Archive for April, 2008
« Previous EntriesUpcoming WordCamps
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008WordCamps are my favorite events to go to because there’s something about the core WordPress community that attracts smart folks with good philosophies that are fun to hang out with. In this post I’ve collated the upcoming WordCamps we know about, including the one in San Francisco. Hopefully there will be one nearby so you [...]
How to Boost Sales of Your Niche Product or Service
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008When somebody visits the sales page of your niche website, they are looking for a solution to one of their problems, they have an itch and they're looking for a way to scratch it. They are not there to buy your product… That is the last thing on their mind. Your website has got their interest and they're checking it out, no more, no less.
Now it could be that they are in a bad mood and on that particular day they don't like your writing style, or they might be late for another appointment and don't have the time to fully read your sales page, what ever the reason they won't be buying your product today… and then they're gone. In fact most sales pages are lucky to convert 4 out of 100 website visitors into customers. That means 24 out of 25 visitors will leave your sales page without buying.
You've no doubt heard many times that the way to get around this problem is to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list so you can pitch them over and over again with your sales message. This is quite true, it's the way to go, but just how do you get your website visitors to join your opt-in list?
It's not that difficult, there are many ways to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list, and here are a few examples you can implement on your website today:
1) Place an opt-in form on your sales page. You need to place your opt-in form a few times on your sales page, you also need to make sure readers understand that you are providing some free information related to your niche product and they only way they can get it is by subscribing to your list, and the reasons people will opt-in can include:
i) Those visitors who are in a hurry and don't have time to read your entire sales page will be inclined to join your opt-in list as a reminder to themselves to carry on checking out what you have to offer.
ii) Those people who can't afford your product will sign up for more information from your free information series.
iii) Those people can't decide on any course of action will sign up hoping you will help them make up their mind.
In all cases, if you had not provided an opt-in form on your webpage they would have left without subscribing, and you already know how difficult it is to get visitors to your website in the first place.
2) Place your opt-in form on a popup which displays either as soon as the webpage opens, or when it closes. Popups might be the cause of much controversy, but no matter what people think, they are effective. The new generation of popups and popunders are not easily blocked and in some cases cannot be blocked at all if the person is using Internet Explorer.
Fortunately the majority of internet users still use Internet Explorer, so these unblockable popups are the way to go. Just don't make your popups a nuisance… Use them with cookie controls so they are only activated once per day or once per hour, and don't use them on every page of your website. Some of the newer popups will only activate if the website visitor exits the sales page by closing the browser window or clicking the back button. If they go through to the sales process and purchase your product, they will never see the popup.
3) One of the most effective ways of getting people to subscribe to your opt-in list is to send them to a special opt-in form first. In other words nobody gets to your sales page unless they have subscribed to your list. These special opt-in pages are known, amongst other things, as "squeeze pages" or "name squeeze pages".
These pages are the most effective at converting website visitors to subscribers and they don't seem to affect a sales page’s conversion rate at all. If a sales page was converting 1 in 25 visitors to a customer, the introduction of a name squeeze page doesn't seem to change that… For every 25 visitors to the name squeeze page 1 still becomes a customer. The difference is the number of people who subscribe is substantially higher than for any other opt-in method.
The point to bear in mind is that many of the subscribers to your list will buy your niche product from links in the autoresponder emails sent to them. If you had not been using an opt-in form you would never have had the opportunity to make these extra sales.
How Keywords Affect Your Rankings.
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008We all want to know how keywords affect our rankings, but to find out we’ll need to do a little work. Many say keywords are the key to good search engine rankings, although they aren’t at all the only factor.
If you need a tool to help you decide on your keywords, try Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool – it allows you to test your keyword rankings by showing you statistics on recent searches for them. It’s a great tool when you have no clue which keyword you should choose, as it can give you a list of terms that were recently searched on.
Keyword Density.
Keyword density refers to the number of the keywords contained within your text relative to the amount of text there is. Preferred keyword density ratios vary between search engines, but you should generally try to keep them between two and eight percent (major search engines prefer the lower end). Keyword analysis tools can help to optimize a web page’s keyword density. These tools are good if you’re not sure of what you’re doing, as they’re very intuitive and explain things as you go.
Counting the Keywords.
Many SEO experts will tell you that the keyword density of your text isn’t a very important factor, and that you should be careful not to overdo it. So is there a limit? How many times should you use your keywords? SEO experts won’t be able to answer these questions for you, because no-one’s really sure of the answer. The best answer is that it changes regularly, and you can never be sure – you have to experiment to see what works for you.
Location of Keywords.
When testing the effects of keyword location, we found that pages with the keywords at the top and bottom of the page ranked higher on Google than pages with the keywords in the middle.
Many other search engines also give keywords more or less weight based on their location, but keep in mind that each search engine’s algorithm is different. Here’s a list of how most search engines prioritize keyword positions, from most to least:
1. Domain name.
2. Page title.
3. Headings (i.e. H1, H2, etc.).
4. Body text (the first 2 to 3 KB usually counts more).
5. Meta tags (especially description).
6. Links (including keywords in the URL or link text of links to you).
7. Alt text (the ‘alt’ descriptions for your pictures).
Really, though, keyword density is one of those areas where you’ll have trouble on your hands if you try to second guess the search engines. Be cautious.
How Google Page Rank Works.
Sunday, April 27th, 2008A ‘Page Rank’ is a number Google gives to a web page that represents how important Google thinks the page is on the web. When one page links to another, Google considers it to be effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more ‘votes’ there are for a page across the whole web, the more important that page must be. But that’s quite an assumption, isn’t it?
The importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself really is, meaning in Google calculations a page's importance comes from the votes cast for it. These votes are then taken into account when the page is ranked.
As a general rule of thumb, Google Page Ranks along with Alexa ratings are the best indicators of how well your SEO work has been going. Granted, the ranking that you appear in on the results for your most important key words is the real indicator, but a strong Google Page Rank will help to boost this position substantially. The more links that you have pointing at your site, the better off you are. That’s a basic rule that will apply throughout your SEO operations.
Page Rank matters because it’s one of the most influential factors that determine a page's ranking in Google’s search results. If you want to have good Page Rank, you’d better make sure people are linking to your site.
Well, don’t jump the gun and try to get your site linked from everywhere you can, because Google doesn’t count every link. They have started filter out links from known ‘link farms’ (sites that are nothing but big lists of links), and being linked to or from these kinds of sites will get you penalized by Google. Be careful out there. They have also implemented a new relevance calculator that (true to its name) tries to determine how relevant the links into and out of your site are. The most important factor here is that Google considers long lasting links as more meaningful than a recently published link.
The best way to increase your page rank is to contact people with relevant and complementary content (that is, content that does not compete with your own but that enhances it). These links are most likely to last and they will not only increase your Google Page Rank, but they will also provide relevant hits via the links themselves.
How is PageRank Calculated?
Google calculates the PageRank PR of all pages it indexes, taking into account all the links to and from each site. When a page ‘votes’ for other pages by linking to them, it shares out some of its PageRank value amongst these pages.
This algorithm means that a link to your site from a page with PR4 (i.e. a Page Rank of 4) and five outbound links would be worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and a hundred outbound links. It’s not just the Page Rank of the page that’s important, but also the number of links it has.
The more links there are on a page, the less Page Rank value your page receives from them. You should also remember that it takes progressively more Page Rank to move up a level. It is generally pretty easy to achieve a Page Rank of three. Once you achieve a Page Rank of four, your site is getting formidable. Increasing past this mark may prove difficult and will require very important content. Reaching 8+ is very difficult. These ranks are usually reserved for sites that are crucial for the functionality of the internet.
Each time you add a link, or a page that links to you adds a link, you run the risk of lowering your PageRank. Make sure that you have as few links as possible, and so do any sites that are associated with you.
Google repeats its PageRank calculatons many times at each update, and each time the calculation is made it gets more likely to be accurate. Total accuracy can never be achieved, however, because one site’s PageRank is entirely relative to the others’. You should understand that the results searchers end up with can really only be properly worked out by Google, because they’re the only ones with access to the whole index.
How to Accept Payment for Your Niche Products
Sunday, April 27th, 2008In the early days of internet marketing accepting payment for products sold online was a real headache, fortunately for you this is no longer the case and you don't even need a merchant bank account. Over the last few years a number of companies gave positioned themselves as third party credit card processors which allow you to accept payments by credit card at your website for your product or service.
In a typical online purchase your customer will enter their credit card information into a form, and each third party processor has their own particular form (known as a gateway). The third party processor contacts the bank that issued the customer's credit card and the issuing bank approves or declines the transaction based on the information entered into the form. The processor routes the result back to the customers computer screen either as a "purchase declined" message or by passing your customer onto the web page containing your sales fulfillment information.
If the transaction was successful, the customer’s credit card will be billed for the selling price of your niche product or service. This service is not free and you will be charged a set fee for each transaction. The most common third party payment processors are:
1) PayPal (https://www.paypal.com )
PayPal is owned by eBay the world’s biggest online auction and can be used by customers living in the developed world. Opening a PayPal account id free, but you will need to verify your bank and contact details before being able to use it for accepting payments at your website. There is a fee charged for each transaction and this is automatically deducted from the selling price charged to the customer.
You can link your PayPal account to your bank account which makes it a simple task to transfer the money made from your sales into your account. Your normal banking transaction fees will be charged on this service.
Be careful of using an un-encrypted PayPal payment link on your website as it is a simple task for link highjackers to change the details to their own so they get the money for every sale you make…
PayPal can be easily incorporated into a shopping cart system (i.e. you can sell multiple products at different prices all in one transaction).
2) 2CheckOut (http://www.2checkout.com )
2CheckOut is a very popular third party payment processor and although there is a small setup fee, they don't charge a monthly fee for their services; they do charge a small fee for each transaction processed. As with PayPal, you can use 2CheckOut with a shopping cart system.
One advantage of using 2CheckOut is you can accept credit cards payments from customers living virtually anywhere. The will transfer money directly into any US or Canadian bank and send a monthly check or Bank Wire to non-US bank account holders.
3) ClickBank (http://www.clickbank.com )
ClickBank is another similar third party payment processor who have restricted their service to suppliers of downloadable products or internet services. For example, e-books, one time membership fees, software programs etc. To open a ClickBank account there is a small one time setup fee, no monthly fee and you are charged a small fee on every transaction processed on your behalf. You will be sent a check twice a month for all the sales you make during that period.
One major benefit of Using ClickBank for your niche product is you can set up your affiliate program through them and they will automatically pay your affiliates for every sale made on your behalf.
One big disadvantage of using ClickBank is that there is you can't incorporate their payment gateway into a shopping cart system.
4) Digibuy (http://www.digibuy.com )
Like ClickBank, Digibuy can only be used if you sell digital products or services that can be downloaded, the major advantage of using Digibuy is that you can use a shopping cart with their payment gateway (i.e. you can sell multiple products).
Unfortunately they don't include an affiliate payment system like ClickBank.
Your choice of third party payment processor is going to depend on how many products you sell and whether you intend to run an affiliate program. One extra consideration is some customers will be unwilling to use their credit card on the internet. For these customers you need to decide whether it's worthwhile accepting alternate forms of payment… Some third party payment processors, for example Digibuy, allow you to accept alternate forms of payment through them as default.
WordPress 2.5.1
Friday, April 25th, 2008Version 2.5.1 of WordPress is now available. It includes a number of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and one very important security fix. We recommend everyone update immediately, particularly if your blog has open registration. The vulnerability is not public but it will be shortly.
In addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. [...]
How Alexa Rankings Affect Your Traffic.
Friday, April 25th, 2008Alexa is a very powerful tool, used to rank website traffic. The relationship between how Alexa rates your website and how popular your website is, however, isn’t as obvious as it might seem. You need to consider your website’s ranking, links, traffic, and many other factors. Many of these factors are hidden and known only to the most experienced Alexa users.
Do other websites link to yours? If you want Alexa’s attention then you should make sure that they do. Don’t worry: usually, all you need to do is ask, as long as you offer a link to their site in return. Remember that your links need to be relevant to your site – don’t take links from an unrelated site, as they won’t be counted. However, if the links are on sites that don’t get much traffic, then Alexa will never hear about them.
The fact of the matter is that relevant links are helpful to your visitors. Search engines want to know if a site is worth going to. If it is, they are happy to index it in a higher spot. This is a general rule of thumb that you should keep in mind at all times when performing SEO operations. The difference between a site with a moderate search results and a site with high search results is that the site with the higher results is generally more user friendly. Alexa Ratings and other rating systems try to emulate how a visitor will see your site. Once they’ve determined the worth of your site to a visitor they index it accordingly. This is why it is so important to have relevant links. If you are linking to sites that your users would find interesting, Alexa will enjoy it.
By targeting sites that are similar to yours, but not exactly the same, you’ll get relevant links that Alexa will like. The best sites to link to are with content that complements your own. For example, if your site is dedicated to rock and roll and you link to a guitar sales web site, you’ll probably get traffic flow back and forth. One way of ensuring relevant information is to link to yourself from other sites that you own: why try to hunt down other webmasters if you have 20 or 30 websites of your own you can use? Traffic flow is the biggest factor, however, as most of what Alexa does is traffic-based.
After comparing your site to the other ones it ranks, Alexa will assign your site a ranking number. The higher that the ranking number is, the better traffic you are receiving. Many search results utilize Alexa Rankings in indexing their results, therefore, if you have a high Alexa Rating not only are you already getting a good deal of traffic, you will begin to accumulate even more traffic. If you’d like to see your Alexa rating, all you need to do is go to alexa.com and enter your domain name.
You can also view Alexa rating using the Alexa toolbar, which lets you see how much traffic the site you’re currently visiting has. For example, you might be considering whether you should exchange links with a site. If the site you’re considering has no traffic then a link exchange won’t be worth your time and it may even have an adverse effect on your Google Pagerank which is at least as important as your Alexa Rating.
Using the Alexa ranking system allows you to compare the traffic of your site or other sites with the traffic of the web as a whole. Number 1 is the top rank, so the larger the ranking number, the lower the traffic is likely to be. Let’s say that your site’s rank at Alexa is something like 1,578,459. No matter how professional the website looks, or how high the Google PageRank is, your website just doesn’t have much traffic – in fact, Alexa knows of 1,578,458 websites that have more traffic than you do.
It is, however, important to keep in mind that a high Google PageRank will almost certainly increase your traffic. If you have a high Google PageRank and a low Alexa Rating, your site is probably new to the internet. It will take your visitors some time to find the site via Google and the links from other sites. Generally, the Alexa Rating is the second rating that SEO managers should worry about. The Alexa Rating is very useful in analyzing a comparison between your site and others, but you must also keep in mind that because Alexa ranks sites based on visits by users who utilize their toolbar, these ratings can be inflated or under-stated..
Great Sources for Free Shopping Carts
Thursday, April 24th, 2008Choosing the best shopping cart is very important to the success of your online e-commerce venture. Many businesses are now using shopping carts combined with automated payment acceptance gateways, giving both them and their customers more ease of use and flexibility.
So what is a shopping cart? A shopping cart is a tool used by internet marketers to help buyers select various products from different pages of their website, before proceeding to a virtual 'checkout'. The term "shopping cart" is a metaphor webmasters use to describe their sales process that customers can relate to, especially if they have been shopping in any supermarkets. A good shopping cart will incorporate the following:
1) An unlimited number of products which can be grouped by categories or displayed in one long list. You should also be able to set the maximum number of items listed per web page.
2) Shipping costs are displayed per unit or bulk. When goods are sent individually, the shipping costs are more expensive, so your shopping cart should automatically use the correct shipping cost based on the number of items ordered.
3) Additional shipping options should be available to the customer based on whether they want standard, 2 day or overnight shipping.
4) For international customers, the shopping cart should be able to store and display international shipping costs.
5) Many countries require sales tax to be charged on any sales made in that country so the shopping cart must be able to calculates local sales tax.
6) There's little point to installing a shopping cart if it does not support most of the credit card processing gateways which must be able to accept credit cards, checks and PayPal
7) Once a customer has paid, the shopping cart must send an automatic order confirmation email to customer.
Behind the scenes, the shopping cart doesn't handle the actual transaction, but acts as a front-end to gather data on customer selections. It then passes on its information to a payment gateway via a secure web page. The customer's credit card is verified, and the payment directed to your account. Once the payment is made, the transaction details are relayed back to the shopping cart, which then tells the buyers how their order will be fulfilled if their payment was accepted.
One of the 'free' payment solutions available is the one offered PayPal, which integrates basic shopping cart functions (the PayPal shopping cart is very basic and does not offer feature like shipping options) without the need for a separate merchant account or payment gateway. There are no setup fees, monthly fees, or gateway fees but you will pay a low fee on each sale you make. This fee will vary according to the volume of sales you make through your PayPal shopping cart.
When it comes to paying for their products, your customers have the choice of paying by major credit card, debit card, instant bank transfer, eCheck or through their own PayPal account balance. They don't have to own a PayPal account to make a payment as they would have in the past.
From a security point of view, PayPal offers free fraud protection services and there are no chargeback fees. They also offer web developers a wide variety of easy-to-use tools to help things run more smoothly.
One of the biggest drawbacks to using PayPal is that link highjackers can easily divert the funds from your sale into their own account. Your customers won't know this has happened because the funds leave their account and they get their goods, as far as they are concerned the transaction was successful.
Another good free shopping cart is the one offered by AgoraCart.com, and most website hosting companies offer this as part of their service. If you have a merchant account, you can link Agoracart to any major payment gateway. Agoracart can also be linked to third party credit card processors such as 2CheckOut.
A third free shopping cart available online is the "Light" version offered by eMartCart.com which is free as long as you have less than 45 orders per month and less than 25 products, thereafter you have to upgrade. It is however a full featured shopping cart and well worth investigating.
Before choosing a shopping cart do some investigation, find out exactly which features are available with each shopping cart and only choose the one that best suits your business needs.
Help! My Keywords are Too Common.
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008What can you do if your keywords are too common? Is there anything that can help?
Well, for a start, including misspellings in your meta tag keywords could help you to get visitors who don’t know how to spell or those who type too fast – this traffic is just as good as any other, after all. How many people do you know that use a dictionary when they don’t know how to spell a word? I certainly can’t think of many. Including misspellings will help you to some extent, but it probably will not provide you with a drastic improvement in traffic especially considering that many search engines now have built in spell checkers so that if a user spells a word incorrectly it asks “Did you mean <correct spelling>?” You can use tools like WordTracker to find out which misspellings are the most popular, and target those.
Try to think on the same level as your users, not always like a webmaster. Thinking like the average person will make you more successful – you should constantly remind yourself to think like the average person when you’re trying to pick what words people will use to find you. If you can get into the mind set of a lay person and think “What would I type into the search box if I was looking for the content on this web page?” You probably come up with the key words that are most important. Think of each group within your audience and try to come up with realistic search queries. Entering each word from these queries into your meta tags should help you substantially in terms of increased search engine traffic.
One of the things that will set you apart from the rest of the world is learning the special language of your trade. When you learn about your chosen trade, you start using acronyms and other words that would be foreign to most people, but mean something to the people who would be searching for you. Words that people outside your industry would search for aren’t the same as ones that people inside it would search for – targeting jargon words can help you to get highly-targeted traffic with little competition.
Another thing that will set you apart is using words that someone unfamiliar with your trade would use in an attempt to find content regarding your trade. You can’t target your site only to those who already know a good deal about what you have to offer. Your content probably won’t be fresh to people who are experienced in your field so you are much more dependent on your products at that point. If, however, you are able to target people who know little or nothing about your particular trade, you will be able to generate a good deal of traffic and probably move a sizable amount of inventory.
One last, but very important, method of providing good key word is to discuss the subject of your site with others and observe their reactions to your language. If they seem to suddenly understand what you are saying, that phrase may be a good one for your key words. Talk to your friends, your family, and other web masters about your subject and see what language is generally associated with your subject. This language is generally the correct language to use when generating your key words.
The most important thing to keep in mind when attempting to come up with unique key words is that there are huge groups of people out there who are interested in your goods but have not been targeted by other sites. These markets (known as niche markets) are basically ripe for the picking. If you can come up with a group that would be interested in your product but has not been targeted thoroughly by your competition, you will be able to drastically increase your traffic and/or sales. The ability to identify and target niche markets is an art and it can be developed by any truly dedicated marketer, but you have to be observant and patient in order to come up with valuable niche markets. After all, you are attempting to do what nobody has done before!
As an SEO, you will constantly be fighting with your key words. You will be trying to come up with more interesting or unique key words, and you will be trying to implement them more smoothly into your web page. The fact of the matter is that this takes time and practice. You have to get thoroughly engrossed in the community surrounding your market. Check out some forums relating to your market, look at the common forms of media coverage such as magazines and books. There are possible key words everywhere just waiting to be exploited for the sake of increases in your traffic and sales.
An Event Apart Discount
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008An Event Apart is a web design and development conference which features some of the same fine folks who helped out with WordPress 2.5. (And many others.) I attended the one in Chicago a while back and was engaged the whole day in interesting talks on design, writing copy as interface, advanced CSS, and creativity [...]
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