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Marketing Without Search Engines

 
No Search Engines Image

Build your website for visitors, not for search engines. Let’s take a quick look at this idea. What if you completely forgot about search engines and simply built your website for your visitors.
This would mean that you take a great deal of care in understanding who your visitors really are and design your website’s look / feel / navigation carefully and specifically tailored to the needs of your site visitors.

Defining your visitor domain:

You have to use several attributes to define / document your visitor domain.
Some of these attributes can be as follows:

  • Age Group
  • Academic Qualifications
  • Technical Qualifications
  • English Language skills
  • Work Experience
  • Their Technical Interests
  • Sex
  • Geographical Area

And so on.

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How To Make Your Newsletter Sought After

 

newsletter image

I’ve been writing and publishing books, tutorials, how to type manuals, eZine articles for myself for the last 30 odd years. Over time I learned what readers like. I began to understand what – Writing type – keep readers coming back for more regularly.

I’d like to share some of the things that I learned during this ongoing journey ( I’ve not stopped writing ) with you. These are simple things that make readers happy, happy enough to forward your newsletter to their friends and/or recommend that their friends subscribe to your website and its newsletter. This helps increase focused traffic to your website, and everyone benefits.

Get To Know Your Readers:

Let’s assume that you are going to bring out a newsletter on Joomla or WordPress, both very commonly used content management systems. Start off by doing some research.

Google for Joomla ( or WordPress ) forums.  There are really tons of these. Subscribe to some of these. Read the kind of questions posters want answered.  Try and identify, if possible, a pattern in the questions being asked.  For instance, are there several questions being asked about – CAPTCHA – being used with a Contact Form Plugin.  Make a note of this topic in an XL spread sheet. This is a topic that could be included in your newsletter.

Read more…

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When Did You Last Review Your Website Privacy Policy?

 

Privacy Policy image

It´s that time of the year when resolutions are made. Cut down ( or stop ) visiting the pub, Join a gym, run the half marathon, Lose 15Kg, all great stuff, but if you run an E-Commerce website maybe it’s time to review your privacy policy.

FTC has enacted several new laws which help protect an individual’s on-line privacy and their data security. Failure to comply can have a disastrous financial effect on a website owner.

Two Cardinal Rules Regarding Privacy And Data Security

When crafting your website’s privacy policy it´s important to focus on the following fundamentally important rules. They are:

Rule No. 1: The purpose of any website based, privacy policy, is to:

  • Disclose clearly, the categories of information collected at the site
  • How this information will be used
  • With whom the information is shared ( or who will have unfettered access to this information )

Rule No. 2: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) treats a privacy policy as though it was a contract being entered into with your website´s visitor. If the website promises certain practices in its privacy policy, but fails to deliver on such a promise, the FTC says the website owner is liable for damages.

Read through your website´s privacy policy, keep these cardinal rules in mind. Understand and document all that your website does regarding the collection, use and sharing of personal information belonging to any website visitor.

Do check if:

  1. The privacy policy discloses all categories of private information collected?
  2. Does it describe all the ways you use the information?
  3. Does it describe with whom such information is shared ( or who has the means to access it )?

Once done, sit down and compare what is promised in the privacy policy and how the website´s products and services are actually marketed.

Privacy Policy Checklist

Here´s a privacy policy checklist which can assist during the review of your websites online privacy policy.

Read more…

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Are You Building Your Business Website To Win ?

 
website winner cup A staggeringly huge number of people use search engines like Google as their primary source of information. Hence, it’s absolutely necessary to ensure that your website delivers a satisfying experience to your site visitors.What’s amazing is that in the face of such fact, about 90% of all websites are deficit in delivering a satisfying experience to their site visitors often in ways that can be easily rectified.

All too often such websites deliver a less than ideal visitor experience because:

  • When the website is being built there is a lack of strategic planning in understanding all the different types of people that would visit the site, their needs and aspirations, with a focus on what they would want from the site
  • The website’s main menu system, that seems to have been created – On Demand – appears to have a lack of clear logic when delivering relevant content to a site visitor
  • This is little or no connection between the website and its owner’s social media presence
  • Seemingly little done about the – Call To Action – content on the site’s Home page. Either such content does not exist or the content itself is confusing
  • Apparently senior / experienced management personnel were not involved when designing the structure, design, content and so on of the website, which leads to the failure of the web site landing pages to engage the site visitor. This can and does cause significant loss of potential revenue.

Read more…

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Writing A Guest Blog Post? – This Checklist Will Help

 

Okay so you’ve decided that writing guest Blog posts is a great way to get good quality back links for your site. Now comes the tricky part of crafting your guest Blog posts such that they will be accepted on the special Blog site with a page rank of 9. You are sure that if a site has such a high page rank it’s not going to accept a badly crafted guest Blog post. You are absolutely right.

The guest Blog post adds unique value to the host Blog by providing fresh and valuable content to the host Blog site visitors and the host Blog site gives a valuable do follow, back link, for the guest Blog poster’s website in return.

Obviously any guest Blog post must match the overall content of the host Blog. You may have a completely different point of view, but this POV must somehow connect to the host Blogger’s content and add value to their site visitors. A completely off topic guest Blog post is rarely accepted.

In order to be certain that my guest Blog post is accepted and published, ( I really do want the do follow back link ) I use a check list which helps ensure that I deliver the very best quality guest Blog post. I’m sharing my check list here. Perhaps it would help you write guest Blog posts that are welcomed anywhere where they are appropriate.

Following a check list is a marvelous way of developing a structured ( hence repeatable ) way of crafting guest Blog posts. Employing a structured approach ensures that you do not make crucial errors that will cause your guest Blog post to be rejected out of hand by the host.

On the other hand using a structured approach to craft a guest Blog post is definitely not a 100% guarantee that your guest Blog post will be accepted. Using a structured approach increases the possibility that your guest Blog post being accepted when compared to you crafting your guest Blog post using a random approach.

My checklist is as follows:

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Why You Need An RSS Feed For Your Site

 
RSS Image RSS ( Real Simple Syndication ) feeds have been in existence for a very long time. Most Content Management systems like WordPress and Joomla come with the ability to deliver RSS feeds, built in. To subscribe to these RSS feed one needs an RSS feed reader.

RSS feed reader software, available free via the Internet, empowers a user to view the most recent content from multiple websites all from within one program. It helps keep the user up to date on what’s happening on the websites subscribed to. All RSS readers are really fast and simple to use.

If you own a website or a Blog you need to know about RSS feeds, how they work, what they deliver, and why you should have an RSS feed for your web or Blog site.

Read more…

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Vitalize Your E-Commerce Website – Start A Blog

 

Today a lot of people believe that selling products and services via the Internet is a great way to earn a decent living. Actually, some people have become pretty wealthy using this business model.

Marketing products and/or services via the Internet can be developed into a sound business only when you’ve done careful research into the niche you want to be in and are very clear headed about the products and/or services that you wish to market via your website.

Even if you’ve done your homework carefully about which product/service you want to market via the Internet- is that enough?  Perhaps not.

To create and nurture a steady income stream via the Internet, you have to:

  • Develop a commanding presence in the Internet marketing domain
  • Earn the trust of your site visitors
  • Have a real sleek website which works beautifully
  • Have the website link up with a payment gateway like PayPal
  • And a bit more . . .

Before people will start to spend their money on your website.

Read more…

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You’ve updated your Blog now what?

 

You´ve just completed creating an interesting new Blog – Page or Post.  Now you are wondering what to do.  Here is something that all experienced Bloggers do immediately after they click the – Publish – button.  They immediately notify Update Service websites that their Blog has fresh content available.

Although this may sound like a tedious chore, it’s really not so.

Read more…

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Ever Thought Of Selling Websites To Generate Income?

 

Selling websites is a lot like purchasing a second hand car in good ( or great ) condition, spending some time and money getting it to look fantastic and work flawlessly and finally sell it at a tidy profit.

For example you could purchase a second hand car for maybe USD 10000/- spend another USD 5000/- doing it up well and then sell it for between USD 18000/- to USD 22000/- this is the general idea.

The purchase – upgrade – sell, cycle of websites, is just a tad different. Here one is dealing strictly with digital goods there is no physical material involved. Additionally, there is a ton more possibilities in the purchase of websites.

Read more…

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Are Social Media Connections Important?

 

socialmedianetwork image Today I cannot think of any business that believes that social media marketing is not an integral part of their business expansion plans. This is reflected in the fact that most corporate entities are setting aside a definte portion of their marketing budget specifically for growing their social media interaction with their customers. Businesses are wholly convinced that they can generate a real buzz about their products and services via thier social media connections and through that generate a lot more sales.

Establishing a social medial presence for any business is the easy part. Getting ( loyal ) followers and fans is what is tough.

Today most businesses are actively pursuing:

  • Growing their Internet authority factor
  • Once this is established they can attempt to influence their social media connections
  • Earn their Blog readers trust by honest one on one conversations

Read more…

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