Monday, October 31, 2005

Another Opinion on SEO and Web Traffic

Just in case you think I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to SEO
and web traffic, here's another opinion. This article is reprinted in its entirety
from a SiteProNews newsletter.
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10 Better Ways Than "SEO" To Get Web Site Traffic
By Joe McVoy Profitable Marketing Systems, LLC (c) 2005


Does your web site clearly tell your prospects why they should
do business with you instead of your competitors? Does it have
a clear "call-to-action"? Are you set up to track your visitors
and conversion rates? And lastly, do you know what a visitor is
worth?

If you've done all this, you're ready to bring traffic to your
site. If you haven't, go back and do those things or you'll be
wasting money.

Everyone wants "organic" or "free" traffic, but it's a full time
job to try to keep on top of the search engines changing rules.
Instead, if you build a good content-rich site and do the things
on this list, you'll get traffic from these things and help your
ranking at the same time.

* Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Get traffic in an hour with PPC.
Google and Overture (now Yahoo) are the primary ones, but you
might also want to consider FindWhat.com. Key to make this
work: know your visitor value, bid on hundreds of keywords and
phrases that are not too competitive, and track each keyword or
phrase separately.

* Distribute Your Content – write articles of value to your
target market. Distribute that content for other webmasters to
use on their sites as long as they keep the link back to you in
a "resource box" at the end of each article. Distribute your
articles through article directories, ezines, and your blog.
Key to make this work: valuable content

* Submit Press Releases – submit electronic press releases
frequently with news of interest to the media and your target
market. Since press releases are news, if they get picked up,
it will be quickly and you can get hundreds of links back to
your site this way. Key to make this work: write 300 – 500 word
releases, include a link back to you, and have them written and
distributed by experts who know how to optimize each release for
keywords (not typical PR firms).

* Set Up a Blog with RSS – to be effective blogs must have
frequently updated content. Base yours on information helpful
to your customers, not sales pitches. Don't do it unless you
can commit some ongoing time to it. Seth Godin says the keys to
a successful blog are (1) Candor, (2) Urgency, (3) Timeliness,
(4) Pithiness – be short & to the point, (5) Controversy. Key
to make this work: make it interesting to your visitors, submit
to all the blog directories, ping the search engines when you
post, distribute your content with RSS (others can use on their
blogs or web sites without the hassle of negotiating permission
and distribution doesn't get caught in spam filters like
email).

* Get One-Way Incoming Links – All the above will create
incoming, one-way links, but you can also buy links from other
sites and from text link brokers. Don't bother with reciprocal
linking, it's dead. Make sure you get links from pages with a
Google page rank higher than 0. A site Google rates as 0 maybe
because they are penalizing it for some reason and if you link
to it, you will get hurt as a result. Key to make this work:
Make sure links have your keywords in the anchor text and make
sure they are text, not graphical links. Make sure they are
from other relevant sites, not link farms or FFA sites. Best is
links from pages without many other links.

* Give Other Sites Your Testimonial – let them publish it on
their web site as long as they link back to you. This can get
you a one-way link from a site that would otherwise not give it
to you. Key to make this work: keep it short and to the point.

* Email Promotions - Advertise in Ezines, place ads in
someone else's email newsletters that reach your target market.
Key to make this work: track everything carefully

* Joint Ventures – Get promoted to your JV partner's customer
database by your JV partner. John Reese sold over $1 Million of
his information product in 24 hours exclusively by using joint
venture promotions from his partners sending his offer to their
customer lists. He paid his partners 50% commission on sales.
Key to make this work: know your visitor value and have a tested
and proven sales page that converts well BEFORE you contact JV
prospects.

* Get Affiliates – If selling a product, offer a commission
to affiliates to sell for you. Each affiliate's link to your
sales letter conversion page will bring you traffic and a better
search engine rank too. Key to make this work: Make it
financially attractive to your affiliates, provide all the
promotional and sales materials, give them as many tracking
codes as they want so they can track each thing they do at their
end, do the work for them and make it easy to sign up. Provide
tested emails, banners, and other tools for them to use.

* Buy Other Web Sites – Find web sites that already rank high
on your keywords, verify their traffic with the site owner and
buy their site. Make sure to get ownership of the domain – you
can let them still use their content elsewhere. Check
deleteddomains.com to see what domains you register for a few
dollars that their owners have let expire. Key to make this
work: Check Google page rank, Alexa rank and number of back
links for any site before you buy it. (One marketer I
know challenged some SEO experts to see who could get ranked
highest on a given term in 24 hours – he won, the techies did a
lot of things, but the marketer just bought the site that was
# 1)

And lastly, the one everyone usually starts with...

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Lots of technical issues and
you should hire an expert to do it for you. Anyone who
guarantees high rankings is a fraud because no one can guarantee
Google or Yahoo will do anything and the rules change constantly.
(They will guarantee some key word like your company name, but
not a competitive word that would do you any good). How your
site is designed is the key to this.

The big 3 of SEO are:

* Content
* Relevant one-way incoming links with good Google PR
* Proper site design.

Everything listed in the 10 points above helps with content and
providing one-way links, so all you need to add is proper site
design. Key to make this work: don't think one page site, think
a site with hundreds of optimized pages all tightly themed and
relevant to one target market. Make sure to get someone ethical
and competent. People publishing articles on MarketingSherpa.com
or SiteProNews.com are typically good.

================================================================
Article by Joseph McVoy, President, Profitable Marketing Systems,
LLC, 1100 Nautilus Court, Lafayette, CO 80026
Ph: 720-890-8760, Fax: 303-604-6839 Email: joe@joemcvoy.com
http://www.profitablemarketingsystems.com
================================================================

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Realtor web sites

This is a very tough market to work with here in Cañon due to the fact that ONE and only ONE IDX provider is available to the brokers for their websites.

IDX (Internet Data Exchange) means that the realtor's association sends MLS info to a vendor who then charges a fee to the broker/office/agent who has a web site and wants to display their listings along with MLS.

Sorry, folks, but that's so 'old Cañon' to me. Why would any association NOT be willing to offer choices to its members?

So in the end, from my perspective, even though the clients pay me good money for a custom site so that they'll stand out from the crowd, the listings portion of their site (the most important) will look like everyone else's in town and even with all my extraordinary powers of web design and development, there's not a darn thing to be done about it...at the moment.

RGAR beware - the times they are a-changin'!

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Canon City Fire Protection District Preliminary


Here's a screenshot of the preliminary layout for the local fire dept site and here's a link to the page. The Chief likes the look, and he's gathering additional feedback before we proceed. For a city official, this guy is sharp, not to mention personable. They could take a few lessons at city hall.

We'll be hosting the site on their own server, which I'm excited about as it will mean more flexibility. Commercial hosting tries (only occasionally succeeding) to fit packages to a broad market and that means they can't trust any of their customers not to do any damage to their servers. I'm looking forward to working on CCFPD. Stay tuned to watch the project proceed.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Fw: Royal Gorge Anglers' Newsletter

I wanted to post this copy of the Royal Gorge Anglers' Newsletter. This is goes out to Bill's 2200+ opt-in list EVERY WEEK, and has been very successful for him.

All my customers would find the same success if they only took the 20-30 minutes each week (or bi-weekly, or monthly) to send something like this out. It drives a lot of INTERESTED traffic to his web site, and makes his readers feel as if he's speaking to them.

I get so many complaints from customers that they don't see the traffic they want on their web site, and yet, they are unwilling to put any effort towards updating the content, or staying in touch with the customers they do have. I read an article last week that said, according to studies, 64% of businesses who pay for SEO work and consultations don't follow through on the recommendations made by the professional. 64%!?! That's crazy!
Think about it!!

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Slow week!

While I've got plenty of work to do, I've been spending a lot of time at the hospital with hubby after knee replacement. I've got to get with the program this week though and get a lot accomplished.

Almost have the Fire Dept layout done, am having trouble with the UL/LI nav menu. That's the goal for today.