Monday 30 June 2008

What is it about images

What is it about pictures that customers frequently don't get? I've already talked about this a few months ago, but it rears its head every so often.

Last week a customer emailed me a sheet of their latest offers to update their website with. It contained offers, menus and various other information to be cut and pasted into various points on the website.

It was a massive file, but sent as a PDF so the resolution wasn't actually that great. By the time I'd removed the images at their full size, they were a little small and fuzzy. Not sure why when this was what was going to print - maybe they'd sent me a proof.

Of course, this morning the email arrives saying the pictures are too small and fuzzy. Make them bigger and clearer. Of course, I can do one of these quite easily from the original, but not both. If I make the images bigger, they lose quality. If I make them clearer, they lose size.

If you are emailing pictures for use on a website, send them at least as big as you want to see them on the page, but not too big...

Sunday 29 June 2008

Don't Just Affiliate - Add Value

Too many people think that it's easy to set up a website using an affiliate feed, get it listed on the search engines and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in.

I even had people come to me and ask me to build the sites for them. They look blankly back at me when I ask them how they will promote the website, expecting me to produce a website for £300 that will do all of this for them.

Well, if I could spend a couple of days to produce a website that would earn thousands of pounds per year, would I be charging a few hundred for it? Or would I be producing those websites for myself...

What I try to offer is the opportunity for them to add something themselves to the website. Product reviews is usually a good one and let them choose which products they try to sell and add just these to the website.

If you are a travel affiliate then instead of just listing the same old huge list hotels or villas, make sure that you are including resort guides researched and written by yourself just for the site. Maybe even start a travel blog and include the accommodation details in that rather than just listing the 10,000 hotels available.

Whatever you are trying to sell, make sure that you add something to the information available. This means that there is less risk of falling to the search engines duplicate content filters and more chance of visitors stumbling across your new website. Just remember that if you are expecting to make a couple of thousand per year from the affiliate scheme then you are probably going to need to invest the appropriate amount of time to that site.

Feel free to post ideas in the comments!

Saturday 28 June 2008

Adwords Content Network

I've already touched on whether I think that Google's Adwords is a good idea, but then I was referring to the search network (e.g. Google itself & other partner search engines).

So what about the Content Network - the millions of small and large websites that display Adsense adverts?

I think if you are careful then this network can be great. It's possible to hit your potential customers right where you want them - whilst they are browsing relevant websites. These websites can have (in total) huge volumes of displays of your adverts so there is a lot of brand exposure for you.

It is said that the site owners can click on their own adverts to make more commissions. Yes, some people try this. But Google have loads of ways to detect this activity and anything that looks suspicious is not charged for. Too much suspicious activity will result in the account being closed. It's not in Google's interest to have any fraud at all.

It can also be a lot cheaper and if you are getting low click through rates it doesn't affect the charges for the search network.

Yes, there can be problems. I've found in my own experience there is a lot more evidence of more general browsing than people hungry to shop. But it's still getting people onto your site and your name known. As long as your product is right, they might come back next time.

Friday 27 June 2008

Adsense - Friend or Foe?

There's a lot of debate around about whether Google's adsense should be included on websites or not. One side of the argument states it's a good way to earn money. The other says that often little is earned and it can detract from the content of the website.

Which is right? Well, I think both (not really sitting on the fence!!!).

Simple. For a corporate website selling their own product then it's unlikely that adsense will bring in any significant revenue and the adverts will distract from the content.

But if you are running a blog, ezine, review or information site, then why not? If your main income from the site (or the site doesn't have an income stream) is affiliate selling, then I think it can be very worth while adding another source of income.

Some people will shout me down saying that it's rare to earn much from adsense. Yes, plenty of people earn very little, I'm sure. But in my experience the adverts can be well worth while. If your site has original content, plenty of traffic and especially if it's targeting keywords that are likely to be move expensive, then it's well worth the short amount of time it takes to sign up and add the code to your site.

Thursday 26 June 2008

What advantage PDFs?

What search engine advantage is there in displaying your thoughts in PDF format, rather than in plain old HTML? I'm sure I mentioned this only a few weeks ago, but I've seen another example of this on a website today.

On the site today, the home page is PR1 and the internal pages that or lower. Except for the information stored as a PDF document - that's the only PR2 page on the site.

It's not a site built, intended or used for search engine traffic. There's no link building scheme to help the search engine rating - the page rank is just what it's got from the few sites it's linked through, including my portfolio.

I noticed on my own site a few weeks ago that a couple of PDF documents that are only linked to from 1 page have a higher PR than the page linking to them. This goes against convetional wisdom as to how page rank is inherited - it's supposed to diminish as it is inherited, not increase.

So why is this and why could it be happening? Well, the first and easiest answer would be that Google hasn't fully updated and that the higher level pages have dropped, but not the PDFs. I know with my own site this hasn't happened. Maybe there's an increase coming, but it's only showing on the PDFs. But that would be too hopeful that both sites are going to increase in page rank...

So what else? Well, I can only assume that page rank works on multiple levels. You get the main level of a page rank, which is what inheritance is based on. Then you get marked down (and maybe up???) depending on other page factors.

What could these be and why? Well, with a PDF it's not full of links to other sites - or even your own. It's an end product that someone can pickup, print out and read. It's not full of Google Adsense or affiliate adverts and they aren't created just to drive traffic to your site - because people arriving there may never actually visit your site.

Or maybe it's just as simple as you lose some of your page rank by linking out to other pages. Now, how many people does that make sweat!

Whatever the reason, and it will be easy to monitor the situation through a couple of page rank updates, it does seem that there is a page rank advantage to putting your materials into PDF format. But, what advantage does this actually give you? It's difficult to then put links into your site - people would have to cut & paste or even retype the required URLs and maybe find the page they are after on the site.

I suppose that's why there is a page rank difference - if you are supplying the information it is just to give that information to your visitors. There would be no great advantage for me to fill Compare Mortgage Rates with information in PDFs, because there's no guarantee that anyone reading the information is then going to visit my site to click on adverts etc.

I suppose in some markets it can work. I'm working with pure strike on their website. With them, golfers might be reading up about golf putters and if they read about the pure strike putter and saw the URL they probably would be interested.

So maybe reviews etc would be useful in PDF format, but not for affiliates. As an affiliate I could write up how brilliant a driver is, but then the reader is just going to go off to find the cheapest about, they aren't going to come to my site to by it.

There must be a few good ways of using this quirk. How, I haven't quite worked out. And that's probably the answer - move up the search listing results that are there for results, not because people can manipulate the traffic that arrives.

Wednesday 25 June 2008

Rebuilding another site

I run several of my own site - compare mortgage rates and holiday cottages to name just 2 of many! These are all promoting various affiliate schemes and including Google Adsense.

The top 3 sites of my own all include a good element of my own input, but there's a golf site that when it first went live got loads of traffic and plenty of commissions - in fact the affiliate provider quickly moveed me up the reward levels. But for ages now it's not had a single commission.

Most of the site is built along the same lines as my divingg website, which currently does much better for traffic, adsense and commissions. What's the difference? Well the diving website started off and gets most of it's traffic not through the product information, but from reviews and information about diving in different locations and the dive centres there. It's got plenty of unique content.

But the golf site has none. It's just the products put together in different ways. A bit like the cottages site before that was rebuilt. So, although I've not actually finished rebuilding the cottages site - there's still a lot more information to add to the pages, I've decided that my next target is to be the golf website.

At the moment it's just a list of products for sale. I'll keep this, maybe even the same directory structure. But it's getting a new look along with new sections to review UK golf courses and whatever else I can think of linking to. Yes, most of it will be driven by what affiliate schemes I can find, but I'm learning the lesson that these sites don't work unless you put plenty of time and effort into creating something else - something that the public want to read.

Tuesday 24 June 2008

Top 7 Low cost Website Marketing Ideas

Need to get more traffic to your website but working on a budget? Not all ideas need to cost an arm and a leg - here's my top 7 ideas of getting new customers to your site, whilst not spending too much, some are even free...

PopUnders - this is where when a website on a similar theme is visited by a customer, your website is opened in a window behind the main one. This is low cost and can really provide tons of traffic. It's good because you know what theme of site the person is looking at and therefore a bit about what they are interested in.

Link Building - if you want to maintain a good search engine position then swapping links with other sites is a must. Not only can this actually allow people to find your site through these links, but search engines also see these links and assume that you are becoming more popular - and list you higher in their search results.

Fresh Content - by keeping your website updated with fresh content is a must. Whether it is freshly added information, the latest news or just maintaining your product database, make sure that changes are there. Not only does this make the search engines see that the site is maintained, which means they are more likely to list them highly, if the updates are interesting enough visitors will bookmark your site and want to return to see the lastest changes.

Articles - writing articles that your potential customers want to read about and that other people can distribute for you can interest new people and tempt them into visiting your site. Don't try to over-sell your services, write about what they want to read about and at the end tell them how you can help them. Go to a few article distribution sites and keep an eye on the increasing traffic.

Advertise name in shop / on literature - this is one that is often missed by customers, but such an easy way to promote a site. Just make sure that your customers and visitors to your outlet know about your website. They might be wanting to shop out of hours or compare your prices to someone else during their lunch break. So put your URL on your shop sign, on your price tags, on all of your stationary and everything else that your customers might be picking up from you.

Run a newsletter - sign up to a free newsletter provider, put a signup form on your website and encourage visitors to sign up for the newsletter. Maybe even encourage them to sign up by offering special discounts via the newsletter. These people have then shwon an interest in your product and are more likely to want to buy from you - if they are reminded about you enough. Just don't over do the newsletters and annoy them.

Free Directories - depending on your website content, free directories can generate loads of traffic. I personally consider these more relevant to websites where the theme is one where people are taking more time to search for new websites. For example, I've used these to great effect on dating sites and sports site, sites about hobbies, interests and recreations can all have plenty of people digging around for more websites to visit.

Monday 23 June 2008

Top 7 Online Website Marketing Ideas

Now you have a website, how can you get plenty of traffic onto the website? There are 7 top ideas for marketing a website online that every website could be using to generate more incoming traffic.

Pay Per Click - do you want a quick feed of traffic? Well in my opinion, pay per click systems offer just this! Sign up for a Google account, or MSN, Overture or whoever you choose, select a few appropriate keywords, write a concise advert and in minutes your website can be receiving targeted customers. There is an element of quality advert writing required and careful selection of keywords, but as long as you set limits for the advert and monitor the advert's progress, pay per click can be quite useful.

PopUnders - this is another way of generating fast traffic and this one is quite cheap. I've got a customer who relies on this to generate website traffic to support his business. How quick and well it works does depend on the provider you are buying from, but basically your website is displayed in a new window when a person visits another website of a chosen theme? Sounds complicated? It's not! For example, you choose a Golf category and then for 5,000 visitors the traffic provider gets to their golf websites, they also open a new window to display your website. Simple and can be very well targeted.

Fresh Content - if you aren't providing new content to your website then you are virtually killing it's content. It doesn't have to be weekly or even monthly. It depends on your website theme and competition. Whether you are adding new information, news or even just maintaining the freshness of yoour products, keep updating your website and traffic will be a lot better.

Forums & Blogs - by keeping your eye on other people's suitable blogs and forums there are time when you can genuinely post or leave comments that are usful and informative that can link to your website. Don't do it needlessly - you want the people reading the comment to see that you are making a valid point and want to visit your website - no spamming please!

Google Maps - on certain search results for businesses, Google displays a map and a list of businesses it is aware of. It is well worth signing up for free to this service to make sure that your website is listed and will appear in search results.

Articles - writing informative atricles that people find useful and getting them published in other people's newsletters, blogs and websites is an excellent way of being seen as a useful expert in the field and a way of generating more traffic. Like commenting in blogs and posting to forums, if the reader finds what you write interesting they are likely to want to visit your site.

Run a Newsletter - people visiting your website can be encouraged to sign up to your newsletter. If they do, then they are probably interested in your offer so likely to be happy to visit you when you have special offers. Sign up for a newsletter service and get it running now. Even if you only have a handful of subscribers, it can be fun.

Sunday 22 June 2008

Top 7 Free Website Marketing Ideas

It's always nice getting something for free - and publicity for your website is certainly on that list! Promoting a website can be expensive, but with a few DIY ideas under your hat you can help build your website traffic for free. So here's by top 7 free website marketing ideas.

Link Building - this is really a must for anyone wanting more traffic! By building links with other sites you can exchange traffic with them. Even if you aren't exchanging links on content pages, just links pages, that can help the popularity of your site and increase your search engine traffic. Getting listed in popular "Top Sites" lists may not help your page rank teriffically, but if it's a popular list it might have plenty of traffic and send some of it to you. This is particularly true when the topic involved is a hobby, when people are tending to browse deeper than just a quick flick through sites.

Fresh Content - by constantly updating and maintaining your content you are giving search engines a reason to come back to your site and a reason to send you visitors. If this new content forms new pages then you can quickly build up a large cataglogue of useful pages. Try adding one new page each week of content that you have written yourself. Don't worry too much about keywords - just write what comes easiest. Make sure the pages are easy to find - linked to from the search engines, and let time take it's course. If you aren't a content site, e.g. a shop, then make sure that your catalogue is updated on a regular basis. Search engines will pick up on special offers coming and going. Likewise, using a forum on your site can help as this is constantly producing new content on a site.

Forums & Blogs - by actively participating in other people's forums and leaving comments on blogs that track back to your own blog or website their readers can see what you have had to say and if it is interesting maybe they will also visit your blog or website. I've had people asking for advice on forums to which I've posted replies leading to commissions.

Video Clips - using amusing video clips and posting them on social networking websites where others might show them to their friends can be a useful idea. Done subtly is best - give the viewer something to enjoy and they will tell other people. Maybe demonstrate a product in use in an unusual way and drop in the name of your website as providing the product. I've seen this well done, with just the comments on the top of the page saying where the products could be bought from if any viewers wanted to try it for themselves.

Google Maps - the Google maps service shows on the map the location of businesses for variouse searches. If Google decides a search is relevant to a business and a location, then the map is shown at the top of the search results, along with a list of the displayed businesses. It's free to get listed - go to maps.google.com, search for your business and location and assuming you aren't listed, use the link at the bottom of the page to list your business.

Articles - promoting your website through frely distributed articles is an effective way of helping traffic. If you write an interesting and informative article, publishers should pick up on the article and reprint it. If it makes interesting reading then the readers will want to read more and visit your website. Also, so of the articles will be reproduced on websites, with pne way links into your website.

Run a newsletter - if you can collect email addresses of people that are visiting your site then you can later email them when you want to generate a bit of interest. Maybe you have special offers to promote, or have too much stock that needs clearing quickly. Well, if these people have enjoyed your site and offered you their email addresses then it's likely that they will be open to your offers - make use of this!

Saturday 21 June 2008

Top 5 Off Line Website Marketing Ideas

There's more to advertising your website than search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing. There's plenty of advertising that you can use that doesn't even involve the website. Offline marketing can bring plenty of good results for your business and a lot of it can bring long term customers without too much expense.

Here's my favourite 5 ways of marketing your website - without using the internet!

Advertise in your shop - if you are a shop owner, or at least have a premises that your customers might visit or pass, then advertising there is a definite must. Get your shop sign altered to include the website name. Have your price tags printed up with the shop name and on posters around the shop include your website address. Remember that people might be passing your place of business and see you and want to get in touch. A website address is far easier to remember than most phone numbers. It could be that you are a solicitor and they are about to move and drive past you every day to and from work. Whatever, make sure that passing trade sees your website address.

Advertise on literature - basically, put your website address on everything you print. Every receipt, invoice, statement, business card, letterhead etc should show your website address. This one, unless you are throwing away old literature to make way for newly printed stock, is a free one! But it's reminding current customers at a later date how to contact you.

Fliers - getting a batch of fliers designed and printed isn't going to break the bank. Then get them out as quickly as reasonable possible - they aren't doing any good in your drawer. Stick them on cars; give them out to potential customers you are meeting; post them through letter boxes; even just drop one into each carrier bag. You could be reminding existing customers about you or drawing in new customers depending how you distribute them.

Give aways / promotional items - similar to fliers, here you get some pens, stress toys, keyrings or whatever printed and distribute them as you wish. Maybe you give them out on the street or to customers. Or give them to customers who spend a certain amount (to encourage further spending) or have a set printed and give out a different one each week, saving the last one for online orders only. Whichever way you use them, having your URL printed on them means that your recipients are seeing your message and website name and can visit your site.

Magazine Adverts - this one is saved to last as it's probably by far the most expensive of all of the off-line ideas. By being listed in a magazine with a good circulation its readers are finding out about your site and associating you with the magazine. By using a specialist magazine you can really target your audience well and several of my customers use this, with some having sites just to give the readers a point of contact. But, depending on the quality and circulation of the magazine, this can be an expensive exercise. Done well, the returns can be even greater.

Friday 20 June 2008

Top 7 Paid For Website Marketing Ideas

Using paid for advertising to market your website can be very expensive. Here I present what I consider to be 7 of the best ways of spending your money.

1) Pay Per Click - using services such as Google and MSN, you can select a variety of search keywords that people might be searching on and pay to be in the adverts column next to (and sometimes above) the results. You can usually control quite carefully the budget and pause or cancel the advert is you are spending too much and it can produce quick results. So a good one to start with.

2) PopUnders - this is one that is very controversial in some ways! With these, when someone opens a website, a new window opens in the background displaying another website. Because you know what sites are being used as the trigger, the advertising can be accurately tardetted. But there are so many popup blockers about that most people must have at least one - my computer has one built into the browser, one within the Google toolbar and one within the Alexa Toolbar - popunders don't get through! So with so many popup blockers available, will these services work? Well my thoughts are that with so many blockers availahle, if you don't have one installed, that is almost a conscious decision to allow them through. Therefore you are probably happy to receive them. Popunders are usually cheap, so another good starting point for marketing a website.

3) Expired Domain Traffic - this one is also cheap and cheerful, but at the moment in my experience many providers are struggling to provide UK traffic. With these, when a person tries to visit a site that has been deleted by the owner they are instead sent to a similarly themed website. The idea is that with a careful choice of sites you can generate plenty of well targetted traffic. Very cheap, rapid delivery usually, but stuggling with UK traffic at the moment,

4) Paid Directories - paying to be listed in a directory can be quite expensive and does not necessarily get a quick result. I have tried many directories and some are worse than the free directories! I now go by the theory that if they are phoning me and hassling me for business, then can they be that good? But there are some usful directories out there - you just need to see where your competitors are advertising and research whether those directories will be good for you.

5) Fliers - these can be useful but are often overlooked. A well designed and printed flier, made available directly to your customers can be used by them at a later date to recall your website address and visit it when they need it. Depending on your target audience there are many ways of distributing leaflets - handing them out on the street; handing them out in a shop; door to door posting; leaving on car windows; mailshot etc.

6) Magazine Adverts / Printed Adverts - advertising in the daily press or relevant magazines can rapidly get your website noticed by many people. By advertising in these your website gains credibility with the readers and some respectibility as you are advertising in a publication they trust. On the upside is that your advert can be seen by thousands of readers. In the downside is that this exposure comes with a cost. If advertising this way, make sure that your advert is professionally designed - even if it's only a couple of column inches. Whatever space you use, you want the advert to stand out and the costs of a designer can be recovered with a well produced advert that pulls in more customers.

7) Affiliate Marketing - and finally the 'big one'. Not necessarily just for big sites. As long as you can cope with the traffic then getting a team of marketeers working for you on a commission only basis could be just what your business needs. A lot of networks have large monthly charges and setup fees, so if your marketing budget is small start out with a network that avoids these, but they usually involve setting up everything for yourself. All that the network does is act as a contact point for affiliates and to help with the reporting of sales.

Thursday 19 June 2008

Build traffic with a competition...

OK, so I said that yesterday was the last of the ideas, I was wrong. Here's something else that I was suggesting to a customer. I'll describe it as I described it to my customer for his promotional items website.

Basically, what I suggested is that he run a promotional items competition. He invites his existing customers to send in ideas as to how they have used his products. This could be descriptions, images, videos etc. It doesn't matter - it's whatever he wants to use. It could even just be the most unusual place to give out his products, the most unusual model to build etc. It doesn't matter - all that matters is that there is a competition (and simple prize) that interests his customers.

And the competition doesn't need to be restricted to just his customers, as long as the entrants are using the right products. More about this in a minute...

So he gets the customers posting their entries. Each of these forms a separate webpage (more content...). But he's the important part - customers and their customers vote for the winners. This is vital! That way, customers who have signed up and entered the competition then tell their contacts about the cocmpetition so that they get votes. These people visit the site and vote.

You can incentivise the voting to encourage more votes by offering a prize for those voting as well. So to be able to award thee prize, and to make sure that people are only voting once, you capture email addresses.

So, what do you get from this exercise, rather than just a bill from your web designer for the work!

For a start, customers are returning to your site so they have you in mind. It's an excuse for you to email them and remind them you exist.

Second, the customers are telling people about you, so they are spreading the word about your site. There's a chance that your customers' contacts could then become your new customers.

Third, you get to capture a mailing list of your customers' contacts and can email them competition updates - and remind them you exist.

Fourth, some of your customers will be keen on the competition and link to your voting pages from their websites - one way links.

So, keep the voting rolling and maybe reset the counters every month or so. That way, your customers keep the votes rolling in and the benefits continue.

Wednesday 18 June 2008

Word of Mouth

The last of the ideas for marketing your website is very simple, but works. It's one I use time and time again, it just takes a bit of getting used to to do it well.

What's the simplest idea of all, that's free and takes no time - simply tell everyone you know or talk to about your website and business. There's a chance that they, or someone they might know, might need your services.

It works. My very first customer came this way and I'm currently working on a neighbour's site. And a few months back I was giving another neighbour my phone number for a new homewatch scheme - so the easiest way was to just give her my business card. It had all the contact details I needed on it. The other morning she was driving past me when she stopped and asked for a quote.

I've also had close friends send their friends to me for work and, of course, on the line odf referrals is the fact that if I do a good job then my customers will be telling their friends who built their website. If it works for me, then why not everyone? Even if you are selling clothing, books or whatever, if your target audience is the people that you mix with then let them know about what you do.

Tuesday 17 June 2008

Using Email Signatures

Have you ever noticed that some free email services add adverts to the bottom of the emails? The reason why is that these adverts pay for them to run the service.

If it works for them, why not for you? Now OK, for them you are distributing their adverts to people you know that might not know about their services. On the other hand, most of your emails are being sent to people you know. But what if not everyone knows what you do, or that you are trying to earn an extra income on the side by promoting an affiliate scheme or whatever website you are trying to promote?

By adding a signature to the bottom of your email you are showing everyone who receives your email your message and maybe some of them will look at the website. This is at it's best when people then forward your email. Every sent a joke to a colleague? More to the point, have you ever received jokes and see that people haven't deleted the original email?

If you look down that list and see what's at the bottom, others might later do the same. And that could be your advert.

And it's not just this sort of distribution that works. Quite often you may be emailing people you don't know - trying to make bookings and so on. Well they also might see your advert - it's always worth a go when the advertising is free.

The same can happen when you use an email address from within your domain. The recipient might just notice that URL, and if it's something that interests them then bingo - they might turn into a visitor.

I'm not promising overnight riches from email signatures, but they are totally free so well worth giving a go.

Monday 16 June 2008

Articles for website marketing

Many sites, large and small, use articles to promote themsleves. Articles work in two directions at once.

First, reader see what you have written, see you as an expert and visit your site.

Second, with some article publications, the article is published on a website and in return the page links back to your site. So you have a source of one way links.

Either way is goog for business. The former is best whilst the article is new and being distributed in e-zines, but like the second, SEO, aspect as long as the article is displayed on websites with the links live then there is the chance of benefits.

But what sort of articles should you be writing? Articles should be honest, whilst not directly selling your product. You should be writing impartial advice and using the information imparted to convince your reader that you know what you are talking about and tempting them to read more about what you have to say by visiting your site.

Articles should be unique and have something in the title that makes them stand out - why should a publisher publish your article rather than someone else's? Getting your article picked up by publishers is vital - else you are wasting your time.

Sunday 15 June 2008

Fliers to market your website

Fliers can be an efficient way of marketing a website, or any business for that matter. You only need to look at your post and the free newspapers to see how many people rely on them for your business.

You need to put together a good looking and well presented convincing flier. Spell out what you offer quickly and plainly. Spell out the advantages of your services against the next guy's and make sure the leaflet looks the part.

Leaflets that drop through my door on badly cut cheap white paper, with less then perfect printing find their way to the bin even quicker then the better quality leaflets. And those with bad spellings and apostophes in the wrong places get the speediest trip of all!

So make sure leaflets are well written and spell out why a customer should use your services. They can then be rapidly distributed around your target audience. If your audience is householders or general public, then dropping the leaflets on a door to door basis is ideal. If you are looking for commuters, then car parks could be what you need. But if you are dealing with businesses, then leaflet dropping around the relevant businesses is the only option.

Targetting small businesses can be trickier - especially if they are so small that they are typically ran through private homes - are there are a lot of those around here. With them, you are best getting a list of businesses and their addresses to drop the leaflets to. But be aware that not all directories like you making marketing lists from their data.

Saturday 14 June 2008

Free Directories CAN Drive New Business

Getting your site listed in free directories, including top sites lists, can drive in new business to your site. Now it depends on what you are selling and how many sales you are after, but this can give your business a boost.

Particularly if your market is dealing with a topic where people browse around a lot, then getting listed in free directories and top site lists can be to your advantage. Whilst promoting a dating site a few years ago I listed it in a few of these such sites. I monitored it and noticed that most traffic came from a couple of very good "top sites" lists.

Now I was never going to retire on the income from this affiliate scheme - I gave up actively promoting the services in favour of other schemes because I found the conversion rate to be very low. (It was one of my early ventures when I was looking for any idea to work on!) But it did get plenty of taffic sent to the provider and even though I don't work on this any more and haven't done so for years, I'm still getting people joining up through my links from the top sites list!

For the small amount of effort in joining relevant lists and maybe uploading banners or links to your own site, you can possibly gain yourself a steady stream of visitors for a long time. It's free to sign up - so any sales you make are a wonderful profit.

Friday 13 June 2008

The Cottages Site's Links Directory

I've noticed testerday that the number of link requests for my cottages site is up significantly - at a guess, I've had more requests today than the whole of last week, and possibly the week before as well.

I was wondering why so many were coming through and then I noticed in my Google Adsense account that the traffic was up - helped of course by displaying the Adsense adverts on the link exchange pages. But it was only seeing that which reminded me of the effort I've put into that site recently! I'm not exactly known for my memory!

I suppose I'm watching for traffic being up on the website as a whole, not an increase in the link requests. But there could be a catch 22 situation here - in a postive way. Refresh the site and get it more popular with the search engines. Maybe not popular enough for the content pages to list highly, or high enough to show extra traffic, but a little higher.

But it might not just be the content pages that search engines take a shine to - why not the whole site? Although I've not yet updated the links pages to the new style (I forgot - my memory...) so I'll do that in a minute, it's possible that a slight improvement to the site could bring more traffic to the links exchange. There was another good day a few days back.

So maybe the links pages are being found more and the result will be more link swaps with suitable sites. That will hopefully bring the PR of the whole site up and as well as meaning yet more people are finding the links pages, ultimately eventually hopefully more customers will find the pages and begin making bookings.

Fingers crossed - I hope it wasn't all a big waste of time!

Thursday 12 June 2008

Using Blogs To Promote Your Website

Like using forums, using blogs to promote your website can be extremely rewarding, but should be done carefully to stay above board and not upset the owners.

There are two ways to use blogs to promote a site. First, using your own blog to promote your own product and second, visiting other people's blogs.

So, using your own blog - how's that done? Well, it can be as simple as running a blog for whatever purposes and the blatantly going "See my Mortgage Rates website." - see, just done it there for myself! If the blog / post is well page ranked, then it's a one way link into your website... Plus, if it is applicable to your audience, then there's a good chance of traffic following the link.

The next step is to tun a blog specifically for your product or services, either independently or on your own website. It can be a general blog designed just to create lots of content and therefore the chance of numbers of people finding it, or it can be specifically to mention and discuss various aspects of your products and services.

You can also post comments on your blog about posts on other people's blogs and link to them. Sounds crazy - probably is - but if the blog has got features such as trackback installed then they are likely to link back to your post. This might have the rel="nofollow" instruction of the link, if so it doesn't help for SEO. But even if it does, if you found the post then so will others. And they will be interested to see what you had to say when you linked to the blog, so an amount of traffic can start to appear.

Posting comments onto other people's blogs is the same idea as the trackbacks. These can frequently be covered up by the rel="nofollow" instruction, but visitors will see the comments and some may follow if your comment is interesting. If it's just blatent self publicity, then it's likely not to be followed and possibly even deleted.

Work with these people, not against them. Do unto you as you would have others do to you and everyone will be happy and your website traffic will increase.

Wednesday 11 June 2008

Using Forums to Market Your Website

Using internet forums can be a good way to market your site - but be aware of rules and regulations, else you might upset someone and be reported as spamming!

Carefully, and properly, used forums can drive genuine visitors to your website, for free. All it takes is a bit of time and effort on your behalf. Furthermore, the same techniques can also sometimes count as one way link building - possibly a great benefit!

Why only "possibly"? Well, for a start, many forums have been so blighted by spammers in the past that they now take action against people posting links. Some are quite harsh - removing all links and hiding them. Some only allow links to be posted by long standing member whilst others hide the links from search engines using the rel="nofollow" instruction, which was developed by Google especially for this sort of work.

Add to this that search engine programmers know that it is far too easy to get a one way link from a forum and have coded the weighting behind forum posts links to be far inferior to normal links, and you might start to wonder if you are wasting your time.

But you are not! About 18 months ago I was reading a running forum about a well known UK half marathon and many people were struggling to find accommodation for it. I posted a link to a page of mine on which there was an affiliate link to a hotel provider. Straight away I saw a few commissions appear and even now, when I am no longer promoting this scheme and even they entire site I was using for it has closed, I am still getting odd commissions for bookings on race weekend.

Such is the power of blogging that by one quick post I generated traffic to send to an affiliate scheme, that repaid my time handsomely. I could take this further and be more proactive in the forum and post recommendations to more of my own pages for running equipment affiliates, but it's a matter of getting the time to set that up.

But with careful posting it is easy, and allowed, to post replies including links to your websites. Quite often you will get warnings and bans if you take it too far - creating threads just to publicise your products, but if the reply you post is honest, helpful and happens to include a link to a supplier, which may be you, then no-one should complain.

Keep above the line and you can work this well. Look at it more as driving genuine traffic than search engine optimisation and you will be satisfied.

Tuesday 10 June 2008

The first cottages reload

The new style holiday cottages site has been live for over a week now, so I thought I should, as planned earlier on, reload the database.

The agreement with the provider is that the reload is at least monthly. But with my new style of website, an essential element is listing the latest cottages on the site's home page, plus the home pages for the areas. Within each of these lists, only the 10 most recent additions are displayed. So with the load today, 13 new properties were added. this means that only a randomly chosen 10 will appear on the home page.

Does this matter? Well the purpose of putting this information on the home page are: it adds regularly updated content to these page; it makes the search engines find the new property pages a lot quick (if they are visiting the home page that often). So there's a balance.

If I update every day, for argument's sake, then the new properties will drop down the list one or two positions at a time. If I update every month, then a new 10 are picked up each month.

On balance, creeping down the list is best. This way every new property gets a chance of being on the home page, and the content changes slightly, with blocks staying the same for when the search engines come back. Ideally encouraging the search engines to the site every day would be ideal, but a weekly visit is most likely. So being prepared for that visit is probably the target.

Therefore, I must be uploading the new file at least every week, probably twice a week to cope with cases when search engines return after 6 days etc. So it looks like that's the routine I must develop.

Monday 9 June 2008

How to manage link exchanges

How do you manage your link exchanges? I think that if you are running link exchange for SEO then you really do need a tool. It should be able to allow other site owners to add their site to yours; it should allow you to add sites - before they add a link and it should run various checks that the sites supposed to be linking to you actually still are.

I've had various attempts at writing this for myself over the years, but they are never as efficient as an off-the-shelf links directory. You need tricks such as when another site owner requests a link exchange the software much check their site to ensure that the link exists where it says it does. And preferably it checks the robots.txt file and for rel=nofollow in the link.

No software is going to be perfect, but I always use linkmachine for my links directories. One customer was unable to install it onto their website as their hosts has unusual security considerations, but on the whole it is quick and easy to install. It does check that the link back already exists and helps you as the site owner to get more links in. And whenevery you want to, at the click of a button it goes off and checks every link pointing to you is still in place, checking the sites where it can't find the link in case the link has moved.

It's not perfect, but the free version is fine for my requirements. I like it and believe, especially in some cases, that it has really helped the positioning of some of my sites.

Sunday 8 June 2008

May Cottages Benchmark

I said that I was going to benchmark the holiday cottages website for the month of May, and I nearly forgot. But the way the commissions are going between the two sites, it's really no wonder!

Between them, the 2 sites managed 4 bookings in May, and 3 have been rejected. So a fantastic commission for May of just £26. Wow. Last May it was 5 bookings and only 1 was rejected, earning a still pathetic £56.84.

As far as traffic goes, the cottage-holidays site (unchanged) had 4,914 page impressions, against 1,018 for cottages-4-holidays, which will include a few of my displays during testing. So traffic compares well to April. As for income, well it was $169.62 and $32.30 respectively, again, very close to April's figures.

So, thanks to the reduced commissions, the income between the sites is down to around £160, from £200. And I thought April was low. I'm not expecting great movements this month - give the searcb engines a few weeks to find the new pages etc. But these figures serve as a benchmark for my changes.

Saturday 7 June 2008

Sorting your link

You have decided what link building software to use, you have got a list of sites to get in touch with and put their links into your linsk directory, but should your link look like?

Most take the format of:

UK Mortgage Rates - compare all mortgage rates online.

That's three elements - the URL, the title and a description.

The description is the easiest to deal with - just describe what your site offers - it's not important for search engine optimisation (yet!). The URL - well the obvious thing is to link to your home page and many link exchanges demand that. But also consider requesting that some of the links point to your internal pages - this helps get traffic up over the entire site.

Then comes the important bit - the title or link text. Much has been written about this and there is a great deal of care required in any search engine optimisation - too much and the search engines pick up on this and you can get banned.

Most advice is that having keywords in the anchor text - the title - is advantageous in getting you rated higher for those keywords. So, if you want to rate higher for cottage holidays, thne use them.

But if suddenly you get 100 links in using the same keywords then it is obviously artificial. So don't just target one keyword. Try cottage holidays, holiday cottages, UK holiday cottages, cottage holidays UK etc. Really going for link building? Then if you are building heavily find an even wider variety of anchor texts. Try Cornwall holiday cottages, Devon cottage holidays etc.

Variety is the spice of life. Combine the wider range of anchor texts with linking to the relevant website pages - for example, Dorset Holiday Cottages would point to the Dorset home page. Simple!

Friday 6 June 2008

The wrong way to link exchange

I had an email overnight from a customer asking me what I thought of an email he'd received advertising a website www.nettrafficsystems.com. They are a bit cagey about how exactly they work, but they claim to have a network of their own sites and for the fantastic price of only £245 per month, you can get 10,000 links from them. They even offer a free trial for 30 days.

I had to advise him that there wasn't enough information for me to be able to say the service was worth it. It might be great - I've never experienced them and couldn't find any write ups, but their own home page was page rank zero and the site has an Alexa ranking of over 2,000,000, which didn't bode well. They claim this is intentional - they don't want to be found by search engines. So why don't they block the site using the robots.txt file - and what harm would it be, given that they don't list customers or links sites?

My problems with this and similar schemes are many. First, they don't say how quickly you get those links. If it's all on day 1 then search engine are going to detect a massive spike in link building - all from a set of sites that they have previously witnessed this take place fro,

Second, for 'privacy' they don't tell you any of the sites they are using. Your links could be going anywhere. Are they PR4 sites or grey barred pages?

Next, there's no indication of how the links are portrayed on the pages. Are they mid paragraph, list or menu bar?

And lastly, the day you stop paying your links are all removed - there's no long term return for your investment. They claim to offer 'permanent links', but only for as long as you are a paid customer.

What about that trial? Well you only need to read the FAQs to see that at one point these guys say that it can take months for the effect of link building to show - "Ranking changes can happen daily but they are usually due to changes from as far back as 2-3 months." - that's when they are telling you why you should be a long term customer and I agree with this statement. Later on though, the claim is "You can expect to see some promising results already within the first month.". Personally, the only results I would expect to see that quickly would be getting new pages listed.

OK, I'm nit picking here. I suppose it's the surprise of the cost of the service has shocked me! But they are not alone - there are loads of other services like this out there - I've even thought of writing something along these lines, but addressing loads of the problems I mentioned - adding links incrementally etc.

To me, the best way is always proper link building. Get out there and exchange links with sites that are good, honest, hard-working sites. I'm not saying that the sites used by www.nettrafficsystems.com aren't just that - but there's no evidence either way. For the same price my customer could have one of us here spending a day per week link building for him. OK, maybe not 10,000 links on day one(!!), but a year down the line those links we have built would still be in place if he decided to cut back on his marketing budget.

If you have a large marketing budget and can afford to pay the £245 for 6 months and not cry if you don't see the huge improvements then it is probably worth a trial. But, if like my customer every penny is tight, then almost £1500 is a huge gamble.

Don't get sucked into these systems thinking they will always work. They might do - but the reason why I thought of writing one wasn't just to earn more cash, it was to increase my own sites' ratings. That way I'd have earned more affiliate incomes through them. If these systems are so good, why aren't the owners just using it on their own sites like I would have done?

Thursday 5 June 2008

Finding Bulk Link Exchanges

Finding suitable sites to exchange links with the manual way I've already described can get good results, but it does take a while and can be very unfuitful. You can spend ages searching sites for link exchanges, only to either send emails that aren't replied to or just not be able to find a link exchange page.

So when you want loads of link exchanges, how can you do it? There are many paid one way link exchange directories out there, but I don't touch them. They are expensive and the ones I've seen actually bear very little benefit.

The best way I find is to do different types of link searches. Search for phrases that are often on links pages, and if you want to limit the results, a keyword you want to work on. For example "add link" mortgages would be suitable for my mortgage rates website.

As well as add link, swap links, add site and exchange links etc can all be searched for. Any combination of these typical phrases is likely to find you useful sites. And if the sites have automated systems, then it's a lot more likely that the owner will actually respond and put your link up, or even that process will happen automatically.

And this happens a lot with popular link exchange tools. A lot of people find my site by looking for "powered by linkmachine" or "powered by link machine" (don't forget the quotes). This is because all free versions of link machine display this text once the free trial period is up. Paid for versions don't display it - but I've never seen how to find these sites.

Wednesday 4 June 2008

How to find sites to swap links with

So how can you find useful sites to exchange with?

Well, in the first place, look for sites that are of interest and contact them and see if they will link exchange. Contact people you know or deal with, and see if they are interested.

After that then we're probably onto the mass link exchanges and hunting down other sites that will benefit you. There's a fine line here between spam and genuine work - unfortunately I consider most of the requests arriving in my inbox as spam.

The first step is simply to type the keywords you are using into Google and see what sites come up top. Then look to see what sites link to these. If I was working on Compare Mortgage Rates I would type just that into Google. The top few sites are usually big names and not into link exchanges, so I ignore them and drop down a few until I find a site in my league. Once I've found one I look to see if it has a links directory. If so, I request a link... Next I go through the sites listed on this site, looking for their links directories, asking them to exchange links with me.

If I want to be more effective then sometimes I limit myself to just looking at which links are showing in Google. So when you find the first site, use the links: search to see who is linking to them and then either look for links directories or email them. I have to say that the email trick is very poor and gets only a few responses, submitting to links directories is probably a much better use of time.

Tuesday 3 June 2008

Which sites to link exchange with?

Here's a contentious issue - not how to find sites to swap links with, but who to swap links with. After all, it's only when you have decided who to swap links with that you can decide who you are looking for.

There are two schools of thought. One says that swapping with closely themed sites is all that you should do. This school is thinking that sort of link swap is more natural and will give you a better PR. The other school says the more the merrier and swap with anyone in sight.

I can't honestly say I prefer the former. Whilst it sounds better, I've never seen any direct benefit. Yes, if I could get Compare Mortgage Rates listed on the home page of other mortgage sites then I'd be delighted. But what sites are truly on topic?

Would you say that just mortgage sites are on topic, or that financial sites are on topic? Estate agents aren't really financial - they are home. But they are more closely related to mortgages than foreign exchange, which is financial.

In the real world, without link exchanges for PR, you would almost certainly find links to mortgage, insurance, solicitors, surveyors and removal firms websites on estate agents websites, and vice versa. That's because these businesses work hand in hand. Yet no category cleanly encompasses these variety of websites.

I've already spelled out in this series how contrasting niches of sites can naturally link to each other, so why then artificially create boundaries? Search engines, however clever, can't put each website into a niche that it should be linking to, so we're not mimicking what they expect.

So I say, within reason, any website is open to a link exchange. Don't look at whether they are the same niche, look at whether they get traffic and if we are being good, if our visitors are likely to find them useful. I get many visitors to my sites arriving through the links directory, so why not make sure these directories do some good?

Monday 2 June 2008

Reviewing the SEO Experiment

I've not looked at the results of the target="_blank" experiment for a while (3 months actually), so first a recap.

Basically, I was wondering if using target="_blank" in links hinders sites as far as SEO and PR are concerned, so I set up 3 test blogs last October. The first didn't get any links in; the second had links in and the third was linked to from the same pages as the second, but using target="_blank" in the link.

Now this experiment isn't perfect. I'm using an equal mixture of my own writings and articles across all three blogs, posting to each at the same time. But there are other sites that pick up these articles and publish them as well from my blogs, and I'm not controlling how those links look. But overall, it should give a general impression of what's going on. So here's the current state of play...

Site 1 - 33 posts - no links.
15 pages on Google, all grey barred.

Site 2 - 34 posts - 'good' links.
40 pages on Google

PR 3
October - hello-from-austria-going-back-to-my.html
October - costa-rica-beaches-most-beautiful.html
October - things-to-do-in-boulder-colorado.html
November - multi-leg-flights-explained.html
December - know-your-bag.html
January - reinvent-your-sports-spirit-with.html
January - timeshare-travel-discounts-travel.html
February - self-catering-accommodation-in-style.html
2008_01_01_archive.html

Site 3 - 34 posts - target="_blank" links.
38 pages on Google

PR 3
October - 10-reasons-to-visit-berlin-germany.html
October - traveling-with-children-in-ireland.html
October - hello-from-austria-hiking-through.html
December - ways-to-mark-your-luggage-for-easy.html
February - sunny-outlook-for-spains-sunshine-coast.html
February - how-to-research-and-book-cruise.html

There are slightly more pages page ranked on (2) than (3) - but not enough to get excited about! What is interesting is that it is internal pages that are ranked - not the home page. And they are either PR3 or nothing. What is interesting is that the page ranked pages have changed since the last review, so I'm guessing this is more to do with an external factor. Having said that, the first site, without any links in, doesn't have any page ranked pages and hasn't got all of its posts cached. Thus showing the importance of link building.

Sunday 1 June 2008

There's nothing like leaving it to the last minute...

There's nothing like customers leaving everything to the last minute! We started working on a site in early March - 2 and a half months ago. The design really dragged on. Nothing was heard back for weeks, then a few little changes requested, then suddenly about 2 weeks ago a major restyling of the site was requested.

Not brilliant, but OK if there's time. The problem was when about a week ago the customer annouced that the site must be live for this Wednesday.

You would think that in this case all the stop would be pulled out on both sides. I'm here now, Sunday afternoon, to get the site pushed through a little. But all week there's been a huge list of little tweaks that the customer wants. Never anything too major and nothing that affects the style to make it that much better for visitors. Only (to be honest) the customer trying to style himself more on a big name site and wanting everything to match.

So here we are, with just 2 working days to get the site live. At this point in the project, especially after 2 and a half months' work, you would expect to find us well into the build. But with only 2 days to go until he is desperate to go live, and with threats about what will happen if we're not live, I switched on this morning hoping to see emails from him. But there's nothing.

So how far into the build are we? Well, we're waiting for him to sign off the home page of the site. It's a few days since we last had any changes off him for that page and they were returned straight away (subtle changes to colours etc). So I was hoping for an immediate reply.

It looks like we'll be lucky to get the pages signed off for Wednesday, let alone the site live. I could start putting together the site, but with 4 different page style, including the home page, waiting to be signed off, there's little chance that there will be no changes. So I can only wait.