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 Issue #40 - February 16th, 2004 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue # 40 Monday, February 16th, 2004 In this Issue: ARTICLES: ONLINE POLL: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome to another issue of the idesignbusiness Internet Marketing Newsletter. Happy President‘s Day to all our US subscribers. As I was thinking about topics for this issue‘s article I realized it was time to get back to basics. We have discussed many different marketing programs and techniques over the past two years and this issue is going to cover ways you can ensure your programs are designed for optimum results. We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles, just email us at newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Did you miss the last issue? You can always visit our idesignbusiness Internet Newsletter Archive and easily view and search all our past issues. Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Endorsement MailBlocks - The Email You Want. The Spam You Don‘t. Sick of SPAM email? I was, so I decided to do something about it and see what options I had to combat unwanted emails. What I found was a great service called MailBlocks that lets you create a new email account that will be SPAM free or protect your current email address(es). Whether you want to start fresh with a new email address or stop unwanted messages to your current email address you won‘t be disappointed with MailBlocks. They offer 3 levels of service, including a FREE Account, so try it today and stop receiving unwanted emails for good! www.mailblocks.com Online Poll Have You Ever Hired Someone For Search Engine Marketing? ARTICLE How Research Can Improve Your Current Online Marketing Programs by Neal St. Clair One of the most important aspects of marketing, and most often ignored, is evaluating your programs. If you are launching an email campaign are you ready to track sales, click-throughs, replys and undeliverable messages from your campaign? If you answered YES, are you comparing those results against email campaigns you have launched in the past to determine if your results are better or worse than your historical results? Finally, all of you professional marketers out there that answered YES to both questions above; do you know if your campaigns are performing to their potential? This last question is much harder to answer accurately but thorough market and competitive research can provide a very educated guess. I know that not every business has the time or money to evaluate their marketing programs as closely as the example above. In saying that, if you don‘t have the time to closely evaluate your marketing programs than preliminary research is even more important for your business. Theory in articles is great but when I can I like to provide hands-on techniques that you can use for your business. If you have a website than you have spent some amount of time marketing your site in Search Engines, or should start now!. Whether you have spent 30 minutes submitting your site to a few Search Engines or endless hours optimizing and submitting your site the following research tip can help you. How To Determine & Reach Your Website‘s Search Engine Potential
When trying to determine what keywords and phrases your target market are using in the Search Engines spend some time reviewing competitor websites. You can quickly determine the keywords and phrases they are targeting by reading their page titles and page content. Also, you can view the actual source code and META Tags of their HTML pages by selecting “View > Source” from your Web Browser. From your research in this step create a list of all the keywords and phrases you have found that relate to your business. One of the biggest mistakes people make when optimizing their website for Search Engines is trying to target too many words or phrases. Realistically each page on your site should be optimized for 5-10 keywords only. More than that will create a page that is diluted and won‘t perform well for any specific words. There is a very easy way to take your list from Step 1 and rank order each keyword and phrase by the number of people that are searching for that phrase. This can be done by using Overture‘s Search Suggestion Tool. You can enter a keyword or phrase in the Overture suggestion tool and find out the number of people that searched for that phrase in the previous month. These results come from the Overture Network which includes many of the major Search Engines and Directories. This number does not provide the exact number of all searches done on the Internet, but statistically, it provides a very good comparison between search terms. Remember things can change very quickly on the Internet and you should repeat this process at least twice a year to ensure your Search Engine marketing efforts are targeted and accurate. Advertisement Don‘t Pay More Than $9.95 mo. For Website Hosting! If you are paying more than $9.95 per month for website and email hosting than you are paying too much! idesignbusiness provides affordable and RELIABLE website hosting with comparable features to much more expensive plans. * Newsletter Subscribers - Enter promotional code HELIUM and you‘re setup fee will be waived...Sign up today! Click here to learn more. FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. Overture.com, one of the leading Pay-Per-Click Advertising providers, offers a great free research tool to help determine search terms and keywords that will drive traffic to your website. You simply enter a phrase or keyword into a form and they will tell you how many searches where performed for that term in the previous month. They also provide a list of related search phrases and the number of times each one was searched for. Whether you are planning a Pay-Per-Click campaign, or just trying to optimize your website for Search Engines in general, this is a great place to start your research and determine the high-traffic keywords for your business. Overture‘s Search Suggestion Tool ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides complete Internet services for small businesses including Website Design, Website Development, Hosting and Internet Marketing. Increase Website traffic, build your customer base, and drive revenue using our cost-effective and result driven tools and services. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line or click on the remove link below. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - 2004 idesignbusiness http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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