The term blog is short for web log, which started out meaning a personal online journal. Back in the late 1990s when blogs first emerged, they were usually filled with personal posts about the owner’s daily life, thoughts, and problems. They have since evolved into invaluable online marketing tools. Blogs are now a “must-have” resource for any online business.

So jump into the 21st century and read below to see why your business demands a blog!

1. Corporate Headquarters – Every company needs a home-base or corporate headquarters, so to speak. A blog would be the hub of your business and establish your online presence.

2. Easy to Manage – The choices available to you when creating your blog are limitless. With widgets, plug-ins, templates, etc. it is one of the easiest and quickest ways to build an effective, powerful website. You will be amazed at the things you can do with your blog, even if you are technically-challenged.

3. Customer Interaction – A blog encourages customer interaction by allowing people to post their comments, opinions, questions, etc. This will enable you to provide more effective customer service. It will also enable your customers and visitors to get to know you better which in turn will build trust and credibility. Your blog will become an active community attracting more and more subscribers, followers, etc. by building relationships.

4. Cost-Effective Marketing – Research has shown that businesses with a blog have reduced marketing costs. Not only are the costs lower with blogs, but the results are much more successful. Blogs do generate more customers at a lower cost!

5. Value and Education – Because of regular postings and fresh content, your blog will educate your visitors as well as add value to their visit. For example: if you own an online jewelry store, you can add posts educating your visitors on jewelry. How it’s made, the value of the different gems used, the quality of the workmanship, how to take care of your jewelry and much more helpful information can be given to your customers. This will also help establish you as an expert so people will continue to come to you for help and information as well as for the products and/or service they need.

6. Free! – One of the best things about an effective blog is you can get one for free. You do not have to pay a professional web designer hundreds or thousands of dollars to create your business headquarters. Blogger and WordPress are two of the top blog providers.

7. Social Connections – A blog allows you to stay connected with your social sites more effectively. You can also allow your visitors to share with their social pages as well. With social media plug-ins and widgets, your visitors can simply click a button to share your site with all their followers, fans and friends. All these social connections could spin a pretty big web of customers.

8. Business Connections – Through your blog, other online business owners can find you more easily, thus increasing your chances of forming business connections and alliances. Joint ventures with other business owners can help get both sides more exposures, leads and sales.

9. Higher Traffic and Sales – Higher traffic and sales is a goal sought after by every online business owner. Having a blog on your site can help you achieve this goal by the more effective marketing results it can create. Your marketing is more efficient, your site is more valuable and educational, your online presence is much more announced and your networking circle is always expanding. This should all lead to more traffic and increased sales.

10. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Good blogs consistently provide fresh and updated keyword-rich content. This is exactly what Google and the other engines look for in a site. Blogs also increase your chances of getting more quality inbound links. This is another thing the search engines like. As your blog grows and gets more visitors, the importance of it will also grow. This can help you in the search engines as well. Overall, a blog will more likely do better in the search engines than a standard website.

There are many more benefits to blogging than what I have mentioned in this article so if you are not already a blogger, you need to seriously consider becoming one. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much it can benefit your business.

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com
This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Online and offline marketing methods can be polar opposites. Although they both possess the same fundamentals, there are vast differences on how their respective strategies are implemented. Many businesses new to online advertising can quickly find themselves in trouble financially by following the same basic rules that they did in their offline advertising.

If you are new to online advertising, the first step you should take is learning about all the various online advertising tools. As you learn what advertising options are available, each one should be analyzed to see what best matches the strategy you are trying to implement. Most business owners find that the most effective way to market online is to develop a variety of strategies instead of only focusing on one or two.

There are numerous resources available to help you learn about your options, but developing the proper mix of advertising campaigns can be tough when first getting started. If you are at this stage, you can probably expect a lot of trial and error until finding what works for you within your budget.

The fundamentals of choosing an online advertising mix is similar in comparison to choosing an offline mix, but priority issues differ quite a bit. These priorities include the type of business you’re in, your available budget, targeted clients, skills, time factors, and more. The overall goal should be to find out how to make Google search engine put your website near the top of the results for your preferred keywords.

In deciding on how to choose your online advertising mix, list the factors you must consider and put them in order of priority. Once you have organized this, it makes it easier to determine what your choices should be. For example, your budget might be your top priority. If this is the case, you know that you should focus on the lower cost options until you begin to see a good return on your investment.  After you have achieved a solid ROI, perhaps the budget won’t be the top priority anymore.

Most successful online marketers have found that the best advertising campaigns have a good amount of flexibility. Priorities do change. When they do, the transition to a different campaign should be fairly seamless. If you start an inflexible marketing campaign, you may find yourself stuck doing something that isn’t working and quickly find yourself throwing good money after bad to change things. For example, you need to know how to check google indexed pages and how to get on google search before you spend too much time promoting these pages.

Whatever mix you decide will not guarantee results since many factors come into play such as the economic climate, general preferences, and more. If you use the various tools out there to test and track all your campaign results, use these results to chart your next move, and have the adaptability to make changes, chances are you’ll find your own path to success.

For more information on building and promoting a website, please click here. You can get more tips and tricks on enhancing your online presence by reading our backlinks article or by visiting our search optimization page.

If you own an online business, you need to provide an About Us page. Unfortunately, many sites neglect to give this page the attention it needs and deserves. Many people do not realize the importance of an effective About Us page.

Your About Us page has the distinct purpose of letting people get to know your company, which will help build the foundation of trust and respect that is needed for a successful online business. For certain businesses, the About Us page can also be used for recruiting new employees, sales reps, etc.

So, take some time, look over your About Us page and see if it utilizes any or all of the ten features listed below.

1. Company History – Give a brief history of your company and how you got started. Explain how long you’ve been in business, the purpose of your business and your experience. This is also a good place to add your mission statement.

2. Focus on Benefits - Be sure to focus on the benefits your company will provide the customer. Your potential customers want to know what you can do for them, not how you do it.

3. Introduce Yourself and Crew – Be sure to give your name and the names of those who work with and/or for you. You would be surprised at how many About Us pages I have read that contain no names whatsoever! Give a very brief background on yourself and your workers so your visitors can get to know them.

4. Special Skills and Accomplishments– Highlighting any special skills you have or accomplishments can help to build your credibility and separate you from your competitors. If your company is a green company be sure to highlight that as well. Let people know what your company stands for and against.

5. Toot Your Horn – Provide testimonials, awards and names of notable clients. Don’t be afraid to let people know exactly how accomplished you and your company are. This will also help build credibility and trust.

6. Use Photos – Be sure to add some photos of yourself and your workers (if any) so people can feel more human contact. Actually seeing the person or people behind the website will make it more believable.

7. Personality and Passion– Give your company some personality. Accentuate the passion and commitment your company possesses. Let your readers see the human side of your company.

8. Social Media – Be sure to add your social media site links. This will give your readers another avenue to keep in touch with your company.

9. Coffee Clutch – Write all of this information as if you were sitting over coffee and chatting with your visitors. Don’t make it sound like a dull cookie cutter page. Add life, vigor and sparkle to your writing.

10. Contact Info – ALWAYS thank your visitor for coming to your site and offer your contact information. Let them know you are available to answer any questions or concerns. Adding your physical address is shown to raise the level of confidence in your company as well.

Although the About Us page is often overlooked by the site owner, it can be a very powerful way to attract customers and increase your conversion rate. Do the research and take the time to write a compelling and powerful About Us page that will boost your credibility and gain the trust and respect your business needs to survive!

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Public relations can be one of the most valuable forms of marketing in that it tends to deliver mass exposure at a fraction of the cost. For example, it can provide a level of credibility that can’t really be fabricated. It also helps to create a buzz around a business if conducted appropriately. For these reasons, PR can be a particularly effective tool for small business owners.

Unfortunately, public relations agencies often work on monthly retainers and require a significant budget to get the ball rolling with even small-scale marketing campaigns. So, how can the average small business owner afford a PR campaign that delivers results without committing to fixed monthly fees or blowing their whole marketing budget?

Public relations doesn’t have to have an expensive, high profile campaign to yield results.  In fact, a simple press release can be a highly effective tool in generating media exposure without having to worry about creating a truly innovative idea designed to take the world by storm.  A press release that covers the fundamentals of a story, is interesting, and is as easy as possible for a journalist to implement can generate significant exposure on both a local and national level. This can also cement the resources and contact lists for future PR campaigns.

Finding a unique angle for a story is one part of the PR mix that takes a little getting used to and one that’s often hit or miss.  It ultimately comes down to crafting a news angle that appeals to the specific person on the other end of the message. If the journalist or news agency you send it to agrees with your vision and its relevance to their readers, it has a good chance of being accepted.

Have a look at the kind of features your chosen publications have recently run with and think about ways you can integrate elements of these stories into your press release. These are the kinds of angles that they feel appeal to their readership thus has a greater chance of mainstream coverage.

It’s also important to take the time and effort to build relationships with the journalists and bloggers with whom you interact.  You may get coverage by blindly emailing your story to a list of recipients. But sending to a small, targeted group and then following up with a quick phone call to each recipient will help you form a personal rapport that can only ultimately benefit your cause.

Public relations is an extremely powerful strand to the marketing mix and requires a creative, consistent approach that’s tailored to the needs of each chosen media outlet.  By spending your own time to compensate for a lack of budget, it is possible to achieve the same (and even greater) results than many of the PR companies within the small business price bracket.  By choosing your syndicated publications carefully and taking a unique, personable slant on your newsworthy angle, it’s possible to see real, meaningful media coverage and further stretch your marketing dollar.

Search engine optimization is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive targeted traffic to your website.  This means that, as a business owner, its  important to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the user initiating a search.

They use programs called ‘spiders’ to index websites. This spider is an automated program that crawls a website, reads the content on the it and follows the links that the site connects to. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository where the data is indexed. It will visit each link listed on the website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so its not recommended to have a website with more than 500 pages.

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine. A spider is almost like a book that contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index millions of pages a day.

When someone asks a search engine to locate information or goes to search a website on google, it is actually searching through the index that it has created and not actually searching the page itself. Different engines produce different rankings because not every one uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial word stuffing or spam-dexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Internet. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can determine what a page is about if the content of the linked pages are similar to the content on the original page.

For more information on the major search engines and how to make sure your website is listed correctly, please click here.  You can get more ideas on how to enhance your online presence by reading our backlinks article or by visiting our search optimization page.

A website without traffic is like a city without people. It is wasted, as the sole purpose for it being created was for others to use it. Therefore, you need to spend as least as much time building access routes to your website, just like roads are built to a city, as you spend on the design of it, and the content for it.

You probably already know about the general methods of getting people to visit your website, so only a brief mention will be given to them here. Essentially, all traffic come from one of these three sources…

1.  Search Engines

2.  Referrals

3.  Paid Advertising

Which of those methods of getting traffic to your website is ’best’ is actually an irrelevant question, as it is not a case of just choosing one of them. If you opt to use just one method of getting traffic to your website, then you are making a common, and costly, mistake. In order to get the highest possible amount of visitors to your website you need to use all three of the above mentioned sources of traffic. It is really quite simple when you think about it – the more traffic sources you use, the more ways there are for people to find your website and, consequently, the more traffic your website will receive.

So, unless you are already knowledgeable on each of the methods of getting traffic, you should make that your top priority. Educating yourself on the basics of them is easy enough, as there is plenty of free information to be found on Internet marketing websites, blogs and forums. If you want your visitor count to reach its maximum possible level though, then you will need to learn about more than just the basics of those methods. The reason being that every website owner wants the same thing as you, more visitors to their site, and you are all competing for the same visitors.

Your competitors will no doubt have also read the free basic strategies that you already know about, or which you soon will know about after a little more research. So, while implementing the basic traffic gaining strategies will see you get some traffic to your website, you will be missing out on a lot of visitors, who will instead be visiting rival websites. So then, how can you make your website stand out from these rival websites? The answer is that you need to implement traffic gaining strategies that are above and beyond the basic ones that your competitors use.  Keep learning the latest techniques and continue to put the most effective ones into practice and you’ll likely see a gradual and steady increase in the traffic to your site.

Affiliate programs are a great way to increase your revenue: both by promoting affiliate products in return for a commission and in establishing your own affiliate program.  By selling other people’s products and services on commission, you can more effectively monetize your customer base after they’ve bought from you.  If you can find complimentary products and services to promote that can provide added value to your prospects and customers, you can earn more money from each contact, which will have a positive effect on your trading profits.

Particularly when combined with an effective email marketing campaign, marketing affiliate offers to your existing customers and prospects can be a good way to maximize revenue by enabling a means to sell other products and services to those that might not be interested in your primary offering.

Of course, affiliate marketing can be used to equal, if not greater effect as a lead generation tool for your business.  The model works by offering a set commission, usually a percentage of the sale price, for sales referred by individual affiliates.  There are stable technologies in place to track and credit affiliate referrals, and provided the right affiliates sign up to promote your offerings, it can be a great way to quickly scale your sales force.

The real beauty of marketing through affiliates as a lead generation tool is that it effectively outsources the marketing process to often professional-grade affiliate marketers, and related businesses in complimentary industries, with no wasted expense. While the affiliate commission portion can be high (often up to 50%, as margins allow), it is only paid in return for a concluded sale.  While the sale value is lower, the marketing input from your side to get that customer on board is zero, and you’re effectively guaranteeing a return from your marketing spend.

And the scalability factor is infinite: there’s nothing to stop you building a network of affiliates stronger than your in-house sales force to exponentially grow your sales and with a certain direct acquisition cost for each and every sale processed.

Website architecture refers to the specific design and layout of the web pages on a given website. There are some things that should be considered for both a visitor point of view, and a search engine point of view.

It’s important to have a web design that is appealing to the human eye so that visitors stay a while and come back often. The problem is that often what is appealing to the human eye is not so appealing to Google’s algorithm. This can create problems when it comes to getting the web pages to rank well in the search engines.

Google looks at text when it visits each web page. It doesn’t “see” images and it doesn’t view videos. It sees text content on the page and in the code of the page – not much else. Websites that make heavy use of such things as Flash and javascripts often have trouble getting a high ranking from Google.

Javascripts

Lately Google is starting to get a better handle on java, so its use is becoming more acceptable as long as it’s placed correctly within the code of the page. For example, javascripts should be placed in a file that resides in the root directory of the server. Then the coding on the page should refer to the file in order to call up the script.

Flash

If Flash is included on a page, it should only be used in a small percentage of the overall code. The Flash files should contain keywords that the search engines are able to read. When browsing the internet, you often see intro pages that are nothing more than videos that take up the entire page. Other than the keywords, the search engine spiders are not able to crawl these types of pages to gauge their content.

Images

It’s also important that images be kept small because they can cause the page to take too long to load. If a large image file is a requirement, it can be a good idea to include a thumbnail version of the image on the page and link it to a copy of the full size image that resides on the server.

Frames

Another common coding style that has recently led to issues is the use of frames within a website. You know you are looking at a “framed” web page when it appears there is a smaller, scrollable window embedded in the larger page of your browser window. It is actually, a separate web page. The problem with this style is that Google has to divide its Page Rank evaluation between 2 pages instead of one. If the larger page is being optimized for a specific set of keywords, and the framed page is not, this creates what is called Page Rank Dilution. If Google gave a value rank of 2 to the larger page, and only 0 to the smaller framed page, the overall ranking of the page may only be 1.

Links

It’s also important that the page links are text links rather than image links. Remember, Google reads text very well and it’s ranking pages that most accurately relate to a search term higher. It does that by checking the page text content against the search query. If it can’t read the text that is embedded within an image, it might not be able to give the site the ranking would otherwise deserve.

Links should be included in the site menu that is usually placed at the top, or in the left or right column of the page. It’s a good idea to also include the menu links horizontally across the bottom of each page. Links should also be added in the body text of your pages wherever there is an occurrence of a keyword or key phrase. Use these links to connect to the other pages of your site that contain more information relevant to those keywords.

Summary

The coding of a website makes up a good percentage of its optimization and ranking on the search engines. Its essential to find a good balance between the visual appeal for visitors and the overall coding for the search engine spiders. However, if a website is built, managed, and regularly updated with a focus on the visitor experience the rest will likely take care of itself.

One of the most powerful ways to build a successful online business is by creating relationships with your visitors so they can begin to trust you and feel comfortable ordering from you. One way of building these relationships is by having a mailing list so you can keep in contact with your subscribers. This helps form a bond and will start to build that foundation of trust and credibility.

Sending out weekly online newsletters or mailings is a great way to solidify the trust relationship. But who do you send it to? Taking the time and effort to build a responsive email list is not easy but it certainly can be done.

The ten tips below will help you get started building that all important list of names and email addresses.

1. Privacy Guarantee – One of the most important things you can do is guarantee the visitor’s privacy. Be sure to let them know their information will never be given out or sold to anyone under any circumstances!

2. Easy Sign-Up – Be sure to put a quick and easy sign-up form for your visitors. You do not want your potential subscribers chased away by having to click through a maze of forms. Make the sign-up as easy and fast as possible.

3. Multiple Forms – Don’t make the mistake of just putting one sign-up form on your site. Be sure to have one on every page. Not everyone will go to your homepage. Also, be sure to add subscription forms to your Facebook page and other social networking sites.

4. In Plain Sight – When putting the sign-up form on every page of your site, be sure to put them on the top of the page on either the right side or the left side. I have read that the left side is more effective.

5. No Life Story – Don’t ask for a ton of information when trying to get people to sign up for your mailing list. You don’t need to know their phone number, address, gender, birthday, etc. The person is going to wonder what you want all that information for and they will be inclined not to give it to you. A name and an email address is all you need.

6. Double Opt-In - Always provide double opt-in for your subscriptions. So after they sign-up, an email will be sent to them to give them a chance to confirm their subscription. This will protect your subscribers from being added to unwanted lists and it will also protect you from being reported for spam.

7. Free Gift- Always offer a quality free gift to everyone who signs up for your mailing list. Show them you appreciate them and are willing to give something to them as well. I usually offer a free ebook with helpful, quality content. Put the download link in the welcome subscriber email you send out so they can access their gift immediately. Don’t make them contact you or wait for it.

8. Email Signature – Be sure to offer a sign-up form or link in your email signature. A lot of people will sign-up directly from an email.

9. Forward to a Friend – Encourage your subscribers to forward copies of your mailings to their friends and associates. Offer incentive contests. For example, whoever gets the most people to subscribe gets a free gift or big discount on their next order.

10. Ad Swaps - Contact other newsletter publishers and ask them to do an ad swap. You will run a blurb about their newsletter if they do the same for you. You can also exchange blurbs on your welcome email that is sent to all new subscribers.

Bonus Tip: Be sure to offer quality content and products in your mailings. Add some contests (for example: a trivia challenge), some fun and encourage your readers’ interaction with you. This will go a long way in building that foundation of trust which in turn will bring you much more business!

Don’t be one of the 95% of people who fail at their online business. Terri Seymour can help you make money online. Find out how to increase your traffic and sales with her popular “How to Build Your Online Business” ebook for FREE at: ==> http://www.SeymourProducts.com
This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Website legal compliance is now under serious consideration by lawmakers in Washington. The U.S. Congress is now considering two proposed bills, which if enacted into law, would provide ground-breaking weapons for law enforcement and content owners to enforce intellectual property rights. If you’re a content owner that provides content on the Internet, you have an important stake in the current legislative process.

The competing bills currently under consideration – The Protect IP Act (Protect IP) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – are both aimed at websites that are focused on infringing the intellectual property rights of content owners. What’s both creative and controversial about these proposed laws from a website legal compliance perspective is the enforcement mechanism – shutting down the offending websites regardless of whether they’re U.S. based or foreign based websites.

The typical offenders that are the targets of Protect IP and SOPA are websites that pirate and illegally stream movies, TV shows, and music. However, if you’re a content owner with valuable content that may be the target of infringers, these proposed statutes may provide important legal remedies for you to protect your intellectual property.

The Protect IP Act

The target in Protect IP are websites that are “dedicated to infringing activities”. The key to determining if a website falls under this standard is whether it can be proved that the website has “no significant use” other than engaging in or facilitating infringement.

Remedies for violations are three:

* blocking the domain name from DNS servers and search engine results (available only to U.S. law enforcement),

* mandate that financial institutions (meaning primarily credit card processors) cease doing business with offending websites to the extent of U.S. online customers (available both to U.S. law enforcement and content owners), and

* prohibition of advertising services that provide ads to offending websites from continuing to do business with them (available both to U.S. law enforcement and content owners).

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

SOPA is similar to Protect IP, but there are differences. The key difference is that SOPA lowers the bar for proof requirements when determining which sites are “infringing”, meaning that content owners would have an easier task in getting to the remedies.

Under SOPA, content owners would only have to prove that an offending website is “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property”, clearly a much lower proof requirement than Protect IP’s.

Unlike Protect IP, SOPA would employ a procedure similar to the current DMCA notice and counter-notice procedure prior to bringing action against an infringing website. The notice would enable payment network providers and Internet advertising services the opportunity to cease dealing with offending websites prior to an action for a court order.

Conclusion

Given the severe remedies of both bills – shutting down offending websites – critics are numerous, particularly regarding SOPA. Critics argue that the severe remedies amount to censorship with related violations of free speech, plus they argue that there will be serious unintended consequences.

Most commentators are predicting that a statute with the same goals as both Protect IP and SOPA will eventually find consensus and be passed into law. If you’re a content owner that provides content the Internet, the outcome will likely affect you in a significant way.

Is your website legal? Do you understand what you need to do for website legal compliance? Protect your website and your business with near-custom Website Legal Documents. One size doesn’t fit all. Leading Internet and SaaS Attorney Chip Cooper’s “done for you” online legal document service does all the work for you. No special knowledge required – http://www.digicontracts.com/

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com