Published: March 23, 2010
Updated: April 12, 2010
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Do you usually wonder what to do next whenever you visit a certain web site? Well, you can always rely on site maps. A site map is a list of pages of a web site available for surfers or site visitors. This can be either a document in any form used as a preparing tool for web design, or this can be a web page that enumerates the pages on a particular web site, usually organized in a hierarchical way. This usually helps site visitors and search engine bots find their way on the pages of a web site.
What is meant by a “hierarchal way”? Simply put, it’s just the visual model of the pages of a web site. Site maps help crawlers navigate through a web site that has more than one page by exhibiting to the site visitor a diagram of the entire site's contents. It’s very similar to a book's table of contents in that it makes it easier for a site visitor to find information on your site without having to go through your site's many pages.
Not all web sites will have a site map because the less difficult a site is, the less need there is for a site map to guide site visitors. Site maps can also be used to give additional information about your site, such as the date it was last updated or how frequently you update your site’s pages. In addition to regular site maps, you can also create a site map to give search engines specific information about specific web content including images, video, news, code search and geographical information.
A site map can be very beneficial to you when:
•Your site has dynamic or active content.
•Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by search engines like Google.
•Your site is new and has just few links to it
•Your site has a large archive of content pages that aren’t properly linked to each other, or are not linked at all.
If you happen to have several different websites, you can simplify the process of making and submitting site maps for all of them. Simply create just one site map that includes URLs for all of your web sites. Then save the site map to a particular location (provided all of your sites are verified in webmaster tools).
Finally, site maps do not guarantee that all of your links will be searched. And being searched does not guarantee indexing by the search engines. However, a site map is still the best assurance for getting a search engine to learn about the content of your web site.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: March 10, 2010
Updated: March 10, 2010
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First thing you need to remember is that, reaching the top doesn’t happen overnight. So, you must have a lot of patience. And yes, at this point, patience can be a skill if you want to drive traffic to your website. Years ago, when the internet first became really popular, business owners could promote their products and services on free classified web sites and make an easy buck or two. Yet five years after, everything slowly went downhill. There were so many ads on these sites that it got “eaten up” by junk and a lot of people stopped looking at them to make purchases. For some reason, however, web sites like Craigslist.org, Kijiji.com and Backpage.com brought back to life free online classified advertising. In fact, today, they provide a good opportunity to promote your products or services.
Craigslist is one of the biggest websites in the world. Craigslist gets over 10 million visitors per day! This generates over 4 billion page views per year. Millions of people have had success marketing their products and services on Craigslist and other online classified advertising sites. It only makes sense for you to tap into traffic that is already there and waiting for you.
These sites provide free classified advertisements on almost anything: jobs, housing, pets, sales, personals and more. Start out by compiling a shortlist of Craigslist and the best classified ad sites on the internet. After you make your selection, keep in mind that these sites have differences as to the popularity and the image. A good way to compile a shortlist, is to seek expert advice from an experienced internet marketing company and ask assistance from the experts who in turn have their own experiences on the matter and can tell you the good from the bad.
Your next step is to set up your business’s profile and submit your classified ad. Many of the sites syndicate their ads. This means that your ad is sent out to a lot of other sites that run free classified ads. So one submission can result in hundreds of postings for your business! Also, if you write, design and optimize your ad well, you’ll increase the chance of your ad making it to the first page of Google where it can remain for weeks. In short, you drive new free targeted traffic to your site as well as new sales leads for your business.
Also, pick the right category for your ad and don’t just put it wherever you want it to. The category you choose will determine whether your target market will actually see it. The bottom line is to connect with your target market when they’re searching for your product/service and get them to either call in or click your link and go to your website for more information.
To be successful in leveraging free online classified marketing, you must have a well defined strategy. This starts with a well written compelling ad that gets them to your web site. You want to direct them to a page in your site that offers them something for FREE provided that they gave you their email address and maybe other contact information. This way even if they don’t buy from you right away you can continue to market to them until they do.
Lastly, online classified ad sites generate RELEVANT TRAFFIC to your web site. And remember, the more relevant your traffic, the greater the number of sales conversions that you get. These are a few simple strategies to get you started leveraging online classified ad marketing into your internet marketing campaign.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
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You may be asking yourself the same thing. PageRank is a value that Google made to determine how important a particular web page is and how it positions itself with other web pages. Simply put, it’s how a webpage ranks itself with it’s competition. The more links a particular webpage has, the more important that page becomes. It serves as a digital vote to that page every time a link is created. The more the links created, the more votes are cast on that page.
The term Page Rank was named after one of the founders of the Google search engine, Larry Page. It’s interesting how it came into being. At onetime, webmasters would only link to pages that they thought were interesting and important to their viewers. Because of this, Google determined to use the number of inbound links, or IBL, to a certain page to judge the weight of that page. The “weight” determined where to put that page in the SERP or search engine results page. They made a scale of measurement from 0 to 10 and produced a toolbar that can be displayed in Internet Explorer that will indicate the Page Rank value of any page being viewed in the browser.
Having quality information on your web pages would surely help to raise your PR over time. Links connecting to your content from other websites will also help the GoogleBot understand that your site is important to others. This would increase the PR as well. The value is being ranked from 0 to 10, ten being the highest value that your site can get. For some reason, however, getting a ten doesn’t always mean that you get higher search results. Oddly enough, a site with a ‘0’ PR can even rank higher than those with a ten. This is because the content of the actual site is considered more important. Although PR is one of the more valuable components, it’s not the end all. There are about 200 different factors as to how your website can gain position in search engine result pages for any keyword search. Google factors in what other people think about your site as well. Quality information is also very important. And remember to ensure that your site content is understandable to GoogleBot as well.
Having some basic knowledge of SEO would be very advantageous to you in building up your PR. In case you’re not well versed on the subject, you can always search Google and read their webmasters guidelines. You’ll find one of the best ways to get the coveted back-links from other sites is by getting natural links which lead to the pages of your site. These natural links are links that people include in their site that lead back to yours. These can be acquired through sharing content via RSS feeds, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, social bookmarking sites and even article directories.
There are also unnatural links. These are used just for the purpose of getting higher PR. These type of sites are called FFA (Free For All) sites or link farms. Link farms are sites that solicit you to post your links to their site just for the purpose of increasing their popularity also yours. Don’t do it! Otherwise you can very well be banned or taken out of Google altogether. Google is taking strong steps to make sure that they take out all these link farms that just want popularity and offer nothing else.
Following these few simple methods will help yourweb site gain higher PageRank and the results can be very rewarding for your growing business.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
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Why do you need to write a mission statement for our company? Well, the reason is simple. The mission statement is a reflection of how you look at your growing company, how you want other people to see it, what your company’s main purpose is, how it benefits your customers and how it would stand against your competition.
The next step is how do you actually write it? You might think, couldn’t you just copy some old quotations from you’re an old English book or sayings from the I-Ching and put it on your company’s mission statement. How about outsourcing it? Good try, yet not very original, my friend. When writing your company’s mission statement, make sure that it would be heartfelt by anyone who reads it. It should connect with your readers. It should reflect your company’s purpose, what your company is ALL about. Your mission statement should clearly state why your company exists in the first place. As well as how you see the future of your company, your goals and objectives.
Also don’t rush it. Writing a mission statement for your company doesn’t have to happen overnight. It may take days or even weeks to finish it. Get lots of suggestions from employees, partners, board members, customers and other people you feel would make a difference. Brainstorm with them and review once you’ve gathered all the information that you need to write a powerful mission statement. Be open to new ideas and suggestions.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, so what’s the hurry?
Always remember the KISS formula. Keep it Short and Simple. You don’t want to bore your readers with long paragraphs. Your mission statement should be short enough to remember, articulate clearly what you do and what value you provide to the market place. Make sure your mission statement is timeless. It should still be just as applicable 5 years from now as it is today. Also ensure sure that it’s possible to achieve, yet not too easy or idealist in nature.
Next, review what you’ve written. It may take a week of editing and tweaking to develop your perfect mission statement. Have your team look at it and determine if they understand and can relate to your company’s strengths and vision. Once you’re done, your mission statement will be your guide to attract new people, new resources and new customers for your business.
Finally, your mission statement is a powerful public relations marketing and branding tool. Post it to your website, add it to all of your marketing collaterals, leverage it (or portions of it) in your social media marketing and make it a requirement that all of your employees learn it and memorize it. Actually make it a condition for them earning their bonuses. Now every time you hold your annual stockholders’ meeting, conducting a sales training or just simply any company get together, discuss your company’s mission statement. And always hold yourself and your organization accountable to whether or not you’re living up to it.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
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Not CONSISTENTLY marketing to your prospective and existing customers is bad. Why? It has to do with what we call “The Buying Spectrum”. Think of a grove of orange trees. Once the oranges are in season they begin to ripen. Now it’s time to pick the ripe ones. Yet do you think that all of the oranges on all of the trees ripen all at the same time? Of course not.
So you go through picking only the ripe ones and leaving the green unripened oranges still on the tree. Now that you’ve gotten all of the ripened oranges you leave the orange grove never to return right? Wrong! Yet this is exactly what many businesses do.
Simply put most businesses run some ads, have people calling in for more information yet only focus their attention on the people who are actually ready to buy right now. They completely discard the other people who called in yet didn’t buy. Understand that these people will buy what you sell at some time. It just isn’t right now. It may be 3 weeks from now, 6 months from now or 2 years from now. So how do you get their business as well?
Think again of the orange grove. Instead of picking only the ripened oranges and leaving the grove never to return, think of nurturing the grove. You consistently water it, fertilize it and weed it. And as each and every orange ripens you pick each and every one. Your prospects are no different. You must nurture them along the sales (buying) cycle as you’d nurture the orange grove. You consistently maket to them, educating them about your product or service and how they benefit by doing business with you.
Then as they are ready to buy 2 months from now, 6 months from now or even 2 years from now, you “pick” them all! Realistically, you may not get them all yet you’ll definitely get the majority of them. By adopting this approach, you’ll wind up with the lion’s share of the market.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.12
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 16, 2010
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If you’re like many business owners you’re probably wondering, what exactly is social media? If you don’t know what it is then your business is missing out on a tremendous marketing and sales tool. Also, without a thorough understanding of Social Media, you can wind up paying a company a lot of money to do it for you and not get the results that you want. So there’s a simple solution, let’s learn what social media is and what it isn’t.
Social media is a term that includes internet programs and systems such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other things typically thought of as social networking. The idea is that they are media designs with social components and public communication channels. These are built to be distributed through social interaction, where people can easily access and drive up their popularity through the use of voting and tagging.
Social media supports the human needs and wants for social interaction, and uses the Internet to transform broadcast media (one to many) into social media (many to many). It supports education and information; and also transforms people by not just being consumers yet also producers. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated communication. Okay, now we have some of the technical stuff out of the way.
On the surface, you might think that people who stay in front of their computers would have a sorry social life. Yet a recent survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, found that those who use the Internet and mobile technology actually enjoy a bigger social network than those who do not. These are the people that are more likely to join discussions, make friends and basically keep in touch with friends and family.
If you’re a business owner, you may find unique ways of promoting your product or service through social media. You may want to thank Facebook and Twitter the next time you organize a seminar, launch a new product or service line, hire for a key position or even reach your sales quota.
So what are the common forms of social media that can help your business?
• Electronic media with sharing, search engines (like Google) or your own mobile phone.
• Concepts, expressions and statements that are not only easy to remember yet hard to forget and that excite others to repeat it.
• Grass-Roots direct action information distribution such as public speaking, seminars, events, installations, performances and demonstrations.
• Print media designed to be re-distributed and shared to others.
So what are something’s that are NOT social media? Well the answer is simple, older forms of media such as magazines and newspapers that are simply places for content to be surrounded by advertisements
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 15, 2010
Updated: February 15, 2010
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Many people are daunted by effective custom web design, site optimization, internet marketing, seo, etc. How can you blame them? There are so many so called “experts” out there spouting off the latest internet tripe. With just a little research, you soon discover that these experts are usually hawking some business opportunity or selling software. So, we’re going to divest the entire process of it’s mysticism and make it as plain as possible.
Here’s what you’ll need to market your business effectively on the internet. The first thing you’ll need is a great website. This is not the area where you want to play it cheap. Do not design your own website! Unless you’re a graphic designer, you’re probably not as artistic as you think that you are. Hire a good web design company. Think about it. The first contact that many prospective customers may have with your business are you marketing materials such as your web site. A well designed web site should educate, instill confidence and trust in potential customers and above all is A SALES OR CLOSING TOOL. This can not be emphasized enough. It should not merely be a pretty online brochure. It’s purpose to either directly or indirectly close business for you. Period.
Make sure you check around on the internet and observe your competitors websites before deciding on the design of your site. A good design company will help you with this. Study the design elements and features of the most successful companies in your industry. Do searches to determine which of their sites get top rankings in the search engines. Also, look for opportunities to innovate to make your website even better than theirs. Make it clear what you want from your website to your web design company.
After your site is constructed, the next thing that you need is for your site to be optimized. Site optimization consists of selecting the right keywords and then imbedding those meta keywords and phrases in the pages and links of your site, installing site maps, doing link exchanges, installing robots and analytics, tying in blogs and article directories, posting articles, and more. This makes your website search engine friendly and helps to get you higher rankings in the search results. Make sure your design company is experienced at this. Some designers are just so eager to get the business that they’ll claim to know more than what they actually do. Do not bypass the site optimization step and just try to submit your site to the search engines. All that will happen is that no one will ever be able to find it.
The last component is actually internet marketing or promoting your site. One popular way is submitting your optimized website to the search engines. There are literally thousands to choose from. However, the majority of searches are done through: Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. A study conducted by Berrier Associates shows that of people who spend five or more hours a week online, they average an astounding 71% of their time searching for information. Other research shows that the most common method of finding a website is through search engines. Google powers over 70% of all searches and is the trendsetter for algorithm creation. Therefore, search engine marketing is of paramount importance.
Some search engines are free and others you pay for. A good SEO company can advise on which search engines work best for you.
By applying just these simple strategies, you will be well on your way to getting good results from your internet marketing.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By "From The Minds Of Wharton"
Published: February 15, 2010
Updated: February 16, 2010
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As you are probably aware, there are many options when it comes to using the internet to market your business. It’s easy to understand why so many people feel lost and not sure where to start.
Our marketing options consist of: search engine optimization, paid search, affiliate marketing, email marketing and blog marketing. How does each work?
Well, search engine optimization using organic listings within search engines to get your business seen by those who are searching for specific keywords and phrases works very well an is one of the most popular. There is both an art and a science on how to launch and maintain a successful SEO campaign to maximize your results. A good SEO company should educate you on some of the basics. This is important so that you understand how everything works and that you are getting a good deal.
A couple of things about SEO. 1) It takes anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks for your site to start showing up in the search engines after you initially submit it. 2) It can take up to 3 – 6 months to begin seeing any results. Make sure you factor this into your marketing plan. There is a solution though (refer to paid search). 3) With so many businesses competing for first page ranking, it’s very challenging to actually achieve it. Think about it. There’s only 10 positions on each page of search results. With thousands of businesses competing for first page ranking…it just isn’t going to happen for very many. So be wary of any company that guarantees first page ranking. There are ways to get first page ranking yet we’ll cover these in future articles.
The next option is paid search. Paid search marketing consists of placing ads for your products or services on search engines and on content sites across the internet. These ads are typically small snippets of text linked to your merchandise pages. You pay when someone clicks through to your site from the ad. Cost-per-click (CPC) fees range from 5 cents to several dollars per click, with an industry average near 35 cents. Leading search marketing channels include Google, Overture, and Inktomi (now Overture Site Match).
Paid search works best for catalogers with fair pricing, good websites, and strong brands. Paid search marketing also favors retailers with focused merchandising. Merchandising depth increases the odds you win the click, and the odds that click yields an order. Often companies will outsource their paid search campaigns, not because they can not learn to do it or can not manage it on their own but because they want someone with a great deal of experience to make sure they are getting the most for their money.
Paid search, which appears online pretty quickly, can be used as one possible solution for the “SEO gap”. You simply use paid search until your site starts appearing in the search engines.
Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Essentially you get another company to drive traffic from their marketing efforts to your website to effect a sale. You then pay them a commission for the sales that they drive to you. The great benefit to this marketing option is that it costs you nothing unless they in fact send your sales. The downside is at times its difficult to find the great affiliate marketers unless you have connections within the industry or your hire a company that knows how to go about recruiting effective marketers.
E-mail marketing is great for enhancing your relationship with your current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately. It has lost it’s effectiveness somewhat because so many of us have been bombarded with so many unsolicited emails that we’ve become somewhat jaded towards it. Just make sure your emails are engaging and have a very compelling offer.
Lastly, blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via web blogs. These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, businesses use blogs to create a dialog with both prospective and existing customers to explain features of their products and services. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for consumers.
Search engines love blogs and readers love to read them in their own leisure time. We pull in the feeds that are important to us so we can view them when we want to. A blog will help your viewers stay on top of your current offers, specials and important news. If you don’t have a blog, get one FAST!
These are some of the basics of internet marketing. Combining and coordinating these basic elements effectively will get you great results. Just take it one step at a time.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
By From The Minds Of Wharton
Published: February 15, 2010
Updated: February 15, 2010
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Articles come in many sizes and levels of complexity. There is no single set of rules that fits every project, but there are guidelines you should follow to keep yourself on track throughout the weeks as you prepare, research and write. You will complete your project in stages, so you must plan ahead and give yourself enough time to complete every stage of your work.
Your first step is to write down the due date for your article on a big wall calendar, in your planner, and in an electronic calendar.
Plan backward from that due date to determine when you should have your library work completed. A good rule of thumb is to spend:
Fifty percent of your time researching and reading
Ten percent of your time sorting and marking your research
Forty percent of your time writing and formatting
Timeline for Researching and Reading Stage: 1 week for short papers with one or two sources
It’s important to get started right away on the first stage. Give yourself time to collect many possible resources for your project. You will soon find that some of the books and articles you choose don’t actually offer any useful information for your particular topic. You’ll need to spend sometime online or make a few trips to the library. You won’t finish in one trip.
You’ll also discover that you will find additional potential sources in the bibliographies of your first selections. Sometimes the most time consuming task is eliminating potential sources.
Timeline for Sorting and Marking Your Research: 1 day for a short paper
You should read each of your sources at least twice. Read your sources the first time to soak in some information and to make notes on research cards.
Read your sources a second time more quickly, skimming through the chapters and putting sticky note flags on pages that contain important points or pages that contain passages that you want to cite. Write key words on the sticky note flags.
Timeline for Writing and Formatting: Four days for a short paper with one or two sources
You don’t really expect to write a good article on your first attempt, do you? You can expect to pre-write, write, and rewrite several drafts of your article. Don’t get held up writing any section of your article—especially the introductory paragraph. It is perfectly normal for writers to go back and complete the introduction once the rest of the paper is completed.
From The Minds Of Wharton
Wharton Business Foundation
www.WhartonBusinessFoundation.com
(888)4-WHARTON (494-2786) ext.17
info@whartonbusinessfoundation.com
