Knowing the Buyer’s Intent - Free Keyword Help From Microsoft
The tool has a fancy name - Detecting Online Commercial Intention - and some complex calculations behind it. Fortunately Microsoft has made it easy to use.
You probably already know that Keywords are the Critical Success Factor in getting the right visitors to your website and into your business. You want traffic that is looking for your products and services. People find those by using specific words and phrases - Keywords - on search engines - Google, Yahoo, etc. Therefore in order for people to find you the website and its content must be created around the specific keywords that people are using to find your specific market and niche.
This leaves a gapping hole for our needs however as website and business owners. People use the web to either just find information and because they are looking to buy something. We want those buyers looking to buy something - preferable in our office or store. This is where Microsoft’s “Detecting Online Commercial Intention” tool comes in.
Using the website Detecting Online Commercial Intention you can learn which keywords attract buyers and which are simply keywords used to find information. Microsoft says it this way:
“Web page searches display two levels of commercial intent: informational and transactional. This tool can detect customer intent to acquire information or to purchase products based on their search queries or recently visited URLs. For example, if a customer searches for “canon digital camera”, it is likely that they want to purchase a canon digital camera; therefore, the online commercial intent is strong, with a confidence level larger than 0.5.”
“This tool can be used to find keywords that are commercial but have low ad coverage. From a SEM point of view, it is useful to find these keywords as they have low bid density (low price), but high commercial value. Similarly, for an advertizing engine, this can help increase ad relevancy by displaying fewer ads if a keyword has low online commercial intent.”
Although the technology behind how the site determines the keyword’s effectiveness for knowing buying intent (Detecting Online Commercial Intention) is complex -see below - the site is easy to use. Simply type in the keyword or phrase and Microsoft will produce a percentage number on its value - or the likelihood that a person using this term is to buy what they find. The result is in a .00 form, so .20 would be 20% and so forth. Anything over a .50 (50%) is considered good.
Keywords are the critical success factor for getting both paid and organic traffic to your website. Knowing if they produce business is the most important question. Until now the only way to do this is to measure the conversion rate - sales - of different keywords based on the articles, advertising, and experience. Unfortunitly this information is historical data - hindsight - meaning you’ve had to use them and pay for them without knowing first their effectiveness.
Microsoft has provided the missing link of keyword research. Now you can get a better idea if the keywords used will produce visitors who are buyers or just lookers. This is very important, especially if your’e paying for advertising, such as Adwords, which are based on keywords and costs money every time someone clicks on them.
Another Free - Quick - Easy tool for you to use.
Your Website Sucks - and You’re to Blame
Potential customers don’t like to be annoyed, figure out your site, or have their time wasted. They also want real information not endless pitches and over hyped products.
How did I learn this about your website? Well I’ve spent hours on the web looking at your website and countless others. Just today I was searching for a solution to a simple problem: I needed the manual to a radio that I bought last month. Google gave me a million hits but everyone was a dry hole of misinformation, product pitches and fake reviews. The Internet is becoming a babble of incoherent nonsense - a circus. It’s getting to be like the carnival with barkers yelling at you to buy some of their cheap foreign goods.
Here are the most common annoyances that blow visitors right off your webpages:
- Loud audio or video messages that start up as soon as you open the page
- Navigation that takes Einstein to use
- The important information is hidden
- The site is just an excuse to get a bunch of Adsense ads and other advertisements displayed
There are many other reasons - and the fixes for them. For the sake of brevity I’ve put them in an article that you can read by Clicking Here
And by the way…if you think your website doesn’t suck or you sell quality foreign goods 
make a comment and post your website. I’ll check it out and let the world know that at least one website is really great. Thanks.
Is the Local Internet going to save Newspapers?
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You can read the entire article at Can Local Web Ads Save Newspapers?
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Here are some of the highlights:
“It has been a rough time for the newspaper industry in the US, with a series of layoffs against a backdrop of falling revenues. Consumers still read newspapers, but the rise of online news and opinion sites and blogs has given them additional reading choices.”
“One fresh indicator that print newspaper readers are shifting to news sites comes from the Readership Institute. Although two-thirds of Internet users surveyed in July 2008 said they still used print newspapers about as much as they did before they started visiting news sites, more than one-quarter said they were reading print less as a result, and that figure has grown during the past 5 years.”
Newspapers revenue from their online advertising is growing and perhaps will save them.
Bottom Line: the web is going local. Even local newspapers are now realizing the importance of supporting business on the Internet. Most advertising dollars are shifting to online publications and websites because that is where people are looking for the companies they want to do business with. Growing a business using the Internet is more important than ever.
Honest advice about what works to get traffic
I am tired of hearing about the same old link development methods over and over again. Go to any seo forum you like and start a 2.301.991-st topic called: “What are good ways to get backlinks?”. I bet you will get told to go and submit your website to directories, write articles and exchange links. Come on! We are in 2008! You need to stand out from the rest in order to succeed at seo!
I have decided to sort this out once and for all and cover every single link development method known to man. (Probably not but if i miss something out please do leave a comment) I will keep this nice and sweet. Us seo-ers don’t usually have all day to read a blog entry
This post is great because it debunks a lot of the tired methods and myths about SEO and target generation. Tired of beating your brains out without any results? Try some of Llia’s ideas.
Free Photo Editing Software - Paint.NET a Photoshop Alternative
I use Paint.NET because its easy to use for the graphically challenged among us. Paint.NET will accept Photoshop files. It will also edit, crop and save your images into different formats, all of which are necessary for getting pictures onto the web.
This is what the Paint.NET website says about the program:
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.
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Below is a screenshots of Paint.net in action. Another great tool that doesn’t kill your wallet, in fact it’s (can you guess what I’m going to say?) Free Quick and Easy. Cheers.
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Website Naming - Harder Than Ever
The problem is that with so many existing websites finding a good name that isn’t taken can difficult. Most webhosts provide a service to check on names for you however they are time consuming and hit and miss. Here is a website that will look up a name and offer suggestions based on keywords: DomainsBot. It is free, easy to use and quick - all the things I like. Happy site naming…
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The Missing Element of Growth: Strategy
Here are some of its key ideas that I agree with:
Looking at many online small business owners, always so busy with current operational issues, I have noticed that they are often missing the bigger picture. The majority are lacking any strategy on how to successfully grow their online presence/visibility.
Cost. We all know that small business budgets are limited, however investing in buying a website can reward you and your business greatly. Not only are you gaining an extra base of potential costumers, but you’re adding an important asset to your business, which will increase in value over time.
You can read the entire article at Small Business Growth Strategy
I suspect that buying a website is more useful for a company that wants to do business on the web instead of growing their local business. However the author makes some great points:
First, all success starts with a clear focused purpose - A STRATEGY. The ready, fire, aim approach works in the movies but in real life ends up costing a businessperson a lot of money. That’s the main idea of providing a clear strategy in the article I wrote called Profit by Using the Internet.
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If you can purchase a website that works with the strategy of
- Improving
- Growing
- Expanding
your business great. However whatever action you take make sure that it fits into the goals and purpose of the business. Have a clear strategy with the metrics to measure success and failure. Don’t use cost alone. The soft benefits of reputation, credibility, and customer service improvement are difficult to measure but those are the very things that develop customer loyality and sustain a business in hard times.
Buying a website is a good tactic, but is a tactic, not a strategy. It is a powerful weapon in your growth arsenal but like traffic building, search engine optimization (SEO), Google Adwords, and alll tactics it is not the place to start.
Having a clear goals, a time line, and a budget are the places to start.
Perhaps just as important is to keep in mind that those goals and plans need to integrate into the overall business strategy - with one supporting the other. Otherwise your customers will be confused, you’ll spend money needlessly and you won’t get the powerful results possible by leveraging both offline and online mediums.
Relationship Marketing
Yet there are millions of websites out there that do nothing to cultivate customer relationships. Time after time, this is what you’ll find:
- Ego - All about the company: We have this, we did that, we said, we, we, we… The truth is that nobody cares. If a visitor doesn’t see something that’ they value they’ll be reaching for the back button.
- Brochure - A replica of the company brochure, with product and service information, photos, driving directions, and contact information. Just like millions of other websites.
- Buy Me! – There’s no shortage of websites selling products and services. The problem is most of them don’t offer anything else - no useful information, no free trial, no coupons, nothing. Just an opportunity to separate the visitor from their cash.
Just as in real-life, online relationships take time to develop. The constant barrage of sales pitches and hype has made many web surfers hold on tightly to their wallets. Until they get to know the person behind the website, you are tarred with the same brush as every other greedy marketer trying to pick their pocket.
So how do you begin to develop customer relationships? Two words: relationship marketing. But what is “Relationship Marketing”?
As an independent professional, a freelancer or a small business owner one of the most challenging tasks is marketing. Michael Gerber’s book “the e-Myth” points out that most individuals know their trade or profession well. They know what their customers value and what to offer them. However they just don’t know how to locate people (prospects) and convince them to use their services or products (become customers).
One of the most powerful techniques in marketing is to step into the shoes of your ideal client and brainstorm how they would find your business. This helps to refine the exact target market looking for your product or service. It also helps figure out what would be the best marketing methods and the messages to communicate your message to them.
Relationship marketing is about having a dialog with your customers over a period of time. It can also include gathering customer information and analyzing their behavior. You may not have the financial resources of Best Buy or WalMart, but as a local business owner you can do something they can’t - have real person-to-person relationship with your customers.
You do that by providing value to your customers, usually good information and value packed offers. Remember, people don’t go online looking for something to buy. They’re usually seeking information. So your strategy should be to use the information your customers need to build and maintain relationships with them.
There are 2 critical components to making this strategy work: a value-packed website and the consistent use of email to stay in touch.
Value-Packed Website
The relationship marketing process starts when a visitor arrives on the website. Make sure it’s a wonderful experience. Offer value - articles, content and interesting visuals - reasons to stay around and read more and click to other pages on the site. This is called “stickiness.”
Your main goal is to get the visitor’s email information. Only by having their email can you initiate a dialog. The number of people who visit the site compared to the number that sign-in (also referred to as an opt-in) is called the conversion rate. This is an important metric. It indicates if the website is interesting. If the website fails to motivate a visitor to opt-in it isn’t very likely to produce any business either. Don’t confuse the opt-in conversion factor with another important conversion factor: the conversion of leads to sales. Both should be watched and improved.
There are many techniques to get opt-ins. Some sites use what is called squeeze pages. Squeeze pages don’t allow the visitor to get any more information until the visitor opts in. However I find this irritating and leave the site. Many people put in false email information. The best strategy is to incentivize the visitor by offering something that they will value - a free report, a discount coupon, or a membership to an exclusive service. Be creative. Whatever you do this step is crucial to success. Get it done on the first visit because there may not be another.
What else characterizes a value-packed website?
Free Information or Service - Give before you get marketing. Some examples are:
FAQs - Make it easy for people to find the information they need by providing online help files. Make a note of questions you’re asked repeatedly and compile them into a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
Put service and operational manuals on the website. Customers often loose the documents that came with their purchase. This is a constant source of frustration. Remove that frustration.
Put ‘how to’ guides on the web. A landscaper could put instructions on how to layout a yard. When I bought paving stones for my driveway I had to drive to the rock yard to learn how to figure out to compute the materials I would need. A good website would have made the purchase much easier.
A hardware store could offer project ideas and instructions on a website. Anyone wanting to do the project would have to buy the materials to complete it.
Another important component of a website is allowing customers to help themselves. Can a product be purchased in different colors? What would the product look like? Can they order online? See a menu? Initiate a service call? Comment on purchases and the company? Can they set their own appointments? Allow these kinds of actions on a website and the interaction becomes a two way relationship. What can a customer do to prepare them for a sale?
Other important factors in providing a value-packed website include:
Two-way Dialogue - You want a two-way dialogue between you and your customer, so make it easy for customers to contact you and encourage them to do so.
Personalize the site. Allow your personality to come through. Be human – life is in the details, share some.
Timely Response - When your customer does “raise their hand”, respond quickly! There’s nothing more de-motivating than an unanswered email to someone who claims to want my business. Use an autoresponder (if you’re unfamiliar with autoresponders check out the articles about them at www.businesswebstep.com article page. Get people answers quickly. If possible allow them to download documents and information immediately.
Community People want to feel a sense of community, which is why discussions boards are so popular. Give people a place to gather, swap tales, and build a community. Message boards, mailing lists, polls – the more chances you give your customers to express their likes and dislikes, the better. Give them their voice and they’ll tell you exactly what they want (and will pay for).
Ask Questions - Ask customers what they want. They’ll tell you. If you find out what your customer wants and become a friend, you will beat most of the competition hands down.
Community Related Announcements or a calendar. Don’t do it if you’re not willing to keep it current.
Frequent Updates - If you want people to visit frequently, you must give them a reason - new content, a fresh look every how and then, information updates. A website is never finished. This is why Blogs are so popular. People (as well as search engines, directories, and other websites willing to link to a business’ website) want fresh and original information. Provide it.
n it on the BusinessWebStep site. Wikipedia has a good article on RSS at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication
Free Tools or Services – Another way to draw people back to your site is to offer free tools such as a mortgage calculator, or free services such as email. You could offer free advice about your industry, for example an “Ask Andy” column.
Money-back Guarantee - If you’re selling something online, you must offer an ironclad “no questions asked” money-back guarantee! Then honor it.
Above all, show your customers that you’re in it for the long haul, not the quick score. No flashing banners screaming “Buy Me!” Tone down the hype. People have become very cynical because of the over inflated claims being made by businesses - online and offline. Solid content backed by a solid company builds trust and gets more sales than does carnival barking.
Under promise and over deliver. Remember the goal isn’t to get a single sale but to develop a long-term customer relationship. The goal is to increase the lifetime value of new and existing customers because they purchase more from our business. The only way to accomplish that goal is to have satisfied customers. Don’t disappoint by promising what can’t be delivered.
Keep your word. Do what you say. Don’t make false or misleading offers - like deadlines that never really expire. No pressure to hurry up and buy before midnight - unless the offer really does go away at 12:01. Don’t have a clock that resets every time a customer comes back. Credibility will suffer when those kind of tactics are employed.
In addition to a value-packed website the consistent use of email is required. There are many good articles in the directory about emailing - from content generation to tips on building an email address list. However lets touch upon some important points here.
If you are emailing your local customers, sending offers, coupons, and useful information about the business, you are more likely to get their business than a stranger. If you’re sending out a newsletter, you’ll be light years ahead of all of your competition, local or not!
Here are a few ways to use email to create ‘brand’ awareness within your local community.
Email your customers and prospects on a regular basis, at least twice a month. Any less than that and they may forget you. Again, use an autoresponder to automate this process. Write one email - get it distributed to everyone. Create separate categories based on the buying habits or preferences of the business’ customers. Use specific emails to target their specific needs.
Send an electronic newsletter to customers and prospects with useful information, news about the company, related articles, notice of new content on the website, new product announcements, etc.
The goal is to keep in touch so that when they need your products or services you’ll be the one they call. The more they identify you as someone who wants to help them the more likely they are to contact you when the need arises.
When customers purchase a product or service, use email to help them get the most out of it. For a book or publication, it could be an email ‘walkthrough’ series highlighting important topics. Put audio or video excerpts on the website and let buyers know about them. This could motivate someone to actually read the book they’ve bought - and buy another.
Send a personal email note to select local customers without a strong sales pitch. Keep it simple and friendly. It could be a Happy Anniversary note or card if the customer has been with you for a year. If you have birthrate info, you can send an electronic birthday card.
Become a frequent contributor on local message boards with helpful information. Let the community get to know you. There are many directories that will list local businesses on them. Most local governments have a website as do most chapters of the Chamber of Commerce. Get free listings on their sites. Send out Press Releases, announcements, even special events that your business is doing. There are many free promotion and advertising opportunities on the Internet. These community sites need local information to keep themselves relevant and people visiting. They want your information.
If possible, you should do joint ventures with neighboring businesses. If you do this, make sure you control the mailings, and that your company “introduces” the other business. Never give out anyone’s email without their permission or if you haven’t disclosed the intention to do so in the company’s privacy statement.
Another joint venture idea is a coupon exchange. Band together with other non-competing businesses and regularly exchange coupon offers with each other’s email lists. The email could have an ‘electronic coupon inside or links to a webpage where the offer can be found. You send out your partner’s coupons and they send out yours. That way email privacy is maintained and you get the credit for providing savings and more value to your customers.
Summary
With a value-packed website and the consistent use of email you can build lasting relationships with your customers. The Internet offers many ways to build the trust of customers and build a local brand. Great websites and consistent email campaigns will become the backbone of a business’ marketing program. Motivating customers to find you and search out your business is far easier and far more profitable than traditional prospecting and off-line growth methods.
Keyword Brainstorming
Sometimes however we get stumped trying to brainstorm the effective keywords for our niche and our business. Kwmap in a free resource that will help brainstorm and link different keywords in an attractive and intuitive display.
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As you can see from the website picture Kwmap will not only graph the keyword you search on but provide an entire list of associated keywords and relevent sites. You can drill down on the differnt keywords by clicking on them. Kwmap also allows you to link your site and url directy - in other words free publicity and networking for your business’ website.
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Another Free - Quick - and Easy resource for those wanting to take the Business Web Step.
Remarkable find: SocialMarker does the work for you
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Growth requires new business. New business requires people seeing our offer - prospects - traffic in the online world. Everysite wants more traffic, including the websites of a local business.
To build traffic you need to network in at least 3 ways:
- Article Directories
- Website Directories
- Social Newtworks
Social Networks are increasing becoming the most important element for driving traffic (organic, that is unpaid traffic) on the web. Propeller, Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Technorati, Del.icio.us, to mention only a few are becoming critical success factors for websites.
What is it?
Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website. But going through all of those social bookmarking sites is very time-consuming and downloading all toolbars is madness! That’s where SocialMarker.com comes in, the free service designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website.
How Do You Use It?
All you need to do is simply drag this button 
to your bookmarks toolbar, in order to create a submission bookmarklet. When you are on a website that you want to socially mark, simply select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate the submission form with the selected information.
Why SocialMarker?
It can help you spread a link on 47 of the best social bookmarking sites in under 15 minutes!
- It helps you get a lot of backlinks.
- It helps you increase your traffic.
- Your link gets indexed by Google in a matter of minutes.
- Best of all, it’s free!
Of course the problem is who has time to enter information and link to all of these sites? No-one - or at least no-one who has to work for a living. Social Marker has taken the work out of the process. Here are the steps:
1. Sign up and get an account at the socai networking
2. Find interesting information and highlight what you want posted on the networking sites
3. Hit the link or bookmark that takes you back to SocialMarker
4. The information is automatically populated and the site takes you through each social network you’ve checked off to post the links.
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One of the great features of the site is that if you’re not registered with one of the social networks it allows registering without leaving the process of posting the information or loosing your place. Once you’ve registered and told your computer to keep you logged in then the entire process is automatic. Unbelievably fast, easy, and effective. Just take a look at the popular social networks SocialMarker works with:
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If you’re reading this and you want to build traffic - which I hope is everyone - check out SocialMarker. It’s free, quick, and easy. My signature theme - free quick, and easy. Cheers…Russ