Posted by Admin on December 22nd, 2006 — Posted in Internet Marketing
By: Melvin Ng
If you have a blog, you’ve probably realized that truckloads of traffic don’t pour in from day one offering comments and criticisms of your carefully crafted prose. In fact, most bloggers are quite fortunate if they get traffic at all for a while without some kind of ‘advertising’. This advertising can come in many shapes and forms but is vitally necessary if you are seeking growth for your blog.
Many people give up after only a few entries with no response without ever really realizing the potential that their blogs had. The problem is that the World Wide Web is a relatively infinite universe in which your words can be eternally lost. That is unless you provide people with a map for finding your words. In the world of the Internet, one good turn often deserves another. Visit blogs of other people, particularly those writing about similar things to which you are writing. Leave comments that are meaningful and valuable to the conversation at hand (not just hi I was here, come see my blog) and you will be surprised at how many visitors you will receive (not only from those bloggers, but also from people who read and subscribe to their blogs.
The Internet is a wonderful place for snowball effects. By visiting other blogs daily and spending at least twice as much time doing that as you spend working on your blog posts you will find that you are doing far better than many people at your stage in the blogging game. Also remember that it is a game to some degree. There are going to be people who do not agree with you and there are going to be those that violently oppose what you have to say. Take it all with a grain of salt and remember that the world is a big place and so is the Internet, move along to the next comment. Comments are a great way to build a base of readers (and they don’t cost a penny).
Another way you can get visitors to your blog is by using keywords and optimizing your posts for those keywords, remember to use the keywords you want associated with your blog in the title as that is what is typically picked up. Keep keyword optimization in mind when creating categories for your blog as well. Each of these things works towards bringing in new traffic on a regular basis and is an important part of the process (keeping them coming back is up to you).
Pinging services are also a great way to announce to the world that you’ve updated, made changes, and added something new to your blog. Some blog software does this automatically, if you are using Blogger, you will need to subscribe to a pinging service. Many of these are free and the service they provide is priceless.
If you want your readers to keep coming back (and of course you do) offer them the opportunity to subscribe to your blog by adding RSS feeds. There are many free services and I recommend that you make use of each and every one of them.
These are just a few ways to bring traffic to your blog but will have you off to a fantastic start.
About the Author For more info on blogs and blogging, please visit our website. Blogs And Blogging
No Comments »
Posted by Admin on December 21st, 2006 — Posted in Internet Marketing
By: Sean Ray
Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.
If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.
However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.
To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).
If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.
You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.
Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.
About the AuthorDownload my brand new guide free here: Secrets of Article Promotion
Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building
No Comments »
All Rights Reserved