In this post we’ll look at SEO (search engine optimisation) from two angles. The first being the SEO techniques used and not used by Google in a video supplied by the Google Techs which has some very interesting insights that mention things like “that’s why we don’t like the “keyword” meta tag” as mentioned by Matt Cutts in the opening 3 minutes of the broadcast. Watch the video fully to get all the inside info .. it’s well worth it.

The second angle is the SEO pyramid which is very relevant in building your SEO strategy from the start, instead of applying this strategy after your website has been indexed. It’s always better to build right first than to fix something later .. right?

The SEO Pyramid: Do the right things in the right order

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not difficult but it has to be done right. If you do the right things then you still might not succeed. The reason for that is that you have to do the right things in the right order.

1. Keywords
   The keywords that you choose for your search engine optimization activities greatly influence your online success. If you target the wrong keywords, all of your efforts will be in vain.

   Choose your keywords wisely. It’s not a good idea to optimize your web pages for general one-word keywords. Optimize your pages for highly targeted keywords that attract the right kind of people. You want buyers, not website visitors. The more targeted your keywords, the better.

2. On-page optimization
   Once you know the keywords for which you want to be ranked, you have to optimize your web pages for these keywords. Optimize as many different pages for as many different keywords as possible.

   Make sure that the keywords appear in the right elements on your pages and that search engines can parse your pages without problems.

   Your website architecture is also an element of on-page optimization. Your website navigation should contain your keywords and all pages of your website should be linked in a meaningful way so that search engines can categorize your web pages.

3. Usability and conversion optimization
   Even if your website gets hundreds of visitors per day, it still might not deliver sales because the web pages are not user friendly.

   Your web pages should have an appealing design, they should be easy to use, they should create trust and they should make it easy to buy.

4. Link building
   When all other elements are in place, you can start to get back links for your website. In general, more than one web page has been optimized for a given search term so the web page with the best back links will be listed in the top results on Google.

   The back links should target the same keywords as your on-page optimization. If you want to get high rankings for “car dealer Knoxville” then your web pages should be optimized for that keyword and the links that point to your site should also contain that keyword.

All elements must be in place and they must be in the right order.

If you just have links then you won’t get sales if your web pages don’t convert. If you have optimized web pages, they won’t help you if they are optimized for the wrong keywords.

If you have the right keywords and well optimized web pages that convert then you still need good back links to get on Google’s first result page.

By combining these two SEO angles we have posted today, I’m sure you’ll be an SEO expert yourself in a matter of minutes. BTW, being an SEO expert is just one little part of many parts involved in being an Internet Marketing guru. So always keep learning and most of all, keep an eye on every trend online.

Matt Cutts is Google’s chief SEO / SEM expert who gives some interesting tips and so on related to Google and how the big G goes about indexing websites, reading titles, descriptions & keywords etc for us punters.

In this video extract Matt discusses the ever present Tag Cloud that nearly all of us use.

Is it an advantage to use Tag Clouds?

Probably not he says .. check out this video and make your own opinions .. oh and ask Matt for more .. his site is Matt Cutts Gadgets, Google and SEO

As always it’s best to test your own site against competitors sites to assess either the tag cloud issue benefits your site’s rankings and search results or not. Testing this usually means doing a manual test instead of an automated SEO service or another.

There’s nothing wrong with getting your hands dirty, even if it’s cyber dirt.

~ Bonn Appetite

There are many freelancers and small to medium business owners that want an active presence online. In this competitive world, it is impossible to survive without getting access to both the physical and the online market. People who focus on only one of these are bound to fail. The number of online customers is equal to the number of physical ones and the intention of internet marketing is marketing your business, service or firm on the internet.

If you want to take control of your business online there’s a couple of ways to go.

1. You can do it all yourself.

To do this you’ll have to take a big steep learning curve and become internet marketing savvy by actively working your websites search marketing, social marketing, article writing, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing just to name some of the many aspects of internet marketing your business online.

A good way to start the learning curve is to read up on a lot of search marketing techniques that are freely available at reliable websites like Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) or Search Engine Land (http://searchengineland.com/) which are both great sites to take the plunge into. There are many search marketing sites available and doing a quick search will yield plenty of results. You’ll just have to start digging through and absorbing heaps and practicing what you learn as often as possible.

These two site are great resource to learn pay per click advertising too. In fact without being too “WooHoo” about it trolling through hundreds of pages at these sites will give you a great overview of what you’re in for, learning wise, and what you can expect to be doing for 20 hours a week (conservative estimate) for your business.

Of course there’s always the second option ..

2. Hiring an Internet Marketing person to do it for you.

If you’re not into a steep learning curve, trial and error type arrangement like most small to medium business owners, you can always hire someone (qualified) to do this type of thing for you. You just have to find the right one. The one person who “Gets” your business and understands the way you do business. They must and I mean must appreciate your product or services so they can “hook into” your business benefits that you supply to your customers.

Having a great understanding of your business must incorporate this type of mental attribute supplied by the internet marketing to achieve your business goals and obligations. Long gone are the days of NOT understanding a clients business cause there’s so much competition out there. All vying for the same exposure for similar product or services that your business has, it’s a mine field really.

To find the right internet marketing person, here’s a few questions to ask first before you sign on the dotted line ..

Q: How many years of experience have you had?
A: X amount will not cut it. If they can list the clients they have made a difference to (and you check that out) then that person may have ticked the first box.

Q: What, In Your Opinion Is Internet Marketing?
A: Oh Pay Per Click Advertising – Is NOT the answer. The answer to this question should include SEO (Search engine optimization, SEM (Search engine marketing – which is different to SEO), PPC (Pay per click advertising), Website Design, Website Development, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, HTML Code Compliance (W3C Validated Coding Experience) and a few more things added. (Well I can’t give the game away now can I)

Q: How much do you charge?
A: X amount per hour or month IS NOT the answer you’re looking for. Here’s some reasons why. A $X per hour means they’ll put you on a paying drip feed. Not all internet marketers do this but most inexperienced ones with little or no idea will be glad to accept your hard earned on an hourly basis.

Monthly payments are another way of saying, drip feed us and when we’ve had enough of your money we’ll do something.

A standard way of payment could or should be performance based. As in, if the internet marketer increases profits through the work they have done, then of course they’ll get some of the pie. Stands to reason and is a fair way of doing business. If you see results, you’ll pay for them right?

I think you’ll get the general idea by now. So if you’re going to outsource your internet marketing make sure you have a good understanding of those that want to “help” you (usually means free) as you’ll only get what you pay for, as we all know.

Of course, a final idea, you can always contact us if your looking to outsource your internet marketing strategies, we don’t answer questions with X and we defiantly do take the time to understand your business.

Have a great day and Bonn Appetite.

We all use Google in some way, if your online it’s virtually impossible not to. The ever growing internet giant wants your business, not only wants your business but also wants your online business to get known, seen and visited as much as it can. Why? It’s good for Google’s business and yours.

There’s no escaping Google no matter how hard you try. Google will be round for ever and a day and the future of Google and us internet users can only get better as the giant acquires more “stuff” to supply to us Google users, usually free too.

I’ve made a small list of Google Marketing Tools for all you Google-ites and non Google-ites alike.

Google Marketing Tools

Google Accounts:
Get one of these first to access all Google’s Marketing Tools, BTW, there free which is well worth the price.

Benefits: Basically having a Google Account opens many free marketing doors for your business, either offline or online. The benefits are numerous and too many to mention here. Best just to go ahead and get an account and then get going marketing your business.

Google Merchant Center:
Upload your product data to Google and make it available to Google Product Search and other Google services. You can upload your items via data feeds, direct uploads, or use Googles API.

Benefits: Allow shoppers to easily find your site using Google Product Search or Google.com. Helps drive traffic to your site and increase your sales. Google Commerce Search improves the shopping experience on your site and you can use your data in your AdWords campaigns.

Google Sites:
If your thinking of creating a website, Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share web pages to all your friends, family & customers.

Benefits: Single-click page creation, Customizable look and feel, Dozens of pre-built templates, Settings for accessing and sharing information and it’s free! Google Sites is powerful enough for a company intranet, yet simple enough for a family website. You can start a site from scratch or from a template.

Watch this short video to see how easy it is to use ..

Google Places:
You can get your business listing into Google search & Google Maps, add photos and more.

Benefits: Helps customers find you and your business on Google Maps. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they’ll find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your storefront or products. It’s easy, free, and you don’t need a website of your own.

Google Profiles:
Google Profiles help people find the right information when they search for you on Google. You can create a personal page that links to your blog and other profiles or business website.

Benefits: You can keep your customers, family & friends up to date with your contact info and photos and be more prominent in every way when people search at Google for you or your product and or services.

Google Blogger:
Easily create a “Blog” for free. Your blog, sharing your thoughts, photos, and more with your friends and the world. And not forgetting your business as well.

Benefits: Customize your layout, fonts, colors and more. Easy to use. It’s easy to post text, photos, and videos from the web or your mobile phone. Helps you build business information and also enables your business website to be linked to directly from posts that might contain “great” information about your products or services. Marketing right!

Google Alerts:
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

Benefits: Helps keeping current on a competitor or industry. Helps when monitoring a developing news story. Also helps with keeping an eye on what’s going on with your business by specifically monitoring your business brand, name or individual product or service.

Google Feedburner:
Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription  to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email.

Benefits: Having a “Feed” makes it possible for site content to be packaged into “widgets,” “gadgets,” mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere. Great for business marketing.

Google Friend Connect:
Quickly turn your website or blog into a place where people meet and get to know each other with Google Friend Connects easy-to-use features.

Benefits: Google connect is another avenue to Social Media Market your business products and or services. Not only business but personally connect with friends and family alike. Many benefits as you’d expect.

Watch this video for a run through of what’s available and how it works ..

Google Marketing Tools DO market for free and I deify anyone or business to come up with a better marketing idea than Google’s world dominating effect online. If you can of course you’re going to become a Trazillionaire, just allow 10-20 years of development and product launching then wait for an even bigger Google to buy you out, simple really, isn’t it?

~ Bonn Appetite

Having a professional marketing writer is very important for every business. Whether you are looking for an extra shot of flair on your upcoming television advertisement or an eye-catching brochure for your next revolutionary product, an excellent marketing writer can make all the difference! Creativity and innovation are what captures the imagination of your potential customers – and this is precisely the advantage a good writer can give you.

Today’s advertising world is overflowing with a glut of messages barraging the consumer. In all the clamor, how can you make your business stand out? An exceptional writer can add that perfect touch of panache, emotion or humor that will make your product or service memorable to the consumer – and will keep your brand registered in his or her mind. This important cause-and-effect relationship translates to dollars in your company’s pocket.

Once you have a customer’s attention, how do you keep it?

One way is to make sure your website and Internet advertising are always fresh and dynamic by hiring a marketing writer to post new material on a regular basis. This will pique the interest and curiosity of your potential customers and keep them always coming back to see what’s new. A good marketing writer understands the importance of keeping up with current trends in news, technology and entertainment to help build a marketing package that will be formidable to your competition.

If you are just starting out in your new business, you need a novel and alluring company message.

This is one of the most important building blocks of a successful business, the cornerstone on which its future is built. Your company’s image, growth potential and dominance in the marketplace – in short, the success of all company products and/or services – rests upon this very message.

A powerful company message grabs the attention of your potential customers and what’s more, helps to keep their attention. It can also attract the most talented personnel in the business, another essential ingredient of future success. Consider using a marketing writer for any of these additional needs:

• Internet Marketing Campaigns
• Press Releases
• Brochures
• Articles
• Social Networking
• Advertising Scripts
• White Papers
• Case Studies
• Product and Service Descriptions
• Speeches
• PowerPoint Presentations
• Sales Landing Pages

Creating exciting and sometimes controversial press releases is an art in which the seasoned marketing writer particularly excels – the right words at the right time, especially in response to current events, or even a well-timed media stunt – can push your brand right out to the front of the marketplace by creating a well-timed “buzz”. In today’s social networking world, a press release that captures the public’s imagination can spread like wildfire across the Internet, increasing your company’s presence and sales exponentially.

A good marketing writer has the experience to know what works – and what doesn’t. Avoid all the common mistakes that could potentially damage the good reputation that you have worked so hard to achieve.

It’s your business. It’s a new world where every single word counts. Hiring a professional marketing writer is one of the most financially sound investments you will ever make!

~ Bonn Appetite

One of the most appealing factors about the Facebook Cost Per Click advertising is the depth of targeting you can achieve for all of your adverts. Facebook currently allows you to select and define your audience much more specifically, which for an advertiser can only be a good thing.

The more of the “unrelated” audience you can remove from seeing your advert and therefore clicking on it and wasting your money the better, and with the amount of selections you can make with Facebook you should really be able to achieve near perfect targeting of your audience. As every advertiser knows, if you can remove most of the audience that will not really be worth paying for before they have a chance to click on your advert, the more money you will end up saving both in wasted clicks and receiving much better traffic.

So, what options does Facebook have that make their system perfect for targeted, paid traffic?

Location - Because of the level of information you need to put into Facebook before you can have a profile, they have a much better understanding of the demographics of their users, meaning the targeting is much improved on other PPC programs. With the location selection on Facebook, you can not only target people from a specific country, but you can also select the city as well and then set a radius for people from surrounding areas. If you had a small shop in Cardiff that only sold to people calling into the shop and not online, this means that you could only have your advert show to people in Cardiff and the surrounding areas.

Age - Being able to select the age of your preferred audience is really useful if you are selling something age specific, maybe along the lines of life insurance or mortgage protection, as you would assume that only certain age categories would want this. It also helps to deliver different kind of adverts to people of different agents, which is proved to be necessary for getting the maximum reward from an advertisement campaign.

Gender - If your product is gender specific, things like some kind of insurances or clothing, to be able to select the desired sex of your audience is a necessity, as it will eliminate the chance of unrelated or wanted click throughs, again, saving you money and getting more from your budget.

Languages Spoken – Some products, services or offerings are sometimes related to a specific nationality, religion or language and Facebook gives you the power to only advertise to people that speak certain languages. This can work two ways, the main being removing people who can not understand the native tongue of your advert, hence saving wasting click throughs and the other is too really target specific nationalities and languages.

Likes And Interests – This is a really fantastic little filter if your advert is hobby or craft related, because you can actually select your advert to only be show to people who have selected something related as this interest. For example, if you were selling Manchester United football shirts, you could select to only display your adverts to people interested in sports or football, which would be an obviously targeted audience for your product or service.

Ian Spencer works for Clear Web Services, a SEO Web Optimisation and Web Design company serving the Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire and South Wales.

He has worked in the SEO and Internet Marketing world for many years, and working in partnership with another company has launched the new SEO business.

http://clearwebservices.com/ For More Information, please call 01594 835 857 or email info@clearwebservices.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ian_D_Spencer
http://EzineArticles.com/?Using-Facebook-Cost-Per-Click-Campaigns-to-Drive-Targeted-Traffic-to-Your-Site&id=4316517

You have a business and you’re worried about your Brand not being seen or even heard about and you’re getting frustrated .. there’s no need to be .. it’s just a Myth that getting your Brand seen or heard of is Hard Yakka.

Read my post and see if it makes sense to you .. pretty easy right!

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to approach branding the same way big companies do. Niche marketing on the internet is a very different way of doing business than selling laundry detergent on the supermarket shelves.

Throwing money at a brand is no guarantee of successfully hitting your target market. Examples of this type of thinking and how it’s not the case are frequently shown and in particular the internet “Hotshots” like these examples listed below ..

Webvan.com
Tesco have shown that online grocery deliveries can work but Webvan never displayed the business nous to be a success. Raising $375 million, Webvan expanded to 8 US cities, and built a huge infrastructure. However, with extremely thin margins being neglected, unreliable delivery times, and insufficient customers this dot com was always doomed to failure.

Kozmo.com
The idea was that you could order anything from snacks to movies at any time and have them delivered direct to your door within one hour with no delivery charge. The idea was great but ultimately a little too good to be true. Eventually a $10 minimum charge was introduced but the company still went out of business after working through $280 million in investment.

eToys.com
After raising $166 million in May 1999 eToy’s share price fell from a high of $84 to only 9 cents per share in February 2001. In such a competitive industry and unable to benefit from pester power (kids encourage parents to make a high percentage of purchases in the toy industry) this company was destined never to live up to its billing.

In short you can see that throwing money at your brand is not necessarily the way to go, although if you do have a failure, you might still be able to profit from it by selling an eBook of all the mistakes you made while trying to boost your brand, just like Boo.com did.

Anyway. Let’s get to the 3 Major Branding Myths .. ahhh that’s better.

Myth #1

“I need to make my business / company / product a household name”

Truth: The most successful and profitable businesses do one thing and do it very very well. They target, closely target their market. In other words focus on getting your business name and your advertising in front of your best potential customers. These are the people who have expressed an interest in your product or service and what it offers. Don’t try and get your products in front of everyone .. not everyone wants your product, that is of course unless your product is Jelly Beans and in that case, your market has already been covered .. anyway I digress.

Why would you waste your hard earned cash advertising to a broad audience when you can channel that money into your targeted market group who actually want your product or service. Makes sense?

Myth #2

“Branding my business online means thousands of dollars worth of high-visibility banner advertising”

Truth: Banner advertising is dead, well maybe not dead, but perhaps very very ill. Banner advertising used to be the hot ticket item that sold millions and believe me companies paid millions to have their banners popping, flashing and generally goggling your eyes out. Not any more tho. Although having said that I must say that targeting a banner or two to your target market does work albeit very slightly.

Try and focus your advertising dollars on more targeted performance based platforms, as in Google AdWords or Yahoo’s Search Marketing programs as these actually do work cause they place your ad in front of only those people searching for your products or services. Makes sense again don’t it?

The bottom lines is .. Pay for Customers, Not Potentials

Myth #3

“I’ll need to spend lot’s of money if I want to gain brand recognition”

Truth: There’s plenty of free and low-cost techniques that you can use to brand your e-business, especially if you’re a small to medium business or even a home based business. The one that springs to mind with the least amount of effort is Social Marketing.

Social marketing is today’s biggest advertising platform with sites like Facebook, Twitter and all the others thrown in competing for your dollar spend and most importantly, giving you the reins by allowing you to target your advertising directly to those wanting your business.

Social marketing is also easy to do cause you’re the one doing it and let’s face it, you’re the one that knows most about his/her business .. aren’t you? If not, you’d best get cracking and find out about your own business so as to tell others and get them buying your great products and/or services.

So the upshot is .. getting your brand in front of people wanting to see it has not ever been easier to do. The internet is like a huge database of customers wanting whatever all the time and if you find your niche market you can get in front of these of people for hardly any or no cost at all.

Hope this little post inspires you and helps to get your business happening as that’s the business we’re in at ROI Consultancy.

Bonn Appetite

From our previous post Top 5 of 10 Business Marketing Concepts Six-Figure Income Earners Use Everyday

#6 Provide Information
People don’t go online to be sold something. Yes, of course there’s going to be the rare person out in cyberspace that heads straight for your order form, but generally speaking people go online seeking information .. not to read sales pitches.

No matter what field your business is in, you can make your website a valuable resource for your customers by providing free tips and tools. Not only will you build your reputation, you’ll also make one your visitors come back to time and time again .. and this is what your trying to do in the first place, get re-visiting customers, being familiar with you, your business and the great things your business has to offer.

A very important way to establish your reputation and provide information is with a free newsletter. Your newsletter is a direct way to promote and inform your customers of new and exciting services or products that you’ll be releasing, also, it’s a great way to send your customers information related to your website theme or niche that arrives directly into your customers in-box.

#7 Include A Call To Action
One of the most common online business mistakes is “implying” what you want your visitors to do rather than explicitly stating it. This most likely stems from a desire to be polite and not impose your wishes on anyone. Nobody likes to give orders .. but the plain truth is unless your blunt with your visitors, you’re going to see mediocre (if not downright poor) results.

So make sure you tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do! Whether you want them to .. 1. Subscribe 2. Click 3. Fill out a survey 4. Read an article 5. Enter a contest 6. Join an affiliate program or 7. Buy your product or service .. or anything else you can think of, make sure you let your people know what you want them to do .. a very important issue to take control of straight away.

#8 Test Before You Invest
Many people are like ostriches when it comes to testing their ideas. They would rather bury their heads in the sand and hope for the best than find out they’re on the wrong track.

It’s easy to find out what your customers want by tracking what they do at your website. With this valuable information you can easily maximize your profits by adjusting your web site to reflect your markets interests and needs. Makes sense right?

Isn’t it better to loose a handful of sales during this testing process than loosing thousands and thousands of sales by NOT fine tuning your website.

One of the best if not essential website tracking services today is Google Analytics. Why? It’s free, it’s easy to use, it’s comprehensive across all page views, customer clicks, goal sets, Country entries and much much more. Give it a go and you’ll soon see why Google Analytics is the webmasters preferred tracking services program.

To get information on Google Analytics just click this link.

#9 Automate, Automate, Automate
I’ve seen this happen to some very intelligent business owners. They start out with the best intentions. They grow their business and website traffic .. they run a few successful promotions .. and suddenly they go from personally dealing with a handful of emails and orders each day to drowning under hundreds of customer inquiries, questions, orders and requests. Managing mundane tasks suddenly turns into a full time job.

If you want to grow your business you can’t afford to be spending your time chained to your computer managing every single chore manually, especially if you want to grow quickly.

Like anything, you can make the automation of your business website as simple or as complicated as you like. Large e-commerce sites hire programmers, educated and experienced in putting together intuitive automation systems that make learning to translate Greek to Latin seem easy. Fortunately the average website business owner starting out doesn’t need anything nearly this complicated .. or confusing for that matter.

There are plenty of automated services out there in cyber world, but one stands out for mine and that’s Infusion Soft. They’re automation system, follow up email services, collection of email and name services etc (all types of website business email & e-commerce automation) deserves the award for most comprehensive and easy to use interface that’s going round today. You can check them out at Infusion Soft’s website on this link.

To grow your business, keep your customers in the loop and generally have your website business delivering product & services to your customers, even while you’re asleep (Yes Asleep) you need .. no WANT a great automation service that 1. Doesn’t break the bank & 2. Delivers the information directly into your customers in-box. Makes sense .. yes?

#10 Pursue Multiple Streams Of Income
Once your business is running on autopilot you can start adding new profit streams into the mix .. or even start another online business. This will provide you with multiple streams of income to fall back on if there’s a shift in the industry and one of your profit streams doesn’t do well for a while.

If your business has a slow period wouldn’t it be nice to know that you could count on revenues you’re generating through a secondary income source to get you through those quite months?

With the help of the internet you can find a very targeted market, build a business and then either add more products and services that appeal to your existing market, or find another targeted market and build another business, using the same techniques I have mentioned in this ROI Consultancy Post Top 10 Marketing Concepts …

Start with a profit stream that’s easy to run and easy to automate with a market that’s easy to target, then do it again .. over and over. If one profit stream ever fails the loss will be minimal when compared to the large model or vision your business has grown to. And always remember .. small profits add up .. instead of one or two huge priced products hardly ever being bought .. see what I mean?

Download Top 10 Business Marketing Concepts

To make things really easy for you, we’ve made this post into a down-loadable PDF document so you can keep it stored on your own computer and reference it anytime you like.

It’s very easy to get .. just fill this little form in and you’ll be sent the information straight away .. how easy is that?

In the marketing business, if you want to be successful, it’s extremely important you understand these 5 of 10 concepts, no matter what type of business you choose. These concepts are the building blocks that you can use and develop to really get involved with your business and your marketing efforts to increase your knowledge, professionalism and of course your business sales.

#1 Follow Your Passion!!
Anyone that tells you that starting your own internet business is a sure-fire way to make millions overnight with hardly any effort is simply lying. The truth is that you CAN make millions of dollars online, but it’s going to take some work .. of course.

For this reason alone, it’s so very important that you develop an online business that you’ll really really love. After all, you’ll be spending a lot of time developing it and so why not spend it loving every minute of it.

If your business IS something you love, you’ll not ever work a day in your life.

#2 Find A Niche Market
Once you have a few ideas your passionate about you’ll need to make sure that other people (your potential customers) are passionate about them too. You’ll need to do some market research to find your niche market to sell your products or services ideas to.

Simply put, a niche market is a targeted group of people who share a specific interest. The more specific your group is, the easier it will be to tailor your marketing messages to them directly. This next point is critical to identifying your market .. you must identify and locate your niche market online .. makes sense right!

The secret is to focus focus focus! Why? Because everyone does NOT want your product, so just concentrate on the people that do. Develop your products or services with these people in mind and you’ll be far more successful than trying to sell to everyone.

#3 Solve A Problem
Made it this far .. great. Here’s a very useful and important aspect to really get your teeth into, Solve A Problem!!!Once you’ve found your niche market and figured out who your niche market is you’ll need to study them to find out what products or services they’re looking for.

It’s always better to discover what people want first and then provide it, instead of creating a product or service and then try to find the market for it.

How do you do this I hear you asking .. well it’s easier than you think. With your passionate business idea in mind go to chat rooms and forums where members of your niche market are likely to hang out. Do a Google search using your business idea keywords and you’ll find a list of chat rooms / forums etc that you can join or sign up to that your target market has already signed up to and receive emails that your niche market are getting.

Then analyse that information over a week or so and try to uncover a common problem your niche market has. Once you’ve found a common problem try and develop a solution! This is the simplest way to find an obvious void in the market place and fill it. Also, it’s the best way to ensure you have an eager market for your product or service.

#4 Focus On Benefits .. NOT Features
Following on from the previous concepts, you may have found a great product or service to release .. but .. you will not earn a cent until you convince your prospects that they need it, want it and can afford it.You must emphasize how your product or service will BENEFIT your customer. You know how it will solve their problems and make life easier for them and you need to make sure they know this too. This technique will ultimately make the sale.

Simply listing off features of your product or service won’t do the job. You really need to know how to turn the features of whatever your selling into compelling benefits. A feature is a simple fact about your product .. a benefit explains what advantages your customer will actually get from using it. Makes sense right!

#5 Develop A Unique UPS (Unique Selling Position)
No matter what your selling you need to develop your very own unique selling position. You need to emphasize what makes your product better than your competition. Explain to your customers exactly how and why they’ll benefit from doing business with you as opposed to someone else.

Your product or service might cost less than others .. you might offer a better guarantee than anyone else .. you might provide special knowledge or advice that is not available anywhere else .. you might offer special incentives that no one else does .. or your customer service might be better than your competition’s.

Whatever your unique selling point is you need to clearly define it, clearly understand it and always have it ready at your fingertips so that when you’re asked “What makes your product / service special?” you’ll be able to deliver the goods, your UPS, in a caring, beneficial way.

Continue to the next Top 10 Concepts #6 #7 #8 #9 & #10

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Bonn Appetite

Since webmasters or business owners often don't have enough time on their hands to devise fruitful SEO strategies and keep a close eye on how they are working, changing and fine tuning them from time to time, they tend to hire someone competent to do the job. If you are looking for an SEO consultant, you should know certain things to make the right choice:

SEO Planning & Analysis
Your chosen SEO consultant should offer:

Analysis of your Website: There may be many reasons as to why your web pages are not indexed by the search engines. So, your SEO consultant should do a website analysis of the content and structure of your website to ensure that nothing is wrong in these aspects that might have kept the search engines away.

Statistical Tracking: Google Analytics or some other popular form of visitor analytics should be incorporated into your site. This will help you gauge your ROI, referring hits, direct hits, keywords used, and much more.

Ethical Methodology: Be sure your SEO consultant is not using any unethical or Black Hat SEO Methods. Visits and links to your site are best built organically.

Keyword Research: Your SEO consultant should help you to choose keywords and phrases that a customer is likely to use as a search string to find the goods or services that you offer. The selection of keywords should also take into consideration those words or search phrases that have a high probability of giving you a sale or 'conversion'.

Plans for Inbound Links: Getting good quality inbound links from reputed neighborhoods will not only bring credibility to your site but also help you with link juice and an increase in the search engine rankings. So, your SEO professional should help you with plans to get such links that are relevant and will help your long term goals.

Competition Analysis: It's not enough to focus on your plans and strategies alone. You should also have an insight into what your competitor is doing so as to beat the competition. That's why analyzing your competitor's website should also be a part of the package that your SEO consultant brings to the table.

SEO Consultation and Marketing Strategy: Using various avenues of internet marketing, leveraging the social media platforms, manual submission of your site URLs and Sitemap to various search engines, setting up Google webmaster tools to track the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, evaluation and revision of your Meta Tags – all these should be offered by your SEO consultant.

Ongoing Effort: Since the search engines are constantly changing or refining their algorithms to determine rankings, your SEO consultant should be willing to put a continuous effort. Remember – reaping the benefits of SEO strategies is not a one time or short-term process. Rather, it's an ongoing process where you should be alert to make the changes as and when necessary.

Regular Updates: Unless you get an update every week or at specified intervals, you will not be able to see how well your SEO plans are working or if they are working at all. Since it's your hard earned money at stake, you should make sure that your chosen SEO consultant is forthright with the submission of such reports to give you an overview of how the things are proceeding.

Though there are many other intricate details that you have to look out for, you can safely begin the hiring process of your SEO consultant by keeping the pointers discussed above in mind.

Try Creative Services at Studio1C.

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