Driving Traffic to Your site

There’s an interesting discussion on the BlogSquad’s blog about how domains are handled by TypePad vs. WordPress.

A TypePad link to Denise’s blogpost “Tom Antion Reveals The Secrets of HIS Success to The Blog Squad” is http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reve.html

On a WordPress blog this would be
http://www.buildabetterblog.com/2008/08/tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html

Now, which link has more keywords?

tom-antion-reve.html <-- this truncated post title
or
tom-antion-reveals-the-secrets-of-his-success-to-the-blog-squad.html <-- the full title

And, btw, you can edit these links, if you wish, to get rid of extra words such as "to, and, the" etc.

Another example, from my own blogsite
http://www.yourezinecoach.com/2008/how-to-make-money-with-email-marketing-send-email-promotions.html is also the permalink to this blog post.

On TypePad permalinks are in the form of: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/145459/32319900

Ask yourself this: do I want to build links to TypePad and building their Google Page Rank, or my own domain?

I don’t like dealing in absolutes, so I won’t say WP is better than TP, but in this particular area it shines.

What do you think?

P.S.
By commenting on this blogpost, I accidentally discovered another weak spot in TypePad, and it has to do with displaying long links in posts. Take a look at how long URLs are displayed here, in my post, then compare the same in TypePad.

First, let’s talk about your ezine, or e-newsletter. If you intend to publish an informative ezine, do not expect much direct sales from it. Why is this?

Because the primary purpose of your newsletter is to establish your credibility, expertise and to create that relationship - we keep returning to this relationship thing all the time, don’t we? Do not think of your ezine primarily as an advertisement for your services or products.

In your ezine, you must provide useful content to your subscribers. 

By all means, promote your products and services in your ezine, but do not make it the most prominent part of the newsletter. Here it should be in the background, and shouldn’t take up more than about a quarter of the space.

For example, at the bottom of the newsletter you can have a section titled “About Me”, and here you can provide a brief summary of your business, and also mention that you are the author of such-and-such book, or creator of a product. Provide a link to your site where there’s more information.

Now, the most money you’re going to make is through so-called promo-emails, or some people call them solo mailings. While your ezine may have several articles, reviews, comments, recommendations, etc., in a promo email you will concentrate on promoting just one particular thing: it could be a new product you developed, a new type of service that you offer, or something like that.

Typically, your promo emails will be much shorter than your regular ezine. In case you’re sending your ezine in HTML format you may want to experiment and send the promo emails as plain text. Be sure to split-test this.

BTW, for those who are not familiar with the term, split-testing is when you send one version of your email to a subset of your list and another, different version, to a different group of the same size. You compare the results, and from then on use the format witch produced the highest response.

These promotional emails will usually have response rates that are several times higher than a response from your ezine.

Don’t buy or rent email lists, unless you know 110% that the company who offers such lists is kosher. If anyone offers you a list of 1 million emails for $99, or whatever price, run like crazy from them.

Same applies to joining online list services, such as YourLuckyList, The List Machine and ListDotCom. Although they promise you access to thousands of “subscribers” I have a feeling that those thousands of people are there for the same reason you are - to offer their stuff to you - so they won’t be so responsive to your offers. That’s just my experience, you’re free to give them a try - let me know how you do, please.

My philosophy behind email marketing is - relationships - and the only way to build a relationship is if you build your own list. But, you see, building your own list doesn’t necessarily mean you have to build it yourself, alone. You can team up with others, for example with someone who offers a service or product which is complimentary to yours, and do some kind of join venture with them.

The word “blog” itself comes from “web log”, so “blog” for short. Ever since Google acquired Blogger in 2003, this medium has been on the rise. Today even companies such as General Motors run blogs. Here are five reasons why you should have a blog for your small business or professional practice:

• Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing about your experiences on a particular topic, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts to provide useful information. This will establish you as an expert; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs.
• Search engines love blogs. Because blog pages change very frequently, are content-rich, and easy to index, search engines just love to gobble them up. For example, if you noticed that your web site search engine rankings are slipping, this is most likely because the contents of your web site hasn’t changed in a long while. Search engines love fresh, new content, and by its nature, blogs are the epitome of freshness. To make the most of this, host your blog on your own domain, and use WordPress, or a similar blog system to run it.
• Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get a presence on the web is through blogging. If you can type and click a mouse, you can blog. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, describe new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. No knowledge of HTML is necessary, but will certainly come in handy to get some of the more advanced features set up.
• Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturates our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, untainted by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience.
• Blogging costs nothing. You don’t need to have any software, buy web hosting, register a domain, like you do for your web site. Any opportunity for free web time is definitely a bonus, especially to businesses that are starting up. Most major players in this arena offer free accounts. WordPress.com is one, Weebly.com is another.

Do you have a blog? A few days ago I started playing with WordPress for my blog. For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out which technology would be best, and have settled on WordPress for two main reasons:

1. It allows me to create “static” pages, so I can have a site that looks like a regular web site, with menus such as “About,” “Products,” “Services,” and so on, and at the same time have a blog going.
   and,
2. Second, I prefer to install the WP software on my own server, rather than use the hosted version of WP (i.e. WordPress.com) or other software, such as Blogger or TypePad, because it’s better for Search Engine Optimization. All the pages are sitting on my server/domain and are being indexed here, not at some blog hosting company.

Once word of advice, from my own experience: If you’re looking to save a few bucks and opt for a free blog, I wouldn’t recommend Blogger. Although it’s a good platform and all that, and being owned by Google can’t hurt these days, what I don’t like about it is the feature they have at the top of each blog, which is a link to “Next blog”: a few times I tried clicking it I ended up on blogs that I wouldn’t want my kids to see, if you know what I mean.

If you have a web site, consider re-doing it using WordPress, then you can enjoy the best of both worlds - and Google and other search engines will just love it so much more!

Some years ago personal development guru Mark Victor Hansen said “Your net-work determines your net-worth.” You’ve probably also heard the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” and that’s actually better said “it’s who knows you.”

In the previous issue of Contacts2Clients, I mentioned some online networking sites and how to use them to build your business. It sparked a number of inquires from subscribers of this newsletter, but also from clients and colleagues.

Although I created my LinkedIn profile years ago, I’ve never actually used it until recently. Within about a month my network is now over 1.5 million strong - yes, that’s six figures, baby. And all that from only 60 or so connections.

Mind you, the point is not to have a large number of contacts, but to participate. Be active. If you just put up a profile, but never participate, it’s like having a blog to which you never post.

Some people say you should be active on 25 different networks. I don’t think that’s realistic, unless you delegate the work to a virtual assistant, but you should pick at least 3 that you will visit fairly regularly and make an effort to participate.

Applying these simple SEO strategies will do wonders for your organic search engine results.

3. Write a meaningful description for each page

This goes under the tag. For this you have about 25 words, or 160 characters. Write this paragraph of 2-3 sentences so that it sounds like aclassified ad for the page. Each page should have its own unique meta tag description, relevant to the content of the page, using relevant keywords people are likely to use to find you.

4. Compile a list of keywords for each page

This goes under the tag. Some experts say that you should keep the keyword meta tag under 1,000 characters, some say 256. I’d suggest keep it as short as possible but make sure you cover everything you need. Make sure you pick the keywords that are relevant to the page and to the overall site content. Try to make the first 10 keywords your strongest ones. By the way, by “keywords” I mean single words and phrases, such as “ezine design” and “e-newsletter production services.”

5. Use relevant keywords when you write copy for your pages.

Don’t stuff your page with keywords, search engines will penalize you for it, and secondly, and more importantly, the humans reading your pages would most likely see through your tactic and abandon the page as quickly as you can say SEO.

One final thought: don’t fall for the idea to have your web site submitted to hundreds of search engines by some automated process. Simply go to Google, Yahoo and MSN and submit your web site’s home page only manually, it won’t take you more than a few minutes.

As a matter of fact, if you’ve done your basic SEO homework, you don’t even need to submit your site, the search engine spiders will find it and index it properly.

Please also read Basic SEO: 5 Free Do-it-yourself Strategies, part 1

Many small business web site owners make a mistake of not paying attention to basicSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) of their web pages. This usually happens because of two reasons: one, they create the web site themselves and have no idea about what SEO is and why they should pay attention to it, or two, they hired a “trusted, knowledgeable web designer” to design their site, and s/he has not included SEO in the project proposal.

For sure, you could make SEO an art, but following a few basic steps - accessible to anyone - will go a long way. By all means, if your budget allows you to pay for a professionally devised and managed SEO strategy, do it.

However, for a solo professional, small business owner or a non-profit organization on a limited budget, applying these simple SEO strategies will do wonders for your organic search engine results.

1. Each page should have a descriptive file name

In other words don’t name the files just services.html, or even worse page02.html, but try something like email-marketing-services-consulting.html. This will help the search engines index your pages more thoroughly if you use keywords that are relevant to the content of that page.

2. Give each page a unique title.

This goes under the <meta title> tag. You have about 60 characters, or about 10 words, whichever is less in your particular case. The page title is like a summary of the content. Again use the relevant keywords, or you can make it a call to action, for example a “Contact Us” page could have this title: Receive a free email marketing consultation - Call 905-844-4247 now!

Read this post for 3 more tips on basic search engine optimization for small business.

Are you Networking? I don’t mean business networking in person, you know, at your local chamber of commerce or BNI. I mean, are you networking online?

Are you using LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Ryze? I just recently started exploring this area. It seems everyone and his uncle is on at least one of these networks. For example, Facebook now has over 65 million users and adding 1/4 million every day!

Here’s a great article on why you should join LinkedIn.
http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2007/07/ten-ways-to-use.html

You can find me on LinkedIn and Facebook. Take a look at my profile and let’s connect.

Today I’d like to remind you that you there’s a treasure trove to be discovered in my interview with Glen Hopkins. Here’s Glen’s discussion on one of his advanced list-building strategies, the so called Triple Win Customer Generation System, which is a hybrid of sorts, of the squeeze page. - Boris

What you need to do this, I’ve broken it down, basically what you need is one JV partner, or an affiliate, it takes you about one hour of your time, it is going to takeone ethical bribe, which is really nothing more than something of high perceived value, such as a call or an audio recording, that I am using in this particular case, which is of low financial cost to you, and then a back end product.

What it is going to do is build you a very highly-targeted customer list. Not just subscribers, but customers who have paid to be on your list and they have proven that they have a willingness to spend their money on you.

That is key, because if you have, not only subscribers on your list, but actual customers, that is of much greater value to you. They have a method of buying, they have a credit card and they have a willingness to pay you money.

So what we are going to do is, I am going to walk you through it really quick. You set up a simple page - withs your basic headline you see on a sales copy on your squeeze page. A headline and then you have a short sales copy letter. You can see that it is really just a few paragraphs with a picture of Mike Filsaime and myself.

Mike Filsaime and I are both list-building experts and we got together and we did a call and we talked about building our opt-in email list. It is a private exclusive call that was not available to the public, it wasn’t a teleseminar, just Mike and myself masterminding and talking about building our opt-in email lists.

Now, you need to understand that both Mike and I charge in the neighbourhood of $500 an hour for consulting. So we are looking at about $1,000.00 value here.

Now, what I am doing is: People coming to this site, I already know they are interested in list-building because the people who are sending out emails for this site, send an email to their list saying “Listen guys, I’ve got an opportunity to share a call with you between Glen Hopkins and Mike Filsaime and it is only going to cost you a dollar. You have to go check this out.”

They come to this site and for a dollar they are going to have access to both Mike and I. In other words, they are going to listen to a brainstorm mastermind session on how to build your opt in email list for just one dollar.

Now, this is a very high perceived value so, obviously, these people want to learn how to build their own opt-in email list. They click on that PayPal link that you see at the bottom, they pay their one dollar to get the call, and here is the process I go through, when they pay their dollar to get the call, PayPal gives you the opportunity to redirect them to another page and the page that I redirect them to is a registration page.

The registration page is where they enter in their name and email address. And I tell them that when they enter in their name and email address I am going to email them the download instructions for that call. So now what has happened is, I am instantly building a list of paying customers - I know that in the future if I try to sell them something, they have a willingness and ability to pay me. You are building a buyers list, the most powerful list you can have.

So we get them to enter in their name and their email address, add them to our list and as soon as they click on the submit button, we redirect them to a second page which is called our “OTO” — the One Time Offer — which is typically an up sell or a cross sell to the product or service to the product that you just sold them.

In this particular case what I do is, when somebody first pays one dollar for that call on how to build their list, the upsell on the OTO page is the opportunity to purchase my book Lucrative List Building, which is the digital version.

Now this currently sells for $147.00 for the resell rights to this ebook. Well, they can get it for $19.95 which is an unheard of price and so the conversion rates on that is very high. So what I am doing here Boris, is I am positioning myself as an expert. Because what is happening is that people are going to purchase this book, they are going to read it and they are going to learn more about me and what I can offer them. So I am positioning myself as even more as a list building expert in their eyes. Which is great for future sales again.

I sell them the ebook and here is what happens. With the ebook there is a PayPal link on that page as well, on the OTO page to purchase the ebook, that PayPal link is a link to my JV partner’s PayPal account, not mine. So my JV partner is getting 100% profit of every sale of the ebook.

You know what that is doing? The key to this is that my JV partner now has an incentive to want to tell his list all about this call for a dollar, because he knows that there are a lot of people who are going to be interested in getting on the call and every time somebody purchases that ebook he is going to get 100% commission.

That’s why it is a triple-win situation: my JV partner’s customer is winning because they are getting a $1,000 call for $1, then they are getting an ebook worth $147 dollars for $19.95, which they can resell to their heart’s content and make 100% profit on it, so they are winning. Then my JV partner is winning because he is making commissions from all of these sales. Triple win situation and the best part about it is, you are getting people on your list, you’re building your list with paying customers.

Glen Hopkins is a master list builder. He’s the publisher of the Web Traffic Report monthly newsletter and CD, and also runs a co-registration list-building service called List Builder.