30 Most Useful SEO Tools for Internet Entrepreneurs

Here are the top 30 SEO tools that will help promote, increase your website ranking, and sales.

http://blog.webbizideas.com/30-most-useful-seo-tools-for-internet-entrepreneurs/10/

If it’s Not One Thing it’s 6 Others!

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I grew up hearing my mom say that all the time. “If it’s not one thing, it’s 6 others!” And boy is that true when you work on the internet.

Just like when you look up information online and keep linking to more and more information (and often get totally off subject), owning an online store leads you in to: joining forums, (so you can get help from other shopkeepers or marketing people, or promote your store) social websites, (I’ve joined My Space, Facebook, Kappa Delta, My Church and Friendster) online classes, (about web design, freelance writing, copywriting, marketing and affiliate marketing) signing up for ezines and newsletters, (hoping to become better educated or get that one brilliant idea!) advertising, writing articles, press releases and blogs.

There truly seems to be no end in site. It is a web indeed!

Still Spooked by E-Mail Marketing?

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Here's another article by my favorite internet consultant. (My husband!)

E-Mail has been around for roughly 15 years already depending on what you count as the beginning. Hard to believe isn’t it? Remember when you got your first email address? Maybe it was at work, maybe it was through Compuserve, Prodigy or AOL…you dialed a local number from home, sometimes several times to get a free line, then waited while the email crawled in. “You’ve got Mail” was a happy time back then. A lot has changed over the last few years and the term “email” has become a noun, a verb and sometimes a curse word. With all the filters, privacy tricks and even laws to protect us, email has certainly taken on a life of its own and there are a lot of folks around the world always trying to get around these various barriers causing the rest of us to be on the continual defensive.

I bet you occasionally get a good or at least necessary email though even today. Like a hole in one on the golf course (I’ve never gotten of those) it’s enough to keep you going back and slugging through the rest, for that relatively rare gem.

While I am not in a position to solve all of our issues with email today, I can report to you that on a dollars earned to dollars spent basis, email marketing for business is more than twice as profitable ($45.65 for each dollar spent) as the next most profitable direct marketing you can do which is internet advertising ($20.19 / $1) according to a study done in 2007 by the Direct Marketing Association. The numbers continued to decrease for newspaper, direct mail, telemarketing and so on. Yes in spite of what you may have heard about open rates (yes they are low) and automatic filters (they can tend to keep out honest messages as much as malicious ones) email marketing is extremely cost effective.

Some tips on using email marketing effectively: 1. Do NOT buy lists. There are plenty of better ways to get email addresses of people that are actually interested in what you have. Start by asking your existing customers. 2. Do NOT send emails too frequently. The correct frequency will be related to the value you are offering. Don’t send them just to send them, but have a purpose, and one that has perceived value in the mind of the recipient. 3. Do NOT abuse your list. Those who give up their email address to you do so with a level of trust. If you violate that trust you will lose them and probably sooner rather than later.

For more on proper and effective use of email you can attend a Lunch & Learn session at the Catawba County Chamber of Commerce on November 14th at 12 noon. I will be presenting and leading a discussion on how to use email most effectively. You do not have to be a chamber member to attend. Contact the Chamber at 328-6111 for more information or to register.

Using technology can be frustrating at times, but it is not going away so we can either try and run the other way and get crushed or we can learn to use it effectively and prosper with the best going into the future. With the Holiday Season upon us there is no better time to get a handle on this not so new but continually evolving technology.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Click... Are You There?

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Here’s an article from my favorite guest author – my husband:

Business owners and managers often ask "How can I make sure people find my site when they search on the web?" The best answer depends on the particular business and marketing strategies of an organization, but a quick overview can be a great start to helping understand the business of marketing your website.

It should not be the primary strategy of every website owner to be stumbled upon by web surfers of all persuasions. Factors such as intended audience, and intended interaction with that audience, weigh heavily when planning a good strategy. Selling products, building a database, and providing a support service all require different marketing strategies. Having said that, let's look at some variables to consider when integrating website marketing into your overall internet and business strategies.

1. Search engines are only one of several key pathways to your website. Including your site address (URL) on business cards, stationary, advertisements, telephone messages, vehicles, signs, other websites, and word of mouth can be more effective than being on the first page of a particular search by keyword or phrase.

2. Search Engines such as Google and MSN as well as directories like Yahoo are registration based. If you do not register your URL with a particular search engine it will generally not show up at all. Site registration is a conscious and specific activity that must be executed, whether by site developer or site owner. The registration process is similar to announcing your presence, and invites review by human and/or electronic "judges" that accept or reject each request for registration. Listing can take up to 90 days unless fees are paid for expediting. Mere registration does not guarantee rank, but in many cases this listing in conjunction with the methods described above makes up the critical mass of a good internet strategy and costs little to nothing.

3.For those businesses marketing products or services across geographic boundaries, or when the internet is your primary or exclusive channel to market, it may be cost effective to tweak the design of your site and/or pay search engines for positioning by way of a technique much like advertising. Known collectively as Pay Per Click (PPC), major search engines allow you to buy position on the top pages of search results for specific search words and/or phrases paying a fee only when each surfer clicks through to your site from the listing. This can be cost effective when your success highly depends on exposure and volume and can be an excellent jump start to a new business but can be dangerously expensive without a carefully thought out plan.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Conclusion of Tips on Starting an online business

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7. How To Promote Your Business Website

Write An Article: Write an article promoting your site or product. Write an article on a hot topic many people would like more information on and submit it to various e-zines. How do you find out what's hot? Visit a few of the message boards and see what questions are raised often.

Search Engines: Thousands of search engines exist on the Internet. But, you should only be concerned with the top eight or ten. You should manually submit to the top eight: Alta Vista, Excite, Yahoo, Hotbot, Lycos, Northern Light, Infoseek, Webcrawler, and use one of the FREE automatic submission services like *SubmitPlus* to handle the smaller search engines.

Directories: List your site here too. Directories organize sites into categories. Good examples of Directories: Yahoo, Magellan.

Ezine Listings: If you have an e-zine to promote along with your site. Why not list it with one of the many e-zine services on the Internet. E-zine Library is a good one to start with.

Free Classifieds: You will have to submit to a ton of FREE classifieds to get any significant traffic. Why? You are competing with thousands of other Ads. Remember to work on your Ad copy and make it attention grabbing. Go to one of the popular search engines, type in Free Classifieds, and surf to the top 20 classified sites for beginners.

Often, these sites will lead you to several other Free Classified Sites. In response you'll get a stack of e-mail thanking you for listing your site while barking their promo. Best to get one of those free email accounts. Hot mail is a good one. So is Yahoo mail.

FFA Pages. Free For All's are worth a try. Be prepared for an avalanche of e-mails from FFA web site owners. If your title is attention grabbing you will get a few clicks. Good Attention grabbing headlines, FREE, Limited Time, Limited Offer, Proven, Secrets, and many more if you brainstorm. Check out the sales literature delivered to you by regular mail. Check and see what headlines grab your attention. And why? Incorporate them into your Online Ads.

Tell Friends And Family: If your friends, family, acquaintances, have an Internet Connection, e-mail them telling them about your new website, and ask them to visit often. Offer a FREE incentive if they tell a few friends to surf over. Perhaps, a FREE Ad in your e-zine.

Leave Business Cards or Flyers: Leave these promo pieces with small businesses in your community. All relevant contact information; email address, URL, telephone number, should be included. Offer a freebie to anyone who visits your site. A free e-book, report.

8. IN CONCLUSION

Think of your first six months primarily as a training period. Don't expect large earnings until after you've educated yourself.

Even the most dynamic, highest-earning entrepreneurs in the industry took MONTHS to begin seeing an income of any real significance with their internet home business.
Don't be a negative thinker and don't let the negative attitudes of others (even if they're family members, friends, or peers) influence you.

All the great men and women in history had to overcome the naysayers who said it couldn't be done-and then went out and did it. Think for yourself!

As long as you think positive and focused on your internet home business target you're on the right way to a rich life, which is directed by you and it will lead you to tremendous success and personal satisfaction.

About The Author
Michel Richer, The Internet Home Business Specialist Can Help You Build A Successful Internet Business That Can Generate Massive Profit !!! So Start Your Own Internet Business for FREE >> Visit Now: http://hombyz.com/homebusiness.htm

Good business advice

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I found a good article today that I want to share. It’s really too long for one blog post so I’ll print the author’s first 5 suggestions today and his last 5 tomorrow.

It’s called “Make more money online with less customers” by Roy King.

Most website owners are on the Internet to ultimately earn money. Internet marketing, traffic building, and search engine optimization has become a difficult challenge for all who seek the financial rewards from their ecommerce ventures.
There are many ways to direct traffic to one's website, a few are free, but most will cost you time, money, and patience to gradually develop.

Many experts who have carefully analyzed Internet traffic patterns admit that your website visitor will give you between 5 -10 seconds to influence them to stay.
When you actually think about this, 5-10 seconds is a very short time to convince anyone about anything.

Now you are expected to reassure a new client that has for the first time visited your site that your site is relevant to their immediate demands and desires, and will provide them with the primary solutions to their problems. How can this be done?

Traditionally an acceptable online conversion rate for Opt-in clients versus buyers is about 1-2 percent. Simply put, one out of 100 visitors will possibly purchase from your website. These are just terrible odds.

The vast majority of the ecommerce community seem to willingly accept these percentages as a part of doing business online. Most website owners constantly spend tons of money developing SEO tactics along with paid advertisements to lure bigger volumes of prospects to visit their website with no regards to super weak conversion ratios.

New traffic should always be a priority, but persuading prospects to buyers should rank supreme.

Let's say for an example that your established website incorporates 10,000 opt-in clients. The traditional conversion rate is about 1.5 percent. These figures equal a potential sum of about 150 buying customers out of 10,000 clients.

Now let's raise the bar to a 10 percent conversion rate. We now have 1000 consumers that have purchased from us, that's an increase of 850 buyers from the same opt-in list.

Well you say, ok, but who actively produces a conversion rate of 10 percent?
The answer is site owners who really understand their clients!
Here are 10 steps to help you make more money online with fewer customers....

1. Evaluate your website.
Simplicity is the key here. The simpler the better. Review the biggest revenue bearing website on the world wide web today... Google.com. This site is as simple as it gets, that's the way the web visitors like.

Simple navigation to destination articles or products should not be a difficult hurdle. Just click on a subject or title and you’re there, period. A maze of links and clicks turn visitors off. Make it simple and to the point.

Article or product links should be within 2 clicks. Your client should not have to thoroughly search your site for the pertinent information that they may desire. Remember you have less than 10 seconds to convince that client that this is the place for them, or else, click, they’re gone!

2. Clearly present what your website is all about.
Your main header (headline) should clearly state what your website has to offer. Your potential customers should not have to guess or get frustrated while trying to determine the relevance of your site. Your customer is there to seek solutions to his or her problems; it's your job to resolve them, not to create another problem.

3. Establish your website with statements of confidence.
Your website presentation should carefully place confidence into your visitors mind as a trusted authority of facts, information, or for products in demand.

4. Using Power words, Phrases, and Emotional Triggers.
Compile a list of intelligent words that interact with your customer and your website peaking your customer’s interest.

Power words are the essential ingredients to a successful website. These words respond with the mindset of your customer's needs and the fundamental reason they are there.

Power words further develop curiosity in your customer's mind. Can this product or informative article resolve my problem? Power words relate to the primary resolution of their problem, concerns, or desires. The more frequently you can establish a mutual relationship between your client's problems and the different ways you could possibly solve them, the more sales you will ultimately make.

5. Establish a Perceived Value to Opt-In.
New clients will not give their email addresses out willingly to just anyone. Most customers already have flooded e-mail boxes with junk e-mail. Customers do not like receiving worthless junk mail that is annoying and consuming their time.

Never try to sell your customers anything with your e-mail messages. Emails to clients should be committed to establish complete confidence and curiosity within your valued client. Email should be used as a tool to credibly connect the message that your website is a realistic resolution to their problems or desires. You definitely desire your customer to be eager to open your e-mail having them feeling confident that you will be helping them. Remember, this is your invitation to your website.

Simply stated, these types of emails are called pre-sells. Making your client aware that your their trusted friend, and are here to help them. Concentrate your efforts for a long-term relationship. Your main goal here is having your client enjoy receiving your emails and visiting your website.

What's your #1 reason?

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Following is from an article my husband wrote for a local newspaper. I think it helpful to online business owners.

The following is a collection of key reasons, based on experience of other business owners, to getting a firm handle on the use of the internet for your business. You might find at least one in particular that bubbles to the surface as an opportunity missed up to this point for your business, and provide just the tool you need to open up a bottleneck currently holding you back from greater success.

Increase Reach – The entire world is your oyster. Not only is the communication network open to the ends of the earth, but today’s translation tables all but totally remove language as a barrier! Transportation companies such as FedX, DHL and others have created global footprints and the ability to ship your product to the far corners of the earth right from your doorstep.

Decrease Costs – Printing, postage, design/layout, time, and inventory are all key components of any print-based project. Cutting any one of these can save substantial sums of money, but with the exception of design/layout which we’ll call equal, the others can ALL be cut substantially using the power of the internet as a distribution channel for brochures, specifications sheets, manuals, procedures, you name it. This alone can save hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for the typical small business.

Increase Speed – In addition to the time savings noted above, the internet can provide the nimbleness you need to respond quickly to changing conditions. New products or services can be explained, viewed and transactions can occur to include delivery in fraction of the time that the traditional development, production and marketing support package took to complete. Products can be introduced and decommissioned instantly as well as featured or put on sale. The cost of mistakes is greatly reduced as well.

Increase Automation – Although I have always remained suspicious of the claim that computers don’t make mistakes, it is tough to argue that automation as part of the sales and fulfillment process is rock-steady compared to the proliferation of human errors related to order entry and shipment. Add to this the ability to receive and process orders while you are sleeping, it’s an experience not to be missed! Labor, accuracy and convenience for your customer lead to increased profits.

Get more for less from your Marketing efforts – Track buyer behavior. See what they look at, in what order, for how long and the various patterns associated with their online experience that is nearly impossible to accomplish in a traditional brick and mortar environment. Money spent for marketing can have an enormous effect on your profitability but whether the effect is positive or negative depends on its effectiveness. Traditionally marketing has been more or less a black box into which you throw money, and then wait to see what comes out. The wait can sometimes take months or even years and it is difficult to understand what to change if the results are not as you expected. With today’s online marketing tools, you can measure marketing effectiveness instantly and, using real-time feedback, make adjustments on the fly. Forget to ask where a customer heard about you? The internet can track online behavior and report it for you in relevant terms that you can act on. Put your marketing money where it works most efficiently and reduce your overall costs proportionately.

The internet certainly doesn’t solve all our problems, provide world-peace, or even let us totally put our businesses on auto-pilot, but take it from those who know from experience, it can greatly enhance our success and ultimately our quality of life when used effectively according to our own specific needs. Now that is worth passing along.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/

Are you afraid of email?

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I wanted to share an article my husband just wrote for a local paper (he does a monthly internet column.)
Online shop owners are, of course, small business owners, and we are always looking for ways to get our information out without spending an arm and a leg. Email is a great tool.

Are You Afraid of Email?

Since the days of telephone party lines, it has been a fact of life that some communicators have tended to cause others of us frustration. Teenagers tying up the family’s only telephone line for hours on end; then the computer tying up the line for hours on end. Our mailboxes have been so over-stuffed with junk that it is truly a joy to find an honest to goodness letter or card amongst the ads, flyers, and other uninvited materials. Countless family dinners have been interrupted by telephone selling campaigns. One by one, technology and/or legislation address the annoyances, or we flee to the next thing, and today we find ourselves with more personal communications choices than ever. Individual mobile phones for voice, text, and video; we have not only cut the phone cord, but in many cases the computer cord as well. More laptops are sold than desktops as of last year, and for businesses the increasingly popular Personal Digital Assistant/Mobile Phone combination devices are becoming a norm.

Unfortunately with all these conveniences and choices have come new opportunities for abuse, arguably the most widely annoying form of which today, is email abuse. Email abuse takes on many forms with common terms such as spam, phishing, and the spreading of viruses all of which decrease the overall efficiency of, confidence in, and perhaps even use of this valuable communications tool. Yet the attractiveness of e-mail as a marketing tool is unshakeable. Quick, reliable, targeted, multi-media-capable, and virtually free, it is hard to dismiss email as a valuable way to communicate, and market your business. So, is it a practical idea to consider email as an effective marketing tool in today’s environment? Consider the following simple guidelines and I think you will agree the answer is a resounding YES!

Comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2004. This legislation simply requires sender to: a) provide recipients with an ability to opt-out of receiving more email, b) identify the email as commercial (no misleading subject lines, or e-mail addresses in the “from” field), and c) include sender’s actual physical address in the email. Although as in any Federal Legislation there is a lot of fine print, this is the crux of the requirements and not difficult to comply with. Visit www.ftc.gov/bcp/online/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm for additional information.
Once you are comfortable with CAN-SPAM compliance, the next step is to make sure your intended recipients can receive your mail. Some users today apply filters, which block incoming mail unless it has been pre-cleared as desirable. This is normally done via an “accepted email list” or using the recipients contact list, so make sure you are on their acceptable address lists. There are many ways to do this off-line, or you can use an opt-in registration through your website for example. Provide something useful to our recipient for adding you to their list and it is a win-win. The idea is that the recipient wants to receive your mail, not that you are forcing it on them.
Build a good list over time, monitor the results and provide relevant and useful content. Coupons, special offers, and probably most important good, information will keep your recipients loyal to your list. Don’t over-send correspondence. Frequency will depend on your objectives and the value to your targeted audience. Solicit and heed feedback.

Due to a rapidly developing market for providers of Email Marketing and Campaign Management, spending on email marketing is expected to reach $1.1 billion in the next 4 years according to Jupiter Research but the good news is you can do it yourself with a minimum of effort and expense. Oh, and one more piece of good news…spam emails are forecasted to decline about 13% per year from an estimated 3,253 per year in 2005 to 1,640 or around half.

When done well, e-mail marketing provides cost-efficient, targeted results and helps reduce the amount of communication annoyance. Don’t be afraid to use it to your advantage.

John Geiger, owner of Webmasters ICE, has over five years experience helping small and medium-sized companies and organizations capitalize on the power of the internet through consulting, education, and supporting products and services. His focus and passion is the use of the internet in providing more effective overall marketing strategies and highly measurable levels of marketing success. http://www.webmastersice.com/