Category: Online Business

It’s easy to get discouraged with your SEO if you allow yourself to listen to the “gurus.” The “gurus” will tell you that you have to spend a ton of money on their services or products in order to unlock the secret to SEO. They’ll tell you that there are tricks and hacks that only they know that will jettison you to the front page of Google in a matter of minutes.

What a bunch of…well…you know.

You don’t have to know the details of the Google crawler algorithm to know that getting to the front page of Google is really about doing some basic common sense stuff. This is especially true with regards to link building. Here are the most important things you can do when you want to build links to your site (and, by extension, improve your Google page rank).

Using Relevant, Niche Sites

There are hundreds of different advertising companies out there that promise you a million dollar link building campaign. Most of these companies simply spam your link out to sites through blasters and other black hat methods.

What you want is to find an advertising agency that will post your link or ad on websites that have been vetted and are relevant to your niche. You want a service that has dedicated outreach and a stable base of sites that they work with and on which they publish content. You don’t want your ad on just any site. You want it on the right site. A good ad placing company will know this and, more importantly, know how to do this.

Organic Linking

Organic linking is what it sounds like: getting someone to mention your site organically in their content. Organic links “weigh more” on the search algorithm and with readers. Without a dedicated outreach or link building team, there are only a few ways to get these links:

1. You can offer to guest post on a person’s blog in exchange for that post organically linking to your site.
2. You can get another site to review your site.
3. You can create a great site of your own that people want to link to (this is the best but takes the most work).

Engaging the Blogosphere

Leaving comments on someone else’s site is always a good idea. It helps you build links back to your own site and it helps you build relationships with other website owners and bloggers. You can’t just leave any old comment, though. Your comment has to be relevant. “Nice site,” will (more often than not) get your comment kicked over to the spam pile. Instead, actually read the post and come up with a thoughtful and relevant thing to say about it. Include something from the post itself to prove that you read it.

A good comment doesn’t just grab the attention of the site owner. It grabs the attention of the site’s other readers. Links left in comments won’t give you SEO juice but they’re good for your traffic and could lead to some great organic links.

Link building is something that can be time consuming. It is better, though, to spend the time doing the work organically than to risk your reputation by hiring a black hat service that promises the moon.That is one of the biggest SEO mistakes you can make.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

Article Contributed by Chris Lindsey

When going into business online, it is important to take some of the best parts of shopping at brick and mortar stores and translate them to your online business presentation so that customers are satisfied not only with their complete transactions but with every step of their shopping and browsing experience from the start. Here we will discuss five overlooked needs for startup online businesses and what to do to ensure they are not overlooked in yours.

1. Secure, Professional, Well Known eCommerce Program

Choose a safe, secure, legitimate online shopping cart or e-commerce software to enhance your customers’ experience. Customers should not question whether it is safe or not to purchase from your website. Choosing the best ecommerce software for your business can go a long way for you and your customers. Being one-hundred percent credible from the get go with your customer’s should be your number 1 priority. Clients will be pleased to be able to shop with any major credit card via a shopping cart that they trust.

2. Precise Size Charts for Every Relevant Product in Your Store

There are few things more frustrating than ordering a product only to have it not fit. Even more so is ordering it according to a size chart that is incorrect. Whether the brand supplies a size chart or not, if you use it to sell their products through your business website, you need to take a good look at the size chart yourself along with the products to ensure that the chart is correct and accurate.

3. Authentic Product and Service Reviews

Customers can spot insincere, fake product reviews from a mile away. Do not rely on content mill writers to write reviews for your products. More often than not, these individuals are just doing it for the money. They most likely have not tried the products that they are writing the reviews for. No matter how good a writer they are, this fact shows. Ensure that all of your product or service reviews have been written by customers who are truly familiar and satisfied with your products.

4. Series of Photographs for Each Product

Customers care about how their investments both look and function. A high-quality photographic series of each product will give the client a better idea of the quality of craftsmanship and how the product functions. Photograph interesting or pertinent details of your products. Photograph a dog harness on the dog from the top and bottom views so customers can see what part of the dog’s chest the harness puts pressure on. Photograph the side zip detail of a dress. Make them interesting and a little unique.

5. Site Should Demonstrate When Products are Out of Stock Immediately

If a product is out of stock, update your site to state this immediately to avoid clients thinking it is available. Customers will get annoyed and frustrated if you allow them to get to the very last step in the online shopping process only to then find out it is out of stock. Be up to date and on top of your inventory.

Although these things may seem small or not important at this time, you can never underestimate the importance of these simple items. Don’t over look these simple things and amp up your customer’s shopping comfort and experience today.
Chris Lindsey is a blogger who likes to write about many things, including technology, software, computers and more. He loves to talk business, especially on the golf course. You can find him on Google+ and Twitter.

I’m sure you’ve heard this a ton of times already – that the gold in your business is in your list. And what this means is that if you’re going to run a successful business then you need to have people who are ready, willing, and able to buy your products, programs, and services. And you need to have this information all stored in one place, i.e. a list!

So, let me ask you, how is your list doing? Are you getting new subscribers to your list every single day, or is your list stagnant and not growing?

One of the areas I teach my clients about is creating an online marketing flow – that is having a series of list building strategies in place that draw new people into your list on a daily basis, and automating as much of this as possible. But if you find that this isn’t happening for you and you’re not getting new subscribers on a daily basis, it could be down to one of these five problems here:

1. No clear call to action. You attract people to your website/blog but once they get there it’s not clear what you want them to do. Obviously you want them to sign up to your list, but are you ASKING them to do that? And is your sign-up box in a prominent position on your website? Research has found that the best place for your sign up box is top right-hand corner of your website.

2. Not utilizing a squeeze page. People get to your website and there’s so much information there that they simply don’t know what to do – it’s too confusing. One way to streamline this is to create a ‘squeeze’ page – that is a page where your website visitor can do one thing and one thing only – and that is to sign up to your list. Then in all your marketing activities you will direct your visitors to your squeeze page.

3. Requesting too much information. Are you asking your visitor for everything except their shoe size? If you are then maybe you’re asking too much from them. Typically you want to get their first name, last name, and primary email address. If your visitor feels that you’re asking for too much information in exchange for a free report then they may leave your website all together.

4. No opt-in box on EVERY page of your website. This is another classic mistake I see many business owners make – they don’t have an opt in box on EVERY single page. If you have a blogsite then it’s really easy to make sure you have this on every page simply by adding your opt in box to your sidebar. Remember: not every visitor will enter your website via your home page – there are many different ways in for them.

5. Not asking your current subscribers to forward your ezine to their friends. This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to grow your list – simply use a Tell-A-Friend service to make it easy for your current subscribers to let their networks know about your ezine. You can set it up so that the more friends your subscribers forward your ezine to they are then eligible to get some kind of bonus. This could be a free report, tip sheet, checklist, or audio … anything that is easy to deliver and will make a great ‘special bonus’ as a way to say thank you to your current subscribers.

If your list isn’t growing then you’re going to have real problems maintaining a long-term successful business. Review the five areas I’ve shared with you above, and see if your lack of new subscribers is down to one (or more) of the above areas. And then set about creating a plan to rectify this problem.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is what determines the rank of your company website when it appears in internet search results. Sites that have strong SEO tend to rank higher than sites that have weak SEO, or no SEO at all.

The website’s rank determines where it appears on a results page. For example, if you do a Google search for “wombats” the first result is a Wikipedia article. The second result is the official site for a rock band called The Wombats. These two listing are ranked first, and second, respectively because of their SEO rating. Both pages have such a high rank that they beat out the National Geographic page on wombats, which was ranked third.

SEO works differently depending on your search engine. A search for “wombats” on Bing shows the same top three results, but the fourth result is different. Bing lists the Wombat Information Center fourth, while Google lists WOMBATS – Women’s Mountain Bike & Tea Society.

These differences occur due to slight differences in the way each engine searches the web, and indexes the information it finds.

So why is SEO important?

Let’s say you have a blog site with affiliate links. In order to make money, you need to drive traffic to your site so people will click your links. Or, let’s say you are using your website to advertise your own services. Without traffic, you’ll be advertising to the void.

Just creating and publishing a site does not guarantee that it will show up on the first page (or even the fifth page) of a web search. And, if it’s not on the first page, then people are not likely to see it, and you’ll get very little traffic.

How does SEO work?

There are several different ways to optimize your website for high search ranks. One method is to publish content that uses keywords that match popular web searches. For example, if you have a website devoted to dieting, then content with words like “lose weight,” “weight loss,” and “how can I trim my middle” would give you a higher ranking.

Another option is to apply tags and keywords to the site itself to make it more visible to search engines.

But SEO isn’t just about throwing popular words and phrases onto a website.

When done right, SEO-rich content and tags appear natural and seamless, yet are very effective in driving traffic to your site.

When done wrong, they look awkward and contrived, and your site could still be overlooked by major search engines.

If it sounds daunting, that’s because for many people it is.

This is why a lot of business owners rely on search engine optimization services to help them improve their rankings.

A good SEO service can take over and make your company site a lean, mean, SEO machine so you can spend your time on other aspects of your business. On a basic level,  an SEO service can review your current site and offer suggestions for improving SEO. In more advanced cases they can take over designing your site, and provide SEO-boosting content and tags.

Whether you decide to tackle the task yourself, or work with a professional company, SEO is crucial to improving your presence on the web.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith

One of the main problems with those who’re new to online business is they easily get attracted with the design of the month. Flash was quite popular in recent times, while sliding banners were considered as the ‘real deal’ later on.

Today, many online businesses gear their efforts towards search engine optimization, but they forget that the real success lies in user experience. Visitors coming to a particular website go through thought conversations such as ‘why am I on this website?’, ‘where am I supposed to place the order?’, ‘how do I contact the owner?’ etc.

Thankfully, web design elements can be used to guide users through sequencing and create the best user experience on a blog/website. There are many web design services that have expert knowledge on how design elements work such San Diego web design and similar companies in other states.

Here are some of the design elements that are considered important when it comes to user experience:

1. Shapes

Shapes have an important connection with the visitors as they’re used to communicate and appeal to their emotions.
For example, many of the bloggers who write about making money online use dollars ($), giving the readers an impression of money. The brain also processes shapes much faster than simple text.

2. White space

A website is going to be more attractive when it’s filled with banners, ads, opt-in forms, messages, pop ups etc. This is a misconception that needs to be cleared. There should be plenty of white space in the design of a website (see Huffingtonpost).

White space makes it easy for the readers to consume the information posted on the website, while banners, forms and the likes can possibly distract them from the main content.

3. Size

Size is important for emphasizing the visual and text content on the website. In case of web design, bigger is better when it comes to shape, front or graphics.

The bigger size is used to emphasize the importance of a particular element. It also becomes easy for visitors to skim through widgets, messages, content etc.

4. Position

Position is a tricky element and text, banners and other properties of the website need to be placed carefully, as they can prove to be the difference marker in the end. For example, for some, putting advertisements above the fold is the main source of revenue, while others say it reduces the user experience and the visitor should be able to see more of the content above the fold.

A website should place the most important information above the fold, because that is the area the eyes of a search engine visitor scans first when he/she lands on a particular web page.

5. Motion

Motion can directly impact how a user behaves. The size, shape and color on the web page can be combined to make a motion to direct users towards a particular action.

A simple arrow moving downwards towards a form that says ‘pre-order now and get a free dock connector’ has the ability to tap into the will of users and prompt them to make a purchase.

These design elements come together to provide the best user experience. They also help businesses to gain the trust of the visitors and communicate their message effectively, which leads to better conversions.

Article contributed by Jenna Smith