The Keys to Internet Marketing » Featured

11 Steps To Search Engine Optimization

Charly Leetham — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:36:25 +0000

The one thing that all businesses are concerned about, is getting traffic to their site – preferably targetted traffic, that is visitors that are interested in what the site owner is selling and will, eventually, make a purchase.

There is a lot of hype around how website owners can get hundreds and thousands of visitors to their site and how they can get their site on Page 1 of the Search Engines – yes, a lot of it is hype and some of it is true.

There are a couple of excellent ways for Small Business Owners to gain targetted traffic to their site including:

Pay Per Click Marketing (Google AdWords)
Search Engine Optimization – so your business can be found in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
Social Marketing
Offline advertising

Out of all of these, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the one method that site owners should have a basic understanding of, because it’s the one method that is ongoing and, in my opinion, most beneficial.

Search Engine Optimization is literally about having your website listed in the SERPs (indexed) for the search terms you want to be found for. SEO is also about having your site found as high as possible in the Search Engine rankings for those keywords – preferably on Page 1.

However, SEO is an ongoing process – once you’ve got your site listed, it takes ongoing work to improve the ranking of your site, and then maintain it.

Whilst a lot of the SEO work can be outsourced, it pays to understand the SEO Basics and why they need to be done – that way, business owners will understand whether they are getting a fair price and whether the work being offered by SEO companies is the right type of work.

My one single tip to ensuring that website are indexed, and start ranking for their chosen keywords is to write great content. Don’t be fooled by the stories that you can get your site ranked with a little bit of content – whilst you may get your site listed and ranking well for a while, it will most likely be temporary. Writing great content is the way to ensure you maintain and improve your rankings.

When you write your content, use one of your chosen keywords throughout that content – but no more than 1 to 2 times in every 100 words to avoid ‘keyword stuffing’. Once you’ve written your content, read it aloud before publishing it to make sure it sounds natural.

My final advice with this tip, is to use formatting like bold, italics and underlines to highlight your keywords and bring attention to them.

This tip is only one part of a series steps to optimizing your website for Search Engines, but I consider it one of the most important parts to the process.

I have created a simple report (and email series) where I share my 11 Steps To SEO that I use when setting up a clients site. You can obtain a copy of Get Ranked: 11 Steps To Search Engine Optimization here. However, I’m going to share one tip with you here.

List Building and Giveaway Events For November 2009

Charly Leetham — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:35:02 +0000

Health and Fitness
Start: 2009-11-13
End: 2009-11-21
Become a Contributor
Become a Member

Harvest Giveaway
Start: 2009-11-16
End: 2009-11-26
Become a Contributor
Become a Member

Build Your List Giveaway
Start: 2009-11-13
End: 2009-11-20
Become a Contributor
Become a Member

Webmaster Tools
Start: 2009-11-18
End: 2009-02-02
Become a Contributor
Become a Member

Control Your Traffic With Redirects

Charly Leetham — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:22:02 +0000

When I started building an online business, I heard people saying ‘control your traffic’, use redirects or cloak your links – and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Over time, the reason for this became a lot clearer but it wasn’t until recently that I really understood the absolute importance of using redirects to control my traffic.

Recently, one of the the affiliate programs I participate in closed down. When they closed down, all of my affiliate links were disabled and anyone who clicks through is sent to a dead page. This looks really bad and, if I had heeded the advice above, would have been really easy to fix.

As it is, I have linked my raw affiliate link ‘all over the place’ and I can’t remember where! I now keep getting notices from the affiliate program saying that I’m sending traffic to a ‘dead link’, but the reporting isn’t detailed enough for me to find out where they are originating, so I can change them.

If I had used redirects through my own website, fixing this issue would be as simple as going to the redirect, changing the target location and saving it. Problem fixed…. So here’s some advice for you.

Keep Control Of Your Traffic

You need to maintain control of your traffic. The question is how do you do it? The best way is to setup one link that you use to direct traffic to your third party or affiliate link. These are called Redirect Links and will allow you to manage your affiliate links and send them whereever you want.

There are third party services that will allow you to redirect your affiliate links, like BUDURL, Viral URL, Tiny URL however, if you have your website I strongly recommend you redirect your links through website.

By redirecting links through your website, you maintain full control of those links and cement your branding.

Link Redirects Through Your Website

Redirecting links from (or through) your website is a great way of maintaining control of your traffic and maintaining your branding.

When you use redirects through your website, these links will look like:

http://mysite.com/recommends/myfaveproduct or

http://mysite.com/myfaveproduct

and when you click on these links you are taken to another site entirely, generally an affliate link.

You can achieve a link redirect using a html file or through the .htaccess file (if you are running an Apache server). These methods are effective, but can be cumbersome to manage, put in place and require a degree of knowledge in editing html files.

WordPress Blog Users

If you have a self hosted WordPress Blog, there is a neater solution. The Redirection Plugin. This is a great plugin that will allow you to easily add redirects to your site and track the number of hits, using the wordpress graphical interface.

Domain Redirects

Using a domain name to redirect to an affiliate link is a popular practice. This is one of the strategies outlined in the One Week Marketing Plan and can be very effective.

When you register a domain name, many registrars provide the ability to ‘point’ the domain to another url, like your affiliate link.

Given that you can purchase .info domain for $1.99 per year, this is an excellent strategy.

The only thing that I do have some reservations with this strategy is that you can have one link per domain – which might mean you end up with a number of domain names.

You Be The Director

Once you start using redirect links, you will be able to control where your traffic goes – and if your affiliate programs change, you can make that change quickly and easy.

I also recommend that you use redirect links to control your Social Network links too – that way, if you decide to exit that social network you can still connect with your followers.

[Podcast] Be Empowered By Technology

Charly Leetham — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:31:19 +0000

Today, I was interviewed by Tonya Ramsey from Journey To Self about my love for Technology. The interview was really interesting as Tonya asked me about what people who really don’t like technology can do, what are my favourite tools that I use to make my life easier and allowed me to announce my new service – How To Videos Central.

The interview is below and I hope you find it as interesting and informative as Tonya did.

During this interview, Tonya asks me my favourite tools and shares a couple of her own. Here are links to a couple of the ones we discussed:

RoboForm is an awesome tool – I don’t have to keep my passwords in memory, RoboForm does it for me

G.Ho.St – Virtual PC, access your desktop anywhere in the world…. (I haven’t checked this out yet, but it looks really cool)

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 7)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:35:59 +0000

Part 7 in my 7 part Podcast series……

Mari Smith is a Relationship Specialist, Internet Marketing Consultant, and Facebook Business Coach. Mari’s specialty is helping entrepreneurs to develop information products and systems, and to strategically grow their businesses using no and low cost online marketing techniques.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mari a couple of weeks ago and she shared some wonderful information about using Facebook to develop your business. She also provides some very practical tips on how each of us can use Facebook in our own businesses.

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 7 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari talks about Facebook Pages, how they relate to your business and how you can use them effectively.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!

After listening to this series, if you want more informaton about using FaceBook to grow your business, Mari offers a complete multi media training package which provides Audios, Videos, PDFs, Checklists, Templates,
Interactive Forum… Everything! You’ll receive exact step-by-step instructions on how to do EVERYTHING on Facebook with the full range of multi-media formats to meet your learning style needs.

Mari Smith – Facebook For Professionals

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 6)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:25:53 +0000

Part 6 in my 7 part Podcast series……

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 6 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari discusses Facebooks Groups, how she chooses which groups she joins and how you can be a beneficial member of the groups you choose to participate in.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!

Mari Smith – Facebook For Professionals

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 5)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:15:07 +0000

This is Part 5 of my 7 part Podcast series…..

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 5 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari discusses how she handles the application requests and event invitations that can start to clutter your Facebook notifications. Mari also discusses how to use photos to generate interest amongst your community.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!

Mari Smith – Facebook For Professionals

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 4)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 05:08:35 +0000

Part 4 in my 7 part Podcast series……

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 4 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari reveals her preferred Facebook applications and how to setup your profile to deliver a professional business persona.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!

Mari Smith – Facebook For Professionals

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 3)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 04:59:42 +0000

Part 3 in my 7 part Podcast series……

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 3 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari talks about connecting to people and her preferences when accepting friend requests.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!

Mari Smith – Facebook For Professionals

Podcast: How To Use Facebook Strategically To Grow Your Business (Part 2)

Charly Leetham — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:50:12 +0000

This is Part 2 of my 7 part Podcast series…..

The interview was over 1 hour long and I have divided into 7 seperate sections. This is Part 2 of “How To Use FaceBook Strategically To Grow Your Business”.

In this weeks Podcast, Mari discusses why she prefers Facebook over other social networking platform and managing your time and reputation.

Enjoy this weeks Podcast.

You are welcome to connect with either of us however, when sending a connect request, make sure you introduce yourself and tell the person you want to connect to a bit about yourself.

Connect with me on Facebook

Connect with Mari Smith on Facebook
– remember to mention that you were listening to my podcast!