Online Marketing Articles by Web Profits

Online Marketing Mindmap

Over the past few years we have tested and tracked dozens, if not hundreds, of different strategies online… everything from banner advertising to social bookmarking, and at the end of the day, implementing the core online marketing strategies effectively has proven to generate the maximum impact from online marketing efforts.

Of course you’ll hear about the rare online business that doesn’t have to use SEO or PPC to drive traffic, as they have a 100k+ database of people and JVs with other sites which command the same number of subscribers. But for a business starting out online, you want a strategy that is simple, actionable and not reliant on the goodwill of others (at least initially).

We’ve prepared a mindmap of the core strategies essential for succeeding online, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been online for years.

You can download the online marketing mindmap here.

Click here to continue reading this article…

Get the latest articles from Web Profits. Subscribe to our RSS feed.

A Day in the Life of a Successful Website Owner

So what’s it really like to own a website which both generates profits for your business and helps (forces) it to grow?

Here’s a breakdown of a typical day of a successful website owner…

1. You Check Your Emails

You wake up in the morning and switch on your laptop (or PC), open your email account and check how your website has produced overnight.

If you sell direct online, how many sales were made?

If the aim is to generate sales leads, how many new leads have you received?

2. You Check Your Stats

You login to your Google Analytics account.

• How much traffic did you receive yesterday?
• Is it increasing or decreasing?
• Where did the traffic come from?
• Are there any areas of opportunity that small effort can result in big payoff?
• You implement.

Click here to continue reading this article…

10 Link Building Strategies for Higher Search Engine Rankings

When it comes to search engine optimization, getting other websites to link to your website is the most important factor in achieving top search engine rankings. Here is a list of 10 link building strategies which you should be implementing for top search engine rankings (in no particular order):

1. Write quality articles – write quality articles that other websites will want to post on their websites and link to. The higher the quality of the article, the more one-way links you’ll get. The best articles to write are ‘how-to’ and informational articles. Stay away from self-promotion.

2. Start a Wordpress blog – setup a Wordpress blog on your website and post articles to it once per week. It’s a great way to build the size of your website, keep your website content fresh and get incoming links. Plus Google loves Wordpress!

3. Syndicate your articles online – take the articles that you’ve posted to your blog and syndicate them on article directories such as Ezine Articles and Go Articles, so that other website owners can post them on their websites.

4. Submit your website to online directories – submit your website to free SEO friendly website directories for a quick way to start building one-way links to your website.

Click here to continue reading this article…

Quick Survey

There are so many topics to write about it is sometimes difficult to know what you want to read about. So, to help us out, please take this quick poll:

SEO Video - How to Use Google’s Keyword Tools for SEO

If you are currently implementing search engine optimization (SEO) for your website or are thinking about it, then this article will be worth tens of thousands of dollars for you.

Conducting effective keyword research from an SEO perspective is critical, because the next 12 months of SEO activities and investment will be focused on the words you identify before you start optimising.

The key to a successful SEO campaign is selecting keywords where a top ranking will earn you more profit per month than the cost of achieving and maintaining those rankings.

If you get it wrong, you could spend tens of thousands of dollars on achieving a top 10 ranking, only to find that the top ranking is not making you any money!

I’ve seen it many times… businesses optimising their site for a keyword which has high number of people searching those keywords, but an extremely low number of people actually buying.

Here are step by step instructional videos on how to use Google’s keyword research tools to identify highest value keyword phrases:

Click here to continue reading this article…

Why Pay-Per-Click Advertising ‘Does Not Work’ For Beginners

As an online marketing agency we get a lot of small businesses contacting us to help them make money on the Internet. One of the core services we offer is PPC setup and management, with a focus on Google Adwords. Yet one of the most common statements we hear is:

“I’ve already tried pay-per-click advertising and it doesn’t work”

Immediately this sounds warning bells, as PPC advertising is one of the most profitable methods of advertising available (in fact, we’ve been able to generate more than 1,000 sales per day for some companies using PPC advertising).

After further questioning we find out that they have setup a Google Adwords campaign themselves (because Google makes it so easy) and have invested $500 or $1,000 in advertising, only to find that they could not achieve any results… and based on this they say PPC advertising doesn’t work!

Maybe it is because of the common misconception that ‘it is easy to make money online’. We’ve been hearing this for years now, and I admit that was one of the reasons I started in the online game… but I was wrong, even in the very beginning. Now, after many years in the online game I understand why it is difficult to make money online, and why it will become harder in years to come.

When you market on search engines, like Google, you have to be on the first page to be noticed, and that’s where the challenge lies. There are a maximum of 10 paid positions available to the entire country. That means that from all the advertisers in the country, only 10 can hold a first page position. That means that only those advertisers which know what they are doing can afford to compete in a market where the top positions are dominated by clicks of that cost between $2 and $7 per click.

Click here to continue reading this article…

How To Establish Yourself Online

If you are only just starting to think about creating an online business for yourself, it’s understandable if you feel intimidated by the sheer number of people already out there doing exactly the same thing.

How can you compete with people who have already set up shop and have a good base of customers?

Everyone has something to offer, and the key to success online is to build a business around something you enjoy – something you have a natural affinity for.  It’s easier to become an expert in this kind of subject, and becoming an expert is what will get you noticed and established.

Take the time to build a business of real worth.  You don’t have to dive in the deep end and build your own website.  Why not start with your own blog instead?  If you don’t have any products of your own to promote then join a website which grants free access to the best affiliate programs out there.  People often start earning an income online by becoming affiliates for programs that interest them.

You can also write articles for other websites that point back to your own site or blog.  The more work you do and the more you learn, the more other people will start to recognise you as someone who knows what they are talking about.

It’s good to start out with some sort of plan of what you would like to achieve.  This can be altered, added to or changed as you go along, but it will at least point you in a good direction to begin with.

Click here to continue reading this article…

How To Create A Blog

It’s possible to make a lot of money from a blog, but if that’s your goal you need to be thinking long term and have a good base from which to start.

Firstly you need a subject for your blog.  Many people make the mistake of writing about anything and everything, but if you are serious about getting your blog indexed by Google, showing up in search results and getting plenty of visitors, then you need to focus on a specific subject.

It stands to reason that if you are going to write about something every day or two for what could prove to be many months and hopefully even years, it needs to be something you are very interested in.  There are two main reasons for this:

•    If you don’t have a passion for your subject you will find it hard to constantly think of new things to write
•    You will instinctively know what other people who like the subject are looking for, and will be better able to provide it for them

This second point relates especially to monetising your blog, which is virtually a necessity if you want to make some serious cash from it.  If you love your subject you’ll know what you want and need from it, so you’ll know what to offer others too.

When it comes to setting up your blog you have two main options.  You can either set it up using a free blogging platform and account, or you can use the free software and set it up using your own domain name and server.

Click here to continue reading this article…

How to Target a Niche Audience

If you’re trying to sell something online it would make sense to target as many people as possible in the hope of making lots of sales, right?

Actually no – nothing could be further from the truth.  Your best bet is to target a much smaller group of people with an offer which is specifically tailored to meet their needs.

Consider this.  If you had a new golf club you wanted to sell, you would go and find someone who plays golf to see if they wanted to buy it.  You wouldn’t try and sell it to just anyone, and exactly the same principle applies online.

The good news is that niche markets are smaller, easier to target and generally present much less in the way of competition.  If you can target a niche audience in the right way you’ll have a much better chance of making some significant sales than if you try and reach out to anyone and everyone.

But in order to make those sales you need to make sure your site is found by the people who want to buy what you have to offer.  To do this it’s very important that you have the right kind of content on your site.

Include plenty of useful information that will appeal to those people, and make sure it is rich in relevant keywords.  So if your site sells rare golf clubs, you could write an article on the benefits of using rare golf clubs, making sure that term is used several times throughout the piece.  By using longer key phrases you will stand a much better chance of being found when people search for information on your subject area in the search engines.

Click here to continue reading this article…

How to Build an Emailing List

A good solid email list can be worth a lot of money to you as an internet marketer. With this in mind it’s obviously in your best interests to get as many people signed up for your list as possible – legally and legitimately.

But people won’t add their names and email addresses to your list unless you have something to offer them in return. This is where free offers, free newsletters and free downloads come into play.

It should be noted however that simply offering something for free won’t persuade everyone to sign up. You need to provide something that has value, and preferably something that they cannot get anywhere else.

Many internet marketers offer a free weekly newsletter to keep in touch with their customers, and send an extra bonus when someone signs up. This is typically a free report or e-book which is targeted specifically at the type of customer the marketer wants to have on their list.

For example, let’s say you have a wide range of e-books to sell on the subject of search engine optimisation. You could offer a free newsletter giving away weekly tips on how to get more traffic to your website and offer a free report in exchange for an email address, revealing the three mistakes almost every website owner makes which cost them mountains of traffic.

Anyone with their own website would no doubt be interested in receiving this free report, as well as the regular weekly tips. If they benefit as a result (remember that your free products should be valuable to the person receiving them) there is every chance they will buy something from you in the future.

Click here to continue reading this article…