Writing Effective Ad Copy

February 26th, 2008

When writing an ad copy, there are some things to take into consideration. While this article will not tell you how to write a sales ad it will give you some insight to what a sales ad should contain to be effective. Implement these ideas in every sales ad that you write and you will end up with a good ad copy that will sell. The first thing to understand is that most products sold on the Internet are impulse buys. For the most part people do not search for a product to buy online. They look for information not something to buy. Even if you are selling information it is still considered a product and what web surfers are looking for is free information not information that will cost them money. A good sales ad should contain the following.

• Curiosity
• Credibility
• Believability
• Trigger an emotion or desire
• Create a sense of urgency
• Put a time limit if possible
• A call to action

Curiosity
In the opening of your ad copy you want to create a bit of curiosity. Creating curiosity right from the beginning in your headline will hopefully draw the reader into the body of your ad copy. There are many ways to make the reader curious. I’ll give you a couple here to get you started. One way may be to use reverse psychology. Here’s an example using reverse psychology.

• If you like wasting countless hours submitting your website to the search engines read no further. This is not for you.

Can you see how this would catch the reader’s attention? It’s like when someone tells you not to look makes you want to look all the more. You think to yourself. Don’t tell me not to look. I’ll look if I want to. You’ll get the same reaction telling the reader not to read any further. Here’s a more positive headline.

• We have the solution to your SE woes. Let us help you save time and money with one click of a button. Learn how we can put you on the fast track to getting your site listed higher on the search engines.

In the above example the reader is given enough information to hopefully peak his or her curiosity without telling he or she what it is that is being offered. He or she will have to read the body of the ad if he or she wants to know what will help them with their search engine woes. Curiosity will catapult the reader to the body of the ad which is what will ultimately make the sale. You will however, need to get them to the body. Curiosity will do this very well if written properly.

Credibility
You must be a creditable source in your sales ad. In other words you must be knowledgeable about what you are selling and be a trusted source. You must lead the prospective buyer into a mindset that you know what you are talking about and that you are an authority on the subject. If the reader feels that you cannot be trusted you will lose them forever. Do whatever it takes to build credibility. Use testimonials if you have to. Use whatever legitimate means to make your prospect comfortable with you. Create a I’ve been there done that scenario. Giving your reader a sense of familiarity will go a long way in building trust. Tell a true story about yourself that fits in with what you are trying to sell to bring a point across. The main focus in building credibility is to get the reader to relate to what you are saying.

Believability

Make what you are saying believable. Always tell the truth. Don’t ever say that a product does something that it doesn’t do. Whatever credibility that you have established will go out the window if you do. You can put a spin on what you are selling and make it sound like it is something that he or she can’t do without as long as you are being honest at the same time. Don’t say something that can’t possibly be true. Make it believable and more importantly, tell the truth.

Trigger an emotion or desire
As I said earlier in this article, web surfers are impulse buyers. This very fact really puts you in the drivers seat when it comes to selling online. If you can trigger an emotion or a desire in them you will be able to sell to them. There are a variety of ways to do this. If it’s a product that solves a problem or will make a hated chore easier, you can put a spin on this and put their emotions and desires into overdrive. It could be a product that saves the reader time or money. You must take the most important feature of your product whatever that may be and spin it in a way to evoke the readers emotions and wanted desires. The biggest thing that will stay in your readers mind is what is in it for me. Unless you tell them by working on their emotions and desires you will lose them. Don’t describe what a feature of your product does instead give the benefits of a particular feature. Here is an example of the right way and wrong way of triggering an emotion or desire in your reader.

• Our SE software will send your submission to all of the search engines.

• Our SE software will send your submission to all of the search engines with a click of a button saving you time which will enable you to work on the important things, like your website.

I don’t think that I have to tell you which one gives a benefit of the product. The thing to understand is that people don’t care about features. They care about what the product will do for them. Make sure that you tell them.

Create a sense of urgency
Create a sense of urgency. This doesn’t have to mean that if the reader doesn’t buy now that the product may not be available at a later time. If there is truly a time limit or you are only selling a limited quantity, then that would be the best way to spin it. You would only spin it this way if it’s the truth. Always keep credibility in the forefront when writing your sales ad. If there is no time limit or a limited quantity to be sold, going back to the most important benefit and spinning that is the best way to go. Putting urgency on the most important benefit may sound something like this.

• Don’t spend another day submitting to the search engines manually. If you continue to do this you will be losing something that you can never get back. Your time. As they say time is money. Stop wasting both.

See where the urgency fits in? The above statement implies that if the reader continues to waste time he or she will lose money. If that doesn’t create a sense of urgency, I don’t know what will. Another idea may be to set the product at a lower price for a limited time or for a limited quantity. However you do it, put a mindset of buy it now in the readers mind.

Put a time limit if possible
Putting a time limit on the product falls in line with creating a sense of urgency because the time limit will put in the mind of the reader, if I don’t buy now, I may lose out. I separated the two because the seller may be selling someone else’s product and may not have the authority to do this. If it is your product this is a great way to close the deal right here and now or you will lose out on this great product. Time limits are generally put on high ticketed products. If you have a high ticketed item that is your own, putting a time limit on it is a great way to go.

A call to action
Of course a call to action has to be placed in order to seal the deal. The call to action is simply a button or hyperlink that tells the reader that it’s time to buy. I like hyperlinks as a call to action and have found that having a hyperlink that says ‘click here to order now’ has worked the best for me. If your sales ad is long, you should put a call to action more than once in your ad copy. I always put a call to action after I have consciously triggered an emotion or desire. This is the place where people are most apt to buy if they are not going to read the whole ad copy but have already decided to buy.

Follow these guidelines and you will find that you have created a killer ad copy that will sell over and over for you.

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Local and Regional Classified Ads

February 2nd, 2008

Using local and regional classified ads to advertise your online business is an excellent way to get your website known and will give you an advantage over your competition because most online businesses don’t use the local and regional classified ads.

When I say local and regional classified ads I am not talking about the free online classifieds. I am talking about placing small ads in local and regional newspapers or magazines.

Understand that most websites don’t use resources outside of the Internet. I don’t know if it’s because that it never occurs to them or maybe they think that the only way to make money online is to advertise online.

The nice thing about using local and regional classified ads is that you will get instant results unlike many advertising methods online. Yes it will cost you some money but it will also return that money rather quickly. Think about it, if someone sees an ad in the local or regional classified ads and takes the time to go to your website to check it out there must be a great interest in what you have to offer. Where there is interest, there is money to be made.

Using local and regional classified ads will get you some immediate traffic to your website. If you have a website that is well done and has a lot of information that is of interest to the visitor you can bet that you will have visitors that will come back time and time again.

Of course you do want to do some analysis before going out and placing your local and regional classified ads. You want to be sure that the return you will get is greater than the cost of the ads. Don’t just jump in blindly. Like anything else that you do in business you can lose money if you don’t take the time to make sure that it is feasible for your online business.

The best thing to do is to check to see what local and regional ads will cost for each ad so that you can budget for it. Check to see how many readers they have and that sort of thing. Don’t go with the cheapest just because they are the cheapest. You may find that the publication doesn’t have a high enough reader base to be worthwhile. You want to find the highest readership for the lowest cost.

So start placing those little ads in the local and regional classified ads. You will be amazed how quickly you can grow your online business using this method.

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Offsite Optimization Part 2

January 28th, 2008

Another great offsite optimization strategy to get inbound links is through article writing. Articles are a great way to get inbound links to your website. While article writing is a bit more work it is definitely well worth the effort.

There are thousands of article directories out there however you really only need to submit to one or two high traffic article sites for your article to be effective.

Here’s how article sites work. When you signup to an article site you will want to fill out the authors box right away and use the main keyword or keyword phrase for your website and also use it in your anchor text that leads to your website. For this website it would look like this. Strategic Internet Marketing. This will give you an inbound link from a high ranked website for every article that you write.

An article is a lot like a post and must be written in an informative way that can be easily understood. Be sure that your article is clearly written and that it makes sense otherwise it will be rejected by the article site. An article is not an advertisement. If you write an article that plugs your product or website in any way it will get rejected. Save your product info and website info for the authors box.

The subject matter of your article should be relevant to what the information on your website is about. Don’t submit articles and link to your website that has nothing to do with your website.

Use the keyword for your article throughout the article 2% to 3% of the time and be certain that the keyword is used at the very beginning and very end of the article. Use the keyword in the title as well. Add the keyword to the keyword box provided for the article.

Here’s what happens after your article goes live. Many webmasters use article sites to use as content for their website. The thing to understand is that many webmasters are lazy and don’t want to write their own material so they go to article sites to get the content for their website. That’s where your article comes in. When a webmaster picks up your article the webmaster must include your author’s bio which has your anchor text link in it which will give you another inbound link to your website without any additional work on your part. You could pick up hundreds of additional inbound links from just one article without doing any extra work on your part.

Submitting articles is a powerful way to get additional inbound links and is something that you should do on a regular basis.

Here’s a link to the most popular article site. Offsite Optimization Using Articles.

Here are some tips on article writing and how to go about writing an article title

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Offsite Optimization

January 26th, 2008

Offsite optimization is an important part of your SEO strategy. Actually, offsite optimization is probably the most important part of your SEO because if done right it will get you ranked well on the search engines and will bring you tons of traffic to your website. The problem that most webmasters have with their offsite optimization strategy is that they leave out a super important key ingredient. I’m guessing it is because most don’t consider it in the first place.

The biggest offsite optimization that you will ever do is getting other websites to point to your website. Offsite optimization is super important to getting traffic to your website.

I get really annoyed when I read that you must have incoming links from websites that are related to your own for the link to be worth anything. I can tell you that this is not true. While having inbound links from websites that are relevant to your own may be helpful it is not the most important or deciding factor to your offsite optimization.

The most important thing is that the inbound link itself is relevant to your website. That’s what the search engines rely on to determine the relevancy of the search. The search engine has no idea what your website is about when it finds your website through a link on an outside website unless you tell the search engine through your text link. That’s what this post is going to address.

Another fallacy is that free link directories are no longer as effective as they once were. The fact is, they are still very effective. The problem is that most don’t take the time to learn what they need to do in order to submit quality links that will count with the search engines. Ignorance may be bliss but it is disastrous when it comes to offsite optimization. The sad thing about it is that it isn’t any more difficult and it doesn’t take any longer to do it right. The problem is that everyone listens to the so called SEO gurus who don’t know anything more than anyone else when it comes to offsite optimization. If you submit your link correctly to free directories it is extremely effective.

Before I tell you about using directories for offsite optimization I’ll tell you what you need to have for a quality effective inbound link. The most important thing to have with an inbound link is that you use the most relevant anchor text that best describes what your website is about. Anchor text is the text that displays in front of the URL to where the user will be taken when the text link is clicked in case you didn’t know what anchor text means.

I’ll use this website as an example to help you understand what you need to have for a quality inbound text link. Your anchor text should contain the main keyword to your website. For this website my main keyword is strategic internet marketing. You can find this keyword throughout this website including the title, website name, and the URL itself. It is really important that your website name and title are the same because those are the two things that the search engine will look for first and carries the most weight when your website is crawled. For this website I would want my anchor text for my inbound link to be the same as my main keyword for this website. For my main keyword (strategic internet marketing) I want my text link to look like this. Strategic Internet Marketing. That’s what I want to submit for my inbound links.

When the search engines find my link on another website it will follow that link here and will find that the title, website name and the URL are all the same and will determine that this website is very relevant to the link that it followed and will consider the link a reliable relevant source and will add the link to its directory.

I have run searches on Google to check out websites to see how they optimize their websites and have found that there are websites that rank above other websites that have far more inbound links. I have seen websites with just a couple hundred inbound links beat out sites with thousands of inbound links. The continuing constant between the two is that the better ranked website has relevant anchor text while the lower ranked site doesn’t even though the lower ranked website has more inbound links. While quantity is important, quality far outweighs it.

The thing that you need to understand about the free link directories is that most are very anal when it comes to accepting websites for inclusion in their directory. Some directories will require that your website has a minimum page rank. There is nothing that you can do about this if your website has no page rank. For the rest there are things that you need to know before you submit your website for inclusion.

Free link directories go about the inclusion process differently from others. Some will be exactly the same while others will be different. Before submitting to any directories make sure that the title and the meta description of your website are what you want and both contain the main keyword for your website. The meta description and title for your website should be the same as what you will submit to the link directories.

Some directories will only ask for the URL to your website and will import your title and meta description and will leave you no choice of how your text link and description will look like. That is why it is important that your main keyword is in the title and meta description and everything reads the way that you want it to so that you end up with what you want. The title to your website will be used as the anchor text for your submitted link.

Most directories will require you to add the link and description yourself. Use your title and meta description so that every link in every directory looks the same and matches what’s on your website.

Make sure that you submit your link to the most relevant category otherwise you will get rejected. If you submit to the wrong category your submission will almost always be declined.

Make sure that your website has enough content on it as well. If your website has just a page or two on it your website will almost always be rejected. As of this post I have not yet submitted to any link directories for this website because of the lack of content here. Once I have enough content I will submit.

Some link directories will accept you right away to a couple of days while others will take weeks, months or even up to a year to include your website in their directory.

The bottom line to your offsite optimization where directories are concerned is that your anchor text is relevant and matches what your website is about so that the search engines can follow the link and determine what your main keyword is.

Here is a website with a considerable list of directories that you can submit to. Offsite Optimization Link Directory List.

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How to do Web Content

January 26th, 2008

While adding content is not the hardest part of putting your online business together, it is definitely the most work. Open your favorite word processor. All of your content should be written using a word processor before it is added to your website. The reason that you want to write everything down using a word processor instead of writing it directly from your website is the tools that a word processor provides helps you catch spelling errors and will help you to use better grammar so that your content is easier to read and understand.

Before I help you to put your content together let me inject a little message here. If you are thinking that you can’t write you are wrong. Here are a few questions to help you come to the conclusion that you can write.

• Can You Communicate?
• Do You Have Conversations With Your Family And Friends etc.?
• Do You Talk On The Telephone?
• Do You Send Emails?
• Have You Written Letters?

I could have listed many more but there really isn’t any need to. The above five should do the trick. Writing is simply the ability to communicate using the written word. If you can talk, you can write. Chances are you are already writing with the letters that you write, or the emails that you send. You may not be a great writer but you don’t need to be. I’m not a great a writer but I do know how to communicate. You do too. The good news is that the more often that you write the better you will get at it. Think of it as talking to the person on the other side of your computer screen because that is all that you will be doing. You are simply writing down what you are talking about. Do you still think you can’t write? I know that you can. Everyone can.

Here are a few tips just in case you have trouble getting started. Make sure that you find a quiet place with no distractions before you begin writing. Ideally you should be all by yourself. No tv, radio, or music, it should be just you and your keyboard. Just start typing anything. It doesn’t even have to make a whole lot of sense. Get accustomed to typing. You will be surprised at how the ideas will come, and your writing will begin to flow. Before you know it you will be typing up a storm and writing the content that you intend to write. Most people get intimidated sitting down and writing something on a blank page. Typing something, anything at all, makes that person feel less intimidated. The page is no longer blank. It doesn’t matter how you start, just start. The rest will take care of itself. You are going to find that you are a better writer than you thought you were in the process. Try just writing anything, this will help prepare you to write.

Of course I can’t tell you what to write. I can only help you to begin.. There are some things that you need to be aware of so that your content is formatted in a way that it can be easily read by your visitors.

People read web page content differently than they do when they read a book or magazine. They will quickly scan through your content reading bits and pieces of it as they go. The reason your visitors will scan through is because they are checking to see if your content is worth looking at. If he/she likes the content from their initial scan of your pages, they will then take a closer look at your information in a more conventional way. The funniest thing about it is that we all do it without even realizing it. I think it is a built in mechanism to protect us from all of the garbage that we’ve all read out there on the Internet.

That’s why it is so important to have a content rich web site. Content rich does not mean that you have to have a lot of content. It means that you must have good content that is clearly written and delivers the information that the web visitor came for. Throwing a bunch useless content on your site will hurt it, not help it. It is far better to deliver a small amount of content that delivers high quality information. Depending on your business theme you may only need a page or two to get your web site up and running in the beginning. Do not use one or two web pages if it does not complete your site. For example: Because of the nature of this website, I simply could not just throw up a couple of pages, like the main page and the introduction page and leave it at that. The site would be incomplete and devastating to my online success. The point is, if you can complete your business theme with a couple of pages, go ahead and do that. Do add more pages later on though. The more quality information that you have the better your online business will do. Adding content to your site should be a continuous process. That’s how your web site will get noticed and how it will grow.

Use paragraph breaks often. Make your paragraphs short. You should never use long paragraphs because it makes it very difficult to read. Given the way that your visitors will initially read your content by scanning through to see if it is worth taking a closer look at it makes it even more important to do this. Start a new paragraph when you change your train of thought. Do not go on endlessly talking about a bunch of different things on the same paragraph. It will only confuse your visitor and make your content impossible to read which will make your visitor click away from your website. Lots of white spaces are the rule of thumb to follow.

Talk to your visitors rather than at them. It is very important that your content talks to your visitors and not at them. If you approach your writing as if you are communicating with your visitors you will avoid talking at them. No one likes to be talked at. You wouldn’t talk at a friend would you? Don’t do it in your writing either. Talk to your visitor in your writing as if you were having a conversation in person. Write as if you are talking one on one with your visitor. Never broadcast. Never write as if there is a room full of people in the house. It’s just you and your visitor no one else. Make this person feel special. This adds a personal touch to your content.

Keep the language in your content simple. Don’t use words that your visitors cannot understand. You are not writing a college thesis. You are giving your visitors simple information in a very simple way. Write it in a way that everyone who visits your site can understand. Keep it real. Don’t say things that are not true or you are unsure of. It is better to leave it out if you don’t know it well enough. If you find that you do need the information in question for your content to work, go research it so that you can add the real information. If you add something to your content that is not true someone, at some time, will call you on it. You cannot defend content that is not true. When you have finished writing be sure to proof read everything. Make sure there are no typos especially the contextual ones that your spell checker won’t find because they are not misspellings. Words like the ones below.

• They’re
• Their
• There
• You’re
• Your
• It’s
• Its

Those are just a few and are very common errors that people make. Be sure to use these types of words in the right context or it could make your content misunderstood or not understood at all.

Proof read to make sure that your content makes sense.. Can you say certain things in a clearer or better way? Are there things in there that you really don’t need? Continue to refine your content until you have something that contains a lot of great information and is easy to read and understand. You may be surprised at how many times that you will need to make changes before you have what you want.

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Content Search Engine Optimization

January 25th, 2008

Content search engine optimization is simply the process of finding a keyword or keyword phrase for what you are going to write about in a particular post, article or web page. Do not confuse content search engine optimization with your website optimization. Your website needs to be optimized with a main keyword that will filter throughout your website while the content search engine optimization is used for single pages, single posts or single articles. While the website optimization will be in the title or title name, footer, text links and should be on every page on your website.

Selecting a keyword or keyword phrase should be the first thing that you do before you ever begin writing any new page, article or post because you will want to work it into your content. It is important that you do this otherwise it may never get indexed with the search engines. The more pages that get indexed, the more ways that people will be able to enter your website via the search engines and the better the chance your website will be found.

Content search engine optimization works in the same way as optimizing your website except you will use the keyword throughout your new web page, article, or post instead of using it throughout your website. Using this website as an example, strategic Internet marketing is the main keyword phrase for this website and content search engine optimization is the keyword phrase that I am using for this post.

The reason that I want to do this is if someone is looking for how to optimize the content on their website in particular, hopefully they will find this website. The name of the game here is that you want people to find you as many ways as possible and he or she will hopefully stick around and check out the rest of the website.

Use the keyword or keyword phrase throughout your new web page, article, or post. The keyword should be in the title of the new web page, article, or post. As I mentioned earlier the title of this post is content search engine optimization and is also the keyword phrase that I am using for this post.

Your keyword phrase should be used at the beginning of the first line and at the end of the very last line of your new web page, article or post and should be used at least 2% of the time and not more than 4% of the time. I try to use my keywords 3% of the time. Do not under or overuse your keyword, or keyword phrase. If you under use your keyword the search engines may not be able to determine what your keyword or keyword phrase is and if you overuse your keyword or keyword phrase they may see it as you trying to spam them for a high ranking and may penalize the new web page, post, or article which is definitely something you don’t want to happen.

Any links that you have within your new web page, article, or post should use your keyword or keyword phrase as an anchor text for the link. For my keyword phrase for this post (content search engine optimization) it would look like this. Content Search Engine Optimization. You will also want to use your keyword or keyword phrase using an alt tag. Mouse over the link above and you will see the keyword phrase (content search engine optimization) for this post display.

Using the content search engine optimization strategies mentioned here when writing a new web page, article, or post will give you a better chance for a high ranking with the search engines for your chosen keyword or keyword phrase where in the case of this post is content search engine optimization.

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Web Content Ideas

January 24th, 2008

Here’s how to get web content ideas for your new website. While you can use other peoples content such as articles from article sites or public domain sites I don’t recommend that you do this because you can’t make changes to them meaning that if an article isn’t optimized properly within the article you can’t change it and the articles content will be useless to you as far as attracting visitors to your website.

Many say that duplicate content will get your website penalized by the search engines. I have yet to find that to be the case from my own experiences. I own several websites and have used some of the content from one website for other websites without hurting my ranking in the search engines. I have had articles that have ranked on the search engines first and second for the same article that are on two different websites that I own. The biggest reason not to use other peoples content is that you don’t have any control over it. Besides it is always best to have content that no one has ever seen before.

Generally in the beginning most have plenty of web content ideas but over time the ideas are more difficult to come by. With the web you have at your fingertips a massive encyclopedia with a wealth of information. There is no easier or better way to do research than on the web. The information is there, you can bet on that. You just need to go and find it.

The place I get ideas for my websites are article directories. Because article directories cover so many different topics there is bound to be information about your websites topic somewhere in the directory of articles. Article directories are organized by category to make it really easy to find what you are looking for. Once you find your category you can scroll through the countless list of articles pertaining to your website topic to get new ideas to write about. Here’s a link to one of the most popular article directories on the net. Web Content Ideas From Articles

Another great place to find web content ideas are likeminded blogs. Find blogs that write about the same topics that you write about to get new web content ideas . You are bound to find new ideas with blogs that have the same subject matter as your website. Here’s where you can go to run a search on blog sites. Simply run a search of the topic that you are looking to research. A list of blogs and blog posts will display much like a Google search. Web Content Ideas From Blogs

Forums can be a great place to find new web content ideas for your website. Join a niche forum that deals with the topic of your website. You will be surprised by how many ideas that you will come up with just by reading the posts on these forums. Run a Google search to find forums within your niche and check them out to get some ideas. Google Search for Web Content Ideas on Forums

Saying that you have run out of web content ideas is a poor excuse when you have right in front of you a very powerful research tool where you can get more information than you could ever possibly use.

If your website is new it must have content on it otherwise you will only get one time visitors. You need to have content in order for the search engines to determine what your website is about. Updating your content on a regular basis will keep your visitors coming back if they like what your website has to offer. The more often a visitor comes to your website the better the chances that he/she will buy something from you. Above are just a few places where you can get good web content ideas when you run out of ideas for your content.

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Website Business Optimization

January 23rd, 2008

This post is about website business optimization. Once you have found a web host and registered your domain using the keyword that you chose for your domain name you will need to optimize your website business so that the search engines can find you.

This is a very short and easy process but it is an important one. Don’t ignore this because it is what will help bring you most of your traffic from the search engines.

How you optimize your website depends on what web platform you are using. There is very little that you will need to do at this point to optimize your main website. Because there is little or nothing on a new website there isn’t much to optimize but doing these few things will have your main keyword on every existing page and every new page that you create in the future on your website.

If you are using a blog or CMS system this will be really quick. If you are using an HTML web platform it will take a little longer. When you setup your blog or CMS for your website you should have been asked to name your blog or CMS. You need to use your main keyword or your main keyword should be contained within your blog or CMS name.

On a CMS or blog platform the name of your blog or CMS will display on every page of your website. Using your main keyword as the blog name or CMS name will give your main keyword more weight with the search engines. On a CMS and blog platform this will also act as the main title of your website. If you didn’t use your main keyword when you setup your website you can do so from the admin of the CMS or blog. If you are using an HTML web platform you will need to go to each page on your website and add it individually.

You will also want to add your main keyword to the footer of your website as well. The best way to do that would be by using a copyright statement. Here’s what it looks like for this website. Copyright © Strategic Internet Marketing – All Rights Reserved. Because my website URL is the same as the main keyword for this website it makes it really easy to work it into the copyright statement.

If your website is a blog or CMS platform or you have a website that allows for categories you should also name a category after your main keyword. As you can see on this website, I have a category that is the same as my main keyword. (Strategic Internet Marketing).

Add your main keyword often throughout your website but don’t overdue it. If you have a privacy policy or an about page (which you should) adding your main keyword to them will add more weight with the search engines. Eg. Strategic Internet Marketing Privacy Policy and About Strategic Internet Marketing. I didn’t do that with this site because I used my main keyword often enough throughout this website.

That’s really all you need to do with your main keyword for your on page business website optimization.

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How to Create a Website

January 22nd, 2008

Before you can learn how to create a website you need to decide what platform your website will use. There are many options. I will give you just a few here.

Of course there is HTML format but unless you know how to write HTML code and you don’t mind spending the extra time required, you could use this format. I know HTML code but I don’t have any HTML based websites because it’s not as powerful as some of the other formats that I can use. Besides, I don’t want to mess around writing HTML code and css code. There are easier ways.

There are software’s that will build you a website in just a few minutes. There are just two that I will introduce you to here. They are weblogs and CMS based websites. They are very easy to setup and are free of charge. These types of websites have benefits built right into them that HTML based websites simply don’t have.

CMS stands for “Content Management System”. As implied by the name CMS is a system that not only helps you manage your content it also allows you to manage every aspect of your website. A CMS based website is very easy to use and allows you to add content without having to worry about playing with HTML code. You simply write whatever content that you want click submit and a web page is created dynamically for you along with the content that was added.

Many lone websites do use CMS as a website however CMS was created with larger companies in mind to share content. Many webmasters do use CMS because it is a real time saver and is a very organized platform. CMS can be a good choice because it eliminates the technical side of a website allowing you to concentrate on your web business without having to worry about the technical side of it.

There are many CMS software out there. Below are links to two of the more popular CMS systems if you decide to go that way.

Joomla is a CMS system that many hosting packages offer and can be installed directly from the admin panel. All hosts don’t offer Joomla. Check your hosting admin panel to see if your host doesn’t already offer Joomla. You can also download Joomla here. Drupal is also a very popular CMS system. You can check out drupal here.

Weblog better known as a blog is another easy to use platform and is probably a better choice for an individual webmaster. Blogs were originally created as an online journal or diary where a person could write down their personal thoughts and publish them to the web for others to read.

Because of the powerful tools that a blog is equipped with these personal weblog websites were easy to find through the search engines and has since morphed into a more commercial type of web platform. Don’t get me wrong, blogs are still being used for what they were created for but there are now hundreds of thousands if not millions of commercial blogs out there.

A blog is a lot like a CMS system except it is less detailed and is geared more toward smaller online businesses. There are lots of plugins that you can add to a blog that will allow your blog to perform different tasks for you. I won’t get into that at this point. I’ll save that for another post.

Like the CMS system a blog allows you to write your content submit it and a web page is dynamically created along with the written content.

There are several different weblogs that you can use. The only one that I will list here is Wordpress simply because it is the best out there. You can download wordpress here. You can also get more info about wordpress and blogs in general at the above link.

The nice thing about using either of the two web platforms mentioned here is that you don’t have to know how to create a website or use HTML code because the software’s do it for you. If you are new to the online marketing world you are better off with a blog website because it is easier to use. No matter which way you choose to go with the two platforms mentioned here you don’t have to know how to create a website to create one.

Posted in Strategic Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

Choosing a Domain Name

January 14th, 2008

Choosing a domain name for your website should be based on your niche keyword research that I posted about a couple days ago. If you haven’t read it yet you can find it here.

Using the same domain name as your main niche keyword will help you rank with the search engines better for that keyword. Think about it, every web page that is accessed on your website will contain your main keyword in the URL which should help the search engines find your website when someone searches for your keyword. The site you are on right now contains the main keyword for this website. Yes, “Strategic Internet Marketing” is the main keyword for this website.

If you haven’t read the post on “Website Hosting Packages” do so before you do anything else. You can find that post here.

If you have read the two mentioned posts you can go ahead and signup with a hosting service and register your domain using your main website niche keyword. If you already have a host and they allow addon domains you will only need to create the addon domain from your domain admin panel and register it using your main keyword.

Don’t add any content to the website until you read about “How to Create a Website”.

Posted in Strategic Internet Marketing | 2 Comments »