Guide to make money online!

A friend who manages a store for a large retail chain recently told me that headquarters announced a companywide conference call for all store managers. Never a good sign.

The chain apparently had decided to increase its e-mail marketing efforts during this economic downturn. It implemented a quota system for store managers, requiring each store to capture 25 percent of its customers' e-mail addresses.

You might be able to guess what happened next. Unable to reach their quota by normal means, some stores started making up e-mail addresses. As a result, the chain's e-mail service provider detected a large number of bogus e-mail addresses and refused to send the e-mails.

Naturally the ESP is working with the retailer to correct the problem. But in the interim, my friend complained, they're unable to send out any e-mail marketing. The moral: Don't poison the well by using bad marketing practices.

This type of well poisoning now happens with social media channels like Facebook. As marketing on these channels becomes more tempting, it's important to begin a discussion on exactly how we safely and effectively market to these channels.

Hopefully we can at least begin the dialogue and raise awareness of the issues, if not necessarily come up with answers.

From my viewpoint, shared by many marketing professionals with whom I've had this discussion, each social network has its own role in our working lives. For many, LinkedIn and Twitter are the de facto B2B (define) networking networks, while Facebook is for personal contacts and, at best, B2C (define) marketing efforts. The vast majority of my Facebook "friends" are also industry colleagues, which adds an interesting conundrum: how much do you want your industry contacts to know about what you're doing and your personal life?

Add to this that many people use Twitter to automatically update their Facebook and you have a scenario where, as George Costanza would say, "Worlds are colliding."

I recently unfriended some people I'm otherwise perfectly friendly with. Why? These folks never provide personal information in their updates and use the channel to promote themselves, their products, and their companies. On LinkedIn, I wouldn't mind it. But on Facebook, it's as if I invited someone into my house and they tried to sell me blue-green algae.

On the other hand, some of my Facebook "friends" provide references to interesting articles they've read. I find this valuable, even though it's business related.

Some people keep two Facebook accounts: one for friends and the other for business associates. I'm beginning to lean toward the idea that this is the wrong approach.

Facebook requires a personal touch. As an example, my Facebook friends include jazz musicians I admire. Most of these musicians use the channel strictly to promote their personal appearances and CDs.

However, one jazz musician, Sean Jones, uses the Facebook channel effectively. One of the best jazz trumpeters on scene today, he announces his concerts and albums on Facebook, and also lets you know what he's thinking -- how he feels that day, that he's stuck in traffic, his thoughts on race. He's not just updating his fans -- he's turning them into friends.

I'm reminded of the late comedian Red Skelton. When Red Skelton traveled from town to town doing his act, he would collect the postal addresses of anyone who came to see him. Each time he played a town, he would personally write to everyone who had shared their mailing address to let them know he was coming to town again. Instead of playing to an audience of strangers, he played to an audience of friends.

Isn't that what social media is all about?

Commenting on other people’s blogs is a great way to have interesting discussions, learn from others - and publicize yourself and your own site.

The content of your comments is crucial to achieving all of these, but there’s one aspect that is often over-looked: having a good profile on blog commenting systems. Suppose, for example, that you comment on a site that requires you to login with a Blogger (Google) account. That means your comment will appear with your name - and a link through to your Blogger profile. What you have, or haven’t, done to refine that profile can have a big impact on what people think of you. Doing a nice comment but neglecting the profile is a bit like remembering to wear a smart suit to a business meeting, but then handing out a tacky business
card.

Commenting options vary greatly across different blogs: some require you to login with a particular account (e.g. Blogger or WordPress), some give this as an option but allow other comments and some don’t offer any account login options. What will suit you best depends on which blogs you frequent, but it is likely you will quite often be wanting to comment on sites that offer Blogger or WordPress account options.

Even if they offer freeform commenting too, using your account helps save you against the occasional typo in your name or web address, along with the convenience (if you remain logged in) of not having to type in
name and other information each time.

Some people prefer to type in their name and site URL to using their Blogger or other account to comment on the basis that this lets you link direct to your site and may bring some search engine benefits to your
site.

In my experience the boost is very little, whilst consistently using your account profile helps build a more consistent and credible online persona, particularly as it helps you avoid having to mix and match between sites that require an account to be used and those which allow open commenting. In addition, having an account profile page that appears in search results is itself helpful. As with most advice, experiment a bit and see what suits your own circumstances.

So what can you do to improve the appearance of your profile? Let’s take Blogger first.

Note that I’ve given my full, real name. If you consistently use, and are known by, a nickname it would make sense for that to be on display. But otherwise you want to make clear that this is really you. Hence too the photo. I do a lot of training and talks, so a simple head and shoulders photo makes it easy for people to associate the person they have met with this online commenter.

The profile page also shows those blogs I am following via Blogger. The impact of these is a bit like the choice of books on your shelves or magazines on your desk. They help give people an impression of who you are and what you know about - though if you try to fake it by putting a whole load of items on display about an area you don’t really know about, you’ll soon be found out once you start communicating with
people.

Other information about me is fairly sparse as Blogger’s options are generally for fun stuff, whilst I am going online in a professional capacity.

You can set all of these settings by logging in at www.blogger.com, which uses your Google account (free to create if you do not yet have one). Once logged in, you can use the ‘Edit profile’ and ‘Edit photo’ links to set your profile’s contents. From that initial ‘Dashboard’ page, you can also control the blogs that appear on your profile, using the ‘Add’ and ‘Manage’ buttons at the bottom.

You can also control what information appears if you comment on a site that uses Google Friend Connect, although the settings are buried a little. Once you have added at least one blog to follow, click on ‘Manage’ and then on ‘Settings’ next to the name of one blog. Although there is a ‘Settings’ link next to all the blogs listed, they all take you to the same core settings for photo and links. So click on any and you will see that you can add a photo and set of links which will appear via Google Friend Connect. I just use the same photo again. Unlike the main Blogger profile, you can easily display links to more than one of your online presences, so I have created a set for Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and the group blog I contribute to.

There are some legitimate privacy concerns around services such as Google Friend Connect, but if you want to publicise your thoughts and presence, the sharing of data about what you are doing is an opportunity
to be exploited.

WordPress accounts are another popular option for blog comments. People often only think about creating accounts at www.wordpress.com if they want to use its blogging services, but it is worth creating an account
and refining your profile for the commenting benefits you get. You can create an account for free if you don’t yet have one.

When you are logged in, clicking on ‘Edit Profile’ in the ‘My Account’ menu at the top lets you set information that appears linked to your comments, such as your photo. WordPress.com uses the Gravatar system,
which is also used by some other blogs, so there’s a useful bonus from setting your picture through here. You can also give other useful information such as your name and website (which is where your name will
link to from comments you post).

‘My Comments’ in the ‘My Account’ menu gives you a handy list of all your recent comments made logged in with your WordPress account, along with any responses from other people. Blogs often give you other ways of keeping up with responses, but this is a handy one-stop-shop for all your WordPress account comments.

If a lot of the other people and sites you hang around are WordPress.com powered, there are quite a few other features in the ‘My Account’ menu you may find useful, such as the tag search tool which can help you find interesting stories you would have otherwise missed.

Armed with Blogger, WordPress and Gravatar settings, you can comment away with added impact. I’ve picked these three based on my experiences and market share (in the UK). You may of course find that another system is used where you comment often, in which case the same general advice applies - make full use of the options available to refine how you appear.

When we speak about website architecture, we are talking about the design & layout of the web pages. There are some things that Google has a hard time with and so avoiding them is just plain smart both from a visitor point of view (vpov), and a search engine point of view (sepov).

You want a web design that looks great and appeals to the human eye, so visitors stay a while and come back often. I understand this is necessary. The problem is that often what is appealing to the human eye is not so appealing to Google’s algorithm. This can create problems getting your web pages to rank well in the search engines.

Google looks at text when it visits your web pages. It doesn’t “see” images and it doesn’t understand moving pictures too well. It sees text content on the page and in the code of the page - not much else. Websites that make heavy use of such things as “Flash” and “Java scripts” often have trouble getting decent ranking from Google.

Now Google is starting to get a “read” on java more than ever, and in some cases using it is ok. Placing it properly in the page code is important and your web designer needs to understand how to do it. For java scripts you need to place the script itself into a file, which resides in the root directory of the server. Then a link is simply placed in the code of the page where the script needs to be seen, so the script is called up through the link from the file in the root directory of the site.

Flash should only be used on a small portion of the web page, not the entire page! Flash files should contain keywords that Google is able to read. You see a lot of intro pages that are nothing more than moving images, and they take up the entire page - stay away from these designs if you can.

Static images should be kept small so they are not driving people away because the page takes too long to load. If you have to use a large image file, create a separate page that displays the larger version of the picture and use a small image link on the original web page.

Another problem that, fortunately you don’t see so often anymore, is something called “frames”. You know you are looking at a “framed” web page when it appears there is a smaller, scrollable window embedded in the larger page of your browser window. It is actually, a separate web page.

The problem with frames is that Google has to divide its Page Rank evaluation between 2 pages instead of one. If the larger page is being optimized for a specific set of keywords, and the framed page is not, this creates what we call Page Rank Dilution. If Google gave a value rank of 4 to the larger page, and only 2 to the smaller framed page, the overall ranking of the page may only be 3.

For page text, use a color for the text that is not close to the background color of the page. Black text on white background is best. Don’t use a print font smaller than 10 or 11. Both of these issues can cause Google to think you might be ’spamming’ its search engine.

Links

Make sure your page links are text links, not image links. Remember, Google reads text very well and it’s trying to offer pages that most accurately relate to a search term. It does that by checking the page text content against the query searched on. If the relationship between the two is very accurate, it will help your pages score well.

Links should be found in your site menu (usually placed at the top, or in the left or right column of the page. It’s a good idea to also include the menu links horizontally across the bottom of each page. Links should also be added in the body text of your pages wherever there is an occurrence of a keyword or key phrase. Use these links to link to other pages of your site that contain more information relevant to those keyword links.

Summary:

Web design can sometimes cause problems when optimizing your website for Google. Strike a good balance between visual appeal and search engine appeal for best results!

Check with your web design person and make sure that care has been taken to ensure none of the above are issues with your website. If they are, edit the site so they will not be a problem in the future.

As an Internet Marketing Consultant, I know that whether using pay-per-click (PPC) or organic search engine optimization (SEO), the process begins with our research keyword.

This is true whether you’re doing your work yourself or working with an SEO Consultant.

The search engine ranking for our chosen keywords consumes us, causing ecstasy when we succeed and sleepless nights when we fail.

But increased sales happen only IF:

1. the keywords bring enough traffic to meet our sales goals;
2. the competition in SEO is obtainable (and)
3. the keywords will actually convert — they will actually result in increased sales.

Otherwise, it’s really wasted time.

And now that Google shows an estimated number of average monthly impressions (instead of just the old green bar), the Google tool can really help with your keyword research.

And it’s Free!

If you don’t have an AdWords account, you can access the tool independently (just Google: Google Keyword Research Tool).

Grabbing the Best Keywords for your Website Using Google’s Keyword Research Tool

Step 1 — Put your keyword phrase or root keyword into the tool. I suggest one phrase at a time, 1-4 words in length. Click: Get Keyword ideas and wait for the results.

Another option is to click Website Content and let Google pull suggestions from your website content.

Step 2 — IMPORTANT, change the Match Type to Phrase, which adds quotes to the keyword results. This makes the tool’s impressions more closely match organic search, ignoring the “loosey-goosey” broad match phrases for AdWords.

And under the Show/Hide Columns make sure your settings display Approx Avg Search Volume. (If you’re marketing a seasonal product or service you might change to a different setting.)

Step 3 — Analyze the results. What we’re all trying to find is the low hanging fruit: the best balance of traffic volume, ease to perform SEO and traffic that will likely convert.

I suggest targeting phrases that are at least 5,000 to 10,000 monthly average impressions. Conversely, keyword phrases with very high monthly impressions may prove too competitive in organic search. Find the best balance for your organic optimization skills and for your industry.

If your sales goals require 200,000 monthly organic impressions and you choose keyword search phrases with between 5,000 and 10,000 monthly impressions each, then you’ll need between 20 to 40 keyword phrases to deliver you that 200,000 monthly impressions.

Of course, as you discover opportune phrases that are offer greater monthly impressions and that you’re comfortable optimizing for, that will lower the number of phrases needed to reach your monthly goal.

Make your keyword list from this criteria. I like to copy and paste into my email program.

And to determine the number of monthly impressions needed, you’ll need:

1. good organic listing click-through rate data — what percentage of searchers will click on your listing? (and)
2. conversion rate data either from your own website or for your industry — what percentage of your site visitors will BUY?

You will find an experienced Internet Marketing Consultant | Coach who specializes in Keyword Research can help you formulate a keyword list that will deliver BOTH the traffic and sales conversions that you need.

Step 4 — Evaluate the competing number of pages in organic search from Google. Is this a number you’re comfortable optimizing for?

While you’re on the SERPs looking over the search results, look at the AdWords ads and the organic results.

Does your service or product sound like it belongs on this page, for this keyword? Or, does it sound out of place?

And for a search phrase to be good, normally you’ll want to see several AdWords ads appearing for the search phrase.

Make your list from this criteria, setting aside any keyword phrases from the previous step (at least for right now) where the competition is too steep. Phrases that look good but with too much competition, save for the future.

This brings up a good point: Keep good notes! Otherwise, you’ll come back for the next round of research and have to re-do things.

Step 5 — Evaluate the phrases still on your list for their likely commercial intention using the Microsoft Online Commercial Intention Tool (Google it).

If you’re using an SEO Consultant, make sure they use this tool and evaluate commercial intent for the keywords you are considering.

Now, this is a Microsoft tool…I use it and am glad for the data, but I don’t make decisions about any keyword phrase off data from just one tool or from just one step in my process.

Having said that, I wouldn’t select 15 phrases for optimization where each of them shows there’s not commercial intent.

Keep your list of phrases that still meet your criteria and move onto the next step.

Step 6 — Evaluate your remaining list in Google’s Traffic Estimator. What I look for is the relationship of average monthly impressions to estimated daily click throughs in AdWords. Do they make sense and suggest commercial intention?

If one phrase has twice the monthly impressions, but only 1/2 the daily AdWords clicks, something may be wrong. You may want to look closer.

The goal isn’t just traffic, it’s traffic that converts — buys, sign up to your email list, calls or emails your company and becomes a sales lead, etc.

When you complete these steps, you should have whittled your initial keyword list down to the “lowest hanging fruit”, the most opportune phrases (easiest to rank well in) COMBINED with the largest amount of quality traffic, COMBINED with traffic that should convert.

The Windows into Your Website

Keywords are the windows into your website. If you target the wrong ones for your business, you won’t have the traffic, Internet sales or sales leads that you need.

If you’re using an SEO Consultant to perform your work, make sure they do it the correct way — not the lazy way — and oversee their work. Your site, your responsibility!

If you’re doing d-i-y Keyword Research, be really educated about what you’re doing OR your d-i-y effort could cost you more than hiring a qualified company.

NOTE: Another option available from some Internet Marketing Consultants today for those watching their budget is to offering Coaching services. This is sort of a hybrid between the retail price, full-service option and the go-it-alone, time consuming do-it-yourself option.

Achieving the search engine ranking for your chosen keywords doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive if you follow my formula. And if performed correctly, the end results will be keywords that work for your business.

Page Rank (often denoted by PR) is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage with its content. Page Rank is a quantity (between 0 and 10) defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page.

Page Rank is displayed as a green bar to the left of a webpage listing in the Google Directory, and also in the Google toolbar

The basic factor behind defining a page rank is the keywords

* If your keywords are Rare and Unique, then Page Rank doesn't matter.
* If your keywords are very Competitive, then Page Rank becomes very important

There are "over 200 SEO factors" that Google uses to rank pages in the Google search results (SERPs). There are certain google search engine optimization
rules which effects the page rank they are

1. Positive ON-Page SEO Factors.

2. Negative ON-Page SEO Factors.

3. Positive OFF-Page SEO Factors.

4. Negative OFF-Page SEO Factors.


Some of these factors are listed below:
POSITIVE ON-Page SEO Factors:
* Keyword
o Keyword in URL: First word is best, second is second best, etc
o Keyword in domain name: Same as in page-name-with-hyphens
o Keyword in title tag: Title tag 10 - 60 characters, no special characters.
o Keyword in description meta tag: less than 200 chars. Google no longer "relies" upon this tag, but will often use it.
o Keyword in keyword meta tag: less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice.
If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.
o Keyword density in body text:5- 20% - (all keywords/ total words)
o Individual keyword density: 1 - 6% - (each keyword/ total words)
o Keyword in H1, H2 and H3: Use Hx font style tags appropriately
o Keyword font size: "Strong is treated the same as bold, italic is treated the same as emphasis".
o Keyword in alt text: Should describe graphic - Do NOT fill with spam
o Keyword in links to site pages (anchor text): Links out anchor text use keyword
* NAVIGATION - INTERNAL LINKS
o Link should contain keywords.
o Use hyphenated filenames, but not long ones - two or three hyphens only.
o Check that all Internal links are valid or not.
* NAVIGATION - OUTGOING LINKS
o External link: Link only to good sites
o Validate all links periodically
o Less than 100 links out total
o Avoid "Link Churn"
o Outgoing link Anchor Text : Should be on topic, descriptive
* OTHER ON-Page Factors
o Smaller files are preferred, Try not to exceed 100K page size
o Use Hyphens in URL
o Freshness of Pages: Changes over time, Newer the better - Google likes fresh pages.
o Freshness of Links: Excellent for high-trust sites, May not be so good for newer, low-trust sites
o Frequency of Updates: Frequent updates are equal to frequent spidering that generates newer cache.
o URL length: Keep it minimized - use somewhat less than the 2,000 characters allowed by IE - less than 100 is good, less is even better
* OTHER ON-SITE Factors
o Site Age: Old is the best
o Site Size - Google likes big sites
o Age of page vs. age of site: Newer pages on an older site will get faster recognition



Negative ON-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors
* Text represented graphically is invisible to search engines.
* Too high keyword repetition (keyword stuffing) may get you the Over Optimization Penalty.
* Redirect through refresh metatags: Don't immediately send your visitor to another page other than the one he/ she clicked on, using meta refresh.
* Keyword dilution: Targeting too many unrelated keywords on a page, which would detract from theming, and reduce the importance of your REALLY important keywords.
* Flash page : Most SE spiders can't read Flash content Provide an HTML alternative, or experience lower SERP positioning.
* Use of frames should be avoided as SE has problems with frames.
* Excessive JavaScript should not be used.
* Invisible text Google advises against this.
* Gateway, doorway page Google advises against this.
* Duplicate content Google advises against this
* HTML code violations Google advises against this





POSITIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors
Incoming links :

* Based on the Number and Quality of links to you Google link reporting continues to display just a SMALL fraction of your actual backlinks, and they are NOT just greater than PR4 - they are mixed.
* Incoming links from high-ranking pages are better.
* Site Age - Old shows stability.
* Site Directory - Tree Structure.
* Complete - keywords in anchor text.
* PAGE METRICS - USER BEHAVIOR:
* Page traffic: trend of number of visitors.
* CTR: how often is the page clicked on.
* Time spent on page: Relatively long time, indicates relevance hit.
* If your website pages are bookmarked by user it is good for you.
* SITE METRICS- USER BEHAVIOR
* Site traffic: number of visitors are more its better.
* Time spent on domain: relatively long time indicates relevance hit.
* DOMAIN OWNER BEHAVIOR :
* Domain Registration Time: Register for 5 years, Google knows you are serious, register for 1 year, is it a throw-away domain?



NEGATIVE OFF-Page SEO Google Ranking Factors
* Traffic Buying is not suggested
* Old links are valued, new links are not.
* Zero links to you: You MUST have at least 1 (one) incoming link (back link) from some website somewhere, that Google is aware of, to REMAIN in the index.
* Google hates link-buying, because it corrupts their PR model in the worst way possible. Please check all these points before creating links:
1. Does your page have links it really doesn't merit?
2. Did you get tons of links in a short time period?
3. Do you have links from high-PR, unrelated sites?
* Cloaking (practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines.) should be avoided as Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.
* Links from bad neighborhoods: Google says that incoming links from bad sites can't hurt you, because you can't control them.


So we can say that the page rank is the function of page,

* Strong on page gives better page rank and strong off page is added advantage
* If off page is very strong and on page is bad then page rank will be very poor
* If on page is strong and off page is poor, then PR will not be that badly affected

One of the most important ways to get website traffic is by making use of the traditional SEO marketing techniques. Search engine optimization techniques are recognized by all major search engines and this in turn increases the quantity of links to your website. While using SEO techniques, kindly ensure that you are using organic SEO tips.

One of the best ways to increase your traffic is to distribute free gifts on a random basis. It is basic human tendency to make use of something which is free of cost. The moment they see something free of cost, they come rushing towards it. Hence, many top companies offer free brochures and even free samples of their products, which can be used by their customers.

Since back-links are so important, how do you build them?

Well, one of the easiest was to start building links back to your site is to utilize website directories. There are many directory-type websites that will index your website(s) and make your business/service/information available to users who are searching for it. Not only do you get an increase in website traffic from these sites but you also get the back-links from these services to your website.

Every website always needs more traffic. You need to have targeted traffic otherwise you are wasting your time and ultimately money. Listed below are some of the most popular methods.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC). Google Adwords is the largest and most popular PPC. When used correctly it will increase your exposure and give you fast results. It is important that you follow the rules and keep up to date as they change regularly. The beauty of PPC is that you set a daily budget of how much you are willing to spend. You can create as many campaigns as you want and then test your ads. Google provides its customers excellent tutorials.

Are you one of the many marketers online who are at their wits end? Have you used up every traffic avenue available and still can't get anywhere?

You might also be wondering why your ad campaigns are not working as well as your marketing strategies.
It's all traffic, it's all about making your traffic strategy work exactly for what you want to achieve.
Remember that not everyone's is going to be the same!

Promote in ezine newsletters

This method does cost money but it is very cost effective. You can literally send out a email to a subscriber base of 50,000+ people in one ezine for anywhere from $30-$60. Out of 50,000 seeing your offer don't you think you will make money? Of course you will but the key to ezine advertising is being targeted with what you are offering. Very powerful method I use all of the time that can bring you hundreds, if not thousands of daily visitors.

Overall, while PPC marketing serves some people very well, instant free marketing tips are the best and fastest way for new site owners to start their marketing efforts while they learn how to properly use more sophisticated marketing for future growth. If done successfully, however, some will discover that free marketing tips can work just as well as expensive marketing in achieving their traffic goals.

With the advent of popular sites like YouTube, creating videos that go viral are a hugely successful way of driving traffic to a website. By creating vignettes designed to captivate viewers with a funny, interesting or emotional video that they, in turn, are compelled to share with others by email, on their blogs or on social networking sites, a person can increase traffic to their site exponentially. By providing a link in the video or on the author's profile, as these clips are passed around the Internet, free traffic is also driven back to the owner's website. A very good campaign of this nature may be passed around for weeks, months or even years while creating a steady flow of residual traffic.

Traffic generation helps you in generating revenues in two ways; firstly, if your website is about your business, your sales will automatically go up, and secondly, if you register in an ad-sharing revenue generation program such as Google Ad Sense, your revenues will get increased depending upon the number of clicks.

You may not know what you need keyword research software for at all and you may not understand the difference between free and paid for research software. The environment of the modern internet is constantly changing and evolving and develops rapidly, even daily; the modern internet is immense and your website can easily become lost among the competition. One way to avoid being buried on the last page of a search engine is to carefully identify the relevant searches that relate to your site.

Already mentioned is the very real need to maintain an edge over your competition; this is where research software becomes useful. The free software is good because there are no costs but it will not provide as comprehensive a result as a medium cost paid alternative. Paid keyword research software is developed specifically to assist website construction by finding lucrative words and phrases and gain a complete edge over their competition with minimal hassle and effort.

Free software is all very well but contains limited function and because there is no associated charge and profit there is no motivation to add extra useful features; you may still uncover to odd diamond with a free software tool but you must expect to work through many rocks to find them. Not only will you have to locate the best keywords and phrases, you will also have to ensure the keywords are not too competitive.

The majority of free software does not provide the capability to achieve this; further, you will have to input the words and analyze their competition level manually. As one person you are limited to the amount of work you can get done during your working hours so by taking advantage of Google Adwords tools, you should be able to better utilize your time and efforts.

As with the vast majority of software programs available on the market the paid-for versions offer more comprehensive functionality and extra features as well as automatic free or low cost upgrades. Most paid keyword software will not only present large lists quickly and efficiently, they will also provide analysis on the competition too.

This obviously reduces the waste of time and effort significantly; an even greater benefit available from some of the top of the range paid-for keyword software is the ability to spy on your competition, providing you with information based on profitability, competition and monthly searches.

Most of the successful websites make full use of automated software at every opportunity as it maintains more cost effective use of time, allowing faster research and site completion; faster site completion means the quicker you become indexed, ranked and begin making a return from the money invested in your site.

A true business owner makes investments in their business to help it grow and become profitable. Do yourself a favor and invest in quality keyword research software.

Search engine robots are sometime also called spiders or crawlers and their job is to find web pages. The question is what is they really do and is what they do all that important. They are essentially ‘data retrieval programs’.

If your site cannot be found it may be because the search engine robot cannot find your site, or it may be more complicated such as the robot not being able to crawl your site, or they cannot understand what is on your web page.

There are certain things which block robots from doing their work, perhaps a site is built using frames or has flash movies. Robots are not able to enter areas protected by passwords and they cannot click on buttons. Their search they can be impeded if they come across JavaScript navigation and if they can be stopped in their tracks if they come across a dynamically generated URL.

How do they work?
Robots spend their day by travelling and finding links and information.’ A robot has a list of websites which it has to ‘troll’; submission of a new URL is added to a queue on this list. A website can also be added to this queue via a link which is another reason to Build Inbound Links with popularity in mind.

When it’s your websites turn, the robot checks to see if you have a robot.txt file which tells it which areas of your site are off limits, such are directories which contains information that does not need to be indexed. The robot then starts to collect information and follow links from page to page which is the only way a robot can find its way around the World Wide Web.

When a robot reaches your site it first looks at all visible text and the content contained within various Meta Tags in the pages source code. It also looks at hyperlinks. The information it finds in the text and from links helps the search engine understand what your site is all about. It is the responsibility of the search engine to decide what matters and it does this by means of algorithms.

Once the information has been evaluated it is accorded a certain value, and is ranked according to this value which is then indexed and sent to the database where it is available for searchers looking for a specific item. Once a searcher enters their query, a calculation is done and the result is that the right set of relevant results are given to the searcher. Only those pages which have been visited by a robot and in turn sent back to the database for indexing are shown.

It is possible to track where a robot has visited by means of server logs or results from log statistic programs. This information will tell you when they visited your website, which pages they visited and how often they visited. Search Engine Spiders are identified by names given them by their ‘master’ search engines. Inktomi calls their robot ‘Slurp’.

A steady flow of good web traffic increases the potential of any web-based business to make money online but many online business owners know that internet marketing can be expensive. This is why online business owners are so attracted to free web traffic platforms. However, free platforms to gain web traffic have its own advantages and disadvantages.

Apart from the fact that they save website owners a lot of money, some methods to drive free web traffic can help you increase other people's awareness of your online business. Some of them can also help you establish your reputation. Among the methods that will allow you to do this are publishing articles on free article directories and increasing your presence in forums. These will help you attract visitors to your site through your resource box or your signature links.

However, free web traffic also comes with certain disadvantages. Among the most significant disadvantages is the fact that you are unlikely to get very targeted traffic. To some extent, article marketing and forum marketing can help you target your traffic as long as you publish content that are relevant to your offerings. However, other free traffic sources won't allow you to do the same. Safelist services, for example, will help you gain free traffic but will unlikely help you generate sales and leads. Auto-surf programs won't help you gain targeted traffic either and, because you will have to surf through other sites to gain credits. These traffic never convert. In fact, they could get your AdSense account banned if you put in an AdSense site into the program. Your time may be better spent pursuing other internet marketing activities.

Keep in mind that it is not enough to gain tons of traffic for your business website. Your ultimate goal should be to make money out of your visitors and there is no way you can do that if your traffic is not targeted. This is not to say that you shouldn't make use of free web traffic methods as they can still be very useful to your online business. After all, pursuing those free methods can't hurt you because they're free. What you need to do, though, is combine those free methods with paid strategies that have proven to increase targeted web traffic.

By making use of both paid and free methods, you can attract a huge number of visitors and make sure that you generate sales and leads at the same time. Using both methods strategically will not only help you gain visitors to your site but also make your online business profitable.

Most people think that to make money online you have to join affiliate programs, pay for a high-end web site & hosting, or try to persuade people to join pointless programs. It's also very popular for webmasters to try and earn money using catchy subject lines about how you can make X amount of cash within X amount of hours. That, however, is NOT the correct way to make money online.

1.Relax and clear your mind. When you have accomplished this, think about some things you like to do. What you are most interested in will determine what your niche should (or can) be and in the end will prove that you can earn money doing what you love. In this article, our example niche is going to be sports; in particular, basketball.


2.Decide what kind of site you want to create now that you know what you want it to be about. You could write a blog talking about your favorite basketball teams, make a community website where all basketball-lovers alike could chat to their hearts' desires about the sport, or anything else you can think of that has to do with basketball. If you're the sales type of person, you could open your own sports store online or join an affiliate program for sports. However, the best, dependable source for money comes in from ads, which work best when there is a lot of content pertaining to your particular niche. Always remember...targeted advertisements make money!


3.Create your website. You do not necessarily need to get a domain name, but once your site gets more popular it would be best to have one so people know your brand. You also do not even have to spend a dime on hosting or a domain. There are many free hosting sites out there (110mb.com, byethost.com, & wordpress.com to name a few), and free co.cc domains as well. View http://totallyfreedomain.co.cc for more information on getting a free domain name. Doesn't cost a penny.


4.Add some content to your site. With whatever you have decided to make your site about, there is usually always some kind of product, service, or information that can help your visitors learn more about it. This is where the ads (and money) come in. It's time to monetize your site!


5.Choose an advertising site like Google, Bidvertiser, NeverBlueAds, etc. to put on your site. It will be up to you to decide which one you go with. The most popular, and promising, is Google Adsense, but obviously that is an opinion. Everyone has their own preferences. Add these ads to your site and pay attention to how the ads match your content. Your content is like the heart of the advertisements. If you write about basketball, they will display basketball-related ads. Same as if you were writing about another thing such as cars or fashion.


Finally, keep a watch on your site. You need to make sure your content is up-to-date and that you make any necessary changes when needed. If you have a blog, make sure you post at least once or twice a week. This keeps readers coming back for more.

If you want to increase the amount of views or visitors to your site, you could join a traffic exchange or use Google Adwords to have others display your ads on their sites. Adwords is not free so if you want to keep everything free, your best bet is a traffic exchange.

Also remember to keep your content all on the same topic. Don't create a site about basketball and then write about football. If you want your site to make it onto search engines to where people will visit your site and click the ads, you must keep the web site focused on basketball; since that is what your visitors are there to see in the first place.

After Google, YouTube is now apparently the most-used search engine in the world. YouTube now allegedly sees more searches than either Yahoo or MSN. I think that’s amazing. And I also think it is an amazing opportunity for those of us who want to increase traffic to our websites.

But does YouTube really represent a realistic option for increasing traffic to your site? Last year I set out to test this very theory because, frankly, I was a little cynical. My own suspicions were that most of these searches were from teenage kids looking for clips of their favourite bands or stupid stunts and I doubted that YouTube could be effectively harnessed for the sake of marketers.

So I created a small number of short (2-5 minute) videos on a topic related to one of my websites and published them to see what happened.

And I must say that the results truly impressed me. People were finding my videos either in YouTube itself - or on Google which tends to rank videos highly - and then watching my videos. Over a few months, thousands of people watched them and a decent number then clicked on the link pointing to my site.

As a result I saw a marked increase in my traffic as a result of this experiment and it really turned me on to the possibilities.

So how difficult is it to harness the power of YouTube? Honestly, the answer is not very, and I’d to tell you exactly how I did it in the hope that you too can benefit from the power of online video.

Making The Video

Nothing flashy is need to make a video to market your website. Personally I used a cheap digital camera and just basically spoke into the lens. For YouTube ensure your videos don’t go over 10 minutes in total length. Personally I pretty much read some of my more popular articles and tips so I was able to reuse much of my existing content rather than having to create plenty of new content.

I literally took an article that was generating traffic and then read it to camera.

Upload The Video

Sign up for a free YouTube account if you haven’t already and you will find how easy it is to upload the video. All you need to do is to locate it on your computer and press the upload button.

Once the video is uploaded the final step is to name it correctly. As you are basically reusing the content of an existing article, use the article title as the title for your video and include a link back to your website in the description.

That really is pretty much all there is too it. I recommend doing a number of these videos as they can be a little hit and miss and the more you have out there the greater the difference will be to your traffic levels.

One final tip is to enable comments on your videos in your YouTube account as I have found a surprising number of people are keen to ask questions about the videos I have uploaded and this can also be a good way to lure people back to my site by explaining that the answer to their questions is at this page or that page on my site.

There are two paths that you can take when it comes to managing your pay-per-click advertising campaign online. You can learn it yourself and make Google’s stock rise higher while you figure out the learning curve, then spend a lot of time keeping it running smoothly. Or, you can hire a professional pay-per-click firm to handle it for you.

I did both.

See, I know the position you’re in right now. I’ve been there. I’ve hired and fired 2 pay-per-click management companies. I was forced to learn on my own and spend tens of thousands of dollars.

My Experiences with Outsourcing My Pay-Per-Click Needs

The first pay-per-click management company that I hired kept raising my budget and jacking up my costs-per-click. Yet, I wasn’t getting any conversions!

So I decided to fire that PPC firm and manage my own pay-per-click campaigns. I studied under the top gurus like Perry Marshall. I bought all the ebooks and coaching programs. And, I spent more than $10,000.00 figuring everything out on my own until I grew a no name business into $50k per month in sales all from pay-per-click advertising.

But, I worked day and night on my pay-per-click campaigns. I spent a ton of time, money and effort on it. I couldn’t handle it anymore so I hired another pay-per-click firm to take over the accounts again. They did a nice job and are still around today, but I saw some holes in their approach.

Now, I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I want to help you choose a pay-per-click management company that’s actually going to help you turn clicks into clients.

Here are 7 Questions You Need to Ask Before You Hire a Pay-Per-Click Management Company:

1. This is going to piss people off: How many accounts does an account manager handle? Just because you have a “dedicated” account manager doesn’t mean he/she isn’t dedicated to 50 other accounts. This is not uncommon in some of the larger pay-per-click firms out there. If they work 40 hours per week that’s less than 1 hour/week they are spending on your account, provided they do nothing but work on accounts every minute of the day.

2. Can I peek in and have access to my Google & Yahoo accounts? There’s a new breed of PPC management that keeps everything secret. They are basically buying a click for $1.00 then charging you an undisclosed markup on the click. That’s why their setup & management fees are low. They’re making money on marking up your clicks.

3. What constitutes an improvement? You need to put in your order with the pay-per-click firm just like you would order a steak medium rare with a side of truffle fries to a waiter. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and don’t be afraid to speak up. For example: I want to increase sales while keeping my cost-per-sale under $50.

4. Do you track phone calls? If you are doing any part of the business offline then your pay-per-click management company should offer a way to track where your calls are coming from. Tracking calls back to specific keywords helps eliminate waste and will reveal high response terms you’ll want to dominate.

5. What are your prices? Now, don’t be cheap. There is no such thing as a Mercedes Benz for Honda prices. I’ll admit some people don’t need the Mercedes, but if you are spending $2,000/month or more, chances are you at least need a certified, pre-owned BMW.

6. What is your experience? I’m all for giving the new guy a try. I was the new guy at one point. Nothing, I repeat nothing can replace experience. Experience comes from long hours of hard work. There are no magic formulas. Good solid basics and some creativity will always win in the end.

7. Will you involve me in the project? No one knows your business as well as you. Get specific on how often you’ll meet to review the results and plan next steps. A good pay-per-click firm will welcome your input. It is invaluable.

Now, it’s up to you. But, if you fail to ask the above questions, then you’re risking hiring and firing new pay-per-click management companies when things go south or spending tens of thousands of dollars learning how to do it yourself like I did. Learn from my pay-per-click outsourcing experiences.

Pay-Per-Click Expert Paul Rakovich grew a no-named business selling Tony Robbins CDs to doing $50,000.00 per month in sales with PPC advertising. Today, he manages PPC campaigns for plastic surgeons, dermatologists, clothing companies, dentists, lawyers, Internet marketers, a famous copywriter and more! Now get his FREE 5 PPC Fixes That Could Save You Thousands at http://www.clicksandclients.com & learn how to turn your clicks into paying clients.

Alright, so I've been walking you through how to set up your very own customized article marketing strategy which you can use to guide and motivate yourself throughout the year.

The first two steps were setting you up to be able to measure and track your progress.

In Step 1, you established a baseline for your website and set up a spreadsheet where you'll do monthly tracking of certain stats.

In Step 2 you figured out who your top competitors were and you entered your baseline information for them.

In Step 3, we get down to business–here is where you organize your article marketing campaign.

I've noticed that the #1 reason why some people give up or don't see success or simply say "I don't have time to do this" is that they haven't planned their marketing activities out very well.

When you own a business, whether it is an internet business or a traditional business that has a website, you need to take your marketing activities seriously. No matter what type of business you have, if you are able to position your site at the top Google, you will receive more targeted traffic to your website, and traffic translates into more business for you!

Many people use Article Marketing as their primary marketing tool, and in order to see the results you're looking for, you need to take an organized approach. If you do not, you will likely quit in a month or two be back at square one.

So, let's do some pre-thinking on this, and I will tell you exactly what I did as I was launching my most recent article marketing campaign.

1) Set a goal as to how many articles you'll submit each month–something between 1 and 8 articles.

I know some top article marketers who submit just one article a month and see excellent results, but you'll see better results faster if you lean towards the upper end of that range, especially if you're just getting started. You might give yourself some time to get used to writing articles on a regular basis and start off slow–perhaps Month One submit 3 articles, Month Two submit 4, and then gradually work up until you're submitting 7 or 8 a month.

2) Determine which days you'll write and what time–put it on your calendar.

For myself this is imperative to success–if I tell myself that I need to write 5 articles before the end of the month and I don't set any specific times/dates for doing so, before I know it the end of the month will be on top of me, and I'll be up against the wall. Not many people like the feeling of being in a tight deadline, and I like to do my articles at a leisurely pace so that I have time left to edit them and be sure they're of the quality that I like.

I write on my calendar exactly which days are writing days, and I do my writing first thing in the work day. Some people say morning is best as that's when our minds tend to be clearest, but some of us don't start working until the afternoon or evening–whenever is the start of your workday, try to do your writing then. It feels good to have that accomplishment behind you, and I like writing when my mind is fresh rather than at the end of the day when it's mush.

You'll want to make this calendar as visible as possible to remind yourself–I even have a special dry erase board calendar specifically devoted to my writing schedule. It sits on the wall beside my desk, and every day when I sit down to work, there it is staring me in the face. After I write the article I mark that day off on the board. It's very motivating to see the writing days being checked off.

3) Start brainstorming article ideas–remember, these are article topics that are on the topic of your website. You don't have to make your brain hurt by trying to think of article topics that have your keywords in them–let's keep this simple. Just start thinking of topics that your target readers would find valuable and that are also on the same topic as your website.

This is a brainstorming list, so there's no commitment here. Just start writing down as many ideas as you can think of, and get your creative juices flowing. When I'm jotting down ideas, I usually end up jotting down titles. You'll find that when you start writing down ideas, the ideas will start to flow. Write down as many as you can and keep them in list form. This is a list that you can use all month long and depending on how many ideas you brainstormed, perhaps for several months.

By creating a list of article topics, you're making it so much easier on yourself come your writing days–you won't have to sit down and try to think up a topic and then write. All you have to do is sit down, look at your article list, pick a topic that appeals to you, and then write. Believe me, working like this is a million times easier than taking it day by day, article by article.

And that's it for this step–pretty easy, eh?

Easy, but indispensable–I caution you, do not skip this step.The stuff you're doing in this step will keep your whole article marketing campaign on track, even when you don't feel like writing and even when you don't think you have time. A little prep now can set you on the right path for the rest of the year.

The nature of internet marketing is that it is a convenient medium which allows the sale or purchase of a product. It is growing faster than any other media. What it refers to is the markeing of a product or services by means of the Internet.

It is a way to distribute information to a global audience, faster and cheaper and it is interactive which means that it provides and receives instaneous responses, something unique in marketing.

There are many different business models for internet marketing and what they all have in common is that they all benefit from SEO, or Search Engine optimsation which can greatly enhance and influence their success or failure. SEO can also be referred to as an online marketing campaign.

There are many advantages to internet marketing, one is the cost. Internet Marketing is relatively inexpensive when you compare it to the costs of reaching a large audience the old fashioned way. This is a definate advantage for smaller companies who work on limited budgets.

Another advantage is that it possible to reach a wide audience quickly and bring in results just as quickly. Internet marketing also supports mediums where measureable statistics can be gained, easily and inexpensively. In fact all aspects of Internet marketing can be tracked and tested, the advantage of this is that a marketer can determine which of their offerings is more appealing and change accordingly.

Internet marketing allows the tracking of competitors on a realtime basis which would otherwise rely on word or mouth, or by means of quarterly publications. However, the overall effectiveness of any internet marketing does depend on the business goals being used.

Limitations and security
There are some limitations to internet marketing though. One is actually the technology it uses which requires a customer or marketer understands how to use it. Another is low speed internet connections which does result in delays in the delivery of the information being advertised. Some buyers feel that they still want to touch and feel the product before they buy, but this can be addressed by offers of return policies and pick up services. Some marketing executives are finding it difficult to convince senior management of the advantages of Search Engine Optimization and internet marketing.

Security issues regarding information are also important and many customers are still hesitant when it comes to buying over the internet because they may not trust their private information being kept confidential, or worse, having it stolen by unscrupulous scammers.

With the advent of encruption, it is possible, if not mandatory, for a company to guarantee privacy and security to their customers. And if a customer decides to ‘opt out’ of their subscription services, their details are no longer held on the company’s database.

Another security concern is that a consumer will actually receive the goods they have purchased, these fears can only be relieved by brand building and gaining a good reputation in the market place. As well as this online payment merchants provide back end buyer protection sytems which protect the clients credit card details in cyberspace.

Page Rank is all about authority, the more authority a website receives, the higher the page rank goes, that is the general theory.

Don’t be deceived, high listings in the SERP’s are not about how big your page rank is, as the saying goes it is not the size but what you do with it that counts.

I can give examples of site that are PR 1 but rank #1 for some very generic terms within Google, however the theory and process of SEO is such you build them both together, like a well tuned operation it is not all about what is done in the shop front but usually the stock room that runs the engine.

These are my five top tips for building page rank:

1. Integrate a blog into your website, using wordpress you can integrate a simple blog into your website, wordpress also has a ping list, as soon as you post blogs the web is effectively notified of your blog, be controversial, create interest and just like the viral effect people will post your blogs creating natural links back to your site.
2. Press Releases, use someone like pressreleasepoint for a small fee distribute to about 60 PR engines, it is cheap to do, if you have not written releases before read up about writing styles, this is not a “process” and the purpose is to create real interest about what you have to say, if you hit the right note, it will get published and again create natural links back to your site, as well as build your brand.
3. Social media distribution, when you have good content, don’t sit on it, get it out and about, submit into social network sites, if your article takes off, the rewards will be there for you to see, and if not, there is no harm as if you are consistent and your content is good, you will build your own following which will create links and improve your longer tail of search.
4. Use methods such as commentating on other peoples blogs, and where they allow you to, pingback a link to your website, also use Yahoo! Answers, you can give people feedback and again create some natural back linking.
5. All the above are not quick methods, they are methods used to build the authority of your topic “website” and build your web based authority off page back to your website which is what will have an effect on a search engines perception of your site.

Thanks to technology, SEO tactics used to position a website evolve but fundamentals stay the same.

There are three aspects of Search Engine Optimization which are considered major and are important for optimisation. In a nutshell they are Keywords, Links and Graphics and if you make use of these three aspects correctly you be rewarded with high rankings.

Keyword Aspect
Firstly you must ensure that your keywords are relevant to your content. They should be in phrases that are used most commonly in a search. This may entail some research, but you will end up with keywords that searcher actually use.

Make sure that all your titles on all your pages start with your keywords and your content is filled with them. Fill your content with any other related information too. Optimise your Meta tags with your keywords and make sure that they are included in your filenames.

Linking Aspect
It should be evident how important external links are for SEO, so make sure they are listed in the Open Directory Project, or DMOZ. DMOZ provides most of the popular search engines with their results.

As well as listing your site the DMOZ, list it in human edited online directories too and make sure that your site has a sitemap which support text links. It is wise to avoid linking with just anyone, rather link with sites that have the same or better ranking than you do and make sure that your links are complimentary to your product or service.

Graphic aspects
Creating SEO can be hard and not a little confusing. A lot of web designers will tell you that you need a lot of eye catching features on your site, fancy fonts, animated sections and lots of beautiful graphics. SEO experts will tell that this it is not necessary to go overboard, and in fact may even work against you.

When you insert graphics in your web pages, use Cascading Style Sheets which separates the content, or keywords, from the code. The result will be that search engine robots are able to ignore formatting code and will find your keywords immediately instead of being slowed down by bad or unnecessary code.

It is very important to accompany your graphics or photographs with descriptive keyword rich alternative attributes. This is helpful for humans viewing your site and will aid in attracting repeat traffic. A simple thing such as putting a caption below a photograph will please the search engine robot, but beware of using fonts which are considered too ‘graphic’, use standard fonts instead.

When a search engine robot finds weird stuff such as flash animation or fonts, it cannot translate it into text and will instead see all the text on your page as a blank space. You actually don’t need flash animation if your content and product is good and by overloading their use can actually tell your customers that you are don’t have a lot of experience in designing and selling on the internet.

Not many people are still unaware that search engine optimisation is essential for your website and the success of your business. Websites that do not need optimisation are indeed a rarity on the Internet today. Search engines are responsible for guiding the majority of your traffic to your website and keywords are an indispensible part of SEO. Unfortunately there are still far too large a percentage of website owners who go at it over enthusiastically and this can be very bad for your website and your business overall.

Keywords and keyword phrases are indeed one of the top SEO Tools that give you high ranking on the search result pages of the search engines. The problem comes in when you go overboard, for there will be consequences. Ask yourself this question: exactly what percentage of keywords do you really need to optimise your website and do you know the do and don’t rules that apply for keywords.
Novice mistakes due to ignorance

Most people have read some articles about the correct places for those important keywords such as in your anchors, the title and your ALT tags to name a few. You cannot simply add Keywords in those areas to boost your optimisation; it has to actually be relevant to the specific image or the location you are linking to. Stuffing keywords willy-nilly all over the place is a total waste of time. There are general rules about the average number of keywords and phrases that will optimize a page.

The norm per page is 3 phrases or keywords and the percentage of keywords that you use in text for the total content on your website should be between three and five percent. To make things easier for the novice there are some excellent tools that help with this. These free online tools can pinpoint the percentage for you of every word that you use on your website and such tools will also show you exactly which of the words on your website is responsible for making your website show up in a search.
Do not mess up in your keyword tags

There is a list of words that the search engines ignore. These are: the, this, because, and, there and that. These are called stop words, so do not waste putting them in. Do not repeat words, for example red lipstick, pink lipstick, toffee lipstick. The search engine will pick up that you are offering lipstick and automatically match the word lipstick with the colours, repeating words needlessly is a good way to get yourself penalized.

The secret of successfully using your chosen keywords and keyword phrases is not difficult to understand. Use them sparingly; use them in the correct and most strategic places for your keyword placement to be a successful part of your search engine optimisation effort for your website. Search engines are not human, but if you insist on annoying them with flooding your web pages with keywords and put them in totally inappropriate places, you are going to annoy the search engines seriously. That is bad news for your website.

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something’s wrong but don’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don’t know what kind of traffic you’re getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic
You’re excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it’s a shame it isn’t making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn’t mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submitting it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges — provided the sites you exchange with are reputable — just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you’ll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

If you’re looking for high ROI, invest your own time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don’t settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.

2. You Have Worthless Content
What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it’s tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I’d say you aren’t in good shape. If you don’t know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what’s popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

* “Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day”
* “In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air”
* “Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War”
* “Automatic bacon dispenser?”
* “The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr”

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it’s appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today’s market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you’re the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or offer seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don’t.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative - don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.

3. You Have No Call-to-Action
Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren’t drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span - give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don’t get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.

4. You’re Getting Traffic But No Sales
Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won’t come if your visitors aren’t interested in what you’re selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you’re running ads it’s always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

* ad text
* landing page
* specific network your ads are shown across
* topics on which you focus the campaign
* geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn’t pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.

5. You’re Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales
This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you’ve ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site’s navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it’s not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

If you’re pulling out your hair over a problem with your site and these tips still haven’t helped, feel free to post a comment and I’ll personally have a peek at your site.