Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Using an Email Signature

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One of the most effective Internet marketing secrets is also one of the easiest–and it’s free!

Do your emails include a signature file? A signature file is a standard block of text you include in each of your outgoing email messages and postings to forums.

Most email systems (including Gmail, Outlook and others) allow you to create a signature file which will automatically appear at the end of every message you send. Search the “Help” function in your email program to learn how to do this.

Your email signature may include your name, tagline or slogan, URL and other contact information, such as your telephone number, links to social media profiles or IM and Skype IDs.

To make your signature most effective, include a call to action. Your call to action may drive people to your website to sign up for your newsletter or download a free report. Or you may ask people to follow you on Twitter or call you for a free consultation. Or include a link to your sales page where they can buy your flagship product.

It is best to keep your signature file to no more than 7 lines. You can’t tell your whole life story, just give the basics of who you are, how to contact you and why they may want to contact you.

Keep it simple. Don’t use HTML in your signature. Many mail programs won’t read it properly, and recipients will see a jumbled mess of codes instead of your beautifully formatted message.

Do put any URLs in your message in this format: http://www.IdeaLady.com/. Most email programs will read the URL as a hotlink, making it easy for readers to click through to your site. You can also make your email address a hotlink by entering it as mailto:email@example.com. 

This is a strategy you can implement today. It’s easy, it’s free and it really works. Many of my customers originally found me through my signature file. How many customers will find you with yours?

Get Links to Your Website

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An important element in getting your site ranked well with the search engines is to fill it with quality content. How do the search engines judge what is quality content? 

They have a number of proprietary algorithms, and they tend to be secretive about many aspects of how they evaluate sites and determine rankings. However, one thing we know is that having a lot of good links coming in to your site is one factor that can help you to rank well.

You might think of links as “votes” for your site. That’s a simplistic way to look at it, but it is not a bad analogy. When someone likes your site, they link to it. When a lot of sites link to your site, that means a lot of people like it.

The search engines like links to occur because people want to link to your site. They are opposed to things such as “link farms” (massive link exchanges) or paid links that try to game the system. The best links are those that occur naturally. However, it is possible to do things that ethically encourage incoming links.

Some links are more valuable than others. A link from an authority site to yours is worth more than a nofollow link you got by placing a blog comment. Just about any link will have at least some value, though, and you should always be on the lookout for ways to get more links.

Also remember that links have value beyond the search engines. Links may be followed by humans looking for more information about your topic. Posting an article, blog comment or other useful information, along with a link to your site, can lead them directly to you.

When talking about leads, we advise to consider following six ways to generate incoming links to your site:

Publish quality content. Bloggers and other website owners like to link to relevant content. If you write and publish tons of quality content, you’ll receive tons of incoming links.

Write articles for other sites. Writing articles and publishing them on other sites, especially respected sites in your niche, is a great method for getting inbound links.

Guest post on other people’s blogs. Bloggers are always looking for fresh content, and many are open to using guest posts. Approach bloggers in your niche and offer to write guest posts. They get the content, you get links to your site. Subscribe to http://BloggerLinkUp.com to find guest posting opportunities.

Write press releases and submit them to online press release websites. Be sure to include your website link at the end of the press release so media representatives can contact you, but also so you have an incoming link and interested visitors can find your website.

Get reciprocal links. Some reciprocal links are good as long as they’re coming from relevant websites. The trick is to balance reciprocal links with one-way links. Mix up your linking tactics so it looks natural to Google.

Participate in social networking. Posting tweets, and Facebook posts create incoming links to your website. In addition, when you comment on forums and other blog posts you also create incoming links via your signature.

As you’re creating and implementing your search engine optimization strategies, take the time to consider and include these linking tactics. While you may not be able to complete them all at the same time, instead focus on one tactic at a time adding to your SEO strategy as you grow.

Why Building Your Own List Is Important to Succeed Online

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email-list

Why you need an email list, and tips on building one. This post is by David Smith of Conversion Optimization company Invesp.

You’ve a great product which you want to sell online. So you created a stylish website with some great content, you’ve written a great sales letter covering all the reasons why one should buy the product , But still you are not getting sales?  Why, because you don’t have traffic. Your target audience doesn’t know about you. And to get traffic you have to buy it through PPC campaigns or by investing in SEO activities.

In early business stages, you may have to rely completely on search engines and PPC campaigns for traffic. But, if you want to be successful in long term you must have direct access to your customer base. And, there comes the importance of list building. It doesn’t matter what products/service you have to offer building your own list of potential customers and their contact details should be your top most priority from start.  Below are the few benefits of having your own list.

[Read more…]

Content Brings People to Your Website

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When people search the web, they are usually looking for the answer to a question or problem. When you provide the answer, you are rewarded with visitors. You can then create income streams from that traffic by offering products and services of interest to your visitors.

The first step is to figure out what people are searching for. You may think you know what search terms your potential customers use, but you could be very wrong. They may use different terminology than you, so start by doing keyword research. One free resource you can use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Write strong titles. I have been guilty of using titles that were too clever. Don’t go for the clever title, use titles that are descriptive. Include your keywords in titles. Promise a benefit.

Make it easy to read. People do not want to read pages of dense type on the screen. Use short sentences, short paragraphs and bulleted lists to make it easy to read. 

Remember that content is more than words. Useful content may include photos, graphs and charts, audio, video, and more. Use multimedia to attract and engage site visitors.

Encourage your visitors to get involved. You may allow visitors to rate site features, make comments, post to a forum, write reviews, or even to contribute content such as articles, photos and videos.

Update your content frequently. Add new content to your site at least weekly, and more often if possible.

Put some of your content on other sites. Upload videos to YouTube.com, pictures to Flickr.com and articles to EzineArticles.com. All of these sites allow you to post your content there for free, and you can link to your site from theirs. But do not put all of your content elsewhere. Some should be exclusive to you.

Watch your stats. Your web host should provide some kind of information about how many visitors your site receives and where they came from, or you may prefer to use Google Analytics. Look at your site’s stats to see what works. What sites refer the most visitors? How many people are coming from search engine results, and for what did they search? Are you seeing spikes in traffic? Do they occur on certain days, such as the day you updated or the day your email newsletter went out? I always see an increase on the days when I send out an email newsletter.

Once you know what works, keep doing it. 

Give Your Website Credibility

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Is it clear that there is a real business, run by real people, behind your website?

While surfing the web the other day, I ran across a site I found interesting. Before making a purchase, I wanted to know a little more about the person or company behind the site. Hard as I looked, however, I couldn’t find out who owned the site, where they were located, or how they could be contacted, aside from a contact form on the site. Needless to say, I didn’t make a purchase.

What do your customers learn about you and your company from your Web site? For customers to order online, they have to feel comfortable. The more they know about your business, the more comfortable they should feel. At the very least, give a company name and names of one or more real people at the company.

You may want to include a physical address, or photos of your staff or office. Put up bios of yourself and other principals so customers can learn more about you.

If at all possible, you should include a phone number. Many customers are surprised when they call to ask a question or place an order and I answer the phone myself. They like knowing that there is a ‘real person’ behind the website.

Make sure phone numbers and other information are current. I recently had an experience where I was charged twice for an online purchase. I knew the reputation of the company, and was sure it was a technical error. When I went to the website to find a customer service number, the number was not in service! I found another number, and it was out of service, too. After a couple more calls, I reached the principal who immediately credited my account for the error. When he heard about the trouble I’d had reaching him, he made sure his website information was updated that day.

I knew the double billing was a mistake, but had I not been familiar with the company my difficulty in reaching them might have made me think I’d been scammed.

Be generous with information to make your customers feel they know you and can trust you. They will repay you with all the business you can handle.