The Role of Artificial Intelligence In Improving SEO
Customers are out there searching for the right services and products that you as a business are claiming to provide. They are using every means available to them to look for products, services, and information that they need. They are looking for genuine and good products and service providers on search engines, local business searches, using different platforms like mobile and tools like voice search. The point of all this is that your customer is looking for you desperately and it is you who has to meet them halfway. Be where your customers are and seize the opportunity.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a key method to do this. It establishes your presence in all the locations where there is a probability of consumers looking for you. SEO ranks your website where it matters the most, the search engine results page (SERP). In a survey conducted with more than 340 enterprises, it was found that real-time marketing and omnichannel delivery and engagement counted for the top near term marketing priorities.
Just Google, the number 1 search engine, processes more than 1 billion searches every day and thus there is a massive influx of data from search and consumer interaction that cannot be processed without automation tools. Not simply automation but with the integration of artificial intelligence, smart automation has given us the power to analyze this tremendous data and information in a matter of seconds and even form strategies and carry out optimization tasks. This frees up your time to indulge your effort in creative and strategic elements of the SEO campaign.
The power of AI and its scope:
AI can help us to extract useful data and insights from a large volume of data. AI algorithms can help in detecting the anomalies faster than other resources. Search data is a complex data set and includes several parameters and variables. Let’s take a look at them:
- Search queries: These tell us what the customer is looking for, their issue, and the problem. They also give the keywords which the consumers are using to search for any particular product/service/answer or in general.
- Zero-click: Customers can get what they want in a single click or without even a single click. Interactions with local listings tell if customers found what they were looking for and converted to a phone call or an in-store visit.
- On-site activity: Data about the buying cycle and journey. Site abandonment and stats on how long a customer stays on a website. Reservations and gaps in completing transactions.
- Demographics: Add data to buyer personas, help in identifying trends and patterns.
- Transactions: Purchase history, consumer habits, offers availed, customer interactions, and third party profiles help build a better understanding of the customer.
- Social media, emails, and other conversations: What triggers a conversion? Which content and product attracts and repels the audiences? This key parameter helps in understanding the minds of consumers, their likes, and dislikes.
All this data is extremely crucial for gaining insights into the business as well as into the minds of the customer. It has the power to transform your entire online business. AI powers you to extract key insights from large volumes of data. These insights point executives towards the loopholes in a business process or show specific pain points of the customer to the business owners. Smart AI results help you to reach such insights and conclusions in no time. The quality of AI is speed and precision. AI can be trained to dig deep into data and extracts patterns that otherwise remain invisible to your eyes. Artificial intelligence is most useful when it comes to understanding the customer.
How to put AI to better SEO?
Automation is already being used to perform various business processes to save time and reduce labor. AI automation can improve SEO’s performance. AI can power content optimization and can automate repetitive tasks like SEO auditing, link building, etc. AI-powered tools can also be used to trigger optimizations based on consumer behavior, interaction with content and search queries, etc. Apart from recognizing consumer habits, the power of AI can predict the product and content that performs the best. The best part of AI is that it continuously analyzes, learns, adjusts, and perfects itself. AI can help you scale your SEO even if you are a one-man team. It can be your silent data-obsessed partner who is always working for you and can handle the analytical work of a hundred people.
In short, AI takes up the time-consuming tasks and frees your time to work on creative aspects and in formulating the SEO strategies.
How to Ready Your Business For Scalability? 4 Essential Steps To Avoid Obstacles
How to Ready Your Business For Scalability?
Setting up a business is one thing but growth and scalability are a totally different story. The metrics change drastically in the latter. It is true that the beginning stages for any business can be tough and complicated, however business owners must also think of ways to prepare for the future plans of scaling up and expansion.
Once your business has traversed the road between setting up and scalability newer challenges begin to appear and the best way to mitigate them is to be ready and prepared. Scalability means growth and expansion which should be the target of every business. Without it, you start stagnating and your business ultimately ends in a stalemate.
Scaling your business should be approached with caution, if you go too fast you can end up crashing and if you go too slow you may find yourself and your business in a quagmire-like situation. There is an optimal rate of growth that is needed so that your business doesn’t suffer in the long run. This calls for elaborate preparations keeping the future in mind to effectively counter any challenges.
Read here: Enterprise SEO: Let Your Website Produce Your Dream Results
There are several practices that you can employ to ensure that you have steady growth and nothing deviates from the plan. These guidelines when implemented will also ensure a seamless scaling process and help you through rough patches on the road.
4 Must-Implement Elements For Scalability:
1. Automation: The Key To Speedy Scalability
As far as business processes are considered, they utilize manpower and resources. Automation simply means handing out menial and repetitive tasks to machines. This helps in reducing the margin of human error, saving time and simplifying processes like sales, payroll, accounting, and marketing. Ex: A buffer is a software that lets you schedule social media posts.
Such tools are super useful in saving time which can be utilized in other creative activities. Automation also provides helpful data analytics that boosts marketing operations.
Similarly, automation integration holds true for several other aspects of the business too:
- Automation for email marketing
- Payment processing
- Accounting & payroll automation
- Lead tracking and analytics
- Customer service automation
Automation has a lot of scope in the future in terms of business improvement and in preparing your business for an upward climb.
2. Cloud Computing For Scaling Up Resources:
Cloud computing is the best way to work in real-time with servers, databases, storage, networking, software, and analytics. Cloud computing allows you to access and deliver all these network-related functions in real-time over the internet. Apart from providing considerable advantages in efficiency and scalability, it provides the opportunity to expand IT resources as you scale up your business. Cloud computing answers the growing bandwidth demand and allows you to operate with better efficiency even when your business grows and functions at a higher capacity.
3. Long Term Financial Foresight:
Setting up your finances correctly is crucial from day one to improve scalability. Your business revenue must exceed costs in order to survive in the long run and of course to make it a profitable one. Scalability means thinking in the long term. When you start to earn profits put aside some money to re-invest in the business when you want to scale up or expand. This will do away the need for finding investors whenever you want to scale up your business giving you the majority of the control over your business. You can also invest your surplus in liquid assets which can be used in times of need.
4. Mastering The Sales Funnel:
Sales is the priority for any business. An effective sales funnel ensures that nothing can hold back your business. From lead generation to closing a sale, all steps in your sales funnel must be smooth and well organized.
There are typically 3 stages of any sales funnel:
Awareness: This is the stage when you reach out to your prospective customers. Effectively accomplished by a strong content marketing strategy. This phase can include informative and relevant content, along with email newsletters, ebooks, guides, video tutorials, blogs, etc. This content should be equally interesting and informative to capture the maximum audiences.
Evaluation: This is where your prospective customers or ‘warm’ traffic begins to turn ‘hot’ and real by engaging with your products and content. Prospects can be clearly identified inching towards purchases. Marketing material for this phase should include webinars, tutorials, case studies, and customer reviews and testimonials. Any content that would help customers make an informed decision would help in this phase of sales funnel.
Decision: This is the ultimate phase of a sales funnel, where-in a customer decides on what to purchase. This is the point where you can relay your offers and discounts to maximize the chances of purchase and encourage them to return to your business in the future. Every phase of your sales funnel must be well thought and tested to determine the most optimal performance. Once proven, you can use the strategy on ‘auto-pilot’ for the future.
Implementing the above 4 steps will ensure that your business is ready for scalability operations and can bear the brunt of expansion. You don’t want your business to crumble and hence being ready on all fronts is the logical way to go about this. However, there may still be some issues but the majority of the obstacles can be mitigated with these practices.
Google now discounts all reciprocal links
Google now discounts all reciprocal links! For a long time, reciprocal links have remained at the forefront of most inbound linking strategies. This is going to have to change. Google now discounts all reciprocal links. The algorithm has been altered to identify the exchange of links by two parties for the purpose of increasing their number of inbound links.
The concept of reciprocal linking defies Google’s original intention with the algorithm. Quality content should attract links. The exchange of links is nothing more than a mutual agreement to unjustifiably promote others’ content with the end goal of promoting your own. Google doesn’t particularly like this (see Link Schemes).
Some even claim that Google is now able to identify three-way linking schemes (i.e. website A links to website B, who links to website C, who links back to A). Whether this is true or not is hard to say. One thing is for certain though: inbound linking strategies should NOT be centered around reciprocal linking. This manufactured form of link creation is not well-received and is ultimately a waste of time. Instead, focus on creating unique, high-quality content in a given niche. The links will ensue.
Incorporation of Company Branding and SEO
Incorporation of Company Branding and SEO is not an exact science. This becomes apparent when trying to incorporate both SEO and branding into a strategy. This process is finicky to say the least. On the one side, SEO deals with the placement of keywords and phrases. On the other side, branding deals with company loyalty and culture. Incorporating both sides dilutes the prominence of both. But eliminating one or the other may not meet all strategic and marketing goals.
Once again, it should be emphasized that SEO is a series of guidelines rather than an exact science. Having said that, the following recommendation can be used to satisfy both sides of the equation. In general, keywords and phrases (i.e. SEO) should remain the focus of any early-stage company, while the incorporation of company branding should appear later in the evolution. This is simply a general statement and should not be taken word for word.
The reasoning is pretty straightforward. At first, no-one knows the name of your company, but perhaps they are searching for your products or services. In other words, you want to target keywords and phrases that focus around your offering rather than your company. As you build loyalty and credibility, branding becomes more important. It’s at this point that you may want to incorporate corporate messaging to strengthen the relationship with customers and instill trust in your brand.
One final thought about branding: if a searcher types in the name of your company, they are likely to find your website anyways. This is due mostly to anchor text and back-links. Therefore, optimizing for the company name is rather insignificant in most cases.
Absolute Links vs. Relative Links – SEO Value
The debate between absolute links and relative links continues to live on in the SEO world. The individual significance of each has been contested, but it is widely regarded that absolute links provide better SEO value on the whole than relative links.
Many believe that absolute links have less potential for getting messed up when search engines index your page. It shouldn’t really make a difference, but many conclude that this is reason enough.
Furthermore, content scrapers and RSS services may ‘repurpose’ your content legitimately (or not). In either case, shouldn’t a proper back-link be attributed to your site? This situation favours absolute links. Although this is a minor argument, it’s still worth considering.
When working with website and creating web pages, there are two ways to reference an item – an item being a link, image or maybe something like a video file. Those two ways are either with a relative link or absolute link.
The simplest way to explain what each kind of link is, is to just show you:
Absolute link:
<a href=”https://www.yourdomain.com/page.html“>Link</a>
Relative link:
<a href=”page.html“>Link</a>
Quite simply, a relative link is relative to the current page. In the above example, it’s right next to the current page (think: in the same folder). If the file is moved from where it is, then the link could break (it probably will). With absolute links, you’re giving the exact, full address (URL) to the page.
Here’s another relative link:
<a href=”../page.html“>Link</a>
This one means to go up a directory and find the file there.
Another:
<a href=”../folder/page.html“>Link</a>
This one means go up one folder and find the file in that folder.
Another:
<a href=”folder/page.html“>Link</a>
This one means find a folder under the one we’re in and find the file there.
Why Use One or the Other?
The benefit of absolute links is that they can be used anywhere and they work. The benefit of relative links is that if you need to change the domain name later, you can and you don’t have to change all your links – it’s more portable.
When using Joomla, another benefit of relative links is that if a page needs to be secure (SSL / “https” instead of “http”), then you don’t have to go and change all the links or image references on that page. It just happens automatically.
Which way is better? Well, we would probably say that going with relative links is the better choice.
More To Think About
Page names are case sensitive. Domain names are not case sensitive. (Also, email addresses are not case sensitive).
These two take you to the same place:
https://www.yourdomain.com/page.html
https://www.YourDomain.com/page.html
These two do not take you to the same place:
https://www.yourdomain.com/page.html
https://www.yourdomain.com/Page.html
Remember that the text you use in the link helps with SEO. Linking the words “click here” to your About Us page tells Google that what you’re about is “click here” and that makes no sense. Better link text to use would be the words “about us” – for example:
Not Good:
Learn more about our company by <a href=”folder/page.html“>clicking here</a>.
Better:
Learn more about <a href=”folder/page.html“>our company</a>.
Image References
On this page, we’ve been showing absolute versus relative links with links (hypertext) but it’s also the same with images. For example:
Absolute:
<img src=”https://www.yourdomain.com/image.jpg“>
Relative:
<img src=”image.jpg“>
With most content management systems, you’re not seeing the code unless you go into code view – so you’re not going to see this much. This is just kind of FYI.
The Importance of Anchor Text in Back-links
The Importance of Anchor Text in Back-links with respect to a linking strategy cannot be overstated. Back-links are a huge part of the search engine algorithm. When initiating a linking campaign, it is vital that external sites link using the appropriate keywords and terms in the anchor text.
Almost always, linking candidates will use the company name as anchor text. This does not provide any type of description of the target company’s products or services. Sure, it may be great for branding purposes, but it isn’t usually needed. In most cases, companies already rank very high (if not first) for searches that incorporate their brand.
The Importance of Anchor Text in Back-links
Here is an example using fictional company “Acme Plumbing Supplies”:
Most people will link simply using the terms “Acme”. This is alright, but it does not describe the company’s products or services, nor provide any context. By adding the word “plumbing” or term “plumbing supplies” (i.e. “Acme Plumbing” or “Acme Plumbing Supplies”), you may be able to drive additional traffic that may not have otherwise attained the corporate site.
Link building is an essential part of SEO. The more links, the merrier. Each link consequently comes with an anchor text. The confusion right now is, does Google still give as much important to anchor text as it does before?
How Google derives a Link’s relevance
Before we go on to conclude the importance of anchor text right now, let’s take a look at how Google derives an individual link’s relevance. Basically, there are three major ways:
Anchor Text
The anchor text is what we want to tackle today. This is the blue underlined text that is clickable and will take you to another webpage to which it is pointing to. There have been many controversies and exchange of ideas surrounding anchor text – some swear by its effectiveness, while others proclaim its death.
Recently, Google has announced that it will gradually reduce its dependence on anchor text until it has minimal effect. Lots of sources have given infographs about the future of SEO factors – and it clearly shows that anchor text is in rapid decline.
Anchor Title
The anchor title is the tool-tip text that appears whenever you mouse-over on a link. The importance and weight of the anchor title is not really as big as the anchor text – but it is one of the most visible factors describing the link and what it is pointing to.
I personally think that Google derives a link’s relevance from an anchor title too albeit not too much.
Context around the link
The context that surrounds the link is also used to derive the link and what it is pointing to. Basically, we look at two major factors that comprise the context:
- Page Title – The page title is what you see at the top-leftmost part of your browser. It gives you an immediate idea about what the webpage is all about. This affects the link by the page as a whole. A link coming from a page with a very relevant title tag incurs a huge impact in the link’s quality.
- Content Body – The content body is the whole of the article written in the webpage – where the link is almost always placed. The upper part of the content is arguably the best link placement and should easily describe what the link is about. This is also used by Google to derive the link and where it points to.
Anchor Text’s current importance
Right now, looking into an experiment posted in SEOmoz, the facts are laid out straight. Google isn’t there in its acclaimed ‘anchor text independence’ yet. Right now, how the system works is how it still does – varying anchor text is still the best as long as there is relevance in the words.
For example:
If you have a website that sells gift checks, building links with the anchor text “gift checks”, “gift certificates”, “gift items” will get you further up the ranks in the long run than making just focusing all your anchor texts on “gift checks”. But not having the keywords “gift” or “checks” or “gift checks” inside the anchor text would lead to it being somewhat useless.
If you visit the experiment from SEOmoz, you’ll see that the website with the backlinks having the anchor text “Click here”, “See here”, “This entry”, was nowhere to be found in the long run.
What now?
Well, the results of the experiment laid it straight out: build backlinks with relevant, but varying anchor text – and you’ll get to rank well in the long run.
Can Any Inbound Linking Hurt My Ranking?
The answer is simple – inbound linking cannot hurt your search ranking. How is this known for certain? Well, for one, if inbound were to hurt your rank, your competitors would continually link to your site from link farms. Such a scenario is beyond your control. For this reason, Google cannot penalize your site for any inbound linking.
On the other hand, you can be penalized for illegitimate external linking. It is highly advised that you not link to any website or group of sites that may be involved in shady or unethical search practices. Doing so could result in being black-listed by Google, ultimately ruining your SEO strategy. Avoid this situation at all costs and ensure that all external links point to trusted and reliable sources.
Having been involved in the internet industry for a large part of my working life, I have spent a lot of time researching and browsing the internet and reading websites, mainly for client design research, but also for occasional personal use. The one thing that I find most disappointing, is the apparent lack of thought going into website creation and it’s purpose, which in turn creates a missed opportunity for many e-businesses to become successful.
My personal perspective on e-businesses and their websites, is that if they don’t take pride in their websites and show to their customers a passion for what they do, chances are, they won’t take pride in their products, and the passion for providing good customer service will also be missing.
What you must remember, is that your web site is a direct reflection of you and your business. The appearance of your site is the most important factor in determining your potential success rate. In short, if your site doesn’t look professional or pleasing to the eyes at first glance, the majority of people will assume your products and/or services to be of similar poor standard.
At the other end of the scale, you could fall into the trap of going overboard with the design and over complicate things with incorporating high costing flashy graphics. You may end up with a great looking and highly aesthetic web site, but the danger with this is that your site may prove unreliable and at times may take too long to load. There is nothing worse for a customer than trying to visit a slow loading site, and most will close the browser window in complete frustration. As i’m sure you will be able to work out, this will ultimately cost you business.
The other major consideration (if not the most important) when designing a website is your content. Not just links, but content with passion, relativity, and understanding to the customer. When someone is searching for something in particular and they visit your web site, they’re visiting for a reason. Your site has something they want, Whether this be your product, service, and/or information. If they are unable to obtain what they’re looking for, they move on to the next site and so on. To be able to get your visitors to stay and look around your website, you must give them a reason to. Providing them with quality content will achieve this goal.
There have been countless other lists and articles on the subject of website designing mistakes, but I have compiled my own list, from a designer’s perspective, of some pitfalls to look out for when considering either designing a website or purchasing a template. Remember that the simple, clear, informative and well designed sites are the most successful. If you are a current e-business and your sales aren’t what you had hoped, consider the above and take some time to look openly and honestly at your site. Spending money on improving your website is a much better investment than throwing money away on trying to advertise and market a site that just isn’t good enough to sell your product or services.
If you are looking for a template or a custom designed website, be aware of the above and be prepared to ask your chosen designer or template provider questions to ensure that your hard earned money doesn’t go to waste on an inferior design, which contains any of the above. Asking questions won’t cost you a penny, and in doing so could actually save you a lot of money over the long term. Getting your website right first time is vital in terms of saving money and time. The earlier your website is up and running properly, the quicker you will be able to reap the rewards of a successful e-business.
The prime mistake Newbies make is to put their website name into the Anchor Text. Unless your website contains your keywords this is a waste of a perfectly good link. Remember that Google puts a very big importance on those Anchor texts and they should always use your keywords.
The second mistake is trying to put every single keyword into your anchor text and give that to everyone. There are two mistakes with this technique. 1.) Google assigns weight to each word in anchor text so if there are a lot of filler words (common in long sentences), they will “dilute” your target words.
According to two recent surveys, conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customers click- away caused by slow loading sites. If a page takes too long to load, your potential customer will not wait. Ultimately costing you business.
Make sure you include proper META tags in the HTML of each page of your web site. META tags are HTML code that enable the search engines to determine what keywords are relevant to a specific site. About 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from the eight major search engines. It would be a good idea to make sure you’ve done your homework and fully understand how to optimize your web pages prior to designing your site. This will save you a lot of headaches in the long run. For further information on META tags read the tutorial entitled, “Building Your Site.”
Be cautious when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. Always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Your site should be nicely organized and uniform throughout. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule of thumb would be to use colors based upon the type of effect you’re trying to achieve.
Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you’re offering. How many times have you visited a site and never figured out exactly what they were selling? If your potential customer can’t find your product or service, they definitely won’t waste a lot of time looking for it. They’ll go on to the next site and probably never return. They’re visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers. Whether it is information, a product or service.
Design your site to be easily navigated. Place your navigation links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links. If you are planning on using graphic buttons to navigate your site, keep in mind that with each graphic you add to your page, it will take that much longer for your page to load. If you only have a handful of navigational links, using graphic buttons will be fine. If you have over six links, it would be wise to simply use text links to keep your load time down.
If you must use frames, use them sparingly. Frames, if not properly used, can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very irritating and cause your visitors to leave. If you must use frames, offer your visitors a choice. Frames verses No Frames. Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four. Keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main. Always have good navigational links on every page and place your company logo on each page.
Design a quality e-book to give to your visitors. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. If you can create a web page, you can create an e-book. The focus of your e-book should compliment your web site. Simply write about your passion. If your passion is sales, then you could share some of your knowledge and experience by designing your e-book to provide a complete sales training guide. If your passion is home based business, you could write an e-book about how to start your own home based business. If you’re writing about your true passion then you shouldn’t have any trouble coming up with something to write about. For further information on e-books, read the article entitled, “How to Create an E-book and Drive Massive Traffic to Your Site by Giving It Away.”
Having been involved in the internet industry for a large part of my working life, I have spent a lot of time researching and browsing the internet and reading websites, mainly for client design research, but also for occasional personal use. The one thing that I find most disappointing, is the apparent lack of thought going into website creation and it’s purpose, which in turn creates a missed opportunity for many e-businesses to become successful.
Is Search Engine Submission Necessary?
The simple answer is no – search engine submission isn’t necessary. The majority of search engines nowadays (most notably Google) crawl and index pages by following links. Using that logic, a single inbound link from any already-indexed page will identify your page to the engine. Subsequently, if that page links to other pages within your site, they will also be indexed… and so on.
For this reason, inbound linking is very important. In fact, acquiring back-links may be the most important of Search Engine Submission. In theory though, a website owner shouldn’t have to ’scout’ or ‘hunt’ for links. If the presented content is of interest, useful, and/or important, there is a natural tendency among web users to link to information. This is the basis for the Google Page Rank algorithm.
With all due respect, submitting your site to the search engines can’t hurt. Plus, it only entails about 5 minutes of added work assuming you only submit to the big guys. And once is enough… you don’t need to submit your site more than once. It doesn’t help or get your site crawled any quicker or more often.
It should be noted that submitting your site to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many others doesn’t cost a fee. Many Search Engine Submission companies assert that you need to pay to be indexed. This isn’t the case and I would stay away from these companies. They are money hungry and aren’t looking out for your best interest.
Would you ever consider going on a vacation across the country without bringing a map? It is hard enough to find your way in some places with a map. How hard would it be if you tried this adventure without one? Yet, this is exactly what people do every single day in the online world. They tried to build their own businesses online without having a roadmap to success. Then, after months or years of just wandering around online, they give up in frustration and quit. They walk away saying that the Internet doesn’t work for them. The reason it didn’t work is that they didn’t pick up a map and follow it!
You don’t have to end up lost in the online shuffle. Below I will give you ten steps to help you map out your course and get you started in the right direction. It isn’t everything that you need to know by any stretch of the imagination, but it will give you a basic foundation to build upon.
Consider it your beginner’s map to Internet marketing profits.
1. Choose a targeted market
The biggest mistake most people make when starting a business is that they choose a product and then try to find people who want to buy it. If that is the direction you are starting from on your journey, then you are going the opposite direction from your destination. Wise businesses operate from a different concept. They pick a market first, and then they pick a product those people are searching for. In other words, instead of trying to find leads to sell their product to, they find targeted leads and then ask them what they are wanting to buy.
Don’t even consider starting a business until you know exactly where you are going to get your leads from. Think targeted customers first. Then, you can come up with a product for those individuals. Would you rather have 1,000 hits a day at your site of a general audience OR 10 hits a day of people who are desperate and willing to pay any price to buy your products? If you are smart, you will choose the people who are ready to buy!
2. Develop a Product
Next, you need to develop a product or service for this market. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon of affiliate programs when you come to this step. There are three major ways to selling a product online:
a. You create your own exclusive product.
This is the best opportunity you have. If you develop your own product, you can pick it’s price, sell reprint rights to others, set up an affiliate program, etc. Don’t tell me you can’t do this. Tens of thousands of innovative entrepreneurs have used their own information products to get their careers started. You can to.
Throughout your life, I am sure that there is something you have learned that you can share in a How-To product. Maybe you know someone else who has the right knowledge for a How-To product and you could offer to help them create a product if you both shared the rights to it. Don’t just jump past this opportunity and say it can’t be done.
b. You buy the rights to a product or you JV for an offline product.
You can buy the rights to successful products for $500 – $20,000. If someone else has created a product that you know your targeted market is interested in, offer them a large up-front fee for the rights to it. This way you can get your own product and never have to pay a penny in royalties. You can also search through magazines your targeted market reads and look for products people are selling. Then, give them a call and ask for the exclusive Internet rights to their product for a certain percentage of the profits or an up-front fee.
c. You join an affiliate program.
If you are just starting out online, this can be a good choice. You do have to keep in mind though that it doesn’t offer quite the profit potential that creating your own product or obtaining rights to one has.When choosing an affiliate program, make sure that it is something your targeted market cannot be without. They absolutely have to have it. Also pay special attention to the profits you receive from each sale.
If you are only be paid 5% commissions on the sales of $10 books, you will only be making 50 cents per customer. It would take 2,000 customers just to product $1,000 in profits. You cannot make money like this online! Look for higher priced products and higher commissions…especially commissions in the 25% or higher range.
3. Create a USP
Create a Unique Selling Position for your product or service. Too many companies are just trying to be me-too companies online. You cannot be just like the next guy and expect to make a profit in a global economy. Just going to the next guy’s web site to order is too easy for your customers.
You have to create a Uniqueness to your product or offer. What can you offer that no one else can? Can you offer better guarantees, better customer service, more technical support, faster shipping, or lower prices. Think of something that will set you apart from all of your online competitors and tell in complete detail what it is.
4. Pick a Domain Name and Hosting Service
The next step is to pick a domain name that describes your company, USP, and offer. Try to keep them as short and descriptive about your business as possible. Avoid using dashes or misspellings of your product. Both of these things will cause people to leave out part of your domain if they type it in. Someone else will be getting free traffic that you worked hard to obtain.
For hosting, I personally choose to use Virtual-is since they have the Fastest customer service and technical support in the industry. Test them out. They will respond to you within the hour…anytime 24 hours a day. No other company I have ever been with has even come close!
5. Develop a Customer Friendly Site
The next step in the process is to develop your web site and put it up for the world to see. If you are planning to own a full-time Internet business, I recommend that you learn how to design the site yourself using one of dozens of programs which are readily available at any software store.
You will save so much money if you can do the work yourself on just the editing alone as your site grows. If your main business is offline and you are just adding a secondary income, then you may want to consider having a professional do your site for you.
When designing your site, keep the customer in mind always. Provide order forms for online credit card orders. Make all of the links easy to understand. Try to keep your site simple. Think like a customer, not the business owner.
Your customers are not nearly as interested in your business as you are. Make sure to put the benefits of your site and your USP right on top of the site. More than half of the web surfers never drop down past the first screen full of information. So, you have to give them the information they need as quickly as possible. The rules for any type of business are Benefits, Benefits, and more Benefits.
6. Offer a Freebie
One of the major keys to developing traffic and sales at your site is to always offer some type of freebie as a drawing factor. For example, I offer dozens of free reports, weather reports, news, and more. My greatest drawing factor throughout the past 8 months though has been the two free e-books which we offer on our site to people who subscribe to this newsletter.
You need to come up with a freebie no matter what type of business you are in. Create a free report and give it away. Add in a message board or some other type of CGI program on your site. Give a free demo of your software. Create something that you can give away for free on your site to draw in the visitors.
7. Start Your Own Opt-In List
Almost every full-time Internet marketer I know has developed their own Opt-in email list of some type. For most of them, it is a weekly newsletter they send out by email. For others, it may be a Tip of the Day. Other people might just have a list that they send out important updates to.
No matter what you choose to do, odds will be on your side if you concentrate on building a list of loyal email subscribers. Very rarely do customers purchase from you the first time they visit your site. Most of them will get on your list, hang out for a few weeks or months, and then they buy from you. They have to get to know you before they are willing to spend their money with you.
I have found that the most effective leads come from offline advertising. For example, you could purchase ads in a popular targeted magazine for your business. You could also purchase a postcard in one of the card decks. Start up a co-op and get 10 other people to advertise with you and run your own ads for free. Offline leads which come to your site often turn out to contain a much higher percentage of buyers than any of the online advertising methods.
Once you put our short 10 step outline together you have a basic map to creating your own Internet success story. You wouldn’t consider going on a trip without a map. So don’t try to go it alone online without a map.
Terry Dean’s Brand New Fr-e eBook, “10 Quick and Easy Ways to Increase Profits to ANY Web Site Overnight!” Reveals More Time Tested Proven Internet Marketing Secrets Than 99% of the Paid Products Available…Showing You Step-By-Step How to Increase Your Traffic, Drop Your Expenses, and Drive Your Profits Through the Roof
Methods to Enhance Your ROI By way of scientific SEM?
Want to know the one thing that every successful digital marketer does first to ensure they get the biggest return on their marketing budget? It’s simple: goal-setting. This is an absolutely essential practice for any digital marketer who knows how to execute their campaigns in a productive, cost-effective way. With a few. With a few simple tips, you can be doing the same in no time! In this blog, we’ll walk you through the first steps every savvy digital marketer takes to ensure that they’re on target to hit all their marketing objectives. Get ready for revenue!
Remember: even if the channel you’re considering is all the rage right now, it might not fit your brand. Always make informed decisions that directly relate to your company. Otherwise, your message won’t be delivered to its intended audience and you’ll have wasted time, effort and money.
Know Your Digital Goals
The first step is clearly identifying which goals you want to achieve. Get specific. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Are you all about locking in leads? Do you want to establish a strong network of influencers that can help you be discovered? How about pushing engagement on social media?
Get Specific
A useful tool for narrowing down your goals to ensure they’re viable is the SMART mnemonic. It’s important to get specific to understand exactly what you’re working towards, and help you break down the process of hitting your targets. This is exactly what this mnemonic helps you to achieve.
- Does the channel reach my intended audience?
- Is the channel sustainable and affordable within my company’s marketing budget?
- Will I be able to measure the success of the channel?
- Does the channel allow me to express my brand’s intended message?
- Do the channels I’m considering work together to convey my message?
Always Remember Your Goals!
Establishing a solid vision for your business is the first step to planning your digital marketing budget. Always keep your final goals in sight when organising anything for your company. When deciding which steps to take next in your business, ask yourself how they will help you achieve the goals you outlined in Step #1. This will ensure that you stay on track and prevent you from spending your budget on anything that won’t help you achieve.
Cum et essent similique. Inani propriae menandri sed in. Pericula expetendis has no,
quo populo forensibus contentiones et, nibh error in per.Denis Robinson
As your budget progresses and evolves, continue referring to your SMART objectives. Stay focused and remember your goals – they will always inform what your next step will be!
Evaluate Picture Views
Want to know the one thing that every successful digital marketer does first to ensure they get the biggest return on their marketing budget? It’s simple: goal-setting. This is an absolutely essential practice for any digital marketer who knows how to execute their campaigns in a productive, cost-effective way. With a few. With a few simple tips, you can be doing the same in no time! In this blog, we’ll walk you through the first steps every savvy digital marketer takes to ensure that they’re on target to hit all their marketing objectives. Get ready for revenue!
Remember: even if the channel you’re considering is all the rage right now, it might not fit your brand. Always make informed decisions that directly relate to your company. Otherwise, your message won’t be delivered to its intended audience and you’ll have wasted time, effort and money.
Know Your Digital Goals
The first step is clearly identifying which goals you want to achieve. Get specific. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Are you all about locking in leads? Do you want to establish a strong network of influencers that can help you be discovered? How about pushing engagement on social media?
Get Specific
A useful tool for narrowing down your goals to ensure they’re viable is the SMART mnemonic. It’s important to get specific to understand exactly what you’re working towards, and help you break down the process of hitting your targets. This is exactly what this mnemonic helps you to achieve.
- Does the channel reach my intended audience?
- Is the channel sustainable and affordable within my company’s marketing budget?
- Will I be able to measure the success of the channel?
- Does the channel allow me to express my brand’s intended message?
- Do the channels I’m considering work together to convey my message?
Always Remember Your Goals!
Establishing a solid vision for your business is the first step to planning your digital marketing budget. Always keep your final goals in sight when organising anything for your company. When deciding which steps to take next in your business, ask yourself how they will help you achieve the goals you outlined in Step #1. This will ensure that you stay on track and prevent you from spending your budget on anything that won’t help you achieve.
Cum et essent similique. Inani propriae menandri sed in. Pericula expetendis has no,
quo populo forensibus contentiones et, nibh error in per.Denis Robinson
As your budget progresses and evolves, continue referring to your SMART objectives. Stay focused and remember your goals – they will always inform what your next step will be!
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