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We have all heard that Social Networking is crucial to your business development, but how serious is it really?

We’ll it might interest you to know that Facebook is the most popular social networking site for Americans 50+, with 23 percent of participants reporting they prefer it—followed by MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter.

So why is this important?

Because it shows us that the baby boomers, the ones that control the vast majority of the cash in the world, are now starting to use the Social Networking sites more and more.

If you want to get your business some real exposure you need to ensure that you are getting eyeballs to your website.

What better way to do this than to ensure that your websites and blogs are showing up constantly in the Social Networks.

One of the things that we have heard again and again is “It’s just too hard to create a profile on all the Social Networks that are recommended and even if we make it that far how the hell do we keep communicating on them all, the process of communication on all these sites is so time consuming and detracts from the other day to day activities required to run our businesses”.

Wow – Talk about a self defeating attitude!

Now we can understand that you have vital and important day to day tasks required to run a successful business but if no-one or very few know of your existence then you don’t really have a business anyway, no matter what you think.

Hard hitting we know but you have to face the facts.

Brand awareness and getting your marketing message out is paramount to you increasing your business exposure and at the end of the day your ROI.

When we talk about ROI what is the real return on investment when it comes to using Social Networks – Well huge! It can far outweigh any other type of advertising and exposure that you can spend time on. If the big boys of the industry are using it why the hell aren’t you?

Yeah, yeah we know it takes too much time to post information out to all the Social Networks that you have a profile on right – WRONG!

With the right tools in place you can actually post updates be they blog posts, micro-blog posts, status updates and more all with a single click.

Is that really possible?

You bet it is…

So let’s take a quick look at a way you can do all this.

First of all you need to have a profile created on all the Social Networks you want your business to get exposure on. Which networks you choose are up to you.

Secondly you do not need to answer every comment and post from other individuals who are connected to you on your Social Networking profiles. Of course you should answer the ones that make a direct comment or pose questions about your business, but don’t get lost in the playing of games and other stuff. You’re trying to gain business and run a business right, so keep your focus.

Set yourself a schedule to log into each of the Social Networks that you are a member of on a regular basis, be that weekly, monthly, or whatever, to confirm the requests people have sent you to join your network (Accept in new member requests) or to send out your own requests to be added to other peoples networks of friends and associates.

Doing this will ensure that you are gaining a larger following that will be able to see and read your blog posts, status updates and micro-blog posts when you make them.

The last thing you want to do is set up a system so that when you post a new blog post, status update or micro-blog you only have to post it once and all the Social Networks you are a member of receive your post simultaneously. This will alleviate your time constraints immediately. No more logging into one network to make a post, logging out of that network and into another to make the same post again.

The quickest way to learn all this is to purchase a package that can teach you how to set this all up and keep it running.

Sometimes you just have to invest in yourself and your business to increase your income and brand awareness, but you do not need to pay a fortune for it, we didn’t.

If you want to eliminate your frustration and the time commitment needed to use the Social Networks for high impact, eyeballs on your site and traceable ROI campaigns then you should check this out.

Social Networking Traffic Made Easy

Don’t let the name fool you, it may be simple but the results will blow you away!

To your best year ever,

Nicholas McIntosh

After you have built your website, the key to generating profits from the Internet is getting qualified prospects to visit your site. This is called ‘traffic’.

Without traffic your website will never make your business any money. Why?

Because if nobody visits your website it doesn’t matter how well your website performs at selling your services.

Like selling, it’s a numbers game… simply put, the more traffic you receive, the more sales you will make.

There are many different methods of driving traffic to your website. Here are the four most popular methods:

1.  Targeted Email Advertising

As email is still the king when it comes to getting into your markets face directly you should be using it as part of your advertising campaigns.

Sometimes it is just better to show them what they need and where to find it rather than having them go and look for it.

Easier said than done right?

Well it can be very easy if you know where to find a high quality email advertising partner.

With targeted email advertising you need to ensure that you are using geo-targeting, especially for a service company as it is a critical component in getting maximum ROI from your advertising dollars. The last thing you want to be doing is to paying for website visitors which who are not interested in the products or services that you are selling.

When choosing a targeted email campaign service the most important things to look out for are the following.

Conversions can be tracked – Make sure that the service allows you a way to track how many people are actually visiting your site from the emails they are sending out for you.

Ability to choose the country to promote in – This is an essential aspect and if you can get it down to specific states or regions within a country that is even better. No point in promoting your product or service to a country that you are not going to be able to deliver to.

Age range – the ability to select the age range of the customers you think are more suited to your product or service is vitally important. No point in targeting the teenage market if your product or service is designed for people in the 45 – 65 year old bracket.

Ability to choose the market itself – The best of the best email advertising partners will also allow you to choose a specific niche or industry to promote in, this is a sure fire way to attract the right customers. If you have a health related product like a water purifier then there is no point in promoting that product to a market related to the iPhone.

Sidenote: Rent-A-List has recently updated their services for targeted advertising allowing advertisers to advertise in more specific niches, and at prices that everyone can afford. This is a major breakthrough for many companies which were not able to advertise within the specific niches that they have products in.

2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC advertising is by far the fastest, easiest and most consistent method of driving targeted internet traffic to your website.

Here is a brief rundown of how PPC advertising works.

When somebody wants to find something online they usually visit a search engine (usually Google or Yahoo) and type in what they want more information about, called a ‘keyword phrase’.

As a website owner, you can have a small text ad displayed when an internet user types in a specific keyword phrase into Google or Yahoo. This is called a ‘sponsored link’. You don’t have to pay to have the ad displayed, but you do have to pay when somebody clicks on your ad, hence the phrase ‘Pay-Per-Click’.

How much you pay per click depends on how many other people want their ads to be displayed for that keyword. The more competition there is, the higher the cost per click (CPC).

PPC advertising is the fastest and easiest method for driving traffic to your site for the following reasons:

You can target any number of keyword phrases you want

You can start driving traffic in as little as 5 minutes with Google Adwords

You allow for how much traffic you’re willing to pay for and budget accordingly

You can quickly find out which keywords are performing and which are not

You can quickly tweak your website for maximum response (more about that later)

When you start a PPC advertising campaign you only need to focus on Google Adwords, as it has the monster share of traffic online. In our experience, Google drives anywhere from 1Ox to 1OOx the traffic of Yahoo and MSN combined.

Because you are paying per click it is essential that you track what you are spending and make sure you are earning more than you spend. The key to running a successful PPC advertising campaign is tracking the keywords which are producing conversions and continually working on lowering the cost per action (CPA) of driving a sale or lead.

For example, if you spend $100 and get 2 sales leads, the CPA would be $50 (i.e. $100 ÷ 2). The CPA is much more important than how much you are spending per click. The general rule is the more a keyword costs ‘per click’ the more profit it produces for the advertiser, hence the increased cost. Note: Personally we get the best results for our own advertising when spending in excess of $4 per click on target keywords.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes you should avoid when setting up your PPC campaign, to ensure you don’t spend your advertising budget without achieving any results:

Not enough keywords being used – identifying the most profitable keyword phrases first requires that you build a keyword library of all of the possible keyword phrases that somebody who is interested in your service would type into Google. Most beginners use only 20 or 30 keywords in total, where the minimum for most small campaigns should be 1,000 to 2,000 keyword phrases.

Incorrect use of targeting - using exact match, phrase match and broad match correctly will increase your positioning and decrease your average cost-per-click (CPC).

Poorly constructed text ads - writing effective text ads, utilising proven marketing principles, will increase your click-through-rate (CTR), improve your quality score and, in turn, decrease your average (CPC).

Not split-testing text ads - the only way to tell if one text ad is better than another is to split test those ads, track the results and identify which combination of words produced the best results.

Not geo-targeting campaigns - geo-targeting, especially for a service company is a critical factor in getting maximum ROI from advertising dollars spend. The last thing you want is to pay for website visitors which are in locations that you cannot service.

No continual optimisation - the hardest month for PPC advertising, and the lowest ROI, is in the first month, because it is during this month that you are experimenting to identify the keywords which produce the most profits for your business. Done incorrectly, the first month can cost thousands of dollars with no results at all. But once the ‘money words’ have been identified, continual bid management and optimisation is required to increase ROI from the monthly advertising spend.

Conversions are not being tracked - tracking conversions is the most important factor in PPC advertising, because this is how you measure the success of all of the previous 6 points in the campaign. Most importantly, when you track conversions at the keyword level you can increase spend on the keywords which are producing results and decrease spend on the keywords which a not producing results, increasing your ROI.

Sidenote: the biggest (and most common) mistakes made by newbie PPC advertisers is not tracking conversions, and this is the major reason that most advertisers do not make any money from PPC advertising.

3. Site Targeted Advertising

The total number of people using search engines, such as Google, is just a fraction of the total number of people on the Internet at any one time.

There are literally hundreds of millions of people online every single day visiting various sites of interest to them.

Another method of driving qualified traffic to your site is to advertise on websites which offer complementary services to that of your business.

For example, as a water purifier retailer you might advertise on health food websites, nutrition websites, organic food websites, specialty food websites and natural health portals. The tailored options are endless.

Unlike PPC advertising, site targeted advertising, also known as banner advertising, pop-under advertising and contextual advertising, is usually charged on a ‘per impression basis’ or, in other words, every time your ad is shown. You might hear of banner space selling for $5 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). This simply means that it will cost $5 for every thousand times your ad is shown or 5 cents every time your ad is shown.

Sidenote: Google has recently released a PPC version of site targeted advertising allowing advertisers to advertise on high traffic websites, but only pay for clicks. This is a major breakthrough for many companies which were not able to advertise on high traffic sites, such as myspace.com, due to their niche product offering.

There is no set rule of how much you should pay for advertising space, but the golden rule is that each individual campaign must produce more profits that the total cost of the campaign.

Here are some important factors to keep in mind when buying advertising space on other websites:

Don’t pay the retail price - there is no fixed price for buying advertising on other sites … everything is negotiable. We have often been able to purchase advertising at a 75% discount just by asking!

Negotiate a test run - usually you will be asked to invest at least $5000 to run a campaign, but you always want to negotiate a test of $100 to make sure that the website produces sales for your business. If you cannot get a sales lead from the first $100 spend, you probably won’t be able to make the campaign work, and should request a refund.

Set daily caps - if you don’t request a daily cap on the spending of your budget you might find that the website has spent your entire budget in one day.

Display your banner once per day per person - because you are paying each time your banner is displayed it is important that you negotiate that your banner is only shown once per day per person, especially for high traffic sites where the same person may visit 100 pages on the same site.

Track conversions - like PPC advertising, it is critical to track conversions from your site targeted advertising campaigns to identify which sites are producing results and which versions of your banner ads are producing results. As mentioned earlier, it is the words used that sell. The majority of the advertising you do on other websites should follow good direct marketing principles. Here are some tips of writing effective ads:

Immediately communicate the benefit of your service to your reader.

Provide a compelling reason for them to click on the ad, such as a free offer.

Use the words ‘click here’ in large visible text.

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO simply means getting your website to rank in the top 10 listings for particular keyword searches in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Ninemsn. Getting a top listing in a search engine will provide your website with a lot of free traffic.

For example, as a law firm you might want to have a top 10 ranking for ‘legal services’, ‘law firm’, ‘lawyer’ or any other keyword phrases which have to do with your business. If you specialise in real estate law, you might want to have a top 10 ranking for ‘real estate lawyer’ or ‘property lawyer’.

Because SEO has the allure of ‘free traffic’ it is the most competitive methods for driving qualified internet traffic to your website, especially for the most popular keywords. It can take considerable expertise to a top 10 ranking for popular keywords.

Let me explain.

There are certain keywords which get typed into search engines far more than others. For example, ‘home mortgage’ has more people searching for it than ‘cheap home mortgage’, which has more people searching for it than ‘very cheap home mortgage’.

Generally, the more traffic you get to your website the more profits you make. So, as a finance company specialising in mortgages your goal for SEO would be to get listed in the top 10 for ‘home mortgage’ in Google or Yahoo.

The problem lies in the fact that there can only be 10 websites within a specific country that can be listed in the top 10. And that means competition! This ultimately means you are competing against some of the best and most experienced businesses in the industry. And because search engines are continually trying to improve the quality of their search results, even though you might have a top 10 listing today, Google might change its search algorithm (how it rates and ranks different websites) and, as a result, you fallout of the top 1000. It is a constantly changing dynamic.

Sidenote: There are so many factors which contribute to how Google and Yahoo display listings for particular keywords. In fact Google’s algorithm (the mathematical formula they use to sort websites) includes over 100 different factors.

When it comes to search engine optimisation, getting other websites to link to your website is the most important factor in achieving top search engine rankings. Here is a list of 10 link building strategies which you should be implementing for top search engine rankings (in no particular order):

Write quality articles - write quality articles that other websites will want to post on their websites and link to. The higher the quality of the article, the more one-way links you’ll get. The best articles to write are ‘how-to’ and informational articles. Stay away from self-promotion.

Start a WordPress blog - setup a WordPress blog on your website and post articles to it once per week. It’s a great way to build the size of your website, keep your website content fresh and get incoming links. Plus Google loves WordPress!

Syndicate your articles online - take the articles that you’ve posted to your blog and syndicate them on article directories such as Ezine Articles and Go Articles, so that other website owners can post them on their websites.

Submit your website to online directories - submit your website to free SEO friendly website directories for a quick way to start building one-way links to your website.

Submit your blog to blog directories - use RSS Submit software to submit your blog to blog directories. Use both the automatic and manual submission tools.

Exchange links with relevant websites - exchange links with high quality, relevant websites in your field. This can be extremely powerful, as long as you are very selective with whom you exchange links with.

Use social bookmarking - submit your blog posts and other high value content to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Aside from the one-way link you’ll get and the (short-term) top Google ranking, you can hit the ‘jackpot’ by getting to the first page of digg.com, where you’ll receive thousands of one-way links.

Syndicate press releases online - write newsworthy press releases and syndicate them online at press release syndication sites such as PRWeb. If the release is good enough, you can get a lot of one-way links to your site.

Post comments on industry blogs - post high value comments on other blogs in your industry to spark discussion. Even if the comments are ‘nofollowed’, you can still get links to your site from other bloggers that refer to your posts.

Link between your web pages - use contextual links in your website copy to link to other pages within your websites. Each of your pages should have some PageRank, so why not maximise it?

Due to the increased expense of PPC advertising and the level of expertise required to make it successful, SEO is quickly becoming the lower-cost option, but it can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months to achieve a top ranking and start driving profits … but the wait is well worth it!

To your best year ever,

Nicholas McIntosh

When it comes to creating Viral Videos for your business you can’t expect to post what you think is a great video on YouTube and have it instantly go viral, even if you think you have the best video ever.

Now a day’s achieving true virality will take some serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work but at least you will have more fun in the creation process and get exactly what you want, even if it does cause you a little frustration from time to time.

The truth of the matter when it comes to viral videos it this “Without kick ass content, you’re not going to have a genuine viral hit” Sure it’s easy to spend a bunch of money building up views on YouTube – but that’s not the same as genuine viral success.

So you want your video to go viral, but is it really possible?

Before we can answer this question you need to first of all, understand what types of videos go viral.

Most videos that go viral do so by accident. However, another category of content that could go viral is content that is produced on a regular basis in order to build a sustained audience. As an audience builds so does the likelihood that it will get shared more and more ultimately one of the videos in the series may go viral

When it comes to actually creating viral content, it really is about great content. The bottom line is that it’s really difficult to make content that is not interesting or exciting go viral.

Content is King

If you want a truly viral video that will get millions of people to watch and share it, then your content is the key. But good content is not necessary for a vial video to get 50,000+ views if you follow the outline below.

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips.
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others.
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing.
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further.
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen.
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive people available to be in the video.

Content Explained

1. Really Get To Know Your Audience.

Think about the type of viewers you’re hoping to reach especially in your business niche and find out what they like to talk about with their friends.

Online videos are a valuable social currency, nowadays they are being used more and more as conversation starters. If the video you’ve produced is perceived to have a high value within your target group, because it’s particularly entertaining/relevant/meaningful to the group you are targeting then it’s much more likely to get passed on.

2. Choose Appropriate Viral Triggers.

Once you’ve got an understanding of what makes your prospective audience tick, you will have a much better idea on how to identify the viral triggers most likely to resinate with your audience.  A “viral trigger” in essence is something that takes a passive viewer and turns them into someone who shares the content as well as viewing it.

The most common of the well perceived vial videos use  viral triggers that are already well established triggers in the marketplace: Funny, Sexy, Random and Surprising videos are some of the most well-established reasons that people pass on videos, though Illuminating, Shocking, Spectacular and Hyper-relevant have the power to activate equally high levels of viral sharing also.

3. Turn the volume up to 10.

Once you’ve decided on your viral triggers, focus on making sure that you make these triggers a stand out aspect of your video. There’s no point in trying to make your video funny, knowledgeable and spectacular all at the same time. It is definitely better to focus on one or two triggers and work them to the max, eg if you decide to use humour as your trigger you will need to ensure that it is funny enough to to create a belly laugh for the viewer.

As a general rule, if your video is to have a chance of viral success, it should be arresting enough to elicit a physical reaction from the viewer (tears, laughter, goose bumps & gasps are all good). If you’re not sure how your video rates, then check out the competition.

Your video is competing with up to 1 million daily uploads to video-hosting sites around the world, so your content needs to really stand out in order to get passed on. up there with the best of them.

Take It To Your Audience

Once your video is ready to go, how the hell is it going to attract 50,000+ viewers?

The core concept of video marketing on video hosting sites like YouTube is to harness the power of the site’s traffic. Around 80 million videos are watched each day on YouTube alone, and a significant number of these views come from people clicking the “Videos” tab at the top. So the ultimat goal here is to your video on that Videos page, which lists the Daily Most Viewed videos.

If we can succeed at this, the video will no longer be a single needle in the haystack of 100,000+ new videos per day. It will be one of the twenty videos on the Most Viewed page, which means that we can grab 1/20th of the clicks on that page! And the higher up on the page our video is, the more views we are going to get.

So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Facebook: Share, share, share. Sharing a video with your entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. Take advantage of this.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone you know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this happens quickly.

Optimizing Your Video For the Best Possible Results

1. Title Optimization

Once a video is on the Most Viewed page, what can be done to maximize views?

It seems obvious, but people see hundreds of videos on YouTube, and the title and thumbnail are an easy way for video publishers to actively persuade someone to click on a video. Titles can be changed a limitless number of times, so we sometimes have a catchy (and somewhat misleading) title for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand. I’ve noticed a trend towards titling videos with the phrases “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” and “leaked video.”

2. Thumbnail Optimization

If a video is sitting on the Most Viewed page with nineteen other videos, a compelling video thumbnail is the single best strategy to maximize the number of clicks the video gets.

YouTube provides three choices for a video’s thumbnail, one of which is grabbed from the exact middle of the video. As we edit our videos, we make sure that the frame at the very middle is interesting. It’s no surprise that videos with thumbnails of half naked women get hundreds of thousands of views. Not to say that this is the best strategy, but you get the idea. Two rules of thumb: the thumbnail should be clear (suggesting high video quality) and ideally it should have a face or at least a person in it.

Also, if you feel particularly creative, optimize all three thumbnails then change the thumbnail every few hours. This is definitely an underused strategy, but it’s an interesting way to keep a video fresh once it’s on the Most Viewed list.

3. Tagging: Leading Your Viewers By The Collar

This is one of the best strategies and yet it is often underutilized. YouTube allows you to tag your videos with keywords that make your videos show up in relevant searches. For the first week that your video is online, don’t use keyword tags to optimize the video for searches on YouTube. Instead, use the tags to control the videos that show up in the Related Videos box.

The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to engage with all your content, rather than jumping away to “related” content that actually has nothing to do with your brand or start-up.

So how do we strategically tag?

Choose three or four unique tags and use only these tags for all of the videos you post. We’re not talking about obscure tags; we are talking about unique tags, tags that are not used by any other YouTube videos. Done correctly, this will allow us to have full control over the videos that show up as “Related Videos.” Using your brand name or website’s domain name is usually a good place to start.

When views start trailing off after a few days it’s time to add some more generic tags, tags that draw out the long tail of a video as it starts to appear in search results on YouTube and Google.

4. Make Sure Others Can Use It!

Make sure that you allow downloads, embeds, comments, and use URL shorteners e.g. bit.ly to create Twitter-friendly links. This is no time to become a control freak, so instead of smothering and protecting your creation, set it free!

The whole point of viral is to create a piece of content that goes beyond the video-maker’s control, that takes hold of the public’s imagination and becomes a part of the pop-cultural landscape. In essence you want your video creations to be a piece of creative commons to be championed, ridiculed, re-worked and re-imagined. When your video starts to get mashed-up, don’t regard it as a mutilation, but as a sign that your one-hit-viral-wonder is turning into something more long-lived.

Creating Video Awareness and Tracking

1. Commenting: Having a Conversation with Yourself

Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch your videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. Get a few people in your office or in your industry and niche to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section – especially if the comments are related to a brand or start-up.

Also, don’t be afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying your video (or your startup) sucks, just delete their comment. You can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.

In most cases unless you create the comments feeds as suggested above you usually will only get one comment for every thousand views, since most people watching YouTube videos aren’t logged in. But these heated comment threads, if done well, will engage viewers and will drive traffic back to your sites.

2. Metrics/Tracking: How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Viral Campaign

The following is a way you can use to measure the success of your viral videos.

For one, tweak the links put up on YouTube (whether in a YouTube channel or in a video description) by adding “?video=1” to the end of each URL. This makes it much easier to track inbound links using Google Analytics or another metrics tool.

TubeMogul and VidMetrix also track views, comments and ratings on each individual video and draw out nice graphs that can be shared with others. Additionally, these tools follow the viral spread of a video outside of YouTube and throughout other social media sites and blogs.

At the end of the day your viral videos do not need to receive one million viewers for them to be effective. For businesses especially, a video can be viral as long as it is reaching its intended target audience, your clients and customers!

If you are not applying these valuable tips for producing viral content then  maybe you should start doing so with your next vial video campaign!

To your best year ever,

Nicholas McIntosh

We have had a few questions posed to us about how to go about the process of optimizing a website for the purpose of engaging search engine traffic without having to pay vast sums of money for it.

So in continuance to our last article on website domain names here is a little bit more information on what to look for in a website domain name and the importance of keywords in both your domain name and the content that is to be posted on your website

To build a fully optimized site you need to be thinking about what you are going to be saying and the products and services that you wish to promote from a keyword perspective. To do this you need to build your site around optimized key concepts and keywords, and its pages should never stray from the tight connection to those concepts and their related keywords. Well defined and profitable sites are always focused on their target audience, the people who search for the key concepts and keywords embedded in the Web page. In theory to construct a perfectly optimized site you should follow the ordered list below:

1. Conceive the site.

Conception means determining the site’s purpose in specific terms. An optimized site can have more than one purpose (information publishing and affiliate marketing, for example), but those purposes should be tightly related. Conception means also identifying your target audience.

2. Identify keywords.

Planning your site to have a specific mission with key concepts and keywords is essential. Keywords can be single words or phrases, but keep phrases short to begin with, three words at most. Eventually, you need keywords for every page of your site, and they might differ from the core words used to create the subject matter of your entire site. During the entire keyword process, think about your target audience, not only as a topical demographic, but as searchers going into Google with certain keywords. When you can really identify your sites keywords, you are also identifying your customers.

3. Register a domain.

Choose a domain name that incorporates core keywords.

4. Design the site.

Use spider-friendly principles. Design your site in such a way that it is easy for the search engine robots to find you. Try to stay away from flash designed menus and too much fancy stuff. Although some of this stuff can look great it makes it almost impossible to get indexed and ranked on the search engines without having to constantly pay for traffic.

5. Write and acquire content.

Content development is an ongoing process that starts while you are designing your website. This process should be seen as never ending so that you website has a constant stream of fresh and up to date content for your visitors.

6. Optimize content by keyword.

Embedding keywords in your page’s text helps visitors and Google understand the content quickly.

7. Tag the site.

Tagging means embedding keywords into important HTML tags that search engines like Google’s take notice of. So much for theory, you’re probably thinking. Few Webmasters deal with optimization issues from the very start. Most people optimize after the fact, which is why SEO professionals stay in business: It’s harder to fix problems than avoid them. But no matter how you approach it, improving your optimization isn’t hard at all. And the knowledge it provides about sound page design, content development, concise communication, and smart tagging translates into an invaluable online marketing technique.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

If you’re not dreaming of keywords at night, you’re not optimizing enough.

Keywords are the thread that runs through the entire SEO process from start to finish.

Your keywords are the cornerstones of your site’s content. They’re embedded in your site’s important headers and HTML tags. If your domain name is in line with the sites content, which it should be for the best results, then keywords are drilled into every incoming link because the domain name is spelled out in each link to your site. An appropriate domain name spreads the identity and purpose of your site through the entire internet.

Your content should be densely saturated with keywords. Your keywords are carried into Google’s search engine by your future customers and visitors, who are searching for your site as well as similar sites that might contain links to your site, links that spell out your site domain, which, ideally, contains core keywords.

Keywords are the battleground of search engine marketing. You and your competitors are fighting for position on search pages resulting from keywords you have in common. Remember, search engines are all about keywords, so your site should be all about keywords. As described in the preceding section, keywords should form the basis of your websites plan and even help determine the nature of your business.

To many people this about face approach can seem far-fetched as many believe the business come first, then the keywords which define it!

Often this can be true, but keyword based marketing has become an imperative in the online space, especially for small businesses.

Keywords are not a purchasable commodity as some would have you believe, even in Google AdWords. With AdWords the advertiser is actually purchasing a position, not an actual keyword. Keywords can be shared but a position cannot be shared. When you select keywords around which to build and market your site, you’re attempting to secure a position on the search page, in competition with other “owners” of the same keywords. All this notwithstanding, you should feel as if you own your keywords and that they will propel you to dominance in your field.

When it comes to building your business, you don’t just optimize, you optimize for something. More accurately, you optimize for somebody, and that somebody is the customer or visitor you seek.

So make sure that you are defining your site in terms of specific keywords, not general ones. This is the ultimate goal of keyword research and the planning of the content to use the keywords you have defined from such research.

To your best year ever,

Nicholas McIntosh

Hi Team,

Well it has been another busy and exciting month for the team here at Loyalty Club Rewards with many members learning new IM skills and implementing the ones they have learned already.

Not  that we want to promote anyone site over another but here are some good examples of just how simple and effective a website can be to help you build leads and prospects.

Check these out when you get the chance, they may just inspire you.

You will notice that all these sites are very basic in nature but they all have one thing in common.

They have been built using a customised website template.

Once you have a template created it is extremely easy to open up the template in your chosen website editor to create a new page or to edit one that is currently on your website.

When it comes to web editors there are many different ones to choose from such as the famous and expensive Dreamweaver, Microsoft FrontPage or free editors like Nvu.

Now it is not really that important as to which editor you choose to use as much as it is important to get to know one particular editor inside out and outside in and remember to always use the same editor that you created your templates in to create new pages and to edit current pages.

Domain Names & Hosting

Over the last month we have also had many requests for information on who is the best company to buy hosting from and where is the best place to get your domain name from.

Suffice to say we have our preferred favourites, but what is really important about these services is that you are assured of getting the customer service that you need when you need it and it what form.

Some provides only supply email support and other supply phone support and some even supply both. It is totally up to you as to how you feel about receiving support when you need it.

Generally if you can explain what you need in a fairly technical aspect then companies with great email support are the go, but on the other hand if you are a little newer you may want the added advantage of being able to talk to a live person who can not only answer your questions, but in most cases can fix the issues for you when required also.

Whoever you decide to go with for hosting, which is by far the most important thing to consider first, you need to ensure that the company has a sound track record and knows what they are doing. It is also advisable that you ensure that your chosen host has the latest software updates applied to your server on a continuous basis, such as PHP and MYSQL to name but a few and the ability to install your own software scripts at a later date if required.

When it comes to domain names most of the time you will be able to buy your domain name through your hosting provider. This will help keep things simple and all in one place.

By buying your domain name through your hosting provider you will not be forced to worry about the dreaded DNS setting for your domain.

DNS for those who are interested stands for Domain Name Server and they relate to the physical address of the webhost (your hosting company) who will allow your domain name to be seen across the internet.

One of the last things to bear in mind when purchasing a hosting service is how many domain names would you like to host on your hosting account. By this we are talking about the ability to build several different websites and have them all located within the one hosting account, saving you both time and money.

To your best year ever,

Nicholas McIntosh