DAY 3: Qualifying Your Keywords
March 8, 2010 by Tyrone
If you haven’t completed day 2 of the SEO course, you can review: Building Your Keywords List before starting this post.
“High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.”
- Charles Kettering -
It’s now time to refine your keywords list
Yesterday, you have collected a list of keywords as per the suggestions of different tools and software. That’s good, but not enough.
There’s a fact that a machine is nothing more than a machine in the end.
Only you will truly be able to tell whether or not a keyword is relevant to your site or not.
Reality Check
The real success of a site doesn’t come from traffic, it comes from targeted traffic.
There’s no point to optimize your site for a keyword that has nothing to do or very little with your site, you may get some one time traffic visitors alongside suffering a loss of relevancy and credibility as per the quality of your content.
If you are offering medicals services in Denver, there’s no point optimizing for “medical services in New York” just because it’s suggested by a keyword tool.
Why Qualifying Your Keywords?
There are two major reasons as to why you should qualify your
keywords:
- As I just explained, to prevent time wasting by optimizing for irrelevant keywords.
- To reassess your “real” potential traffic volume within your niche.
How to Quality Your Keywords?
Start by opening the keyword list you built yesterday, remember your list should look like that:
How To Use Press Releases To Gain Exposure For Your Website?
July 20, 2009 by Tyrone
If you want to establish credibility and create brand awareness in the shortest amount of time, utilising the media is a more effective approach than paid advertising. The goal is to get the media to write great stories about your Internet business and yourself using press releases. It allows you and your website to reap the benefits of free exposure, which is considered to be three times more valuable than paid advertising. By having a third party such as a journalist write a story about you, your brand message becomes more credible and effective. Their coverage offers an impartial endorsement that tells their readers you are an honest person, and that your services or products provide substantial value.
Understanding How The Media Works
Our society is very time-poor, and this fight for attention includes our journalists and writers. They have to scan through literally thousands of articles, ideas and proposals a day to pick the best ones that will capture the reader’s attention. If we want to stand out among the thousands of articles a journalist will receive daily, we first need to understand what they are looking for.
Most journalists will ask — where’s the angle or the hook to this story? What is going to appeal to my readers that will make a great story? For example, if the heading of a story reads, “Man takes dog for a walk,” then people will not be interested. But if the heading reads “Man takes flying dog for a walk,” that story will grab the reader’s attention.
Marketing Your E-commerce Business Through Social Media Networks
May 28, 2009 by Tyrone
A popular way to generate traffic to your e-commerce business is through social media networks. You can market your e-commerce website through places such as Digg.com, Twitter.com, Facebook and MySpace. The goal with social network marketing is twofold:
- You are trying to enhance your site’s community by establishing outposts on social networking sites so people who share your interests, or are interested in your products and services, find you and your site.
- Getting involved in social networking multiplies the number of places that your site and your products can be found by search engines, which is critically important to the success of your e-commerce business.
How To Leverage Social Media Networks To Our Advantage?
Simply, we are trying to spread the word about your e-commerce business. You can take your product reviews or blog posts and spread them as far as possible online enlisting the help of these sites. It’s important to make sure the content you’re promoting is interesting and helpful to the audience you’re trying to reach. Remember, people like to do business with their friends if they’ve never met you offline. By being reasonable and participating in social networking, you’ll expand your credibility and potential customer base in many important and helpful ways.
It’s also important to recognize that these social media outlets were designed to serve as conversation platforms, and not as overt marketing channels. Sending messages that are overly promotional or commercial is often compared to shouting at a party where everyone else is chatting quietly, and the backlash can overwhelm the benefits of participation. As an ecommerce business owner I recommend taking a couple of weeks to monitor the various sites to get a sense of the patterns and informal rules before posting anything.
12 Sales Effective Marketing Tips
March 3, 2009 by Tyrone
MARKETING YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS may already be your strength, or you are struggling and just getting by. No matter how your business is performing everyone can benefit by exploring some low cost marketing opportunities that will help grow your business. You don’t have to spend loads of money on advertising, it just requires some creativity and planning. Furthermore, not only does it add more dollars to your bottom line in money not spent on advertising it can also boost your confidence. Here are 12 tips for you to implement into your Internet business.
12 sales effective / low cost marketing tips:
- Press Release – send a story about yourself relating to your business via email to a newspaper or magazine relevant to your industry. A story will increase your businesses public awareness and credibility and it is free marketing for you as well. Don’t forget to include a professionally taken photo of yourself.
- Send Email – contact your existing clients and offer them something via email to entice to visit your website.
- Public Speaking – offer a presentation at your local service club like Rotary or Leagues and ask if they would be interested in allowing you to present a subject of interest. Don’t do a sale pitch, offer something to people that will be of value and record the session to use for later public broadcasts. You can also use this in your credentials to show people you have spoken in public and is good for press releases as well.
- Keyword Marketing - not enough businesses use this method and it’s low cost as long as you set your target and budget correctly. You can buy keywords relating to your business from as little as 5c per word. Be really specific and make sure your target audience sees your advertisement.
- Post Advertisement On Noticeboard - your local shopping centre, schools, universities will have noticeboards for you to post up notices and advertisements. Use them and take advantage of them because many people still read noticeboard and give them an incentive to call (maybe include a tear off at the bottom of your notice).
- Networking – join a business club or a forum in your area sharing the same interest. Attend these events regularly and swap business cards.
- Setup A Stall – sometimes just setting up a store at your local fair or market creates brand awareness for your business and is a great opportunity to talk to people in the community and hand out brochures to offer your products or services.
- Cross-Promote – contact other businesses that offer complimentary services or products to yours and work out a co-operative marketing strategy to promote together. It’s a win-win to help each other out.
- Promote On Your Car – A very cost effective way if you drive around a lot. You can purchase magnetic signs to stick on your car with your business details. You will definitely get people looking because not enough people do it.
- Give Away Vouchers – When a consumer purchases your product or service give them a discount voucher for their next purchase to entice them to come back to spend again.
- Talk To People – Don’t worry, they’re not going to bite you! Talk to your friends and acquaintances, they will be more than happy to refer your details if you approach them nicely.
- Write A Guest Post – This is becoming more popular across the Bloggersphere where you offer to write an informative article for other bloggers. They may have readers that you want to attract and they are interested in what you have to say, then it’s a great way to market your Internet business.
Try to implement a couple of these ideas over the month and test your results. The best way to find out if they work is to ask your customers when they contact you, “How did you hear about us?”. This is the best way to measure and learn from your customers as it can help you determine what is working and what is not. It’s all about trial and error to find the best marketing method for your Internet business.
Tyrone Shum
Marketing Tipster
