Proper Web site design and structure is an integral part of any search-engine optimization campaign. The search-engine ranking algorithms are constantly evolving. More and more Web site owners are losing their spots in the rankings as their competition becomes more technically competent and adept at the technical side of search-engine optimization.

Create a Robots.txt File

Creating a robots.txt file is a way of speaking directly to the search-engine spiders when they arrive at your site. Perhaps you would rather the spiders not visit certain section of your site. Or maybe you want to instruct them to visit every single page. Other times you may want to control the frequency at which the spiders visit your site.

Also you can create a robots.txt file to prevent search-engine spiders from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth on your server and also to prevent potential copyright infringements.

The file resides in the root directory of your Web server.

Tip: A robots.txt file can also be used to tell the search-engine spiders where a site map is located with this text: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/yoursitemap.html

You can use the robots.txt generator at: www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp to simplify the robots.txt creation task.

Using the Nofollow Attribute

Attaching a nofollow attribute to a link is your way of telling the search-engine spiders that they should not follow that link or view that link as anything of significance when determining ranking.

The nofollow attribute can also be used to link to other Web sites that are not directly related to the content of you own Web site. Google has asked that all paid links be tagged with the nofollow attribute to indicate that the links should not affect ranking influence.

Tip: Essentially, adding the nofollow attribute to a link tells the search engines not to use that link as a positive factor in their ranking algorithm.

Structure URL s Correctly

Both search engines and search-engine users appreciate static-looking, descriptive URL s. The search engines also take into consideration the keywords and phrases contained within your URL s and use these to influence your rankings.

Tip: Structuring your URL s correctly provides you with benefits beyond just improving your search-engine optimization efforts. One such example is a paid search, or pay-per-click, advertising campaign. A properly categorized Web site gives you a head start in developing the keyword lists necessary to properly construct a paid search advertising campaign. You may actually see a price decrease in your paid search efforts as well.

Protect Yourself with an .htaccess File

An .htaccess file is the Apache Web server’s configuration file. It is a straightforward yet powerful text file that can accomplish a wide variety of functions.

Although normally left to expert server administrators, an .htaccess file can help you avoid several potential problems.

Rewriting URL s and redirecting Web traffic enables you to use numerous forms of protection ranging from password protecting directories, banning visitors from certain sources, and preventing bandwidth theft from image linkers.

Rules located in an .htaccess file uploaded to your images directory take precedence over the foot file. Also you may want to stop the malicious use of the Linux Wget command that can retrieve your Web site content.

You can use .htaccess to block direct linking to your images, and instead even send a replacement image.

Tip: An excellent tool located at www.htaccesstools.com allows you to generate a variety of different .htaccess code blocks.

The tool automatically generates .htaccess authentication code along with an encrypted .htpasswd file to password protect directories. This is especially important with the advent of new image search engines like Google Images. The tool also creates .htaccess code to block unwanted bots traffic or traffic from certain IP addresses. You should regularly check for excessive traffic from random bots or excessive visits from any particular IP addresses.

Using Mod_Rewrite to Rewrite URLs

The mod_rewrite module of the Apache Web server gives you the power to rewrite poorly formed URL s on the fly as well as manipulate the appearance or any file name you choose. There are tools available to simplify the complex parts.

Use mod_rewrite to easily and noninvasively restructure the URL to look like www.example.com/pets/dogs/fod.

Activate mod_rewrite by adding the text RewriteEngineOn to your Web root directory’s .htacess file. The mod_rewrite module is not present on all server, so be sure to contact your Web hosting administrator to make sure that it is installed or ask if an alternative solution is available.

Tip: Mod_rewrite can be very complex and difficult to use if you are not a skilled Web programmer. And excellent, free tool can be found at www.mod-rewrite-wizard.com. You also have the option to add any relevant keywords as a prefix or suffix.

Redirect Non-WWW Traffic to WWW

You may be amazed to learn that some search engines see the example.com and www.example.com variations of your domain name as two totally separate Web sites. This is called a www/non-www canonical issue because there is confusion as to which version is standard.

It is important to set up your server to redirect all traffic to one variation to prevent any confusion by the search engines.

Fortunately, you can easily address this problem by adding a small amount of code to your Web root directory’s .htaccess file to set up a 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com or vice versa. A 301 redirect is also known as a permanent redirect.

301 redirects are the preferred method of redirection because Google attempts to pass all the ranking influences to the new destination.

Tip: You should always set up the 301 redirect discussed in this task, and you may be curious to see if you have a large canonical issue with your www/non-www domain entries.

To check, visit www.google.com and type site:newdomain.com into the search bar. Replace newdomain.com with your domain name.

Also take a note of the total number of pages indexed in the upper-right corner of the search results. Next, type site:www.newdomain.com into the search bar. If the results differ dramatically from the results of the previous query, you probably have a canonical issue.

Redirect with 301 Redirects

301 redirects provide you with the means to tell the search engines that not only have you moved your site, but you want all your rankings to move with it. This is a very important and often overlooked issue.

Unfortunately, search engines are not necessarily friendly when you make Web site changes. You can set up a 301 redirect to accomplish this task, and both search-engine spiders and Web browsers automatically redirect to the new location. For search-engine optimization purposes, this also preserves most if not all of your search-engine ranking factors.

If you want to move your entire Web site from one domain to another, a 301 redirect is your best bet to keep your current search-engine rankings.

Do not be alarmed if your redirect is not reflected immediately. Also, keep in mind that any changes you make to your Web site can negatively or positively influence your search-engine rankings.

Tip: Do not expect the search engines to understand your intentions. When you remove pages that are not longer necessary for your site, consider adding a 301 redirect for those pages back to your site’s home page. Otherwise, if you remove the pages and the search-engine spiders continue to crawl the missing pages, they may penalize your entire site despite the deletions being intentional.

If you own the .com, .net, .org, or other extension of your domain name, you can use 301 redirects to automatically force all .net and .org visitors to redirect to the .com extension or whatever extension you choose.  301 redirects can be used to automatically redirect any misspelled traffic to your actual domain name.

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Find Web hosting

If you are designing a mid-level or large-scale Web site and plan to sell products or services from your Web site, you want to carefully evaluate potential Web hosting companies.

Choose one that is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 99.9% of the time. I know this sound obvious, but believe me it’s not. How many times have I come across clients that were telling me “I signed up with a hosting company one year ago and they don’t exist anymore, please help me find the right one.”

There are hosting review forums out there, one of them is WebHostingTalk and the other one is FindMyHosting.

Establish a Domain Name

Selecting a domain that relates directly to the theme of your Web site increases the likelihood that search engines such as Google and Yahoo will rank your Web site for related keywords. Choose a domain name that contains the keywords and phrases that your Web site is about, or choose a domain name that is brandable.

When choosing a domain name, try to include, if possible, one or two of the major keywords your Web site is trying to rank for.

Tip: Cybersquatting occurs when someone registers a variation of your current domain name.

At the same time you register your primary domain name you should also register that same domain with common domain and country extensions. At least you should register the .com, .net, and .org extensions, as well as .co.uk and any other country with which you may want to eventually conduct direct business.

Securing a good domain name is not easy. Domaining is a business where domain names are purchased, usually in bulk, and monetized.

You may consider purchasing that domain in the domain secondary market from a Web site such as www.sedo.com, which brokers single domain names for as little a s $10 to as much as $10million.

Optimize for Multiple Browsers

Unfortunately, each individual browser does not read HTML code in the same fashion. It is possible to design a Web site a certain way and view it in Internet Explorer only to find out later that it looks much different in Firefox. A simple way is to download a version of each browser and test your Web site in each.

Also, you want to be sure that your Web site is designed with different screen resolutions in mind. Test your Web site with your computer’s resolution set to 800*600 and 1024*768.

Tip: Anybrowser.com offers a variety of tools that help you make sure your site is compatible with multiple browsers.

Design a Sitemap

Although not strictly necessary, consider naming the sitemap either sitemap.html or sitemap.php. Sometimes no matter how well you design your internal linking structure, your visitors may have a hard time finding exactly what they are looking for.

XML-Sitemaps.com helps automate this process. You can generate sitemaps that can be submitted to search engines.

Create a Company Information Page

A company information page helps build trust with your viewers by providing company biographies, history, and even photos to explain who you are and where you come from.

Place a link for your company information section on the home page of your Web site. Label the link as About Us, Company Information, or something similar so that users can easily find it.

If you are selling a product, your consumers want to know who you are, where you come from, and why they should trust your business.

Also statistics have shown that your Web site’s company information or About Us page is likely to be one of the most clicked pages or your entire site by new visitors.

Including an actual address and phone number can help to provide a sense of confidence in your visitor, which is especially important if you run an e-commerce Web site.

Create a Privacy Policy page

You should create a privacy policy to ensure your users are aware of your information collecting policies. Many in the SEO community theorize that having a privacy policy page can help to show the search-engine algorithms that you are in fact a legitimate business.

The purpose of having a privacy policy is to prove to your visitors that you are committed to protecting the privacy of their personal information. Privacy policies are particularly important if you collect e-mail addresses or any other type of demographic information about your visitors.

Tip: The Direct Marketing Association offers a tool for creating privacy policies that is freely available to all Web site owners.

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Creating search-engine-optimized Web pages is the core effort of a successful Internet marketing campaign. Taking care of technical on-site factors such as file names, title tags, meta description tags, meta keyword tags, and meta robots tags is crucial to making sure the search-engine spiders can determine the relevance of your web site.

Optimization of images is important for those Web browsers that do not support images, and because search-engine spiders cannot read the content of an image, optimizing images presents an extra avenue to squeeze in more content.

Choose File Names

Using file names that are relevant to the content of you Web page is important for numerous reasons. The search-engine spiders see your file names before anything else.

Besides your domain name, the first thing search engines discover when spidering through the pages of your Web ste are your file names. Make sure your file names are relevant! Have a specific topic in mind. A good practice is naming each Web page after the main key phrase that the page is about.

Tip: Search engines specialists have stated that hyphens in URLs and Web page file names are viewed as spaced by the search-engine ranking algorithms. But an overuse of hyphens is considered to be a spamming technique and can result in a penalty. So try to limit hyphen usage to no more than three hyphens per file name. The search engines have begun to treat underscores similarly to hyphens, so limit this one as well. Also keep URL lengths as short as possible. A 30-character URL is far easier to remember than a 300-character URL.

Optimize Title Tags

The first thing a visitor sees when finding your page on the search-engine results is your title tag. Title tags should be descriptive of what your Web page is about and compel potential visitors to visit your site.

Also search engines use the text contained within the title tag as primary factor to determine what the content of a certain Web page is about.

Tip: Limit your title tag to 65 characters or less. Write concise statement summarizing the main point of your content. Be unique with each title tag and include keywords you want to rank for. Another hot tip is that the web page file name should relate very closely to the page title tag.

Optimize Meta Description Tags

Some search engine use the meta description tags in their result pages directly underneath the Web page titles.

Because this information is displayed in the search results you can use it as a method to deliver your marketing message and entice search-engine visitors to click on your listing versus clicking on your competition.

Make sure that all you pages have a unique meta description tag.

Whether Google uses meta description tags in its ranking algorithms is not know. I think you should still take advantage of search-engines spiders that do use the mega description tag in their ranking algorithms.

Tip: Try a free meta tag generator from SEOBook.com at http://tools.seobook.com/meta-medic.

Optimize Meta Keyword Tags

Although many search engines ignore this tag, some likely still use it in their ranking algorithms. For that reason I recommend you implement this tag on all your Web pages.

The mega keyword tag contains a list of keywords or phrases, separated by commas that describe the subject matter of a particular Web page.

For each page generate a short list of no more than ten keywords or phrases and include them in the meta keyword tag. Do not repeat keywords or phrases and be sure that each Web page on your site has a unique meta keyword tag.

Tip: Widexl.com offers an invaluable tool to help analyze meta tags. Keep your title, description, and keywords meta tags within the length requirements. The tool can also be used to analyze your competitors’ meta tags if you are curious to see what they have done differently.

Create a Meta Robots Tag

There are situations where the privacy of a particular Web page or Web site is of utmost concern. This is especially useful if certain sections of your Web site require payment to access. The last think you want is search engines sending visitors directly to those locations.

You can use the meta robots tag to tell a search-engine spider whether or not the Web page it visits should be indexed or if links on that page should be followed. These search-engine “robots” often need to be controlled.

Depending on your web hosting, you may or may not have the ability to create and add a robots.txt file.

Benefit with Header Tags

Emphasize your main topics and ideas. A well structured Web page has a logical hierarchal flow with headings and subheadings fortified with content.

You can use HTML header tags to apply significance to keywords or phrases within a web page. Header tags are arranged in preset levels of importance ranging from <h1>, the most important, to <h6>, the least important.

Header tags can be used anywhere within the <body> tag of an HTML document.

Using Text Modifiers

Emphasize appropriate keywords and phrases within your content. Your Web page content should speak to visitors, emphasizing words and phrases to express urgency or significance. You can emphasize certain blocks by bolding, italicizing, or underlining.

Optimize Images

Spiders still cannot read any images present on your pages. Using ALT Image tags to describe your images gives the search engines a readable text description of those images and also aids in compatibility with non-graphical Web browsers.

Do not repeat the same words over and over again, and never repeat the same Alt Image tag more than once unless the image itself is repeated.

Create Links

The structure of your links tells the search engines what the linked Web page is about. Your internal linking structure is taken into consideration by ranking algorithms that determine where your Web pages rank for target keywords and phrases.

Link creation may be a basic task, but if done correctly, it can be tremendously influential to your overall search-engine rankings.

Generally speaking, the higher a link appears on the page, the more it assists the rankings of the Web page it links to. Also, links embedded within blocks of content hold more value than isolated links. If possible, avoid using images to link to other pages or your Web site.

Validate HTML

Writing valid HTML is just as important as speaking proper English. Search engines read Web sites line by line, and errors in your HTML syntax can trigger a penalty if the invalid code prevents the search-engine spider from reading the content.

Optimize your Web pages by not having excess markup code surrounding your main page content. Although it has not been proven to increase search-engine rankings, writing valid HTML is another weapon in an arsenal of best-practice techniques that are likely to have a cumulative effect on overall search-engine approval.

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Creating well-written, original content is absolutely critical to your long-term search-engine-optimization success. Content is what visitors use to determine value and one of the primary factors that search engines use to rank you Web site. Whether your Web site ends up on the first page or the one-hundredth page of Google largely depends on the quality and relevance of your content.

When you write content, you must avoid duplicate content. Duplicate content occurs when your Web site contains content that already exists on the World Wide Web. If you feel that you do not have time to build large amounts of unique content, you can employ tools on your Web site, such as user reviews, that allow for user-generated content. User-generated content allows your content to remain fresh, which is one of the factors search engines use to rank one Web site over another with similar authority.

Fortunately, tools such as Copyscape are available that help you avoid and prevent duplicate content issues.

You should also use proper keyword density throughout each page of your Web site. First, you want to optimize each page of your Web site for no more than one or two target keywords, while at the same time making sure that you do not inadvertently repeat non-target keywords.

When drafting your content you can use a powerful content-creating principal called latent semantic content, which involves using keywords very similar to your target keywords to enhance the theme and relevance of your page.

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Basic

A well-optimized Web site design and structure helps to improve the overall performance of your Web site, making it easier for users to navigate and for search engines to find and index all of your content.

One way to ensure that search engines find all of your content is by submitting a sitemap. Think of your sitemap as an outline of your entire Web site. As you add new content to your Web site, you should submit your sitemap to the search engines on a regular basis, every 24 hours or so.

In addition to a company information page, your Web site should also contain a page explaining your privacy policy.

Advanced

A robots.txt file allows you to tell the spiders what they may and may not do when they arrive at your domain. Robots.txt files also provide you a means to prevent both potential copyright infringements and search-engine spiders from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth on your server.

The “nofollow” attribute instructs search-engine spiders that they should not follow a particular link or view that link as anything of significance when determining ranking.

A second advance Web site structural consideration is the way you structure your URLs. Search engines as well as people prefer URLs that are simple and that include the keywords describing the page within the URL string.

A third structural consideration is the use of an .htaccess file. An .htaccess file is the Apache Web server’s configuration file.

Other advanced Web site structural considerations include using “mod_rewrite” to rewrite URLs and using 301 redirects whenever you change or redesign your Web site. Each advanced structuring technique provides you with procedures to ensure that search engines recognize your Web site and that each of your Web pages are correctly indexed.

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For the purposes of search-engine optimization, keep in mind that search engines do not actually rank Web sites; instead, search engines rank individually Web pages. In order to succeed with SEO each and every page of your Web site must be optimized for search-engine purposes. The most important element of each of your Web pages is substantial unique content.

Meta Tags

For example, optimizing technical on-site Web page factors such as adding correct file names, title tags, meta description tags, meta keywords tags, and meta robots tags is crucial to making sure the search-engine spiders can determine the relevance of your Web site. Besides your domain, name the first things search engines discover when spidering through the pages of your Web site are your file names. Every single page of your Web site resides in a different file. By titling your pages with search-engine optimization in mind, you have a powerful opportunity to establish relevance to a certain topic or keyword.

Title Tag

Each page or your web site should contain a unique title tag that includes the target keywords you want to rank for. Search engines place great importance on the text contained within your title tag and use it as a primary indicator of what your Web page is about.

Description and Keywords

Although search engines rarely use description and keyword tags for ranking purposes, each page of your Web site should include unique description and keyword tags. Description tags can be especially important because search engines often use them as the display text shown when a search query triggers your Web page. Your description tag should include a call-to-action marketing message that your listing stands out among other listings and gets clicked.

Header Tags and Modifiers

Optimizing your content with header tags and other text modifiers allows you to stress the main ideas and topics that your content covers. Header tags are HTML tags used to apply significance to keywords or phrases within a Web page. Using text modifiers, you can emphasize certain blocks of text by bolding, italicizing, or underlining.

Images and Links

Taking care to optimize Web page images is important for those Web browsers that do not support images, and because search-engine spiders are unable to accurately read the content of an image, doing so presents an extra opportunity to add keyword-rich content to your page. Links provide the pathways that search-engine spiders need to find your Web pages. Creating Links with search-engine optimization in mind is necessary for optimal results.

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Websites are perhaps the most overlooked advertising tool for businesses. A website is an extremely valuable tool that boosts your existing marketing, accounting applications, recruitment and communications effort.

Websites are perhaps the most overlooked advertising tool for businesses. A website is an extremely valuable tool that boosts your existing marketing, accounting applications, recruitment and communications effort.

In fact, if your business is not on line or your existing site is ineffective, then you are losing sales opportunities. A good website will help you reach and retain customers. Yes, every retailer needs one. Every businessman, lawyer, accountant and minister needs one. Every café, restaurant, coffee shop and most especially your company needs one.
I am not suggesting that all these businesses need to actually transact business on line. I am only saying that everyone listed in your phone directory’s Yellow Pages needs to also be available on the Internet today; it is where your customers expect to find you.
A properly constructed website allows your prospects to gather the information they need from their own computer monitors. Your web will answer all the questions your salespeople answer every day.
This is the information that needs to be available 24 hours 7 days a week on your site. This is an extra medium for you to capture their interest and inform them about your business, your products and services.
Marketing your products and services online is very cost effective. Your message can be broadcast all over the world instantly, and with a proper promotion strategy you could put your message directly in front of people in your target market who are ready to buy your company’s services. Read more about “Expanding Your Web Presence“….

My focus in on long term site care and maintenance which involves a combined range of many activities, but I do also provide individual website project elements to some clients including other website design companies, advertising agencies and database developers. I work with certified partner to fully satisfy your needs.

The web and what it takes to build for it may be constantly changing, but you can rely on one thing, I will work with you to make your Website work for you!

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Business is booming. On line, at least. In just two years, Internet sales have increased more than 40%. To get in on this sales upswing, you need to maximize your on line presence in 2009. You will learn about the importance of search engine optimization as well as e-commerce strategies to help increase your sales. You will also learn how to build a loyal customer base with email marketing and we will explore the unique characteristics of the Internet that will help you generate more opportunity for your company.

Section – I

What Works on the Web?

“Does the Website harness the unique characteristics of the Internet to create a strong value proposition for customers, on that could not be easily duplicated in the physical world?” – Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO – Amazon.com

Unique Characteristics of the Internet: I

Why small business need a website

The Ability to Keep Your Overhead Low

• No rent, no stock , less labor, etc
• The culture of the web is one of bargains
• Deep discounts equals loyal customers

Ability to Offer a LARGE Selection

The Ability for Small Businesses to Compete on an Even Playing Field with the Big Boys

• Cost of entry low
• Cost of products potentially low
• But the “store” can look the same
• Customer service can even be better

The Ability to Tap International Markets

• An opportunity NEVER available before in history!
• Site in other languages?
• Products for foreign customers?
• Example: Coastaltool.com – ships anywhere

Section II

Getting People to your Site:

Search Engine Optimization

Why SEO is Vital

• Studies reveal that 70% of searchers click on “organic” listings. With Google, that jumps to 87%, and half of all searches are done on Google.
• 60% of searches click on one of the top three organic listings.

Using Key phrases – I

• Entice searchers to click on the title by making the key phrases intriguing
• Use descriptive keywords and phrases along with your business name on your home page. If you sell skis, do not just have your business name and “skis” as your keywords, instead try “Solomon freestyle skis”
• The first paragraph of your site should contain your keywords and phrases. Later, expand to more key phrases
• Search engine spiders use links to figure out your page. So hyperlink your important keywords and key phrases.

Using Key phrases – II

Develop Specific Pages Focused on Particular Keywords:

• Instead of listing all your services and content on a single page, create different web pages for each. Such pages will rank higher because they contain specific rather than generic content

Choosing Keywords

• Google: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• Wordtracker: http://www.wordtracker.com/

Search engines like content

• Create good content that is frequently updated

Start a Blog

Blogs and SEO

• Instant keywords
• Updated content
• Responses create new content
• Creates links
• (Blogs generally)

Choices

• WordPress
• Blogger.com
• Facebook
• Typepad

2 Get Linked Up

• Search engines consider the number of incoming links to your site as an important factor in ranking
• Google has a 10-point scale called Page Rank (10 being the best) to indicate the quantity and quality of incoming links
• Links from popular sites create higher rankings than links from low traffic sites
• Good content will foster links

Creating Incoming Links

Links from directories also help your rankings

• Yahoo (Requires an annual recurring fee)
• About.com
• MSN
• AOL
• Open directory Project (www.dmoz.com): This directory feeds all the major search engines

Submit your site to industry sites

• Trade associations
• Industry and business sites equal qualified leads
• Pay, if necessary

Creating Incoming Links

Creating Reciprocal Links

• Find QUALITY, complementary sites
• Place a link to them on your site
• After you have linked to them, email the owner of the site. Compliment his or her site. Use their name. Tell the owner you linked to their site and give them the URL of the page
• Request a reciprocal link
• Follow up
• Check out: http://value-exchange.sitesell.com. This site lets other similar sites know that you want to exchange links
• Check out link building software:
  • Zeus and Arelis search for complementary sites

Section III

Internet Growth Strategies that work!

Email Marketing

Similar to Direct Mail Marketing:

• Send offers, proposals, specials, sale notifications, product updates, and so on, to visitors, prospects, and customers
• Maintain your list of customers and site visitors who have opted-in. It’s your best list!
• Or buy a list
• The subject line is critical
• Being personal is vital
• Avoid spam filters
• Be respectful and not overbearing

E-Mail Newsletters

Publish and E-Mail Newsletter:

• Stay in touch with your prospects and customers
• Cerate credibility and develop brand awareness
• Build future business
• Sponsored by advertisers?
• SpeakerNet News

Requirements:

• Offer great content
• Opt-in
• Manage the names
• Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/roving.htm)
• Topica Email Publisher (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/topica.htm)
• AWeber (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/aweber.htm)

7 Ways to get people to opt-in

• Offer free articles and information for people who register with their name and email address
• Offer a free seminar:
  • What kind of information are your visitors looking for?
  • Email the course offering to your subscribers at specified intervals
• Offer a free e-book (need not to be long)
• Offer freebies for opting-in :
  • Screen savers
  • Wallpaper
  • Free e-book
• “Members Only” Benefits
  • Exclusive offers
  • Forums and discussion boards
  • Discounts
• Have Fun!
  • Contest to win your products
  • Games and quizzes (people must opt-in to get the answers)
  • Eprize.com
• Take a Survey (opt-in to see result)

Consider the people you want to opt-in and tailor programs that will entice them

Sell Advertising

• Must have a “sticky” site
• Content-rich
• Text-link ads
• Desirable demographic is key
• Setting fees:
  • Depends upon the number of impressions CPM
  • See http://www.poolandspa.com/page5099.htm for and example
  • Ask the Builder
• Google AdSense

Sell your Services – I

What do people see when they come to your site for the first time?

• Is it professional?
• Are you legitimate?
• Will they get what they paid for? If not?
• Are there guarantees?
• Why use you?
• Are you different or better?
• What’s in for them??

Sell your services – II

Success Secret – Make customers feel safe and comfortable:

• Description of services
• “About us” – include your company’s mailing address, phone number and important email addresses
• Use testimonials and referrals, past clients and customers
• Fees..?
• Make shipping and refund policies obvious
• Install an automatic email response generator
• Don’t be a Nopey!

Sell Products – I

• Selling Products Overview
  • It’s like any other new business, and
  • Like no other new business
• Finding products to sell
  • Your own
  • Others, i.e., http://www.mrallbiz.com/shop
  • Affiliate programs
• The magic of Drop Shipping (profit sharing)

Sell Products –II

• Online Selling logistics
  • Shopping cart and merchant account
  • Easy navigation…look at www.despair.com
  • Check out AT&T/Yahoo solutions – http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce
• Online selling secrets
  • Offer professional service: guarantees, secure ordering, ship promptly, easy returns, contact info
  • Buy online to learn what works online
  • SEO, SEO, SEO
  • Pay-per-click
  • Offer low, low prices
  • Examples: fridgedoor.com, InternetHobbies.com, Vitanet.com

Buying Search Engine Ads

• Google, Yahoo and the rest
• Understanding how these ads work
• What you should expect to pay
• Local or national
• Tracking your results
• Google analytics

Section 4:

Website Tips and Tricks

Offer Something Unique to the Internet

• “Come to our site and learn about our business: may not cut it today. But, use our free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site
• Creating it can be expensive, but you will also see increased traffic to your site
• Increased traffic means increased sales or potential ad revenue

Create a Sticky site

• Audio and video
• Blogs and search engine, and customer friendly
• Podcast
• Forums, polls and survey
• User-created content
• Remember: Content is King!
• Webinars
• Sticky sites – online words of advertisement

Quotes

I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. – Andrew Carnegie

My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things. – Bill Gates

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