Thoughts From LBJ Web Design & Consulting

As SEO frustration reaches an all time high, many companies who came to the table late are merely left with scraps compared to the market share of early adopters who embraced search engine optimization from the onset.

The trend in search engine optimization as a viable traffic source has eclipsed more traditional formats for marketing and promotion such as Television, Radio and Print due to the accessibility of keyword research, a vast array of traffic sources and the benefits of long-term ROI if the investment matures.

Like anything of value, you have to plant the seeds and be patient to see the full effect of an optimization campaign. However, as profits are devoured by companies with larger budgets that can wield more authoritative positions in a marketplace, position their brands, products and services through advertising and methods such as pay per click marketing, it becomes even more difficult for smaller companies to “keep up” with the 800 pound gorillas that are dominating the space.

Combine this with the trend for any web design or development company to tack the word SEO to their service offering and other firms competing purely on price and you have an all out free-for-all with very little consideration for valuation (aside from search engine results).

SEO can be measured by (a) how effective the keyword selection is (b) if the selected keywords make it to the top 10, top 5 or top 3 results in search engines, and once that traffic arrives (c) if those visitors take action and convert.

While the concept of sliding scale SEO pricing is a conundrum to most, consider the adage “you get what you pay for” as a general rule of thumb. Typical organic optimization campaigns for effective SEO companies usually start in the $3-$5000 per month range.

While the variables required to produce a top ranking differ in most markets, the fact is, there are layers of action items to execute, track and synthesize.

Anyone touting to do this for a few hundred dollars per month is either providing a cookie-cutter approach or providing a minimalist time to execution ratio, as you can rest assured your competitors in the top 3 positions paid dearly to capture and maintain those positions.

Just as the saying, to the victor goes the spoils, the top 3 results garner the lions’ share of traffic and funnel those click-throughs to eager landing pages designed to facilitate an emotional response and encourage the visitor to take action and convert into a customer.

In most instances with cheap SEO services and promises of top 10 placements rarely work out as anticipated. The metrics that search engines utilize in order to assess relevance are constantly in a state of flux and change.

What works today, may not work next week or next month (aside from the fundamental SEO best practices) such as a semantically structured site architecture, title tag, meta data and on page content and internal link coherence.

If you are late to the game, there are alternatives such as using an in-house SEO vs. outsourcing your search engine optimization to an outside SEO company. Yet, there are pros and cons associated with each.

While the solution of using an in-house SEO may be appealing, the downside applies to the question of man or woman power, since they are limited in scope and are in fact (just one person).

The upside to using an outsourced solution is

(1) they have a team
(2) in most instances SEO companies have a project manager
(3) a system for implementing and executing deliverables and reporting and
(4) can utilize the collective expertise and human resource that simply would not be available to an individual for spot-checking progress, or other pertinent details.

If your company is faced with the decision on which way to go (in house or outsourcing their SEO), keep in mind that SEO can be measured by effectiveness. If you have an eager team who is willing and able to learn about SEO, then consider SEO consulting services to get your action-items from a trained specialist, who can then review the work periodically or remotely.

Curbing the need to put your eggs in one basket or on one in-house SEO alone vs. using a team is not only viable from a budgetary perspective, but makes perfect sense as the more individuals that are aware of the process, the more you can utilize the collective momentum to work cohesively as a unit.

There are always additional traffic sources, but for the long-term ROI and benefit of capturing a competitive keyword or group of key phrases, the upside is well worth the wait despite the bouts of impatience and SEO frustration of watching others race for the top 10 results in a battle of meddle, skill, budget and resolve.

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough — if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let’s take a look at a very good example — apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!

In reality, you do not need to offer such a “heavyweight” download such as a full-feature software like iTunes.  You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!

Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the hard disk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

In the last two years the national economy has taken a tremendous shock. Not only have we experienced a large increase in unemployment, but we have had governmental spending at unprecedented levels. For those of us over forty, our concern for our retirement is now extending into the solvency of Social Security.

It now is highly likely that this unfunded government obligation will be being paid with inflated dollars. Being such a large liability, it might be expected that any COLA (cost of living adjustment) would not be keeping up with the actual inflationary increases. This would have the obvious effect of reducing the value of our Social Security retirement.

During the tenure of President Carter, the government removed energy and housing from the COLA formula. These have been the two largest inflationary items in our economy. The present Social Security payments are substantially lower than they would have otherwise been. This type of future government manipulation can be expected.

The extent of the present unemployment has had the psychological effect of generating an incredible amount of uncertainty in those who have been lucky enough to maintain their employment.

It would appear from all of the above stated reasons it would be a very prudent decision to add another stream of income to the family budget. And as convincing as this information is we many times to not take into account the advantages of having an in home business.

Aside from removing our insecurity concerning our future income capabilities, having an in home business has a large number of rewards.

With the present revenue of 156 billion dollars being generated on the internet, and the unlimited earning potential, an in home business can be started for the cost of a computer and some filing cabinets.

Normally you can start an in home business on a part time basis and grow it into a full time income.

1. Once full time income is developed, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration indicates the average American spends 348 hours each year commuting. This is like adding 15% to your available work time and a large savings in auto expense and daily lunches.

2. You are no longer dependent upon an employer or governmental activity in regard to your and your family’s future.

3. You are now a master of your own fate. You no longer need to worry about company politics, compensation, or unfair termination.

4. Initially you will not have a tremendous amount of tax benefits, but as your business grows, these benefits can be quite an advantage. We would recommend you speak to a tax attorney for the latest rules and regulations. Being able to pay your children in pre tax dollars is a great way to generate a college fund.

5. Working on the internet is quite different than a brick and mortar business where you had customer sales contact, customer service and problems with accounts receivable. Most of the procedures n the internet are highly automated. Once your procedures and promotional actions have been put in place, you should have substantially more free time for friends and family.

6. You certainly will have no need to find any other creative outlet. The infinite number of methods, products, and promotions is quite motivating as well as stimulating.

After making the decision to start an internet business, the next most important judgment in which you will be faced is the area in which you will become involved. It should be an area in which you have an interest and in which large amounts of money is being spent.

We would like to suggest the healthcare industry. Large portions of the national and your family budget are being used in the healthcare area. In addition, there is no other area that is growing as quickly. People will forgo many of their other necessities of life to adequately care for their health.

Doctor Suzanne Gudakunst has developed a breakthrough weight loss program taking the diet industry by storm. You have undoubtedly seen her on national television describing her program. She has now developed a very unique affiliate program. There is nothing like it presently on the internet. She is looking for associates to increase her visibility on line. For more information, go to our website as shown in our Resource Box.

Your website can be many things, a business card on the web, a resource for customers to get information on your products, a store front, or an audition that shows rather than just tells your prospective customers that you are going to give them the best party out there!

Videos are a great way to connect with an online audience because it’s more personal that just a text website and you can start building a connection with visitors right away.  Plus they’re very easy to make.

Your video can be anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes long.  In fact short videos are more effective than longer videos because people lose interest fairly quickly.  Chances are you already have the equipment.  Most digital cameras these days have video capabilities built in, and in some cases they are very good quality! If not then you can purchase webcams fairly cheaply that will work just fine for this purpose.

Here is what you need to do:

1. Decide on a topic. You could demo a product, talk about a promotion you’re doing, read an article your wrote, or tell a funny story.  You can really do anything that is relevant to your target market.

2. Record the video.  Make sure you have plenty of natural lighting and let ‘er rip.  You can stand against a blank wall or even go outside.  Whatever you are comfortable with is fine.

3. Upload the video.  Depending on your camera you can download the video onto your computer and then upload it to YouTube, or with some cameras you can directly upload to YouTube as soon as you plug it into your computer.

4. Post the video on your blog.  I like to use the Viper’s Quicktags plugin for this because you can copy the link directly from YouTube and it will embed into your blog post.

That is the quick and dirty way to make a video and put it on your blog.  There are many other steps you could take in between such as editing and adding effects but not all of them are necessary, especially f you aren’t technologically savvy to begin with.  The most important thing to keep in mind is to have fun and show your audience your personality, the rest is just details.

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is something that will refer to the ability of any website or blog to be positioned highly on search engine results. When anyone types a certain keyword or keyword phrase into their search engine the results that come up first will be highly effective in terms of their search engine optimization strategy.

As such it is extremely important for you to understand how this works so that your website or blog is highly rated when people type certain keywords into their search engine. This is extremely important in generating traffic for your Internet presence. Traffic is extremely important and without it the success that you would want will never be achieved.

If no one is actually looking at the website that you run and the products or services that you offer then you cannot possibly expect to make enough sales to create the success that you desire. It is therefore absolutely crucial that you develop run a proper strategy of search engine optimisation so that you can make sure the website is as highly rated as possible in search engine results.

There is certainly a lot to learn about SEO and therefore you should make sure you learn as much as you possibly can in order to give yourself the best chance of success.

Thankfully, if you are simply starting up a first-time then you should be aware that there are a number of free methods of increasing the traffic that comes to your website and the position that it will have on search engine rankings. Those who are more experience and thinking everything more seriously, there are also ways of improving results are spending money as well.

All in all, however, if you fail to develop a proper strategy and run through it properly then you will not achieve the results that you might.

Web site traffic building is one of the best methods of improving your business. There are many known methods of increasing the traffic to your site. Using these proven methods will not only increase the traffic to your site, but will also do it very quickly. There are many people who have been successful in using these methods to increase the traffic to their sites too. These methods are as follows:

1. Article submission to directories: Article submission to various directories help to increase the web site traffic. This is because the directories are all having a particular page rank on a search engine search. If your article is submitted to their sites, then your article will also have a high page rank. This in turn will cause your article to be highly visible to all the other sites. When your article is visible, there will be a better chance of your site getting more visitors.
2. Blog commenting: Blog commenting is another method of web site traffic building. If you have a blog, then you can make use of it to the maximum by making various comments on the blogs. Other than your own blogs, you can use the blogs of other people also by posting comments on their blogs. The only thing that you have to remember is that you should post your blogs comments in relevant blogs. Adding a link back to your site will also increase the traffic to your site.
3. Link building: Link building is a method used by almost all people to drive traffic to their sites. The first thing that you have to do is to find the web sites that have the best page ranks and then you can try to exchange links with these sites.
4. E mail list building: E mail list building is another method of building traffic to your web site. All you have to do is build a list of e mail addresses and then use these to send promotional messages and other kinds of deals that are part of your business. This will make the interested people to visit you site. This is the simplest method of increasing traffic to your site.
5. Forum posting: Forum posting can also help you to build traffic to your site. You have to start posting comments in various forums. This will make other people read these comments and then use the link in these comments to reach your site.

One of the things that separates WordPress from other blogging platforms is that it’s Open Source. There are many benefits that go along with this. The main one being the sheer amount of plugins that are available to save you time, help you make money and organize your online business. You can easily add functionality to your sites without programming experience and this makes the whole WordPress platform flexible.

I often get asked which plugins I use on my WordPress blogs and sites, so I thought I would put together a list of the main ones I use. I don’t use all of them on every site but here’s the best ones I’ve found.

Advertising Manager – Control and arrange your Advertising and Referral blocks on your WordPress blog.

Akismet – Comment Spam Protector

All in One SEO Pack – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog

Audio player – Audio Player is a highly configurable but simple mp3 player for all your audio needs.

cbnet Ping Optimizer – Saves your WordPress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer

Contact Form 7 – contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

Embedded Video – Easy embedding of videos from various portals or local video files with corresponding link.

Embed QuickTime – Embed QuickTime movies into blog posts easily.

Extended Profile – Detect and import hCard data on new user, extended data for user profiles, easy hCard generation.

FasterIM Opt-In: Free version – FasterIM Opt-In will pop-over opt-in form to your visitor.

FLV Embed – Standards compliant FLV embedding in your blog posts using SWFObject

Free Traffic Getting SEO PluginTM 2.0 – finds the best SEO plugins available for WordPress and then optimizes their settings so you don’t have to.

GoCodes – Create shortcut URLs to anywhere on the internet, right from your WordPress Admin.

GoingUp! Web Analytics – Web Analytics is an advanced website traffic and visitor analytics application which offers comprehensive visitor activity as well as search engine optimization and site ranking.

Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics.

Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.

HeadSpace2 – Meta-data manager on steroids, allowing complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets, and many many other goodies.

KB Robots.txt – Manage your robots.txt file from within WordPress.

MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup – MaxBlogPress Unblockable Popup generates custom popup to power up your WordPress blog.

More Fields – Adds any number of extra fields, in any number of additional boxes in the admin.

openxwpwidget – Sidebar-Widget, display a banner in a sidebar and replace magics {openx:zoneid} with calls to a openx adserver.

Page Link Manager – Adds admin panel to choose which pages appear in the site navigation.

Permalinks Moved Permanently – When permalink isn’t found, this checks if a post with the requested slug exists somewhere else on your blog.

Platinum SEO Pack – Complete SEO solution for your WordPress blog.

ShareThis – Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Simple CAPTCHA – A simple captcha system for comment system to prevent spam.

Sociable – Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites.

TinyMCE Advanced – Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress.

WishList Member – WishList Member is the most comprehensive membership plugin for WordPress users. It allows you to create multiple membership levels, protect desired content and much more.

WP-DBManager – Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries.

WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database.

Hope you find these useful..

To your success!

List building by means of JV Partners is among the best and fastest ways of growing your subscribers list. Let me share to you some of the strategies on how to build your list by means of JV partners.

1. Finding Potential Joint Venture Partners

One of the best way to locate JV partners is to easily join several lists within your niche. You will be able to easily find these potential joint venture partners by searching “your niche forums” or “your niche newsletter/ezine”. You may join as numerous as you think you possibly can handle, and check out the earliest emails that comes into your email.

List owners and potential joint venture partners are most likely accept your offer, as it can benefit them just same as yours. Just make sure to provide quality and valuable offer, and make sure that your list is responsive, to be fair.

2. The Size Of Your List Matters

The perfect JV partner must have a list size similar to yours. if you have 500 subscribers, then you need to look for somebody which has 500 subscribers as well, at least within that range, or who is eager to give you 500 names if he has bigger list. Doesn’t matter what you need to do, it goes without saying that list ad swaps need to be extremely related to the readers on both lists. It benefits nobody if ever the fit is completely incorrect.

3. The Quality Of Your Offer

Aside from the list size, successful joint venture partnership relies on quality. If you are thinking of running a junk list where you are simply spamming your subscribers with advertisements, then nobody would want to swap with you, because most likely you will not give them enough click that they are looking for, and if that will be the case, you are the only one who will benefit if they have a quality, responsive list.

4. Work out caution

Prior to agreeing to do a list swap, perform a tiny experiment first. Agree to swap, let’s say, 30% of your lists to determine what the reply is. You may choose to even perform little test runs with different email teasers to find out what works best. This is as much art as it is science, so be prepared to do some testing prior to both fully decide to a large swap.

Some words of advice: An additional method of list building with JV partners is to offer to perform a few guest writing for blog owners in addition to list owners. These people have to provide content regularly, and may even accept someone who writes perfectly and can relieve them of some of the burden. Your content will obviously be included by your authors bio box, that will connect to both a sign up page for your newsletter or a sales page that you manage and where you could possibly collect names. Apply this tactic on its own or along with the preceding list building advice.

One of the great features of a blog is it’s “RSS Feed.” That stands for “real simple syndication” – but it can be a little confusing and not feel so simple if you’re new to blogging. It allows your fans to get notified when you post a new blog, if they choose to subscribe in an RSS reader. Awesome, right?

But what if your fans don’t use an RSS Reader? What if you move your website to a new URL? How can you tell who’s following your RSS feed?

No problem if you’re using Feedburner. I use Feedburner along with the plugin FD Feedburner Plugin on my WordPress blog.

Five Reasons I’m a Feedburner Fan and You Should Consider it, Too!

1. It simplifies promoting my feed. Through Feedburner I get all sorts of options that are easy to setup and use.

2. It allows me to offer my readers a “subscribe by email” option in addition to the usual option to subscribe with an rss reader. You can see it in action near the top right of this page, under my welcome video.

3. It’s easy to embed other places. With a snippet of code from Feedburner, called the Headline Animator, I can take my blog posts and promote them on other sites I run, my social networking profiles, and more. I’ve even added it to my Facebook Fan Page.

4. It’s gives me helpful statistics and subscriber information in an easy to follow and understand format. I can login to my Feedburner account and see how many people have subscribed, what they’re reading, and more. With this info you can watch for popular posts or see problems happening and fix them quickly.

5. It gives me control in case I change domain names, blog software, or otherwise need to update my feed URL. I won’t lose any subscribers, I just update the address in Feedburner and it will keep all the subscribers up to date. With a regular RSS feed you would lose your subscribers if you switched to a new feed URL. After all your effort to build a fan base you definitely don’t want that to happen.

As you can see it has several advantages over the built in RSS feed in WordPress and allows you to leverage your feed to get more traffic from email subscribers, your other websites and social networking pages, and more.

There are also alternatives to FeedBurner you may consider including FeedBlitz, Feedity, and RapidFeeds.