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10 Tips for Writing Better Web Content
Author: Wade Sonenberg 07 29th, 2008We’re not all copywriters, but writing concise and compelling web content is essential to the success of any small business’s online presence. Here are a few tips to help get you started, increase conversion, and convey your message:
- Less Is More
The average user spends just 4.4 seconds on a page, don’t waste it with filler language or beat around the bush. The more clear and concise you can be, the better. - Important Information First
Don’t leave your call to actions or main selling points to the end of the page, bring your visitors in and get them excited. Then add the supporting arguments and details. If you don’t, they may not make it to the important points. - Use Headings
Break up long pages by adding sub-headings, such as the <h2> and <h3> tags. Make them catchy, relevant, and of course describe the content immediately following them. - Images
Attractive images are extremely effective in selling your message (even subliminally), if used correctly. Make sure they are very clean and attractive. Spend a few dollars on professional stock photography to get your message across, my favorite shop is IStockPhoto.com by the way. - Establish Trust
The internet is a low trust environment. Don’t oversell, or be pushy, or your users will surely hit the “Back” button. Take every opportunity to make your site & content more personable, after all this is sales, not promenade. And don’t forget the “About Us” page, they’re looking for it…. - Be an Authority
If you want to look up defenestration, you go to the dictionary. Visitors should leave knowing that you are the first stop, should they have a future need. Use action verbs, demonstrate credentials, and give awaygoodgreat information, customers will thank you with their business. - Emphasize Key Terms
Bold or italicize key terms and concepts. Drawing a user’s eye to a section’s key concept will draw them into the rest of the text surrounding them. - Use Lists
Whenever possible. Which looks better?
Bass, catfish, trout, sharks, stingrays, and tarpon
– or –- Bass
- Catfish
- Trout
- Sharks
- Stingrays
- Tarpon
- Break Long Content into Chunks
Break long articles, tutorials, or product listings into sub-pages, with a small (but descriptive) navigation menu to help visitors get to their desired location. - Highlight Quotes
Nothing makes the impersonal personal like quotations from valued sources. Whether they take the form of testimonials, or quotes from industry leaders, be sure they stand out. For example: “This is a quote that is inline with other text, is it very noticeable?”“Or does this quote grab a little more attention?”
Spanish Translation for your Website; and other languages too!
Author: Wade Sonenberg 04 2nd, 2008According to the U.S. Census Bereau, nearly 15% of the American population is Hispanic or of Hispanic descent. Want to communicate with them, but don’t know Spanish? Heck, want to communicate in French, Greek, and Chinese too? Don’t worry, this isn’t a crash corse any any language - not even HTML.
Translate Your Website with Google Language Tools
- First, we must get a link to the page we want to translate. Go to Google Language Tools, about a third of the way down to the “Translate a web page” dialog. Simply enter your web page’s address, and choose the language conversion option at the right. Hit enter, and your page in the chosen language should appear.
- Next, copy the link and place it in your blog, website, or email.
- Whamo, you’ve just learned Spanish, Greek, or Chinese on the web in 10 minutes…
Hint & Example:
Try linking to the translated page from a flag representing the language…
Click the flag to see RainmakerWebDesign.com in Greek:
Blog Or Relegate Your Internet Business To Slow Death
Author: Wade Sonenberg 03 15th, 2008If you have an internet business, or some form of online home business which doesn’t currently support a blog then you are losing a lot of ground to your competitors and quietly signing the death warrant of your online money making ventures.
Blogging Is The Future Of Online Activity
Actually to be honest blogging isn’t the future of online activity Blogging Is The Now of Online Activity and has been for some time. Everything and everybody is leaning towards web 2.0 based sites such as blogs and when I mean everyone and everybody I’m talking about the people who count and search engines. That’s right search engines…remember those pesky not-so-trivial online dictators that we just can’t seem to do without but fervently wish we could?
SURE…a lot of savvy internet marketers are harping on how the golden era of the search engine has been one-upped by social media sites and is for all intent and purposes over; truth be told that’s a pile of steaming hogwash. Why? Well let’s look at some figures…you can’t go wrong with figures and stats; just as long as they are right I guess:
Search Stats End of 2007
* Google: 63.98% (The bigboy has muscled up)
* Yahoo: 22.87% (Retained the same balanced diet)
* MSN: 7.98% (Looks like Microsoft’s search is on a slimfast diet)
* Ask.com: 3.49% (The toddler of the pack…must be doing good because it won a PC World Nomination for 25 Most Innovative Products of The Year)
Fine And Dandy But What Has Mainstream Search Got To Do With Web 2.0?
Hmmm,wasn’t the whole point of social media websites and the explosion of new refined niche-category search engines supposed to circumvent bigboy online mainstream search? After all Google is no longer the darling of the people it once was and doesn’t seem to abide by its “Do No Evil” motto anymore. Be that as it may Google ain’t going anywhere anytime soon no matter how loud disillusioned acolytes may chant. Google is making sure of that by strengthening its grip on search and its influence in the social media theater…that’s why it bought Youtube for $1.65 billion dollars despite having its own Google Video platform which however, in comparison, performed dismally.
What was the real driving force behind the Google buy up of Youtube? How about the fact that Youtube has over 100 million videos viewed a day and well over 72 million unique visitors each and every month!
But this is happenstance digression, time to get back to the point!
Mainstream Search Engine Web Traffic vs. Social Media Traffic
If you think of mainstream search as enormous relatively unrefined web traffic and that of social media websites as more niche-oriented or refined web traffic you wouldn’t be far wrong. But that is not the complete story because conversely search-engine based web traffic is more valuable to you as an internet marketer or if you have an online home business. Catch is, it ain’t easy to get to the top of the search engines where it really matters! Luckily this is where social media sites and web 2.0 truly shine.
It is a lot easier to get a good flow of web traffic from web 2.0 and social media sites than it is from the search engines, most especially if your website/blog is spankin’ brand new! However getting internet traffic from social media sites also requires a level of input from you (Yup! What one-time big-hair advocate and internationally recognized hairstylist Vidal Sassoon quipped stands ever strong today as the day he uttered it: “The Only Place Where Success Comes Before Work Is In The Dictionary”).
Social Media And Web 2.0 Is All About Community
Much as we like to think of ourselves as unique creatures and largely independent-minded the truth is we humans are little more than herd animals. We tend to appreciate and hangout with like-minded individuals, people who mirror our thoughts and ideas. In other words people gravitate towards people who share the same interests. True there is some time-whipped saying which states that opposites attract but that’s best left to the field of love not the frenzied amphitheater of social media.
Social Medialites are all about the community and friends!
If you wish to capitalize and make any headway using social media sites you need to become part of the community; a task that involves active participation and not merely flagrant self-promotion! Blatant self-promotion without community service is the quickest and most assured way to get banned from a social media site (oh did I mention that most social media sites loathe internet marketers with a venom that Cleopatra’s Asp would’ve envied, though there are a few good ones solely devoted to internet marketing and online business).
Participation in this context means:
* voting for posts
* reading posts (and not just wanton voting)
* making comments
* joining and inviting friends to lists
* writing your own posts
If you’re new to this whole social media thing a good point to begin is read the TOS (Terms Of Service and conduct of behavior) then start making friends by voting for articles or posts you actually like (leaving a comment tends to warm even the coldest of hearts…assuming the comment is positive; social media afficionados tend to favor positive affirmation, much like what goes on in the real world) which will in turn make it easier to get votes for your own posts. The whole point of votes is that that the more of them you have the greater the exposure of your post which translates into more web traffic.
Mainstream Search And Social Media Sites Feed Off One Another
Undoubtedly building up a quantifiable list of friends and fellow voters can take time but when all is said and done that time spent on amassing friends is time well spent indeed! A well-written, intriguing, controversy-juiced post (otherwise commonly known as a linkbait piece) could send anywhere from 1000s to 100,000s of visitors to your site in next to no time.
Web traffic to your blog or website translates into greater love from the search engines which means better positioning in the SERPs (search engine index pages). The bottom line is your social media and web 2.0 efforts will draw web traffic far quicker to your fledgling website than the bigboy search engines, plus that web traffic will push your website further up the search engines.
A good linkbait post helps your seo efforts not only through the links garnered from your amazing penmanship (post) but also for the fact that the search engines these days ascribe greater rank and influence to such links that are heavily and often trafficked! Many heavy-weight links of yesterday that largely exist today as shadowy relics of their former selves (one-time high PR links that now boast little to no movement across their borders) are being consistently and all too frequently downgraded with each passing Google update.
If Content Is Still King; Fresh Content Is His Queen
No denying it, original content is still, as ever, the engine that powers the internet as well as being the enviable darlingest of darlings of the search engines. And you don’t have to be a genius here to figure out that in this respect static sites just cannot compete with mobile platforms such as blogs. King Content’s queen (HRH Fresh Content) is the driving force behind your site being crawled by the search engine bots on a regular basis. With a blog any new content automatically gets inserted on the homepage and pings (notifies) the search engines almost instantaneously. This means even a short post is going to bring the search engines sniffing to your site within hours (sometimes minutes) like a panting beast hot with lust. Just try and get that response with a static website even with a totally original, lengthy article in play!
Make Money
Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of http://www.internetbusinessmart.com
Introduction To Blogging - How To Build Customer Relationships
Author: Wade Sonenberg 03 12th, 2008
The term blog comes from the word iweblog. Blogs have been around for approximately 6 years in their current form - as a digital journal maintained by one or more authors. The blogosphere is the portion of the Internet where the websites are blogs. Anyone who blogs (writes blog entries) is referred to as a blogger.
Part of the charm of a blog is that the writing voice is very personal, one-on-one. This is much more palatable to readers, making it easier for them to trust the writer. Research shows that the most popular blogs also have a photo of the writer, even if the blog ultimately exists for promoting the services or products of a business. This also builds trust, and would seem out of place on a regular website, unless it was a regular column - and thus similar to a blog anyway.
Another advantage that a blog has over a regular website is that Search Engines currently love indexing them, since the content is typically updated very regularly. In fact, successful bloggers say that you must write and post blog entries at least daily, if not multiple times daily, if you want your blog to rank high in the Search Engines and blog directories for relevant keywords.
An ongoing experiment of mine shows that my blogs get indexed by the Search Engines more frequently than my regular websites. If you have both a website and a blog, you can then use the relative popularity of your blog to advertise your website, thus drawing traffic.
Another use for a blog is to develop Google PR (Page Rank) for your main site. If you write and post quality content to your blog frequently, you will eventually draw links from other arwebsites and blogs. This in turn helps increase your blog’s PR - a relative measure of popularity - which helps your visibility in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Similarly, if your blog links back to your main site, the site’s PR will eventually increase as well.
On the issue of using a blog to promote your business, you have to tread carefully. Your blog has to offer informative content without hard-selling your products and services. (But there is one blog, Woot.com, which exists solely to sell a new product every day.)
If you do publish a “business” blog, offer tips relevant to your business and its industry. Build trusting relationships. For example, if you selling antique furniture to consumers, offer useful do-it-yourself tips on refinishing, hints on how to save money by bargaining, materials to use for fix-it projects, and so on. Show the reader that you are interested in their well-being and finances, not just your bottom-line sales.
On the other hand, if your business caters to wholesale furniture buyers for chain or department stores, your blog content will have to be different. Such buyers are not interested in the same information as the average antique buyer. Target your blog content appropriately.
You can also add advertising to your site, which should be relevant to your blogging topics. Many of the ad networks provide “contextual” ads by scanning your blog (or website) and checking for keywords. The delivered ads will be thus be relevant.
While some people view ads as an annoyance, there are others who are searching for information. They may find your website via a Search Engine, but they may still be looking for additional information, or even product-specific information. The intent of contextual advertising is to provide links to sites with such information. And you get rewarded for (legitimate) clicks on ad links.
The truth is, there are millions of blogs out there, and blogging services report that number is growing rapidly on a daily basis. Carve out a niche relevant to your business. Exercise the leverage that Search Engines give to blogs. Post surveys and comment boxes so that readers can interact with you. In other words, build a relationship with readers. It takes time and effort to develop regular traffic to your blog, and quality content and frequency is the key.
(c) Copyright: 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, Chameleon Integration Systems
Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.
Create a Business Blog - 10 Steps to a Better Blog
Author: Wade Sonenberg 03 5th, 2008
Building a business blog is a great online marketing tool for finding new customers and networking online. Once you have set up your own blog, either on your own domain name and website or off site like http://www.blogger.com, it’s time to start posting effective blog entries that draw visitors.
How?
Follow these 10 steps to a better business blog!
Strong Post Titles
Title your posts for grabbing readers attention and help search engines find your blog. Every blog post has a title. Make each title strong, concise with your most important key word first in the title. This title is the heading that others see first through RSS readers so make it a grabbing headline.
Example: Stuffable Teddy Bears with Noah’s Ark Workshop or AmeriPlan - Latest Bonus Opportunity.
Strong Post Introduction
Start your actual blog entry with the same key words, phrase as your title. Think of it as reinforcing your theme of your post to your readers but it will also help with search engines and RSS readers that display your blog may include the first few lines of your latest post.
Make your blog informative.
Teach your readers and consumers. Share your knowledge to help them make informed decisions. No Hype - avoid making your blog post an advertisement. Avoid sounding like an advertisement ~ internet surfers are wise to the language of SALES.
Become a resource.
Through consistent effective blogging, you will establish yourself as an expert in your area whether it’s about cooking or candles, home decor or direct sales. Present your blog posts in a way that invites discussion with an email address for readers to contact you for more information or answer questions.
Create a Dynamic Blog
Encourage feedback. A blog with comments, feedback, discussions will create more visitors and establish your blog as dynamic and interactive. A static blog that simply has post after post of self discussion is much less effective as a marketing tool so work to make your blog shine. Within your post invite your readers to click-thru for more information on whatever you are discussing. This will bring visitors to your own website to see product, read more and potentially create sales.
Make your business blog a big part of your marketing
Discipline yourself to blog frequently. Essentially, train yourself in the same manner you use to post your ads through your online groups. Create a new blog entry even 2-3 short paragraphs several times a week. At a minimum, blog weekly. Publishing a new blog entry 3-5 times a week will keep your blog being read, crawled by search engines and creating headlines on the RSS feeds which is what you want.
Think Search Engines when blogging
Work to use a few important key words over and over within each blog entry. Consistent use of the same key words that internet surfers use to search will build up page after page of these search relevant key words in your blog. When you have a blog with 15 posts in your blog with titles and blog entries about soy candles, scents, safety and specials - search engines will read your blog as it would a website.
A blog with several posts (pages) on the same subject with the same key words but unique content will give you search engine traffic that you can learn to funnel to your own website or direct sales company website.
Publish your own articles on your business blog
Post your own articles to your blog, complete with resource box and permission to publish with resource box intact. Your own articles will give you further credibility and build readership. Other than your own website, your business blog is the perfect venue to you to publish your thoughts, ideas, and business plans through articles and business writing.
Use your blogs links section
The links section of your blog give your readers the opportunity to explore your websites, your newsletter, services and products further after they have read your latest post. Make sure your blog links section clearly directs readers to your own website but also to sign up for your newsletter or read other blogs you have online.
Be sure to PING!
Finally, take the time to understand how to ping your blog. Whether you are using a ready made blogging system like Blogger or your own blog set up on your website - every time you publish your blog you have one more step before your work is done! The absolute minimum is to submit your blog each time to Ping-o-matic http://www.pingomatic.com Your latest blog will be sent out to a number of feeds and blog services for online publication.
When you are ready to begin actively promoting your blog, you will move beyond using only Ping-o-matic as your announcement for your business blog.
Remember to keep your business blog ever focused on your readers, your target market. Your blog will be found by both RSS readers AND search engines following these 10 steps to a better blog!
Tammy Ames is the owner of WAHM Connections bringing home business learning to striving entrepreneurs. You can visit her blog at WAHM Connections here WAHM Blog for home business owners.
Every Business Needs To Blog
Author: Wade Sonenberg 03 5th, 2008
Blogging is a weblog or online journal where people write their daily (or at least frequent) adventures, sentiments, or whatever other ideas they want to express online. What started out as more of a personal commentary about one’s own life events and beliefs, has taken the internet by storm and is now used for both personal and business agendas alike.
With the steady progression of online businesses, blogs have become an inexpensive, yet very effective method of advertising. Business blogs are basically created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales. Here are 5 reasons why blogging should be included in your arsenal of internet marketing tools.
* Blogging is pretty straightforward and non-technical. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper where you can make it known to the world (or at least to your readers) your ideas, experiences, products and services. With no particular writing format to follow, bloggers have the freedom to express themselves creatively and use what ever individualistic writing style they feel comfortable with. This opens the door for just about anyone who has access to a computer to tap out a few words and exploit a blog for all its benefits.
* Blogging is authentic and personal. Real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about products or services has a much more personal appeal. Reading a blog can be like talking to person first hand about their experiences.
* Blogging is free. Blogging sites offer free services with minimal restrictions. Within 10 minutes after registering for an account, you can easily be up and blogging. Any opportunity for free web time is definitely a bonus, especially for businesses that are just starting up. Paid blog sites are not bound by the same restrictions and have the potential to generate more income for your seriously growing business.
* Blogging builds credibility. Consistently posting quality content will gain you notoriety as an expert and can position you and your company as a leader in the field. Readers who benefit from what you post will not only continue to return, but can increase your readership by providing links to your blog.
* Blogging builds relationships. As a forum where your main objective is not to sell, you can establish a more personal relationship between you and your customers. Blogs give your readers an option to leave comments and a way for you to measure the value of what you are offering. Feedback can be used to determnine the needs and wants of your customers.
A major difference between a blog and a conventional website is that a website needs to be promoted in order for it to bee seen. Blogs on the other hand, have a unique quality which allows them to announce themselves and can keep doing so with every posted update. These are just a few of the many benefits blogging can bring to your business. Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an internet marketing tool.
Andrea Chin surrounds herself with like minded people and learns from the best. Get the Truth about this business and partner yourself with a Team that is already achieving the success you desire.
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