It seems the excitement about search engine optimization fades in and out from time to time. The more people talk about search engine optimization (SEO) the more it seems to be the logical choice for bringing customers to your site. However, there are some points that I haven’t seen anyone else make as of yet about the effectiveness of SEO versus the effectiveness of building a responsive list. I think you’ll be surprised to see which one comes out on top.Rules and Regulations
There are rules and regulations for almost everything in life. List building and SEO are no different.
Rules for SEO: Your HTML coding has to be just so in order to rank highly on the engines. Your copy (text) also needs to include specific keywords a certain number of times in specific places or you might not be accepted. And if you are accepted, unless you follow all the “dos” and “don’ts” of SEO, you’ll likely not see the top 10? or even the top 50.
Rules for List Building: Offer a good product or service; notify your list about it, and watch the sales come in.
The Only Constant Is Change
If you do get accepted in the search engines, you might be tempted to rest easy. Don’t! As we’ve seen in recent months, search engines can change their policies and ranking orders at the flip of a switch. If you depend on search engines for all your traffic, such a change could leave you completely out of business. Not good!
Lists on the other hand are built from loyalty? not rules and regulations. The people who subscribe to your list, ezine, or newsletter are there because they want to be. They’ve come to you because you offer them something of quality? something unique.
If you change the design or copy on your site, it won’t matter one bit to the members of your list. They’ll still be there for you. If the search engines decide they’re only going to list sites that use the colors blue, green, and purple? it won’t affect you at all.
Sales vs. Leads
Truth be known, SEO only drives “leads” to your site? not sales. On the other hand, list building puts your offer in front of those who have already checked you out, decided they liked what you had to say, and chose to stick with you. These are loyal, pre-qualified individuals who are waiting to receive your next mailing and purchase your next product.
Free, Automatic, and Viral
Lastly, list building can be done at no cost. List building can happen automatically and can (and should) be a viral process.
If you produce a quality list that offers something of value, others will want to tell their friends about you. This process of automatic, viral marketing costs you nothing whatsoever and works like a dream because your subscribers are making unsolicited recommendations to those who trust them.
This process not only drives new subscribers to your list, but also ultimately makes new sales for you.
Search engines, on the other hand, do not operate virally. While some are free, many charge for the “opportunity” to be reviewed for inclusion. Still others charge on a pay-per-click basis, which can get very costly without ever bringing in one sale.
When all is said and done, which one is better? Lists or search engines? While both can have an important role in your marketing plan, if what you’re looking for is the generation of more sales? building a responsive list simply can’t be beat.
About The Author
How - exactly - do you build a list that delivers an automated, consistent, monthly income? Robert Gwuzd and Ian Herculson have teamed up to offer you “The Opt-In Strategy,” a powerful, FREE EBOOK designed to show you specifically how to build a list of thousands who will consistently buy from you. Best of all? this ebook COSTS YOU NOTHING. Download it now at http://www.opt-insolution.com
Written by SEO Tipster on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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We all know that the search engines can’t “see” or “read” the graphics on our pages. We also know that we need to provide text on a page, so the spiders will have something to crawl and index.After all, we have to prove to the search engines without a shadow of a doubt that our pages are about what we say or claim they’re about if we want to achieve top rankings. That’s why I believe so strongly in focusing each page on one single keyword phrase only. As soon as a spider hits a page, I want the spider to know exactly what that page is about.
But, many sites out there are graphic intense, often by virtue of their very nature. The sites may sell prints, wallpaper, pictures, graphics, or posters. Or, the sites may sell hats, for example, so that each page is full of pictures of a particular type of hat.
Many Web site owners don’t want to add text to those pages, because they want to highlight exactly what they’re selling. They’ve created the site with their audience in mind, which is as it should be. After all, when visitors stop by a wallpaper site, they want to see loads of pictures of the different wallpaper samples. They don’t want to read about them!
So, being careful to adhere to Google’s Guidelines that prohibit hiding text, what options do we have with our graphic-intense site?
Let’s look at some possible solutions.
1. Can you put visible text above or below the graphics on the page? If so, this is your best solution, because you’re giving the engines some content to crawl.
Simply add a paragraph of content above the graphics, and then a paragraph or two of content below the graphics. Make sure the content focuses on your keyword phrase and that it describes the page accurately.
If you don’t want to add a full paragraph of content above the graphics, try adding a heading tag containing your keyword phrase. Then, add content beneath the graphics.
The bottom line is: you want to start the page with text if at all possible, not graphics.
2. Be creative! Can you add descriptive text about each graphic under or beside the graphic? Can you add little “Tips” or “More Info” boxes on the page that contain valuable information for your users and keyword-containing text for the engines? Can you include testimonials from happy customers that will add valuable keyword-containing content to your page?
3. Leave your existing graphic-intense pages the way they are, and create some new text-based interior pages that are full of valuable content related to your graphics. Pull in traffic through those pages, and provide text links to your pages full of graphics. Be sure to use your important keyword phrase in the link text that links to the pages of graphics.
Keep in mind that these new pages are interior pages, which means that they should provide a link to other pages on your site, and your site should provide a link back to those pages. If you’ve done your homework right, these new pages are providing value to your users, therefore providing value to the search engines, so there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to link to these new interior pages.
Can you use redirects from the text-based pages to the pages of graphics? I highly recommend not doing so. The engines have never been fond of redirects for one thing. But, even if your redirects aren’t “sneaky” (as Google says in their Guidelines), if you don’t use text links with the keyword phrase in the link text, you’re missing out on one of the most valuable search engine optimization strategies available to you: using your keyword phrase in link text pointing to your pages.
4. You can leave your existing graphic-intense pages as they are, and instead concentrate on “off page” factors such as building link popularity to those pages and making sure that the pages linking to the graphics pages use link text that contains your important keyword phrase. In other words, you can work on your “link reputation.”
After all, you can compete with the big boys using almost any strategy that is detrimental to search engine rankings if your link popularity and link reputation is strong enough, and if the sites linking to you describe your site using your important keyword phrase.
By “strong” enough, I mean that the links should be from popular, authoritative sites in your topic area. Sheer numbers aren’t what we’re after here. We’re after links from popular and authoritative sites in our topic area. We’re also after links that use our important keyword phrase in the link text describing our pages.
In Conclusion
Though the best solution is to add text to your pages of graphics, sometimes you (or your client) won’t want to go that route. They may want to keep the existing pages just as they are.
In those situations, it’s important to have some “Google friendly” solutions that will give you the best chance at achieving top rankings for your pages, while making sure that you’re following the guidelines as stated by Google.
About The Author
Robin Nobles is the Co-Director of Training of Search Engine Workshops with John Alexander. They teach 2-day beginner, 3-day advanced, and 5-day all-inclusive “hands on” search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe. She also teaches online search engine marketing courses through http://www.onlinewebtraining.com, and she’s a member of Wordtracker’s official question support team. With partner John Alexander, she’s co-authored a series of e-books called, “The Totally Non-Technical Guides to Having a Successful Web Site.” And, they opened a networking community for search engine marketers called The World Resource Center for Search Engine Marketers.
robin@searchengineworkshops.com
Written by SEO Tipster on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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A few months ago I was watching a stream meandering back and forth across a flat plain in a high mountain valley. The stream reached it’s destination - a small lake - but only after dozens of loops and curves. It occurred to me that Water and clever Web Marketing have something in common - they both follow the path of least resistance.Let me explain.
Your first contact with a future customer usually starts with an email. It could be an Ad in an Ezine, it could be your Resource Box at the end of one of your Articles, or it could be your Signature File in your correspondence.
But in the chain of events that leads to a web sale, an email is the point of greatest resistance.
Why is that?
Firstly, your future customer is reading your message offline. She or he has to fire up their modem before they can buy your product. And that requires effort (and expense).
Secondly, if your message is in an Ezine, it’s probably one of a dozen other messages all clamoring for attention.
Thirdly, whether your message is an Ezine Ad, a Resource Box, or a Signature File, you’ve probably had only a few lines to explain why your widgets are so good.
So if an email is the point of greatest resistance, what is the solution?
The ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism (pronounced ‘Dowism’) - also known as ‘The Watercourse Way’ - gives us the answer. Taoism tells us to be like Water and follow the path of least resistance. Water flows. It is soft and moves easily around obstacles in its path, instead of attempting to go through them.
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. (Tao Te Ching, ch. 78)
“What is the path of least resistance in an email?”, I hear you ask. Offer something free!
Successful web marketers know this already. I recently did a survey of the Resource Boxes of fifty well known Ezine Writers. Over 90% of them were not trying to sell anything from their Resource Box. In fact, an overwhelming majority were not even trying to get a click-thru to their website - they were simply offering a free subscription to their Newsletter. In other words, they were more interested in building a long-term relationship than they were in making a quick sale.
When I started out on the Internet, I was pretty impatient. I certainly didn’t want to the follow the path of least resistance. The path I had in mind was more like the flight of an arrow - straight to it’s target.
But the statistics suggest that most web sales are not made like that; on average your customer will have to see your message seven times before he or she buys your product.
So next time you plan your marketing strategy, why not take a lesson from Water and follow the path of least resistance?
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Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://ezine-writer.com/
Written by SEO Tipster on December 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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