An important part of owning a web page is deciding what you want to get from it. Whether you’re looking for readers or buyers, the important step is usually getting readers to your page and keeping them there.

Using email marketing for a captive audience

Email marketing fits seamlessly with a solid SEO strategy. In fact, it’s more important to your conversion rate than social media, for a variety of reasons. When a consumer receives an email, you have their undivided attention for the second they take to look at the subject line. If they open it, you have even more of a chance to keep their attention and achieve conversion.

If you’re going to get to that point, though, you have to have interesting content in your emails. Whether it’s a newsletter or a roundup of the week’s best posts, the email should have something directly to do with your audience’s interests. The best way to figure out what they want is to ask them to do a short questionnaire when they first sign up.

The key to keeping your subscribers happy is to send an email maybe once or twice a week. You shouldn’t oversaturate them with content, but you don’t want them to forget about you, either. Remember to only send them when you have something of value to share, and they’ll welcome seeing you in their inbox.

Providing the right content at the right time

Beyond just the matter of timing, there’s also timeliness to consider. Some companies have a bevy of emails on hand, ready for a snowstorm or any event they can take advantage of with a quick sale or article about weathering the storm.

Aside from being interesting to readers, sending newsletters is also a great way to improve the amount of keywords on your site. Send out useful articles filled with information gleaned from your professional expertise, and then load them in text form to your site under an archives section. Other than having a blog attached to your main URL, it’s one of the best ways to get fresh, relevant content onto your site.

Sprucing up your home page

If you’re able to get people to click through to your website, don’t forget about the landing page. It’s a treasure chest of SEO opportunities. Sprinkle it with time-sensitive keywords, and the amount of people visiting the page should increase your site’s overall PageRank in time.

Whatever your conversion goals may be, a well-planned email marketing strategy will benefit not only your conversion rate, but also the SEO value and PageRank of your site.

Of course, businesses have started to catch on and have begun to use Pinterest as a marketing tool. Is your business using Pinterest? Before you jump right in and start pinning, it’s important to fully understand what Pinterest is, how it can benefit your business, and ways to use (and not use) Pinterest.

How Pinterest Works

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. The site works as a visual bookmarking tool that allows users to pin images they find across the Web to their pinboards, which can be organized by categories ranging from Design to Fitness to Men’s Apparel. Each pin is linked back to the original source, and can be viewed by users’ followers or by using the Pinterest search bar. Users can repin images from other boards onto their own boards, creating a snowball effect that all leads back to the original Web source.

Benefits of Using Pinterest for Business

So why should you be using Pinterest?

• Boost site traffic. As users find images on your site that they like, whether it’s just an appealing image or they’re putting one of your products on their wish list, your site receives more traffic the more that pin is clicked and repinned.

• Expand your customer base. Pinterest is just like other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, in that it helps you reach out to your customers through shared information. Not only does having your products and website images on pinboards help boost traffic and garner more attention for your business, but by creating your own Pinterest account, you can connect to your customer base even further.

• Promote your business. Use Pinterest for what it is: a bulletin board. With each image that you pin, you are telling customers more about your products, your business and your brand.

How to Use Pinterest for Your Business

Here are some tips that can help you get the most out of Pinterest for your business:

• Pin your own products with care.While you may be tempted to pin every single product that your business offers, you must resist the urge. Pinterest users don’t want spam in their pin stream, so if your boards look more like product catalogs rather than inspirational spaces, they likely won’t follow you. Pin your own products sparingly, and use descriptions that offer more information than simply the price – for example, ideas for how to use your product. When writing descriptions, be sure to use specific keywords. Pinterest users can utilize the search bar to find products that they want. So if you’re pinning an image of a hat, be descriptive with your tags and include keywords such as “blue hat” or “striped hat,” so users can find your pin more easily.

• Make your content visually appealing. Pinterest is all about looks. Users scroll through Pinterest looking at hundreds of images, and only the most visually appealing will catch their eye enough to click and repin. In addition to pinning attractive images, you can help generate traffic to your site through Pinterest by using quality images for your products or blog.

• Be creative; connect with your customers. The majority of Pinterest users are women. For businesses that don’t offer products targeted toward a female demographic, it might not seem like an obvious move to start using Pinterest. That’s where creativity kicks in – after all, Pinterest is designed to share ideas and inspiration, not sell products. For example, a packaging company might connect with users by posting images of sustainable packaging ideas. A company that sells cleaning products could create boards that focus on before and after photos of different rooms in the house. Internet marketing agencies can share their favorite infographics and design elements. Sharing ideas with your customers and clients can help you make a connection and enhance your relationships – you just have to be creative, know your customers and identify how they are using Pinterest.

Keep in mind that Pinterest is still new and continues to grow. Just like using any other social media tool, it certainly isn’t going to make or break your business. But when used right, it can help. If your customers are using Pinterest, it offers a great opportunity for you to promote your brand and build a community.

Death to the Old SEO Methods

There is a prevailing theme often heard in Internet Marketing that Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO, is DEAD.  Any number of reasons can be attributed to this idea, and there are many more articles where the author creatively wishes SEO to Rest in Peace. However, this article will take a slightly different approach.

SEO is still alive and stronger than ever. This is especially true with SMBs (small to medium businesses) with cost conscious marketing budgets because even a small budget can go a very long way. However, with the rise of Web 2.0 in the last decade, Internet Marketing methods have had to evolve as well.

People hate Interruption Marketing

Remember the days of Pop-Ups? Turns out people did not like constantly having a million windows pop-up on their screen, especially when they were for products that they had no interest in purchasing (you know what I mean). With the evolution of more precise algorithms on search engines like Google and Bing the need arose for more effective specialization in Internet Marketing, and this specialization gave birth to Search Engine Optimization. This effectively brought the death of Interruption Marketing, and now what you see matches to what you want.

 Google Panda

If you ask me from the SEO point-of-view, “What was the biggest highlight of 2011 by Google,” I would have to say it was the Panda update. The major aim of this update was to improve the quality standards of SERP (search engine results page). The purpose was to improve the rankings of quality searches would out rank and thin out low quality content. This would then put a significant emphasize back on to the content of every site, and how users share you content. The Panda update once again set creative, unique and informative content as its foundation to quality standards for SERPs.

Social Media on SERPs

Google’s social media presence, Google+, is the web’s fastest growing social network with over 90 million users. This has been most notable on the +1 of Google’s Adwords campaigns. Now friends are able to +1 all ads that appear on the Google Display Network. The bottom line, Google cares what others in your network are saying (they even starting indexing comments on Facebook), and the initial data is showing the Google+ is having a positive impact on SERP results. Therefore it is crucial to have as part of your social media and SEO strategies.

These are only some of the impacts to SEO with the evolution of Internet Marketing. If you think SEO is dead, maybe you want to consider your best practices in your strategies. SEO is no longer just link building with good content, but great content partnered with link engineers. The Internet is constantly changing, and as such your SEO strategies must be able to adapt to the new landscape.

 If you share our opinion, please share your thoughts with “SEO is Alive!”

Internet marketing is a broad term that branches off into various methods based on what aspect, design, advertising, sales or content, it focuses on.

More for Less

In terms of the customer reach it can achieve, internet marketing is cost-efficient. For instance, the most straightforward strategy, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) involves advertising by placing banners on third party websites or paying for placement in search engine results or contextual advertising. Though paid for, it works out to be a fraction of conventional advertisements.

Search Engines Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is arguably the most popular of internet marketing methods that requires studying Search Engine Result Page (SERP), how search engines work and how and what users search for. This information is then used to boost the website’s visibility. It differs from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) significantly as the focus is on enhancing visibility on “natural” search results.

Email Marketing

Sending emails as a marketing strategy is second to search engine marketing as the most effective method. Especially if customers opt in to the service, then businesses that send out emails find that the results are quite beneficial. It’s possible to track and gain high return on investment as most customers that receive and check personalised emails sent to them with product information or new promotions are likely to respond.

Social Media Marketing

Another method to make websites more visible is through Social Media Optimisation (SMO). A company’s reputation facilitates popularity, especially online and SMO is the online equivalent of good word-of-mouth. SMO is promotion through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and is user driven. Increased interaction with customers also provides better insight into customer opinions and improves communication.

Generating Content

Content generation operates, to an extent, on the principles of Inbound Marketing, where the website is “found” by the users. Content on websites can be information on the product, interesting articles and news related to the product that draws customers. It fosters interactivity, especially if it’s a blog, thus making links more important, particularly in the case of Google’s algorithms.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing works on the basis of commissions for websites that refer customers to the business. It tends to overlap a few other marketing strategies as websites that affiliate in turn use the same methods of SEO and social media optimization.

There are quite a few factors that go into deciding what online marketing strategy is suitable or workable for a business, the most important of which is the business model of your business. What works for other website may not work for yours, so looking at similar websites and experimenting to study the results of different strategies would be a smart start to implementing online marketing for your website.

Given below are some of the most effective ways that you can use to increase Facebook post comments.

#1. Ask Questions
One of the easiest ways to get fans commenting in good numbers is to ask them questions of different styles and types. Some good examples would include ‘yes or no’ questions, ‘true or false’ questions and ‘fill in the blanks’ type of questions. Asking poll questions is also an excellent idea to add some extra fuel to your business page and get your Facebook fans to comment.

#2. Post Photos & Videos
Users have a natural tendency to react to photos and videos more actively as compared to text-based posts. Whether you post a photo or a video, make sure they are informative, interesting and funny.

#3. Go Off Topic at Times
Allow your fans to have some fun time while they interact with your business page on Facebook. Talking about off-topic things does a great job to add some personal touch to your page. When you discuss things that you fans can relate to personally, you actually establish an emotional connection, an essential ingredient for getting more comments on Facbook wall posts.

#4. Increase Posting Frequency
A proven strategy to increase the degree of engagement with your Facebook fans and get them to comment is by increasing the number of times you share posts on your Facebook page. Posting frequently doesn’t only make your business page look fresh, but it also enhances the likeliness of getting viewed by a large number of Facebook users.

#5. Add Call-to-Action to Posts
Even when your Facebook posts are relevant or interesting, you need to add a call-to-action to increase participation. Therefore, don’t forget to ask your fans to leave comments.

#6. Be on Time
Timing plays a vital role in terms of engaging more fans. Mornings and evenings are best time periods to share posts with Facebook fans via your business page. In addition, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to connect with your fans at the weekends. If you post at the right time, you can easily get more comments on your Facebook posts.

#7. Comment Back
Do you respond to your fan’s comments? Yes, you can never expect to increase commenting on your fan pages, if you don’t reply. When fans post answers, reply a question or comment, you need to acknowledge their participation. Commenting back fuels the conversation further and bolsters connection with your Facebook fans.

Do you have some more tips in mind? Please feel free to share them in the comment section below.

Here’s why you should start using them right away.

#1. Build a Diverse Backlink Profile
Though Google’s last year’s Panda update hit many Q&A websites, there are several others that are still going quite strong. This is simply because these sites run around an excellent concept – answer, ask and discover. If you’re looking to build a diverse backlinks profile (yes, diversity is an important factor in link building), you can never ignore the potential that such sites offer. More importantly, the backlinks that you generate by using Q&A websites will be natural. So, that’s a great SEO benefit that you can leverage.

#2. Get Targeted Traffic (= Higher Conversion)
Apart from link build the natural way, Q&A websites can also bring a lot of targeted traffic. Millions of people log on to these sites to find solutions to their specific problems. Depending on the niche you cater to, you can leave detailed (and highly useful) answers to their questions along with placing a link to your blog or website. In this way, you can drive a good amount of targeted traffic, which definitely means higher conversions as well.

#3. Use Them for Keyword Research
One of the biggest reasons for which you should use Q&A websites is that they provide you a useful insight into users’ search behavior and trends. Question queries (long tail keywords) have high search volumes. In many cases, the search volume of question queries is higher than generic primary keywords belonging to the same topic. If you’re conducting a keyword research for your blog or website, Q&A sites can provide you with excellent ideas.

#4. Connect with Industry Experts
Great answers come from experts or influential people. You can easily find a lot of industry experts by locating insightful answers to questions that relate to your niche. An excellent idea would be to approach them for getting permission on including their insights on your blog. And if you include a link pointing back to their own blog with the answers that you publish, you’ve all the chances to build good relationships in the industry (as well as have the favors returned in some way or the other).

#5.  Know about the Competition (Competitive Intelligence)
If you’re in a business, you always need to keep abreast of what your competition is doing. Q&A sites can be efficiently used to conduct competitive research. All you need to do is search for questions related to your competitors’ brands, services, products etc. Evaluating answers to such questions can really prove to be an eye-opener.

Do you use Q&A websites? Please feel free to talk about your own experiences, thoughts and views.

Where Should Place the Buttons?

Social buttons have the same functionality as call to action buttons in that they lead to higher conversions. These conversions come in the form of shares of your blog content or a new Facebook fan.

Here are some strategies for social button placement:

1. Experiment

Just because your social button placement works well in one area doesn’t mean it will in another. Experiment with button placement and a/b test the social action over these pages to see which works best.

2. Keep It Minimal

Don’t put too many social buttons on your site. You may find three key sharing locations works fine, but test it out to see which works best on your site. Keep in mind too many social buttons can overwhelm and thus lead to lower conversions.

3. Only Use Them Where Necessary

If you run an e-commerce site, avoid using social buttons on the checkout page, as this could distract the customer from the checkout process. Products pages, blog posts, and the homepage are a few good places to place them as these places attract the most amount of traffic.

Optimizing Your Profile

First impressions are important and this is especially relevant when you’re trying to attract new fans and followers. The first step in optimizing your profile is to have a professional image of yourself to include on all you profile pages. Secondly, make sure to include a bio and description, as these things contribute to higher search engine rankings.

You can start the optimization process by monitoring your profile’s performance for a couple weeks. Gather how many fans/followers/members you have accrued during this time. Afterwards, change your bio or profile picture and see how these figures adjust. Repeat as necessary

Knowing When to Share Content

The next aspect of sharing content is knowing when to do so. You want to identify when your followers are online so your content is seen and the chance of conversions, retweets, and reshares are increased exponentially.

The following tools are available to help you identify when to share in getting the most retweets or impressions:

• Tweriod
• Crowdbooster

These tools allow you to find out when your followers are online so you can tweet when it’s most advantageous to you.

Conclusion

Social media is a crucial element of today’s web landscape. Before you jump into this multi-faceted marketing channel, it’s important to step back and analyze what is the best strategy for reaching your audience in the simplest way possible. In this article I’ve presented key elements for you to consider in getting the most out of your social profile and attracting the most fans and followers to your business.

Do you have methods of attracting fans to your business through social means? Let us know in the comments.

Terminology First!

Before we begin, let’s be sure we know what we are talking about. Bounce rate is a single page visit, either to your blog or your site, where a person comes on, looks at what you are, and leaves. Hence the term “bounce”. That is given as a percentage for your site or your blog – so the greater your bounce rate number, the less chance there is that your visitors are being influenced in any way by your content (that would be a hint for one of the ways to reduce your bounce rate, btw).

1: Design is Important

If your website looks rubbish people will leave it. An age old rule of web design that still holds. By “rubbish” I mean “anything other than what people expect to find” as well as genuinely awful. There are fashions in web design and you need to follow them otherwise you get labelled as behind the times.

2: Content, Content, Content

Content is still everything, no matter how many times I or anyone else tells you this. If you haven’t got focused, relevant content on your landing page, then people won’t hang around to find out why, they will just leave. Focused means that you talk about one thing and one thing only – and that it’s immediately obvious from your content what it is your are doing and why.

3: How Do Your Visitors Find Their Way Around?

Navigation is, was and always will be extremely important for website design. If your site user cannot find out how to get from where he or she is to where he or she wants to be straight away, he or she will end up deciding to be somewhere else instead. Keep it simple and accessible from every page.

4: Content (again!)

Update your content as often as you can – but bear in mind that updating one lot of posts with other posts that say the same thing as before is not god enough. That will just about fool a search engine but it will not trick a genuine human user. You need to keep things fresh and constant, which is a pain but there you go. If you have a dry spell, take all the dates off your posts so people don’t realise they are old.

5: Ads are Bad

Users hate ads. Side bars and header bars that do not move, or shout, or play music, are OK – but anything else, pop ups for example or all singing all dancing ads that distract from your content, are basic evidence that you are not really interested in letting your user find out what you have to say. My average length of time for staying on a page with pop ups is the amount of time it takes me to close the pop ups and go somewhere else.

6: How Quick Are You?

The length of time your page takes to load is extremely important to a visitor. If I am hanging around waiting for a page to load for more than around 5 seconds, I leave and find a different source of the same information.

7: External Links Are Evil

If you land on a page with an interesting external link – you’re gone. Bouncing off through the web to someone else’s site. The more external links you have on your landing page the worse it will be for you, unless of course those links go to other sites owned by you – in which case carry on!

8: Match Your Headlines or Watch Them Bounce Away

An attention grabbing headline is absolutely imperative for a click through. But the amount of times I have clicked on a promising link and been taken somewhere that has no relevance whatsoever still makes me grind my teeth in my sleep.

Basically: good housekeeping, good content and the ability to make your user feel like you care. They’re the Holy Trinity of keeping them on your page.

This content-packed webinar is going to be chalked full of industry secrets and the EXACT blueprint that both Jeff Vacek and Ken Preuss use to make anywhere from 17k-39k each and every month online.

This webinar is LIMITED to the first 1000 registrants, so hurry and reserve your spot.

About Jeff and Ken

Jeff Vacek and Ken Preuss are two regular guys who have been personally helping every-day folks build massively successful businesses for over 15 years combined.

Jeff is a former Information Technology professional who was laid off 4 times within a six-year period. After trying numerous things including real estate investing, a disc jockey business and several MLM’s, he began studying how the TOP entrepreneurs of today create the biggest fortunes. This led him to Information Marketing where he was able to build three separate 6-figure revenue streams and quadruple his previous income within a few months. Jeff has since generated millions in online revenue for partners, clients and students, with whom he freely shares his best underground Information Marketing strategies for generating huge revenues within a short time.
Ken is a former school music teacher who got the entrepreneurial itch and quit his teaching job to start two local businesses: a school consulting company and real estate investment. During a desperate period with almost zero business revenue coming in, he stumbled on to Information Marketing and quietly generated $12,070.80 within 59 days starting from scratch. Using specific strategies he now teaches to students across the globe, Ken was able to grow to mid-five figures monthly within a short period of time. Since that time Ken’s marketing skills have been responsible for generating multiple millions of dollars for both partners and students exclusively through the power of Information Marketing.

In 2009 Jeff and Ken combined forces to teach their proprietary and proven Information Marketing methods to dedicated people all over the world. They now have thousands of students in over 16 countries, and their reach continues to grow exponentially. Most important of all, they get to live out their shared mission of changing people’s financial lives through the power of Information Marketing.

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1. EBay accurately measures brand desire and trends in real time.

2. EBay rates customers.

Both of these things when applied analytically to any niche market are extremely valuable. It’s likely that Neiman Marcus have been using EBay for market research and brand exposure for their Last Call stores for quiet some time. Priced much higher than most of the used merchandise on EBay, these items rarely sell. However, similar items do sell and EBay helps Neiman determine what will and won’t sell in their Last Call stores and to a degree in their regular stores.

Brand Desire and the Aspirational Shopper

The truly rich section of society probably doesn’t shop on EBay, why would they? However, many luxury sales are driven not by the really wealthy but by aspirational shoppers. These are people that can’t afford a 6 million dollar ski house or charter a plane. However, they can afford an Armani suit or maybe a pair of Prada boots. Aspirational shoppers are what drive brand sales for everything from cars to cell phones. EBay is the homeland of the bargain hunting aspirational shopper and this is why it is excellent for brand research. By watching the auctions of popular brand name items it is possible to see the magical power of branding at work and quickly determine what is “hot.” For example, what makes a used Moncler jacket command a $250.00 ending price with 11 bids while a comparable Cinza Rocca Due jacket goes unclaimed at $59.98? This is powerful information for anyone in online marketing or retail.

Watching brand desire on EBay also makes it possible to spot trends. For example, some of the most sought after items in women’s clothing are Fossil purses and North Face puffer jackets. These items can sell used on EBay for close to their new retail prices. What is interesting about these two brands is that they are not top of the line traditional aspirational brand names like Versace, Prada or Pucci. New, these items are not wildly expensive. However, they are cute, well made, and functional and shoppers want them. This is reflective of a new trend in aspirational shopping that reflects a more money conscious buyer. The fascinating part is that a used Fossil purse (new at about $200.00) can demand a higher price on EBay than an authentic Pucci purse from a top rated seller (new at about $1,000.00). The level of desire for the product dictates the value.

Watching desire on EBay works in almost any category. For example, it is possible to buy HDMI cables to hook up sound and video systems. Certain types of cables sell much better than others. Moreover, using EBay’s geographical tools it is possible to determine the demand for different types of cables in different markets. This in turn reveals the penetration of different types of audiovisual systems depending on the region. The audiovisual cable shopper on EBay isn’t an aspirational shopper so much as a shopper in search of convenience and a deal. If you happen to be an online seller of HDMI cables it would make sense to design your website high lighting cables that are in high demand on EBay.

EBay: Judging the Buyer

Bum buyers have been a problem on EBay so buyers as well as sellers have ratings. Sellers can also block bad buyers from bidding on their items. Rating buyers in the past has been the sacred land of credit agencies and credit card companies. However, this is an excellent metric that has the potential to transform all online commerce. Simply put, sellers would love to know the star rating of their buyers. Good buyers = happy sellers and lower prices. Bad buyers are not worth the energy. They are slow to pay, they return things for no reason and they provide substantial losses for any business. Distinguishing bad buyers isn’t generally easy even on EBay. Sellers cannot leave anything but positive feedback for buyers so the scores are not as valuable as they could be. However, certain categories tend to attract bad buyers much more readily than others and this is easy to see by comparing bidding categories and buyer ratings. Online sellers and marketers can analyze the ratings of buyers in different categories to cherry pick customers through their choice of inventory. In addition, in categories where there is a high level of bad customers a seller can institute strict return policies to protect profits.

EBay: Niche Communities

Every section of EBay is full of niche communities and niche sellers within these communities. Many of these sellers have established themselves as their own brands and they have strong followings. Niche sellers’ items sell better and get higher bids than non-niche sellers on EBay. Following any category identifies the niche sellers. These are social communities too and members occasionally chat with one another while they are asking questions about an item. Anyone interested in online selling can learn a lot from EBay’s successful niche sellers. They know how to use online marketing, keywords, photo listing services, descriptions and images effectively.

One example of a niche EBay seller is lassiefaire. This seller targets budget-minded working women with high quality used clothing made out of natural materials. As a convenience to her buyers she coordinated outfits together so that it is easy for them to buy an entire outfit at one time. Return buyers come back because they can trust that the quality and condition of the clothing has been hand picked by lassiefaire. It’s cheaper and easier for time-strapped working women to rely on her as their personal shopper than to try to tackle any other kind of store. Their choice to buy used items is also eco-friendly. This particular seller is expanding her business into an EBay storefront called “Transit of Venus” to further capitalize on her customer following. This type of niche targeted selling is the antithesis of Costco and it is likely to dominate online sales in the future because it is so much easier for the consumer. Niche selling brings buyers exactly the types of items they are interested in buying quickly and efficiently.

EBay tools allow a searcher to break down almost any metric and collect data about almost anything and then save the searches to test them again at a later time. For anyone interested in online market research this is one way to gain a valuable perspective.