August 2012 - IlianaLola.com

Off-line ads for promoting your online business…

Many people believe that online marketing is only about online promotion. For me, the truth is far from there. When we are talking about online marketing, mainly we are talking about online promotional methods for our online business, and most of the times we forget that we can promote our site off-line too. It may be silly for some people, but the point is to get more traffic and as a result more customers. Right?

Well, here are a few off-line methods you can use effectively to drive traffic and thus gain more money through your site.

Word of Mouth

This can be very easy if you have a great site and/or product to promote. Don’t lie and cheat your way through as this will come back to haunt you. Be professional, courteous and honest, and the rest will look after itself. If a person likes what you do they will tell six others. If a person is disappointed with what you do, they will tell twenty others.

Newspapers

This is a bit old fashion method, but it still works great, plus it presents you as an authority in your field. Create a unique story angle on your blog and e-mail it along with a press release to journalists.

Business cards

For anyone to take you seriously, you need to have a business card. Having a business card is a great way to introduce people you meet in day-to-day life about your blogging activity. They are also very inexpensive to purchase with most costing less than 1 cent per card.

Use your car or truck as a billboard

Numerous business owners recognize how important it is to get involved with social media to increase the exposure of their offerings and reputation.

Create branded gifts

I am sure you have seen a pen or a cup with a logo on it. Giving away promotional gifts is a great way to promote your online business and branding and it is very cheap to do it. You can create your own gifts, bags, apparels etc. Whatever come to your mind can be done. Make a list of promotional apparel, find what is the best fit for you and get started.

Television

Probably one of the most expensive forms of advertising due to its massive audience, especially on prime time T.V. Usually only the big businesses with massive advertising budgets use television, but there is an alternative. Advertising on local cable television channels can bring in a lot of business. It is relatively well priced and because it’s on TV can give the impression that your company is bigger and more successful than it actually is.

Radio

Radio advertising can be very effective in advertising your URL if your domain name is short, catchy and easy to remember. Creative webmasters could develop short scripts themselves whereby their ad incorporates their slogan which in turn incorporates the benefits of visiting their URL. As with TV advertising radio ads work best when targeted towards a specific demographically segmented market such as a certain cities residents. Again price wise you mightn’t be able to compete with the big boys and have ads on very popular stations, but local stations offer good prices. Keep in mind however that prices all depend on when and how often your ad is run.

Create and Giveaway custom Coffee Mugs

Create coffee mugs with your logo and site on them and give them away to your friends and family. The time they will use them they will also make a free advertisement to your site. Try http://www.bluesodapromo.com to take some ideas.

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

Reasons Why Your Company Should Hire SEO Specialists

Let’s first take a brief about what SEO means. The expansion is Search Engine Optimization Most of you should be turning to the Internet if you need any information of any topic under the sun or over it. However, it is not enough to go to the Web, you need to specifically look for an effective search engine like Google. Even after you have accessed Google, your search needs to be very specific in order to quickly find whatever you are looking for. Your question will certainly throw up several thousand answers, however only the top few get noticed and viewed. The endeavor then, is to figure in the top few that appear on the first page itself. SEO is way to rank your websites in the top most slots.

The important thing that you need to realize is that SEO cannot think like humans, though they are created by them. They respond to specific commands that are in text-form only. Though search engines like google can amaze you with the speed and precision with which they pull up results, they are not designed to detect anything other than text. Continue reading →

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

How to start with Affiliate Marketing

A few days ago a reader of my blog, Mark, sent me an email asking about how he can make money using his website which is about loans. He said:

Iliana Hi,

I am a frequent reader of your blog and I have to say I have learned many things up to now.

I just wanted to ask you a quick question about my website. I have a blog about loans, and although I have traffic -around 300 uniques per day- I cannot make any money from it. Do you have any suggestion?

Thank you in advance

Mark

Mark to be honest you didn’t gave me a lot of info about your website. What income sources do you have on it? I assume that since you do not make any money from it yet you have just paid to click ads, Google ads or similar.

Well, if this is the case, this is not bad, but you need much more targeted traffic to make an income from it. What I propose is to consider Affiliate marketing. What I mean with this is to place targeted ads on your site and get paid per sale or per lead (which is much easier and quicker). The important thing is to place only targeted – relevant ads to your site, so they can convert quick.

What I propose in this case, is to join a free affiliate networkrelated to your niche and start placing ads to your site. There are many affiliate networks out there, but you do not have to join all of them. Many are scams, ask you for money in order to join or they have only little converting offers. That’s why I propose Blue Global Media which is, in my opinion one of the best networks you can start with.

I guess that you are a newbie in affiliate marketing and that you may think that this is something difficult to do. Don’t worry. This particular network is very easy to use, is user friendly and the most important thing is that it have many offers you can choose from.

Once you go to their website, instead of trying to login click the sign up button to start the sign-up process. Complete the form with all your info (be careful to use valid info, so you will get paid properly), give the details of your site so they know how you are planning to promote their offer and of course do not forget to read the affiliate agreement. Once done, click the signup button and that’s it.

Once you login to your members area, spend some time to find the offers that best fit to your site. There is no need to add all of them. Choose 2 or 3 of them and make your best to advertise them and see how they convert. If after a few weeks you see that some of them do not convert well, do not get disappointed, just go back to the Payday affiliate program, choose an other offer and start the advertising process from the beginning.

Affiliate marketing needs time. Don’t believe that you will make money overnight. Choose the correct network, add relevant offers and have patient. If in the process you find difficulties in promoting the offers or anything else related to it, don’t forget that once you join you have been assigned to an affiliate manager who is responsible for helping you out. Use him to your advantage…

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

3 Reasons your business needs a domain name!

I run a domain name forum and one of the questions we are always being asked is ‘Why should my business be thinking about domain names’. Well, a domain name is just a set of characters that represents an IP address. It says to other computers, ‘Hey if you’re looking for the data for this website, go here’. It might sound like it’s just a pointer, but believe me, it’s so much more. A domain name can be had for next to nothing in the current market and it could be the start of something truly amazing. I’ll give you three reasons that your business needs a domain name. I guarantee you; you’ll be heading to the nearest registrar by the end of this article!

1. Branding.

Anyone with business sense knows that your organisation needs to have an image, a persona and character. All of these three factors roll into one to create your brand. This is the image that your business portrays. It can be fun, serious, formal, secure, silly or a combination of all of these. Your domain name is the first step to branding yourself on the Internet. Think about Google. Their brand is based around their domain name. A catchy domain name can define what your business becomes. Get it right and it can create a serious buzz around your products and services. Longdrawnoutnameiwthlocation.com is not going to get anybody excited … ZOOMBALL.com might do though. See the difference a name makes?

2. Reach.

A domain name can take your business global. Again this is really an advantage to getting your business online, but without the right Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) e.g. .co.uk, .de, .nl or .us, you won’t maximise your visibility. ccTLDs are domain names that are geared towards a single locality. People in that nation or area tend to place a certain amount of trust in what they feel are their own parts of the web. This gives you the opportunity to penetrate markets that would have otherwise preferred to go local. This obviously involves some additional investment in the numerous domain name extensions. But if you’re planning on taking your business global, there’s no excuse for not exposing yourself to all of these economies with the right domain name.

3. SEO

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is the process of optimising websites to gain a higher ranking with search engines like Google and therefore appear at the front of search results. The number one position for your keyword is extremely elusive. The number 1 spot on a Google search is clicked by over 50% of searchers. Get to that haven and you have yourself some serious exposure. The right domain name, that includes a keyword that relates to your business, can give you an advantage over your competitors. If I ran fishing shop and my domain name was fishingshop.com, I would have a much better chance of getting to the top of the search engine’s pages when people search for ‘fish shop’ than my local competitor, whose domain is ‘shoppingforfishingstuffinlondon.com’.

I could add another 7 points onto this list. There really are a huge number of advantages to getting your business online and securing a great domain name. Before you start advertising, grab the right domain name and make sure you give yourself some breathing space for international expansion by securing the right ccTLDs too! Good luck with your businesses and let me know what domain names you’ve registered so I can see if you’ve taken my advice!

About David Webb

Administrator of Web Wise Forum. Discussing Domain Names, Web Hosting, SEO and much more. Writing guest posts for Ilianalola.com in my spare time.

Twitter Taking Legal Action To Can Spammers And How You Can Spot A Black Hat Company

According to the latest reports, Twitter is launching fresh legal action against spammers in an attempt to cut down on the problem which has been a big issue for the social networking site over the past few years.

According to the report, Twitter is not suing individual spammers themselves, which would be difficult and near on impossible, but it is trying to cull the Twitter spam industry by bringing down five of the companies that enables users to use the service in a spamming fashion.

The lawsuit which Twitter has raised names three of the firms, TweetAttacks, TweetAdder and TweetBuddy – and also identifies individuals from two other organisations — James Lucero and Garland Harris. The companies are being charged with violating the strict usage terms of site by selling software that helps people to spam the service.

A Twitter spokesman commented on the legal action, “Taking legal action sends a clear message to all would-be spammers that there are serious and costly consequences to violating our Rules with their annoying and potentially malicious activity.”

“Working the system” as it has become known, is a technique which many spammers are active in as an attempt to abuse the system for personal or commercial gain. This has also become known as black hat techniques, something which many less than ethical SEO consultants have become known for. Rather than creating quality pages that get shared, these people will use black hat techniques that get the results which the client wants, albeit usually in a temporary and unappealing fashion for their brand.

The difficulty with employing a black hat expert is that the results of their work will often only be temporary, and it could result in your website being de-indexed if Google discovers what you’re up to.

Consequently, many companies should ensure that they use a professional search engine optimisation expert rather than trying to find a cheaper alternative to get the work done. Even with the best intentions at heart, your company website could be blacklisted if it decides to employ black hat techniques in an attempt to rank higher in search engine results.

To look out for black hat SEO’s, there are various things which you might be promised. The first thing that the black hatters tend to promise is a quick success rate when it comes to ranking your page on Google search results. Even the most professional of search engine optimisation providers will not be able to promise this, as SEO generally takes a lot of time as quality content, links and social activity is gradually built up.

A black hat SEO company might also offer very cheap prices as a lot of their work is automated using software. When it comes to search engine optimisation, you often get what you pay for. Choosing to pay for a quality service will not only keep you out of trouble, but will ensure that your website begins to take the shape and growth that you would like it to and hopefully appear higher on search engine result pages across the Internet.

About The Author:

Scott Pittman works as an SEO consultant and has many years experience in online marketing. Visit the link to learn more about black and white hat seo or to see the complete range of services from an seo company.

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

Internet Marketing… A newbie guide

Many people think that Internet Marketing (IM) is something easy, that everyone can do it….

Really? Do you also think so?

To be honest, this is not the case, that’s why more than 90% of people wanting to make money online, fail to do so. They start with the belief that Internet marketing is for everyone, but they forget that without skill nothing can be achieved….

Well, in this blog you will find many info about how to proceed effectively with IM (also known as web marketing, online marketing, webvertising, or e-marketing). This post is written for newbies that what to explore mainly what is all about and start developing their skill.

What are the types of internet marketing?

Advertising Display: the placement of web banners or banner ads on your site/blog with the purpose to drive traffic to an other website. Of course this is also the case when you pay someone else to add banners to her website with a link back to yours.
Search engine marketing (SEM): A marketing type with which you increase a sites visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). This can be done using paid ads, contextual ads, paid inclusion, or just through the use of free search engine optimization techniques.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Probably the most common Internet marketing technique which focuses on improving the visibility of a site/blog in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (also known as organic) search results.
Social media marketing: Also a very popular techique. The process of driving traffic to a website through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc.
Email marketing: This is a very effective, but most of the time expensive and time consuming one. It involves directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using electronic mail, such us send a targeted commercial email to your mailing list. The difficulty here is that most of the times you need some paid services marketing that can provide you with the needed software, so you will be able to create that list.
Referral marketing: a method of promoting products or services to new customers through referrals
Affiliate marketing: As an affiliate you drive traffic to a third site that sells a service or a product and you get a commission for each new customer you refer.
Inbound marketing: involves creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
Video marketing: This type of marketing specializes in creating videos that engage the viewer into a buying state by presenting information in video form and guiding them to a product or service.

As you can understand, it is not that easy to develop all the skills that is needed to be able to use all those types of Internet marketing. The best way is to choose two of them and try to become as good as you can at it. Find what is the best fit for you and start working on it until you learn it very well and you see results. Of course, you can always hire marketing consulting services and let them do the hard work for you.

Once you understand what is the best for you, navigate to the appropriate category of this blog to find out more….

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

Is Your Site Optimized for Maximum Conversion?

You may have an awesome design, a huge ad words budget or great rankings on search engines, but is your page creating maximum conversions? Creating a simple user friendly website that makes it easy for sales to pile up should always be your goal as a webmaster or marketer. I can’t stress enough how simplicity means more money in your pocket, the less confusing your page is the better. Along with simple design, content and website flow will also improve your sales and conversions.

Creating Content that Sells

Content is more than space for you to place your keywords and business name. You want content that is not only informal, but also has a positive impact on guiding visitors into making a purchase. This means writing proper sales copy that talks about the benefits of your service or product along with a call to action. A call to action may be as simple as “If you need fast and effective plumbing services don’t hesitate to contact us”. Generally a call to action is at the bottom of the content so that users are left with an urge to take an action. Remember, your website is a sales tool no matter what industry you are in.

Lead Forms

Lead forms are extremely important to making sure you get maximum conversions on your website. Make sure your form is as simple as possible and gives you only the information you need to contact and sell the customer. Lead forms should be easy to find and are extremely effective when added to a page side bar on the home and subpages. Make it as easy as possible for your customers to drop in their contact information. Follow up with your customers as quickly as you can to improve close rates.

User Flow

If you sell products directly off your site then you need to optimize your user flow. User flow means that going through the ecommerce process should be quick and easy. By this we mean that purchasing a product should take no more than 3 pages. You should have at most one page to search or find the specific product, one page to check-out and one page to receive confirmation. The longer it takes a customer to purchase a product the more likely they are to have second thoughts.

Testimonials

Testimonials are awesome at creating credibility for your product or services. Your testimonials should be in high traffic areas of your website where customers can easily find them without looking. You can also go the extra mile by getting customers to post reviews on other sites such as Yelp or Manta.

Contributor: Trevor is the CEO of Rainbow Tucson Internet Marketing. He is well versed in Tucson Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click and Social Media.

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

Pandering to Panda

What exactly is it that Google likes? We know that the most recent focus is on high-quality websites, but that’s a pretty broad term. Google have released some guidelines on what makes a site high-quality, but there are many things to take into account when considering international search marketing. This brief article should help explain what Google thinks makes high quality content.

These are some of the factors that distinguish between a high and low quality website:

Trust – Is the site trustworthy in the sources of its information?
Originality – Pretty simple really, high-quality sites have a high proportion of totally original content, and duplication between pages is rare.
Safety – A quality site needs to be secure. While this isn’t under SEO jurisdiction, it’s very important that a site can be trusted with personal details.
Accuracy – The more accurate the information on a website, the better.
Bias – A tricky one to make work on some sites, but according to Google’s guidelines, sites should illustrate both sides of a story.
Authority – If information is being provided by an expert or authority on the subject, then it’s better.
Editing – Spelling and grammatical mistakes, poor structuring of information, and general lack of checking work results in low-quality site content.
Relevance – Pointless pieces of content, or things that have been blatantly added as a result of guessing what people might search for, lower the quality of a site.
Substance – Is the content good content? Does it give the user what they came on the site for, or is it obvious and basic?
Over Optimisation – This was a feature rolled out in March 2012. Google believe that a site can be ‘over optimised’ which results in a poor quality experience for the end user. As a result, penalties have been introduced for excessive SEO.
Consistency – Being consistent across all the pages of a site is very important. Having low-quality content on one page can in fact impact the site as a whole. This was a new feature introduced by Panda, and should not be ignored.

The User Knows Best

Relevant to global search engine optimisation, Google’s focus is on improving user experience. Google wants its users to quickly find the very best results they’re looking for, and so places quality at the top of its agenda. Websites that continue to provide high-quality content that follows the above guidelines should not face any penalties from further updates. Global search engine optimisation has changed, but it’s good news for users.

International SEO Company London

Adam Hart-Davies writes for Ingenuity Digital, an international SEO company London. http://www.ingenuitydigital.co.uk are experts in international search marketing, delivering measurable results through international SEO, social media & online PR.

If you’re looking for an international SEO company London based Ingenuity Digital could be the answer.

About

Iliana Lola is a full time internet marketer and writer and the owner of Ilianalola.com.

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