Business Head

Project Planning

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 01:40:00 +0000

Project Planning Online: Ever wondered how online project management software can benefit the project manager, or the amount of time that it might save?

Looking for profect planning online software, either free project management software of paid? Take a look at Project Planning Online for some answers!

Building a Website - Keyword Selection.

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:41:00 +0000

Did you know that some of your SEO ranking will occur naturally, if you plan, and set up you website correctly? Once you have everything planned out, executing your SEO strategy, is going to be very easy.
If you pick niche, specialised keywords, you will pick up free traffic very (more...)

keywords, search engine optimisation, search engine optimisation seo, search enging optimization, seo brisbane, the seo company, web design, website

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:17:00 +0000

Search Engine Optimisation and the Search Terms that you choose

It is a good idea to put together a business case for your site, to focus your effort on the goals of the site.You may change your mind, from what you originally intended the site to be after reading this article. Don't become too attached to those initial ideas just yet, you need to validate them, and change them if your research shows that you site will be better off if you refocus, due to your new found knowledge of your customers, competition and offering.

Search Term Selection

Hey! Are you listening?Concentrate, don't miss this information.To make it worth your time putting together a website, you need to make sure that it is making use of keywords that search users search for.When nobody is interested in the keywords you are using to drive traffic to your offer, you whole effort is a waste of time.

Advertising can drive traffic to your site, but at what effort and cost?Are there other opportunities, other keywords out there that are more easily attainable for you?

Research your websites' focus

First of all, you have a niche, right?You need a focus for your site; otherwise it will not make any sense.What you're trying to achieve is to send people to your site as THE place to go for information on your niche.Is there some aspect of your niche that customers are particularly interested in and how would you know?There are a number of ways that you can find what people really want - listen to people when they talk, look in the paper, look in internet forums and chat rooms that are associated with your niche.Is there something that people are looking for?Do people discuss your niche?Is there a subject that regularly crops up that would describe your niche?

Understanding your Competition - How do they rank, and why?

A good way to start to understand your competition is to open up your favourite search engine, let's use Google, most people do, and type in a search that you would expect would find your site when you build it.The number underneath the search box once you have performed the search shows the number of pages that were found.

Open up some of the search results - who are the competition, do they offer the same product or service that you are intending to offer? Is their location a factor in their domination? Could you offer a localised version of what they do? If your customers have been around for a long time, offer the same products and services, in the same location as you, you're going to have your work cut out for you, to beat them.

If you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty, you need to know for each of those sites, their age, the number of inbound and outbound links, page rank, body content - all these things are big factors in the ranking of that site.

Search Phrase Analysis Sites

Some utilities on the net will help you to discover the search volume per month, and levels on competitiveness for your search phrase.Varying levels of related search term suggestions can be generated that will help you find the term with the best combination of search volume and low competition.

Tools can be found from the following:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - free

keyworddiscovery.com

Wordtracker

Siphon the free traffic - Pick the correct keywords

If nobody searches for the search term that you are focussing on, it makes it much more difficult to generate money.Without a clear set of keywords, your SEO results are very likely to be random. You may get traffic, but it will not be targeted, or the results will be less than could be expected from an alternative keyword.Don't worry, something can be done about it, but it entails refocussing the site toward the correct terms.

If your keywords are chosen correctly, your site is more likely to be structure in such a way that it makes sense in that context, through the choice of headings, categories, tags, page content, backlinks, anchor text, image names, and the search engine is more likely to be able to find your content and rank you well for it, as you deserve.As you can probably see from the list of items that feature in making the site rank well, changing from the wrong keywords to the right ones is likely to require a lot of rework.

Can you choose keywords yourself, or should you pay someone to do it?

Due to the importance of getting the right keywords for you site, it is a good idea to spend a great deal of time researching the best terms, researching your competitors, niches and so on, before jumping in to creating a web site.
There is nothing wrong with doing this yourself, although paying someone to do this is highly likely to yield sales way in excess of the initial outlay, and continue to do so for some time to come.

Article source: How to build a business web site - Keyword Selection - Keyword Research

How to start a website in the right way with the correct Search Terms - Keyword Research

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:14:00 +0000

SEO Keyword Research

It is a good idea to put together a business case for your site, to focus your effort on the goals of the site. As you read through this article you may have cause to realign your goals to make it easier to achieve success. This is good news actually, as it means that you have used completely understood your websites' purpose, and have eliminated that which is inefficient, given your new found understanding of your customers, your competition and what you are wanting to offer.

Search Term Selection

Hey! Are you listening? Concentrate, don't miss this information. To make it worth your time putting together a website, you need to make sure that it is making use of keywords that search users search for. You could be position number one in Google for keywords that nobody searches for, in which case the whole effort was totally pointless.

Advertising your products is going to cost money, are there easier ways to drive traffic that has a lower cost? Are there other opportunities, other keywords out there that are more easily attainable for you?

Research your websites' focus

Have you a niche? You need a focus for your site; otherwise it will not make any sense. When your visitors think about your niche, you want them to first think of your website.Is there some aspect of your niche that customers are particularly interested in and how would you know? Keep an eye on internet resources such as forums, chat rooms and blog comments associated with your niche subject, listen to people, ask your friends, look in niche publications. Is there something that people are looking for? Is you niche something that people talk about? Is there a core phrase that you could use that would describe your niche?

Understanding your Competition - How do they rank, and why?

A good way to start to understand your competition is to open up your favourite search engine, let's use Google, most people do, and type in a search that you would expect would find your site when you build it. When the results are displayed in the search engine, a number at the top of the results indicates the total number of matches found.

Open up some of the search results - who are the competition, do they offer the same product or service that you are intending to offer? Is their location a factor in their domination? Could you offer a localised version of what they do? If your customers have been around for a long time, offer the same products and services, in the same location as you, you're going to have your work cut out for you, to beat them.

If you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty, you need to know for each of those sites, their age, the number of inbound and outbound links, page rank, body content - all these things are big factors in the ranking of that site.

Search Phrase Discovery Programs

There are a few tools that allow you to understand the number of monthly searches that are performed for your core phrase, and how competitive it is. The good thing with these tools is that they are also able to suggest other keywords that may be applicable to your core phrase.

Tools can be found from the following:

Adwords External Tools: Keyword Tool from Google, which is free

Keyword Research - keyworddiscovery.com

Wordtracker

Correct Keyword choice drives Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

If nobody searches for the search term that you are focussing on, it makes it much more difficult to generate money. Without planning the search phrases that you target carefully, using scientific methods that quantify what is required to achieve your goals, your SEO efforts are likely to be wasted. You will get traffic, but will not achieve the true potential of the site. It isn't too late - we can change that starting now, but redefining what the keyword focus should be, and concentrating our efforts there.

Your website structure should be clear given that you know your target keywords, the right page titles, webpage addresses, headings, link anchor text, body content, image tags, metadata will easily be found by the search engines, and will allow you to rank better naturally than you would without planning. As you can probably see from the list of items that feature in making the site rank well, changing from the wrong keywords to the right ones is likely to require a lot of rework.

Can I choose keywords myself, or should I pay someone to help me?

Build the site last - understand fully that you are trying to achieve before you start, including your competitors, niches, and alternatives.

This is something that you can do. The only downside is that it can be time consuming if you have never done it before. The effect of getting the whole process of SEO will generate traffic and sales way in excess of the initial outlay, so it is more a matter of priority.

Article source: How to start a website in the right way with the correct Search Terms - Keyword Research

New Website? Where are my visitors? Want traffic? Heard of SEO?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:08:00 +0000

If you're interested in how to build a new website and need help with web design, and what needs to be done to get free traffic or wondered what SEO is, then go to this site. There are lots of very useful articles for people starting out with a new website, and these guys do a great job, and really want to help you succeed.

Visit The Brisbane SEO Company for more information.

Here is a great new investment site

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:46:00 +0000

I stumbled across a very familiar seeming site whilst searching the other day. It has information about wealth creation,wealth strategy,wealth building,wealth partners, investment in both property or real estate,stock market trading,wealth mindset,business ownership. It seems that this site has much of the information that i was attempting to put together. Great site, take a look at Wealth Genetics for wealth creation, wealth strtegy, wealth management, to see how good it is!

All things Software has moved!

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:11:00 +0000

All things software has now moved to a different blog location.

Find it here

I hope you continue to enjoy the information that it provides.

Martin.

Business Head - Can I save money and do it myself?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:41:00 +0000

Stange title to a post, right? All will become clear in the fullness of time.

I'm talking about paying people to do things instead of doing those things yourself. Which is the best option?

Things like designing a logo for your business, you could do it yourself, but if you're like me, it would look like a blind, one-armed pygmie drew it instead of being the professional message that you had in mind. By the way, no offence intended to blind onearmed pygmies!

What about your books? You could put all your receipts in a bad, then give them to the accountant and hope that they will end up all being okay. Well, that's not likely, you're unlikely to get the tax credits that you might do if you were a little organised. There's also the problems of sorting through the receipts and throwing away all the pizza boxes and beer cans too. You got the wrong bag, again!
One thing that is a great thing to be across, is what money you are making, and how you could make more of that money. Probably when you first start out, your fiscal affairs are going to be fairly straight forward, but once you start to make a bit of money, it is a good idea to at the very least pay the accountant to print out and check your accounts for you. It means that you're a lot less likely to get unexpected visitors in the future, and I didn't mean mice or cockroaches.
It's good to get the stamp of approval on the books, and also to know that a professional has had a look at what you're doing, and hopefully advised you if you can save money by re-arranging how you do things in the future. Accounts are like the log book for the car, good to always get it stamped after having had a the service.

So what about marketing and sales? Can you do that yourself? Well, it really depends on the business that you're in. Regardless of that information, you're more likely to know about the business than anyone else, unless of course you have a business partner, or resident ninja spies. That means that you will need to convey exactly what you want to the paid professional to make sure that you get what you're really after. That can be really difficult in the begining, as you probably are a little unsure of where the business is heading. It is good to take a look at your business plan from time to time, and figure out if you're still on the same track, or you need to refine where you're at. If all is in order, then you can use the business plan to give to the paid professionals.

But, I don't have the time? You have choices, you can get someone in as an employee to organise things for you, they'll also come in handy for other stuff too, and they can organise whatever it is for you, perhaps. You could get your camp bed under the desk, and work some insane hours, or you pay someone. Could you do it for a cheaper price if you did it yourself? Quite possibly, but would it be as good a job, or lose you more sales than you would have had you paid someone for the work?

Finally, am I good at? Acting like an idiot? Harsh but fair. What I mean by that is, are you really good in one area, and so can concentrate on that area whilst paying people to do the other stuff? It might cost you a little more initially, but is the end result going to be that much more impressive for having the proper job done?

Business Head - Cashflow

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 04:29:00 +0000

Hi,

Okay, so you have identified competitors, a market or markets, and some ideas of how to sell whatever it is that you're selling.

Okay, so assuming that you've come up with a great idea, you'd expect people to start buying what you have straight away, wouldn't you? Seriously, I don't know you, why would I pay for something from a person or company that I have never heard of? That's an entirely plausible scenario, so what can you do? How about coming up with another idea or two, some other areas that you might be able to depend upon to keep the food on the table, and the wolf from the door.

That's a nice easy thing to say, but not that easy to dream up. I spend years thinking of this idea, and now I'm finally doing it, you're saying that I should start that process again? Well, you don't have to, but imagine how much easier it could be if you have two things that could make money, and you can fine tune to make them more profitable. It gives you a lot more chance at success doesn't it?

You are much less likely to feel pressure if you have a sure fire way to make money as well as your "little baby" or an idea. It may be that the alternative cashflow idea makes more money in the long run, that the other idea. That's great, you're making money. So long as it lives up to your benchmark, you should develop that.

The extra cashflow also gives you extra money so that you can develop marketing and sales tactics, without having to mortgage your house, and take a massive risk, on something that might be a huge flop. That said, you did all your research, people like it, they like the price, the time is right, everything is right. How could you ever fail?

Business Head - I feel I have something special to sell

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:40:00 +0000

Hi!

You have an idea that you feel is special, will sell. But will it really? Will people really be interested in self-warming socks? How do you know? The thing is, it's one thing for you to think that your idea is good, and a completely different one for others to agree.

So what can you do? Well, you need to ask people. You need to find a forum, and use it as a sounding board. That could easily be an actual forum on the internet, or alternatively it could be a case of asking your family (poor buggers!)

Presumably you already have a market in mind? Maybe you could run the idea past a select few from that market, and see what feedback you get? This is a useful phase, since you may get ideas to add to your original idea, or fine tune it. The idea may not be feasible, so aren't you glad you asked, instead of wasting all that time and money?

You also need to find your unique selling point. What is it that sets what you sell apart from others? Price alone can be a reason, but it makes the business a lot more likely to fail, as you immediately will find yourself in price wars. Unless you have some special place from which you can obtain your product or raw materials (that's legal) you might want to think through what you're trying to do.

What if what you have is completely new? A new eyebrow curling gadget? Great! Now, you still need to find out if people would buy that product. You also need to look if there's something similar to what you do, and see how they sell things. You need to be different, but to start off with you could have a similar approach, with a slightly different product.

Business Head - Where are my markets?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:01:00 +0000

Hi,

Well obviously if you're going to start a business, you need to know where you're going to sell whatever you're going to sell.

So, being the brains that you are, how are you going to find that information out? You're hoping that I was going to tell you? Ummmm... Okay, I'll give you a few ideas to start with.

First of all, do you have any competitors? Or if not, are there any companies that do something remotely similar to what you plan to do? I don't mean pick your nose, as I don't think that that would sell well. You could even look for people that have a similar sort of approach to you. So you could look at no frills companies, or companies that offer things at a cut price. Perhaps you could even view companies that often do big sales, it really depends on how you envisage your company working.

Now, you have an idea of competitors either for a product or service, or people who have a similar approach. You're really impressed with yourself aren't you? Chill out! You still have some work to do, although the job you've done so far has been sterling. Okay, so you need to write down what or how you found those competitors, or like companies, what identifies them? How are they different? What do they do well, and what do they do badly? How much money do they earn?

You can also try to look at the competitors in terms of investing, would you invest in them, and if so why? If not why?

I want a new business. Where do I start?

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:44:00 +0000

I do often come across people saying that they'd like a business, at which point I often question their motives. This often ellicit responses such as, "So I can make lots of money", "So that I don't have to take order from the boss", "So that I can work when I want" and so on. Dont we all want those things in life, and more besides? Of course, but that isn't going to make a business sucessful.

First things first, you probably need to lay down some ground rules, a benchmark before you start. Then figure out some things to look for to see if it is at all feasible.

So having your office on the beach is the most important right? I joke about it, but it's quite possible that that is the criteria for business, perhaps if you already can do that, or have a great view from you office window or whatever?

I think it's often a good idea to decide what consitutes a good business first. Loads of dosh, big houses, cars, and the like? You're with me, right? I hear you, really I do. Stepping back for a second, how about the job that you currently have, you earn $x, so by my way of thinking, if the business can't make you that same $x then you need to be asking questions of it regarding how worthwhile the process is.

So, lets assume that that is all we're bothered about at the moment. We don't really care that we will live at work for the next decade, do we? It's all worthwhile in the end isn't it? Okay, so now we need to look at what our business will sell. This area of feasibility is often called a business plan, and whilst people often see this as optional, it's a really good idea, to see if the reality is the same as the visions of paradise you have in your head. We will leave business plans to other posts, as you will otherwise have fallen asleep soon. Wake up already!

Business Head - Another blog starts

noreply@blogger.com (Martin Platt) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:24:00 +0000

Good day to you all,

This is the first blog in a series of blogs about how to start up a business. The blog will deal with how to make the business successful, what to look at to improve the business.

This blog is not meant to be advice, but instead, as with the other blogs at teamplatt, it's all about information, and how that knowledge can get you started looking in the right places to put things right.

I hope you enjoy it.

Martin Platt.