Website Optimization - Do You Suck At It?
July 16, 2008
Do you suck at website optimization? If you have a blog, or website you really need to optimize it so the search engines will find you.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m really lazy when it comes to website optimization. Now and then, I’ll go into Wordtracker and find a great keyphrase for a post I’m writing. And other times, I don’t think about optimizing my posts at all.
But I’m changing my ways and so should you. If you don’t bother to optimize your site, you might get a whole heap of visitors eventually. Trouble is, you might not be able to give them what they’re looking for. For example, here’s a few things people have been keying into the search engines to arrive at this blog lately. And I’m guessing a few of them were probably a little disappointed with the results:
Dirty Pictionary Ideas: Does working in a cubicle drive people to this?
Mortician Wedding Ideas: Well, I suppose we’re all different - some more than others.
The fact that nobody understand you doesnt make you a genius: Too true - I only wish someone would explain that to one of my old nursing tutors.
Downloading porn at work gross misconduct tribunal: Serves you right you prat.
Mi5 recruitment questions: I could tell you but I’d probably have to kill you.
Ian denny magician: Well his business is doing really well these days - now we know his secret.
Can i sack staff for swearing at customers - Do you really have to ask?
I also get so many searches for “sky tv complaints” and similar keyphrases that I’m considering asking them if they want to outsource their customer complaints department to me. I guess that’s what happens when big businesses try to rip off small customers.
Don’t worry, with a little bit of website optimization, you can attract customers who actually want what you’re offering. Here’s a few useful resources:
Increased Search Engine Traffic For Lazy People: A guest post I wrote for Barbara Swafford over at Blogging Without A Blog.
Wordtracker - Free Trial: Find hundreds of great keyphrases for your website.
How To Find And Target Long Tail Keywords For More Search Engine Traffic: Maki of Dosh Dosh explains long tail keywords and shows how you can use them to drive traffic to your website.
10 Ways To Optimize A Popular Post On Your Blog: Excellent advice from Darren Rowse at Problogger and he’s worth listening to, as he blogs for a living.
Wordpress SEO - The Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog: A long and informative article for those of you who want to optimize a wordpress blog for the search engines.
Do you suck at website optimization, or do you have no trouble in driving heaps of targeted traffic to your website? What strange keywords have people keyed into the search engines to find your website?
Are You Sick of The StumbleUpon Freaks?
April 1, 2008
If you use StumbleUpon, I don’t need to tell you that it’s a great resource for networking. You get to meet new people with the same interests and share great articles, photos etc with them. It’s also great for marketing your blog or website. If you write something great, many of your friends are liable to Stumble your post and drive traffic to your blog.
But, there’s also a dark side to StumbleUpon. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but some people don’t seem to like the fact that Internet marketers and bloggers use StumbleUpon. Some of these tossers deliberately thumb down posts we vote on and give them awful reviews. And lately I’ve noticed that it isn’t always done on a random basis either.
For example - a few days ago, I noticed one Stumbler had deliberately followed my stumbles and given the thumbs down to several posts in a row that I’d voted or reviewed. And I’m beginning to wonder if these StumbleUpon freaks are a new type of stalker.
Now they don’t always give the thumbs down - some of them just don’t vote at all, but leave a mean review. This week, I received this review criticising a picture I’d used in a post (the review at the bottom of the page). The user obviously hadn’t read the post at all and she complained that the person in the picture didn’t look as though they’d hit rock bottom.
Now, I’m not great at choosing pictures to go with my posts, but to me, the picture represented a blogger who’d hit rock bottom because they were so desperate to blog that they sat on the street to do it. What did the critic want me to publish? Someone lying on the street in their own vomit with a syringe stuck in their arm?
I just don’t understand the mentality of these people. We’re not there to spoil StumbleUpon. Most of us vote on topics that include self improvement, business and Internet marketing and we also vote on a whole heap of non-business related topics that interest us too.
Fair enough, we may get a bit of traffic from StumbleUpon, but we’re also there to share information and network too.
So how does that make us any different from other folks using StumbleUpon and what right do these StumbleUpon Freak’s have to stalk and harrass us? We may not like all the posts they enjoy either but, we don’t follow them round and accuse them of spamming, or deliberately give bad reviews on the posts they like.
Have you suffered attacks from some of these StumbleUpon Freaks? Did you confront the stalker, or just ignore them in the hope that they’d go away? Or are you one of the StumbleUpon stalkers I mentioned? If so, what is your justification for doing this and why does our presence on StumbleUpon bother you so much?
* The hate comments and abuse by spammers have been deleted and no further comments can be allowed on this post. If you care to read the comments, Frank gives a pretty good insight into how these spammers work.
Piggyback Marketing With A Zero Budget
March 9, 2008
Most new businesses are bootstrapping, so the need to find low cost marketing methods is vital. But how do you get started when your marketing budget is zero?
In, a recent article I pointed out the benefits of subcontracting to other businesses, so that you’re able to offer a wider range of services to your existing customers and make additional profits for yourself.
But, if your marketing budget is low, you can also do this the opposite way round. You simply approach others who have customers with similar needs and persuade them that they can profit and attract more customers by offering your services to their customers.
Christine OKelly has profited by using this approach as a freelancer writer. In this article, she explains how she got $100,000 of work with zero marketing costs by persuading SEO companies to offer her copywriting services to existing customers. If you’re a freelance writer and you’d like to profit by following Christine’s methods, you should check out her excellent e-book, which shows you how to do it.
All Businesses Can Benefit From This Approach Using The Following Tips
Identify businesses who have a similar customer base to you and would benefit by offering your service to their customers.
Put together a letter of email explaining why they would benefit from offering your services - eg. Attract more customers by offering a more comprehensive profit and ability to mark the work up and make an additional profit of 20-25% on the work you do.
Be persistent - write more than once and consider following up with a phone call.
Remember that you can reduce your charges because you don’t have to spend anything on marketing. So you’ll still be competitive, even after the other business has added their mark-up to your price.
Don’t Rule Out Your Competitors
Don’t rule out those businesses that seem to offer the same services as you - particularly the national companies. Many are able to offer nationwide coverage because they farm out work to small business like yours. So, it’s important to do your research.
For example, a nationwide building company in the UK has a contract to carry out all insurance work for one of the major insurance companies. They don’t have the coverage to carry out this work themselves, so they simply farm it out to smaller businesses.
Many nationwide businesses operate like this, as it’s extremely difficult to cover such a wide area. For example, one of our best competitors wrote to us recently asking us to cover this area for them. We operate in a widespread rural area which is difficult for them to cover. It’s beneficial to them, because they can ensure they won’t let their customers down. And it’s beneficial to us, because no additional marketing is required.
Nude Freelancer Storms Google Campus
March 6, 2008
Would you storm the Google campus nude to get publicity and attention for your business? Or would you dye your hair pink, or get your logo tattoed on your forehead? You’d certainly attract attention, but not the right sort. So what can you do to get potential customers to notice you?
The chances are, you’re swimming in a huge pool of competitors. And if you’re a freelance writer, or web designer that pool is more like an ocean. So if you don’t stand out from the crowd, you’ll struggle to make a decent income.
Consider the average freelance writer. As Monika points out in this article, it’s difficult to find writing gigs on the Internet that pay a decent amount of money. And the trouble is, there’s so many writers offering the same thing. So what could the average freelance writer do to get noticed?
Research: Find out what potential customers are actually looking for from a freelance writer. You could do this by simply calling and asking them, or through networking on StumbleUpon, or one of the popular webmaster forums like Webmaster World. Other business owners or freelancers can do the same by hanging out in forums frequented by their target market.
Define What Your Customer Really Wants:
Work out what your customer really wants and once you’ve done that, you’ll know what to offer them. For example, if you’re a freelance writer, they obviously want you to write good articles and blog posts. But, what do they really want? They want articles that bring them traffic - they want content that people will read.
Think about how much more appealing your service would be if you could ensure your articles were ranked highly on Google, or attracted heaps of traffic from social networking sites. And by becoming more proficient in SEO and social networking you’ll attract more customers and you’ll be able to charge more than the run of the mill writer.
What about other businesses? If you have an online store which sells vitamins, think about what your target customers may be looking for. Vitamins is the obvious answer, but what else are they looking for? People usually buy vitamins because they want to improve their health. So, why not add more products and services and make yourself a one stop health shop. You could also, brush up on your knowledge and offer them specialist health advice. After all, people are busy and they would appreciate being able to get everything they need in one place.
Some More Ideas
You Offer Skincare Products
What Are Your Customers Looking For: They want to look better. So you don’t sell them skincare products you sell them the experience of looking better.
You Offer Virtual Assistance
What Are Your Customers Looking For: They want their lives to be easier. So don’t sell them on the fact that you can type 150 words a minute and you speak nice on the telephone. Show them how much easier you can make their lives.
You’re A Property Rental Agent
What Are Your Customers Looking For? A hassle free experience. Someone to take care of everything so they don’t have to worry about it. So you show them how much easier their lives will be when you’re taking care of everything - including repairs and maintenance and rent collection.
If you brainstorm like this for your business, you’ll discover exactly what to offer your customers and how to sell it to them.
Brand Yourself: A recognisable logo and strapline will get you noticed and remembered by customers. For example - if you’re a freelance writer, what’s going to stand out more - a generic website with a title something like Freelance Writer At Home, or a well branded site with a logo that stands out?
Be Helpful: Remember you can offer more services than your own. Most people are short on time and they just don’t want the hassle of trying to co-ordinate multiple contractors. So offer complimentary services carried out by other business owners and supervise the whole project. Not only are you doing your customer a favour, but you can also add 20 to 25% on top of the subcontractors costs for arranging it.
If you’re designing a website for a customer, chances are they don’t just want design, they want a fully functioning website. They’re asking you to design it because they don’t have the time or the skill, so they may not have the time to do many other things involved in the building and launching of a website. And they’d probably appreciate a designer who could co-ordinate the website and organise others to do the work they don’t want to do eg. copywriting services or SEO.
What other things could your business offer to give you the edge over the competition? Could you do things faster, or offer an emergency service for example?
There are many ways to get yourself noticed. You don’t have to resort to storming the Google campus in the nude.
