Marketing & Design - a South African Perspective

2006-12-17T22:23:00.000+02:00

Keyword Density

Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.

If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.

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2006-12-11T11:08:00.000+02:00

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

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2006-12-07T16:10:00.000+02:00

5 Ways to Avoid the 1998 Look on Your Website
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If you've looked around at a few websites, you might have noticed that many of them look absolutely terrible. In many cases, this is because they were produced in the early days of the web's mainstream popularity, but they haven't been maintained or updated since. The chances are that their creators have never even looked at them in a modern browser, and don't realise just how bad they look now. These websites have an affliction I like to call the '1998 look' – but, unfortunately for you, even new sites aren't altogether immune to it. Here, then, are five ways to avoid becoming a victim.

1. Don't Use Animated GIFs.

The animated GIF is dead. It was a charming idea, once, letting us include animations on our pages as easily as normal graphics. Now, though, it looks extremely dated thanks to the small number of colours used, not to mention jarring and out-of-place. It's even worse if you use one of those early-web 'stock animations', like that spinning @ symbol to represent sending email – there are very few things that look more amateurish.

If you don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing, stay away from animated GIFs.

2. Text in Graphics.

Unless it's your logo or possibly a heading, don't type text in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, save it as an image, and then put it on your site. It's supremely silly, and gives you no benefit whatsoever – not only does it make the text take much longer to download, but it also stops people from selecting it or doing anything else they might want to do with it. Not to mention that text created this way is usually aligned badly and compressed so that it looks even worse than it would usually.

Keep your text as plain text, and use graphics for pictures. Text as a graphic is almost always bad.

3. Bad Backgrounds.

It's amazing that people still do it, but there are plenty of websites out there still with absolutely disastrous backgrounds. Either they'll have a colour that doesn't provide enough contrast with the text, making the text unreadable, or, even worse, they'll have a small pattern, tiled to fill the entire background. Wallpaper-style patterns are one of the most 1998 things in existence, and instantly make your website look like a joke, not to mention often making it entirely unusable.

So what should you use as a background colour? In almost all cases, the answer to the question is white – but, if you really want a colour, make sure it's a restrained background colour that people can still read your text over. If you're using a pattern, don't repeat it more than once.

4. System Requirements.

Listing system requirements on your website is no longer fashionable, and thank goodness for that. In the bad old days, sites would write things like "best viewed at 800x600 using Internet Explorer 4". Did they really think people were going to switch, just to view their website? It acted like a disclaimer, saying they couldn't be bothered to make the site look good for everyone, and anyone using something unusual had no right to complain. It was, quite simply, terrible.

The end of the Internet Explorer/Netscape war thankfully consigned these messages to history, for the most part, but there are still some sites that have them. Don't let your site be one – it does nothing but make you look hopelessly out of touch.

5. Open in New Window.

Finally, there's this one, back from the days when graphic designers were just starting to get to grips with the web and wanted exact control over everything, including the size of the web browser. Going to a site would give you a message like 'click here to launch', and the site would then try to open a new window automatically, with none of the browser's toolbars.

This technique has always been bad (it takes away too much control from the user), but it's even worse now that so many users have pop-up blockers thanks to the abuse of pop-ups for advertising. If you design your site this way, many people will have trouble seeing it, including people with the latest version of Internet Explorer. Don't do it.

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2006-12-05T09:55:00.000+02:00

5 Steps to Understanding HTML.
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HTML is a relatively simple language, but that doesn't stop people from having problems with it. Why is that? It's mainly because, while the HTML tags themselves are easy, creating an HTML document that works as intended on a web server requires you to know a few extra things that aren't often explained. Here, then, is a guide to understanding those parts of HTML that they just don't tell you about in the books.

Step 1: Understand Doctypes.

It isn't often noted that valid HMTL documents don't actually start with the tag – they have one extra tag before it. This is the doctype, and it must be present right at the top of your document for it to be valid HTML.

There are only really two doctypes that you really need to know about. The HTML4 doctype looks like this:

The XHTML one looks like this:

These versions of the doctypes that are a little more forgiving – if you're a purist, you can use the strict ones instead by changing the words 'transitional' and 'loose' to 'strict'.

But what is the doctype for? Well, its purpose is simple enough: it tells web browsers exactly what version of HTML your page was written in, to help them to interpret it correctly.

Step 2: Understand HTTP Errors.

A truly shocking number of people writing HTML pages don't know how HTTP works – and they quickly run into trouble because of it. HTTP is the way a web browser communicates with a web server, and this communication includes information about your pages, such as cookies.

You don't need to worry too much about the internals of HTTP, but it's worth knowing that it works by the browser sending a request to the server for a certain page, and the server then responding with a code.

Your website should be set up to handle error codes well. For example, a 404 (page not found) error should show a page with links to the most useful parts of your site. Other common error codes include:

200 - OK

301 - Page moved.

403 - Forbidden (no authorisation to access).

500 - Internal server error.

For more information, visit www.w3.org/protocols.

Step 3: Understand MIME Types.

MIME types are another part of the HTML header – an important one. Also known as the content-type header, they tell the browser what kind of file they are about to send. Browsers don't rely on HTML files ending in .html, JPEG images ending in .jpeg, and so on: they rely on the content-type header. If you don't know about this, you can have problems if you need to configure your server to send anything unusual.

Here are some common MIME types:

text/html - HTML.

text/css - CSS

text/plain - plain text.

image/gif - GIF image.

image/jpeg - JPEG image.

image/png - PNG image.

audio/mpeg - MP3 audio file.

application/x-shockwave-flash - Flash movie.

Step 4: Understand Link Paths.

One of the hardest things to understand about HTML is all the different things that you can put in an 'href' property. Abbreviated URLs are created using the rules of old text-based operating systems, and there are plenty of people writing HTML today who are completely unfamiliar with these rules.

Here are some examples. For each one, the assumption is that the link is on a page at http://www.example.com/example1/example1.html.

- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example1/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/example2.html
- links to http://www.example.com/
- links to http://www.example.com/example1

To put it simply, one dot means "in the folder we're in now", while two dots means "in the folder above the one we're in now". This can get confusing fast – just look at the difference one dot can make! Be careful with it.

Step 5: Understand How to Insert Things That Aren't HTML.

One of the most common HTML questions is how to insert things like Javascript and CSS into an HTML document. This is one of the easiest questions to answer: you simply use the link and script tags, like this:

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2006-12-03T22:17:00.000+02:00

5 Simple Steps to Accepting Payments.
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When you're selling things, you need people to be able to pay you. Sure, they could send you cheques in the post, but that's not really convenient or scalable, is it? No, to do business on the web, you need to be able to accept card payments electronically – and, luckily for you, it's never been easier. Here's the whole process, in five simple steps.

Step 1: Choose a Payment Service.

While you could get a merchant account and do your own card processing, it isn't usually worth it, unless you do an awful lot of transactions. For most business, third-party payment services are a better solution, and there are lots of services out there that let you accept card payments for a small fee.

When you choose a payment service, then, the main things you want to consider are the prices, and whether your customers will trust it. You used to need to consider which services your customers would have accounts with, but as most services now let you accept payments from people who don't have accounts with them that's not much of an issue any more.

Right now, the biggest general payment player is PayPal, and they're worth considering first, but you should be aware that many businesses have had issues with PayPal freezing their accounts and being slow to respond (see www.nopaypal.com for more). StormPay (www.stormpay.com) is a decent general-purpose PayPal alternative, and useful to keep around as a backup. You might also like to check out more specific services, such as AuctionCheckout (if you're taking payments for auction items) or ClickBank (non-physical products only, popular for ebook sales).

Step 2: Create an Account.

The next step is to create an account at your chosen online payment provider. This will require you to give out either your personal name and address or a business name and address. Depending on who you're registering with, you may also need to give out credit card or bank details. It almost goes without saying that you shouldn't give these details out to anyone you're not sure of – be suspicious of payment services that you've found with a search but never actually seen in use.

Step 3: Get Verified.

Before you can receive any significant amount of money, most payment providers require you to become 'verified' – this is usually nothing more than the minimum they need to do to comply with the law. If you haven't been asked for your bank and credit card details already, you will be at this point, and some services will even ask you to fax them a photocopy of your physical card, to prove you're the real cardholder. Some services will even cross-reference your phone number with your address and then phone you up to make sure it really was you. Don't be too disturbed by all this: it's all in the name of security, and you're not doing anything bad (or at least I hope you're not!).

Step 4: Add the Payment Button to Your Pages.

When it comes time to actually start accepting customers' money through the service, all you'll need to do in most cases is add some kind of button or image of a button to your sales page that says 'Pay Now'. The payment service will usually provide the HTML for this, and a few tutorials to explain things like ways to make sure that the correct amount shows up on the payment page.

Step 5: Withdraw Often.

Whenever you're dealing with electronic payments, the final step is to withdraw every time you get an amount of money you consider significant, and an absolute minimum of once per week. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but the biggest one is that online payment services aren't anywhere near as strictly regulated as other financial institutions, and aren't under that much of an obligation to give it to you in any timely manner. You should consider any money left with them to be at risk until it's securely in your bank account. Besides, you don't want your money sitting there earning interest for them instead of you, do you?

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2006-11-28T22:13:00.000+02:00

6 Reasons Why You Need a Website.
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If you don't have a website, then you might not realise all the great things they can do for you. Maybe you think there wouldn't be any point, because your business is too small – or maybe you don't even have a business! Perhaps you think it'd be a lot of work for little reward. Or maybe you paid big bucks for a site back during the dot-com 'boom' days, only to get nothing but trouble out of it and shut it down a year later.

Whatever your situation is, though, you need a website, and I'm here to tell you why.

1. People Will Look for You Online.

Sooner or later, someone's going to type your name into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing? These are people who want to find you, and if you don't have a website then you're letting them down – they expect you to be online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can't be found with a search engine. Not having a website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Whether it's customers or old school friends you're hoping for, very few people are going to find you if you aren't online.

2. Websites Cost Next to Nothing.

Once, it cost a lot to run a website – but those days are long gone. There are 'pay as you go' services out there now charging as little as $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth. If you're sensible about the size of your pages, that dollar could last you a whole month, or even longer! If you don't want to pay for design, it's never been simpler to do it yourself, or find free software to do it for you. Really, it's never been cheaper to have a website than it is today.

3. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you're advertising – your services, your products, or just yourself – a website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there's no guarantee that they're paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a website.

4. A Website is a Worldwide Presence.

On the web, it doesn't matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world – they can see your website just the same as anyone else can, at no extra cost to you or to them. Phone and post both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but a website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you've never been and will never go – suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

5. Your Website Can Make You Money.

There's a lot of money on the web, and it's not hard to get some – the longer you're online for, the bigger your share can get. If you have something to sell, you can sell it worldwide, thanks to credit cards. Doing business online eliminates almost every overhead there is: all you need to do is have the goods. If you've written something useful, you can put it out there with a few ads. You won't get rich overnight, but you can set up a steady trickle of income... and there's no limit to the number of trickles you can set up.

6. Your Website Can Save You Time.

Giving out information takes time, whether it's on the phone, or in brochures, or even if it's just emailing your family. Websites are designed to save you time. All your family and friends can read your online diary (known as a weblog), but you only had to write it once. Customers can see your whole product catalogue without ever needing to talk to you or visit you. This is the power of the web: things on it are written only once, but can be downloaded endlessly – a good website runs itself, and keeps being useful to people for much longer than you'd expect.

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2006-11-23T11:19:00.000+02:00

10 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website.
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Promoting your website can be a daunting task: it feels like there are thousands of ways to do it, but all of them take a lot of time or money for no guaranteed return. To help solve this problem, I've compiled a list of ten easy ways to promote your website.

1. Advertise in the Media. Now, you might have already ruled out advertising in newspapers and the like as too expensive, especially since the chances are your audience doesn't live in any specific local area. That mostly rules out radio, too, and TV is even more likely to be out of your reach. What you might not have realised, though, is that you should stop looking at the general media and start looking at the specialist media for your area. For example, if you run a house-buying website, you could advertise it in specialist property magazines, and even on 'lifestyle' cable channels that show programmes about moving home.

2. Write Your Web Address on Things. If your business has any physical objects, whether it's a product, a carrier bag or just the front of your office, make sure to write your web address on there. Even if people don't keep or remember the exact address, it at least lets them know that your website exists.

3. Give Out Leaflets. There's nothing wrong with a bit of old-fashioned paper promotion: leaflet as many areas as you can. The chances are that your website is targeted to a specific demographic rather than an area, but the post office will be surprisingly helpful when it comes to getting your leaflets where they need to go, if you ask them.

4. Go to Specialist Events. If there's some kind of trade fair for the industry your website is in, turn up to it and promote your website. While there might not be all that many people there, the ones who are there will be influential, and can get your site talked about.

5. Put it on Business Cards. It should go without saying, but once you've gone to all that trouble to set up a website, don't forget to put it on your business cards. After all, if you're relying on them to get people to phone you, why not give them the option of reading more about you on your website?

6. Astroturf on Forums. An often overlooked way of getting traffic to your website is to participate on forums related to the subject and put your web address in your signature. This gets you more traffic than you'd think, especially at very popular forums.

7. Create Controversy. A great trick to promote your website is to use it to say controversial things: as the saying goes, any publicity is good publicity. This works best if you say something that you know will be provocative to a certain kind of person, getting it linked from all over the place. Bear in mind, though, that this strategy is better for advertising-driven websites than it is if you're trying to build a reputation and make sales directly.

8. Keep a Good Blog. While more and more businesses are starting blogs, few of them are doing it right. If you're using your blog to publish product announcements in corporate-speak, it's useless. You need to remember a simple mantra, 'views not news' – make sure your blog has something interesting to say.

9. Buy Search Engine Ads. Many people seem to think it's some kind of admission of defeat, but search engine advertising can work very well, especially with keywords that aren't already cluttered with ads. If you do it right, you can get very targeted ads very cheap – indeed, ironically, the more targeted the ads, the cheaper they tend to be.

10. Start an Affiliate Program. Finally, if you're selling something, don't forget that old standby of web marketing: the affiliate program. Offer visitors a cut of the profits if they can sell your products for you, and all of a sudden you've got a crack sales team raring to go. The only trouble with this plan is that everyone is doing it, so you'll need to offer a high percentage of your profits to your affiliates to make the offer attractive to them.

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2006-11-22T00:13:00.000+02:00

16 TIPS ON BLOGGING
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You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do? Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.

1. Set up a Blog at www.blogspot.com and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.( to help you setup your blog download Blog & Ping tutorial ( follow the guides presented its so simple with step by step pointers and pictures exactly the kind of tutorial i prefer) at www.design.turtleherbestate.co.za

2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial Blog & Ping ) Note you will have to set up a yahoo account, all explained. www.my.yahoo.com

3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.

4. Use Ping techniques to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish. (blog & ping tutorial)

5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: www.submitfire.com

6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site: http://www.toprankresults.com/blog-submit-list.htmTip: Create a form to track your submissions a simple notepad doc will do, there are special programs for this but for now simple is my motto.

7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.

8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.

9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.

10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.

11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.

12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries. To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm

13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts

14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.

15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).

16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time. Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at www.sitemeter.com

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2006-11-20T23:43:00.000+02:00

How to Get Your Website Talked About on Blogs

Blogs are a very powerful force on the web today. Have you ever

wondered why searching for something seems to turn up so many blog

entries as results? That's because blogs link to each other all the

time, creating a strong network of links that does very well in the

search engines. Not only that, but they're not shy about linking to

other sites, as long as they like them, and one blogger is likely to

take links from the next and re-publish them. In other words, getting

talked about on blogs gets you potentially thousands of links from

sites from highly-ranked pages – that's enough to get you quite high up

in any search engine.

So How Do You Do It?

Well, to get your website talked about on blogs, all you have to do is

create some content that would be interesting to bloggers. Luckily for

you, bloggers as a group have a relatively consistent set of interests.

They care about entertainment (films, books), gadgets (iPods, TV's,

etc.), computers and the web – basically, imagine things that a

slightly nerdy person with lots of free time would care about, and

you've pretty much got it. If you need any further inspiration, take a

look at the links from a wbsite.

Once you've chosen your subject, all you've got to do is write

something about it that is either new, amusing, or controversial.

For example, if you've heard that Apple is releasing a new iPod the

size of a fingernail, that's new. Note that you can do perfectly well

guessing at new things, as long as it sounds plausible and you're good

at predicting: you can often write an article announcing the obvious

next step for a company with popular products and get linked from all

over the place.

When it comes to amusing, you might try some kind of spoof along the

lines of 'popular nerdy film/book in the style of nerdy thing'. For

example, you might do a version Lord of the Rings as though it were

being acted out in an IRC chat, or recreate the storyline of the Star

Wars Trilogy with Lego (warning: both of these have already been done).

Controversy is the most fun thing to create, but it's not easy. You

have to attack one of the bloggers' 'sacred cows', the things that they

almost all seem to agree on. The best example of this is a guy who

wrote an article called 'Why Your Movable Type Blog Must Die',

criticising the software that most bloggers ran their blogs on at the

time. It was linked from literally thousands of blogs, and received an

enormous amount of traffic – if you want to find it, it's still ranked

amazingly highly if you search for 'movable type'.

Basically, I Have to Be a Wind-up Merchant?

Well, not necessarily – it's better to put forward controversial views

that you genuinely hold and stick to producing amusing things that you

genuinely find amusing, otherwise your insincerity will no doubt show

in what you produce, and no-one will like it enough to link to it. What

I'm saying, rather, is that you have to be in tune with the

blogosphere's likes, dislikes, interests and obsessions, and write

about things it cares about.

So I've Written It...

Once you've written something, the next step is to get it out there.

There are several ways to do this: first, try outright submitting it to

a blog or two, saying that you found this thing you thought they might

like. If you published your content in a blog format, it's also well

worth linking to a few related entries on other blogs, as this will

create a 'trackback', automatically creating a link from their entry to

yours.

Other than that, you might try linking to what you've done from a few

weblog-style community, where you know bloggers participate. You would

be surprised how many people will take that link and put it on their

blog if they like it.

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2006-11-20T00:37:00.000+02:00

Net Marketing Tips Part 4

Aggressive Linking Methods!

Where is your business located on the Web? I bet you rattled off your website address in answer to that one. You're right of course - but is that the only place your business is? You've got to be on the Web in as many places as possible i.e. linked on other people's websites.

It follows that the more places on the Net your website is mentioned the more visitors you'll have clicking through to your site. If your site is mentioned on a site about something related to your product or service then it follows that you are then going to be getting more targeted traffic to your site. And it then follows (we're doing alot of following today) that you are going to do a lot more sales and hence become more profitable.

The key to being on other websites are Links - these are clickable links that direct you to another website that's in some way related to the topic of the website you are currently surfing. For example - You visit a website on the wonders of the lesser spotted and bearded beagle and you find a links page with links to other websites dealing with various other exotic dog breeds.

Links are extremely powerful traffic generators because:

A well thought out linking strategy leads to large volumes of highly targeted visitors
A link on another website is equivalent to a recommendation from that website. The bonus is that credibility is established for your site because of the 'referral' link on another related website
Google and many other search engines use link popularity (i.e. how many other sites you are linked on) as part of their rating formula when they rank you for your keywords on their search results.

So then the power question of the day is: How do you get websites to add a link of your site to their site?

The simple answer is hard, dedicated perseverance and work! Just the answer you probably didn't really want to hear. But then again who ever said it was going to be easy? And if someone did they were lying and should be beaten.

Here is my suggested Step-By-Step Method to getting linked:

STEP 1: Choose and gather info on your linking prospects.
Surf the web for sites that deal with your target market and collect as much personal information as possible of the website owners such as:

websites address or URL
the exact address on that page where you would like to link
name of the website owner
their email address
the date you visited the site
brief description of what the site was about.

Remember: The more personal you are the more likely your link request will be taken seriously and the more effective your linking attempts will be

STEP 2: Set up the info you have on a Trackable List.
You need to keep track of who you've requested links from, whether they linked to you, whether they responded to you, how many times you have contacted them etc etc. You need accurate records in order to know who you have contacted and how - Don't trust your memory. I know I would forget the specifics and if I'm anything like you I'm pretty sure you would as well. There's nothing worse than contacting someone again after they politely told you to leap off the Drakensberg with your offer.

Make use of any tool to record this that you feel comfortable with i.e. Excel Spreadsheet, Access Database, Pen and Paper or Serviette :)

STEP 3: Rate your prospects and divide them into 2 lists:

Priority List: Those sites you'd most like to get a link from. These are sites that have your ideal customer visiting them and should ideally not be your competition but rather they should be complimentary to the service you offer.
Secondary List: These sites will relate to your target market but will not be as focused on your product or may not be high traffic churners. While getting linked on these sites will be great they are not as important as the Priority List and as such won't take up as much of your time in trying to get them to link to your site. This list will probably be quite large.

STEP 4: Write a personal email to each person on your Priority List.
Using the info gathered in Step 1 you can now get down to the core of the process - asking the owners for a link with a carefully crafted personal email. Your email should include the following:

Positive, personal comment about their website
Brief description of you and the reason you're contacting them and the win-win nature of your proposal.
Specific details on why a link to your site will benefit their visitors
Where on their site a link would be of the greatest benefit to you
A brief discussion of how their site relates to your site content
Details on how they can link to you that makes it easy for them
Your contact information

... and anything else that you think of that will help you get the link! Just make sure that your email does not take on massive proportions - the shorter you can make it while still keeping it personalised and focused on their benefits the better!

To save time develop a 'Template Email' for all of these Priority List e-mailings where you can just insert the applicable personal details as necessary.

The key here is Personalisation. Let the person know that you personally took time to request the info - Make it pertinent to them! We all know the absolute horror of #$%#$$%# Sp*m and of the many, many "use-this-wonderdrug-while-decreasing-debt-and-also-simultaneously-getting-an-incredible-bank-loan" emails we are all bombarded with. Your email to them has to be focused, direct, personal and clearly not spam.

Remember to focus on the benefits to the person linking to you (i.e. how it is going to benefit their visitors) not on your own product and how you will benefit.

The beauty of establishing a link is that that link will probably get visitors coming to your site for years to come - So it's important to go out and get those links now - Persevere!!

STEP 5: Follow up the email to Priority List people with a phone call
Yes I know this will take time but it will increase your success rate in linking dramatically. The extra personal touch helps to increase the rapport and credibility that is needed in order to secure the link.

STEP 6: Write an email to each person on the Secondary List. Again try and make your email to them as personal as possible. However, because this list is probably bigger than your Priority List you won't be able to spend as much time individually crafting your emails to them. Get a template going and plug the personal info in. Even though you won't be spending as much time on your Secondary as Priority this whole endeavour is going to be taking up some valuable time - but it will be worth the extra traffic you generate!

STEP 7: Make records in the list you created in Step 2 about:

Each time you have emailed a link prospect
Whether they have responded and how (i.e. not heard, yes, no, maybe)
Whether you are yet linked to them

STEP 8: Be consistent and persistent!
If a site you really want to link to doesn't get back to you then email them again and make the request again while offering something more - offer a reciprocal link on your site. Say something like: "Can we exchange links because I think it will truly benefit each of us. We are not competitors but rather co-operative businesses and as such I'll happily link to you if you are kind enough to link to me" and then make it very easy for them to link to you by giving them the exact HTML code they need to add.

For The Best Hosting Ever go to AFRIHOST , Gian Visser and his team are the best especially their support it absolutely on target.

For more top class marketing & design strategies www.design.turtleherbestate.co.za is the place to be: sign up and download all marketing content, ebooks, reports and much more

2006-11-18T19:49:00.000+02:00

Net Marketing Tips Part 3

Lesson #3: A Simple Secret - YOU must contact your website visitors.

So let's assume you now have:

an effective sales website set up
effective sales pitch which motivates people to buy from you
traffic coming in from search engines and word of mouth

Satisfied, you sit back, pull out your calculator, get your bank account info ready and wait for the sales to start rolling in.

What happens? Nothing. Nada. Zip. (Probably not quite that bad but nothing compared to the millions of pie-in-the-sky Rand you had expected and had already spent in your mind's eye)

Why are those website sales not flowing in?

Over the last few days I have had an excruciating headache which feels like it's slowly squeezing the fluid out of my brain stem. The reason I've shared the nature of my wellbeing is this (I promise there's a razor sharp point here so keep reading) - I needed to find info on a product a couple of days ago and visited quite a few websites dealing with the service I was looking for. I found about 10 websites dealing with the product I was interested in (all the while the Headache Hacker was merrily beating away at my brain). I briefly read through all 10 websites and liked what I saw on 6 of them.

I sat back and thought about which of them I wanted to buy from. I then decided that I needed Panado and would make the decision about buying later. So up I got, fed myself some Panados and sat back and thought pleasant thoughts about my beautiful wife (who probably wouldn't have approved of the many Panados I was indulging in :) ).

Now here's the crux: Which of the 6 websites did I return to later when I got round to buying the service?

The one that contacted me!

This morning the headache had eased somewhat and I went alooking again. Of course (and I would like to blame the headache) I had completely forgotten the names of all of the 6 websites that sold the service despite the fact that they had impressed me.

However, on one of the sites I was looking through they had offered a free e-book that instantly got emailed through to me on certain aspects of the product I was looking for. I had filled in my name and email address (please only fill in your email address where the company involved has a strict privacy policy and is easily contactable - else the horror of spam will infest your email inbox) and had received the e-book. Although I hadn't yet read the e-book, I was getting ready to go searching for it so I could see the name of the company and then lo and behold I received an email addressed to me from the company asking me if I had enjoyed the e-book and letting me know they were there if I had any questions about their service. BANG. There it was. Product sold to Mr. G Visser :)

Did I then remember the other 5 websites? Did I even go searching for them again? No on both counts. I bought the service from the website that contacted me.

Did the E-book sell me? No. So what did? The follow up email.

The one thing you need to understand is this simple secret most people forget:

Visitors won't buy your product straight away - You can't wait for them to contact you - you have to contact them!!

Stats show that you need to contact many prospects at least 7 times before they will buy from you. So how do you contact them - By email of course.

This is the key: Instead of sitting and hoping that your visitors will go out of their way to contact you or immediately purchase your product or service - You must try and collect your visitors' emails every time they visit your site so that you can contact them proactively!

So how do collect your site visitor's emails? Here is your action plan you need to institute:

ASK THEM FOR THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS!
Seems pretty obvious but do you have any form or any other email capture device on your site? They won't give you their email address if you don't ask. And they usually won't give you their addresses unless they are motivated to do so. Below are some ideas on how to do this:

Action Plan Ideas:
(Remember the more that's in it for the visitor the more likely they will give you a contact email address)

Ask them whether they want you to contact them - Simply put a form on your site saying something like: "Please fill in your email address here and we will contact you to find out exactly how we can help you (this works very well with asking for Phone numbers as well). This is not too effective simply because the visitor doesn't get much out.
New Content Notification - Offer to send them an email to let them know when you've updated the content from your site - probably the least effective method.
Free Reports and E-books - This is a great way to collect details of highly targeted prospects. Make sure that what you are writing is in fact informative and does relate somewhat to the product / service you are selling. This will ensure that the people signing up are interested in your product. However, don't fall into the trap of writing an E-book that is simply a sales letter for your product. Give them valuable information!
Free E-zine / Newsletter - offer a Newsletter and send it out on a monthly / weekly basis. This is a great way of reminding your subscribers of your website and products. With compelling content your newsletters will draw subscribers to your website again and again
Competitions / Surveys - prospects will generally enter competitions if there is a great prize to be one. Alternately you can reward people for completing surveys regarding your website, products etc with the potential of winning a prize for their effort.

This lesson has been pretty long and I suspect that that 12th cup of coffee has become the 13th so I will close off with the following:

Spend some time thinking about the visitors that come to your site. They are very very very (and a few more very's) precious. They have come to your site for a reason. They are interested in what you offer. However, many of them are not quite ready to buy yet - They are either planning to do some more research about your offering or they are only planning to buy at some point in the future.

What are you going to do about it?

What most of us do is hope for the best and wait for them to come to our website again. I reckon that happens 1 in 50 times if we're lucky. Most won't return even if they like your product because in today's society we suffer from information overload and forget most of the things we see every given day.

What you have to do right now is:

Go through the action plan above and set up your chosen plan on your website to encourage people to give you their contact details. Then follow up with personal emails reminding them why they need what you offer. That way they won't forget about you :)

For the best Web Hosting on the continent AFRIHOST is where you want to go, Gian Visser and his team are the best.

For more top class marketing & design strategies www.design.turtleherbestate.co.za is the place to be: sign up and download all marketing content, ebooks, reports and much more

2006-11-16T09:44:00.000+02:00

14 Places to find Great Advertising Ideas

Creating great ideas is not a very difficult task to overcome, you may say " .. But, I do not have a creative bone in my body". All I can say to you is open your eyes, think out the box and generating ideas will literally fall into your lap. People often ask me how I am able generate so many ideas on so many advertising levels. Most of my thinking is based on a technique called 'Forced Connections' which i spoke about in an ezinearticle (Creating Advertising Ideas from a South African Perspective) not so long ago. This technique has helped me to generate ideas from some interesting sources.

1. Shopping: Next time you go shopping, examine some of the products in the shop and ask yourself the following questions.

- How can this product/service be improved?

- What products/services are missing from the range?(my stamp of approval)

-Can this product/service be produced at a cheaper cost?

- Could the packaging be improved?

- Could the product/service be aimed at a different market?

- Can the product/service be delivered more promptly

2. Media: While watching TV or reading magazines think about the products being advertised. Ask yourself whether they could be improved or promoted in a different way. (my stamp of approval)

3. Household duties: Think about opportunities while performing menial household duties, gardening, cooking, ironing, washing up, painting, looking after the children or sweeping. Is there a quicker, safer, easier, cheaper, more pleasant or less boring way of doing it? Could you design a new labour-saving device.

4. Watching children: Visit a nursery and watch how children play and interact, you will be surprised how juxtaposed their way of thinking is and how they seem to make many things so simplistic.

5. Holidays: Going on a holiday you always seem to bump into new and exciting products/services that you wont really find in your day-to-day living.

6. Sports and hobbies: If you have a hobby or play a sport, look out for products or services that are missing or could be improved.

7. Foreign products: Overseas products not yet available in your country can often be adapted for your market. (my stamp of approval) 8. Visit a factory: Can you think of ways of improving the production process? Could you apply any of the production methods to a new existing product?

9. Copy others: If you decide to copy another business, you should try to improve upon it, so that your ideas become unique and distinctive, giving you the competitive advantage over the original business.

10. Revive or modify an old product: Look at old catalogues and magazines from way back. You may discover ideas ready for a major comeback in their original form or in a modified version. (my stamp of approval) 11. Visit trade shows: Besides being a good source of business ideas, trade shows provide you with an opportunity to talk with exhibitors about the market, new ideas, technology, product features and even doing business together. (my stamp of approval)

12. Examine expired patents: There are many reasons why an earlier patent which was not put into production is now ready for the marketplace.

13. Talking to people: ask friends and family, whether they have thought of ideas for a new product or service. Are there any existing products or services which they feel are poor or inadequate.

14. Examine import and export statistics: Global trends can be evaluated by what product are leaving and arriving into a country. Your department of trade and industry can provide this information.

My experience having gained from marketing and advertising a large range of products and services tells me that you can generate a vast archive of ideas from the most unlikely sources. You may think that some of your earlier advertising ideas for a certain product or service are dead and buried, but with a little 'tweeking' they may gain a new lease on life.

Turtle Herb Design www.design.turtleherbestate.co.za

2006-11-07T21:10:00.000+02:00

Net Marketing Tips

Lesson #2: Getting Stuck In to Marketing your site
(and getting listed and ranked well on the Ananzi Search Engine!)

Has Lesson One sunk in yet? Can you even remember Lesson One? If you're like most people you probably can't - which I'm afraid is not good enough. Remember most people don't make money off the Net. Do you want to be like most people? Of course not.

Now don't get me wrong - simply by reading and embarking on this course you are doing more than 99% out there and I applaud you for this. But you are going to have to do more than just read. You are going to have to roll up the proverbial shirt-sleeves and get stuck in.

There is a truly fantastic Reebok advert that has been doing the rounds on the Internet (a perfect example of viral marketing which we'll cover in an upcoming course by the way:) ) starring Terry Tate an American Football linebacker who literally runs around hammering a bunch of office workers (click here to check it out - you need Microsoft Windows Player) In it his war-cry is "When it's GAME time it's PAIN time baby!!! Whoooooooa!!"

That needs to be our war-cry! It definitely is game time now. That means it's pain time right now - You need to decide that you are going to make use of these courses right now. You need to decide that this is important enough to set aside some of your time and do the work. You need to decide to actually apply these marketing tips to your site. There is this false sense out there that the Internet is the way to easy and unlimited wealth - a bit like a cosmic lotto. Nothing is further from the truth. In the four years that I have been in this industry I've had to work harder than I thought I could. Sure it's been alot a fun (and sometimes quite a hairy ride) - but it's still been hard work. When it's game time it's pain time baby!!

And you know what - I'm happy that it takes some work. Because if it was easy then everyone would be doing it! And they're not, which gives guys like you and me the brilliant opportunity to get out there and hammer some office workers!

I know the secret to being profitable in Net marketing too and it is this (Hold your breath):
LEARN which methods are effective and which aren't. Then WORK HARD to apply these methods to your site. Rocket science it is not.

I can help you with the first part. I will tell you in the upcoming series what works but I can't help you with the hard work. That's your deal. Time to become Zulu Klusener and step up to the wicket and hit the ball out the park.

Now all this ranting above was never meant to be part of lesson 2 but I got carried away. I actually toyed with the idea of making the above the sole focus of Lesson 2 - that's how important I believe it is that you actually make the changes to your marketing strategies that I suggest.

But I decided that there are so many marketing gems to cram into the 7 lessons we have together that I couldn't afford not focus on some tips that will get your website soaring.

So what we'll focus on briefly now is the search engine Ananzi and how to get ranked well on it for your keywords. I won't take long extolling the virtues of Search Engines to you. All you need to know is that search engines are an incredible generator of traffic to your site and that you need to be listed on as many of them as possible as high up as possible. Unfortunately I don't have enough lessons in this course (or even in a much much longer course) to teach you all I have learnt about search engines (I go into alot more detail about ranking well in search engines in my 15 part Internet Marketing course which gets sent to all our clients). But know this: Ananzi is by far the biggest South African search engine and it is imperative that you get listed well on it.

I'm not going to stun you with my scientific genius and go into how the search algorithms works or how complex they are - All I'm going to do is give you a step by step run down of Exactly what to do to get your site listed well on Ananzi. This tip alone (if applied) will help you and your site on your growth curve tremendously.

So here are the simple and straight forward steps to optimising your website and listing on Ananzi - remember though that doing this will also help you with all the search engines as well!

(Note: the first 9 steps relate to changing the html of your home page - if you don't know what I'm talking about then please forward this to your web designer and ask him to do it)

Write down 20 keywords or keyword phrases that you think describes your product / service
(i.e. 1. Web Hosting 2. Domain Registration 3. Web Design ... etc etc)
Now get rid of all the capitals (i.e. 1. web hosting 2. domain registration 3. web design ... etc)
Add the keywords 'south africa' to your lists (i.e. 1. web hosting 2. south africa 3. domain registration ... etc)
Type two lists

One with no commas seperating all your keywords (web hosting south africa domain registration etc)
The other with commas seperating your keywords. (web hosting,south africa,domain registration,etc)

Open your front page of your site in your HTML editor
Afrihost.com - web hosting south africa domain registration etcAdd name of your company/website and the list without commas to your tags in your page (i.e. )
Add the same to your meta description tags (i.e. )
Add your company / website name and your list with the commas to your meta keyword tags ( )
Save and upload your changes to your website
Go to www.ananzi.co.za and click on the link at the bottom of the page that says: "Add your site to Ananzi"
Agree to the terms and conditions, click 'continue' to pass the description of the Meta Tags and click 'submit' if your site is South African.
Choose your category and Sub-category
Fill in the applicable details and submit your site
They will let you know in about a week whether your site has been accepted and it usually takes about 4 days after that.

And there it is - the 1-2-3 of getting listed on Ananzi - now you don't have to mumble next time asks you about search engines - at least you are guaranteed of being on at least one! The submission process for the other search engines are pretty similar

Remember not only are Search Engines one of the most effective ways of getting traffic to your site - they are also the most affordable (you don't get any cheaper than free!)

So use them. Now.

Remember when it's PAIN time it's GAME time baby!!! Yeaaaaaaaaah!

For the Best Hosting on the continent, AFRIHOST are the guys. Gian Visser and his team are the best!!!!

for more great articles visit our site at www.turtleherbestate.co.za

2006-11-06T23:47:00.000+02:00

Net Marketing Tips Part 1

I know you're interested in learning the fundamentals of Internet marketing, as well as the little known secrets and tips. In the upcoming email series we'll discuss the important fundamental tips that you have to master and we'll also look at some strategies that are quite advanced :)

A quick note on my writing style: I'm guessing that you have read enough textbooks in your life to be thoroughly bored by text-perfect-punctuation-and-syntax. I have written these courses as if I was merely chatting to you. I hope you will be able to learn more in this way than if I only gave 14 point paragraphs with impressive headings like "Formulating Marketing Strategies to ensure Quality Management in your Operation Processes" (See? Did you know what the heck I was on about there?) So please enjoy - we often forget that having fun is one of the main points of this life we are living :)

So let's start shall we?

Lesson #1: The NUMBER ONE PRIORITY for anyone wanting to make money off the Internet

Are you ready for it: Your priority is: You need an EFFECTIVE SALES WEBSITE.

Now I know this seems so obvious that you are already reaching for your mouse so you can unsubscribe from this training series but before you do please read on:

Your website is your business on the Internet! No matter what brilliant Marketing strategies you use to get visitors to your site your website is ultimately the key to your success.

Let's say you get 100 000 visitors to your site this September but you get only one of these visitors to buy. Was September a successful month? Of-course not. Based purely on number of visitors to your site you were very successful - But if all you have to show for it is one miserable sale then what was the point?

You need to make sure your website works!

You can improve your visitors to sales ratio dramatically by ensuring that your website is Effective. How do you do this? By applying the following rules to your website:

Make sure your Site is fast loading! You know how frustrating it is to wait for a website that takes an age to open - if your site takes too long to open then your visitors has left before you can dazzle him with your product.

Your Action Plan to a fast loading site:
- Host your website with a Reputable Web Hosting company
- Keep your images as small (file size) as possible
- Reduce the number of graphics you use wherever possible
- Make sure the Web Server your site is on is state of the art
Make sure your site looks professional! It doesn't matter if you do it yourself or hire someone to design it for you - Just make sure it doesn't look like your nephew in Standard 3 made it for his show and tell project - Your site must look professional. This does not mean that it needs to have fancy graphics - It simply needs to look clean, simple and professional. When last did you buy from a website which looked like it was designed in 5 minutes? It may be worth paying a few hard earned South African Rand to get a site professionally designed.

Your Action Plan to a professional looking site:
- Ask 5 -10 friends to visit your site and rank your site 1 - 100 on whether it inspires confidence.
- Ask them what they felt made your site lose some credibility.
- Act on these suggestions if you value their opinions.
Collect Email Addresses and regularly follow up. (there will be a lesson later dedicated to this point) Most people visiting your site will not buy from you the first time that they visit your site - you will need to contact them again to remind them of what's great about your product! And you'll probably need to contact them again after that!

Your Action Plan to collecting email addresses:
- Get the addresses as soon as possible i.e. off your home page
- Offer something in return for their email addresses
i.e. free report, e-coupons, free newsletters, free products (you get the idea)
- Once you have their email addresses then follow up with special offers
Be Consistent in the look and feel of your site. If all the pages of your site look similar then a visitor will know that he is still on your site and has not moved on to a different company’s website. You've worked hard on branding your business - Don't dilute the effect

Your Action Plan to make sure your design is consistent:
- Keep the navigation buttons in the same place throughout
- Keep your background colour, links and text the same
- Make sure your Company logo is on each page in the same place
Include as much information as possible. That is what the Net is about - information. Don't fall into the trap of not putting all the pertinent info you can about yourself and your products on your page. Don't do the dreaded "Contact us for more information" - Which is easier for your client: to write an email asking for more information and then wait while you get round to answering it or to simply click over to your competitors site where all the info he needs is there waiting for him to read and make a purchasing decision? Plus the more information you have on your website the less time you will spend crafting long reply emails.

Your Action Plan to include all necessary information:
- Ascertain whether you can include more info on any product
- Look at the questions most of your clients ask and include the answers on your site
- Set aside a few quiet hours where you won't be interrupted and just do it
Answer all client emails within 24 hours. You've experienced it: You see something on the Net that you want so you send an email to the contact address listed. In your fingers you are clutching your credit card ready to make the purchase. You eagerly tap at the 'Send/Receive' button and what happens? Nothing. As time goes on either your desire to buy peters out or you find someone else who is only too happy to answer your questions and get their hands on those credit card details. You then get the answer to the email you originally sent about a week after you sent it. Why didn't you buy from them they wonder? Simple - they took too long to get back to you.

Your Action Plan to return emails promptly:
- Look at your Inbox as a challenge every day - it is a war against the blue numbers!
- Picture your potential client waiting to buy your product and then picture his desire fading the longer you take
- Don't try to craft the 'perfect' reply email - Just answer the questions simply and directly
- Be sure to access and read your email at least twice a day
Make sure it's easy to get around and understand your site. Remember we all think that our own site is easy and straightforward to navigate and find information. Why? Because we've spent ages looking through it and know it very well. But how easy is it for the first time viewer? Don't make them wade through irrelevant facts to get to the things they want to know - If they have to wade they won't stick around for too long.

Your Action Plan for easy navigation:
- Ask 5 - 10 friends / acquaintances to have a look round your site and ask for feedback
- Ask your visitors to let you know whether they could easily find their way around
- Include well-labelled navigation buttons on your web site so visitors can easily get to any of the main pages on your site
- Include a link to a site-map of your page
Get your own domain name for your site and email addresses at your domain. Which of the two following web addresses would you prefer to buy from: www.tripod.com/ed/~bobshardw/ or from www.bobshardware.co.za . Which email address would fill you with more confidence: bob.j@mweb.co.za or sales@bobshardware.co.za. With your own domain name, your website or email address will work for you. People will know that your business is valid and feel more secure buying from you.

Your Action Plan for your own domain name:
- Find a domain registration company and register your own domain name
- Click here if you would like to check whether a domain is available for registration

I guarantee you that if you just read this Internet Marketing series for my superb prose and if you don't ACTUALLY DO anything your website will not miraculously become more effective.

The Simple premise here is: If you go through this Lessons YOUR action WILL START MAKING MORE MONEY.

It really is that simple.

This article is from the desk of our affiliate hosting company, if you would like a top quality Hosting company click here, Gian Visser and his team are excellent.

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