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Your Website Sucks - and You’re to Blame

Before you kill the messenger let me explain just why your website sucks, why you’re responsible and how it can be fixed.

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.

Honest advice about what works to get traffic

I just found one of the best posts I’ve ever read about what really works to get traffic - and what isn’t working. Scary that it’s written by a person younger than my son. Do yourself a big favor and click over to LLia’s website for some good information on link generation and traffic techniques. SEO and Marketing

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 From now on I will simply point everyone asking about way to get backlinks to this post. Here we go…

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.

SEO and Marketing

Relationship Marketing

If you’re a successful business owner, you already know that the success of your business depends on the relationships built with customers. This is twice as true when doing business online.

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.

To continue this article click on the page links below…

Pages: 1 2

Remarkable find: SocialMarker does the work for you

Every now and then you find a gem on the internet, a tool or website that makes your life so much easier that you don’t know how you lived without it. Recently I found such a treasure in SocialMarker. What makes this site so remarkable is that it is not only FREE but easy to use and a huge huge time saver.

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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

Frank say’s “Selling Sucks!” Do You Agree?

Frankly, I don’t agree with this speaker. Perhaps the way he sell stinks, along with the high pressure tactics and hard closers out there, but I love selling. Nothing happens without something getting sold - an old chestnut but still true. My customer’s appreciate me ’selling’ them because they know I’m working hard in their best interest.

That said Frank makes a few great points. Technology, especially using the strategies used by “Growing Your Local Business Using the Internet” , brings prospects to you. Modern strategies, such as email, eNewsletters, and great information packed websites, warm prospects up, eliminates cold calling (dialing for dollars), and many of the worn out approaches of traditional selling.

Listen to Frank’s video and let me know what you think.

How to Grow Using the Internet

Wow, at long last my Home Study Course is done. After only teaching this material to my customers and at Internet Marketing Bootcamps my students convinced me to create a course so that they could study at home or in their businesses. Well this students might be mad because I’m giving away tons of stuff that they’ve paid for. Hey, I got to practice what I preach: under-promise and over-deliver.

Knowledge is cheap. It’s the how-to and the help that costs money. That’s why I’ve included personally helping LOCAL businesses get set up on the web. You can check out the course by clicking on Grow Your Business Using the Interneta>

Directory Submission Software to Drive Traffic

As the search engines are evolving each and every day, it’s getting harder
and harder to get top search engine rankings.

The search engines now, highly favor, websites that have a large number of
quality, one way links pointing to them. Because of this, it’s absolutely critical
that we consistently try to get other websites to link to us, WITHOUT us linking
back to them.

Yes, reciprocal linking is becoming less and less valuable. Submitting your
website to website directories is an excellent way to get, quality, 1 way links
pointing to your websites. You see, many of the website directories online have
a high amount of page rank and have been online for several years.

These are 2 of the most important criteria for determining what a good link
is, vs what a bad link is. These two criteria are:

• The age of the website linking to you
• The Page Rank of the website linking to you

With that said, many of these directories have both a high Page Rank AND are
old websites, giving them more authority and power in the search engines.

Not only that, but there are literally thousands of website directories on
the internet that are absolutely free for you to submit your website to! While
it does take time to find these directories and then manually fill out all of
the required criteria to submit your website, it is an excellent way to help
increase your search engine rankings.

There are some good website directory submission software products on the market.
The best of which is a product called Directory Submitter created by Brad Callen.
Esentially you simply enter your website details into the software program 1
time, and then click on any of the 1600+ website directories in the software
and it wil automatically fill in all of the submission criteria for you. Click
the submit button and then your site has been instantly added to the website
directory.

So, not only does it save you time in finding all of these directories, BUT
it saves you an incredible amount of time filling out each and every website’s
submission criteria. To learn more about Directory Submitter, visit the link
below:

Directory Submitter

E-mailings Boost Boston Dry Cleaner’s Business

This is a great article, proving that you can grow your business using the Internet. If a Dry Cleaner can do it (without a website) anyone can do it.

May 1, 2005 12:00 PM , BY BRIAN QUINTON

One of the pleasures of owning a local business is the feeling that it’s an integral part of customers’ lives, as important to their daily routine as the newspaper and the mail. If properly nurtured, these people can develop a relationship with the business that no competitor can disrupt, creating an important base for future growth.

Bob Devaney knows this — he operates three “Dry Cleaning by Dorothy” stores in the South Boston suburbs. The stores convey a “family” feel in many ways, including employing several of the Devaney clan as managers. But he says weekly e-mailings to the 3,000 customers on his house list also have become part of the family tradition at Dorothy’s.

“Dry cleaning is largely a convenience business; you patronize a store because it’s on your way to somewhere,” Devaney says. “I’m interested in making my customers feel more like they’re family. Just the fact that I’m always visible, sending them something each week — that helps make me their dry cleaner.”

Like most small businessmen, Devaney says he found he never had enough time to devote to promoting his services properly. “I was running around like a headless chicken, fixing machines and talking to customers,” he says. “I always was sitting down to design my coupon ad campaigns at the last minute, and paying a lot of money to do so.”

So in 2001 Devaney put sign-up sheets on his store counters and offered $5 in free dry cleaning to customers who submitted their e-mail addresses. Four years later, Dorothy’s house list grows by 25 to 30 names a week, using the sign-up sheets and other acquisition efforts.
Small businesses usually don’t have a lot of ad dollars to spend, and many feel they don’t have the time or know-how to run an e-mail campaign on their own. But Devaney thinks they should at least investigate the available online options. “I’ve been marketing for 25 years, and e-mail is by far the best thing we’ve ever done,” he says. “I can contact up to 5,000 addresses for $50 a month. I can envision some day not doing any other promotion.”

How to take advantage of a hot trend: coupons

Coupons are hot again!

The news has been reporting that consumers are using coupons again. Coupon use is at an all time high. Dismissed as a 90’s fad, coupons haven’t been popular in recent years. However coupons are tied to economic cycles and they become very hot in downturns. A household budget can save almost 30% of their food expenses alone. Buyers can save in other areas as well. How can your business take advantage of this trend?

Coupons promote a business - even if they are never used - a mini ad that doesn’t cost anything to distribute on-line. Coupons will get referrals from your existing customers. Coupons will motivate buyers to buy even when they are worried about the economy. Perhaps that best part is that you control the timing and the offer. Have slow days - make an offer to encourage shopping during those time. Have some hard to move inventory - make a 2 for 1 offer. Use coupons for contents, bonuses and rewards.

Discount coupons give cost savings to customers while providing valuable data and inventory control to the seller. Here are five reasons that creating discount coupons can benefit a business:

• Bring in new customers. When a consumer is ready to buy and knows of multiple sources for the product, price is often the deciding factor. Consumers are attracted to a good deal. Offering a discount coupon to new customers provides an added reason to shop at a particular business over all other options.

• Encourage repeat business. Satisfied customers will be more likely to shop again when they are reminded to do so, and given a compelling reason to return. A special discount coupon can be sent via email at specific intervals as a thank-you for past purchases and to encourage repeat business.

• Increase order size. Time-limited offers create a sense of urgency and give customers a reason to buy more than they originally intended. Discount coupons can be offered for a percentage off the purchase price of a second item, for example, or for free shipping on orders totaling a specific amount.

• Tracking. Gathering data on customer trends is imperative for every seller. Issuing separate discount coupons for different mailings, website promotions and affiliate partners, for instance, provides important information on where customers come from and which marketing campaigns are most effective. This data can then be used to make decisions about future marketing programs.

• Control inventory flow. Physical stores manage inventory flow by marking down items they want to move. Coupons can be used for the same purpose. The discount can be offered across the board, or used to bring in new customers with an interest in that particular product category, or sent to previous customers who bought similar products.

There are several ways discount coupons can be applied. Businesses generally offer a set dollar amount off the normal price of a product, a percentage off the price of a single item, a discount on the order total, or free shipping on orders that exceed a minimum dollar amount.

Discount offers can be extended through a number of vehicles. They can be posted on the landing page of the storefront. They can be emailed to select past or potential customers. They can be introduced on the order summary page to encourage the customer to add items to the shopping cart. Or they can be listed at various coupon sites on the Internet.

Many retailers determine the effectiveness of their marketing strategies by tracking the use of discount coupons. The information can help businesses achieve the highest possible ROI and sales at the best available rates.

Selling to Big Companies

Selling to Big Companies is one of the few indispensable resources available for salespeople who need prospects. This course debunks many of sales myths, especially those loved by managers who want more results but are clueless about how to get them. We are living in the ‘perfect storm’ of sales resistance, especially in regards to getting into accounts. Read more…