Archive for the ‘Email Marketing’ Category
Monday, December 5th, 2005
Before you submit your site, go through your entire site and ensure that there are no missing graphics, no links leading to empty or non-existent pages and no “Under construction” symbols. Also, check for typos and grammatical errors. Furthermore, your site must provide good content. If your site simply contains links to various affiliate programs, you will find it difficult to get through. The Open Directory does not mind sites containing links to affiliate programs, as long as you provide proper content.
You now need to select the two most important keywords for your site based on their popularity. If you don’t yet know the keywords which are applicable for your site, have a look at my article on “Choosing the correct keywords for your site”, available at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_d&keywords.htm
In this article, I have mentioned that while selecting the keywords for your site, you should look at both the popularity of the keywords as well as their competitiveness. However, for the purpose of this article, don’t worry about the competitiveness – select keywords only on the basis of popularity.
We now discuss how you should write the Title and Description of your site’s listing in the Open Directory.
You don’t really have much choice regarding the Title as the Open Directory insists that the Title be the official name of your site. There is no way around it.
When you write the description, your aim should be to make the Open Directory editor’s job as easy as possible. You should not give the editor the feeling that he/she needs to edit your description in any way. The moment an editor starts to edit your description, you risk having your keywords removed from your description.
Your description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all about and contains the two keywords you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of the description. However, your description should not just be a list of keywords – the description that you use should be a proper sentence and should be grammatically correct.
Broadly, here are the rules that you should remember when forming the description:
i) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all about. Things like “Have a look at our site” or “Welcome to my site” does not tell a visitor what your site does.
ii) Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using ALL CAPS or exclamation marks. Phrases like “The best web site dealing with widgets!!” or “Offers the BEST QUALITY, CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere” are inappropriate.
iii) Don’t capitalize every word in your description – capitalize only the first word. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.
iv) Write the description in the third person. Don’t say “We offer financial planning and credit counseling services”, say “Offers financial planning and credit counseling services.”.
v) Don’t make your description too long – limit yourself to
15 words at the most. If you are lucky, you may be able to get accepted with a description longer than 15 words.
However, longer the description, higher the probability that the editor will want to edit it.
vi) Check your description for typos and grammatical mistakes.
vii) End your description with a period. If the editor has to add the period to the end of your description, she may also end up editing the description, which is not what you want. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact description that you had written in order to ensure that your keywords are not removed from the description.
Now, we come to how you can select the right category for your site. Go to the Open Directory, and search for the two keywords you have established. Does a particular category come up at the top for both the keywords? If so, go to that category, and see whether the sites present in the category are similar to yours. Also see whether that category has a Description and/or a FAQ. Read them and find out whether that category is applicable for your site. If so, this is the category you should submit your site to.
If different categories come up at the top for the two keywords, go through all the categories and find out which is the most appropriate category among the different categories.
For some keywords, you will find that the Open Directory does not display any categories. In this case, find out which category most of the top sites belong to and submit your site to that category, assuming it is applicable for your site.
Once you have selected the right category, click on the “add URL” link at the top. Type in the address of your site in the first text box, the official name of your site in the next text box, the description that you have earlier developed in the third text box and your email address in the fourth text box. Although the Open Directory says that including the email address is optional, I would recommend that you include it – if, for some reason, your site is not accepted, the Open Directory editor may want to tell you why your site has not been accepted.
What to do if your site is not accepted
After submitting your site, go to the category where you have submitted your site every day and see when your site gets listed. If you find that your site is not in that category, it may so happen that you have been placed in a different category. Type in your domain name in Open Directory’s search box and see whether your site comes up in the results. I have seen some sites getting accepted within 1 day and some sites in about 2-3 weeks.
If your site has not been listed after three weeks, then re-submit it to the same category and wait for another three weeks. If your site is still not accepted, then have a look at your site again. Does it contain any missing images or links, links to empty pages or under construction signs? Does it provide good content? Does it have any spelling or grammatical errors?
If you are absolutely convinced that your site is eligible for being accepted by the Open Directory, then the fact that your site is not being accepted may signify one of two
things:
i) The editor of that category is inactive, i.e. he/she has not been reviewing sites for a long time.
ii) He/she is your competitor, and does not want to list you.
In this case, the first step is to write to the editor of the category. Scroll down to the bottom of the category to which you are trying to submit your site and click on the name of the editor. If that category does not have an editor, go to the category above that in the hierarchy. For instance, suppose you are trying to submit to the
Computers: Consultants: Business Systems category. At the time of writing of this article, that category did not have an editor. In this case, you should go to the Computers:
Consultants category and click on one of the editors there.
Click on the “Send to editorname” link, and in the Comments field, write a very polite message to the editor. Tell her that you have been trying to submit your site to the Open Directory and you have been unsuccessful. Give her the complete details of your submission, i.e. the category to which you submitted, your URL, the Title and the Description that you used and the dates on which you submitted. Ask her as to whether there are any mistakes that you are making and whether she would be kind enough to point out the mistakes to you so that you can correct them.
If, after two weeks, you don’t get any reply from the editor and are not accepted into the Open Directory, then look for another category which is applicable for your site using the method outlined earlier and submit your site to this category.
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Monday, December 5th, 2005
The Link Exchange Process
There are four steps in the link exchange process. This assumes you are not using link farms or other short-cut methods of link exchanges. If you do not use short-cut link exchange methods you will reap the triple-rewards we discuss in this writing, rewards that short-cut link exchange methods will not provide you.
1. The first step in the link exchange process is to ask the destination website if they wish to exchange links with you. You do not want to add their link information to your site at this time since you do not know if they would like to exchange links. You may have a lower ranking, you may not be in the same industry, and/or there may be a certain level of competition.
2. If they accept, then you would add their URL, title and description, provided by them, to your website.
3. Next, you inform them of their link on your website and request they add your link information to their website. You would now provide them your URL, title and description.
4. Once they have added your link information to their website they would then notify you of the completed process.
For purposes of this article, we will not discuss other details of the link exchange process in this writing. Details of the link exchange process can be found in abundance on the web covering details of maintaining email addresses, link urls, monitoring methods, etc.
The Quad-Exchange
If you take a look at the four steps above you may notice in at least two of the steps above the destination website will visit your website. Once to determine if they wish to exchange links with you and the other to confirm their link is on your website. How do we benefit from this process?
1st Exchange Value
The most obvious is that you are indeed completing a link exchange, thus increasing your link popularity on the web and helping your page ranking.
2nd Exchange Value
You are generating traffic for each link exchange you request to your website. The traffic is creating unique visitors and from a variety of locations.
3rd Exchange Value
The product or service you are selling is of value to the destination website. They may likely become a customer or a business partner to refer business to you. Seek out your link exchanges that have this type of potential.
4th Exchange Value
How about creating credits for traffic exchange services? Let?s take, for instance:
Exit Exchange You can open an account with them at their website: here
They will provide you a code that you can add to all of your link pages. As visitors come to your link pages a pop-under will appear creating traffic for you on the Exit Exchange network of 80,000 websites.
Can we benefit further from this in a subtle way without making our link exchange partners frustrated by bombarding advertising? Certainly. Traffic Swarm provides a subtle method of setting up both referrals and traffic. You can visit them at here.
By now you are probably thinking of a variety of other methods to consider for gaining the best value from your link exchange process. Certainly there are many other similar ideas you can employ. Make your link exchange page useful to your link partners. They could be seeking other marketing methods and would certainly try any recommendations you have on your website.
Please be considerate when employing these methods on your website. If you do too much and the link partner is annoyed then they may very easily decide to not engage in the link exchange process. One pop-under everyone is willing to endure. More than that and you will drive traffic away, not to, your website. Instead, use some of the real estate on your link pages to recommend other services.
We hope we have given you something new to think about regarding the link exchange process and certainly recommend that you visit us at SmartFinds to learn more about our Internet Marketing Strategies.
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, November 28th, 2005
Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders,
they can be of value to virtually any type of business.
Some choose to use the autoresponders to answer frequently
asked questions about a product or service. Others use them
to provide information about pricing or product
information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to welcome
new members to a website or group as well as thank them
after a visit.
One might ask what would be the advantage of using
autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the information
on the site. An important feature of autoresponders is that
they send you an email notification each time a response is
sent out. This allows you to track the success of your
promotions as well as have the email addresses of potential
customers at your fingertips so that you can easily send
out updated and new information to them.
It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective
autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as personal as
possible and send out follow-ups to potential customers
since it has been proven that persistence pays off. It
could take up to seven contacts before a final sale is
conducted. Generally speaking an advertisement should be
short and to the point. However, in this case, the customer
has asked to see this specific information and therefore an
effective autoresponder should allow you to place as much
text on the page as you desire. The autoresponder that you
choose should provide automatic updates to customers free
of charge.
The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that will
not cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free
autoresponders online from several sources. The automatic
responses will be a welcome addition to your marketing
strategy and will help to automatically increase traffic to
your site all while you do nothing. Be sure that the one
you choose includes all the extras that will send you site
to the top and your profits through the roof.
Posted in Autoresponders | No Comments »
Friday, November 11th, 2005
An opt-in list will allow you to keep track of your potential customers by obtaining their email address in order to keep them informed about the latest updates for your product or service. You can create your own opt-in list or you can use an opt-in list creator that is available online from several sources. The benefits of creating your own opt-in list is that you will be able to send personal messages to the potential customers and they will not need to do anything, whereas with commercial opt-in lists, the customer will receive a generated message and will be required to verify their acceptance of the message.
An important part of creating a successful opt-in list is to keep in mind that potential customers will visit your site from many places and may not see your homepage.
Therefore it is imperative to have the ability to subscribe to the mailing list from all pages of your site. You should not, however, make the subscription information a focus point of every page. It is a good idea to put it at the bottom or top of the page where it is visible but not distracting. It is also a good idea to promote your mailing list by using a give-away. You could offer a service, a discount, or an ebook. You can also drive potential subscribers to join your mailing list by writing articles that will benefit the reader and at the same time, build your credibly as an expert. You can include the subscription information in the byline of the articles. You could also write an ebook with your subscription information on each page, which will allow the customer to easily access the information and join the list with ease.
Once you have created the mailing list and now have your potential customers within your grasp it is your responsibility to keep them updated and interested. Provide them with quality information that is up-to-date and of interest to them. Offer discounts or a newsletter, something that the reader can use. This will keep them interested and will drive them to your site over and over, eventually they may make a purchase and if not, they will be informed enough to use word of mouth advertising for your site.
Remember, the Opt-In List is one of a small handful of Internet Marketing tools that really are a must if you are going to have a successful online business.
Posted in List Building | No Comments »
Friday, November 11th, 2005
Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders, they can be of value to virtually any type of business. Some choose to use the autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions about a product or service. Others use them to provide information about pricing and/or your product information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to welcome new members to a website or group as well as thank them after a visit.
One might ask what would be the advantage of using autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the information on the site. An important feature of autoresponders is that they send you an email notification each time a response is sent out. This allows you to track the success of your promotions as well as have the email addresses of potential customers at your fingertips so that you can easily send out updated and new information to them.
It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as personal as possible and send out follow-ups to potential customers since it has been proven that persistence pays off. The average is seven contacts before a final sale is conducted. Generally speaking an advertisement should be short and to the point. However, in this case, the customer has asked to see this specific information and therefore an effective autoresponder should allow you to place as much text on the page as you desire. The autoresponder that you choose should also provide automatic updates to their customers free of charge.
The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that will not cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free autoresponders online from several sources. The automatic responses will be a welcome addition to your marketing strategy and will help to automatically increase traffic to your site all while you do nothing after it is set-up. Be sure that the one you choose includes all the extras that will send your site to the top and your profits through the roof.
Posted in Autoresponders | No Comments »
