Building Traffic For Your Online Business - Part 2

Tag – You’re It!

Make it easy for your website visitors to tag you. Help your readers to spread the word about your content through social book marking and social networking. Provide links to social networking site on the end of your articles. Social book marking sites enable readers to share your book marks publicly, tagging them to help others to find them. When you have great articles on your website your readers will tag them so other people can find them.

Press Releases

Keyword rich press releases are similarly effective to writing articles. PRWeb is one of the most popular press release systems. A press release is great tool to announce a change to your company such as the redesign of your website or to announce a new product. Your press release could result in an interview with a newspaper or magazine editor.
Historically, press releases were aimed at news editors. Today, press releases are aimed directly at web surfers. Your job is to write an interesting press release with quality content. You only have a few seconds to convince the reader that your press release is worth reading. Your title and the first couple of sentences are the most important components of a great press release. Focus on what your audience wants to read not what you want to write.

Page Elements

Write catchy page titles. Perform a search with some of your most relevant keywords. Examine the first page results, and see which one grabs your attention. Write down the most captivating page titles, and see if you can write better ones for your pages. The same is true for your Meta description tags. Even though, some search engines no longer list Meta description content it won’t hurt to have a catchy description.
Name your images with your keywords within the image file name. For example, if you have images of candles on your site, name the image files such as “candle-product-name.jpg,” or “candle-product-description.jpg.” Search engines might give you traffic based on your image file names. With minimal effort people performing an image search could land on your website.

Building Traffic For Your Online Business - Part 1

Domain Names

A great domain name will complement your traffic building efforts. Register a domain name that’s easy to remember. Stay away from long hard to spell domain names. Also, avoid domain names with hyphens and numbers. Ask yourself, “Will people remember my domain name?” Test the domain name with your friends, family, and existing customers. Ask them about their opinion. You might love the domain name, while others would struggle with spelling or remembering it.
If you must have the hard to spell domain name, buy the misspelled version too. Domain names are cheap to register. It’s worth buying domains that might be mistyped or misspelled versions of your primary domain. For a small investment, you can correct your customers spelling errors.
Make your domain name easy to read. Which of the following is easier to read? www.triumphontheweb.com or www.TriumphOnTheWeb.com Capitalizing the first letter of each word helps your reader. The easier it is to read the easier it is to remember. Don’t buy the .net version of a domain if the .com version is no longer available. Having the .net version only is going to result in loss of revenue for your business to the business that owns the .com version of the domain.

Directories

Submit your site to directories. There are several major directories such as “The Open Directory Project” you should consider, but don’t ignore the smaller niche directories either. A listing in a directory will result in a link to your site. More importantly, the link is from a relevant directory category. Another advantage of links from directories is that they are one-way links pointing to your site, which is considered more valuable than reciprocal links.

Hosting

A reliable web hosting company has to be part of your traffic building strategy. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a search result that leads to a website that is offline. Selecting an inadequate hosting company could result in loss of traffic. You work hard to drive traffic to your site. Don’t let a substandard hosting company undo your efforts.

Some directories offer free listings while others only offer paid listings. Paid listings usually result in faster listings while free listings can take months or longer. In addition to the financial commitment to getting your site listed in directories, there is a significant time commitment. Directory listings can be easily outsourced on websites such as elance.com. Another alternative is to hire a student.

Building Lists Without Becoming Spammers

Spam And Your List

Building and maintaining communication with your list requires e-mail. Take the following steps to avoid being labeled as a spammer:

· Comply with the CAN-SPAM law
· Don’t purchase e-mail lists, build your own
· Keep records of subscribe requests
· Avoid spam trigger words such as free, earn $, discount, etc

Double Opt-In

Requiring double opt-in is a great way to avoid being labeled as a spammer. Double opt-in requires your subscriber to opt-in twice. First, they opt-in when they complete the online sign up form. Second, they confirm their subscription through a link that has been e-mailed to them. Double opt-in protects you and your visitors.

List Building Techniques

Contact Customers
Contact your previous clients and ask them to sign up. It is an often ignore but powerful technique. Explain your customers that you are building a list of satisfied customers to improve your business. People that have bought from you before are already interested in your company. While you contact them to sign up, ask them for feedback about your company.

Membership Site

Create a membership area within your site. In the special area for your subscribers, you can provide additional resources not available to unsubscribed visitors. Your content has to be excellent. Your visitors have to believe they are getting real value when they sign up. Emphasize the value of the membership such as $29.00 value per month. To justify the value, maintain and update your content constantly.

Auto Responders

Use an auto responder solution that works. Apply the right technology to guarantee best results. Aweber is an auto responder service that costs only $20.00 per month. An auto responder service will automate most of the mundane tasks of maintaining your list. A professional auto responder can provide you with statistics to examine the effectiveness of your campaigns. The appropriate auto responder solution must be an integral part of your building strategy.

Ways To Build Your Subscriber List

Pop Up Windows

Use pop up windows to get peoples’ attention. There are several types of pop up windows available to you with varying degrees of effectiveness. Some of the most effective pop ups are called hovering ads. They are difficult to block, and they will get your visitors attention. Unfortunately, some unethical advertisers have given pop ups a bad name. Don’t let that stop you from utilizing one, but make sure you don’t abuse the technology.

Co-Registration

Co-registration might be the fastest ways to grow your list. By collaborating related but non-competing businesses, you can multiply the speed of your list building process. For example, a dog grooming business might collaborate with a veterinary, sharing each other’s databases. Several related but non-competing businesses might develop a newsletter they could make available to their shared list. Everyone would benefit because the content would be great and the workload would be more manageable.

Contests

Getting your visitors involved through a contest can be an effective list builder. The contest details are published throughout your website, but only subscribers are allowed entry. The contest could be for anything that interests your customers. The best contests have brand enhancing value for the company and entertainment value for the website visitor.

Two Ways To Build Your Business List

Keep It Simple

Make it easy for people to sign up with your website. The more convenient you make the sign up process, the easier it is for your site visitors to become part of your list. The call to action to sign up has to be an ingrained part of your website. It is a mistake to have a single call to action. Your visitors should be able to sign up on any page. If you have a website with twenty-five pages, have twenty-five subscribe buttons on your site.

Free Give Aways

It is true that you can’t expect to get until you give. Provide your visitors with a free gift such as a special report. For example, a realtor might provide a special report on selling a home in a soft market. Brand you special report effectively. Include your name, your website address, your phone number, e-mail address, the name of your company, and your physical address. Your subscribers might forward your report to their friends and family members, and you have to make sure it is easy for anyone to reach you. Embed information within your special report about how to subscribe to your website to receive similar information. A few more examples of free give aways are ebooks, online courses, and tutorials.

Keep in mind that free doesn’t mean worthless. Whatever you give away has to have value. The only drawback of giving something free in exchange for a sign up is that you might get people on your list that are only interested in your free gift. Regardless, free gifts provide a great way to build your list.

Provide short audio clips for your subscribers. A CPA might provide audio tips about reducing your taxes. The audio doesn’t have to be a one-hour presentation. Two to three minute audio files are perfect for website. Make forwarding your audio materials easy. Encourage your subscribers to forward a link to their friends or family members. Again, the key is to brand the advice properly. Anyone that listens to the file should know your name, your website address, and your contact information.
If you are unsure about a topic for your audio materials, interview several of your satisfied customers. Your customers can be your best sales people. Let them help you. Contact them, and ask them to see if they would be available for a short phone interview. Most of them will be delighted to have an opportunity to be heard.

Effective techniques to find out what content your site visitors want to read

· E-mail a set of questions. Don’t send an e-mail asking, “What type of content would you like to see on our website”? Instead, include three to five open-ended questions. When you ask the right questions, your customers are more likely to provide you with quality feedback.
· Create a site survey, or carry out a phone survey
· Query your customer service personnel about the most frequently asked questions.
· Conduct site polls
· Examine your competitors’ websites

Build a List and Profit From It

List building can be the pinnacle of your business development strategy. You might be thinking that list building is just another task you have to add to your already full plate, but a good list can raise your business to new heights. Many marketers agree that it may take up to seven contacts before your can close a sale. Your list can help your business improve your, client communications, intelligence gained from past customers, marketing program, sales conversion, customer satisfaction, company image. You can build far more effective lists than you could ever buy. When you build your own list, you know that the data within is accurate. The quality and size of your list is going to have a direct effect on how quickly you can grow your online business.

Your list building efforts start with you, not your clients. You have to build a website with valuable content before you earn the right to ask for visitor information. Content development requires interactivity. Don’t make a mistake of writing about what you want to write about. Instead, ask your site visitors what they would like to read about. Your website is not what you want, it is about what your clients want. The more passionate you are the more likely will you succeed. Before you research your content, ask your clients what topics interest them.

Pay Per Click

As PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising becomes more prevalent in the online business world, so do related legal issues. While bidding on keywords, affiliates can hijack trademarked phrases that can result in a loss of revenue for the owner of the trademarked product. In addition, Adsense users may be clicking on ads on their own sites. Worse, your competitors may be clicking your ads. Software could periodically click your paid ad, and quietly drain your account of funds. In some countries, people are paid to click your links. The list goes on and on.

Click Fraud is a growing concern among online advertisers. The worst part about click fraud is that most advertisers don’t realize it is happening to them. The advertiser is the only loser in click fraud. The advertising network gets paid per every click whether or not it was a fraudulent click or a legitimate one. As long as the advertising networks don’t lose revenue as a result of click fraud they are not motivated to provide a real solution. Although advertising networks claim to fight click fraud, proactive advertisers often turn to third party monitoring systems.

The pay per click industry is in disagreement regarding click fraud rates. It is estimated that the number could be as low as .02 percent and as high as 30 percent or above. It is no wonder that advertisers would like to get a more accurate picture. The severity of click fraud depends on a variety of factors, such as ad position, bid price and industry type. It appears, that the more competitive the industry and the higher the bid price, the more incentive there is for others to try to defraud you.

Pay Per Click Arbitrage is another common practice defrauding advertisers. Simply put, PPC arbitrage is the practice of bidding on inexpensive keywords, purchasing clicks from Google, Yahoo and other advertising networks and then redirecting the visitors to websites built exclusively for the purpose of hosting expensive AdSense ads. So, the offender pays fifty cents for a click while earning five dollars for another. PPC arbitrage inflates keyword prices while making crooks rich.

Domain Name Disputes

Disputes over domain names can be a part of online business. When a dispute over a domain name occurs you can always turn to the courts. Although courts have the authority to award control over domain names, don’t expect a quick resolution. As usually, courts act slowly. Therefore, many businesses avoid the courts and turned to the name registrars for help.

Companies that do bring a court action must be prepared to spend a significant amount of money on legal fees. Your company is going to have to prove in court why a domain name needs to be transferred to another business.
In reaction to strong lobbying from trademark owners and famous individuals, Congress passed the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in November of 1999. This act made it easier for individuals and companies to take over domain names that are confusingly similar to their names or valid trademarks. To do so, however, they must establish that the domain name holder acted in bad faith.

Web Site Terms of Use

From a legal standpoint, it is important to have a “Terms of Use” page on every business web site that describes the terms and conditions that govern the relationship between the visitor of the website and its publisher. Properly written “Terms of Use” can be an invaluable tool in protecting your businesses from misunderstanding, frivolous lawsuits, and crippling legal exposure.
Terms of Use pages contain similar content, but there is no one size fits all solution. Each online business has a unique relationship with its customers that must be considered in its “Terms of Use”.

Common Elements Of Terms Of Use

Choice of Forum - Choice of Forum provisions permit the parties to a contract to choose, with some limitations, the jurisdiction in which any disputes pertaining to their relationship are resolved. In many cases, a web site’s Terms of Use purports to require any legal action pertaining to the web site to be brought in the jurisdiction in which the online business is located that may be very inconvenient for a distant customer.

Choice of Law - Choice of Law provisions permit the parties to a contract to select, with some limitations, which particular jurisdiction’s laws will be applicable to their relationship. Usually, a web site’s Terms of Use will apply the law of: (1) the jurisdiction whose laws are most favorable to the publisher; (2) the jurisdiction in which the publisher is physically located; or (3) the jurisdiction whose laws are most familiar to the attorney who drafted the contract.

Limitation of Liability - These provisions allow one or both parties to place certain limitations on their liability for breaching the agreement of the parties. Properly drafted, Limitation of Liability provisions can cap a party’s legal liability for certain conduct.

Indemnification - Indemnification provisions permit a party to shift the burden associated with an projected loss to the other party. In many cases, a web site’s Terms of Use require the visitor of a web site to indemnify the web site’s publisher toward any losses associated with the use of the web site’s content.

Attorneys’ Fees and Costs - In general, a party is required to pay his own legal fees and expenses, win or lose. Nevertheless, parties to a contract may, with some limitations, require that a party who loses in a legal action brought pursuant to the agreement pay the attorneys’ fees and costs sustained by the prevailing party.

Your Terms of Use is one of the most important content created for your Web site; therefore, it is advisable to have an attorney look it over prior to posting. A well drafted Terms of Use contract can reduce your legal exposure while a poorly written one can increase your liability.