How to Promote Your Online Business Offline
Promoting offline is a method that many overlook or completely forget about when it comes to advertising their online business. For many people, reading an advertisement in the newspaper, magazine, on a billboard or even in the mail is still a more trusted and safer way to respond to an advert. So this article is going to cover a few of the many ways that you can promote your online business using offline tactics. Some are free, some may require a little money and some thought and cunning.
So, lets get into it. Newspaper advertising is still a very beneficial way to go about advertising, and can be extremely profitable. Just about every household these days subscribe to their local and even national newspaper. And newspapers are kept around for a while and re-read, this is great if you have an advert there. There are different ways to advertise in a newspaper, you have quarter pages, half pages and full pages. This will take money but if you can afford it, it will be worth the money. For a more simple and cheaper way to go, you can take out an ad in the classified section under the category of your product or service. The price will depend on the amount of words and style you want. But again classifieds are read all the time.
Some magazines and newspapers will accept articles from the public, and in exchange they will give you an ad space for either free or at a discounted rate. Some will even let you submit a press release about the company or product that you are promoting. This will have to be very professionally written, but if accepted think of the traffic you would receive.
Flyers are a very effective tool in promoting offline. They are extremely cheap to make or if you have the resources on your computer, free. You can walk the dog at night and drop some off in letter boxes, and each night just take a different route. Get exercise and advertise at the same time. That is a win win situation. Put some flyers up at your community center, supermarkets pretty much anywhere that you think people will be interested in what you are promoting. Just make sure in advance that the management of the establishment approves it first. Be sure to include your URL in the flyer.
Business cards. This is something that people accept willingly, in the business culture of today everybody hands out their business card. And it is another way that could also become viral. How? Say you have handed out some of your business cards to people, some won`t be looking for what you are offering, but their friends, co-workers or other family members might. So your business card and or URL could start to circulate around that 1 persons family and friends. 1 card could be in front of 5 or more people.
There is a phenomenal amount of different ways to promote your business offline that I haven`t covered. This is not even the tip of the iceberg, just a few popular ways that many still use and make a good living at. My father is in retail and he advertises weekly in newspapers and on radio and gets a huge amount of traffic this way. Not to mention word-of-mouth, just use your imagination and start to explore this different avenue of boosting and promoting your business.
Best wishes,
Campbell Shaw
Campbell Shaw
Works At Home as a full-time internet marketer. Learn how to start or grow your own successful internet business at:
www.freeinternationalbusiness.com/marketingsecrets
Promote your Business with the Right Logo
A logo is a design or image that represents a company, brand or product. Its aim is to help people identify the company with a positive customer experience. It is the basis of all future branding, advertising and communication strategies. Therefore considerable attention should be paid by the brand owners to develop and create an image that besides being unique will stand the test of time – Remember a logo will outlive people, products and services and exist as long as a company continues to operate.
Background:
The word ‘logo’ is derived from the Greek word ‘logotipos’ meaning a graphic symbol, element or icon of a trademark or brand which is set in a unique typeface or arranged in a particular way.
The three different aspects of a logo are:
Logotype/ word mark /letter mark
Icon: symbol/trademark
Slogan: Tag line
Logos gained enormous popularity in the 19th Century after the Industrial Revolution which led to increase in output, distribution and beginning of competitive markets. Every Company wanted to prove it was the best. Every organization wanted to outshine its competitors which surprise, surprise has not changed. There was a huge upsurge in the market and as a result logos were created in order to enable people to differentiate between products, packages and labels so buyers could easily recognize the product they wanted.
The emergence of logos brought about a revolution in the advertising world. More and more companies began demanding a unique symbol that could be a part of their business for years to come. However, only affluent companies could afford their own logo, crest or emblem.
Concept:
Concept is the most crucial aspect of logo design. The logo needs to undergo rigorous tests in order to create a unique place in the market its brand owners operate in.
While deciding on what kind of logo you want, ask yourself about the kind of image you want to portray about your company – For example cartoons could represent a fun filled company philosophy. Never forget that once decided upon, your logo will be a silent medium that will communicate the company’s ideals and philosophy.
The logo should be impressive and at the same time should not be over dramatic. The design elements need to be as few as possible so that the logo does not appear to be packed with different image components. It should be able to attract the customers the company wants to attract. For example, research shows that using bright colors does not create the brand confidence in finance related companies. Finance companies are advised to stick by the traditional grey, blues and reds (remember the bankers’ grey and blue pinstripe suits!!) by the marketing gurus! Though for every rule the pundits ask you to stick by, there are highly successful designs that just do the opposite - ING’s logo with its orange color image does exactly the opposite of what research and popular wisdom suggests but still creates a highly unique and recognizable symbol.
It is felt that certain elements make up a credible and a high quality logo. These are: A logo should be different from your competitors. In my view there is no point being another face in the crowd. So stand out and if you dare, be different. Sometimes breaking rules and conventions may work in your favour. Evaluate maverick design ideas and themes. It should reflect the companies business, products/services. It should be easy to compress and still uniquely retain its design elements.
When finalizing your logo design think about your target market and ask these questions:
1) By looking at your logo image, will they be able to guess what the company products/services are.
2) Will they see the image as a representation of professional, reliable company – A company that delivers on its promise?
Remember the logo is not to please you but your customers. Why? Because they are the ones who pay your salaries. They are the ones who will help you buy that lovely apartment with water views!
The most simple yet difficult thing to do is to ignore and forget about what your personal likes and dislikes are with respect to colors, images and font styles and try to see from your target customer segments’ point of view. Easier said than done, but if you can, you will have a logo that will be recognizable.
Significance:
A well designed logo can raise the image of a company it represents. It establishes the credibility of the company. Potential customers form an opinion of a business within seconds and the logo plays a significant part in determining this.
Each aspect of the logo’s design should be carefully analyzed in order to ensure that the right message is being communicated.
Logos leave remarkable impressions that have a lasting and a deep impact on the hearts and minds of the viewers.
REPRINT RIGHTS statement: This article is free for republishing by visitors provided the Author Bio box is retained as usual so that all links are Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.
Author Alok Vats is related with many maverick graphic and website design activities at Maverick Mav. Maverick Mav provides affordable graphic design, logo design, web design, stationery design, illustration design and much more. They have recently launched the cartoon logo design service.
What are promotional products?
You probably personally use at least one every day - maybe that mug you drink your coffee from or the calendar you used to schedule meetings or the sweatshirt you wore this weekend. Everyone has at some time been given something with a logo on it.
That's because promotional products are powerful tools that can solve your marketing, public relations and internal problems and motivate your targets, be they consumers, businesses, volunteers, benefactors, employees, communities, etc., toward your objectives and enable you to achieve your goals.
What "promotional products" means
Different terms you'll hear for promotional products
How promotional products are purchased
What's in the future?
What Promotional Products Means
In its simplest form, the term promotional product is a catch-all phrase for products that are used to affect a behaviour or convey a message. But they are really a sophisticated tool. Some examples of the different ways to use promotional products are to motivate your salespeople, thank your board of trustees, introduce a new product, get your dealers to load up on more product, reduce on-the-job accidents....
Promotional products usually, but not always bear an appropriate logo, slogan or saying, known as the imprint. There are many different ways a product can be imprinted, depending on the material from which it is made.
Some common methods of imprinting include printing, screenprinting, embossing, embroidery, hot stamping, pad printing, etching, engraving, die-casting, etc. The message itself can be as simple as a company logo or as complex as a mission statement.
By their nature, promotional products are usually sold in quantity and imprinting is rarely done on a single item. And because promotional products are generally purchased in quantities, they usually cost less than the recipient thinks they do, giving them a higher perceived value. How a promotional product is packaged can enhance its perceived value even more.
Certain products have traditionally been used for promotional purposes, and are the products most typically associated with this market. Some of these products include calendars, mugs, pens, T-shirts, bumperstickers, keytags, etc. But there is really no limit to the type of product that can be used to communicate a message.
Today, there are literally hundreds of thousands of promotional products, including many high-value items like clocks, crystal, china and watches. Additionally, automotive accessories and desktop products are very popular.
Different Terms You'll Hear For Promotional Products
The four major groups of promotional products include:
Advertising Specialities
Business Gifts
Incentive and Awards
Premiums
Advertising Specialities are useful or interesting articles of merchandise, usually carrying an imprinted advertising or promotional message, given with no obligation. Ad specialities are also referred to as promotional products, give-aways and adcentives.
They're usually distributed in large quantities for an advertising-type purpose such as creating awareness/remembrance of a company, encouraging goodwill between a company and its clients or calling attention to a special benefit of a company or its products; usually without obligation.
Virtually every type of business use advertising specialities from time to time. Specialities are also used a great deal by non-profit organisations like schools, churches, clubs and amateur sports leagues. Your promotional marketing company can provide creative guidance for choosing just the right item for your organisation.
Business Gifts are a product given by a business to its customers, employees, friends or other influentials for goodwill and without obligation.
The imprint on such products is frequently the giver's company name or logo and sometimes they are personalised with the recipient's name as well. However, the imprint on a business gift is usually smaller and placed in an inconspicuous spot, known as a subtle imprint.
Sometimes there is no imprint at all on the product itself, but it is part of the accompanying card or tag. Some common reasons for gift-giving include thanking customers for their patronage, developing business contacts, recognising employee performance/longevity and celebrating special occasions and holidays.
Incentives and Awards are recognition merchandise, often personalised, used to acknowledge performance and milestones and motivate people toward a specific behaviour or objective, be it more sales, fewer accidents, etc.
It is the fastest-growing segment of the promotional products industry, mostly attributable to corporate Britain's increasing focus on motivation, workplace safety and goal-setting.
The most typical products associated with this category have been plaques, service pins, trophies and award jewellery. But today, many other types of products are used as incentives and awards. Products are often selected to reinforce the theme of a special incentive program, like an automotive accessory for a driver's safety program.
More and more companies are using catalogue programs in which points are earned and redeemed for merchandise chosen out of a catalogue.
Premiums are often the same product as an ad speciality, but unlike an ad speciality, the recipient must do something to receive that product. Also, a premium is not always imprinted. When you buy a box of cereal with a toy inside, you have received a premium.
The same is true of the T-shirt you receive by mailing in a proof-of-purchase coupon to a manufacturer or the sleeve of golf balls you received for recommending someone who joined your golf club.
In both cases, an action was required before you obtained your gift. There are several different kinds of premiums, each with different requirements regarding how the premium is received. Some common types include sweepstakes; self- or semi-liquidators; on-pack, in-pack or near-pack; dealer loaders; trading stamps; contests and mail-ins.
How Lanyards Are Used in Business and Industry
Lanyards have become extremely common nowadays. It is very normal to see ID badges dangling from a person’s neck on a short cord, and on the cord or small rope itself, is printed the name of a company, or a school or an event on it. All these prove the popularity of lanyards in business and industry.
You may well ask why is that? This is because there are several uses that lanyards have found in business and industry.
PUBLICITY AHOY: The most important aspect of lanyards is the promotion aspect. A promotional lanyard is used to deliver a message to the customer. A lanyard that has been custom printed to ensure your company's logo and message are visible to current or potential customers.
These lanyards can give your company a marketing edge, especially as the promotion is free, a lot of good will is generated and at the same time a lot of awareness is being added about your product or company. And all these at minimal costs.
It is very cost effective to buy 500 pieces of lanyard, with your company's name or event printed on it, for as little as $110.00. It can also be as fancy as you'd like it to be. Apart from that lanyards are eye-catching and display your message and they are definitely useful.
Lanyards are ideal for use as a medium for advertising because it is easy to custom-print the name of the company and its logo on the badge of the lanyard. Usually it is found that lanyards made of cotton and nylon can be used conveniently for screen printing the name and logo of an organization.
When using the lanyards in promotional campaigns, they can be fitted with different attachments and accessories including key rings, crocodile clips, snap hooks, mobile phone and bottle openers.
Businesses can use lanyards in corporate events and activities, such as seminars, conferences and conventions. Instead of bring disposed of before the event is even over, lanyards are particularly sought after, and kept for use after the event, as a neck strap for a id tag, or security pass holder. So, the lanyards are actually much sought of items, and serve their promotional purpose very well.
Lanyards, which are custom printed, have found to be popular at events like fundraisers and tradeshows. Increasingly businesses are using lanyards as a way to publicize their name, message or logo by designing customized lanyards. These serve the purpose effectively as they are popular giveaways as items of promotions at trade shows and fairs.
Printed lanyards sometimes serve the purpose of a personalized lanyard when your name and identification is displayed on it at a public event. Business also takes care with their personalized lanyards by specifying the design and color scheme.
With the continuing popularity of mobile phones, lanyards, which can hold a mobile phone around the user’s neck, are particularly relevant to the youth/teen market, with companies often targeting those markets using lanyards as a promotional giveaway at events.
BE SECURE: Lanyards are extremely useful in business for security identification. Major security concerns have dictated the use of lanyards and id holders for the display of ID cards from schools to fortune 500 companies Lanyards are used for visitors’ ID’s, employee ID’s and student ID’s.
They can also be used by the company for id badges for security entrance and employee identification. ID neck lanyards are still increasing in popularity and have become an essential security component of many businesses, schools, medical centers, government agencies, entertainment companies and more for displaying personal identification. Their value cannot be undermined.
As you can see, the innocuous lanyard has a high vale as a promotional and advertising aid for businesses and industries. So make most of it and get the maximum mileage out of your lanyard for your business.
Unearth more ways to promote your business or event with
industry and hospitality promotional products.
Catalog Printing on the Web
The Internet is growing bigger everyday and it has made every market place busy. The traditional way of printing catalogs was made exclusive for the paper catalogs. However, most of the people prefer the new age catalogs than the traditional way of printing catalogs.
Researchers and makers of catalogs have found out and proven that when they include the web in the contents of their catalog or in the printing plan, it offers them higher returns. If you want to move your catalog to the webs, you can certainly do it. If you want to increase your profits, you can start it at once.
The studies have shown that the increase in the purchases of the companies that have used catalogs is about 10% to 50%, which is on an annual basis. Although it will still depend on its sector, it is advantageous that you try it out for your new brochures.
In order to have knowledge about the catalog printing on web, you can first contact a web designer or a web developer. If you want to make a quick search, the Internet will help you a lot.
If you do so, you can have the best advantage to your customers and you can easily convince them. It will also be useful if you relate your products with the web design. With that, your customers will easily notice and remember your catalog even if it stands with all the other catalogs.
When you have your catalogs on the web, you need to incorporate the printed catalog design to the web design. Therefore, for a change, why do not you try both and see how it will help you to reap benefits that might just be the big break that you are waiting for.
Lastly, if you want your catalogs to be printed brilliantly and stunningly, you should have them printed in printing companies.
For more related articles, you may visit http://www.printingshoppers.com
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About the Author: Karen Nodalo has graduated from the Bicol University specializing in Computer Science. She has been into writing for almost 5 years now, and has been into different topics. She has also been into student publications since her elementary years, giving her the much coveted exposure that writers of her kind battles for.
Perfect Gift
Do you feel pleasure presenting your friends with gifts?
I bet you do. It is almost irreplaceable to see your mum's smile or a fascination on your children faces.
It make you feel special and the same time them. This little gesture can bring so much of a good energy and change the life for long.
What about gifts given when we thought the situation will never change with our enemies. That small, sometimes cheap present make our door open again.
How many time you wanted to say not only simple 'thank you' but that you cared, you appreciated to someone you would not dare or could not afford to offer anything else but a beauty trinket.
Here we come.
We are the answers to your prayers. Specially constructed gift shop is now open.
Browse through out departments and find whatever suits you best to express your feelings.
Tell your colleagues you like them, make your nephew grin, show to your friends that you care or simply celebrate any occasions with your partner competing who will be better on the next anniversary.
Possibilities are endless.
Try to spend few minutes and you will find thousand of thousands moments in your life you were thinking of buying that what you see on our virtual shelves. How often do you say to yourself that if you only new before about that online shop no-one would be left without gifts.
What about Christmas.
Do you really need to wait till the last moment to find what to send to not frequently visited uncle? Of course you do not.
Does it have to be big?
It does have to be big, the present you are buying. It does. But on the other hand are they not , if purchases by you? Are not they great because that someone special gets all together with the mascot or clock your best wishes as a package?
Do not underestimate your relatives and friends. They know that the effort you have put to find a little special for them make special from them and they will always be glad to say 'thank you' with the biggest smile they can show.
Click here to check
Perfect Gifts offer
eCommerce Fundamentals
eCommerce can be VERY complex. To offer a world class customer experience, retailers must incorporate technologies and functionality that exceeds rising customer expectations.
On the flip side however, site fundamentals still play a very large role in converting visitors into customers. Many retailers surprisingly lose sight of these site basics and leave significant sales on the table. This brief examines 4 quick “fundamentals” every eCommerce manager cannot afford to lose sight of.
Think Fast
Speed has become less of a problem due to the penetration of broadband, but don’t forget that a significant number of people still shop by a dialup connection. When creating a site framework, designers and e-commerce teams should ensure that the site is developed with pages loading in less than 9 seconds (over a dial-up connection).
Our recommended page size is within 60-70k in bytes. At that amount, sites will likely load within the maximum wait time of 9 seconds. Online retailers should avoid flash at all costs within their transactional site. Flash’s artistic aspects may help you establish a brand presence – but it will likely lose potential customers before they have even searched within your store.
Image is important
Images are a very important aspect of selling online and are often neglected. All product images should be of the highest resolution possible, be much larger than the product page original, and have
multiple views. Dynamic imaging capabilities can improve the user experience to an even higher level by increasing interactivity (zoom & rotate). At a minimum – retailers should have at least two additional views outside of the product page image to help build emotion.
Be my guest
Shoppers do not like being forced to do anything, especially when they are ready to open their wallets. Forcing a shopper to register on your site before purchasing is a sure way to drive a portion of your traffic to your competitors. Too often, shoppers do not have the time or the inclination to fill out a lengthy form explaining what types of information they desire.
Always offer the ability to checkout as a guest. You will see less customer leakage within the checkout process and can still offer the option to register when the sale is completed.
Make sure it’s “above the fold”
Your homepage is the most important page within your eCommerce store. It sets the initial tone for the shopping experience and offers your best promotions and products to your visitors. Users typically visually scan a web page from top to bottom and then from left to right. All critical content and navigation options should be obvious to the shopper without having to scroll down. If you have your best promotions “below the fold” – you can bet that a large percentage of browsers are not scrolling down to see it.
Craig Smith
Trinity Insight LLC
http://www.trinityinsight.com
About the Author: Craig Smith is the founder of Trinity Insight LLC - a leading consulting firm for the eCommerce sector
http://www.trinityinsight.com
Don't Become a Victim of Small Business Internet Crime
Every now and then you stumble across something on the internet whilst surfing that takes your breath away. No I don't mean illegal or suspicious content but one of those sites that has committed a business marketing crime by publishing a "sorry" looking web site. I can't mention the name or URL of site that I have just seen (my solicitor's bills are big enough thanks) but it made me think what on earth were the owners thinking when they gave the go ahead for such a shabby piece of global advertising.
I actually know of the offline part of this business and they are a reputable, established company with good products to sell. So why would they allow their reputation to be tarnished by showing themselves on the internet in such a poor light? Perhaps they thought that any advertisement is better than no advertisement and that the thrown together web presence would be good enough or perhaps they thought that their offline reputation would allow people to see through the poorly presented web site.
I think the latter is closer to the truth and it is a mistake that many established small businesses make when going online for the first time. Just five years ago this may have worked for the business as most web sites were purely online brochures where people went to check contact numbers, opening times etc. before visiting the physical store. A recent survey has shown that our spending habits are changing and that Britain's love affair with shopping and the high street is changing. In the past six years, online spending has increased by 2,000 per cent and in the past 12 months alone we have spent more than £50 billion purchasing via the internet.
This change has occurred, I think for various reasons. Our towns and cities are increasingly overcrowded with poor travel facilities. We have less time for shopping and are savvier when it comes to knowing what we want. We value good customer service, but at the end of the day, a MP3 player is the same wherever you bought it from and we want the best price.
So, what does this mean for the small to medium size business? Well, they can no longer get away with having a poor, out of date internet site. A lot of potential customers may never have seen your store and actually know little of your reputation. As in most things, we formulate opinions very quickly and an uninspiring web site will do little to convince the customer as to your genuine value and service. To convert these potential customers to purchasers the web site needs to be clean, simple and easy to navigate. It also needs to provide more than just a brochure of your products. Providing information that relates to your product is a key method of generating interest and trust. For example, if you sell a specific product why not get some real reviews from your existing customers by offering them a discount on their next purchase. I'm not suggesting you bribe them to give a good review when they wouldn't otherwise, but I personally always read products reviews online before I make any significant purchase. This adds value and hopefully with minimal effort will convert into sales.
These are just a few ideas to prevent you also becoming a victim of small business web design crimes!
This article was written by Chris Cooper, owner of theWebBothy - internet marketing for small businesses and author of The Small Business Internet Manual. To view more articles by Chris and receive FREE internet marketing videos worth $428 please visit http://www.thewebbothy.co.uk
Getting free links, search engine optimisation for dummies and article writing for high google rankings
Getting free links, search engine optimisation for dummies and article writing for high google rankings
Getting free links, search engine optimisation for dummies.
When I started my first site selling woven silk ties from the UK I signed up with a SEO company called 123rankings who guaranteed that they would get me into the top ten on Google for five search terms within six months. I paid their fees for four months without any noticeable results. Then my web developer told me that they used a piece of software called SEO Elite and had good results, he gave me an ebook by the softwares author a SEO expert called Brad Callen, you can download a pdf copy of the ebook here and go to his website here. I was shocked at how easy it was when I followed the instructions. I was also surprised at how badly the SEO company 123rankings I had been paying each month had been doing and now do it all myself. Here are the steps I went through.
First up was on-page factors, which means getting the keywords on your site right. This has only a small effect on your ranking but is important to get right. First up I found that the SEO company had changed the title page of my site and webpages to a meaningless list of keywords most of which were not the main ones that were selling my ties. Not only was this reducing my rankings on the keywords I really wanted, but if someone did dig deep enough into their google results to find me then the text that apppeared was a meaningless list"Print, theme, woven polyester, cartoon, novelty ties and cufflinks." that does not include silk ties or even tie. Instead I changed the titles back to a meaningful phrase that would look good in google and on top of my site and would have all the right keywords. The keyphrases I have been targeting are woven silk ties, silk ties, silk tie, English silk tie and UK silk tie. My title page now reads "http://www.TieSpecialist.com. Luxury English handmade woven silk ties. Satisfaction guaranteed with every tie.". This works as both a sales pitch when coming up in search results and contains all my keywords. I went through all my header tags and keywords and as this has just reminded me I have just gone through again and made quite a few changes based on what I have learnt over the last month. This needs to be a continuous process of adding new words, creating cross-links across the site (to help Google to understand your site and to get some key sub-pages on to the search engine results) and polishing up the text so that it converts well with people and looks good to the search engines. I also bolded keywords on the top page and ensured my main search phrases were sprinkled over the page with one near the top and another near the bottom for each key phrase.
The main grunt work in search engine optimisation (SEO) is getting links. Google uses links as the main factor in search results so this is the key to high rankings and therefore free clicks and customers for you. Google uses several factors including the importance of the website (Page Rank), the keywords on the page, the title of the page, the text your site is linked from (known as the anchor text), the other links from that page, whether your site is linked back to the site that links to you (reciprocal links). To assess the page rank you need the Google Toolbar that you can download here this puts a little guage in internet explorer that shows you a ranking for every page you visit. The page rank runs from 0 to 10 and if it is greyed out then the site is not on or has been banned by Google. After four months I had got up to a Page Rank of 3.
The first point of call for links should be directories, by which I mean hand-edited lists of sites not search engines. The key site to be registered on is the Open Directory Project at www.dmoz.org. My SEO people had registered my tie site with this, but had used the crappy list of keywords above. Once I corrected my listing I gained 30+ places on Google on some search terms. Google and most of the search engines place a high importance on the ODP and their search results are syndicated out to 100's of other sites so a listing there rapidly spreads. Submit your site there now if you havent done so already. You can also do a Google search for more directories and register on at least all the ones specialisting in your product.
The next thing to do is to type your target key phrase into Google. For me it was woven silk ties. I then picked the top ranked site which had a Page Rank of 5, next fire up SEO Elite and type in the url of the top ranked site and select analyze backlinks. The software will then show all the sites that are linked to that top ranked site. If you can get the same links then you will be on your way to the top of the list too. Th software lists them in Google Page Rank order so you then simply go to each of the websites in turn from best first and submit your site listing or submit a link exchange request or failing those options by far the most common approach is to email them with a link exchange request. You get the best response if you add a link to their site first and then send an email like mine:
"I run a website selling silk ties http://www.blogger.com/www.tiespecialist.com. I like your site and am interested in link exchanging. I have added a link to your site from: http://www.tiespecialist.com/useful-links-i-14.html I would appreciate a return link as follows: English woven silk ties. Every silk tie comes with free worldwide delivery."A few hours doing this gave me 20 or so links. I have also tried searching for tie listings in Google and getting listings on all the sites that came up. I have also searched for listing sites for markets I am interested in such as weddings. I sell a lot of ties for weddings with grooms and ushers often bulk buying and because I offer big quantity discounts I get quite a lot of these orders and want more. There are also link exchange sites. I have used used LinkMetro and this site allows you to find people to exchange links with and it helps to automate the process some what I have got 30 links for each of my sites with a few hours work on this site. It works particlularly well for my reproduction oil paintings site art specialist. I have exchanged links with lots of art sites, poster and print sites and also gifts and birthday sites were both ties and oil paintings make great links that will help my rankings on those search terms.
It is worth pointing out that pretty much any link exchange is worth having although those from high ranking sites count a lot higher. It makes sense, if your site is linked to from the front page of the BBC website (which has a page rank of 9) then it is clearly a very important site. The only links you do not want are those that are greyed out on Page Rank these could be banned sites. Google bans sites for trying to manipulate rankings in ways that it finds unacceptable. If you are linked to a bad site this will drag your ranking down. The SEO Elite tool also allows you to view how your website apppears to Google by analzying your backlinks, showing you the keyword ratings this generates and the number and rank of each site linked to yours and listed on a search engine. I am currently up to 73 links showing in this way. Which is now enough to have catapulted me to top ten on Google, MSN and Yahoo for "english woven silk ties" and "UK woven silk ties" and top fifty for "UK silk ties". Now I am targeting shorter search phrases. To break into the top for very competitive phrases you can need hundreds of phrases for example a guy at one of the internet marketing companies said they had over 17,000 links. But now I was adding links at the rate of 30 a month to each of my sites but I am after more.
My next step which brought hundreds of top quality links was article writing for search engine rankings. When I started my search engine optimisation I was targeting relatively easy phrases to get going such as "English silk ties" and "uk woven silk ties". Initially I focused my attention on my MSN ranking as they do not use site age or link age as a ranking factor unlike the others, particularly Google which puts a high importance on link age, the so called "sand box" that you are in for the first six to eight months. I got into the habit of actively getting link exchanges, both by using SEO Elite to find good link partners and by using Link Metro.
After less than a month I had fifty links for my tie website and was starting to get top twenties for my easy phrases on MSN for example I was ranking 14th for "English silk ties" and 8th for "UK Woven Silk Ties" whilst for better phrases I was not yet on the first page with "woven silk ties" (35th) and "Silk Ties" (245th).
The next boost up the rankings was to come from article writing. I discovered that there are lots of websites out there that publish articles. The search engines rate these sites highly as they offer lots of content with text heavy pages and are human edited. Most article sites let you have hyperlinks in your story and all of them allow a resource box at the bottom with links to your site(s). So if you write some articles related to the product you sell and then post the articles on many sites, you get lots of high quality links to your site.
First job is to come up with a topic. It is best to write articles related to your product, how to buy it, choose it, use it, reviews etc. This means your text and title will have lots of related keywords and you may even get some customers from people reading it. It shouldnt be too hard to come up with a few thousand word articles for almost any site. For ties for example, I have articles on a history of ties, tie tying and tie cleaning. These are on my web site and I publish them to article sites. For art, I am starting to write articles on buying art to use for this purpose. You can get ideas and content from searching the internet and using sites like wikipedia for facts. You can also use the article sites for free content to add to your site. Most of them allow re-printing of an article as long as the links and attribution are left in.
The process is pretty easy. Search in Google for "submit articles" and your topic and then register with each site and submit an article. It can take a couple of weeks for each article to get reviewed and published. Sometimes I get emails saying article rejected and the reason. The reason is usually something to do with links or overly commercial content, but I simply make edits to address their point and then re-submit. If you submit a number of articles spaced out by a month between each one across 100's of article sites then you can build up a lot of links that will do wonders for your ranking.
After I had done this about ten timesI wondered if there was tool that might help, and found Article Submitter Pro this is a pretty cool tool that semi-automates the process. It has more than 700 article sites in it's directory and using a window in the tool you can sort the sites by Page Rank and starting with the best sites register with each one and record the log in info in the tool. Then when you want to submit an article you enter it into the program and it takes you one by one to each of the sites and auto-fills in all the boxes with your login and then the article, biography and resource text. It keeps track of which articles you have submitted to which sites and helps to keep it all organised. Using Article Submitter Pro I can submit to a 100+ sites in a few hours which I do as a once a week task. After three weeks of article submission I am up to top fives for my easy phrases on MSN for example I am ranking 1st for "English silk ties" and 3rd for "UK Woven Silk Ties" whilst for better phrases I am now on the first page with "woven silk tie" (3rd) and "silk tie" (4th) and "silk ties" (25th). The results are really good so I am going to keep on publishing articles.
If you want to make pdf's of your articles for your other sites then try here at PDF Converter the PDF Forum there offers information for people looking to learn more about using PDF.
The next step for me is to pull together ebooks for each of my sites including one for http://www.artspecialist.co.uk which I can use articles I have written for some of the source text and to harvest email addresses on my sites, by offering a free copy to people.
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About the Author: My name is Tony Gosling and this article is extracted from my Internet Entrepreneurship blog. I am going to share with you my experience in launching and building internet retail businesses. Most of this is going to be about the stupid mistakes I have made along the way which should hopefully provide other budding entrepreneurs with some good lessons.
