How to Generate Traffic on a Shoestring Budget

If no one visits your site, it hardly stands a chance of producing an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and this results to the sites demise. In other words, it takes money to make money.

But, it does not take a lot of cash to generate website traffic to your site. Have you ever wondered how big hit sites drive traffic to their site? They all spend vast amounts of money to lure the traffic to their sites by investing in different marketing and advertising campaigns. This is completly worth it to them because they wouldnt be where they are now unless they had done so...huge earning, big hitting websites.

You don't have to do this if you don't really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you cant afford. Alot of people have tried to use expensive methods of marketing only to end up broke in the end.

Let me show you exactly how you can do this the low cost way of bringing traffic to your site. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in, compared to client ratio, it still works, especially if you get a large number of people to your site.

Exchange Links With Other Web Sites

This is a proven method. It is rare to actually find a site that doesnt in some way have another link to a different site in it. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so they can produce more public awareness about their sites. You will soon see and be aware of the sudden increase of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in trading links with other sites is that they should have the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is stability in the providing of service and information for what interests your targeted traffic.

Exchanging links will also enhance your chances of getting a high ranking with search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high, sites that have inbound and outbound same-niche links. With a good ranking in the search engines, you will produce more traffic to your site without the high costs.

Use A Traffic Exchange

This is basically like exchanging links but on a different elevated level. This may cost a little more than trading or exchanging links but could be more cost effective because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when you view others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are basically viewing of someone else`s site or page. This is done back and forth where one site can use your sites contents and you can also use their content in return.You will both benefit from each others labor to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as their own. Once again the public consciousness of your sites existence is elevated.

Write and Submit Articles

There are truly many e-zines and online encyclopedias as well as article directories on the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save money, you can do the articles yourself. [One of my favorites by the way!] There are a lot of freelance writers who are willing to write an article for you for a miniature fee, but to save costs, you would be better off writing those articles yourself.

Try to write articles that go along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can see your knowledge about the subject and will be enthusiastic to go to your site. Write articles that convey tips and procedures to the subject or niche your website has.

Don't forget to include a resource box at the bottom of your article that can link them to your website.Write a little about yourself and also your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they should go to your site for more.

Create a Newsletter

This might sound like to much work because of all the articles you may need to use to create a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not true. There are many writers and sites that will want to provide articles as long as they can get their name in your newsletter. This will also grant free advertising for them as well. As your newsletter gets passed around, you can expand your public familiarity and build an opt-in list that can frequently visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing more. You can impart your wisdom and know-how with many online communities as well as your own website. You can attract free advertising when you are on forums that are discussing the same subjects that is what is on your site.

Share your opinion and let them see how well-informed you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the status of your site, making it a reputable and sincere business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

This post provided by Robert Hanna. To see the most amazing short video on starting your own home business just visit http://www.massivewealthforever.com

Writing for Search Engines: Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

In order to achieve maximum search engine visibility, you need to think a bit like a search engine when writing the copy for your website. Search engines look at the HTML code that makes up your web page and attempts to parse out the textual copy on the page, eliminating the HTML markup used for layout. The textual copy goes into the search engine’s “index," which is a very large database.

When a user conducts a search on the search engine, the database is queried to identify all the pages in the index that include those words on the page and/or in the links pointing to that page. So if your page does not include the words the user was searching for, it is unlikely your page will rank well, if at all. The same holds true when none of the links to that page include the words that the user searched for in the link text (the clickable text that forms the link).

Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear).

Crafting Your Page

As you begin to start thinking the way a search engine does, most copywriters will realize that they are being too verbose in the first few paragraphs. It also occurs to them as they are writing that the title tag for the page they are working on doesn’t have the most important keywords listed first, but rather last. Moving the most important keywords for that page to the beginning of the title tag, as well as moving those keywords to the top of the page copy, can really help to boost your page ranking.

It is also important that you do not go overboard with what is called “keyword density.” This refers to the number of times your keywords appear on a page. Too many occurrences of your keywords and the page will trip the spam penalty algorithm, which will damage your page’s rank. Also, if you are going after a particular keyword phrase, your web page will appear more relevant if the individual words in that phrase appear together in your page copy.

In addition to placing your selected keywords at the beginning of your title tag and also in the first paragraph or two of page copy, it also helps to emphasize your keywords by enclosing them in heading tags (i.e. h1). Think through how you can best structure the information on your page so that your keywords appear inside heading tags, body copy and other tags while still writing something interesting and compelling.

Once you have thought about each of these points, it is time to start writing. Try to write at least a couple of hundred words of page copy. This is not a rule, but a good guideline to follow. When you are creating links from text, be mindful to include good keyword-rich text in your link text. Avoid using phrases such as “click here” and “more information” in your links, and instead choose words that are relevant to the page the link will go to.

Test The Waters

At this point, you presumably now have well-written, interesting and useful page copy that includes your most important targeted keywords in all the right places. However, don’t just assume that you have gotten it right, especially if you are new at this. Run your copy past a human being or two to ensure that it is interesting, engaging and communicates your message effectively. If it doesn’t, it’s time to start again and rethink your copy.

Once you have human approval, it’s time to run the draft page through a search engine spider simulator.. This tool, and others like it, will tell you how many times you used each keyword. It will parse the text just like a search engine would, and occasionally you will see that another keyword comes through more strongly than you had intended and a more important keyword is dwarfed in comparison. Don’t worry, now is the time to fix this, and with a little practice you will have a good gut feeling for what will rank well.

The final test, of course, is linking your new page to the rest of your website and seeing how it performs with the real search engines. If the results are lower than expected, you can make some adjustments by moving text around, adding and subtracting copy and so forth. Pay particular attention to your title META tag, as this is given the most importance by the search engines out of everything on your page.

Another way to help convince visitors to click through to your website is to write a descriptive summary of your page to be included in your description META tag. Make sure that your description contains the targeted keywords that you have chosen for this page, and be brief. While this does not help with your search engine ranking, having a compelling description is just good form and worth doing.

Today's Post provided by Stephan Spencer

Google Sandbox: Does It Exist?

With an article title like this, it almost seems like I am playing the fool, by telling you something doesn't exist and then telling you that I will show you how to beat that thing I said does not exist. Maybe I am the fool, or maybe, I have something valuable to share with you today. You be the judge.

I Don't Believe In The Google Sandbox, Dragons or Unicorns...

Many people believe in the existence of the Google Sandbox, and I am not one of those people. I place the "Google Sandbox" in the same category as the leprechaun... they both make a neat children's story, but I see no truth in either.

What Is Google Love?

Google love is the imaginary "feeling" that Google has for the websites in its index. The more Google loves a website, the higher that website will rank in the Google search results.

No matter how many search results Google shows for a particular search term, Google will only show a maximum of 1,000 website listing in its search engine result pages (SERPs). However, few people, except nuts like me know that as you go to each consecutive page in Google's SERPs, the actual number that Google is willing to show you gets smaller with each additional page visited.

For example, I just did a search on the keyword phrase "Google Love". My default Google settings are set to 100 results. When I first typed the search phrase, Google showed 68,300,000 results, and Google shows me that I can look at ten pages of results. But, when I get to the tenth page in Google's results, there are only three listings. Google only loves 903 web pages for the search term "Google Love".

Google has told us that they attribute value to a web page, based on the number of inbound links that page might have. Google Love primarily comes from link popularity, which is derived from inbound links.

The Suggested Lifespan Of The Google Sandbox

I see the "sandbox" as being a term that some person working in SEO derived to explain why so many of his client's new pages appeared in Google's search results for about one month, before the pages disappeared into the deep recesses of the Google index.

In absence of a better explanation, some SEO person coined the term "Google Sandbox" to explain to his or her customers why a page disappears from the Google index and stays missing for months or years.

According to those who preach the Google Sandbox theory, the lifespan of the Sandbox is six months to one year. That is a lifetime when you are running an online business.

The Life Curve Of A Web Page

Google's algorithms rely heavily on inbound links to determine the value of a web page. But a brand new web page has not had the opportunity to attract any inbound links, because after all, it is a brand new web page. So Google gives new web pages the benefit of a doubt.

News stories are a good example of web pages that may very well be important to the world-at-large, but its importance cannot be determined by the number of inbound links available to that page.

As a result, all brand new web pages on the Internet are given an intrinsic value by Google, as if the pages housed a news story. But what was important thirty days ago, will not necessarily be important today. So news stories are given early value and then their value fades with time.

Once the news cycle is completed, the web page will slide down to where it deserves to be according to the normal Google algorithms. This often means that a new web page will disappear into Google oblivion (or the theoretical Google Sandbox), if after 30 days the page has not generated any link popularity of its own.

After The News Cycle, All Normal Rules Apply

We have all heard it before. The way to get a web page to rank in Google is to build link popularity for the web page.

And how do you build link popularity for a web page? Build inbound links to that web page, of course.

Once the news cycle is done, a new web page must compete with every other web page, based on Google's normal algorithm.

What If A Page Could Develop Link Popularity In 30 Days?

What if you were able to build inbound links and therefore link popularity for a web page, before the news cycle runs out? That would be a twist, wouldn't it?

Personally, I know for a fact that if you can build link popularity on a page, within the news cycle window, that this new page will not fall into the dreaded and mythical Google Sandbox. The page will not fall into the Google Sandbox at the end of the news cycle, because the page will have already accrued some link popularity within Google's primary algorithm.

You Are The Master Of Your Own Domain

As the master of your domain, you get to choose how long a page is sandboxed. Most people don't realize they have that kind of control, but with smart link building, one can prevent a web page from entering the sandbox. Or, if the web page does slip into the sandbox, the smart online marketer can bring a web page out of the mythical sandbox in days or weeks, instead of months or years. The beauty of this truth is that you define the time line for when a web page exits the sandbox, not Google.

I Boast That I Can Prove It To You

I built a new page 16 days ago (June 10th, 2008) that is holding page one results in Google against 200,000+ websites, with my Blackhat Fish SEO Contest entry.

Now, one could argue that I am still in the news cycle for this web page, so in another two weeks, my page could disappear from the Google results. But, I have built so many inbound links to this page that I fully expect that when the news cycle is done, my page will remain outside of Google's mythical sandbox.

I Challenge You To Test My Results

Test my proof by checking back here in a couple weeks, or even in four weeks or six. If I am right, you will be able to click this link to Google's search results for the keyword phrase Blackhat Fish, and you will be able to see my page title on page one or two of Google's search results: "Whitehat vs. Blackhat: Fish For Links or Die Trying".

I say page one or page two of Google's search results, because I would be surprised if I actually won the competition. However, if I am still in the top20 results for the search key term after July 10, 2008, then I will have proved to you that anyone can beat the sandbox, if only they exercised the right strategy for escaping the sandbox ahead of the end of the news cycle.

I have actually pulled this off with three web pages in the last 60 days. The above listed example is just one of many examples I could show you as proof of concept here. But for brevity's sake, I am only including the one example here.

In Conclusion...

You can accept my analysis as sound, or you can call me the fool. It does not matter to me which you choose. If you want to believe that the Google Sandbox really exists to thwart your online business, then more power to your fears.

This post provided by Bill Platt. Bill has been providing article marketing help to his clients since 2001 at: http://www.thephantomwriters.com He offers ghost writing and article distribution services. With lots of experience writing articles that attract publishers, readers, traffic and sales to his website, Bill wrote an ebook to share the secrets of his article marketing strategies at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-traffic.html

Grow Your Business With Free Traffic

I just read a great article about traffic generation. As you may already know, there is a significant number of sites that promise you traffic and are even willing to sell you thousands of visits. Are these sites legitimate? How do you know what type of traffic they're sending?

Enter TrafficSwarm, one of today's most popular traffic exchanges. There are others like HitGusher and TrafficG, but do not have as many participating members. After reading the article, I signed up and began surfing. The way that the traffic exchange works is simple. You decide the types of sites you're willing to surf and at the same time, place text ads linking to your site that other members surf.

Each time you visit a site within the network you earn credits. Those credits can be redeemed to have your ads appear, resulting in click throughs to your site. Yes, it truly is FREE traffic. You do have to spend some time (I'm spending about 15 - 20 minutes per day) surfing the interface, but it's ridiculously simple to do.

Give it a try and you'll be surprise by the amount of free traffic you generate!

Local Search Engine Optimization: Here's How

Roughly a year ago, local search engine optimization was all the rage - the new frontier in search engine marketing. For a while, it seemed that everyone was interested in the local search angle - even multi-national companies. However, for many companies selling products or services to the entire United States, or even globally, it seemed like a non-starter.

Companies that counted on people looking for certain products or services that did not require close proximity to the company's location were unaffected. As far as local search engine optimization goes, things have changed a bit since then - at least for some.

Some time ago, Google introduced a "geographic box" at the top of its search results. This is tied in to its mapping feature, and, when it was first introduced, the engine would display three results at the top of its search results whenever somebody entered a geographic modifier into the search box ("Atlanta widgets," for example). The Google algorithm then has the intelligence to determine whether the query calls for results that are primarily local in scope. Since that initial trial, Google has obviously found that its users appreciate the feature.

The engine now displays ten local search results at the top of the listings for certain queries, provided that they have a geographic modifier attached. For example, if you type in "Atlanta gyms" in Google, you will see ten results alongside a map that shows the location of ten gyms in Atlanta. It should be noted that you will not see local search results for all queries that contain a local modifier. In certain instances, it almost seems as if Google somehow "knows" when a geographic modifier really means that you only offer services in a particular area. Yeah, those guys are pretty good.

There are many resources on the Internet to turn to if you are looking for local search engine optimization for your regional website. However, many companies have client bases that cater primarily to a national or international field. Can they benefit from local search?

Yes, they can - in two ways (with a caveat for the first). First, many customers prefer to deal with people that are local, even if the business is national, or even global. A businessperson that is looking for, say, marketing consulting, may be inclined to work with someone with an address in close proximity found through local search. It just feels more comfortable - if something goes wrong, he or she can request a meeting, rather than calling an 800 number.

Here's the caveat - you may not want people showing up at your doorstep. Some companies invite people to show up at the headquarters and voice concerns or sing praises, but others would prefer to keep things at a distance. This is not a value judgment by any means. With many companies that deal with thousands, or even millions, of customers, it would be impossible to service every complaint with a human smile.

The second way, which seems more customer friendly (but actually isn't), applies when a large company has many locations. This doesn't mean that your company has "walk-in" locations that are open to the public. If you have locations in many cities, each serving a different function, you can still benefit from local search engine optimization. Say, for example, you are headquartered in Toledo. You have distribution centers in several cities across the United States. Each of your physical locations is eligible to show up in local search results on Google, provided that you supply the engine with the proper information.

Of course, as mentioned earlier, not all searches with regional modifiers attached will bring up regional results. But based on recent happenings, it's a good idea to make your regional presence known and consider the effects of local search engine optimization. After the years of talk about it, local search might finally turn out to be something that most companies can take advantage of.

About the Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue (www.mediumblue.com), a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, and was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world in 2006 and 2007 by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

SEO Made Simple: Book Review

What do you get when you bake three years of work and twelve years of Internet marketing experience? The answer is "SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine."

In 2000, I launched my first marketing related website, MarketingScoop.com. At the time I didn't plan on such a significant amount of interest in Internet marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), or search related advertising. Over the years, I continued to receive many questions from browsers, blog readers, and colleagues, about their online businesses and decided to focus my time on answering one of the most common questions I received, "What makes a web site rank in the #1 position on Google for a particular keyword or keyword phrase?"

After a few years of trial and error, as well as learning from others who had already been successful in the area of SEO, I applied the principles I learned to propel my websites and blogs into the #1 position on Google for very competitive search terms. Today, my web site is ranked #1 on Google for "Marketing Expert", "Internet Marketing Expert", and dozens of other terms.

But I didn't stop there. I chronicled everything that I tried over the past three years related to search engine optimization (SEO). There were many techniques and tools that worked and others that did not. Some were total failures leaving me only with a bad taste in my mouth and a few less dollars in my pocket.

In trying to answer that all-important question about how to rank on top for Google, I realized that I had collected some very important information that could help fellow marketers, small business owners, and virtually anyone with a website or blog. The greatest lesson was that I shouldn't have listened to all those so-called experts that make SEO out to be the most complex science on the face of the earth. The reality is that search engine optimization is quite simple.

That is why I have published, SEO Made Simple: Strategies for Dominating the World's Largest Search Engine. I was thrilled with the results I had achieved and fed up with a lot of the solutions I paid for that simply did not work. The good news is that publishing a book makes the truth about SEO available to everyone for as little as $25 bucks (but you can get a sample chapter for FREE at MySEOmadeSimple.com).

Are You Ready to Outsource Your SEO?

Before you outsource work to a search engine optimization company and sign a contract, there are a few things you need to consider. Evaluating who has control to certain elements of the site, staying aware of code limitations, and keeping track of your own time can save you both money and resources in the long run and can help you reach your goals much faster.

So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of time before you start seeing a huge uptick in business. Right? Not so fast.

An experienced search engine optimization company will tell you that an ill-planned campaign can be a non-starter from day one. This usually happens when there is no clear understanding of what will be required of the client to make the project run smoothly. What follows is a list of just a few of the things that your search engine optimization company will need from you in order for the company to get its job done as effectively and quickly as possible. It's a good idea to consider these things before you sign the contract - because a stalled campaign will cost you money, even if it is just lost opportunity cost.

Access to and Control of Your Website

You may be ready to do whatever it takes to take the steps necessary for a successful SEO campaign. Your IT team, on the other hand, may have ultimate control of the website. This only makes sense - an internal IT team that controls the website knows the ins and outs and doesn't want anyone jeopardizing the functionality of the site. However, an SEO campaign will usually require extensive changes to the site - and you don't want to hit a brick wall when you bring recommended changes to the IT staff or ask them to give your search engine optimization company access to the testbed.

Make sure that you have an understanding with them before you sign on with a firm, lest you suffer delays and internal strife. Additionally, it is important that you can get access to either the log files of your website or to the current reporting platform. Before a search engine optimization company begins work on your site, you want to be sure that you have a baseline of current search referred traffic. Without this, you'll have nothing to brag about later - and no way to hold your firm accountable if results do not turn out as planned. For more on achieving buy-in from different departments within your organization before embarking on an SEO campaign, please see this article.

Control of Your Website Copy

If internal politics are such that you have to consult with every department in your organization in order to get website copy changed, it's imperative that you make sure you have this process streamlined before you bring in your search engine optimization company. There are many reasons why several departments may be involved in the content of your website. For example, mortgage brokers, medical offices, and investment firms (to name but a few) will almost certainly need to run copy changes through the legal department before they go live on your website. If your company sells complicated software, for example, the copy may need to be run by the developers to be verified for accuracy. No matter how your internal politics work, make sure you are on the same page with all the people who will be involved in the copy approval process before you start the project.

Awareness of Current Code Limitations

Your prospective search engine optimization company should be able to look at how your website is constructed and let you know if there are limitations that may impede your ability to implement recommendations that can help your search engine optimization efforts. For example, there are many CMS (Content Management Systems) that will not allow changes to be made that are beneficial to search engines.

While many of the new systems are "SEO friendly," many of the older ones are not. Updating your CMS to one that allows changes to be made for maximum SEO benefit may incur additional costs. If your search engine optimization company has been around for a while, they should be able to steer you in the right direction and, indeed, help you and your IT team to switch to a more SEO friendly platform.

Change like this can sometimes be difficult - another reason why you must be committed to SEO and achieve the buy-in from your IT team before you embark on a campaign. Time The largest commodity that most marketing managers do not have is time. Frequently, there are innumerable campaigns running at once, and outsourcing SEO to a search engine optimization company may make you feel that it is done and off your plate. Alas, this is rarely the case. A good search engine optimization company will take the requisite time to learn as much about your business as it possibly can, but the fact remains that nobody knows your business as well as you do.

This means that you will have to be involved in the SEO process. If you can't dedicate an hour a week to offering feedback, approving changes, and making sure that the work being done is consistent with your overall message, there will be large delays in the project. Set aside one hour per week to make sure everything is running smoothly. If you make SEO a back-burner issue after you have hired a search engine optimization company, you will lose money in opportunity cost (and very likely in project cost, since SEO is normally billed on a monthly basis).

Your chosen search engine optimization company, if you have done your due diligence, is ready to help you to maximize your exposure on the Internet and help you to reach your online goals. However, it is essential that you review the required resources and relationships before you sign on the dotted line. You will save yourself a lot of headaches and see results much more quickly if you do.

This post provided by Scott Buresh, founder of Medium Blue (www.mediumblue.com), a search engine optimization company.

Seven Ways to Get Your Web Site Crawled

To show up in search engine results, your web site needs to be seen by search engines. There are a number of ways to ensure that this happens - quickly. Follow these tips and get noticed.

• It's better to have one main website with numerous domains pointing to the main domain, than to have mini-sites or multiple sites with similar content. Mini-sites and multiple sites with similar content do not increase search engine listings and are frequently viewed by search engines as SPAM.

• If you do have several stand-alone websites, make sure each serves a different target audience and has unique content with different domain or sub-domain URLs.

• Search engines need to be able to follow internal links. To make that happen, use tags, text links, image links, and CSS menus. Spiders have difficulty with JavaScript menus, pop-up windows, drop-down menus, and flash navigation.

• Choose keyword phrases that are most relevant and specific to what your web page is about. Think from the perspective of someone searching for what you are offering on your site. Ask, as if you were they: What would I search for if I am looking for something on your page?

• Validate your keyword phrases through either paid or free services, such as Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker, or Google AdWords.

• Check for keyword competitiveness. Take into consideration the size of your business. In this case, size does matter. If you are a major player with a major brand, you can play in a larger competitive pond than a smaller company just starting out. Know what size pond is right for you, and check for competitiveness by putting: allintitle: "keyword phrase" in your browser and check the number count.

• Once you have your keyword phrases validated and checked for competitiveness, use them in anchor texts, clickable image alt tags, headlines, body text copy, title tags, and meta descriptions. Meta tags aren't all that important for crawling.

SEO can be both intimidating and exhilarating. Intimidating because it seems as if just about everyone has an opinion on what it takes to get a high ranking in Google, so it's hard to know what to believe. Exhilarating because, once you understand the method behind the madness of SEO, you see the art and science of it. Then it becomes fun and easy to come up with a strategic plan about where to place keyword phrases, how to write copy, and what size pond is best for your company to compete in. Optimize your website, and they will come.

This post provide by Dr. Susan L. Reid. Dr. Reid is a business coach and consultant for entrepreneurial women starting up businesses. She is the Award-winning author of Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success. Visit SuccessfulSmallBizOwners.com and download your copy of her latest free business success article.

Optimize Your Landing Page for Online Marketing Success

Focusing on improving conversions is essential for any online marketing effort. In this article , Brett describes his work with a client to test the effectiveness of targeted landing pages. I think the results speak for themselves.

Search marketing is generally broken down into three major categories: phrase, positioning and price. Phrase refers to the keywords or phrases for which your ad will show among the results. Positioning is where visitors will see your ad when it is displayed. Price is how much you are willing to spend each time a visitor clicks on an ad. But consider one more factor — page, where visitors land on your Web site once they click on your ad.

Companies spend a great deal of time determining the right keyword phrases for their campaigns. They monitor, add and prune keywords over time. At the end of the day, however, they are sending all of their search visitors to one landing page, or even worse, to their home page.

What is wrong with this approach? Search users often look for specific items such as “good running shoes” or “iPod Nano trans­fer cable.” These users want to be taken directly to the content they are looking for.

In a well-rounded search campaign, different keywords should be tailored when the search user is in the sales path. “Buy an iPod” is much differ­ent than “iPod information,” and the pages these visitors see first can mean the difference between turning a visitor into a conversion and that visitor leaving your site.

We recently did landing page testing for one of our search clients. Their method of con­version, we found, was to send a visitor to their Web site to fill out an e-mail form asking for more information. We also realized that the bulk of their visitors from search results were being sent to the home page.

Due to technical and legal limitations, we approached our rec­ommended changes very conservatively. First, we implemented simple changes to the home page to lessen the number of clicks from search query to conversion. These small changes ultimately yielded a 186% increase in their conversion rate.

A new, conversion-optimized landing page — designed specifi­cally for search — brought the conversion event to the front of the process, while still allowing visitors to see other areas of the site to gather more information. The new landing page increased conversion 350% over the optimized home page.

This quick testing process yielded a more than 550% increase in the total conversion rate. This allowed us to bid the bulk of our terms higher, which resulted not only in a lower cost conver­sion, but in more conversions overall.

I'm not suggesting spending less time on your keyword mainte­nance or bid management — but, rather, spending extra time on that forgotten fourth piece of the search pie: the landing page.

Brett Charney is director of strategic services at Merkle.

Choosing An Online Shopping Cart

Is your online business or home-based business stalling because you are drowning in administration details? You're not the only one!

Many small businesses are one step away from phenomenal success, if only they could increase their productivity AND reduce repetitive tasks and paperwork. After all, any time spent dealing with writing down orders or sending out emails one-by-one is time that you can't spend selling to your prospects. I've found that having a full-features shopping cart can save me as much as two hours a day!

Here's How to Choose an Online Shopping Cart That Will Increase Productivity & Save Time and Money Guaranteed.

1. Make sure your online shopping cart has an easy-to-follow ordering system. For example, people can order my products and services directly from the shopping cart. They don't have to call me on the phone to take down the details. Don't get me wrong, I love taking orders, but it is time consuming and it takes me away from other tasks. And if a prospect calls when I'm on the phone, or away from my desk, then they get an answering machine and we begin that long task of phone tag. If you have an easy way for people to order online, you can take orders at any time of the day or night. Who staffs theirs phones at 2 a.m.?

2. A good shopping cart will automate such functions as sending receipts. Don't you hate it when clients ask for a receipt? You can't blame them. They need a receipt for their taxes and their accountants. But making a receipt by hand will take you at least 5-10 minutes even if you have a template and a system in place. Everything takes time! But a good shopping cart will automatically send a receipt to the new client - and to you, so you have one for your files.

3. If you send personalize messages to new clients, such as greetings, or training materials, you can automate this process with a good shopping cart. Thanks to the wonders of mail-merge, each message can print the person's first name. If you want to get fancy, you can even automate other variables such as city, state and product purchased. It's a great time saver and people will think your messages are truly personal.

4. A good shopping cart can create sales reports by any variable you can think of, such as total sales, daily sales, weekly sales, sales in a given period, as well as sales by product. You don't have to depend on your part-time bookkeeper to create these reports for you any longer! You can get reports when you need them, not when the part-timer shows up for work.

5. A good shopping cart does NOT just take orders. It can send newsletters and other types of information you'd like to broadcast - such as invitations to teleseminars or special events. A good shopping cart can manage most client communications, so you save time and money by dealing with one vendor instead of two or three. Plus you will be working off of one database and not have to update two other databases hosted by a company that sends out newsletters or autoresponders. Why duplicate your efforts?

6. Make sure your shopping cart offers clients control of some aspect of their accounts. For example, if a client doesn't want to get your newsletter any longer, they can unsubscribe by themselves without having to contact you by email. This way you don't have to do the work yourself. Good shopping carts have information on how to unsubscribe contained in each message for your convenience. If you use a good shopping cart, you can save yourself time and money if you know the hidden truth behind automating your business online.

Dan Janal has built multiple six-figure income businesses using MyEasyOnlineStore.com. Now, for the first time ever, he's revealing the hidden truth behind automating your business, making more money online & enjoying the entrepreneur's lifestyle. Get his free special report, "How to Choose an Online Shopping Cart" now at: http://www.prleads.com/meos

SEO Myths and The Truth

Search engine optimization may seem a bit overwhelming to some. Part of figuring out the equation is separating fact from fiction. In a recent article from Michael Estrin of iMediaConnection, the top SEO myths were addressed and clarity delivered around each. I will be posting each of these 10 myths on this blog with feedback from the experts - as well as my own commentary. The first myth is from Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land...

Myth #1: SEO is all about secret tactics

The Truth...
I talk to a lot of people about SEO, plenty of whom are new to it. I'd say the most common myth is that SEO involves all "secret" tactics requiring you to buy links or trick the search engines, and that no one in the industry can be trusted.

In reality, there are a lot of simple but effective techniques that even the search engines will tell you to do that can increase traffic. And there are plenty of people who are not snake oil salespeople who can provide this useful service. A good place to start the process is to look at your analytics. There are a variety of tools, including some from Google, that spotlight if you have problems being accessed by search engines. I also like a top-down approach. You start from the homepage and ensure that it is search engine friendly, then work your way back through the site going down the paths that are most important to your business.

This is completely spot on... just like any successful marketing campaign, there are certain basics that if executed properly can help you achieve your desired results. There are lots of valid tools out there to help you - Google analytics, Google webmaster tool, SEO Elite, and others.

Make sure you have the right tools to evaluate the current state of your site and direct towards which actions to take. This ensures that what you're doing will generate a return and improve organic search results.