web pages -- meaning that if you've spent time and money trying to push your page to the top of the listings, you might actually be punished for your hard work with a diminished ranking.

If your site listing has dropped in Google, you're probably scrambling to figure out how you can fix the problem -- after all, a lower listing practically guarantees that you're losing money!

So what should you do?

We've researched the changes and listened to the industry buzz, and it looks like the best thing to do now... is to wait. Google is still fine-tuning this latest round of changes, so before you start overhauling your web site, you should wait until the final tweaks to "Florida" have been made.

Frustrating? Yes. But if you've been burned by these changes, here are a few things you CAN do to ensure that potential customers are still finding your site while the dust settles:

Make sure your site offers relevant, high-quality content. Remember, Google's goal in making these types of changes is to ensure that top positions go to sites offering valuable resources and information. Google uses sophisticated software to measure the "relevance" of your site's content to keywords that people search for -- so adding well-written content to your web site is still an effective way to improve your ranking.
Be careful not to "over-optimize" your site. In the early days of search engine marketing, people discovered a number of "loopholes" -- tricks that sent sites to the top of the search engines even if they had little or nothing to do with the keywords being searched for. These tricks include:

Hidden links and text (i.e., white keywords on a white background)
"Mirror" sites (copies of a site that are optimized for a single search engine)
"Link farms" (multiple web sites whose sole purpose is to link to each other)
"Doorway" pages (pages designed primarily for search engines, not for users)

Google can now detect these and many other tricks, and it penalizes sites that use them by dropping their ranking dramatically. If you've hired someone to optimize your ranking, make sure they're not using any of these outdated methods -- or they may actually be damaging your chances of getting a top ranking!

Likewise, if you're using extensive affiliate links to create "link popularity" for your site, you should be aware that indiscriminate use of affiliate links can hurt your ranking under the Florida changes... so be careful to link to sites with content that is related to yours.

Consider using paid listings to keep traffic coming to your site. I know, I know... If you're still smarting after losing your coveted position in Google, the last thing you probably want to do is pay them for advertising! Still, as a short-term way of recouping your losses until you're able to get your ranking back up, you just might want to look into paid advertising.

If you do, be sure to do your research and calculate how much you can spend while still making a profit. Pay-per-clicks can be an effective way to get traffic coming to your site in just a few hours, but be careful: A hastily implemented pay-per-click campaign can quickly get expensive!
Explore other search options. Google isn't the only search engine! While it's true that most searchers go to Google first, you can drive fresh traffic to your site by working on improving your search results in some of the other engines. For starters, try looking at AllTheWeb, Teoma, Inktomi, and Dogpile. HotBot is a neat site that lets you search Inktomi, AllTheWeb, Teoma, and Google, all from a single location. And there's always MSN and Yahoo!...
Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Search engine optimization is just one of many ways to drive traffic to your web site. If your business relies too heavily on search engine optimization, you're putting yourself at the mercy of the search engine algorithms -- which are constantly changing!

The best way to ensure that your site gets a steady stream of traffic is to combine a variety of traffic-generating techniques. Consider adding some of the following strategies to your plan (or if you're already using them, try thinking of ways to make them even more effective!):

Opt-in e-mail marketing
Pay-per-click advertising
Affiliate programs
Link exchanges

2. Are You Wasting Money on Obsolete Online Ad Formats?

A lot of people are struggling to predict the next big trends in online advertising. And it's no easy feat! Technology is changing, sometimes so quickly that we can barely keep up... and even though it's easy to track specific results such as click-throughs for a single ad, there are so many variables to consider that it can be difficult to tell if an online ad campaign is even making a profit!

In the offline world, trends may come and go, but the formats stay pretty much the same: print, radio, and TV. But on the Internet, new technology and software seem to spawn new ad formats all the time. And although this rapid-fire development cycle can be rewarding for those in the know, it has fallen into a predictable pattern. A catchy new format comes out that gets dynamite results... within a few years, everyone is using it... and the ads that were so eye-catching stop getting noticed.

For example, in the early days of the Internet, people were excited about banner ads, which got high enough click-through rates to make them useful for just about anyone. You will need a very good banner ad just to break even with the cost of running it, let alone make a profit. Think about it: People are so used to seeing banners across the top of a web page that most of the time, they hardly even notice them!

If I've learned one thing about online advertising, it's that you can't escape this cycle. The only decision you can make is whether you're going to follow the pack or stay ahead of it.

If you're buying ad space on other people's web sites... or devoting space on your own site to ads for your products or services... or using an opt-in form to collect the e-mail addresses of potential customers... in short, if you're asking Internet users to take any sort of action...

... You'll only see results if people actually notice your ads!

That's why I think you'll be interested in a new ad format that I've been experiencing a lot of success with. In fact, it's increased my opt-in subscription rate by 86%, putting me on track to increase my profits by over $2 million this year!

It's a hot new advertising technology that generates online ads with eye-catching motion. These ads can hover across a web page or float down from the top; I've personally had incredible results from an ad that drops to the middle of the page and "bounces" before coming to rest.

Plus, you get total control over the position of your ads -- unlike banners, which always appear in one of a few basic locations. These ads are generated using javascript that lets you precisely control the motion and location of your ads... so your ads can move in any direction you choose, and come to rest exactly where they'll be most effective.

If you're one of the people still using pop-up windows to drive traffic to your site or collect opt-in addresses, you simply can't afford to ignore this new development -- because if you're still using pop-ups, you're almost certainly losing money!

Now, it's true that pop-ups were once a really effective way to get the attention of Internet users. In fact, we had a lot of success in the past using pop-ups to collect e-mail addresses and build our opt-in list! But it looks like the day of the pop-up is over. Too many sites have used them to "blast" Internet users with unwanted commercial content, and as a result, most people feel the same way about pop-ups as they do about spam: They're fed up!

If that's not enough to change your mind, consider this: Companies including Google, Alexa, Netscape, AOL, and Earthlink have all released their own FREE versions of pop-up blocking software. And what's more, Microsoft has announced plans to build a pop-up blocking feature into its Internet Explorer browser this year. And according to market researcher OneStat, two out of three web surfers worldwide use the latest version of Microsoft's browser, IE 6.0, so if Microsoft introduces pop-up blocking features, you can expect to see the effectiveness of your pop-up windows drop dramatically, whether you're using them to encourage sign-ups, direct traffic to your site, or generate sales.

In spite of this, a handful of marketing companies are scrambling to create software that can "trick" pop-up blockers so they won't recognize certain pop-up configurations. Personally, I think these people are fighting a losing battle. It's time to move on -- right now. Put the newest technology to work for your business before the rest of the world learns about it, and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank!

3. The CAN-SPAM Act: What You MUST Know

If you're using e-mail marketing to promote your business on the Internet, you know that e-mail is one of the most affordable, effective ways to convert interested prospects into customers, and to develop valuable relationships with your existing customer base. But the e-mail marketing environment is changing -- and if you're not already following a few basic rules, your e-mail promotions could actually wind up costing you money... or worse.

As you know, spam (i.e., unsolicited commercial e-mail) has long been one of the biggest problems facing legitimate e-marketers -- and, for that matter, anyone with an inbox! And although everyone knows spam is a problem, we haven't had federal legislation to deal with spammers... until now.

Take a look at the following list of deceptive e-mail marketing practices. Depending on where you live, they may have been outlawed or just viewed as unethical in the past... but now under CAN-SPAM, they're all officially illegal:

Falsifying headers (the part of an e-mail message that specifies where it came from)
Using deceptive subject lines to trick people into opening messages
"Hijacking" other peoples' e-mail accounts or computers to send spam
Creating e-mail or IP addresses specifically to send spam
Sending unsolicited e-mail with sexual content
Sending e-mail to people who have requested to be removed from your list
Neglecting to include a physical mailing address in commercial e-mail messages

Some people in the e-mail marketing industry are saying that CAN-SPAM will be difficult to enforce -- but the new legislation does pack a punch. Serious offenders can now be fined up to $2 million or sent to jail for up to five years!

So if you're currently using e-mail promotions to market your legitimate business, should you be worried? In a word: No. The legislation was created primarily to help prosecutors go after the worst offenders -- spammers who hijack bandwidth and use deceptive methods to send millions of offensive, unsolicited e-mails.

Still, it's more important than ever that you make sure you're sending responsible, legal e-mail promotions -- not spam! The best thing to do is to stay informed and design thoughtful, targeted e-mail marketing campaigns. If you follow these five guidelines, you'll be on track to creating promotions that won't get you accused of sending spam:

Send e-mail to people who have consented to receive it from you.
If you must buy or rent lists, be VERY careful about who you buy them from -- and about how you contact the people on those lists.
Use a subject line that accurately reflects the content of your e-mail.
Include a real return e-mail address and a working "unsubscribe" link in every mailing you send.
If you're sending "commercial" e-mail (i.e., promotions), include your company's physical mailing address in the body of the e-mail.

Make it your mission to stay educated about e-mail marketing and spam laws. Laws and definitions are changing, so it's up to you to stay on top of new developments and ensure that your e-mail promotions are responsible, legal... and ultimately, profitable! A good place to start is at: www.spamlaws.com

How To Promote Your Site With Specialty Search Engines and Directories

2006-05-17T02:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going to assume that you have already got your website listed with the top 10 Search Engines. I'm also going to assume that you have already worked very hard to get your website well ranked within these Search Engines.

If you have not yet done this, then the strategy we're about to discuss is probably best left on the back burner! The most important Search Engines are the top ten (ie. AOL Netfind, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, etc.) - these are the Search Engines that will bring the most traffic to your site, so they should be your main focus!

However, once you've done this, it's time to consider setting aside a few hours to register your site with the appropriate Specialty Search Engines and Directories.

What are they?

Specialty Search Engines and Directories are similar to the top 10 Search Engines. The difference is that instead of focusing on the entire Internet, they narrow their focus to a specific subject or topic range. They will not bring in as much traffic as the big 10 - however, because they "specialise" in certain topics, they will attract a target group of web-surfers who are especially interested in that particular subject!

The Specialty Search Engines may scour the entire web looking for their subject areas, or they may be site specific. The only way you'll know this is by checking them out individually!

There are also thousands of specialty directories to be found. Yahoo is an example of a "directory" - though most people think of it as a Search Engine! The staff of Yahoo review and categorise hundreds of thousands of sites. As a result, Yahoo is ranked as the number one directory on the Internet. However, Yahoo's staff deals with thousands of topic areas, so you may sometimes have someone indexing a subject area who is not an expert in that field! As a result, there are thousands of specialised directories that may do a better job of dealing with certain topics simply because they are created by subject area experts and enthusiasts.

The specialty Search Engines and directories can provide you with another opportunity to bring qualified traffic into your website.

For example, let's say that you have a website called dogsite.com ... a site specialising in the topic of dogs (Big surprise!). You have developed your website to be the definitive source for dog information... and now you're even selling dog vitamins and gourmet dog food! Once you've perfected your website and registered it with the top 10 Search Engines (and optimised your position within them), it is worth spending a bit of time registering with the specialty Search Engines and directories who index dog, animal, or pet related information.

However, the biggest challenge you will face is actually finding the specialty Search Engines that you want to register with!

Here are some good places to begin your search:

FinderSeeker bills itself as the Search Engine for Search Engines. You can search by keyword and narrow your search down by Category and/or Country.

To follow through on my dogsite.com example, I searched for "pets" and did not limit my search by category or by country. This search produced over a dozen different Search Engines including "Animal Search" (A family-safe search engine for animal related web sites), "Bulldog.org" (A search engine for information about dogs), "Pet Path Search" (A searchable encyclopedia of information about cats and dogs), and "Simply Pets" (A guide to online pet sites). Basically, I found some great leads!

The BigHub.com also bills itself as the Search Engine for Search Engines. The BigHub.com allows users to search multiple engines, Web directories, and news databases simultaneously. It then produces one simple summary of the results. If you scroll half-way down the main page, you'll find the search engine panel.

Once again, I searched "pets" ... but only received one hit! Disappointing! So I tried "marketing" ... and this time I got 19 results, most of them searchable archives.

Beaucoup.com opens with a page of useful search categories. I immediately located "pets/animals" and was presented with a comprehensive list of sites and directories... and several animal related Search Engines. Beaucoup also includes a Meta Search Engine. For those of you who have never heard of this before, a Meta Search Engine polls other Search Engines for your keywords or phrases, producing a list of results for each Search Engine.

Yipe! Is your head spinning yet? Let's try and unravel this mess....

There are:

Search Engines like the top 10 ( GoTo.com ) which theoretically index the entire Internet.
Specialty Search Engines like Animal Search, that specialise in searches for specific topics or subjects.
Meta Search Engines such as Ask Jeeves that poll a number of the "regular" Search Engines (ie. GoTo.com). Meta Search engines allow you to simultaneously view the results from a number of different "regular" Search Engines.
and Search Engines such as FinderSeeker that specialise in searching for other Search Engines.

Whew!! We did it!

Try a few of these different search engines, and I think you'll immediately see the differences between them! The results can vary drastically depending on the engine that you are using.

We're not finished yet though! There's more....

Search IQ lists thousands of Search Engines and Directories. Now these people COULD make their site easier to use, but I did manage to find loads of Search Engines and directories about dogs! And a little bonus was the "tutorials" section which had a number of good articles about searching the Internet.

SearchEngineWatch has a limited number of specialty Search engines in their list - it is not as comprehensive as some of the others!

Remember: there is no one thing that is going to be responsible for the success of your website. Marketing and promoting your site is an on-going process! However, taking such steps as registering your site with the specialty Search Engines and directories will help you to build a steady flow of traffic!

How To Get Positioned Higher In Search Engines!

2006-05-17T02:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, we all know that search engine promotions are so popular and everyone is talking about it because they can increase traffic to your website without spending advertising dollars!

Search engine positioning/ranking is a very talked about subject. It is confusing and ever changing... that is the problem. What works this month, may not work next month! It is moving at lightning speed.

It is getting harder and harder to get listed high in a search engine's results. It is becoming that you have to make search engine listing a permanent job that takes you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week if you want to be successful at it (as you have to learn about how they work inside and out). The plain fact is that you cannot waste your time on the ONE method of marketing online, you have to diversify and get yourself in other markets before your competitors do! I may have a solution for you, read on.

Virtually everyone begins their web travels at one of the top search engines and your search position determines how many of those people will visit your site.

The great thing about search engines is that (for now) they are free. It should be one of your main priorities to get ranked high on search engines as they are finding ways everyday to improve their profits by charging for higher listings, bold listings, favoring more popular site, etc. The days of "free" advertising or listings on search engines may come to a close over the next year or two.

Such forms of online advertising like banner-ad campaigns or advertising in Ezines all cost money… search engines are FREE (for now, so get on them right away).

What most people don't understand is that search engines are a catalyst to other promotions. For example, when we start a new project or have low traffic we turn to search engines to get traffic immediately. The traffic we get leads to other promotional avenues because other business/industry people find us and we can do joint ventures, partnering, distributors, resellers, etc.

Many websites can bring in thousands of qualified visitors per month by being well positioned in the Top 10 search engines. It all adds up to thousands of dollars of FREE advertising!

How powerful are the top search engines? Let's just go over a couple of figures:

Yahoo! - over 16,000,000 visitors a month
InfoSeek - over 9,000,000 visitors a month
Excite - over 8,000,000 visitors a month

Just a few good positions for even one or two important keywords can drive thousands of visitors to your website -- for FREE.

So do search engines really generate a lot of traffic? Absolutely… if you do it right and use the right tools. The problem is that most people just submit their site and then wonder why they didn't get any traffic. Search engines are responsible for making us over $20,000 in sales every month between 2 of my companies… so you can see how it pays itself off very quickly.

Now, don't get me wrong, search engines will not make you rich (and anyone who tells you they will is lying to you). They are one method of promoting your site that can be very profitable if done right (just like other methods of promoting your business online). For those of you who have my Internet marketing course, you know how I talk about the importance of diversifying your marketing efforts. So do not place all of your time with search engines while ignoring your other promotions. Search engines are quite profitable if you do it right and spend your time effectively with them (we will talk more about this in a moment).

I can take about 30 pages and explain all the tips and tricks that people are using today to get ranked higher in search engines, but now that we have found a way around that, I will not bother. Besides, by next month a few of them will have changed and all the "techno-babble" would confuse a lot of people and some of the information would not make any sense to them.

So is achieving a good position impossible? No, not for those who use the right tools like SubmitWolf Pro and WebPosition (we will talk about these pieces of software a little later in this section). In my opinion, they are the perfect "team" of software to assure that you are not only ranked high in the top search engines, but that you are ABOVE YOUR COMPETITORS!

Before we get into that, I must explain something. There are two parts to search engine placement. Part one is to submit your sites… but submit them properly using all the techniques available to get you rated high for the keywords you select… submitting your URL to search engines is only half the job! If you don't check your search positions and work to improve them, no one will find you - in other words you won't get any traffic.

So part two of your "search engine battle" is to monitor your positioning to see where you place, if your competitors place above you, and if your positioning starts to fall - to catch it and fix the problems right away.

Everything depends on your search position. If your competition places before you, they win, you lose!

SubmitWolf Pro software submits your site to the search engines and the WebPosition software monitors it so you can improve your ranking. We will talk more about both of them in the next few paragraphs.

Whether you have a new website or a site that has been submitted to the search engines already, these two pieces of software that we will talk about later in this section are critical in getting your site listed at the top of search engines.

Step One: Submitting your site "properly"

SubmitWolf Pro is search engine submission software that actually works to get your site placed higher in the search engines. As many of you know from my Internet marketing course, we would not recommend a piece of search engine submission software out there because most of these pieces of software send out one set of keywords, site titles, and description to all the search engines. You will find that your keywords and descriptions get cut off in some search engines, or that certain criteria and rules may not be met so you are not submitted at all with certain engines, you cannot choose the best category or categories available for your listing (choosing the right category can be crucial to your customers finding your site), and this is just for starters. And the most important reason why you don't want to use these services is because your site will not be positioned high in the search engines as different search engines have different ranking criteria and you have just submitted the same "stuff" to all the search engines (not optimizing your listing with each search engine separately).

Deciphering all the rules of each of the engines can be a chore. This revolutionary new software called SubmitWolf Pro guides you through picking the right keywords and descriptions in its "tutorial", takes the information that you input, and prepares the submission just the way each engine wants it - submitting your website to the top 150 search engines, indices, and directories. Your description will never get cut off in mid-sentence and you will end up in the right category because SubmitWolf Pro knows what each engine wants!

The SubmitWolf Pro knows the rules and guidelines for each search engines (the programmers of the software spend all of their time monitoring them) ensuring that when you submit your website, you'll get excellent positioning and boost your site towards the top of the list!

More importantly, with SubmitWolf Pro you are prompted on how to write effective keywords and descriptions, instead of merely providing an automated placement service with keywords and descriptions that may not best utilize the sorting logic of the targeted engines. This crucial information provided by SubmitWolf Pro helps boost your site toward the top of the list. This translates to increased visits.

Ok, let me summarize what SubmitWolf Pro does… it is easy to rank in the top 10 by helping you prepare your site data exactly the way the engines want it! Including site titles and description.

Until now, the only way to get high-end promotion for your website has been to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars with site promotion professionals OR learn all the tricks of the trade and spend the hours doing it yourself (which can take weeks!). SubmitWolf Pro was created by the same company we personally use and pay $600-$800 per website to submit our sites and clients' sites to the search engines (yes, that is how good they are!). They use this proprietary software to facilitate the promotion of their clients' sites… now you can get professional strength promotion for a fraction of the price.

All you do is point and click and fill in the blanks!

I have to say, I am very, very impressed. So impressed, that it is the only piece of search engine submission software out there that I will recommend.

Click here to read more about The SubmitWolf Pro software and how you can get a copy for yourself. I highly recommend it!

To get good search positioning in the search engines, The SubmitWolf Pro and WebPosition software used together are, in my opinion, the most powerful "team" on the market. Don't get confused by all the other software out there which claims to be the best in getting you ranked high… we have tried just about all of them and there is no comparison to this combination.

Step Two: Monitoring and improving your ranking

Ok, your question may be "what does The SubmitWolf Pro not do?" Well, it will not monitor your search engine positioning and let you know where you are compared to your competitors.

A piece of software called WebPosition provides reports to show you where you stand under specific keywords, keyword combinations, and search phrases, so you can make improvements, correct problems, and increase your website's traffic without spending a penny in advertising.

Many of you have possibly heard of WebPosition… and we will discuss which version you want (as they offer many version)… and surprisingly enough, it is the cheapest version you want and I will explain why it is the best.

There are many benefits to WebPosition and what it can do for you.

The first is that it can take some search engines as long as six weeks to include your submission in their database, whereas others may only take a day or two. So, it is important that you check them regularly to make sure your submission is included in all the top ten search engines. WebPosition has a built in scheduler that will turn itself on every day (or week, or whenever you tell it to) and do it all for you automatically.

The second main benefit is that it saves you hours a week by consistently and comprehensively monitoring your websites search position, making sure you are ranked high, checking where your competitors are in relation to you, and alerting you to problems. WebPosition will literally do this in seconds for you (and you can schedule it to do this for you automatically once a day, once a week, or whatever… with its built in scheduler).

If you offer more than one product or service on your website, it's important to get each "page" which features a different product into a prominent search position under a different keyword. That way you get more exposure in search engines.

Let me explain this a little more for those who don't understand the impact of this and how it can dramatically affect your search engines positioning. Instead of having one main catalogue page with all your products which would have to get ranked high on a long list of keywords and key phrases - which is next to impossible to do; you could have 10 pages, each page with one product that optimizes a specific set of keywords or key phrases. Therefore multiplying your exposure by 10 in the search engines! This technique gives you the chance to corner your entire market no matter what set of keywords they search under!).

Note: Many people overlook this important concept and lose valuable traffic to their competition.

For each product or service you offer, there could be a dozen or more keywords or combination of keywords that someone might search to find you. A good ranking with each word/phrase can significantly improve your site's traffic. So lets go over some numbers here so you can understand why I have brought this subject up.

10 major engines X 6 products/services X 12 keywords/phrases = 720 positions to monitor EVERY day or week.

No one has time to conduct 720 searches a week AND record results AND take corrective action. If your website happens to offer dozens of products or services, you already know that tracking your search positions is an impossible task. That is, unless you use WebPosition to do the work for you!

If one of your webpages have been gradually moving down in the rankings, you can quickly identify the problem and correct it. Without WebPosition's powerful reports, you have no way of even knowing a problem exists - until your site traffic slows down, and it's too late.

WebPosition is also the first software product that allows you to keep tabs on your competition and how their websites rank in relation to yours. With WebPosition, you know what your competition is up to - literally!

Imagine how long it would take to visit 10 different search engines, search on 5 or 10 keywords, and then scroll down the resulting list of websites hoping to spot yours! WebPosition automates this task and saves hours of work!

After WebPosition reports all the results to you, it then provides specific instructions on how to increase your position in each of the 10 top search engines.

Click here, to get more details on how WebPosition works and how to pick up a copy for yourself.

You can now see the value of why The SubmitWolf Pro and WebPosition are a great "team" and how they can dramatically affect your ranking in search engines. I recommend them highly if you are serious about getting better search engine positioning.

Tried and tested essentials of Internet marketing

2006-05-17T02:10:00.000-07:00

These key strategies for marketing your business online have always been effective, but are now much easier to apply. Things like...

Designing a web site that sells: As in the early days of the 'Net, your web site needs to have clear navigation and a good sales process to be effective; however, it's now much more important for your site to look professional. Today's web surfers have clear expectations of how a commercial web site should look and perform. Luckily, new tools and resources, such as the free web-building software Nvu, make it a breeze for you to create a good-looking, fully functioning business web site.
Discovering a profitable niche market: Providing a solution to a problem for a narrowly-defined niche market is still extremely important — maybe even more so with the increased competition. But now, advanced tools such as Yahoo! Search Marketing's Keyword Selector Tool and Wordtracker can help you pinpoint exactly who your market is and what they're hungry for.
Multiplying your profits with additional income streams: If you want to pile profit on top of profit, combine several revenue streams. The host of e-commerce opportunities that are now available mean that you have an almost limitless selection of these profit-boosters: from moving merchandise on eBay to creating free web pages with Google pages that will be quickly indexed by the search engines, to selling on-demand merchandise on sites such as CafePress.com.
Expanding your reach — and profits! — with an affiliate program: An affiliate program can still ramp up your income while exposing your site to a wider audience. But instead of recruiting an "army" of affiliates, these days it's more important to attract "super affiliates" to your program — a few affiliates who will be responsible for generating the bulk of your sales. These superstars can be attracted by a generous commission structure and payouts for sales generated long after an affiliate's referral. And software like AssocTRAC helps you automate your program for almost hands-free affiliate management.

Of course, some areas of Internet marketing have changed more than others since our first course made its debut in 1998. Let's take a look at some of them... and the tremendous opportunities they offer.

Make sure your e-mail gets delivered... the critical changes you need to be aware of

2006-05-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

E-mail marketing is still highly profitable. In fact, we made $2.4 million last year from e-mail marketing alone!

Not only is it a great — and inexpensive — way to establish relationships with your customers, but your promotions and follow-up offers can be completely automated.

However, while you used to be able to send e-mail to absolutely everyone, these days you have to be very careful. Spam — a growing problem on the 'Net — cost US businesses an estimated $17 billion in 2005 (Ferris Research) and now accounts for 57% of all e-mail (Ipswitch 2006)!

The consequences of spamming have grown far beyond a slap on the wrist from your Internet Service Provider or a few nasty e-mails from angry recipients. For example...

Internet Service Providers now filter all incoming e-mail for spam by blocking messages that contain particular combinations of words or phrases and shutting out ALL e-mail from the domains and IP addresses of known spammers. So if you get mistakenly labeled as a spammer, as much as 50% of your e-mail may be "filtered" and never reach your subscribers. And it can take weeks or months to resolve the issue!
The CAN-SPAM Act (January 2004) introduced laws that allowed spammers to be prosecuted if specific guidelines aren't being met. Under this Act you can be fined, and even jailed, if your e-mails don't meet certain requirements, such as an "unsubscribe" link in the body of each e-mail you send out.

The bottom line is that if you want to take advantage of the profit-boosting power of e-mail marketing, you MUST make sure that your e-mails comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. You can read the full text of the CAN-SPAM regulations at www.spamlaws.com/federal/can-spam.shtml.

Once you've made sure your e-mails will be delivered, you need to think about their content. In the face of overflowing inboxes, your e-mails and newsletters need to be particularly appealing and valuable if you want them to be opened.

Keep up with the search engines and take advantage of FREE sources of traffic

2006-05-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

The search engine landscape has changed dramatically since we published the first edition of our course. We used to recommend getting listed on eight major search engines: Altavista, Excite, HotBot, InfoSeek, Lycos, Northern Light, WebCrawler, and Yahoo.

Today, clear leaders have emerged, narrowing our recommendations to the top three contenders:

Google: The most important of the three, Google has a 49% share of the search market.
Yahoo: A distant second, Yahoo has a 22% market share.
MSN: With 11% of the market, MSN is still worth focusing on.

With fewer search engines, keeping on top of their ever-shifting algorithms has become critical. If you can get a top listing on Google, for example, you can double your potential customers!

A new way to drive free traffic to your site is to write short articles related to your industry and post them on e-zine article directories such as Ezinearticles.com. Include your tagline at the bottom of each article you write and watch your traffic increase exponentially — as well as your inbound links (which the search engines consider when ranking your site!).

Take advantage of as many FREE sources of traffic as you can to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site!

Instantly boost your traffic with pay-per-click advertising

2006-05-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

Paid search has exploded, becoming a widely accepted way to drive qualified traffic to your site — fast. And with each passing year, it becomes more sophisticated, allowing you to zero in on your target market with greater precision.

Today, the major players are...

Yahoo! Search Marketing (http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/): Yahoo's sponsored search lets you advertise your site in the search results of the following search engines: MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista, InfoSpace, AlltheWeb, and NetZero.
Google AdWords (https://adwords.google.com/): With Google AdWords, you can have your ads show up in sponsored search listings for certain keywords — and you can also advertise on other sites that match your audience.
MSN AdCenter (https://adcenter.msn.com/): MSN has recently entered the arena of paid search with MSN AdCenter. So far, it's the only PPC engine to offer keyword-based demographic targeting.

Paid search is one of the fastest ways to drive qualified traffic to your site... and if done properly, won't break the bank. To learn how to profit from pay-per-click advertising in three simple steps

And you can figure this out by plugging your key stats and figures into the following three simple steps:

STEP 1: Figure out your visitor-to-sale "conversion" rate:
To find out the number of visitors you need to close one sale, divide the number of unique visitors to your web site by your total number of sales.

So, if you make one sale from every 100 unique visitors to your site, your conversion rate will be 1 in 100, or 1%.

STEP 2: Determine your net profit on each sale:
This is the amount you pocket after all expenses are covered.

First, calculate your gross revenue. If you had 48 sales at $97 each during the month of September, your gross revenue for the month is $4,656 (48 x $97).

Then deduct expenses. Say it cost $3,183 to produce those 48 products:

$4,656 gross revenue - $3,138 expenses / 48 sales
= $31.62 net profit per sale

STEP 3: Calculate your "value per visitor": Divide your net profit per sale by the number of visitors you need to get one sale:

$31.62 net profit per sale / 100 visitors = $0.3162 per visitor

That means each visitor to your web site is worth 31 cents. This is the amount you can afford to pay to attract one visitor to your web site -- and should be your maximum bid for PPC advertising.

Now, you may be thinking that your 31-cent-per-keyword budget will automatically exclude you from bidding on competitive keywords... but that's actually a good thing!

The keywords that tend to be expensive are often much too broad to be effective for small online businesses like yours. The more narrowly targeted your keywords are, the more targeted -- and likely to buy! -- your visitors will be.

Consider this: If you sell waterproof sport watches, and you bid on the keyword "watches," it will cost you at least 90 cents to get a top-three ranking on Yahoo Search Marketing.

But if you bid on "waterproof sport watches" you'll pay around 20 cents to get the same position.

Since there are so many types of watches out there, you're far better off appealing ONLY to those people who are looking for exactly what you offer. They're the people who will buy your product!

Just remember: Never bid more on your keywords and key phrases than you can afford... and you'll get swarms of targeted, affordable PPC traffic -- guaranteed!

Promote your business with the technologies that have changed the face of Internet marketing

2006-05-17T02:02:00.000-07:00

Technology has been furiously advancing since the first edition of our "Insider Secrets" course — paving the way for new and highly effective ways to promote your Internet business. Let's look at some that have had the biggest impact:

Audio and Video: The Internet has come a long way since its text-only roots! Programming languages such as JavaScript and programs like Macromedia's Flash have allowed for web video and audio, slide presentations, and other interactive elements.

Our testing has proven that using audio and video as part of your sales process can now have a dramatic impact on your bottom line — if done right. Use short audio and video clips of you and your customers to personalize your site and reassure visitors that you are a credible business.
Blogging: Blogs are informal web forums that invite feedback and discussion. They're free to set up and use, and so simple that they can be created in minutes using sites such as Blogger.com. As a result blogging has exploded in popularity over the last few years.

With a business blog you can reach a wider audience, generate better search engine rankings, boost your revenue, and develop a rapport with your customers — to name just a few benefits. And because blogs are updated frequently, search engines LOVE them.
Podcasting: Podcasting, the delivery of audio files — typically MP3 files — via the Internet, is one of the hottest new technologies to hit the market. It allows you to publish audio content that interested listeners can subscribe to via RSS “feeds” — so they can automatically receive your audio broadcasts without having to go to your web site.