Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 75% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.
In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords should be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.
In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or “handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.
Link Exchanges
Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. Google uses an algorithm to determine a page’s rank, which is determined by the number of other sites linking to it; and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link from them will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.
There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange. If they agree, you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run; as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.
One back link from a PR8 site is worth hundreds of back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site. Each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.
A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites linking to THAT page. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!
Blogs
As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.
The major blogs are updated on a daily basis, which is very important to Google’s algorithm, which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as http://EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog in the resource section of the article.
As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number of sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site; generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.
In Summary
These are just a few of the more effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, EZine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.
Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a lifetime customer.
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Showing posts with label page. Show all posts
Showing posts with label page. Show all posts
Testing Your Way to Website Profits
Submitted By: Corte Swearingen
Testing has always an important part in marketing and advertising. Companies that took the time to test were the ones that were able to zero in on offers yielding high conversion rates.
The problem is that, for the small business owner, large scale direct mail testing is too expensive and not practical. The solution? Use your website as a means to quickly and easily test page elements, finding the combination that maximizes conversion rate.
We are going to look at two basic types of web testing; A/B split testing and multivariate testing.
A/B Split Testing
This is the most basic type of test you can perform. The way it works is by splitting your web traffic evenly across two different versions of a page. Let’s say you have a landing page for the sale of your ebook. You get decent sales from the page but you want to find a way to improve those conversions.
With an A/B split test, you would test an alternate version of your sales page against the current one. A program works in the background to deliver the current version of the page to 50% of visitors and the new test page to the other 50%. After a set period of time, you see which page is converting better and use that as your new landing page (as well as the page to beat in future A/B split tests.)
One disadvantage of A/B split testing is that you can really only test one item at a time. For example, suppose you test a page by changing both the heading and the image. After the test, you find the page has a 25% higher conversion rate than the original. What you don’t know is whether it was the new heading, the new image, or the combination of the two that made the difference.
Because of this, A/B split testing is typically done by changing only one variable at a time. This means that you cannot test variable interactions and combinations. So, A/B split testing is best for when you only want to test a single page element. But what if you need to test multiple factors? That’s a job for multivariate testing.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing allows you to simultaneously test several variables on a page. This allows for variable interactive testing, something that just can’t be done with A/B Split testing.
For example, with multivariate testing, you could test a page’s headline, images, pricing and guarantees all at the same time. Each of your visitors would see a different combination of elements and, given enough time, you would see the combination that produced the highest conversion rate.
You would then change out your existing sales page with the one the produced the highest conversion rate from your multivariate test. Because you are testing multiple elements, you need to have a good amount of traffic coming to your site to complete the test in a reasonable time. If you don’t have at least 200 unique visitors per day, then stick with A/B split testing until your traffic increases.
The Google Website Optimizer
The Google Website Optimizer is a free program allows you to run both A/B split and multivariate tests on your website. You’ve just have to give credit to the folks at Google. They have made it possible for the small business owner to use sophisticated conversion rate tools without the need to purchase expensive software or on-site consultants.
Check out the Google Website Optimizer homepage today for instructions on setting up your tests. Make no mistake, testing your landing pages is the number one way to increase your conversion rates. Start testing your way to higher profits today. Read More .....
Testing has always an important part in marketing and advertising. Companies that took the time to test were the ones that were able to zero in on offers yielding high conversion rates.
The problem is that, for the small business owner, large scale direct mail testing is too expensive and not practical. The solution? Use your website as a means to quickly and easily test page elements, finding the combination that maximizes conversion rate.
We are going to look at two basic types of web testing; A/B split testing and multivariate testing.
A/B Split Testing
This is the most basic type of test you can perform. The way it works is by splitting your web traffic evenly across two different versions of a page. Let’s say you have a landing page for the sale of your ebook. You get decent sales from the page but you want to find a way to improve those conversions.
With an A/B split test, you would test an alternate version of your sales page against the current one. A program works in the background to deliver the current version of the page to 50% of visitors and the new test page to the other 50%. After a set period of time, you see which page is converting better and use that as your new landing page (as well as the page to beat in future A/B split tests.)
One disadvantage of A/B split testing is that you can really only test one item at a time. For example, suppose you test a page by changing both the heading and the image. After the test, you find the page has a 25% higher conversion rate than the original. What you don’t know is whether it was the new heading, the new image, or the combination of the two that made the difference.
Because of this, A/B split testing is typically done by changing only one variable at a time. This means that you cannot test variable interactions and combinations. So, A/B split testing is best for when you only want to test a single page element. But what if you need to test multiple factors? That’s a job for multivariate testing.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate testing allows you to simultaneously test several variables on a page. This allows for variable interactive testing, something that just can’t be done with A/B Split testing.
For example, with multivariate testing, you could test a page’s headline, images, pricing and guarantees all at the same time. Each of your visitors would see a different combination of elements and, given enough time, you would see the combination that produced the highest conversion rate.
You would then change out your existing sales page with the one the produced the highest conversion rate from your multivariate test. Because you are testing multiple elements, you need to have a good amount of traffic coming to your site to complete the test in a reasonable time. If you don’t have at least 200 unique visitors per day, then stick with A/B split testing until your traffic increases.
The Google Website Optimizer
The Google Website Optimizer is a free program allows you to run both A/B split and multivariate tests on your website. You’ve just have to give credit to the folks at Google. They have made it possible for the small business owner to use sophisticated conversion rate tools without the need to purchase expensive software or on-site consultants.
Check out the Google Website Optimizer homepage today for instructions on setting up your tests. Make no mistake, testing your landing pages is the number one way to increase your conversion rates. Start testing your way to higher profits today. Read More .....
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