Since instigating proper SEO techniques I have seen my web site visitors increase by over 1500%. My conversion rates have also gone from a meagre 0.5% to a very healthy 8%. How has this been achieved? By following seven simple guidelines which have not only seen my visitor figures sky rocket but also the web sites position in the major search engines has gradually improved until it sits on page one for all the important search categories and many surprising ones also.

So what are these seven basic rules I have followed?

1. Develop as many pages as is possible all with good and different content on. The content should be different but obviously related. The content should be written for the visitor not for the search engines. It has to be good sales copy because you are trying to sell a product or a service virtually in an instant so it must grab the attention of the visitor..

2. Develop reciprocal links with related sites. They can be in exactly the same field as you if you are providing a service so long as they are situated away from your area and not directly in competition with you. Do not worry about the page rank of these sites as it is more important that they are relevant to yours service. If you have products which are sold worldwide then it is not quite so simple and you will have to link with sites that have some relevance but not a direct one, otherwise you would be linking with your competitors.

3. Place your link in as many directories as is possible. Most are free and do not require a link back but even if they do it is of no consequence. Do it. Some may require a small fee. It is entirely up to you whether you are prepared to pay this fee. Be careful however because you could end up paying out large sums in total if you do not keep a careful check on the monies paid out. Be selective.

4. Do not direct all your links back to the homepage. Spread the links around the relevant pages.

5. Write articles and submit them to the article distributors. This will give you an ever increasing number of backlinks to your website as the articles get picked up and published on weblogs, websites and ezines. You could find a good article ending up in some very surprising places.

6. Develop a weblog alongside and as part of your website. If this is updated daily then you will ensure that the search engines regularly visit your site and pick up all the updates.

7. Add additional content to your website at least once per week. Do not allow any of your web pages to remain static for any length of time. Even minor changes are good.

All of these things enacted together should see your site climbing through the rankings. As the site progresses towards the first page you will see an ever increasing number of visitors arriving at your site. How many of those are converted into customers depends entirely upon the strength of the copy on the pages and whether it is enticing people to become your customers. It is utterly pointless having many hundreds of visitors to your site if they all depart without interacting in some way with your content.

David Andrew Smith is the owner of http://www.wesparkle.co.uk a commercial cleaning services company.

Until recently, audio, video, Flash, and static graphics were all independent components used as enhancements to text based messages on the Internet. We’re now seeing technological breakthroughs that allow us to combine these various elements into exciting web-based presentations that not only simulate our television experience but also take us to a whole new level of user interactivity. This technology is called Rich Media.

Rich Media is comprised of a combination of audio, video, graphics, and other techniques that, when put together, create an Internet experience that is personal, relevant, and largely unmatched by other print or broadcast media.

Rich Media is in its infancy but companies cannot afford to ignore its’ potential impact as a business tool. The “dot bomb” crash in April, 2000, notwithstanding, the Internet is still the fastest growing medium in history and continues to attract thousands of new users everyday.

Most of us come to the Web to perform specific tasks. We send mail, we read the news, and we research topics of interest. We also come to the Web to browse and shop for goods and services. The Internet, unlike other forms of media, allows us to take immediate action. We’re urged to click on banners, click on text links, write letters to the editor, create greeting cards, and upload our family pictures for the world to see. Is it any wonder that we have higher expectations of the Web than we do from browsing the newspaper or passively watching TV?

We are only beginning to understand how Internet advertising works and how it differs from that in the offline world. We do know that we’ve come a long way from the traditional banner ad which has been steadily losing its’ effectiveness. When banner ads first appeared, they were a novelty, and click-thru rates were satisfyingly high. As the banner ad proliferated, and websites became increasingly cluttered, click-thru rates plummeted forcing advertisers to look for new ways to engage consumers.

Much has been written and said about the state of e-commerce and the emerging trend that puts consumers in a position of power as never before. The need to service, retain, and communicate with these consumers in more meaningful ways has provided the impetus behind the Rich Media movement.

Not only can we use Rich Media to attract consumers; we can craft messages that invite the visitor to interact with the message to obtain additional information or to take a desired action. Purchases could be made directly in the ad or banner window. A user could subscribe directly to a newsletter. Games could be demonstrated. Streaming audio or video clips could be viewed. And, all of this could be done without ever leaving the publisher’s site. (A huge advantage for site owners.)

As the visitor enters a site, Rich Media can be deployed to inform him of weekly specials or product specific promotions. One click could then take him directly to the place where he can obtain further information about that product and order it. If the product is a complicated one requiring demonstration, he could be given the option of viewing a Flash or streaming presentation of the product being assembled. Text boxes could be synchronized with the demo to scroll frequently asked questions and answers about the product.

Pop-up windows, albeit annoying to some, have proven to be an effective method of engaging the consumer. These windows, known as intersitials or supersitials, are done with streaming audio, video or Flash, and usually appear when the user’s browser is loading another page making that user a captive audience.

This kind of interactivity is what makes Rich Media advertising truly unique.

Many potential advertisers hesitate about venturing into Rich Media due to bandwidth constraints and the lack of widely available “high speed” connections. But broadband services are starting to spread, and, by 2004, 30 millions households should have broadband access. Business users will drive the trend. As more people experience media delivered via broadband in the workplace, they will demand that same experience on their home computers. (Currently there are 30 million workplace computers with broadband access compared to 4 million households.) *

One of the issues that have worried Web publishers is how to create “stickiness.” Rich Media, used to deliver content as well as advertising, provides the tool. People are sensory by nature and respond more emotionally to sound and moving objects than they do to still images and static text. Since most purchasing is done on an emotional level, Rich Media presentations often provide that extra impetus to close the sale.

As site publishers and advertisers become more familiar with Rich Media and its’ interactive nature, we’ll begin to see more sophisticated methods of engaging the visitor emerge. Using extensive databases based on consumer preferences and lifestyles, advertisers will be able to deliver highly targeted messages. (We’ve already seen this begin to happen as Internet radio stations insert customized messages to generate advertising revenue.) Retailers will employ Rich Media techniques to offer better customer service and to fine-tune their product offerings. Educators will use it to make their sites more meaningful and add interactivity to workbooks and lessons.

It’s clear that advertisers and site publishers will have to weigh the costs of producing Rich Media versus the benefits that they hope to receive. As technology moves inexorably forward, however, and bandwidth becomes more plentiful, users will come to have higher and more sophisticated expectations of what they see and hear on the Web. The opportunities afforded by Rich Media – interactivity, sound, motion, and text all bundled into one smoothly delivered presentation – cannot be ignored.

* Cahners In-Stat group at http://www.instat.com

Ronni Rhodes is the owner of WBC Imaging, an Internet company that specializes in web site enhancement utilizing streaming media technology. With her husband, Don, a digital media engineer, they work with companies to incorporate streaming as part of successful and meaningful sales and marketing programs.

Please direct all questions and comments to: Ronni@wbcimaging.com 520-742-5780 http://www.wbcimaging.com

In 8 years as an SEO specialist, I’ve only had two clients who didn’t resent buying links. Most simply rejected the whole idea even though the success of their company might be on the line.

Part of the myth of Search engine optimization is that rankings should be free and based on the quality of the site. The concept of paid links just doesn’t fit into the common belief.

In investigating the success of competitors, I notice many of them buy links extensively across a wide range of sites. Several buy from a major portal at $6000 per month. This gives them a huge advantage that is almost impossible to overcome with even the best optimization work.

Surprised? Well Google changed its algorithm with the introduction of Trustrank, and that means that even text link advertising from highly trusted web sites can indeed have an influence on rankings. It seems Google has given up on the idea that they should eliminate all paid advertising influence in rankings. That’s because nearly every link on many web sites is monetized. That means nothing is free or philanthropic in the search engine world. It’s given because something is gained from it, usually money. If you want a ranking boost from these major portals or high Trustrank sites, you’re going to pay for it. But just think of the boost in Brand Image.

The issue for an optimizer is assessing the value of the site, page and context of the link placement itself. And, of course how many links you’ll get.

The key is knowing relatively, what the Trustrank level of the site is. This is an important skill in your SEO arsenal. Trustrank is determined by the quality of links leading to a site. It apparently can be affected by outbound links as well. Trustrank is calculated using the inverse of Pagerank (Google’s popularity factor). A low pagerank suggests the site is not linked to or is a spam page. The lower the pagerank the more likely the page is spam. Additionally, if your site’s links come from low pagerank sites, Trustrank may calculate that your site is also high on the spam scale.

Therefore buying lots of links from low pagerank sites may not help your cause. If those sites are on the wrong topic, it will not generate the value you need to rank well.

Text link advertising then can and will continue to affect rankings. Search engine space is competitive and those who are willing to pay the ante, are going to get in the game and play better. Text link advertising isn’t necessarily evil, even in Google Evil definitions. It’s just part of the new search engine optimization landscape. It is used skillfully as part of the optimization mix.

Scott White is president of the Brand Identity Guru. He can be reached at 508-238-4347 or at swhite@brandidentityguru.com.

Many people, in a rush to spike sales through the roof, think too big and end up completely missing out on one of the best free marketing opportunities on the net: discussion forums. Instead of focusing on individual sales, they go immediately for ads that promise thousands of visitors, pay-per-click search engines that could potentially expose them to thousands, and even sloppily-produced and sometimes fraudulent spam submission programs.

Even though it is essential to increase your rating with search engines, to purchase pay-per-clicks, and to participate in link exchanges and banner exchanges, discussion forums can often provide an extra, non-conventional sales medium to your campaign that allows you to quickly pull in customers with personal contact and conversational presentations of your product.

You can find these boards by searching for the specific product you sell and then adding the word “messageboard” or “forum” or “discussion forum” after it in quotations. For instance, I sell marketing tools and online business-builders on one of my websites, so when I look for forums to market my products in, I go to google or overture and type in “business messageboard” or “marketing forum.” Find as many of these highly-trafficked forums as you can and sign-up. Some of them will require you to confirm it through your email address.

Before you begin actually posting on the boards, you need to lay down some general rules of approach. I would suggest the following methods, but you can decide for yourself what you think is appropriate for your business and situation.

These are my rules:

When I market on discussion forums, I always try to provide more for the board than I take away from it in potential sales. Not only is it ethical, but it’s also good business. When people ask questions, I use the expertise I’ve gained from Internet business-building and marketing to legitimately answer their questions. If I signed up for every board I could find, and then slapped a boilerplate marketing pitch on every site, I’d just get ignored or banned.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to legitimately get involved with the forum community. It is definitely a goldmine for highly-targeted customers and it is possibly the fastest marketing medium on the Internet, but it is also very important to respect that it doesn’t primarily serve as an ad host. If you stay low-key and helpful, people will respect your opinion more and will want to see what you have to offer. This is where your signature comes in…

When you create your account for most boards, they will give you the option of creating a signature, which they will attach to the bottom of every post you make. This is the best way to pull customers from messageboards–by alluring them with your signature. Write something catchy or intriguing and then slap a link to your site or email address on it. Remember: the more helpful you are (the more times you post advice/hints), the more times your signature appears… and the more potential hits you’ll get to your site.

Next, you’ll want to decide when it’s appropriate to market outside of your signature. I personally only market in three situations outside of my signature in forum discussions. If a person asks a question about a specific product or service I market, then I’ll respond because I’m qualified to do so and because I truly believe they should use my products to achieve the best possible results. If there’s a discussion thread where everyone is marketing products and it is generally accepted, I will market my product if a) it is related and b) I have already posted several times on the messageboard. Also, I will market my product whenever there is a forum solely dedicated to marketing your products.

Last, you’ll want to decide how much original content you want to post and how much you want to be boilerplate. You’ll want to find a healthy combination of the two to avoid being called a spammer or wasting too much time marketing on forums. I personally have several boilerplate ads that I have saved for signature files, ad-only forums, and personal product marketing discussions. I keep them all saved on a word file and I pull them up to copy-and-paste when I’m spending a night of advertising on messageboards.

Discussion forums can drive buying customers to your site faster than any other marketing medium. Do not abuse them, establish a reputation in your forums, streamline the process. . . and your work will come back to you quickly in profit.

Isaiah Hull publishes Work At Home Right Now, a fresh and informative newsletter about making money on the internet and using proven methods to increase your site’s traffic and profitability. If you’re looking for time-saving and money-saving tools, as well as honest business advice, come by and subscribe at http://www.workathomerightnow.net

We all know the many "free" traffic producing avenues. We all know about free classified ads, traffic exchanges, web site submitters, banner exchanges, link exchanges, but how many of you have ever thought of this FREE traffic avenue! In the past I have tried, I think, every free method of advertising, and have also had some success with the variety of free advertising resources. I have also tried different paid advertising sources. They have been very effective in building my business, but many times have proven to costly,especially when you are just starting out in a new business. So I was always on a quest to find new and better ways to advertise. Then I met a person on line with the secret!!

Now, your probably wondering what I could possibly be referring to when I claim to have a source of free advertising that is not commonly practiced. What could I possibly be doing to bring traffic to my website that many other marketers are not prating. What do I know that most of you don’t know. Well, I am going to give you the secret right now!
 
Some time ago, I met a person who was pretty effective in online advertising. After many email correspondences, and being told of all the free ways to advertise, he confided in me. He told me one of the most effective, and FREE, ways to advertise your business  is to write articles. At that time I thought he was crazy!! Writing articles? How on earth can writing articles promote my business? After I corresponded with this person, I discovered the "how" in my question. He gave me alot of incite into this method of adverting. Now I will share this knowledge with you!
 
Here is the hidden source of traffic in writing an article. When  I have completed the article, I write a few sentences about myself and include my website address or email address. (Please see bottom of this article for an example.) Ok, what do I do after I write an article? There are many ezine owners that would love to print your article. Search out ezines that would fit the category in which your article would be of interest to the readers. Contact the owner. Or you can find places that you can submit your article to which is like a data base for ezine owners to go to when looking for content for their newsletter.

Secondly, there are webmasters who would love to put your article on their site. By using your article, they don’t have to do all the "pencil pushing" work, and they get good content for the web site. If the have a good web site, with alot of good info then they will get more visitors, and happy visitors at that! Meanwhile these people will read your article and some of them will visit your web site. In this way, you are giving something to someone and getting something in return….FREE traffic. Placing these articles in as many places as you can find will  increase the number of visitors to your site.

What can you write about? Anything!!  Write about anything you can. Maybe you have some good cooking tips. Write an article about your tips. Find appropriate web sites, newsletters, and ezines to submit the article to. Or maybe you are a mechanic, and can give some do it yourself tips. Write out your tips, and again find appropriate places to submit your article to. Maybe you don’t feel like you have anything to write about. How about the vacation spot you visited last summer? Write a review! You see there is so much information on the web. There are so many sites looking for content about such a variety of topics, you can write about anything and find places to submit your article.
 
Now stop and think about it! If you know anything about ezines, you will know some of them have 1,000’s and 10’s of thousands of readers. Some may only have hundreds of readers, but multiple that by 5 or 10 and the number of folks being exposed to your web site is quite alot! Now maybe your are starting to see why writing articles are such a good source of free traffic! So Get Started!

Gather your thoughts

Write out notes

Check your spelling and grammar

Write using details and descriptive word.
 
Search for editors and webmasters wanting your article
 
Submit you article to the databases
 
Place the article on your own web page and advertise the free info!
 
Be creative
 
I hope this information has been helpful to you. I hope you will put this information to work for you. I hope you will discover for yourself the wonderful marketing tool writing articles can be for you. Above all I hope you can look back one day and say like I do, "Boy am I glad that guy shared this information with me!" I am so thankful for that person taking the time to teach me about writing articles. He spent time and effort teaching me. Now I hope with the time and effort I have taken to write this, I have taught you something you will appreciate.

Please keep in mind, the keep to be a success in any business you need patience! A business takes time to grow.You must be willing to stick with it. Begin your business with giving it at least 1 year. One full year of dedicated commitment. Work and Patience will pay off! If I can be of any help to you in your online marketing endeavors, drop me an email  taffin@tnni.net

All Success to you + God Bless,
Tracy Finney

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Tracy Finney has been learning the do’s and don’ts of online marketing since the year 2000. She is a Stay at Home Mom, and successful Marketer. She is soon to be a published author. Please visit her site for more info about her book. http://www.tracyfinney.com

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A few years ago, search engine placement was arranged by your average Web designer and/or Webmaster. The Webmaster would simply submit a site to search engines manually or use rudimentary software that was widely available.

Keyword relevance was largely a matter of link popularity and the Webmaster assigning a simple keyword meta-tag to each page of your site. The system used to work reasonably well, or so it seemed. That is no longer the case.

Today, submission to the major search engines like Google is largely irrelevant, although there is a complex mix of PFI (pay for inclusion) and PFP (pay for performance, sponsored links, PPC ads) that require complex submission of details.

Today’s Methodology

In today’s Internet economy, sophisticated and complex programs - called spiders - surf the Web looking at the source code of Web pages. They sort through the complex web of formatting tags, programming script, multi-media, page titles, and content that the user may or may not see, to ascertain how to rank each page of your site for each and every word and word combination that it finds.

These spiders index the words of each page found and add it to the engine’s database, making them available as keywords for search engine searchers. In this new environment, sophisticated software programs that analyze the various search engine algorithms and how they rank selected pages have moved to the forefront of search engine placement.

This has spawned a large industry of SEO (search engine optimisation and marketing) experts and specialist SEM firms.

What Does Keyword Based Marketing Offer?

If implemented correctly, SEO can offer a higher return on investment than nearly any other marketing strategy (online or offline). Placing high in the search engine ranking positions (SERPs) is a great way to attract first time visitors. Placement in the search engines can largely determine the "reach" of your online marketing strategy.

The stakes in this battle are being raised all the time as the number of users going online increases - which in the U.S. alone approaches 100 million - with over 60% of those users spending some 48 BILLION dollars per year for online shopping (Greenspan, 2002, cyberatlas.com).

With broadband prices in Australia falling rapidly and the rate of Internet takeup extraordinarily high, the Australian consumer is showing similar enthusiasm for online sales. Unfortunately, many potential buyers - some say as many as 70% - give up because they cannot find the good sites to shop at, because they are poorly keyword indexed or the actual site has poor navigation and design.

When any business is making plans to improve their Search Engine positions, they need to understand that optimisation of your site for the Search Engines is not a one-shot job. It requires ongoing monitoring and tweaking in order to keep ahead of both the competition AND the changes the Search Engines make to how they rank sites.

Any comprehensive Web marketing plan should:

(1) Promote your web site based on the (optimised) content of your site and knowledge of the relevant marketplace;

(2) Utilise data of how the average search engine user actually looks for information on your site - including alternative terms, synonyms, common phrasing, etc;

(3) Include internal and external link building with relevant sites and relevant keywords;

(4) Regular reporting of search engine positioning, general Internet visibility and actual visitor statistics/analytics and recommendation for improvements.

Every serious Web site owner should be on a Web marketing plan that is definitely more than just a submission or reporting service. Set a monthly budget and take action.

We’ve seen many of our clients benefit from the ongoing relationship we have developed with them through our web marketing plans. Plenty of page 1 rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN are not uncommon over time, as we monitor and tweak their sites for the Search Engines.

However, in almost all cases, those clients would have never achieved and then maintained those high rankings if they had not had someone in the know keeping track of how their site is ranking, and making changes where ever needed.

It’s like advertising in the Yellow Pages really. If you don’t pay to have your ad included, you don’t get an entry in the book, and eventually the calls to your business start to drop off as people update to the newest edition.

Search Engine Optimisation / Marketing is the same. The Internet is NOT static - it’s always changing and evolving, and in order for your site to get and maintain good rankings around the keywords that are important to you, you have to keep someone on the job on a regular basis who knows how to react to the changes happening.

The Return On Investment (ROI) for good SEO/SEM services is very high, compared to traditional advertising and marketing. According to Google’s statistics, Search advertising is up to 20 times CHEAPER per lead, compared to (for example) Direct Mail. For any company spending money on advertising, this statistic should be of EXTREME interest! After all, what company doesn’t want to reduce their cost of customer acquisition?

That’s what SEO/SEM companies are supposed to be about! Well, at least at our company, we are - I can’t speak for our competitors. Before you hire an SEO/SEM company, ask what their plan is for the ongoing optimisation of your site. If they don’t have a plan, run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit and hang onto your money.

Charles Ryder is the CEO of WCR Internet Marketing, a specialist Australian Search Engine Optimisation company. For a free site analysis, visit http://www.wcr-internet-marketing.com.au

What costs less than a penny an impression, drives qualified traffic to your web site, positions your company as an authority, helps boost search engine rankings, generates buzz, and may even result in traditional media coverage? Three words: optimized press releases.

An average optimized release will:

• Be read by well over 100,000 people (journalists, industry analysts and prospective customers).
• Be published on more than 850 other web sites.
• Have an average cost per read of less than 1 cent (or a CPM of about $8 for you media folks).

Want to try it? Here are four basic steps to successfully optimize an existing press release.

• Decide which search terms to target with your press release. Search terms are the words and phrases your target audience might type into a search engine in order to find your web site. There’s a definite art to selecting search terms, but you can get a lot of good information from Wordtracker.

What happens next?

• The release shows up nearly instantly in both Google News and Yahoo News. These news engines have over 27 million unique visitors a month in total. Often, it’ll show up in regular search results too.

Consider extending your traditional PR efforts to the online world. Optimizing press releases is a cost-effective, measurable tactic for increasing your position in search engine rankings and building traffic to your site. We’ve been doing it for over a year and a half - let us know if we can help you reap the benefits of this powerful marketing medium.

Stacy Williams, a search engine marketing specialist, is founder and Managing Partner of Atlanta search engine placement company Prominent Placement, Inc. Williams has a combined 16 years of experience and education in marketing, having overseen web site development projects and traffic generation campaigns since 1995, and has been doing search engine marketing since 1998.

A member of the Technology Alliance of Georgia and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, Stacy Williams is a frequent lecturer on search engine marketing. She has written articles for Digitrends, SEO Today, Competitive Edge and iMarketing News. She also presents regularly at each of the U.S.-based Search Engine Strategies Conferences.

Behind every good web page are codes only the search engines read. These codes help the search engines match your page with requests from their searchers.

There are two types of codes - or "meta tags" - that you care about. One is keywords and the other is the description.

Keywords are words and phrases associated with your site. If you’re selling a book on how to housebreak your dog, for example, your keywords might include "puppy, housebreaking, house break, paper train, dogs, puppies" and others.

There are several rules of thumb you want to follow when working with keywords:

1. List the words in the order of importance. Some search engines only take the first 10 words; others the first 50 words, etc. You can’t have too many keywords, but it is important to list them in order.

2. Use multiple spellings of the word if searchers are likely to use different forms. For example, puppy is different from puppies in the eyes of a search engine. Likewise, housebreak and house break are different.

3. Use the plural. If someone looks for "dog" it will be found in the word "dogs." On the other hand, if they look for "dogs" it will not be found in "dog." Be safe - use plurals.

4. Use lower case letters. With only 1 or 2 exceptions search engines ignore capitalization. So if someone looks for "Dogs" they will find "dogs." On the other hand, if they look for "dogs" they may or may not find "Dogs" since the search engine might consider it a proper name.

5. Use the language of your customers. If you’re a professional you might search for "canines" but most customers are more likely to look for "dog." So while you can include the more technical term, do so last in the list.

Your description is the other meta tag you want to write. Your description is what shows in the results of the search engine. It’s generally 2-3 lines long.

What happens if you don’t include a description? Often the search engine will make up its own description - taking the first several lines of your web page or the first few lines of code. Neither option is as attractive as the description you will write.

Remember that the purpose of the description is to make the site sound so attractive to your target audience that they want to click on your link in the search engine. So your best benefits and reasons why they want to visit your site should be in the description.

Finally, to really help the search engines find your site, use a descriptive title on each page. The title is what shows in the top bar of your browser. It’s what is listed in Favorites when someone sets a favorite or bookmarks your site. So you want the title to tell people what they will find when they visit the page.

For every page in your site, you should have a unique title, keywords for that specific page, and a traffic-pulling description. Yes, it is time-consuming to do that, but it’s worth the effort. You’ll be more likely to lead searchers to your page when they can see what they want in your title, your keywords or your description.

Dr. Jeanette Cates is an Internet strategist who works with experts who are ready to turn their knowledge and their websites into Gold. Her reputation as a speaker and trainer has earned her the title of The Technology Tamer. Jeanette shares her news and views in OnlineSuccessNews.com

I just reviewed a new website and I’m in shock. Or, maybe, I’m just depressed about my failure to convince people to do what I tell them so they can make money.

I’m not talking about complicated marketing strategies. Most websites, marketing and the like, fail on the basic stuff.

For example, this webmaster wants to sell products. He wants to make money online. He’s got a bunch of good products at great prices. I know this because he told me. No one else knows this after visiting his website. He’s kept it a secret.

Let’s go back to the basics and see if your website passes these simple tests …

What is the purpose of your website? If your immediate answer is anything other than "to make sales," I hope you don’t own a business website. Otherwise, let me pound this into your brain:

You are in business to make sales. That’s where the money comes from.

When people visit your main page, what’s the first thing they see? If all I see is a nice long message about what a great guy you are (who cares?) and how you want to run a good business (I hope so or you should not be in business) and if I have any questions, I can send you an email (I knew that anyway) and how you look forward to doing business with me (of course you do, that’s why you have this website), what’s the point?

I came to your website in response to an ad or a referral so I’m looking to buy something. Why are you wasting my time? I want you to sell me the product. Take my money.

Pick any large retailer that does big business on the Internet. What’s on the front of their website? Pictures of stuff to buy. Links to buy more stuff. They want your money. They are relentlessly working to get it.

Go to my website for "Mining Gold" at:  http://www.ipcgold.com/ad/100/CD3839  and read the first thing you see.

You can’t miss it. I made it large - bold - and incredibly obvious. I make you an offer to invite you to do business with me. I lay out all the information in a carefully ordered flow.

No wasted words. No extraneous links. No stories about my family vacation. No comments on the World Cup. This is a site for business.

I’ll have well over 200,000 unique visitors this month and I want to capture their attention immediately.

Recent stats show the average time spent viewing a web page was 52 seconds. But, how long do you spend viewing a web page when you either get bored or can’t quickly find what you want?

You’ve taken your own small business idea and put it up on the web to make money. Don’t be afraid to let people know you are running a business and don’t be afraid to ask for their money.

If you can only remember one thing from this message, remember this:

If you’re going to spend money to promote your website, you’d better make sure people know what to do when they arrive.

Yours in success,

Shawn M. Casey

Internet Millionaire Shawn Casey’s "Mining Gold On the Internet" is one of the best selling Internet books with over 85,000 copies sold. In "Mining Gold", Shawn reveals the same step-by-step strategies he uses to create millions in Internet sales => http://www.ipcgold.com/ad/100/CD3839  Benefit from Shawn’s 7 years of Internet experience and learn from someone who has actually made millions online.

Using search marketing to place your web site in front of people searching for what you’re selling is no longer a revolutionary concept. Everyone knows that search engine marketing is not only incredibly effective, but also an affordable means to drive conversions from hot prospects who are ready to buy.

But what about prospects who are, well, a bit lukewarm? Is there any value in using search marketing earlier in the buying cycle, before the searcher has their credit card in hand?

Several studies have shown that the answer to this question is a resounding “yes.” This is true whether you’re a B2C or B2B marketer, and whether you’re selling paperback books or technical solutions with a price tag in the six figures.

On the consumer side, an Enquiro study found that the percentage of people who would use a search engine during the various stages of the buying cycle are:

• 9% for Awareness
• 68% for Consideration or Research
• 43% for Decision
• 28% for Purchase

Let’s look at an example. A consumer who is ready to purchase might search for “sony ericsson s700i,” which is a “brand” search term. But before he decides that’s the type of cell phone he wants, he might search for a “generic” search term, such as “mp3 player cell phone.” This would be during the consideration or research phase.

comScore found similar results in research done across several consumer categories. They found that while consumers using branded search terms were roughly 30% more likely to purchase online during that session as compared to searchers using generic terms, generic terms resulted in the greatest number of total purchases — over 60%. This is simply because many more people use generic terms. A majority of searchers never use brand terms; instead, they rely only on generic terms.

What is the key takeaway for B2C marketers? You need to be visible on search engines throughout your customers’ buying cycle. If you’re only found when they’re ready to purchase – if you’re only visible on brand search terms — you are probably missing opportunities.

Let’s turn our attention to business-to-business marketers. Do the same rules apply here? Absolutely. Not only did Enquiro find that 95% of corporate purchasing agents use the web to research products and services before selection, but they also found that 64% said a search engine would be the first place they’d turn early in the buying cycle.

This is a typical buying cycle for a business buyer:

• Needs identification (I have a problem – is there a solution available?)
• Requirement specification (What type of solution best fits my problem?)
• Research & evaluation (Which brand of solution best fits my problem?)
• Selection (Where will I buy the brand that I’ve chosen?)

The buying process can be more complex on the business side since there’s often more than one person involved in the decision. Savvy marketers will not only try to hit each stage of the buying cycle, but they’ll also try to reach each person involved in the purchasing decision.

Often, the person feeling the pain in the organization is not the ultimate decision-maker. However, this person is important because he is the one who identifies the problem, researches solutions, and usually “sells in” the chosen provider or brand to the ultimate decision-maker. This influencer’s searching behavior will most likely be quite a bit more in-depth than the decision-maker’s, spanning a lengthier period of time throughout the process.

The decision-maker may only run a few quick searches on the chosen provider’s company or brand name in order to do a credibility check. And, since 55% of web users (business or consumer) expect to find top brands in the few top search engine results, you’d better ensure that you’re easily found by the decision-maker who’s performing her due diligence.

What is the key takeaway for B2B marketers? Like B2C marketers, you need to be visible on search engines throughout your customers’ buying cycle. There is also an additional level of complexity in that you must be found easily by different people involved in the buying process, each of whom may be searching with different agendas.

Finally, let’s talk timing. On the consumer side, comScore found that only 15% of people made a purchase online in the same session in which they began a search. This means that 85% of purchases occurred later, with nearly 40% of all purchases occurring between five and 12 weeks after the first search was conducted.

On the business side, Enquiro found, not surprisingly, that the budget for the particular item affected the length of time between the search and the purchase date. More than 80% of items with a price tag of less than $500 were bought within a month of the search date. However, 89% of items with a price tag of more than $50,000 took place between one and 12 months after the initial search date.

What is the key takeaway for all marketers? As wonderful as web analytics software can be – especially the packages that can trace online conversions back to their search engine sources – their data will be incomplete due to the lag time in the buying cycle. Yes, set your cookies with as long an expiration date as you can, but recognize that you’re getting more sales from search engines than your software is able to measure.

One last point is worth mentioning. Both consumer and business buyers doing online research early in the buying cycle will, ideally, learn about your brand during this process. Some of them will come back later to the search engines and search for your specific brand in order to determine where to buy. So over time, your presence on generic search terms will increase the number of searches run on brand search terms. Your search marketing campaign will, in effect, create brand awareness. With the proper analytics tools in place, you can measure this aspect of brand awareness and watch it grow along with your sales.

Sources:

• Enquiro, “Inside the Mind of the Searcher,” 2004
• Enquiro and MarketingSherpa, “The Role of Search in Business to Business Buying Decisions,” 2004
• iProspect survey, 2002
• comScore study released December 13, 2004

Stacy Williams, a search engine marketing specialist, is founder and Managing Partner of Atlanta search engine marketing firm Prominent Placement, Inc. Williams has a combined 16 years of experience and education in marketing, having overseen web site development projects and traffic generation campaigns since 1995, and has been doing search engine marketing since 1998.

A member of the Technology Alliance of Georgia and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, Stacy Williams is a frequent lecturer on search engine marketing. She has written articles for Digitrends, SEO Today, Competitive Edge and iMarketing News. She also presents regularly at each of the U.S.-based Search Engine Strategies Conferences.