Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Imagine you are going to a car mechanic to get your car fix.

Does he starts talking about different car parts, plugs, wires, sections and what not? or does he give you a time limit or an idea when your car will get it fixed?

But that’s the same thing most SEO experts in India are doing.

It’s the real truth, when it comes to Search engine optimization. When you go to any website SEO consultant, they’ll dazzle you with talks about .htacess, google spiders, indexing, xml, html,css on page optimization, offpage optimization, link building and what not…

If you try to go on and check SEO forums then, you’ll start wondering where do start within all the mess of this information. That’s why In this article, I am going to rip out all the un-necessary junk from SEO and give you simple details.

Why You Only Need 2 things to optimize your website?

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization and building traffic, you only have to worry about 2 things.

1. Content

2. Back Links

The Real Naked Truth to Getting Rankings

Let’s discuss the back links first- The real truth about all the optimization is that it completely depends on getting back links to your website. You should be spending as much time as possible in this work. It’s boring, it’s BORING but it’s the only thing.

If you take a look at any traffic building tactic, you’ll see it’s all about getting a back link. If you take web 2.0, publishing articles, press-releases etc are all techniques to get links.

If you do nothing else but get back links to your website, you’ll start seeing results.

Of course there are bad way to get links and good way to get links…

How you’d know the links are good?

One of the simplest way to know about links is to check “nofollow” tag. If a link is Nofollow, it’ll not have any effects in your rankings. But can you still get traffic from it? Of course.

Lets imagine, you get a link from google’s home page with a no-follow. Will it carry any weight in your rankings? Technically No. Will you get traffic? Chances are Heck Yes.. Why? because Google gets so many eyeballs on that page is that it’s maddening.

Personally I believe every link that you can get to your website will help you regardless of their “weight” in their rankings.

But if you are linking back to bad neighborhood (spam sites for example), you’ll get your ranking penalized by search engines. So be careful to who you link towards.

What role does Content play in this?

The role of content is pretty much the same as the low cut dress which reveals all the right things.

It’s to attract readers to your website.

Getting links are good, getting ranked in top 10 is good too.. But will it help you if people look at your website and pass it by?

That’s why you need content to attract people. Now of course there are always some exception. But majority of the websites need content. For example, amazon.com has millions of webpages and content on it’s site and we know how crazy business amazon.com does?

Same goes for about.com which is nothing but a HUGE content site. The content there is massive and it gets lots of traffic.

So How does it relates to your website? What can you do with this information?

It’s simple. Follow the 2 step process and get traffic.

1. Create content which attracts reader regularly.

2. Get as much back links as possible.

3. Rinse and repeat.

Next step –

If you are looking for natural SEO company which only utilize techniques that are recommended by google, then you should contact me ASAP.

80–90% of website owners spend almost all of their time trying to get traffic. You’d be surprised to see how much of this traffic actually sticks. After doing lots of research (my own websites and others), I saw, at least 70–80% bounce rate of the traffic that comes to your website.

The bounce rate gives you an idea how much time they spend on the webpage and how deep they checked your website. The bounce rate here is way too high and they never clicked away the moment they landed on the wesites. Bad thoughts that.

What makes people stick to your website?

Before I answer this, let me ask you a question. What is more important – A unique visitor or Repeat visitor.

In normal set of conditions, website owners would like nothing more than unique set of visitors.

But in this scenario, I’d prefer ‘repeat visitors’.

Why Repeat visitors make you go ga-ga?

Repeat visitors means, they have already been on your site. Now, they came back for more. The more communication channels you create between you and your reader, the better your chances to sell them. The best thing about them is that you don’t have to spend any money/time as much for any unique visitors.

They liked your website, or your message or your content or god knows what, but they liked it. They are back for more. Wouldn’t you like to take this chance to cement a long term relationship with them?

In this long term relationship you’ll be able to sell them more and more. Can you think of elements that can help you create this long term relationships?

How these elements can get you repeat visitors?

Everything comes back to your content and how you present them. Your content will take shape in many forms from just text to Audio/video or email content. You have to build your content in a way which brings back your readers many many times.

To do this, you have to focus on “most wanted response”.

The term most wanted response was coined by Ken Evoy, a marketing genius in his own right. Every page in your website should have “Most Wanter Response (MWR)”. 

In MWR, all you have to focus on “What your reader should do when he comes to your webpage”. Notice I said, webpage, not website. Why? Because they can only surf website page by page.

At every page you have to decide what response you want them to make?

Do you want them to subscribe to your list?

Do you want them to follow a certain link?

Do you want them to buy something?

Or Do you want them to take another action?

So exactly what this will do?

First thing it focuses their attention to something you want them to do (or going to do anyway).

Second thing it kicks off any goofs, who are there just for a joy ride.

Third thing, it starts to filter different type of visitors.

Do you think all of this work will be pain in the neck? Of course it’ll. It’s your business, if you don’t do it, then who will?

Remember when readers are there, get them to act.

If you need any marketing help/advice, then click here.

Then you are not alone. Let’s face it, with the ever changing internet and information overload, it’s almost impossible to decide what works and what doesn’t. When it comes down to internet marketing. I personally believe in KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

My method or simplified idea is based on 3 sub ideas.

1. Attracting Traffic, leads and clients.

2. Building Relationship with your prospects.

3. Selling to your prospects and make them keep coming to you.

No matter what techniques you use, they’ll come under the above 3 points. Now what I highly recommend you to pick a simple technique that you can follow (for each steps). You should focus on ONE technique and master it.

For example, If I am good with using blogs to build, attract traffic, then I should spend as much time as possible with blogs. When I’ve master one technique, I’ll move on to learn new ways to generate traffic.

This is how you should attempt to learn internet marketing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with plethoras of techniques and won’t have any idea what to do with them. In last 6 years, though I know tons of techniques, but I’ve mastered 5–6 different ways to do it. 

Selling is all about building relationship with your prospect. If they don’t know you or about your product/service. They’ll never buy from you. In any case, if they do buy, chances are they’ll shop somewhere else for next time.

That’s why my 2^nd step is about Building relationship. And that’s before we start selling to them.

3^rd step you have to worry about is selling them and make them keep coming to you again and again. If you are able to follow the 2^nd step, then you won’t have problem with selling.

Again, the idea of using one technique work wonder in this step. I can write powerful emails and sell my products. It took me about 6–8 months of experimenting before I succeeded in using emails as tool to sell.

So, Of course there is a learning curve as you can see. But it’s worth every second.

So what you can do now?

Simplify your marketing plan and implement it. No need to find out 100 different techniques to build traffic or sneaky little tricks to sell your products. Be Authentic, Be Yourself.

If you need any help with any of the steps above, you can always ask. I can help you with marketing strategies or may be guide you in building relationships or write your sales copy.

One of the crazy thing you’ll find in internet marketing is a set of people I call “SEO pretenders”. I call them because that’s what they are.

Though I don’t claim to be SEO expert or pretend to act like that in forums, I’ve been doing SEO for last 6 years. I have seen ups and down and have a foot in the SEO market. When people see how much SEO people are charging, they also put up their shop.

Before I talk about some things that are used by SEO pretenders blatantly, I say “SEO is expensive, no doubt about that”. That’s why Shop around and look for people who know what they are doing.

1. Crazy Hosting prices – SEO pretenders literally murders your bank account by charging exorbitant prices. For most small business, you won’t have to worry about too much traffic. Often these pretenders talk about services(and functions) they provide with the hosting and charge HIGH prices.

It completely depends on your website material, if you are going to need expensive servers or not. In most cases spending 100 dollars a month for server is way too much.

2. Mind boggling Web design charges – Mind you, we haven’t even started talking about SEO and you have already emptied your pockets by now. Again small business does not need any complicated design.

Most pretenders use “Personalized website” as slogan and charge Super high prices. When you can easily put up a template and get a personalized template for around $1000 (or you can spend less than $100 to get a general template and get it personalized).

Again the problem is all about knowing the right information, right people. Of course most business owners rather spend money than doing the research (that’s why I recommended right people).

3. SEO practices – White hat, black hat or Grey hat – Which color do you wear?

If you are asking about SEO plan, then do ask for what kind of Hat your SEO expert wears. Almost all of SEO guys are pretty much in Grey category and are very good with black hat too. Those who claim they are White hat are just liars.

For those who doesn’t understand about hats –
White hat SEO – Good practices accoridng to google, yahoo.
Black Hat SEO – Bad practices frowned by google, yahoo.
Grey Hat SEO – middle path, very fine line to walk.

If you talk about techniques, it’s better to ask for 2^nd opinion about hats. I normally say, most good SEO spend their time with Grey hat walking a very fine line. But they often tone down their skills and dabble in white hat for the sake of their client’s website.

This is part where people charge for arm and leg. That’s why I am highly recommending you to ask for second opinion. If you need second opinion, You can ask for my help for SEO. Someone who has been doing SEO for last 6 years can give you far better 2^nd opinion.