Web 2.0 - What's It All About?

By now you've heard the term "Web 2.0"... but what does it mean and why is it important for all marketers? Here's a quick explanation and my thoughts on the importance of the Web 2.0 movement.

"Web 2.0" is a weird phrase. It began as the name of a conference, but the people organizing the conference didn't really know what they meant by it. Mostly they thought it sounded catchy. However, "Web 2.0" has since taken on a meaning. There are some interesting new trends on the Web, and it's the nature of a phrase like that to adhere to them.

From what I can gather, Web 2.0 is all about the social networks being created on the web. Websites like Digg, MySpace, Flickr, Blogger, Wikis, etc. are all operating inside this bubble we call Web 2.0. If you want a really detailed explanation of Web 2.0, visit the site that started it all at http://www.oreillynet.com. I'll save you a lot of reading... it's complicated.

I think the key takeaway is that Web 2.0 is the nature of the web as it was intended to be - a resource that allows for information creation, sharing, and dissemination. Why is this important to us marketers? Because marketing is all about WOM (you guessed it, "Word-of-Mouth"). If you've been following the blogging circles you've probably heard of the latest controversy- blogging for payment. The idea that someone would actually pay you to blog about their products or services would only be possible in the Web 2.0 world.

The viral nature of Web 2.0 is contagious. Just visit http://www.digg.com or Delicious and you'll soon find out what I'm talking about. As a marketer in this environment, you have to understand the importance of viral marketing and managing your marketing messages - even creating a buzz around your products. The fastest way to promote your product today isn't with a superbowl ad, its with a viral marketing strategy!

Marketing Innovation: How to Improve Marketing ROI

There are a number of basic marketing fundamentals that everyone needs to know in order to generate attention, interest, desire and action among prospects. But to be successful in today's competitive environment, you need more than a basic understanding of a traditional AIDA model and the
4 P's (product, place, price, promotion).

A number of years ago, I discovered a marketing methodology made popular by Michael Gerber. For those of you who have never heard of him, you can still find his books on Amazon or your local bookstore. Mr. Gerber referred to this marketing methodology as the E-myth which was comprised of: innovation, quantification, orchestration, and documentation.

This methodology is the key behind major marketing successes like McDonalds, the Four Seasons, and many other well-known brands. Let me explain his methodology and illustrate how it can be applied to your business to deliver significant ROI.

Innovation

If you do what everyone else is doing, you'll get the same results – if you're lucky. Most often, those who excel in any market are the innovators, those who are continually trying new things, creating new methods of doing business, or standing for something unique.

Whether you’re Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Apple computer, or Tommy Hilfiger, innovation is baked into the sale, marketing, and product development process. To illustrate, let's take a look at your run-of-the-mill retail clothing store. When you enter the store, what's the first thing the sales rep says to you? You guessed it, "How can I help you?"

An example of applying innovation would be to have that same sales representative open with a new greeting, something like, "Hello, is it your first time visiting our store?". If yes, there's a perfect opportunity to discuss what makes you unique, how to navigate the store, and so on. If no, the same holds true… "Welcome back. Were you successful in finding what you needed upon your last visit? What can I help you with today?"

Regardless of the actual questions used, the example of innovation in a sales/marketing sense gives you the ability to try something new. This 'something' can take a variety of different formats, but most importantly it iis something that can move you towards a greater ROI. Especially if you understand the next step which is quantification.

Quantification

With each innovation, an action is taken – a product sampled, research conducted, a new sales pitch or value proposition delivered. To be truly effective with your marketing you must measure your results.

The most successful marketing programs are always working to improve their return on investment (ROI). The key is to measure each independent element that could possibly influence your result.

Using our example of the retail establishment, you wouldn't want to ask all of your sales reps to start using a new pitch AND change their dress code. Doing so might dilute your ability to measure the effectiveness of a new sales script. Additionally, you wouldn’t want to change other store elements like the music or store layout at the same time – doing so would make accurate measurement next to impossible.

Now that you've tried something new and measured its effectiveness, you're ready for the third component, orchestration.

Orchestration

After trying something innovative, and measuring the result, you now know what works and what doesn't. The key is to keep innovating in small ways, continually testing and evaluating the results. Once you have your successes identified, you need to roll them out in a systemic fashion.

All sales and marketing personnel should be utilizing and implementing the latest innovation in all they do. This methodology now becomes your control. Your next innovation is only effective if it produces better results than your control.

Improving your process of orchestration is also extremely important. The faster you implement your innovation across the business – in a consistent fashion, the better your results become. Walmart is a master of this. If there is an innovation in one store, it is quickly shared and implemented with all store managers across the U.S. The result is innovation on a massive scale which has a direct and positive influence on ROI.

Documentation

The top innovators do this last step extremely well. Documentation doesn't mean creating reams of manuals that are esoteric or difficult to navigate. Rather, documentation is the development of a guide, procedure, or system that allows consistent implementation of the innovations you develop.

As new personnel come into your business, you want to make sure that the innovations and enhancements you've made to your sales and marketing practices are fully implemented. The best way to do this is to not expect an employee to memorize a 700 page employee instruction manual. Rather, they should become familiar with your way of doing business - which needs to be documented in a simple, easily understandable format.

You know you're at a company that does this well when you hear things like, that's "the Walmart way" or "This is how we do it here". It’s those companies that create living documentation that is easily understood and implemented that excel.

Conclusion

If you’re trying to enhance your marketing program, or create one from scratch, keep this methodology in mind: innovation, quantification, orchestration, documentation. This process will ensure constant growth and improvement in your marketing results.

Don't just take my word for it, look at most major brands or category leaders. Under the hood, you'll find systems for innovation, ways of testing, measuring, implementing, and documenting in a seemingly effortless fashion.

By Michael Fleischner | Internet Marketing Expert, Marketing Secrets

Article Marketing is Your Key to Success

On occassion, I love to share some of the great teachings of SEO expert Brad Callen. Of all his advice, this is the most important. Use this strategy to increase your search engine result placements. Enjoy!

If you follow the seo forums, you'll notice that an old search engine marketing strategy is now suddenly everyone's seo strategy” of choice. Yes, I'm talking about article marketing .

In the SEO Elite newsletter I've often mentioned the benefits of article marketing, but with Google's recent updates to its ranking algorithms, the topic merits a fresh look. With everyone even remotely interested in achieving decent search engine rankings turning to article marketing, it is critical for your website's success that you fully understand what traditional article marketing is about and how you can benefit from it. Note that as search engines become smarter with reciprocal links, article marketing - especially the sort of marketing that guarantees good results - will require some expert knowledge.

In the rest of this lesson, I'll show you:

• How traditional article marketing works
• Why it will not work in the long run and
• The right way to do article marketing

In addition, I have a surprise for you at the end of this issue (but wait, read the lesson first, what you'll learn here is priceless).

Traditional article marketing works something like this:

You write (or pay someone to write it) a 600-word article, take out a list of 100-200 article directories, and submit your article to all of them (or you could hire someone to do that as well). In a week or so, your article is accepted and published by the article directories, not to mention thousands of websites who pick up articles from these directories.

Then, after a week or two of submitting the article, search engines pick it up and suddenly see hundreds, if not thousands, of new links to your site. Even if these are low-quality links in some cases (there are very few highly reputed article directories, and most of them are not themed), your rankings benefits thanks to the sheer number of links you've built.

Over a period of time, after several article submissions, you notice an improvement in your search engine rankings at the next algorithm update. Yes, those links have made all the difference, and now your site is starting to get higher search engine placement.

By the looks of it, article marketing has everything search engines ask for – quality content, contextual links and even one-way links (as opposed to reciprocal links, which are less valuable).

However, to draw a parallel, just blindly submitting articles to hundreds of directories is like shooting in the dark - you're essentially banking on getting tons of non-themed links in the hope that they will be enough to improve your rankings (you may get lucky now and then and have some big website in your niche pick up your article and run it).

Important: The reason I say that many of these article links are non-themed is because the search engines not only look at the page your link is located on, BUT also look at the "website" your link is located on. All of these article directories are probably not related to your website in theme.

If you are serious about your rankings, you'll have to get your hands dirty and chase down the right links yourself (only at the beginning of course - as your site's popularity increases, your articles will generate their own links and you will get requests from other websites requesting your permission to reprint your articles).

The case for adopting a personal approach to article marketing becomes air-tight if you consider the following:

• Search engines are clamping down harder on duplicate content , using the “date of discovery” (when the SE spider first finds the content) and other factors to find out which article is original and which are “copies”.

• Search engines are getting better at evaluating “ themed ” links – links from industry-related websites, with a greater emphasis on niche sites dealing with one or two themes rather than general purpose sites dealing with a large set of themes (like article directories).

• Search engines already consider anchor text as vulnerable to spam, so if hundreds of links pointing to your site suddenly pop up (with the EXACT same anchor text), this would be a “red-flag” event.

In other words, while article submissions are excellent tools for gaining traffic and rankings, search engines are catching up to the fact that spammers may use "blind" submissions in order to artificially boost their link popularity, and are looking to implement filters that can catch spammers. This will not happen immediately and maybe not even in the next year, but as the search engine wars (between Google, Yahoo and the rest) heat up, search engines will get stricter in terms of what they allow to rank highly in their search results.

Note that when I say search engines, I'm really talking about Google (which current serves 40-50 percent of all search engine traffic). However, as article spam increases, the other search engines are bound to implement changes that will catch it as well.

If you want maximum results for your article marketing, you would be best served by adopting the following tactics:

• Target the top article directories and go for a few quality links instead of hundreds of low-quality links. In other words, hit the top article directories (I've listed a few later on in this lesson) and devote the rest of your time on the next couple of steps.
  
• Find themed article directories / content sites that are related to the niche that your article addresses. For example, if you write about CSS, you would be looking for directories and websites that accept content on website development and more directly, website programming.
  
• Use articles as link building tools - find high-ranking sites related to yours and instead of simply asking for links, pitch your article to them as an offer to their readers. If your article is engaging, fresh and unique, most websites will gladly publish it on their websites (or at least give you a reference link), leading to increased traffic as well as link popularity.

There are a few more things that you can do to make sure you came out ahead of the search engines' spam filters:

Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties

Ideally, you shouldn't publish articles that you submit on your own website – this "may" help you avoid the duplicate content penalty a bit. On the other hand, this does not address the concern that carbon copies of your article will suddenly pop up in hundreds of places on the Internet. To deal with this, you can use one or more of the following techniques:

• Post the article on your website, and wait for it to be indexed by the major search engines before you submit it to the article directories.
• Post the full article on your website and submit “ half ” of it to the article directories (works best if you have a 1000 words+ article).
• Have your writer create a second, different version of the article. Then, you can submit that version to the directories while keeping the original on your site.

Deep Linking

Instead of just putting links to your main site page, link to a few inner pages of your site from within the article text. Of course, the inner pages must be relevant to the article topic. This will help spread the link popularity you receive throughout the site. Deep links are one of the ways search engines use to evaluate the value of links.

Themed Links

Use different articles for different purposes. For example, you could have one article promoting your main website, another promoting your new book (and linking to the order page), and yet another article linking to your newsletter signup page. The key is to remember that articles also mean traffic, and along with deep links, getting traffic to the key money-making areas of your site is very important.

By

Brad Callen
Professional SEO
http://www.seoelite.com

Selling products and services through multiple channels offers a number of "touch-points" where information can be gathered from existing or potential customers. Most marketing professionals understand the importance of using this information to personalize communications with customers, or perhaps even to customize products and offerings for them.

But the challenge marketers and retailers continually face is how to successfully glean valuable information without pestering their customers.

So how can a retailer navigate past the possibility of a negative reaction? As a technique, conversational marketing is a proxy for an actual discussion about what customers want and what you can offer to meet their needs. To get there, retailers must know just enough about their customers to make suggestions about what else they might like while not crossing a personal line where the interaction becomes uncomfortable for the shopper.

Conversational marketing is the ability to take what the customer says, remember that information, and then give it back to the customer in a way that the customer finds meaningful and is then likely to respond. Conversational marketing requires a customer database and the ability to access this database across all communication channels. To monitor the success of conversational marketing programs, marketers must be able to access customer information across sales channels in order to get a complete view of the potential buyer before executing marketing programs.

Conversational marketing can facilitate personalization. Personalization is the ability to use unique customer information to communicate with the customer. Whereas personalization most often occurs in the communications channels, the art of customization has an added twist, as it is a product-based activity. Customization also requires a database of customer information usually collected directly from customers during the sales process. But there is the added step of taking the information at hand and creating an entirely new product. Brooks Brothers tailor makes suits. American Girl does it with dolls. Lands End does it with clothes. These are all examples of retailers listening to customer desires and examining customer data.

But before a retailer can even consider establishing healthy and productive personal communications with customers, several issues must be addressed. Customer analysis is the first step before building personalization and customization programs. A retailer needs to determine if the customer base can be segmented in such a way as to make personalization and customization viable strategies for the company. One-to-one personalization may not be cost-effective for many companies who may choose to use traditional targeting and segmentation techniques to create personalized communications and offers for groups or segments of customers.

The second requirement is adequate customer data. Without data that can be accessed across channels, customers cannot be analyzed and segmented according to recency, frequency and monetary value or other characteristics for future offers. In a 2003 study of 209 firms, Zahay and Griffin found that customization requires sales-oriented and specific customer information while personalization requires specific marketing information such as responses to particular marketing offers and the ability to share information throughout the firm.

In some cases, a little imagination and hustle can fix a lack of adequate customer data. But in many cases, the problem is data segregation. Data obtained from different channels gets stored in different “silos,” or databases, with no ability to integrate or access data across the channels.

These days, that can be fixed through smart software solutions. For example, it is now possible for enterprise software systems to use a common set of data across channels within a single data schema. This type of technology is used to share data across other systems and replicate it throughout the company when changes are made in one place. This type of data porting system makes it possible to acknowledge customer information regardless of the interaction mechanism.

In addition to advanced marketing, shared data collection and integration are also integral to excellent customer service. For instance, the customer buys something online, tries it and finds that it doesn’t quite fit the need. Instead of boxing it for a return, the shopper brings it to the local mall for an exchange. That particular store does not have the replacement item but the clerk can have it shipped directly to the customer from another store.

Conversational marketing can create possibilities for up-selling and cross-selling, maximized revenues and profits and loyal customers. That’s why all aspects of an organization must be involved in personalization and customization as viable business strategy choices.

When done correctly, conversational marketing and personalization make customers feel special. People want to feel appreciated. And by providing these services, they will start having conversations about you.


By Brian Carpizo is the CEO of Junction Solutions. The company offers retailers advanced software based on the latest Microsoft platform technology to effectively operate catalog, point of sale and e-commerce customer channels as an integrated enterprise.

The User Experience

If you want to create an effective marketing program, it takes more than a good marketing campaign, catchy headline, or special offer. The key to effective marketing is evaluating the user experience from beginning to end.

In the past, when demand out-stripped supply, and there were only a few providers of a product or service, it was enough to simply catch a prospective user's attention.

If the timing was right, or the discount was appealing, you could easily attract a new user to sample and or try your product. However, with consumers bombarded with as many as 3,000 marketing messages a day, you need more than fancy advertising to grow your business.

Focusing on existing customers, even before they become customers, is essential for long term success. I'm reminded of this every time a get a call from a telemarketer (yes, I still get them on occasion despite the do-not-call list, mostly for donations) and can hear the 200 other call center employees making a pitch in the background.

Knowing that I'm only one of thousands of others receiving the same call doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. Nor does it show a respect for my time. Besides, a sales representative is often one of the first experiences you have with a company. This experience, more so virtually any other, sets the tone for the relationship.

The other touch point to consider is customer service. When a user calls your contact center, based on a catalog or mailer, what is their first impression based on that single phone call? If they have a positive experience, maybe they'll be open to the initial purchase, up-sell and cross-sell offers as well as future marketing messages. A bad experience and no amount of marketing will ever get through to them.

I recently took my family to Disney for a family vacation. And guess what- they understand the power of a consistent user experience. From the moment Disney advertised a special vacation package all the way through (and after) our return trip home, the experience was a positive one. This was no minor task... in fact, Disney works extremely hard to create this experience for their current and future customers.

One worker told me that each "cast member" spends about 2 weeks training at Disney University before they set foot in the park. What are they learning? The "Disney way". This encourages consistency among associates and the result is a consistent user experience. This attention to detail is what sets Disney apart from all other them parks!

So, from a marketing perspective you might be saying what does this have to do with
my direct mail or email marketing - or even special promotions? Or, you might already understand that your efforts as a marketer to create a positive user experience will grow your brand, encourage repeat purchase, and drive revenue.

Regardless of your level or stage of understanding, consider the brands you favor and why you favor them. Work to identify all of the touch points in your business and the path prospective and current customers take on their journey with you.

Determine your strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly the type of experience customers should have with your brand. Begin to shape your customer experiences in a consistent way and the results will be all the proof you need that consistency matters.

How Marketers Can Use Yahoo Pipes to Increase Their Online Sales

While RSS end-user adoption has been relatively slow, marketers have jumped at the chance to use this new internet channel increase their online sales.

If you're new to the world of RSS --- RSS is a simple technology that allows you to deliver your online content directly to your subscribers, other websites and the search engines. It helps you improve your content delivery, as well as increase your online traffic and reach, and even conduct business intelligence more easily.

RSS content is delivered through so-called RSS feeds, which are just simple files that carry your online content. Each of these simple files contains multiple "stories" that you may want to deliver to your audiences, called "content items". A content item can be anything … an article, a blog post, a whole newsletter issue, a sales letter and so on.

But there is more to RSS than simply getting your content out.
One of the fields of RSS marketing is also News Mastering, which allows you to:
[a] take multiple third-party RSS feeds,
[b] mix them together,
[c] filter your new mix using various keywords that you're interested in,
[d] use the mix and your filters to create a new stream of content, pulling together all the content items from dozens or hundreds of other RSS feeds … but only the content items that match your filters.

You can now take this stream of content and either subscribe to it yourself, if for example you want to find out immediately what the market is saying about you, what it's saying about your competitors, and what your competitors are doing themselves.

Or you can take this stream of content and display it on your website to:
[a] enrich the visitor experience, by giving them access to the latest and most relevant líst of content from your field, such as the latest news in the field you are covering … and do so automatically;

[b] by doing so also making your website more search engine friendly, thus increasing your rankings.

But up until now doing all of this was quite complicated and really wasn't accessible to most internet marketers.

But no longer so ...

Yahoo! Pipes Changes The Landscape
Yahoo! Pipes is the latest offering from Yahoo!, finally bringing the premise of News Mastering to the mass market, and actually putting it on steroids.
The general idea behind Yahoo! Pipes is to allow its users to "easily" connect various internet data sources, mix them together in various ways, add additional functionality to them and create a new single output, pertaining directly to your settings.

While this may sound alot like the standard RSS aggregation and filtering we mentioned above, it actually goes much further than anything on the market in enabling you to manipulate outside sources and come up with a new content output, all of this in a visual programming environment.

The "old services" simply allowed you to combine various RSS feeds, set some basic rules on how you want to get content from them, such as limiting the output to only the content items that match your keywords and removing duplicates, and get a new single RSS feed from them. You could then subscribe to this RSS feed in your RSS Reader (for business intelligence purposes) or use it to display its contents on your website.

But Yahoo! Pipes goes much further.

[BTW - in the Yahoo! Pipes glossary, a pipe is an output you create from mixing and manipulating various content sources]

a] Aggregate and Filter any XML Feed
Aggregate any kind of XML feed, not just RSS, which means that if your application provides an XML data output, you can now aggregate that data feed with other different feeds you might be interested in, and create a single RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your RSS Reader.

Just as an example, imagine having an RSS feed that brings you various data from your organization in a single output, such as the latest salës data from your webstore, latest account of company expenses, notifications of new employees, important team communications, your website visitor counts and so on. It even lets you combine other pipes into a new single pipe.

[b] Content Manipulation
Apply various filters, such as a keyword content filter to give you only the content you're interested in, sort, count, truncate, join or even create your own filters. It even lets you add your own input fields.

For example, you could create a pipe that aggregates all the RSS feeds from top online retailers, and include an input field that allows you to enter the name of the product you want the latest deals on, and then creates an on-the-fly output with the latest deals for this product. Essentially, it allows you to add simple or advanced search functionalities to filter out only the content you're really interested in ... from hundreds or even thousands of content sources.

[c] Social Applications
Browse through pipes created by other users to either use them as an end-user, or use their pipes to create your own new pipes. It of course also allows you to make your own pipes public and even provide them as a service to end-users.
There are really almost countless opportunities of what you can do with Yahoo! Pipes, and various new applications will surface when the service gets some milage.

The best part is, you can either create your own application that you use when the need arises from the Web, or an RSS feed that you subscribe to in your RSS Reader, to constantly deliver to you the content that you want. Or you can use the RSS feed to display that content on your website.

All of this is done through a visual interface, which might be daunting for the average user, but shouldn't present a problem to marketers that either have the time to learn the ropes or pay a little something to a person that already has.

How Marketers Will Profít

If you're thinking of how you can profit from Yahoo! Pipes as a marketer, there really are countless opportunities.

[a] Provide highly relevant streams of content on your website to enrich the visitor experience.
[b] Become a preferred access point to relevant and latest content in your industry.
[c] Build applications that allow your visitors to easily access the content they're interested in.
[d] Take your business intelligence activities to the next level. And much, much, more ...

With all the capabilities available through Yahoo! Pipes, countless new opportunities will certainly arise quickly. The best part is, you can now more easily take advantage of them.


About The Author
Article by Rok Hrastnik. Get the easy way to mastering RSS marketing today. Click here now to get all the details on how to make RSS marketing work for you and help you increase your online profits: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/?src=s32.

How to Reach the Top of the Search Engines (Part 1 of 2)

If you want to rank on top for Google, Yahoo!, and other major search engines, you'll need more than a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. Those who rank high on natural search results do so because they've been able to effectively manage their on-page and off-page optimization factors.

Inset Photo: Search Engine Result Page for "marketing expert" Listing MarketingScoop.com in #1 position.

On-page Optimization

What you do on your web pages can have a positive or negative impact on your search results. However, as we'll discuss later in this report, off-page optimization is even more powerful when it comes to increasing your natural search engine results.

Some of the most important on-page optimization techniques begin with choosing a key word to optimize your web page for. There are a number of free tools available on the Internet that can help you find a keyword that is popular but not overly competitive.

Keywords that are highly competitive are often very difficult to place well for. Regardless of which tool you use, free or purchased, I recommend using the Keyword Selector Tool (inventory.overture.com) offered by Overture. This will provide you with a count of the number of times the keyword or keyword phrase is searched on each month. If the keyword or phrase gets few searches, its not worth optimizing for.

On the other hand, if your keyword phrase is highly searched, it may also be competitive - meaning that many websites are optimizing for that term. The ratio of searches to websites for a particular keyword or keyword phrase is called KEI. The challenge is to find a keyword phrase that is popular (a lot of people search for it) but isn't all that competitive (i.e. not a whole lot of sites are competing for it).

There are a ton of "keyword suggestion" tools available online for free. Just use Google and take your pick.Once you've selected a keyword or keyword phrase, you’re ready to learn the 7 Secrets of Search Engine Optimization.

Each of these secrets will increase your search engine results. Used together, you'll find yourself rising through the search engines more quickly than you thoughts possible.

Secret #1: Don't optimize for a single keyword, optimize for a keyword phrase. When you optimize for a single keyword, more often than not, that word is highly competitive and your chances of coming out on top are minimal. Where you gain a significant advantage is by focusing on a keyword phrase. This actually increases your chances of ranking well and ultimately helps you towards ranking well for the single word you originally chose.

A keyword phrase is usually less competitive than a single word and gives search engines a variety of choices when displaying your site. One of the best secrets I've learned over the past few years is to use a post to separate your keywords. You can find the post symbol, usually over the backslash key, located near your Enter button. Be sure to hold the shift key down and viola! Your keyword phrase(s) should appear in your page title (ex: [meta content="seo, search engine optimization, website development, google adwords, online promotion, Internet marketing." name="Keywords"][meta content="Increase your search engine results with this free ebook from MarketingScoop.com." name="Description"][meta content="ALL" name="ROBOTS"]The last tag, the Robots tag, lets the search engine know that it should be crawling your entire website).

There are other things you can do to improve the search-ability of your website such as a sitemap and on-page linking, a bit too detailed for this report. Now that we've covered the first four secrets, most of them having to do with on-page optimization, let’s focus on what you can do outside of your website to increase your search engine results. We call these techniques Off-Page Optimization.

A keyword phrase is usually less competitive than a single word and gives search engines a variety of choices when displaying your site. One of the best secrets I've learned over the past few years is to use a post to separate your keywords. You can find the post symbol, usually over the backslash key, located near your Enter button. Be sure to hold the shift key down and viola! Your keyword phrase(s) should appear in your page title (ex: Keyword Phrase1 Keyword2 ).

Secret #2: Place your keyword phrase within the first 25 words of text, and the last 25 words of text on the page. Proximity to the beginning and ending of your website are paramount. This tells the search engines that the keyword phrase is included throughout your site.

Additionally, place the keyword phrase throughout your page - being sure to bold the phrase once, italicize the phrase once, and underline the phrase once. Mention your keyword phrase every paragraph or so. Just make sure that it appears natural. If you stuff the page with your keywords, you'll potentially turn off browsers who would otherwise find your page valuable.

Some of the clients I've worked with have struggled to find an appropriate place to include their keyword phrase. One technique you can use is to include your keyword phrase just after your copyright notice on the bottom of your webpage. This ensures that it is present within the last 25 words of your page and seems to flow. An example would be, © 2007. MarketingScoop.com Marketing Experts.

Secret #3: In addition to where your keyword is placed, it's also important how it appears. Place your keywords in an h1 tag towards the top of your webpage. An h1 tag, also known as a headline tag, is the code you use to display your headline in large type. Although this may seem awkward depending on your website layout, it is one of the most powerful secrets you can use to boost your search engine results. Additionally, you can change the display of your h1 tags using a cascading style sheet.

If possible add a number of sub-headings using an h2 and/or h3 tag. Smaller than an h1, but still significant, using your keyword phrases in these tags are also very valuable to search engines. They also help to organize your content in a meaningful way.

Secret #4: Be sure to place your keyword phrase in your meta tags (the HTML code that appears at the beginning of your webpage) – specifically your page title and description. Your meta tags should look like this:

SAMPLE ONLY (replace "[" with "<"]

[title]Internet Marketing Expert Marketing Secrets[/title]

[meta name="Keywords" content="internet marketing, marketing secrets, online marketing expert, internet marketing secrets, search engine, SEO, direct marketing, email marketing research, online, public relations strategy, trade show booth."]

[meta name="Description" content="Internet marketing expert reveals powerful marketing secrets. Search our database of marketing experts, service providers, and free marketing tools."]

[meta name="ROBOTS" content="ALL"]

[meta content="seo, search engine optimization, website development, google adwords, online promotion, Internet marketing." name="Keywords"]

[meta content="Increase your search engine results with this free ebook from MarketingScoop.com."][name="Description"]

[meta content="ALL" name="ROBOTS"]

The last tag, the Robots tag, lets the search engine know that it should be crawling your entire website. There are other things you can do to improve the search-ability of your website such as a sitemap and on-page linking, a bit too detailed for this report.

Now that we've covered the first four secrets, most of them having to do with on-page optimization, we'll focus on what you can do outside of your website to increase your search engine results (called off-page optimization) in part 2 of this article.... coming soon!

Key's to Launching a New Website

I'm often asked, "How can I launch a new website successfully?" Most people launching a website for the first time think that buying a URL is all they need to do. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When my clients plan to launch a website or new URL, I provide them with a very specific checklist that defines what must be done for Search Engines to recognize and promote you.

The first step is to promote your website to directories. Here are a few directory submissions you must do: Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, Entireweb.com, DMOZ.org, ExactSeek.com, Wikipedia

Once you've submitted your site to the key directories, its advisable to ping the major search engines - letting them know you're out there. You can do this individually or simply use a site like Addme.com.

The other trick I like to use is article marketing. Take some of the content for your site and develop it as an article. This information should be distributed using article marketing software. I personally use Article Submitter Pro which is the best on the market for submitting your articles to article directories and other sites that feed the internet with fresh content.
Article submission is one of the best and most effective ways to increase your search engine ranking results.

If you are offering a product or service through your website, I also highly recommend signing up for an affiliate program like Commission Juncition or Click Bank which is one of the top resources for anyone interested in making money from affiliate programs using their own products or someone elses.

Lastly, I recommend the use of online advertising in the form of pay-per-click keywords. Sites like Yahoo!, Google, etc. use this form of advertising and if done correctly can produce a favorable ROI.

For more web site launch tips like these, visit MarketingScoop.com

Offering SEO Consulting Services

Okay, so I'm thinking about offering SEO services and I need to work through my product offering. Here are some ideas I'd like to throw out. Strategically, I'd like to target small to medium size businesses with a single website. I know the need is there. Ultimately the question is whether or not I can provide valuable services and do so at a cost that makes it sustainable and effective - one where the customer is getting tremendous value and I'm getting fairly compensated for the work. If we can do both, than its nothing short of a win win.

I'd like to provide a tiered service level. I'll start with 3 tiers, the first being at a price point under one-hundred dollars. Let's suppose I offer the first tier for $79. At that price point, I'll need an efficient way to generate a value added service for my customer. In terms of prioritization, I'll provide a few items:

1. A basic overview of SEO principles (how search engines work, on-page optimization, and off-page optimization).

2. An evaluation of the individual's website. Because of the low price point, I will provide summary level data in checklist form that rates a site's overall performance on organic search results and evaluation of on-page optimization factors (use of h1 tags, metatags, keyword density, keyword placement, link text, google PR, internal linking strategy) in an easy-to-understand format.

At the second tier, for only $247, I'll provide all of attributes noted in the first tier. In addition, each customer will receive:

3. An evaluation of the website's off page ranking status (directory listings, external links, anchor text density, etc.) and a comparison to the top ranked site for the chosen keyword phrase. This will allow the customer to better understand the key driver in organic search result placement.

4. An analysis of the top competitive sites (both on-page and off-page optimization factors). This will provide a more complete picture for individuals looking to increase the results of their SEO efforts in relation to existing competition.

At the top tier, for only $497, I'll provide all of attributes noted in the first and second tier as well as a personalized optimization plan. Each top-tier customer will receive:

5. A clearly defined plan that describes the necessary actions required to increase SEO results - based on the before mentioned research. This plan is a step-by-step guide for increasing organic search results.

6. Ongoing email support for 3 months (unlimited). This feature allows individuals to ask additional questions, receive guidance and learn from the experts.

Let me know your thoughts on this service offering. I'd really like your thoughts on pricing and service delivery... on target or off base?