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Internet Marketing Tips; Do Keyword Research and Document Results

Do Keyword Research and Document Results

Internet Marketing Tip: The first step – conduct a keyword research and document the monthly searches, number of competitors and number of Google indexed results.

In my opinion, keyword research is an art form. It is tedious, time-consuming work that requires lots of patience. It’s important to come to the table with no preconceived ideas as to what your keywords are going to be ahead of time. Be ready to do research.

So how do you conduct keyword research that results in traffic to your website?

First, let’s define Keyword(s)

A keyword is not usually just a single word, but can be 2 or 3 words in a combination that answer the question “What’s the point of this one web page?”

Internet Marketing Tip; Learn how a search engine works.

NOTE: When you do a Google search you aren’t actually searching the web, you are searching Google’s index of the web, or at least as much of it as Google has found.

Google uses software programs called spiders. Spiders start by fetching a few web pages, then they follow the links on those pages to new pages, then fetch the pages they point to. Spiders then follow all the links those pages point to, and so on, until they have indexed a pretty big chunk of the web. These spiders index many billions of pages stored across thousands of machines.

So, when you decide to search for a specific keyword:

  • Google’s software searches every indexed page that includes your keywords.
  • In many cases, there are hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions…even billions) of pages indexed on the internet with those specific keywords.

Internet Marketing Tip; How to conduct a keyword research

You can try out this free keyword tool at Wordtracker, or check out  ‘8 Best Keyword Research Tools’ for more options. I also use the free Chrome extension app – Scout, it is easy to use and has a lot of cool features.

At the Wordtracker Search page, type in a relevant keyword and click Search. For instance, I choose the Google option in the upper left corner, typed in ‘Marketing Specialist’, and clicked Search.

Internet Marketing Tip: Document keyword research results

First, open up a spreadsheet and start documenting keyword research results

  • In the first column type in the keyword
  • In the 2nd column type in the Volume (Average Number of Searches in the Last 12 months).
  • In the 3rd column type in the Competition (# of competitors, the higher the number, the more competition.)
  • In the 4th column type in the Google count of indexed pages with your keyword in the content. It is at the top of the search page, i.e “About 709,000,000 results”.

Finally, go over your spreadsheet and look at all of your keywords looking for a keyword niche… in other words look for keywords with at least 1000 Volume i.e Monthly Demands,  limited Competition; under 500,000 indexed pages of competitors results.

Keyword research takes time… sometimes several hours and should result in hundreds of potential keywords that you can use at your website, keywords that will drive traffic to your site. And, the job is never done. You need to revisit this process on a regular basis to see if the keywords you are using are still relevant, and also search for new keywords

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

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Internet Marketing Tips; Simple 5 Step Business Plan

Internet Marketing Tips; Simple 5 Step Business Plan

Many of you are asking “Why do I need a Business Plan?” For years I had been operating without one, just drifting from one project to another. These days I review my business plan every year for the following reasons:

  • It gives me a chance to decide where I want to go with my business.
  • A business plan forces me to review all aspects of your business; sales goals, marketing, operations, financial plan
  • A plan sets up targets in all major areas of my business: sales, expense items, staff
  • My business plan becomes a baseline for monitoring progress and holds me accountable.

There are all sorts of reasons to write a business plan, among them:

  • If you are starting a new business
  • Looking for financing for an established business.
  • A new financial period is about to begin (which is why I do it yearly)
  • A significant change in the market
  • You are developing a new product
  • Your business has crossed a threshold
  • Your old plan doesn’t reflect reality anymore

Getting started is easy… just think about where you want to be (with your business), a year from now… 5 years from now, even 10 years from now. You could ask yourself these questions; What level of income would provide you with the lifestyle you envision for yourself? Do you want to work from home, or do you want to work out of a large facility and employ 100 employees? Do you see yourself building a business that you intend to sell and then retire?

A few years ago I ran across this Simple 5 Step Business Plan:

1.Write down 3 aspects of your business that have an impact on sales, usually – Average income per sale per month, the average number of sales you complete per month, and how many contacts are in your file right now that helped you reach these numbers?

2. Document your numbers in each of the above categories, then based on your business goals for the coming year, project the numbers you are going to need in these categories to reach your goals for the coming year.

3. Ask yourself how you are going to increase your average income per sale per month:

  • Add a new product
  • Offer an add-on product
  • For Realtors – focus on a higher price point or investors
  • Provide the Best Product, and Service in order to generate Referrals
  • Provide a different product or service than all of your competitors.

4. Write down your ideas and commitment that will result in an increased frequency of sales per month:

  • Increase the amount of time dedicated to marketing
  • Increase the number of target market prospects in the contact file
  • Establish your expertise in a specific field; write a book or guide, start a blog.
  • Increase networking activities, both online and in-person
  • Increase the number of times you contact prospects or clients

5. Set up a spreadsheet to shows last year’s numbers in each of the 3 categories (as a starting point) and projects incremental increases in each category for you to meet your projected goals for the year.

Click for a Business Plan Worksheet.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Business Plan article, please leave your comments below.

Image: Canva Pro

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Internet Marketing Tips; Promote and Protect a Brand with Social Networking

Internet Marketing Tips; Promote and Protect a Brand with Social Networking

Internet Marketing Tips; Social networking provides a way to promote and monitor a brand, leveraging Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Internet Marketing Tip: Drive traffic to your website on social networks.

Once your website is all set up and you are blogging on a regular basis, it’s time to start driving traffic to your site – leveraging the social networks; primarily Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Social media provides a way to communicate directly with your prospects, clients, and employees (if you have any). There are a couple of ‘new kids on the block’ – Instagram and Pinterest, however, most businesses need to focus (for now) on the major social networking players; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.

An important part of leveraging social networking for business is to keep up with what is going on in your industry, and, monitoring the conversations about your brand.

Internet Marketing Tip: Use Google Alerts to monitor your brand and keep up with industry news.

If you have a Google profile (and all of you should) you can set up multiple Google Alerts to monitor your: brand, products, industry terms, etc.

What happens is simple; every day, whenever and wherever Google finds those specifically chosen keywords, they will deliver a list are news articles, social networking posts, and blogs (with those keywords)  to your inbox – every day!

Use this tool to monitor what people are saying about your brand, and to find content to share with your target market.

Internet Marketing Tip: Use Google Analytics to find out what keywords people are using to find you.

Again, if you have a Google profile, you can set up a Google Analytics account for your website, and grab a piece of code to add to your site code (before the </body>). What it is set up, Google will start providing you with detailed statistics on your website: visitors, landing pages, exit pages, keywords used, traffics sources, etc.

You can use this information to see what type of content is driving traffic to your website. With this information, you can provide more of the types of information that people want.

Internet Marketing Tip: Use Hootsuite to monitor and maintain multiple social networks from one dashboard.

Using this tool not only allows you to schedule your posts to multiple social networking sites, it also sends you a report every week that gives you some valuable insights as to how effective your social networking efforts are, what were your top posts, how many people have LIKED your page (and unliked).

Social networking not only provides you a platform to interact with your target market, it also is a good place to control your brand.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

Image: Canva Pro

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Internet Marketing Tips; Convert Visitors to Leads with CTAs

Internet Marketing Tips; Convert Visitors to Leads with CTAs

Internet Marketing Tip; Adding a call-to-action to a blog helps convert visitors into informed prospects giving you a chance to build trust.

In the last Internet Marketing Tip, we talked about how blogging was about establishing your expertise. It is that and so much more. Blogging is an opportunity to attract organic traffic, engage with your audience, and convert visitors into leads. To achieve this goal, you add call-to-actions (CTAs) to your posts.

Internet Marketing Tip: Add a call-to-action to every website article/blog.

What is a call-to-action?

Simply put, a CTA is a response you want users to complete. As a writer, you use words that urge the reader, listener, or viewer of a message to take immediate action, such as; Download an eBook, Follow us on Facebook, Subscribe to this blog, Join your newsletter, etc.

A CTA is also a way to convert Potentially Interested prospects into Informed Prospects in the Sales Funnel.

When the reader clicks the link, they are taken to a Sign-Up form or a landing page that provides downloadable access to more in-depth learning material materials, such as an eBook or webinar.

You could produce longer-form pieces of written content like eBooks, whitepapers, 10 step guides, or you could also produce videos, webinars and slideshows. These offers shouldn’t be randomly selected. No, these offers should be based on what types of content attract your target audience. And you can find those statistics in your website analytics.

Internet Marketing Tip; CTA’s offer gives you a chance to educate your readers.

For instance, you could provide an eBook on how to use Facebook to market a business. The offer could be a series of training videos on mobile marketing. Or you could offer a free webinar on Blogging to Promote a Business.

Internet Marketing Tip; CTA offers to convert visitors into leads.

When a visitor “opts-in”, essentially they are giving you their contact information in exchange for your offer. Once you have a contact’s email address, essentially they have opted-in to your sales funnel and you can start converting them from prospects to clients, building their trust along the way.

It’s a good idea to include CTAs both in the sidebar of your blog as well on every individual article you publish. You can include a button CTA in the sidebar and a text CTA within the body of your blog content.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

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Internet Marketing Tips; Blog to establish your expertise

Internet Marketing Tips; Blog to establish your expertise

Internet Marketing Tips; Business blogs can establish expertise in the industry – if you blog about solutions your business has to offer.

Most business blogs start with a purpose – establishing your expertise in the industry.  The blogs should not be about your product, so much as the solutions, your product or services offer to tackle these challenges.

Internet Marketing Tip; Use keywords in a blog from your keyword research

Think about how you could use each of those keywords in a blog. You might even divide your keywords into categories… thinks in terms of chapters in a book. Then write a series of blogs that are related to each other… sort of like the chapters in a book.

Getting started, it’s always a good idea to just stream thoughts while you are writing. Just write down what you are thinking, then when you have written a couple of pages of text, go back and edit; add SEO, create paragraphs, add images, etc. And, finally, create a catchy title.

Internet Marketing Tips; 10 Blogging Ideas

1. Keep an eye on your local newspaper, summarize and give your own opinion about a news article.

2. Check out the questions posed on Quora, what questions are generating conversations around your product, service or industry.

3. Keep an eye on what are people telling you or your competitors they want to know at social media

4. Write 10 articles with answers to the top 10 questions your clients ask you.

5. Write about how a new law or political development affects your product, service or industry.

6. Compile a list of articles that your target market will find useful; upcoming community events, videos, websites, resources, as long as you are not sharing your competitors’ websites.

7. Compile a list of industry news articles, with a short summary and link to the website.

8. Write about a problem in your industry and how your product or service addresses this problem differently.

9. Share case studies, show how your customers benefited from your products or services.

10. Blog about your participation in industry or trade events.

Whatever you decide to blog about, it’s important to blog at least once a week. If the search engines get a hint of new content (and they will if you are sharing at your social networking sites), they will visit your website and send you traffic, giving you the opportunity to convert traffic into leads. Remember to let your expertise and passion shine through your blog content.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

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Internet Marketing Tips; 5 Keys to a Great Blog

Internet Marketing Tips; 5 Keys to a Great Blog

Internet marketing tips: A well-constructed blog includes 5 key elements; a title, well written content, in-text links, multimedia and call-to-action.

There have been literally thousands of articles written about blog content for the internet and if your goal is marketing, it comes down to this tip: write a well-constructed article that includes the following key elements that will drive traffic to your website… and then convert that traffic to leads.

Internet Marketing Tip: A blog title that grabs attention

  • The title is the first thing that people will see, so it should clearly indicate what the content is about, and it should grab people’s attention.

  • Your page title should include internet marketing keywords for SEO purposes

  • An important tip, your title should be clear and precise to attract internet readers and prompt them to share your post at their social networking sites.

Internet Marketing Tip: The blog content should be well written & formatted

  • The body of your blog content should be well written and formatted in such a manner that it is easy to read.

  • Spend some time proof reading your blog, checking for spelling and grammar errors before you publish on the internet.

  • Add heading tags and bullet points to break the marketing content into sections… making it easier to read.

  • An easy tip; ask a friend to review the post before you publish it.

Internet Marketing Tip: Add multimedia to blog content

  • Adding images to blog content will not only make it pleasing to the eye, images give the reader a visual clue as to what the article is about, thus increasing their interest.

  • You should add at least one relevant multimedia image per blog post. Pictures, videos, info-graphics, graphs, slideshow presentations and maps are examples of multimedia content.

Internet Marketing Tip: Add in-text links to your blog content

  • Include in-text links to relevant blog content, your own internal articles and articles from other high ranking sites, and only if the links benefit the reader.

  • Links to relevant blog content on the internet will help your readers dig deeper into the resources they are interested in. Another marketing tip; In-text links can also point to your landing pages to help you generate more leads.

Internet Marketing Tip: Include a call-to-action in your blog content

  • Every article that you publish on the internet should include a relevant call-to-action.

  • A call-to-action is a marketing tool that helps boost lead generation by inviting your reader to share their contact information in exchange for a valuable product

  • Call to action tips; you could offer a blog content subscription, an eBook, a 5-Step Guide, a series of training videos, etc.

If you include each of the 5 Great Keys to Writing Blog Content listed above, not only will your search engine rankings increase, you will be converting those visitors into leads. And after all, that is what internet marketing tips is all about.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

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Internet Marketing Tips; Blogging is a powerful business marketing tool

Internet Marketing Tips; Blogging is a powerful business marketing tool

Internet Marketing Tips; The goal of a business blog is to provide
relevant non-promotional content AND adds a dynamic element to the
standard website.

The standard website is considered a static online brochure.

The problem with a standard static website is that most owners believe that “if you build it, they will come”.

However, if you are trying to promote your business on the internet, and you are not providing the search engines with regular fresh content, they will NOT come.

Internet Marketing Tip: Adding a blog adds a dynamic element to the standard website.

When you publish a new article/blog at a website, the search engines take note that there is new content and send the spider bots to go in to index it. The more often you publish content, the higher your website will rank at the search engines. And higher rankings mean new visitors and leads for your business.

If you go one step further and link to your new article/blog at social networking sites, the search engines will index your content quicker. The more people share your content with their friends… the more inbound links there are pointing at your website. And, this is a good thing for your website.

Internet Marketing Tip: The goal of a business blog is to publish valuable and non-promotional information.

Think in terms of an industry magazine. You want to avoid using industry jargon that only people in the industry understand, instead, you need to use words that your customers use to describe your business.

Make sure your blog is an integral part of your business website, not at a separate location. This can actually be accomplished using a free website platform; wordpress.com, blogspot.com, posterous.com, etc.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.

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Internet Marketing Tips; Getting Inbound Links and Social Networking Shares

Internet Marketing Tips; Getting Inbound Links and Social Networking Shares

Internet Marketing Tips: Improve your off-page SEO by getting inbound links from other highly ranked websites and sharing at social media sites.

Internet Marketing Tip: Improve off-page SEO by getting inbound links from highly ranked sites.

Off-page SEO, which accounts for approximately 75 of your overall search engine ranking, is based on the authority of your website. In other words, what other websites ‘say’ about yours which means that websites with better or higher authority will rank better than websites with lower authority.

Getting inbound links from other websites, especially websites with high authority is one way you can increase your off-page SEO. Simply put, an inbound link from the LA Times is more valuable than a link from an indexed blog with a small number of readers.

Okay, you say… how do we influence off-page SEO? By creating killer content… content that is so relevant and remarkable that other website owners feel impelled to share it.

Internet Marketing Tip; Write Search Engine Optimized Killer Content

Write content that is outstanding in some way; informational, creative… maybe even humorous. Find your voice, whatever that is, and write in that voice – consistently!

Top 10 Tips for Writing SEO Content

  • Write a minimum of 600 words & a maximum of 900 words
  • Choose a keyword to write your article about
  • Add that keyword at least 2x’s per 100 words
  • Use the keyword in the title
  • Use the keyword in the URL
  • Add an image and install keyword in Alt Tag and description
  • Add a couple of h2 and h3 subtitles with keyword
  • Add links to important websites that add value
  • Write short sentences and paragraphs
  • Leave lots of white space, so that your visitor is not overwhelmed by what you have written.

Internet Marketing Tip: Share links with your Social Networking Friends, Followers & Connections

These days, it is easy to improve your chances of getting those inbound links by sharing your content at your social networking sites, and, of course, it doesn’t hurt to optimize it for the search engines so that it can be found easily. IF, and this is a big IF, your friends, followers, and connections SHARE your content, is more likely to get inbound links.

Take advantage of the Share Buttons right on your published page and your fresh content at your favorite social networking sites. Or, set up a free account at Hootsuite.com to automate and syndicate links to your new content at all of your favorite social media sites.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below. 

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Internet Marketing Tips; Add images with alt tags and descriptions

Internet Marketing Tips; Add images with alt tags and descriptions

Internet Marketing Ideas; Images (pictures, graphics, videos), with alt tags and descriptions, are an important element when added to any webpage or social networking sites.

You’ve heard the saying – A picture is worth a thousand words, that’s absolutely true on the internet. Your visitor can see in an instant what your written content is about, and make a decision whether or not to read that written content.

When it comes to images, search engines extract relevant information from the Html which is the back-end code of your website. Search engines cannot see the images (pictures, graphics, videos, etc). So if you don’t install code behind the pictures and graphics, and attach a title, description, and keywords to your videos, those images will not benefit your SEO.

Internet Marketing Tip: Images enhance your visitor’s experience

Pictures, graphics, and videos on a web page enhance your visitor’s experience, so I recommend at least one of these images on each of your webpages. You need to add an Alt tag and image description (with keywords) behind your pictures and graphs and attach a title, description, and keywords to your videos.

Internet Marketing Tip: Do not use images excessively

More pictures can slow down the loading of a webpage page… you have all experienced this in one form or another. You land on a website and the pictures are slowly loading, sometimes they just aren’t there and other times the pictures will load from top to bottom. What do you do? My reaction is to bounce right out of the website, thus negatively impacting the website’s search engine optimization.

Internet Marketing Tip: Use images at social working sites to promote business.

These days social networking is all about images and it would be hard to overuse them in that venue. When you add an image to your social networking sites, be sure to use descriptive text in the image file name, and keywords in the attached post.

Thank you for reading these Internet Marketing Tips. We look forward to your questions and comments, feel free to add your thoughts in the box below.