Internet Marketing Tips

Google, unlike other search engines rely heavily upon inbound links. Taking this into account, this serves as a main principle of how Google ranks pages contained within a website. It is vital to understand that each page within a website will have its own PageRank (0-10, ten being the best) and is determined by the PageRank of other pages referring to it.

Obviously, you would want your homepage or landing page to have a very high ranking. Understand, however, a PageRank of 5 or 6 is actually a fairly high PageRank. It is understood by many SEO experts that the “possible frequency of visits” to a page will render its PageRank.

According to SEO Administrator, this is the process of how a user follows links to surf a network, thus ultimately shaping the foundation of a PageRank:

It is assumed that the user starts viewing sites from some random page. Then he or she follows links to other web resources. There is always a possibility that the user may leave a site without following any outbound link and start viewing documents from a random page. The PageRank algorithm estimates the probability of this event as 0.15 at each step. The probability that our user continues surfing by following one of the links available on the current page is therefore 0.85, assuming that all links are equal in this case. If he or she continues surfing indefinitely, popular pages will be visited many more times than the less popular pages.

The PageRank of a specified web page is thus defined as the probability that a user may visit the web page. It follows that, the sum of probabilities for all existing web pages is exactly one because the user is assumed to be visiting at least one Internet page at any given moment.

Receiving QUALITY links from QUALITY sites could prove to be a very helpful way to increase your ranking in the major search engines. Too often, people think that more is better. In SEO, this translates a lot of the time into black hat SEO. “Bots” are becoming increasingly more intelligent and thorough with their inspections. Below are the main link practices that should be avoided, according to WebConfs.com:

• Bulk purchasing of links. “Bots” are easily going to become suspicious of your credibility if hundreds of websites create a link to your site on a daily basis. “Bots” keep track of these link farms and will penalize or even ban your site completely.
• Link exchanges. This could be helpful as long as:
  • The other party keeps their promise
  • The other party does not change the context the link appears into
  • You do not seem to be “married” to another site and 50% or more of your inbound and outbound links are from/to this direction
• Poor link balancing. Generally speaking, if your outbound links are ten times your inbound links, this is bad but it also varies on a case-by-case basis.

1. Planning Phase
   1. Set up short and long-term goals for your website
   2. Why should a searcher come to your site?
   3. Research your target market thoroughly
   4. Sell the features of your product(s)
   5. Is there any reason why a searcher would not want to buy from you?
   6. Who is going to handle the website’s complaints or problems? Is this person reliable and easily accessible?
2. Create a Stellar Landing Page
   1. What are you trying to generate from your site? Of course you want a sale, but do you want to personalize a lead or direct some other primary response as well?
   2. Look at the entire buying process and fix any glitches that you may think could possibly arise before they occur.
   3. Understand and answer on your landing page any questions that a user may have throughout the whole buying process.
3. Creative Relative Content
   1. Exploit the benefits of your product
   2. Develop content around your selected keywords
   3. Check and recheck for grammatical and spelling errors
   4. Implement credibility (this can be obtained by the insertion of testimonials and/or a guarantee)
   5. Create a headline that could sell to a blind dog
4. Design & Usability
   1. Ensure that your site is visually appealing, yet still directs a searcher to your selling point without them getting lost or caught up in the graphical elements
   2. Visually guide a searcher down through the content to reach your selling point
5. Optimize
   1. Begin an email marketing campaign
   2. Obtain publicity throughout the media
   3. Implement Google Analytics
   4. Test Google AdWords to see if it proves to be effective with your product
   5. Submit your URL as soon as you finish your site
   6. Hire a Search Engine Optimization team to get your site to the top of the major search engine rankings
6. Test, Retest & Test Again
   1. Constantly reread, review and revise your website’s content
   2. Ask for feedback from your clients
   3. Continually think about how you can improve your site and test your new methods

Obviously, this question has no easy or concrete answer to it. I believe most marketers would agree that the fist step in achieving a strong conversion rate would be to ensure that you have a strong “call to action” or a very convincing offer that will entice users to leave their contact information. One of the most frequent mistakes is simply throwing a “Contact Us” button on your website and just crossing your fingers and praying that this will provide you with valid leads. What’s in it for them? Give them a reason to contact you!

Make sure to not make things complicated on your landing page. Keep it simple, concise and to the point. A user should automatically know what services or products you are trying to provide for them right off the bat. Most importantly, make it valuable. Word of mouth spreads extremely fast. If you treat them to valuable information, gifts, products or services, it most likely will come around full circle.

1. Large photos. Just because a picture has a large file size does not mean that the picture is going to be sharper. This may take a considerable amount of time for the picture to load and the user is going to eventually leave your site.
2. Splash page. Never introduce your site with a splash page if at all possible. “Click to enter” is a waste of time and an annoyance to users. People don’t want to watch the screen and wait for some Flash animation to pop up that has nothing to do with the product or service you are trying to provide.
3. Poor organization. Don’t listen to those marketers who tell you to cram everything on one page. Having no navigational path on your website creates disorder that will not set well with a user.
4. Keep it stagnant. Visitors and search engine bots will have less and less of a chance to visit your site if you simply build it and never change it. Always keep the content of your site updated. A good way to do this is to have a blog within your site.
5. Ambiguity. People should know right away what your site is about. Create content that is descriptive, yet concise and to the point. Pictures tell a thousand words. If you own a restaurant and have an online menu, how many people do you think you lose by not having a picture of a few dishes on your menu on your website? I would gather it would be quite a substantial amount.

What will you need? You must have a text editor and an ftp program. According to HTML Goodies, these are the six steps you will need to follow:

Step 1:
Pick a unique username and password that later on has to be typed in from everyone who wants to see your protected pages. Remember that wherever you use capital letters those who want to access your pages will have to use capital letters as well.

Step 2:
Use your ftp program to access your web server. There you create a directory where you want to place the password-protected files using the “make new dir” command from the Commands menu. Then, you create a second directory where you will later place the file with the password information.

Step 3:
Open your text editor and copy the following lines:

AuthUserFile xxx/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName yyy
AuthType Basic

<Limit GET>
require user zzz
</Limit>

Replace the “xxx” with the path you have created for your directory. Also, replace “yyy” with the username of your choice. Then, you replace “zzz” with the password of your liking. Finally, you save this file somewhere on your computer under the name .htaccess.txt.

Step 4:
Next, go to this site. A new page will appear on which you will find a line in large letters that starts off with your username and some random letters afterwards. Copy that line to your .htpasswd file.

Step 5:
Hit Return to create an empty line below. Now save this file under the name htpasswd.txt.

Step 6:
Now, open your ftp program again and access your www-server. Go to the directory where you want to place your protected pages and copy the file htaccess.txt from your computer to this directory. The name of the file should appear on the Remote side of the ftp program. Rename this file to .htaccess. Now, execute the “change file attributes” command from the Commands menu. A box appears where you type in 644 where it says “manual.”

Now, you change to the directory where you want to place the password information. To there you copy the file htpasswd.txt and rename it to .htpasswd. Then, do this process again for the htaccess file. The last thing you have to do is to close the directory where you are in, mark it and once again execute the “change file attributes” command from the Commands menu and type in 711 where it says manual.

Choosing a website host can be a very difficult process. Not all of us are IT savvy. Therefore, some of the main prerequisites for choosing a host should be the amount of free services or additions they offer, how much help they offer to give you and of course the cost. According to SmartAds, if you prioritize the various points in selecting a web hosting, it will go as follows:

First: Find out approximately how much web space you will require in order to run your website properly. You host needs to be able to provide you with a sufficient amount of space. Obviously graphics and videos are going to require more space.

Second: Always chose a host that whose time zone is the same as yours. Most hosting companies do not stay open 24 hours a day. If you have an unexpected error on your server, the last thing you want to do is to wait for your hosting company in China to get into their office the next morning.

Third: Price is definitely always a concern. However, never compromise price with quality. A company’s website may bring in 90+ percent of its business. Make sure that your hosting company has a positive reputation. Reliability is key!

Fourth: A webhosting provider gives you a time-to-time supply of bandwidth (quantity of information your website can allocate to visitors who surfs your website) generally a month after month. When a visitor when downloads something from your website, they are using bandwidth. Initially, a website is visited by a small quantity of people; so to start with, a minimum bandwidth can serve the purpose.

Fifth: Ensure that you have access to some minimal email addresses for your website.

Sixth: Other features are also to be considered before going for Web hosting service provider. You need to ensure a 99.99% uptime for your site along with other features.

1. Check the load speed of every page on your site. The longer the time it takes a page to load, the more likely that a user is going to leave your site. You load time should be no more than five seconds. Your developer should be able to fix this with minimal ease. You can check the speed at which it takes for your page to load here.
2. Check to see if your site contains any broken links. You automatically lose credibility if your site contains broken links. This shows a user that you are not frequently updating your site and checking on its performance. You can use this broken link finder to check your site.
3. Check your Google Analytics account. There is absolutely no reason why you should not utilize this free service! Check it frequently to see how much traffic you are receiving and where it is coming from in order to better tailor to your consumers.
4. Do what you can in order to receive a HackerSafe or ScanAlert logo on your site. While it may mean nothing to you, it means a lot to not only consumers, but search engine robots as well.
5. Comment on other people’s blogs. This builds a relationship that could end up being the conversion of your life!

Google Reader is Web-based aggregator that can read Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. The main function of this aggregator is to keep track of your favorite websites with relative simplicity. According to Google Reader, it allows one to:

· Stay up to date
Google Reader constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content. Whether a site updates daily or monthly, you can be sure that you won’t miss a thing.

· Simplify your reading experience
Google Reader shows you all of your favorite sites in one convenient place. It’s like a personalized inbox for the entire web.

· Discover new content
Millions of sites publish feeds with their latest updates, and our integrated feed search makes it easy to find new content that interests you.

· Recommend articles to your friends
With your Google Reader public page, you can share your favorite items with your friends, simply by sending them to relevant links.

· Share with just one click
Click the sharing icon on any item and it will instantly appear on your public page.

· Spice up your site
Do you have a website or a blog? Add a customizable clip that displays your latest shared items in your site’s sidebar.

· Add Google Reader to iGoogle
Add a Google Reader gadget to iGoogle to see updates at a glance.

· Read on the go
Google Reader works on any mobile phone browser. Whether you’re waiting in line or riding the train, Google Reader keeps you connected.

· Use Google Reader on any computer
You can access your Google Reader account from any computer with online access. Whether you’re at home, at work or abroad, your subscriptions stay with you.

The “About Us” page is mainly used to give an overall introduction to your company and the service and/or product you are providing. However, the more important question you should answer for the searcher in the portion of your website should be: “Why should I trust this company?”

According to The Internet Digest, there are seven questions a user will subconsciously ask him or herself to see if they trust a company. They are as follows:

1. Who is behind this website? Let them be aware that you can provide more personal attention that some large corporation with robots running their telephone lines. Include a picture of yourself and don’t be afraid to express your passion for your business.
2. Is this a real business? Insert your full physical address, along with all pertinent contact information. Let them know you have nothing to hide and that you are easily accessible through various mediums.
3. How do they make money? People are still hesitant to accept a good deal. Tell them why you can offer them what you can over your competitors. Always be sure to explain this in terms of “value” not “price.”
4. Have long have they been in business? In the minds of most people in today’s society, they usually consider longevity as stability. If you have not been in business for very long, explain to your consumer what experiences, jobs, certifications, ect… you have had in the past.
5. How do I know they deliver? This is where you have your prior clients brag about you. Have a link to a testimonials section on your website. Also, ensure that you ask everyone whose testimonial you decide to use and be sure to implement a way for the user to contact the person or company who gave the testimonial.
6. Are they related to the business community? You should always list any groups, associations and/or community involvement you have participated in with your company.
7. Should I trust them with my private information? In today’s age of identity theft, people are very cognizant of releasing their personal information. Belong to as many privacy organizations as possible, such as Truste. This could be the difference a consumer chooses you over one of your competitors.