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The keyword analysis and SEO process

Keyword research is an essential SEO operation. Keywords are refers to how people searches for website on the internet and how well you fare on the keywords with searchengines.
A lot of potential leads will be missed out if you are not optimizing the exact keywords on what your targeted market is really searching for.
The worst SEO error is not targeting the right keywords or completely skipping the  process when starting a website.
Here are the list of steps that may guide you on your keyword research process.
At the beginning
Prepare a few keywords in relation to the site that you are doing keywords research on
Do check that the corrent keywords are being used for the website.For example, when optimizing a site that is related to photographer blog some keywords can be used are photography, photo 
Keywords research tools
Some good tools for keywords research are Google Adwords and Wordtracker. Try always to get keywords that are less competitive and highly targetted
Using Long tail keywords
Long tail keyword consist of a number of combination or permutation of words that user searches for. Take an example ,If you are targeting a website which rents out real estate property. Always go for keyword like "flat for rent" that has less competition than "real estate for rent". Results also shows that users that search for broad keywords searches usually has higher intention on the search and so the leads may yield higher conversion.
Targetting areas and geography location
Using the geographic location of targeted market do help to narrow down the kewords competitors. For an example  there is a big gap if you are aiming for keywords say in comparison of "real estate for rent" and "Texas  "realestate for rent". It it alwas better to specify and narrow down your keywords to your particular geographical area.
Competitor check
Likewise it is worth while to the check the competition of the keyword that you are targeting. Usually it is much harder to get good rankings for highly popular keywords. Do some Msn search on the exact keywords that you are targeting on the search engine.Do have a look at the top 10 results website to check roughly how good these competitors are. Usually by check at the google page rank of these competitors, you can assume how well they are establish for that particular keywords. It is gonna be be long of uphill battle to compete with highly established competitors.
If you are interested to be successful in search engine optimization , it is essential to spend the time and effort  to  ample keywords research for the optimization website. A lot of effort will be in vain after you  that you have been targeting tough keyword earlier stage of search engine optimization.

There are more SEO strategies than you know. Discover the secrets to improve search engine rankings and get better search engine placements on your webite today.

How to Crowdsource Videos for Your Business [Marketing Cast]

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.
Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

12 Email Marketing Mistakes To Avoid [New Report]

While I was working at MarketingSherpa, we published MarketingSherpa’s Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes as a lead generation offer for the 2008 Email Marketing Summit.  At the time, I thought that this was a valuable document that could help companies recognize and change their less than stellar email habits. Three years have passed, and I’m inclined to believe that the email mistakes that were most common then are still rampant today.

We all make mistakes, and my recent blog posts on the topic of email marketing challenges, objectives and tactics have generated comments from our readers highlighting perceived errors by HubSpot's marketing efforts, primarily the perception of too frequent emails. 

Here are the "Dirty Dozen" and my brief commentary on each with their current relevance to your email marketing efforts.

Mistake #1: Blatant Lack of Permission - Companies still try to get around the permission issues in search for the quick buck. That’s a big mistake.

Mistake #2: Utterly Deficient Segmentation - Content relevancy is the number one issue for the email marketer. Without segmentation, you have no real relevancy.

Mistake #3: Lame ‘Welcome’ Messages - We still receive far too many lame welcome messages. What a wasted marketing opportunity.

Mistake #4: Frequency Decisions Made for the Wrong Reason - Marketers are in a constant battle on the matter of frequency.

Mistake #5: Institution-to-One Messaging - The debate on how to personalize company emails is ongoing. It’s all about testing.

Mistake #6: No Real Interactivity - Interactivity is not only for social media. Email was once the relationship building medium, and it still can be.

Mistake #7: Deliverability: Content, Formatting & Lack of Self-Advocacy - If anything, deliverability is even a bigger issue than it was a few years ago.

Mistake #8: Designing Images That Appear as Red Xs - Getting HTML images to appear for those who have images turned off still requires that they turn the images on. It’s the text vs. HTML debate.

Mistake #9: Disregarding Your BlackBerry and Mobile Readers - The number of mobile readers has exploded since 2008. Thank you iPhone and Android.  It’s more important than ever to make your email mobile reader friendly.

Mistake #10: Repeating Ad Types - Banner blindness in email newsletters is more prevalent than ever.

Mistake #11: Collecting Bad Response Rates - You need good analysis to determine the effectiveness of your email. That’s always been the case.

Mistake #12: Relying on Email Only - This last mistake of relying on email only was written during the dawn of the social media revolution. It’s the only one that feels a bit dated, but it’s still worth noting that relying on just one tactic alone is never a good plan.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes, you can download a free copy. We’ve updated portions of it with data from MarketingSherpa's 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. What we’ve kept is the wisdom.

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Foursquare Launches Business Pages for Small Businesses and Brands

Today, location-based social network Foursquare launched business pages for brick-and-mortar small businesses as well as for large brands who may not have a store-front but want to engage Foursquare's userbase. This launch is a big step forward for Foursquare, which previously had little in place to help businesses market to users of its platform.
Let's take a quick look at what is available to small business owners and larger brands.

For a business that has a physical location, Foursquare has opened up new marketing opportunities on its platform and compiled a three-step quick-start guide. Venue owners should first claim a business location, then create a special for users who check in, and finally analyze data from their Foursquare campaigns to generate maximum foot traffic. A Foursquare special is traditionally some type of discount at a specific location. For example, a retail store may offer a 10 percent discount on one item if a person checks into their location on Foursquare.  The idea behind specials on Foursquare is to create an other that makes people want to check-in, so that your business will be exposed to that person's Foursquare friends.

In addition to allowing businesses with retail locations to run campaigns, Foursquare is also providing eduction on their platform to business as seen in the image above. However, the analytics provided to venue owners might be the most interesting piece of the entire offering. Among some of the data provided you can find total daily check-ins over time, repeat and unique customers and time of day of check-ins.
The bottom line is that if you are a venue owner, you should at least claim your venue, and consider offering a special.

From the early days of its service Foursquare worked with major brands that did not have a physical location to create customer badges and other campaigns. Today, brands have specific opportunities to leverage the Foursquare community for marketing. Foursquare is going to continue to do what they call Partner Badges, a paid sponsorship that results in a custom badge related to a brand that Foursquare members can unlock after checking-in at specific location.
Additionally, with this launch, Foursquare is allowing businesses without retail locations to create a page on Foursquare. The page contains the business logo, tips that the business as left at Foursquare venues, the option to follow that business on Foursquare. The page also includes links to that businesses profile on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Unfortunately, Foursquare has not yet launched a web-based tool for creating your page, so currently businesses must complete a form and submit it to Foursquare. On its website, Foursquare notes that it could take as long as 2 weeks for a page to be completed, once a form is submitted.
Location-based social networks are still developing, but have gained a critical mass in some markets. Examine the Foursquare community in the geography of your target market and determine if your business should leverage one of Foursquare's new features for businesses. However, if your are a retail business, you should claim your venue now to protect your brand, even if you are not planning on using Foursquare for marketing at this time.

A Marketer's Guide to APIs

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.
Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

13 Business Blogging Mistakes and Their Easy Fixes [Ebook]

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.
Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

New Chart: Most Effective Email Marketing Objectives for 2011

In my last post on email, I talked about email marketing challenges. Today, I’d like to focus on email marketing objectives.

There are many good reasons for email marketing. Send out a well thought out and timed email and you can see sales jump. Unfortunately, many companies get addicted to email sends that produce instant sales, and when the numbers decrease, they wonder why.

That’s why it’s so important to set your objective for your email marketing. What do you want and expect from your email sends? Once you figure that out you can measure the effectiveness of these objectives.

So which objectives are most effective?

This should not be a surprise since with emails you want people to click to your landing pages or website.

But the number 2, according to MarketingSherpa, may come as a bit of a surprise – building brand awareness.

People often overlook the value of email as a brand awareness tool – but think about it for a moment, and you can see why.

To begin with, most business emails are not opened. According to eMarketer, the average open rate for a marketing email is 19.1%. That leaves 80% of your sends not being opened. However, there is a better chance that your prospect saw either your company’s name in the “from” line and read your subject line, but chose not to open your email.  Each time your email arrives in an inbox means you’re making your prospect aware of you. That’s why it’s so important to create a consistency with your subject line, because each subject line builds a little more brand awareness and identity.

And, when your email is opened (and read), it’s important that you provide them with information they expect from your brand.

The number 3 most effective objective is increasing sales revenue. That’s easier said than done, and requires coordination between the email, the offer and the landing page. One of the best ways to learn how to do this effectively is to read up on case studies. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with increasing sales through email. One is a panel how to develop content for specific buying stages and another is a case study on turning innovation into new revenues. 

Do you agree with these email marketing objectives?  What will you concentrate on during 2011?

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How to Be an Awesome Blog Commenter

Online tools like blogs, Twitter and Facebook have made it easier for people to share with one another, but they don’t necessarily make the Web social. In fact, one could argue that these tools make it easier for people to be less social. In a space where spam and irrelevant messages spread faster than ever, being social requires one to be remarkable. On platforms battling spam and narcissistic one-sided dialogues, the true social value lies with businesses and individuals that communicate in meaningful ways.

This post will discuss how to be a thoughtful and engaged commenter, whether you are active in the blogosphere or on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and message boards.

Would you take a sign for your business and put it in the front yard of someone you don’t know? No, a credible business wouldn’t do that. But leaving blog comments that are nothing more than a link or multiple links back to your website is the online equivalent of that behavior. It is also the fastest way to get your comment deleted and to have future comments marketed as spam.

If you have a post addressing a specific question at hand, then it is ok to include that link into a comment, along with a summary of the information provided on your site. That way if people are looking for only a brief answer, they don’t have to click through to your site.

Another way to include a link back to your website in blog comments is to use a well-optimized signature.

For example:
Name
Company
Website
Twitter Username

This signature helps provide some context to the person reading the comment. If your comment is thoughtful and adds value to the discussion, it is likely that readers will visit your website and follow you on Twitter.

So, why do you constantly see people including links in their comments? It isn’t really to get traffic back to their sites. Instead, it is mainly for search engine optimization purposes. Those who constantly include links in their comments hope to generate more inbound links in an effort to rank higher in search engines for specific keywords. However, most of these commenters are wasting their time.

Most blogs, including this one, use something called a “nofollow” tag for all links in the comments of a blog post. The “nofollow” tag tells a search engine’s web crawler to not follow the link, thus not passing any search engine optimization credit. In other words, links with “nofollow” tags do not count as inbound links for a website.

Go to a blog post that has at least one comment and copy the name of the person who left the comment. Then, in your web browser click the view menu and select the option that says “Page Source” or “View Source.”  Use the find function on your computer (Ctrl+F) to search the source code for the name that you copied from the blog post. Does the link left by the commenter have the “nofollow” tag next to it? If it does, you know that the blog you are looking at does not pass SEO credit through comment links. Most blog owners use the “nofollow” tag as a way to reduce the number of spam comments on their blog.

How many of the blog comments you have read do you actually remember? If you are like me, your answer would be very few. That is because the vast majority of them are not thoughtful or interesting enough. In some cases I read comments and think to myself, “Did this person even read the article?” So, how do you make sure that the author of the blog remembers you? (More on why this is important later.) It is best to have a framework, a way of organizing your response so that it makes an impact.

For blog commenting it works best if you start out with a piece of positive feedback about the article. Follow up with more in-depth explanation or disagreement on one specific part of the article. Using this framework, a comment for this article could look something like this:

“Interesting article, I have never thought about commenting on blogs in this much detail before. I will use this information to improve the comments I leave for my business in the future. However, I do have to disagree with you about the reasoning for including links in comments. Being that many people sign up to receive email updates for new comments to a post they have previously commented on, I have found that including links in you comments can send a decent amount of quality traffic to your website and impact lead generation if you are commenting on relevant sites.”

This sample comment follows the methodology mentioned above. Notice that it isn’t too long. It is long enough to show thoughtfulness and to make a point, but not so long that others won’t take the time to read it.

The most valuable aspect of blog commenting often goes ignored. Most spam commenters are looking for a quick way to drive relevant traffic to their sites. Yet blog commenting isn’t good for quick traffic. Its true value lies in the opportunity to build long-term relationships. Leaving thoughtful blog comments can be one of the best ways to start a relationship with an influential blogger in your industry. After leaving several insightful comments and following him or her on Twitter, it is likely they will recognize your name and follow you back. Once they follow you on Twitter, you can continue to build your relationship with them through their blog and Twitter. After a while, you can approach them about the possibility of doing a guest post for their blog, or maybe ask them to tweet a major blog post that you have recently completed.

This type of relationship building through blog commenting can help drive long-tail traffic over time from links to your blog or website being included in the influencers blog posts and tweets.

How often do you comment on blog posts?

Photo Credit: moonlightbulb

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The Top 10 SEOrankings.com Blog Posts of 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Thanks to all of you and Google for making 2010 such a great year. I hope it was a great year for you too. And your 2011 will be even better! In celebration of 2010 I thought it would be helpful to take a look back at this blog’s top 10 most popular posts for the year. So here they are. Enjoy!

I also want to send out a special shout out to M.J. Taylor of cyber-key.com for all of her support by being the blogs top advocate. THANK YOU!

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Twitter Usage Per Capita: How States Compare [Infographic]

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.

Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

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Do blekko and Google Completely Disregard Navigational Links?

I don’t actually think Google completely disregards navigation links. However, after taking a closer look at blekko’s SEO tools, it appears in most cases blekko does and other search engines might too. If it’s that important and easy for a hip new search engine to do, then it makes me wonder EXACTLY how Google and the other major search engines treat navigational and other page links.

Take a look at this detailed analysis to see what I’ve found out about blekko, which probably gives us some insight into how other search engines analyze the links on webpage.

Most navigational links get immediately disregarded or “exlcuded” (header, footer, sidebar, etc.)Links grouped together are usually excludedBlog comments are excluded regardless if they are dofollow links

Looking at the screenshots below you can easily see which links blekko marked as “excluded” and understand what I am talking about.

(Numbers in green are links that blekko didn’t tag as excluded, and red numbers identify links that are marked as excluded. Also, links highlighted in pink have the nofollow attributed assigned to them.)

InternalInternal (excluded)Internal, ImageExternalInternal (excluded)Internal (excluded)Internal (excluded)ExternalInternal/External (excluded)External, 302 Redirect, NoFollowExternalExternal, 302 Redirect, NoFollowExternalInternal (excluded)Internal (excluded)External, NoFollow (excluded)Internal (excluded)

Anything stand out to you here?

One thing that immediately stood out to me was that blekko seems to exclude most navigational links regardless if they are internal or external links. I don’t believe Google completely excludes navigational links. However, they are likely discounted in some way.

What’s also interesting is that blekko seems to completely ignore the nofollow attribute and 302 redirects. Take a look at links 10 and 12 above. Both of those links are nofollowed, 302 redirected affiliate links and neither of them were excluded.

Now let’s examine how Blekko treats outbound listing links coming from the top 5 directories recommended in the screenshot above.

It appears a listing and backlink from 4 of the top 5 directories I’ve recommended count towards ranking in blekko. JoeAnt is the only one whose listings are excluded – which is interesting, because JoeAnt might be the strictest directory of the bunch. Probably an oversight on their part.

Additionally, I found that “most” listings in the blogs.botw.org directory were excluded, except for listings that didn’t include any additional site links such as: [RSS], [AUDIO], [ATOM], [XML], [VIDEO]. Note: blogs.botw.org is a sub-domain and separate directory from the main directory at botw.org. Listings in the main directory are counted. Probably another oversight because links from both BOTW directories should count – in my opinion, anyway.

I believe the engineers at blekko have manually gone in and allowed links from these directories because other directories I checked had their links excluded. But the great thing is you can always check each directory before you submit to them.

Just keep in mind, blekko, Bing and Google don’t use the exact same algorithms and technology. Google may count links blekko doesn’t and vice versa.

I think most of us assume Google and the major search engines are smart enough to identify, discount or exclude all dofollow blog comment links. However, I thought it would be interesting to see exactly how blekko looks at them since that data is available to us. So I found a site that allows dofollow blog comments and uses the CommentLuv, KeywordLuv and Top Commentators plug-ins.

Internal, NoFollow (excluded)External (excluded)Internal, NoFollow (excluded)External, NoFollow (excluded)NOT FOUNDExternal (excluded)External (excluded)

In this case blekko excluded every link related to blog comments even if they were dofollow links. I also noticed that blekko didn’t find the URLs listed in the drop down option menus on this site.

blekko appears to be extremely strict in regards to which links they count. Navigational links and links that are grouped together are typically ignored while contextual links are NOT marked as “exluded” regardless of their attributes, i.e., NoFollow, 302 redirect, etc..

What have you observed about the way blekko or other search engines looks at navigational links?

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How to Market Smarter, Faster, and Cheaper with David Siteman Garland [Inbound Now #2]

In this episode of Inbound Now, we are joined by David Siteman Garland from The Rise to the Top.

David is a marketer and hustling entrepreneur that runs his own business and show over on RISE and has managed to grow his audience from 0 to over 100,000 raving fans in just under two years. In this episode we discuss:

The ins and outs of creating contentWhere to start when diving into inbound marketingThe importance of having a clean, user-friendly siteWhy emulating big brands might not always be your best betWhy passion is a key ingredient to content creationThen, we take a look ahead into whats coming up in 2011

Enter to win a signed copy of David's new book: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business, by heading to the Inbound Now Fan Page and commenting on why you want the book! (* to comment you must "like" the page)

The barriers to successful marketing are crumbling. It is time to out-care, out-create, and out-hustle your competition by using inbound marketing to gain the upper hand.

David suggests finding one thing you are good at within the content creation realm and start producing one piece of content a week. (Make sure it's indexable by Google for SEO credit!)

Getting your feet wet and creating a content creation habit are critically important for your success online! 

One of the best ways to build trust and longevity in a brand is about creating interesting, entertaining, and relevant content.

Don’t get intimidated by the big guys who are cranking out the content. Start with one small thing that is repeatable.

Consistent content is key. People are programed on schedules and if you set an expectation for your content, you should stick by it. Choose one thing you might want to try and get rolling with it. Do it once a week.

20% on creating the content and 80% on promoting that content and building those relationships online.

You don't have to be Shakespeare to blog or Spielberg to create video.

Repurpose content! Video = audio and text. People like to consume content in different ways. Cater to all of them. Remember, Google eats text for breakfast when indexing pages.

People are not going to tune into your blog or other pieces of your content if they are product focused.

David’s focus has always on his community and not necessarily about building the “David Siteman Garland” brand. He focuses on creating entertaining useful content for his community and his community responds to that and builds and builds. This has resulted in David being hired time and time again by numerous companies including Google.

Both the Rise to the Top and 37 Signals started building their communities of passionate, raving fans before they had a tangible product. 

Start building your site and content now!

Moonlighting to grow a community, there is no shame in that!

You need a home base to house your own content. Twitter could die tomorrow and "Flitter" could pop up in it's place leaving you with nothing to show for it.

Housing your content on your own site will ensure that you will be in good shape if something like this were to happen. 

Not to mention the tremendous SEO implications of building out all of those pages of content on your own site.

Take ownership of your content and fans today. Build out these areas of your site and keep building that in-house email list. 

Emulating big brands may not be the best model. Look at people that are building big things that started with nothing.

Don’t look at an entrenched big brand that joined social media “just because”. (I'm talking about you, Oprah.)

Look for people who have done this without a huge budget! Companies that have just emerged and have leveraged “digital smoozing” can teach much better lessons.

Hands down passion is a KEY component to building any business through these new social channels. 

Knowledge and personality can increase over time but without passion for the content that you are producing, you will fail.

Passion may come from the product itself, it may be from a bigger idea, it may be from the thrill of starting something new, or changing an existing market, or the company itself, but in order to really "crush it" you have to have it!

Hubspotters are extremely passionate about everything inbound marketing and the web! This helps fuel all of the content we produce and grow our community.

Passion is something that you can see and feel in the content that is produced and that passion is contagious.

David sees many many more businesses becoming media sources. More web shows, more podcasts, more “web djs”  Content curation will be a rising trend where, within this sea of content, there will be an increasing need in someone out their making sense of it all.  Moving online relationships to offline in person relationships. Bringing people together!

Past Episodes:

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New Charts: Most Effective Email Marketing Tactics for 2011

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.

Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

View the original article here

13 Must-Watch Marketing TED Presentations

In 2006 the Sapling Foundation started curating TED (Technology Entertainment and Design), a global set of conferences seeking to spread innovative ideas. TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event, and the conference was held annually and has been host to many of the brightest minds in the world, including Bill Gates, Larry Page, Richard Dawkins and many Nobel Prize winners.

Some of the best ideas spread by TED presenters have been related to marketing. These presentations help to put important marketing-related issues into context and uncover simple truths about persuasion and engagement. Whether you market your own small business or a Fortune 500 company, you can take away valuable information and insights from these great speakers. 

1. Dan Cobley: What physics taught me about marketing

2.  Seth Godin on standing out

3. Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce

4. Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

5. Seth Godin on the tribes we lead

6.  Virginia Postrel on glamour

7. Chris Anderson of WIRED on tech's Long Tail

8.  Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man

9. Philippe Starck thinks deep on design

10. Ze Frank's web playroom

11. Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

12. Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

13. Alisa Miller shares the news about the news

Which one of these presentations is your favorite?

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6 Qualifications for an eCommerce Click and Mortar Business

Transforming your brick and mortar store into a click and mortar business could be a very profitable and wise decision for your business in 2011.  The introduction of the internet and eCommerce has drastically affected the way our society shops, and thus the way businesses need to operate.  An online store can open up without ever having a physical location and pose a real threat to many traditional brick and mortar stores.  Should you turn your brick and mortar business into a click and mortar store to compete?

A click and mortar is defined as "A type of business model that includes both online and offline operations, which typically include a website and a physical store.  A click-and-mortar company can offer customers the benefits of fast, online transactions or traditional, face-to-face service."  Additional benefits of click and mortar stores are seen in increased distribution channels and a checkout clerk that never sleeps.  You can sell your products 24 hours a day and 7 days a week without ever paying a sales clerk to man the cash register.

You should consider several qualifications before rushing into the online world of eCommerce:

1.  Have a Website / Willing to Pay Marketplace Fees  The most basic qualification of operating a click and mortar business is the presence of a website and a shopping cart.  If you do not have a website or a shopping cart, you should consider getting started selling online by selling through marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon.  The only problem with marketplaces like eBay and Amazon are the fees associated with product listings and after purchase sales.  These fees can reach astronomical levels, leaving your ROI slaughtered.  You can avoid these fees by operating your own online store by establishing a website and shopping cart.  Make your online store found via organic search engine traffic through keyword strategies for eCommerce search engine optimization.

2.  Inventory / Willing to Drop Ship at Higher Rates  A valid concern for many businesses interested in getting into the eCommerce business is available inventory.  Selling online creates a potential problem of having your products unavailable offline.   The simple answer to this concern is to set limits to the number of items you allow to be sold online.  Almost all eCommerce solutions allow you to control the inventory of your products.  An alternate solution to controlling your product distribution is to find a drop shipper that ships products related to the ones you sale in your store.  The downside to drop shipping is the increase in price you will pay for both their inventory and shipping systems.

3.  Shipping Department / Willing to Drive to Post Office  Logistics of shipping and managing product distribution will be the first hurdle you will face when becoming a legit eCommerce business.  It is easy to handle 2 -3 orders a day, but what will you do when you get to 75 – 200 orders a day?  Shipping and logistics comes much more of a concern.  Thankfully, the increase in revenue created from 75 – 200 new orders every day will leave you with some extra money to hire a shipping manager to help process, pack and ship online orders. Most business just getting started will be fine without a shipping department and can either drive to the Post Office to ship online orders or schedule a shipping company to come and pickup packages from your place of business.

4.  Technology Resource / Willing to Learn.  An often overlooked piece to a successful online business is an employee that is technologically efficient.  This employee doesn’t have to be an eCommerce guru, but should be knowledgeable enough tell you the difference between Google Web and Google Product Search and how to get your website to show up on each.  Your technological resource should preferably have some background with eCommerce, know how to setup and operate an online shopping cart and understand how to send data feeds to marketplaces.  If you either do not have the capitol or availability of a technology efficient employee, then you need to have an eagerness to learn.  There are abundant resources available online and shopping carts such as Shopify that make it extremely easy to get started.

5.  Marketing Resource / Willing to Engage.  Online marketing for your eCommerce store and products should be a high priority for establishing a successful click and mortar store.  Just like your brick and mortar store, your online store needs advertisement in order to survive.  Thankfully inbound marketing for eCommerce is a very good solution for increasing both your store and products visibility online.  You should consider hiring an employee or intern that qualifies for what HubSpot Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah refer to as a “Digital Native”.  These types of employees can have dramatic effects on your business and can really propel your profit growth.  If you do not have the capital or availability of a marketing resource, then you need have a willingness to engage in online marketing.  HubSpot offers a wide breadth of knowledge and resources to help you market your online and offline stores very effectively.

6.  Tenacity / Willing to Set Long Term Vision of Business Growth vs. Store Growth.  Launching a new online business is similar to opening a new brick and mortar business.  You will not achieve overnight success with your new online store.  You will not sell 100 products the first day of your store being live.  You may not sell 100 products within the first month of opening your online store.  But you will be successful if you have the tenacity to see the online business grow and succeed.  Like starting a new business, it takes time and effort to grow an online store to prosperity.  However, the prosperity of selling 100 products online a day in addition to your brick and mortar sales can be very lucrative and worthwhile.  Set a long-term vision for your business growth, not your store growth.  Selling just 1 product online a day, week or even month is helping your business grow.  Don’t forget that.

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25 Ways to Increase Sales and Lead Generation

Want to increase your company’s profitability from your website? Generating traffic is only half the battle. You can spend months focusing on doubling traffic to your website, but if you don’t have compelling offers, effective calls-to-action, and convincing lead nurturing campaigns, you won’t have a way to turn that traffic into leads and ultimately profits.  

Here are 25 ways you can increase website conversions, not only to the point of becoming a lead, but to the point of becoming a qualified lead.

Calls-to-action do best “above the fold” - the space of your webpage viewable to the user without having to scroll down.  According to heat map analysis, anything “below the fold” will only be viewed by 50% of people who view your page. Doubling impressions on your CTAs can significantly increase your website leads. 

Be crystal clear about what the offer is in your CTA. And be specific. If you’re giving away a free guide, say “Download our FREE guide to X”. If you’re hosting a free webinar, say “Register for our FREE webinar on X.” X should clearly convey a compelling benefit of receiving the offer. This is much more effective than “Download Now” or “Get a Free Article.” These simply aren’t specific enough.

Images stand out on a webpage more than text does, and get a lot more attention, as proven by the heat map study. Additionally, using an image will allow you to show off the offer in a way you can’t necessarily convey using text alone.

Your web designer might kick and scream about this, but if your call-to-action blends in too much with your site design, it won’t stand out as much. You want as many eyeballs to land on that call-to-action as possible, so use contrasting colors to make the CTA stand out.

You’d be surprised by how many times I’ve seen calls-to-action that aren’t links. Whether intentional or a matter of forgetfulness, the lack of a link will make it much harder for visitors to find out how to get the offer, and they’ll likely give up. So double, triple, and quadruple check to make sure all of your CTAs link to their corresponding landing pages.

CTAs shouldn’t be one size fits all. If your company offers various products or services, you may want to consider creating a different offer for each. Then you can place CTAs linking to each offer on the website pages that are most relevant to that offer.

Whenever you create a new blog content, choose an offer that’s the most relevant to that blog post. Then add a call-to-action to the bottom of that blog post linking to the landing page for that offer. Informational offers such as ebooks, guides, and webinars do very well in this space, because people reading your blog would likely be eager to get more free information from you.

Keep your messaging consistent on both your CTA and the headline of the landing page. If people click a link for a free offer and then find out there’s a catch on the landing page, you’ll instantly lose their trust. Similarly, if the headline reads differently than the CTA, it might lead to confusion, and the user might wonder of the CTA linked to the wrong page.

This is the biggest mistake I see in landing pages. People often try to be too clever or witty in the headline, and it’s not clear what the offer actually is. Again, if you’re giving away a free guide, say “Download our FREE Guide to Improving X”. Plain and simple.

Just like you want to have your call-to-action above the fold, it’s ideal for the form to be above the fold as well. This way, there can’t be any confusion as to what’s expected from the viewer on this page: they need to fill out the form to get what you’re offering. 

“Simple” does not always mean “short.” What you ask for on a form should match the information your sales team needs from your leads to make the sale. For top of the buying cycle folks at the beginning of their research process, name and email address might suffice. For more committed prospects at the bottom of the buying cycle, you might want to ask for some qualifiers like job title or city/state, and perhaps ask for a phone number. Just try not to ask for more than what’s necessary.

Your landing page doesn’t have a visual masterpiece, but it should show what your offer is all about. If your business is something a bit more abstract, just take a screenshot of your guide/whitepaper/eBook/etc. and add the image to your landing page. You can use freeware like Jing to easily capture and save screenshots.

Be brief and to the point; it’s the offer where you give the prospect more information. In addition to your headline, have a brief paragraph explaining what the offer is, followed by a few bullet points outlining what the offer consists of and what the benefits are.

Make it clear in your brief paragraph and/or bullet points what the benefits of the offer are. It’s more than just listing what the offer is comprised of; it takes a bit of spin. Instead of “Includes specifications of product XYZ,” say something like “Find out how XYZ can increase productivity 50%.” 

When a prospect reaches your landing page, you’re just a few keystrokes away from getting their contact information. So don’t distract them with links that will take them further away from your goal of getting a lead. The thank you page, shown after a prospect fills out a form and becomes a lead, will give you the opportunity to return the navigation and links. 

When creating a thank you page, not only can you give back the navigation, but you can provide other links to keep the lead engaged. You can provide call to actions to the next step in the buying cycle, link them to your blog, encourage them to follow you on Twitter, ask them to subscribe to your newsletter, and more. You can do more with your thank you pages than just adding tracking code!

Your offer should answer the question: “What’s in it for me?” Things like pricing brochures, specs, and self-promotional videos are not compelling offers, because they do not answer that question. Informational items like whitepapers, guides, and webinars are compelling offers because they do. See the difference?

Although lead nurturing is a very powerful tool, provide a way for your leads to find you again besides through email; especially if they are more inclined to ignore email from people they don’t know. If they enjoyed your whitepaper (which is remarkable, so of course they did!), make it easy for them to remember where they got the whitepaper from by linking to your site on your cover page.

Just like your forms might vary for each phase of the buying cycle, your offers should as well. Someone at the top of the buying cycle may be more interested in an informational piece like a guide or ebook, whereas someone more committed at the bottom of the cycle might be more interested in a free trial or demo. You don’t need to pick and choose; create offers for each phase, and include a primary and secondary CTA to these offers on various pages throughout your site.

I’m being repetitive about this for a reason: I’ve seen this mistake made too many times, and it’s such an easy fix. Always be crystal clear about what you are offering. Keep your email short and sweet. Instead of prefacing your offer with two paragraphs about your company’s background, get to the point. What are the tips you want to share with your prospects? How can they benefit from subscribing to your blog? Why should they care what new offer you have on your site? 

It’s awfully hard to measure the success of your lead nurturing emails by the unsubscribe rate alone. Include links back to your site so that you can test variations, and measure what works and what doesn’t. These links don’t have to be CTAs leading to landing pages. You can link to more free information on your blog, encourage people to follow you on Twitter, etc.

People don’t want to read dense paragraphs of text in their email. Just like your landing pages, have a brief paragraph with a free bit of information, a few bullet points of tips or guide steps, and a link back to your site to find out more information. Save the actual bottom-of-the-cycle-offer CTA for one of your later lead nurturing emails, so it doesn’t seem like you’re trying to sell sell sell right out of the gate.

The subject line is arguably the most important part of a lead nurturing campaign. Without an attention-grabbing title, people won’t open your email to read everything else you have to say. Clearly state how the recipient will benefit from reading your email. 

Text-only lead nurturing emails are successful for a number of reasons. Not only do they reduce the risk of your email being sent directly to the SPAM folder, but emails seem more personal if they are written as though they could have been written for the individual reader, rather than a newsletter template that’s been sent to thousands of people. 

Everything on your site can be tweaked and tested in order to improve conversion rates. After a CTA has been on your homepage for a month, vary the messaging or swap out an entirely new CTA and after another month, and measure which has performed best. If your offer CTA is in your 2nd lead nurturing email, move it to the 3rd and see if click-through rates increase. If landing page conversions are low, move the form above the fold and measure the results. Don’t be afraid to test different variations; you can always switch back if the old version worked better. It will be worth it when you’ve found a combination that increases your site conversions.

What are some of the tweaks you've made to your website to increase conversions and sales? Share your tips in the comments below!

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13 Business Blogging Mistakes and Their Easy Fixes [Ebook]

HubSpot makes closed-loop internet marketing software that integrates your sales and marketing activities. It's simple really.

Get found.Convert visitors into leads.Close those leads efficiently.

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New Chart: Most Effective Email Marketing Objectives for 2011

In my last post on email, I talked about email marketing challenges. Today, I’d like to focus on email marketing objectives.

There are many good reasons for email marketing. Send out a well thought out and timed email and you can see sales jump. Unfortunately, many companies get addicted to email sends that produce instant sales, and when the numbers decrease, they wonder why.

That’s why it’s so important to set your objective for your email marketing. What do you want and expect from your email sends? Once you figure that out you can measure the effectiveness of these objectives.

So which objectives are most effective?

This should not be a surprise since with emails you want people to click to your landing pages or website.

But the number 2, according to MarketingSherpa, may come as a bit of a surprise – building brand awareness.

People often overlook the value of email as a brand awareness tool – but think about it for a moment, and you can see why.

To begin with, most business emails are not opened. According to eMarketer, the average open rate for a marketing email is 19.1%. That leaves 80% of your sends not being opened. However, there is a better chance that your prospect saw either your company’s name in the “from” line and read your subject line, but chose not to open your email.  Each time your email arrives in an inbox means you’re making your prospect aware of you. That’s why it’s so important to create a consistency with your subject line, because each subject line builds a little more brand awareness and identity.

And, when your email is opened (and read), it’s important that you provide them with information they expect from your brand.

The number 3 most effective objective is increasing sales revenue. That’s easier said than done, and requires coordination between the email, the offer and the landing page. One of the best ways to learn how to do this effectively is to read up on case studies. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with increasing sales through email. One is a panel how to develop content for specific buying stages and another is a case study on turning innovation into new revenues. 

Do you agree with these email marketing objectives?  What will you concentrate on during 2011?

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New Chart: Biggest Challenges Facing Email Marketing in 2011

Email marketing is tied to inbound marketing: inbound brings in the leads, email nurtures them and sends them back to the website or landing page which, in turn, offers valuable content that helps convert the lead into a sale.

This lead generating and nurturing cycle relies on every piece of the marketing puzzle working to its fullest. That’s why every inbound marketer needs to understand the challenges that go with email marketing and what works best in order to leverage it effectively. Let’s start with the biggest challenge to email marketing effectiveness.

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the #1 challenge to email marketing effectiveness is targeting your prospects and customers with highly relevant content.

 What’s interesting about these findings is that the one thing a company can control is the relevance of its content.

The issue is that the more targeted your email campaigns, the more content is required.  According to MarketingSherpa, a reason for this challenge is that “developing a sufficient amount of content is a time-intensive process that many marketers do not have the resources to produce.”

Key to creating relevant content in email is to make sure your email messages:

Provide an offer that is connected to the initial requestOffer content that fits the needs of the recipientAre sent at the right time and with the right frequency

To accomplish these tactics, you need a well segmented database so that you can better target your customers and prospects with relevant email messages - content, offers, as well as timing.

Like landing pages which need to be tested and tweaked to improve conversions, email should also be tested for open, click-through, and conversion rates.

Things to test include:

Subject lineHeadlinesCalls-to-action OffersHTML vs. TextLength of copy

One of the reasons relevant content is so critical is that the minute an email recipient starts to feel like your emails are no longer relevant, they’ll stop reading them. You don’t get too many second chances these days.

What I find helpful is to read as many case studies as I can, to find out what’s working in the real world. At MarketingSherpa’s upcoming Email Summit 2011, there are a number of sessions that deal directly with crafting effective email messages, as well as a session from HubSpot’s Mike Volpe on how to integrate your inbound marketing with your email marketing.

In my next post on email marketing, I will be talking about the most effective email marketing objectives for 2011.

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blekko: The Search Engine for SEOs

Have you heard about blekko yet? I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t. It just launched a few days ago. Most people outside of the tech space probably wont know about blekko for a very long time, if ever. However, for those of us who spend a substantial amount of our business life online, blekko is worth taking a look at.

blekko, often referred to as the slashtag search engine, is the newest contender to come into the highly competitive search space. It’s a full-fledged search engine with it’s own search index. What blekko has done to try and set itself apart from the other search engines is introduce /slashtags. Slashtags make it easy for anyone to create a vertical search engine around any topic. One of the neatest features of slashtags is customizing your searches to only show you results from a particular viewpoint. For instance, to see websites from a liberal point of view you would use the built-in /liberal slashtag. But, since there are plenty of other posts from around the web discussing that, I’ll dive right into what I’m interested most which is their webmaster and SEO tools.

Using blekko’s webmaster tools is a snap. You don’t even have to be logged in. Simply do a normal search around any topic or website you like and links to the available tools will appear right below the title of each listing.

By default only a few result links appear, but you can easily change your preferences to show the links you’re most interested in. My example above shows all available result links; tag, seo, dup, rss, links, cache, source, ip, site, similar, chatter and spam. I did find a bug, however. Whenever I changed my logged-in preferences it would reset to default after I deleted my cookies.

Let’s take a look at the seo data by clicking on the “seo” link or by typing “http://www.seorankings.com/ /seo” in the search box.

That pulls up some stats on the page including a description which is actually your title tag. Domain / URL Host Rank, Inbound Links and Site Pages which can all be expanded. There are also a couple of link location pie graphs which I find somewhat useless. And, a number of other tabs and hyperlinks pointing to additional data too.

All in all there is a lot of free data provided here which you can use in addition to other tools you are already using. Like most of the tools available the data provided is only a small sample of what is really going on on the web. I’ve read some reports claiming blekko has an index of around 3 billion documents, whereas Google and Bing are reported to have 10+ billion pages in their indices. So you definitely don’t want to rely on this data alone to make assumptions about why a particular website is ranking the way it is in any of the other major search engines.

One of the most disappointing things I found was even with all of the great link data provided, they failed to tell you which links were dofollow and nofollow back links. I know it’s supposed to be a search engine first, but considering everything that has been provided it seems like a waste because analyzing link data isn’t very helpful when those details aren’t readily available. Hopefully they’ll consider adding that information in the near future. Update: Rich left me a comment below letting me know the nofollow data is actually available now, but a little hard to find. See http://blekko.com/ws/http:%2F%2Fwww.seorankings.com%2F+/urlseo#inbound_tab.

Another miss was that Google faired better for most of the searches I performed. Especially last night when I was looking for the latest Washington state senate results. I couldn’t find anything immediately helpful in blekko, whereas Google showed me the latest results right within the SERP as well as several other up-to-the-minute listings. In blekko’s defense, Google has been at this game for several years now.

Either way, blekko provides some of the best free SEO data available for analyzing the competition, which makes it worth taking a look at. And it also shows some potential as a search engine.

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Look Ma, No Toolbar! Tips For Quality Link Building Without PR

The following is a guest post by M.-J. Taylor of Cyber-Key.com.

Years ago when Google regularly pushed PageRank (PR) data to its toolbar, figuring out the value of a potential link was pretty simple. The more PageRank, the fewer outbound links, the more valuable. Today, the toolbar isn’t even updated quarterly and webmasters have to do a little more analysis to assess the value of a link.

Where do you start? Look for quality and relevance. We might not be able to see the current PR of a page, but we do know that PageRank affects crawl rate, so it’s logical to conclude that a quality page will be cached recently. A page that has not been crawled within the past month is probably not pushing much link power.

Is the content relevant to your target page? Are the other outbound links relevant? What’s the quality of the other websites the pages links to? In other words, what sort of a neighborhood are you joining? Will the anchor text benefit your site?

Sometimes the page may not yet have the value you’d like, but if you know it’s a new page, you can look at the other similar pages on the site to determine whether that page will carry value in the future. For example, you might want to decide between two article directories. Examine other pages in your niche to see what sort of crawl rate they seem to be getting; look to see whether older pages have toolbar PR. Who else is writing for the directory? What’s the quality of their content?

Some websites are just gimmes! That is, you know a link from them is worthwhile – .edu and .gov sites if you can get them – and when they are relevant. Links from your industry association or from your local chamber of commerce. Charitable websites or links from any organization you sponsor.

New SEOs frequently ask, what about link exchanges? Link exchanges still have value when they are highly relevant. Let’s say you have a restaurant in a popular tourist destination. It makes sense that you would exchange links with your vendors, and perhaps with websites for accommodations or attractions in your area. You might even feel comfortable exchanging links with some other restaurants in your area. After all, most visitors and locals will patronize more than one place.

The key is always relevance and usability. Ask yourself: am I helping the visitor to my website? If the answer is yes, the link is likely to drive traffic between the two sites, and that alone makes the exchange is worthwhile. The important thing to remember about exchanges is that they should only be a small part of your overall link profile. You want as many links as possible to be one way.

Ready for more? Read this article on link building 101 for more tips and techniques to get the backlinks you need.

M.-J. Taylor is the founder of Cyber Key, Inc., an SEO web design firm based in Key West, Florida and Asheville, North Carolina. M.-J. is a marketing consultant and SEO copywriter. In her spare time she enjoys being a forum moderator on WebProWorld, V7n and SEOworkers.

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Is Your Google Maps Listing Up to Date?

I don’t know if I should be calling it Google Maps, Google Places, or Google Local; because when you submit your site to Google Places you’ll show up in Google Maps. Anyway, I prefer to just call it Google Maps to help avoid any confusion. But that’s not really the point of this post….

What is really important is for you to get your Google Maps listing up-to-date if it’s not already, because Google is making major SERP changes that could affect you.

Have you seen some of the latest local search results?

I wasn’t able to show you the entire page, but organic / map integrated listings took up the first 8 organic search results. Between that and the sponsored listings that only left two 100% organic listings for most of the local searches I tested.

From looking at my past and current clients it appears the organic listing is more heavily weighted than the maps listing when it comes to your rankings. However, the updated map listings with some reviews, stars and Google tags definitely stood out.

As Google continues to try and further monetize their search results you can see the direction Google is going and how important it is for you to stay on top of your local listing.

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