In the news, a women on vacation with friends were tagged in some Facebook vacation photos and one of her so-called “friends” went to her house and robbed her of over $10,000 worth of things. Also keep that in mind when you set your Facebook privacy settings. Don’t let your friends share information about you and don’t let your “friends of friends” see your Facebook stuff.

This morning I saw a television ad for a stop smoking drug which used a testimonial.  In the commercial, they had both a verbal and textual statement of a customer’s “typical” results.  What they said was “in studies, 44% of customers were quit smoking between weeks 9-12.”

To me, this suggests they focused in on the portion of their test results which showed the best performance (9-12 weeks) and reported on that number.

I would pose the following questions:

1. Is it really typical results if you only focus on the best portion of the data.  For example, if the studies lasted for six months (24 weeks) and the typical results from weeks 13-24 were that 90% of customers started smoking again, wouldn’t their reported typical results be misleading?  Or do they simply craft some of  their studies to end at a particular point in time (e.g. 12 weeks) when they know they will be able to show very positive data?

2. Shouldn’t they have to disclose the full length of the study?

3. Does 44% constitute “typical”?  Do you not need a majority (great than 50%) to claim “typical”?

Search engine optimization includes things such as the proper development and use of keywords, header tags, header text, link text, keyword density, putting JavaScript and CSS style code into external files (as much as possible), minimizing the use of flash, creating the proper inbound/outbound link structure, creating a resources page, a site map page, doing competitor analysis and creating an optimized page for each keyword/keyword phrase.

A simple SEO example: You can boost your rankings by moving the web page content containing your important keywords as close to the beginning of your HTML code as possible. Unfortunately, many web pages are hurt by using layout templates that downgrade the prominence of the pages’ primary content. Elaborate HTML tables which push the page’s content section (and it’s keywords) far down in the file diminish keyword prominence and hurt your search engine ranking.

Search Engine Listings
Helping people find your business on the web takes time, patience and persistence, but it can definitely pay off. Getting listed on major search engines can give your web site a significant traffic boost, which in turn can be an important factor in your company’s sales.

There are free and paid options for getting listed and what you choose will depend on your budget, timeline and overall web site marketing strategy.

There are some distinct advantages to paid indexing and advertising. Free indexing can take several months for your site to be listed, whereas paid indexing and advertising usually only takes a few business days. In addition, if your site contains frames and/or the site content is not optimized for search engines and you’re not building link popularity, then you should purchase search engine indexing and/or advertising.

Search Engine Optimization Maintenance

Every 3 to 6 months, update your web site to comply with the latest SEO rules. This should also be done on an “as need” basis for situations such as when Google makes a major change to their algorithm.

Whether you are paying for online advertising, performing search engine optimization on your web site or creating a linking campaign, keyword research is the starting point and critical foundation of all your SEO web design.

Keyword research involves properly identifying your list of primary and longtail keywords to be used in all of your web site marketing efforts.  Guessing games won’t work here.  Specific tools, methods and analysis are used based on your product/service and it’s industry, your marketing goals and budget.  You should also note that as the market and web surfers searching habits change over time, so may your keyword list.

Competition Analysis in Web Site Marketing

If you want to know who your top online competitors are and why they rank the way they do, then a thorough competition analysis is important.  Once that analysis is complete, you can then use that information to figure out how to possibly “one up them.”  For example, in search engine results, there are often many sites on the first page that have missed one or more of the key factors in ranking well and are therefore vulnerable to being knocked down.

Competition analysis involves analyzing your competitors’ sites to determine the SEO strategy and keywords of the top ranked sites in your industry. The top ranked sites may or may not be following the SEO rules, and it’s important to know what works and doesn’t work for your industry and keywords. Competitor analysis is extremely important to your SEO strategy. The best way to see what works the most is to study your competitors.

Why Use Video Marketing?

• Video search results stand out more prominantly than other links on the search results page, so just getting on page one will get you more clicks/web traffic.
• Not only are people more inclined to click on video results, but even mores-so when the video thumbnail screenshot has a human face in it (or something REALLY interesting to click on)
• Many people skip Google search and go directly to YouTube to search
• You can blast a single video out to many video sharing sites, increasing your exposure and not having to worry about the duplicate content issue

Video Styles

Styles and types of videos that perform very well and help the users take massive action:

• Full-Face Video – Video title page, talking head, ending page with website, YouTube Channel, Twitter and FB urls  and an incentive/reason to click-thru to your site.  You can create humerous videos and other videos to get people to take action and click thru to your site or opt-in page.
• Powerpoint/Keynote – text on screen, preferably with voiceover and/or music background
• Browser/Software Demo – title page with title, sub-title, text to convey what video is about, branding image/logo, web site url.  Then screen capture video to show people how to use software or some contents of an ebook and the benefits the buyer will get out of the product; great for trying to sell a product (especially when reviewing an affiliate product you’re selling.)
• Video Articles – convert a written article into a video — contains title page, screens of article text and ending page; can also add audio to these (make the audio a “reading” of the article or use audio to highlight specific points/takehomes/nuggets.)
• Combinations – combines any/all of the formats above
• Advanced alternative styles

Preferred Online Shopping Cart System

The Interspire Shopping Cart is an all-in-one e-commerce and shopping cart software platform that includes absolutely everything you need to sell online.  I have used this shopping cart for multiple clients and I believe it’s the best shopping cart you can get for the price.  It has a ton of features; below are just a few. One thing I love so much about this online shopping cart is it’s search engine optimization features.  I’m an SEO Web Designer, so when I build a web site, I build it optimized for the search engines.

Some of the Shopping Cart Features:

• Completely browser based
• Drag & drop layout editor
• Fully SEO optimized
• Easy-to-use store control panel
• Traffic statistics data compiled and displayed inside the control panel
• You get the source code, so it’s fully customizable
• Sell physical & digital items
• Refunds & store credits
• Groups & wholesale pricing
• Single page checkout
• Per-product inventory control
• 60+ designs included
• Easily customize your design
• Flexible tax settings & options
• Real-time shipping quotes
• Invoices & packing slips
• Coupon & bulk discounts

View a video demo, all the features and pricing of this eCommerce store software

Building backlinks to your web site is part of off-page seo and has become one of the most important aspects of search engine ranking.  The number of links pointing to your site, the anchor text on those links and the page rank/authority of the site sending you the link are all critical.

Aside from Google, the most important sites to get listed in are: The Yahoo Directory (not free,) Dmoz.org (free, but takes a long time) and Business.com. Google considers these sites very, very important and they have excellent ranking, which means your Google ranking will increase by association.

Top search engine ranking is great, but you should realize that an effective back-linking profile can provide your site with more traffic than you would get from top spots in the search engines. A good backlink profile has many advantages and is one of the most important strategies to focus on during your web marketing efforts. Getting links from sites with related content will boost your search engine rankings, give you consistently more traffic and eventually (with an effective ongoing link building campaign), release you from the problems associated with search engine algorithm changes).

There are two kinds of incoming links.  Reciprocal (link exchange, where you must link back to the other site from your web site) and One-Way.

Reciprocal links are generally free, but they don’t carry as much clout in Google’s eys and obtaining them effectively will take time and dedication as it’s quite a process. Not to mention that several outgoing links on your site will bleed your own Google pagerank. For these reasons, it’s recommended you focus your backlink building efforts on one-way links.

One-way links are given a higher weighted value in Google’s ranking algorithm.

Backlink “relevancy” is based on the content of the inbound link pointing to you. Basically, you want web sites with subject matter relevant to yours, to link to your web site. The Google pagerank of the web page linking to your site is also very important. It’s better to have five quality inbound links from authority (higher ranked sites) than a hundred lower-quality inbound links.

Building backlinks to your site is one of the most cost-effective advertising methods. You’ll get targeted traffic from people directly clicking on the links as well as free traffic from the search engines due to your increased pagerank and position in the search results.

Backlink Maintenance

• Always continue to build up your site’s backlink profile

• If you do decide to do some reciprocal linking (especially good if the sites you get links from have a higher pagerank than your site), then monthly you should re-affirm those incoming links. Validate the existence of your reciprocal links and follow-up with their webmasters if your link has been removed from their site. Also verify their page with your link is not:

• • Being blocked from spiders with their robot.txt file

  • Buried or orphaned

  • Using the nofollow tag to block search engines from following the link

The CAN-SPAM Act went into effect in the US on 1/1/04.  Among other things, this law requires senders of unsolicited bulk email to include a valid physical postal address and unsubscribe instructions in their email.  Once a person opts-out, you have 10 business days to stop sending email to the opt-out requestor’s email address.  Additionally, commercial email must be identified as an advertisement.  Each violation is subject to fines up to $11,000.

Go to the FTC Spam site to get more information on what is and is not spam and how to report spam.

Build relationships with prospects and customers by using personalized email, permission marketing and tracking the recipient actions. Send eNewsletters, news alerts, announce discounts & sales, and conduct public relations campaigns.

As you use permission marketing to learn more about your e-mail recipients, you’ll see their loyalty rising, their repeat purchases becoming more frequent, and their word of mouth multiplying!

Permission marketing involves things such as the creation of a contact list, auto responders, an eNewsletter, email campaigns, setting up the statistical tracking reports, handling bounce backs and more.

Not only can you improve your customer service, but at the same time you can generate sales through the use of strategically developed autoresponders.

Preferred Email Campaign and Autoresponder Service

Email Marketing & Autoresponders Maintenance

Once you have created and sent your email campaigns, it’s important to follow-up with the tracking and analysis to identify the click-through rates etc. and to adjust your web site and email campaigns accordingly.  Because it’s important to stay in contact with your current and/or potential buyers, you’ll need to maintain your contact list and send out fresh newsletters and promotions on a regular basis. This regular contact increases your brand awareness with your contacts and drives traffic to your web site. Your autoresponders will also need to be updated once in awhile, to provide your most current information.