Search Engine Tips & Techniques
by: Terri Seymour
As you are building your site or getting your site built, you need to do as
much as you can to ensure higher rankings in the search engines. There are a
variety of little tips and techniques you can use to do this.
Meta tags & keywords - Meta tags are included in the section of your site and
are read by the search engines. The two most important kind are "description"
and "keywords" Description is a description of the content of your site and
keywords is a list of keywords relevant to the page.
Research what people are searching for and use those searches (relevant to
your site) in your meta tags. A great little keyword search tool is available
here:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Find more great info on meta tags here:
http://www.metamend.com/search-engines-meta-tags.html
Site content- Make sure you match your site content with your meta tags.
Also, keep updating your site content. Search engines love new content. Try
adding articles to your site or doing a blog. Do NOT let your site get old and
stale!
Blogging - A blog is basically a journal that is posted on a web site. A
person who blogs is a blogger. Blogs are usually updated daily or every other
day. Blogs can be used on personal or business websites. Blogs can draw a lot of
targeted traffic to your site. You can create your own blog here:
http://www.blogger.com/start
Site map - A site map is simply a page that lists all the links on your site.
This makes it easy for the search engines to spider your site. A site map page
is a good navigational tool for your visitors as well. It contains links to all
important pages of your web site and it gives your visitors an overview of your
web site structure all in one page. Take a look at these well designed site
maps.
http://www.ireland.com/about/map/
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
Links page - Having a quality reciprocal links page can benefit your site in
several ways. First of all, it gets your site listed in more places on the net
which can bring you more traffic. More and more major search engines will rank
your pages higher when there are more links to your site. Also, quality links
can help the spiders find you more easily each week, therefore keeping you
indexed longer and dropped less frequently. Take a look here for an example of a
link exchange page.
http://www.seymourproducts.com/exchange/index.shtml
Articles - Not only do you want to post relevant articles on your site, but
writing and submitting them to other sites will help you as well. Posting new
articles on your site will keep your content fresh and new so the spiders like
your site. It will also keep your visitors coming back for more.
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Writing and submitting articles can increase your link popularity and bring
you more traffic as well as helping your search engine ranking. A few places to
submit your articles is listed below:
http://webmarketingspecialists.com/articlesubmit.html
http://wahmteam.com/submissionform.shtml
http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/articles/submit.html
http://www.webpronews.com/submit.html
http://www.creativehomemaking.com/submit_article.shtml
Using these techniques and others will greatly improve your rankings in the
search engines and bring you more targeted traffic which in turn can increase
your sales substantially! For more info on search engine tactics, visit
http://www.searchengines.com/
© Terri Seymour
www.seymourproducts.com
About The Author
Terri Seymour and her husband Terry offer a no-cost, non-MLM home business
opportunity. They strive to help you build a successful home business. They also
provide a very affordable website building service. Free ecourses, decorating
tips, business resources, and much more at:
http://www.seymourproducts.com. FREE ecourse at:
business-building-ecourse@getresponse.com.
webmaster@seymourproducts.com
Are You a Cultivator or a Harvester?
by: Julie Chance
As a result of providing marketing consulting, training and coaching to a
variety of individuals and industries over the years, I have come to recognize
that people generally approach the business building process in one of two ways.
Everyone tends to be what I identify as either Cultivators or Harvesters. The
problem is the business building process requires both cultivation and
harvesting. Read on to determine which you are and how to assure that you are
both cultivating and harvesting new business.
Harvesters are the great sales people of the world. These are the people that
don’t mind, may even enjoy, spending two or three hours a day cold calling. They
willingly spend a day starting at the first floor of an office building and
visiting every office on every floor to try and get an appointment. Harvesters
will close business. However, they also tend to leave a lot of green fruit on
the tree because their approach is geared towards those individuals who have a
need now and are willing and able to purchase – the so called low hanging fruit.
Harvesters tend to move from orchard to orchard seeking out and picking whatever
fruit is ripe at the time. They are constantly seeking out a new orchard that
might have ripe fruit.
Cultivators tend to rely on the other elements of the promotional mix such as
advertising, direct mail, networking and public relations activities to develop
business. Cultivators prepare the soil, plant the seeds, nurture the seedlings,
and provide care to the fruit as it ripens. They grow their own orchards so they
have an ongoing supply of ripe fruit. However, Cultivators sometimes are so busy
tending to the orchard that they forget to pick the fruit, leaving it either for
the Harvesters as they make their daily rounds or to rot on the tree.
Clearly, in an ideal world the Cultivators and the Harvesters would work
together to assure a constant supply of ripe fruit and to be sure that the ripe
fruit is picked daily before a competitor picks it or it spoils. That is why in
large corporations you will find both a marketing function and a sales function.
However, most small businesses don’t have the luxury of two separate functions.
Many small business owners have to both cultivate and harvest new business as
well as oversee or even implement the myriad of other functions required to keep
a business going.
The purchase decision involves a process of moving from unawareness to
awareness, awareness to preference or liking and finally to conviction and
purchase. Promotional activities such as advertising and direct mail are most
effective in the awareness building stage. Public relations activities and
networking tend to be most powerful in the preference and liking stage. Direct
selling tends to be the activity that actually closes sales.
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Blair Singer in his book Sales Dogs says “The more marketing you do, the less
selling effort you have to deal with. Prospects put up their hands and come
looking for you instead of your having to sniff them out. It’s the art of having
sales opportunities come to you” In effect what he is saying is the more effort
you put into cultivating your orchard, the less time you have to spend out
looking for fruit in other people’s orchards. The challenge for Cultivators is
to make sure they call on the prospect once they’ve raised their hand.
If you’re a Harvester how can you develop cultivation skills?
- Implement activities to develop awareness that allow you to reach many
potential customers in less time than it would take you to reach each one
individually
For example send out a predetermined number of letters each week to
prospective customers you have not met and that may not yet be aware of your
product or service.
- Develop systematic ways to stay in contact with prospects that are not
currently ready to purchase such as a regular newsletter.
- Develop credibility through active involvement or a leadership role in a
trade association or organization that your potential customers are involved
in
If you are a Cultivator how can you assure you are harvesting the rewards of
your work?
- Initiate one-on-one follow-up when someone expresses interest. Don’t
expect even very interested people to follow-up with you.
- Don’t approach the initial meeting as a “sales” meeting. Rather than
trying to sell, use the initial meeting as an opportunity to really learn
about the prospects, their problems and their needs.
- Learn to love objections. If someone has an objection to your product or
service at least they have an interest. An objection is easier to deal with
than a lack of interest any day.
- Rethink your attitude toward closing a sale. Think of it as gaining
commitment for an action.
If you are a Cultivator, the harvest will never be your favorite time of the
growing season. If you are a Harvester you will never relish the work it takes
to grow and ripen the fruit. However, successfully building new business
requires both.
About The Author
Julie Chance is president of Strategies-by-Design, a Dallas-based marketing
consulting firm specializing in marketing programs including marketing coaching
for professional service providers and specialty retailers. If you are
interested in additional information about how to develop more leads, turn those
leads into loyal customers, and obtain a greater return from your marketing
investment, Julie invites you to sign-up for their free marketing tips
newsletter at
www.strategies-by-design.com.
© 2003 STRATEGIES-BY-DESIGN May be reprinted with credits and contact
information.
jchance@strategies-by-design.com |