7 Tips to Improve your website

There are some steps you can follow to make sure you are doing everything right to maximize your sales. Look through the list below. If you can say definitively that you have taken all of these steps, then you should see a big increase in your sales. Here you go:
1. Make sure there is a market for what you're selling
By now, you've probably heard a lot about finding your online niche. If you did your research properly, you should have found a market that has a problem that you can provide an answer for. That's probably the most important part of your business.
If you haven't done the proper research yet, get started now. Use a keyword tool like Nichebot or Wordtracker to find what people are searching for online. And visit the forums to see what people are talking about and what problems they need to solve.
Don't skip this step. It's important that internet users are going to want what you're selling or your whole business is lost before it even begins.

2. Make sure that you're selling something that solves their problem
If you've found the right niche, then you should have some idea about what their main problems are. Do some research to find out what they need to solve that problem, then offer it to them. That's the formula in a nutshell. Don't let your product stray from the main topic. Solve their problem, and you'll have success.
3. Make sure you're getting enough traffic
It's difficult to make a good decision about how effective your sales process is if you haven't had enough traffic to your website yet. I recommend waiting until you've had at least 1,000 visitors. Anything less and you won't really have enough data to work with. Be patient.
4. Find out where your traffic is coming from
It's important that you are getting targeted visitors to your website. Make sure that if you're using pay-per-click advertising you're bidding only on words that are right for your market. If you're selling cell phones, you don't want visitors who are searching for land line phones for their office. Remember who your visitor is.
5. Test different headlines
Your headline is the first thing your visitors see on your site. Make sure it's compelling and gets them to keep reading. How do you do that? Simply by testing different headlines and seeing which one works best.
You can do that by rewriting it every now and then and checking your stats, or you can split test your headlines using Google's website optimizer. Website optimizer is part of your Google adwords account. If you don't have an adwords account, you can get one free at a href="http://adwords.google.com">http://adwords.google.com.
6. Make sure your sales copy is effective
The last thing you want to do once you have a visitor reading your sales copy is to distract them with something that isn't leading directly to a sale. In other words, leave out any links to other websites, forget about adsense and banner ads, and don't start talking about things that don't relate to your subject.
Concentrate on your sales message and proof elements, and dispelling any doubts they may have about giving you their money. This includes using testimonials if you have them, a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and good strong sales copy that keeps them interested all the way through to your "buy now" button.

7. Test different price points
It's hard to know what's the right price for your item right off the bat. You may have it at the price you're willing to pay, but that may not be the price everyone is willing to pay. A lot of people will expect to buy something in your market within a certain price range. If your price is too high, they'll shop elsewhere. If your price is too low, yes too low, they might think that what you're offering is of poor quality. You can answer this problem by simply trying out different prices to see what works best.
8. Make sure your order processing works properly and is easy to use
Test all of the links from your "add to cart" buttons all the way through to your "thank you" page. You can normally run a $0 test before you go live with most shopping cart and merchant account systems. Obviously, if your ordering system isn't working right, you're not going to see any sales.
Also, make sure that it's easy to use. Get a friend to run through it for you. It may make perfect sense to you, but that doesn't mean that it will for everyone. Let some other people try it out and see if they get stuck anywhere. Chances are good that if they do, then others will too. If everything isn't as easy as possible to use, then some people will just leave rather than trying to figure it out.
There you go. Eight steps you can follow with your site to make sure that you are maximizing your sales. Just from my own experience, anytime I was able to say that I went through all of the steps above completely, I saw significant improvement, and found good success with my website. I believe that you will, too. Good luck.

5 Top Tips To Be A Successful Blogger

Blogging has fast become an online business venture all on it's own, bloggers are writers who write blog posts on their own blogs and they share something unique with other related niche bloggers and webmasters out there, they have the passion to carry on with blogging, no matter what.

It's estimated that over 70% of blogs are left and abandoned online, this is a waste of server space obviously, but what of the initial spark of trying to make something work online, writing online in blog form takes time to build up, but it is well worth doing as it can raise your profile and credibility in your niche market area quite quickly if you do it right.

Here are a collection of some of the best tips I have found in the area of blogging:

1. Email a new reader of your blog

When you have a blog established, you may get readers to your blog as this is the ultimate purpose of your blog, so when you do get these readers, why not email them and welcome them to your blog, this could work in many ways, first it could make them think, that was quick I only just subscribed to this blog last night and then the blog owner is emailing me welcoming me to his blog, so they might spread the word of your blogs content to their friends who may also be interested, so it's a good strategy to employ.

2. Join a couple of forums related to your niche.

Getting to know your niche market better by visiting a few forums online in the target market that you will hopefully dominate or be a key player in is something that is well worth doing, you can link to your blog and profile page in your signature line ( this is a unique sentence that includes your blog link and a description about you or an opportunity.)
Participating in forums and getting to know the top members and key players is what you should be trying to achieve for maximum networking potential.

3. Interlinking archived posts from your own blog and others,

If you have a lot of posts, you could consider linking to past posts that are related to your main topic, so that you can provide further information and this helps to build your seo ranking for your blog, you can add links within your blog content or at the end of your posts for further reading, just remember that every post on your blog is and should be like a webpage of it's very own, so target your keywords as such.

4. Planning your blog posts well in advance

Planning of your blog posting is a really easy way of simply coming up with a blog title and then just running with it online to see what you can write about, if you are knowledgeable about the subject matter then you will make this task even easier, I often look in forums, if posters ask questions and discuss certain areas of your niche this is always a basis for some quality blog posts, try it and see what you come up with.

5. Blog commenting on other blogs not just your own

Try and comment on other peoples blogs, maybe you have never visited their blog before and you could maybe introduce yourself in the comment or just interact with the discussion thread at hand, a word of warning though, forcing promotional copy and paste sales copy in a comment is not good for your potential and essential commenting, as what you need to establish is that you have read and liked the blogs content and you deliver a comment that says so or that is genuinely inspired by the blogs content.

You can add these blogs that you find to your feed reader so you can keep up to date with these blogs when you can and interact with them on a regular basis.

Remember that blogging is a long term process usually and it can take time to build up your blogs traffic, so just write useful content and keep blogging.

Blog Posts That Get Attention

Blogs are now a dime a dozen, and bloggers need to make their blog posts stand out. Developing a blog following is not as easy as it once was. Learn how to write blog posts that attract readers and retain their attention. Follow these guidelines to cultivate readers...

1. Draw Attention

Use titles to attract the reader's attention to the blog post. The title should mimic newspaper headlines and generate interest in the blog post. The title can be controversial, but not to the extent of being misleading. Use action words in the title. Bloggers will often come up with a handful of potential titles for blog posts, and then settle on the title that is best suited to a particular blog post.

2. Deliver

Having a catchy title, but following it with content that fails to deliver, will not endear you to your readers. The blog content must deliver what is promised in the blog title, or readers will unsubscribe and stop reading. When deciding on a blog title, do not stray too far from the content, as the two are intricately related -- the title will attract the reader's attention, but the content must then live up to expectations... or the blogger's reputation will suffer.

3. Accurate

Nothing stains a blogger's reputation like inaccurate information, so be sure that your blog posts contain accurate information. Intentionally posting inaccurate or false information will significantly damage a blogger's reputation. But if an error unintentionally or inadvertently occurs in a blog post, be sure to quickly post a retraction or correction, along with an explanation and an apology in order to salvage your good reputation.

4. Relevant & Timely

Blog posts should always be relevant and timely. Hearing about something long after it has occurred will not captivate readers. Blog about information that is occurring in the here and now. If you are going to write something that is no longer timely, be sure to add some sort of twist, or include new or updated information to make it relevant.

5. On Topic

All blogs should have a general theme that connects all the posts on the blog. Readers will expect posts that are related, so stay true to the blog's theme and topic.

6. Use Keywords

Use keywords liberally in blog posts. Search engines will attempt to categorize the content of a blog post and discern its general topic. By including related keywords or keyword phrases, search engines will have an easier time classifying the blog's contents. Additionally, a blog that uses keywords will have a better chance of ranking well for those keywords or keyword phrases in organic search listings.

7. Evaluate Web Logs

Review web logs to determine what blog posts have been popular with readers. Then figure out how to provide similar or related content that might also be of interest to those readers.

8. Original

Blog posts should always contain original and unique content. If you are simply re-posting information from others, include editorial content or a different spin to the information. Readers do not want to constantly rehash the same information -- they are interested in reading new material.

9. Chunky Content

Break content into smaller, readable chunks. Most website visitors will just scan paragraphs for information, and very few will take the time to read all the words contained in a post. Use bulleted lists, or break web copy into paragraphs with bolded sub-topics that appear before the paragraphs.

Writing blog posts is not just about spewing forth content. The best blogs are well thought out, and contain provocative and interesting unique content. Follow the above steps to produce a relevant blog worth reading.

For Google,Every Day Could Be Super Bowl Sunday

Now that Google is a publicly traded company, traditions and advertiser friendly philosophies seem destined to clash with fiduciary responsibility. Imagine this scenario: Everybody uses Google, so every advertiser needs a presence there, and the law of supply and demand makes Google one expensive place to be.

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Editor's Note: Google's rise in market share has been matched by a rise in stock prices. What happens when there's no more market share to grab? It's not far-fetched shareholders will pressure Google into monetizing wherever they can, at the advertiser's expense. Is inflation in our future, or will market or regulatory forces prevent? Please postulate in the comments.

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Big companies were reluctant a few years back to shift a significant amount of their advertising budgets to search marketing. This reluctance made conditions perfect for small businesses to take advantage of Google's relevancy at bargain basement prices while Google built its reputation and search share.

But big companies wised up, making competition for ad space even fiercer. Those big budgets provided a big advantage in organic results, too. While bootstrappy, budget-conscious companies tweaked and tested and gamed to get better organic placement, large companies realized pretty fast it was easier just to buy a site already ranking for relevant keywords.

Trends like these, along with Google's own renewed focus on raising search ad real estate prices by reducing the number of ads while increasing relevancy for users and, by default, conversion rates for advertisers, mean Google was already headed for high-roller club status. And now Google is reaching into Yahoo's pot, too.

Effectively, Google has the potential to reach 90 percent or more of Internet searchers: 90 percent of the US, adding to 90 percent of the UK and Europe. That's what, a couple of hundred million searchers? Add that to other advertising roads Google is traveling—TV, radio, print, wireless—and remember how a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl grabs a couple of million dollars for the network broadcasting it.

Consider this also: According to ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, Google has made its billions from just five percent of its ads being clicked. Not to insult your math ability, but that's 95 percent of Google ads that are not clicked. Though clicks are monetized based on direct action, Fulgoni says only 16 percent of ads have direct online effects; 21 percent have latent online effects, and 63 percent have latent offline effects.

"[S]o 84% of the value isn’t being monetized by search engines," Search Insider's David Berkowitz summarizes in his " Dreaming of a Super Model" report. The value in that 84 percent is in less tangible branding value. Enquiro attributes a 16 percent brand lift when the brand made an appearance in the top organic result and the top sponsored result.

Fulgoni used these numbers to suggest Google could maximize profit by adding a layer of cost to search advertising in the form of cost per impression. Either by display advertising (Google can certainly pull up DoubleClick's CPM expertise for this*), or by simply charging every time a text ad appears on the search results page, Google could up its ad revenue by huge margins. Advantage: advertisers with huge budgets, and Google shareholders. Disadvantage: Google goes back on its core philosophy of clean interface, simplicity, and equality of opportunity.

Think that can't happen? You could be right, but "fiduciary responsibility to shareholders" is a much weightier phrase than "advertisers will be outraged." Berkowitz joins a likely chorus that advertisers would break this model:

"So, what would a CPM model add to search? In this economy or any economy, not much. Yes, it would show marketers that there is more they should value. At the same time, that would make search marketing much less appealing. There are competing forces: the engines aren’t cashing in as well as they could be, but marketers have enough pricing concerns with search even when they’re getting a great return on investment, let alone when they’re struggling."

Tips For Getting Comments

Every blog comes with comments and pretty much every blogger is basing their success on comments. Sure, they may say they don't, but when you have no comments you feel like you're just talking to yourself. So how do you get comments? 1 - Write posts that are conversational and something that people can relate to. If you write posts in a way that there feels like there is no room for discussion, then comments will be harder to get. My wife is great at making posts people can relate to. She put out a post two years ago when she broke her leg and is closing in on 1000 comments from others that have broken theirs. She's not a marketer, or a PR person, just an average blogger who happened to write in a way that people felt compelled to comment. 2 - Invite comments. If you put out a top ten post, or go off on a rant, ask uses what they think. Literally put at the end of the post "Do you agree?", "Do you have any tips to add?" or other questions that are inviting comments. 3 - Make it easy to comment. Don't ask your users to login, don't make it difficult to comment via complex spam plugins or anything like that. Make sure the comment box is easy to see and that the fields are big enough to put meaningful comments in. Sometimes comment boxes are so small, visitors are to annoyed to comment. To test this out, log out of your blog and act like a normal visitor and comment on one of your own posts. Some never see what's wrong as they never look through the users eyes. 4 - Post one side of a story. If I post about how great one political candidate is, there are many others to follow and tell me how wrong I am or why their candidate is better. This is true in most any industry. I could say Blogger is the best blogging platform ever and I'm sure someone would disagree.
5 - Don't be mean to those that do comment. Yes, some comments you may not agree with, but be open and willing to accept other thoughts and views. If you are mean to those that comment, no one will want to comment. Meanie. 6 - Moderate comments. Yes, we want to be open and happy to get comments, but that doesn't mean we want spammy, off topic or just plain mean comments. Delete what is not on topic, edit or remove any inappropriate comments and just keep an eye on what's happening on your site. After all, is is your site. Comments not only make the blog owner feel better, but it also makes the blog look more interactive and popular. As a bonus, comments are indexed and used by search engines and help the page rank. My wife's 1000 comments are what help her continue to get the amazing exposure. Sure, her post was good, but now she has 1000x the amount of content thanks to the comments. So what are your tips for getting comments? Comments
About the Author: Thomas McMahon is a SEO Designer for TopRank Online Marketing in Minneapolis, MN. His specialities inlude technical optimization of existing web sites, creating search engine friendly web designs, and blog optimization. He has also created a number of blog marketing tools, WordPress plug-ins and FireFox add-ons. Blog: http://bloggerdesign.com

Tips For Getting Comments

By Thomas McMahon
Every blog comes with comments and pretty much every blogger is basing their success on comments. Sure, they may say they don't, but when you have no comments you feel like you're just talking to yourself. So how do you get comments? 1 - Write posts that are conversational and something that people can relate to. If you write posts in a way that there feels like there is no room for discussion, then comments will be harder to get. My wife is great at making posts people can relate to. She put out a post two years ago when she broke her leg and is closing in on 1000 comments from others that have broken theirs. She's not a marketer, or a PR person, just an average blogger who happened to write in a way that people felt compelled to comment. 2 - Invite comments. If you put out a top ten post, or go off on a rant, ask uses what they think. Literally put at the end of the post "Do you agree?", "Do you have any tips to add?" or other questions that are inviting comments. 3 - Make it easy to comment. Don't ask your users to login, don't make it difficult to comment via complex spam plugins or anything like that. Make sure the comment box is easy to see and that the fields are big enough to put meaningful comments in. Sometimes comment boxes are so small, visitors are to annoyed to comment. To test this out, log out of your blog and act like a normal visitor and comment on one of your own posts. Some never see what's wrong as they never look through the users eyes. 4 - Post one side of a story. If I post about how great one political candidate is, there are many others to follow and tell me how wrong I am or why their candidate is better. This is true in most any industry. I could say Blogger is the best blogging platform ever and I'm sure someone would disagree.
5 - Don't be mean to those that do comment. Yes, some comments you may not agree with, but be open and willing to accept other thoughts and views. If you are mean to those that comment, no one will want to comment. Meanie. 6 - Moderate comments. Yes, we want to be open and happy to get comments, but that doesn't mean we want spammy, off topic or just plain mean comments. Delete what is not on topic, edit or remove any inappropriate comments and just keep an eye on what's happening on your site. After all, is is your site. Comments not only make the blog owner feel better, but it also makes the blog look more interactive and popular. As a bonus, comments are indexed and used by search engines and help the page rank. My wife's 1000 comments are what help her continue to get the amazing exposure. Sure, her post was good, but now she has 1000x the amount of content thanks to the comments. So what are your tips for getting comments? Comments
About the Author: Thomas McMahon is a SEO Designer for TopRank Online Marketing in Minneapolis, MN. His specialities inlude technical optimization of existing web sites, creating search engine friendly web designs, and blog optimization. He has also created a number of blog marketing tools, WordPress plug-ins and FireFox add-ons. Blog: http://bloggerdesign.com