At some point you may find it necessary to obtain the service of an Internet marketing expert in order to boost the rankings of your website. There are a number of inexpensive and free tools you can utilize yourself to optimize your site, but usually it will be necessary to consult with a professional. When that time comes, there are a few tips to keep in mind to make sure you get the most services for your money without being taken to the cleaners:

1. Dont settle for the first company you come across. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of search engine optimization firms out there who claim to an Internet marketing expert. Look for a company that focuses solely on search engine optimization and not one who does it as a side business.

2. A guarantee is not always golden. Dont trust a company that promises they can get you the number 1 spot on any search engine.

3. Steer away from an Internet marketing expert who uses unethical practices in obtaining optimized results. Examples of less than legitimate means include: link and keyword farms, hidden text, doorway pages and cloaking. Not only will you lose the trust of your sites visitor but these types of procedures can at the very least get you banned from search engines instead of at the top of the list.

4. Avoid companies who claim their methods of search engine optimization are a trade secret. Now, obviously no company wants to give away all their tips; to do so would be business suicide. However, an Internet marketing expert who is trustworthy and employs legitimate SEO practices will feel comfortable sharing with you a basic plan for how they will improve your sites rankings.

5. Do your research. Find out how much the average SEO firm charges for their services. Shop around. Ask friends and business acquaintances. Research any company you are considering for hire. Dont stop with just the references they offer you, because obviously they arent going to give you a reference that would badmouth them. Ask around.

6. Before you sign on the dotted line, read the contract carefully. Find out exactly what the fee you are paying will cover and if the company offers a money back guarantee.

It may take a little time, and a lot of patience, to find the right Internet marketing expert but rushing into a business relationship with the wrong firm can lead to disaster.

Jack Elmy’s Web site provides information for anyone who wants to start a cleaning business. http://www.the-cleaning-business.com

—————————————————————————–

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your e-book or on your web site, free of charge, so long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content and include our resource box as listed above.

Chances are if you surf the net much you have noticed that almost every website offers a free newsletter or ezine in some form or other. Wonder why someone would go to so much trouble to publish a newsletter and offer it for free? The answer is because it is a brilliant Internet marketing idea. True, it does take some work to publish a quality ezine, however the benefits you can reap in sales for your main product or service is worth the time and effort.

What makes writing and publishing an ezine such a good Internet marketing idea is that it allows you to have direct contact with your customers and readers on a continuing basis. Even if they forget to visit your site again (and lets face it; with all of the work and family demands placed on all of us, no matter how good your site is, this is a possibility) if they are subscribed to your ezine you have a golden opportunity to remind them why your site is fantastic. Secondly, when done tastefully, it gives you a chance to earn a little extra through advertising. Finally, there are relatively few other ways you can build a relationship with your sites visitors. And as all good salespeople know, building a good rapport with your customer is key to making the sale.

There are a few golden rules you should understand before hurrying to write your first edition, however. While you may be able to convince a visitor to sign up for an ezine when they visit your site, your job as a publisher doesnt stop there. To get them to actually open it every time it lands their inbox and not hit the delete key, you need to develop a plan. At a minimum, keep these tips in mind in order for an ezine Internet marketing idea to be successful:

Take the time to include informative, interesting and entertaining content for your ezine. Give the reader a reason to want to read your newsletter and better yet, recommend it to others!

Reassure your readers. Always, always include a privacy statement and give them an opportunity to unsubscribe. Hopefully, if you provide relevant, original information youll never have to worry about this; but doing so shows you care about your reader and that you produce quality material.

Once you decide to publish an ezine, be consistent about it. If you tell your readers its a weekly publication, make sure it comes out weekly no matter what. Failing to abide by this rule tells your reader youre unreliable and untrustworthy.

Finally, remember that although writing and publishing an ezine is a fantastic Internet marketing idea, it is also a chance for you to have some fun and really expand your skills. Be creative and have fun!

Have you ever been horrified and intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-reliant information about Internet marketing available on the Net?

Often it results in many companies becoming confused and therefore reluctant to put
into practice what would be a valuable and simple business resource when understood
and applied correctly.

Market Research consultant for Inteltab, Gordon Goodfellow, who is also an English
literature graduate, decided it was time for a change. Part of this desire to make
Internet marketing more accessible may be due to his past experience as a teacher.

“I was sick of all the gobbledegook that surrounds the Internet, even today,” he
explains. “Marketing on the Net isn’t rocket science and should not be presented as such.

Everyone should have access to it. That’s the beauty of it.”

Having spent four years researching and assessing the best way of getting an effective message across on the Internet, he began to design a basic introduction to Internet marketing. The result of this hard work is Applied Web Marketing. AWM is a comprehensive beginners guide to marketing on the Internet, covering everything from
domain names to e-commerce and merchant accounts, and written in plain English. This is designed for the small business user and the home business user who does not want to spend a fortune on outside “experts”.

The key to most of Internet marketing is search engine optimisation. The key to good
search engine optimisation is keyword research. In other words, knowing which keywords or search terms people are using to find what theyre looking for on the Internet. If keyword research is done properly then there is no doubt that you will get highly targeted visitors to your website. This is obviously the professional way of going about things. It is the antithesis to the “spam” approach (unsolicited commercial emails) which achieves extremely poor results and simply annoys anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.

But which search engine should you optimise for? The search engine of choice at the
moment is Google. There are two good reasons for this. Firstly, Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet today. It is known for the quality and relevance of its search results, and so people trust it. Secondly, over the last couple of years Google has joined alliances with other search engines and directories. Yahoo, the worlds most popular directory, uses Googles database, so if you have a first page listing on Google you are likely to have a first page listing on Yahoo as well.

AOL and Netscape also share Googles search findings, so youll have similar search
results on the AOL and Netscape databases. Other lesser databases also rely on Google,
so that if you are well represented on Google, then youll be well represented on over sixty per cent of Internet search facilities.

You should also obtain a listing on the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) which is not much known about but very well respected in the search engine optimisation industry. The Open Directory does not use the normal search engine “spiders” or robot searchers; instead it uses over thirty thousand volunteer human editors who are ostensibly experts in their own fields. The theory behind this is that it ensures relevancy, accuracy and quality of all listings. A listing in DMOZ will therefore ensure a listing on Google and probably earn you an enhanced ranking there. Then all the others, like Yahoo, AOL, Netscape and the rest are bound to follow.

Optimisation is everything. The Applied Web Marketing website itself has the number
one position on Google out of 1.47 million search results for the search term “applied
web marketing”.

After optimisation is the submission process. Perceived wisdom of the moment says it is best to submit manually. Manual submissions to dozens of search engines and
directories can be very time-consuming, however. There are some good automated and
semi-automated software packages available out there to do the submissions for you.
But for the major players do find the time for manual submissions. Some search
engines, for example Alta Vista, make it impossible for automated submission by
software programs, because of individualised text codes that must be entered by hand at the start of the submission process, so you have to submit to Alta Vista manually as well. But that just takes about three minutes.

Dont bother with ads that say that they can “blast your web site to 500,000 search
engines”. There arent that many search engines; theres only a few hundred in total, and only about a dozen of any major importance. Youll just pay your money and be very disappointed. Most of these so-called search engines are link farms, FFA or free-for-all sites, which nobody every looks at, and which are responsible chiefly for sending out spam. If you link to such web sites you risk being penalised by the bona fide search engines.

The next thing to have lots of is patience. A listing on Google should probably appear
within a couple of weeks if you have optimised your pages properly (incidentally, if you have multiple pages on your web site, as is mostly the case, it is important only to submit the index or home page, and let Googles spider “Googlebot” to find and index the other pages itself using the links that you should have set up on your site.

The Applied Web Marketing guide has useful links to many resources, lots of them completely free, and to the submission pages of the major search engines and
directories, making it a perfect site to begin your journey into the world of Internet marketing.

Gordon Goodfellow is a market research consultant and practising Internet marketer and teacher.

www.appliedwebmarketing.com
gordon@apppliedwebmarketing.com

How to get big results with super-cheap fliers. Kevin NunleyRita started her home-based business after a long illness. Her insurance wouldn’t cover all her medical costs. She figured she could bridge the difference by selling her popular gift mugs.

Friends and the hospital staff had been delighted with them. She found herself busily filling orders for her customers’ relatives and associates.

“Wow,” she thought. “This could be the answer to my prayers. Selling my gift mugs could earn the extra money I need each month.”

One problem remained. In order to make the plan work, Rita needed lots of new customers. Word-of-mouth from friends and past clients was wonderful, but she needed a more powerful way to get the word out quickly.

A man at an ad agency told her to have nice brochures printed, mail them to hundreds of businesses, and place a weekly ad in the Sunday newspaper.

“But you don’t understand,” she protested. “Anything I spend on marketing has to come out of the grocery money. I can’t afford any of the conventional marketing options you’re talking about.”

It’s a situation that most of us have been in at one time or another. All the wonderful marketing ideas the experts talk about–radio ads, mass mailings, card decks–all take money. They require more money than we can spend without sinking down the debt drain.

Here’s one of my favorite solutions to the “no money” marketing crunch. For about 20 dollars you can have your corner copy shop print up 1000 fliers. A cheaper, more effective way to market has never been invented. A well-designed flier is like a full-page ad delivered directly to your carefully targeted prospect. No multi-thousand dollar newspaper ad can make that claim.

Keep your flier copy simple and to the point. Your prospect may only glance at it before tossing it in
the trash. You must make your offer within the first three seconds as her eyes run over the page. Start with a banner headline that sells the benefits your product, service, or organization will bring the prospect. Let them know how their life will be easier, happier, or more successful after they have bought from you.

Instruct the potential customer how to buy what you sell. A short “call me today!” or “stop by our store at lunch!” greatly increases your response. Include your name, phone, fax, email, website, location, hours–and anything else that makes it super easy for the prospect to contact you.

It costs no more to have your flier copied on colored paper, so choose a color that grabs attention but won’t make your copy hard to read. Lighter colors are best.

Many successful fliers have no pictures. Line drawings are easily copied. A photo needs to be half-toned first to give a clear photocopied reproduction. Your copy shop can prepare the photo for you. Also pay attention to the quality of the copier. Some of the newer, better maintained machines turn out photo copies that look as good as offset. The better copy shops often charge slightly more, and you may find the increase in copy quality well worth the slight increase in price.

Many shops have machines that staple rubber bands to each copy. This makes it easy to attach your flier to door knobs at homes and businesses. Be aggressive, but polite, when distributing your flier. Leave no stone unturned. Drop the fliers off on car windshields, under doors, on counters, light poles, community and office bulletin boards, and at schools.

Enlist the help of young people and youth groups to go door to door for you. Tell others with fliers that you will pass their’s around if they do the same with you.

I once put one of my fliers on a light pole in San Francisco. A year later a friend called in hysterics. “You’re in StarTrek IV!” While shooting on location, the movie crew had left my flier in the background of a scene. There was my photo and flier displayed prominently between Spock and Kirk. My message reached millions world-wide for the cost of a single copy–2 cents.

And that’s my two cents about fliers–one of the world’s cheapest publicity weapons.

Kevin Nunley Associates is located at 54 Ponemah Road Amherst NH 03031. We answer email fast. Call us 603-249-9519. Online since 1996. Feel free to use Kevin’s articles on your web site, in your ezine, or in your sales materials.

www.drnunley.com
kevin@drnunley.com

I recently posted an article titled Internet Marketing and Public Speaking: Ten Tips for When the Twain Shall Meet. One of the tips concerned a means to practice your sales presentation with a Murder Board. I received several emails requesting a fuller explanation of this practice method.

I decided to write two explanatory articles, so vital is this method to improve ones public speaking, specifically in preparing a presentation aimed at selling off-line your on-line product. In this article, Ill provide an in-depth explanation of this practice method; in the second, Ill cover the seven steps need for a successful Murder Board.

Simply stated, the Murder Board is a realistic simulation of the actual presentation to be made. Colleagues role-play the audience, asking the type of questions they believe this specific group is likely to ask. It is intended to be more difficult than the actual presentation.

If you want to become an effective and persuasive presenter to boost your on-line marketing, this realistic practice session is the most effective shortcut to speaking excellence. It allows you to make your mistakes when they don’t count, increasing the odds that you will shine when the actual presentation is made.

The Origin of the Murder Board

The term Murder Board has its origins within the U.S. military, specifically within the extensive training system of the U.S. Army. When a person has been selected to be an instructor at an Army school, he or she must go through a demanding instructor training program.

Graduation and designation as an instructor is dependent not on a written test, but successful delivery of a 50 minute class from the curriculum of the school.

The audience for this crucible can be instructors who have gone through their own Murder Board, and are determined that this would-be instructor will experience the same frustration and humiliation they did. They ask tough, realistic, questions, the type of questions their students are asking.

At the end of the 50 minute class, the aspiring instructor gets a a thumbs upmeaning he or she can now join this band of brothers and sisters as an instructor, or a thumbs-down, meaning another opportunity to go through a Murder Board.

Lessons from the Pentagon

This realistic simulation has permeated the military culture. As an example, when I ran the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) briefing team, we had three Murder Boards before the daily briefing to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The first one was at 5:30 AM, the second at 6:30 AM, the third in front of two General officers and all the analysists, one hour later. By the time my briefer or I was standing in front of the Chairman, those intense sessions had provided the right answers to virtually any conceivable question the Chairman was likely to ask.

Why have a Murder Board?

This painstaking practice session has two overriding objectives:

1. Hone delivery skills

2. Anticipate probable questions and objections so succinct, accurate answers can be developed.

Many presenters, while accepting the need to sharpen delivery skills, reject the idea of a Murder Board, confident they can anticipate the difficult questions likely to be asked, and need not practice in front of others, especially their peers. These people may actually be displaying a false bravado to mask their discomfort at speaking in front of a group, perhaps exposing their lack of skill in the presentation art, and/or their apprehension at giving a less than sterling performance in front of their colleaqgues.

They are also very mistaken. I have given more than 3000 presentations, and always find it beneficial to conduct a Murder Board before an important talk. No matter how hard we try to think of tough questions that may be asked, a little censor in our mind generally provides only questions to which we already have answers. In my executive training workshops, I always emphasize the importance of a Murder Board, and the practice presentations made by my clients are set up as Murder Boards to get them accustomed to this simulation.

I am in good company in believing that we need other minds to assist us in preparing for a sales or other presentation.. The man who possessed perhaps the greatest mind of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein, realized that even he needed help. He once said:

“What a person does on his own, without being
stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of
others, is even in the best cases rather paltry and
monotonous.”

The Murder Board is the presenter’s version of the actor’s dress rehearsal, what lawyers do in preparing a witness to face cross-examination in a trial, what the flight simulator is to the pilot.

Just as with the actor, the witness, and the pilot, this simulation permits the presenter to learn from his/her mistakes, so that the actual presentation is (1) more responsive to the informational needs of the audience, (2) answers are developed for likely questions to be asked, and (3) overall speaking confidence and competence enhanced.

The Murder Board enables you to visualize the presentation in advance. Not only is proficiency in speaking increased by such a meticulous practice, so too is self-confidence. Public speaking ranks high in the pantheon of phobias because, in large measure, of the apprehension that one is going to be embarrassed by not being able to answer questions from the audience.

If you have been able to anticipate questions, then you can develop answers ahead of time. Think back to when you were in college or graduate school. Your GPA would probably have been higher if you could have seen the questions before the final exams. The Murder Board permits the presenter a look at the audience’s probable “exam questions.”

The only obstacle to developing a question-anticipating simulated presentation is your imagination and willingness to take hard hits in practice so you can be more effective in the actual presentation.

Copyright 2005 Larry Tracy