Archive for October 15th, 2009
How To Get Website Traffic Fast With These 5 Quick Tips!
Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors you have, the better your sales and profits. Presumably you have a niche and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what’s popular. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast!
Tip #1 Make sure you’re actually tagging your keywords.
Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tags they’ll pass right by your web pages. Here’s a quick brief on tags.
There are a number of tag types including,
* Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords. Hereís what they look like – <title>Primary keyword phrase here. </title>
Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.
* Header Tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines. They’re ranked in order of importance and look like this – <h1>Primary and/or Secondary keywords here</h1>
The ì1î designates this header as the most important header on the page.
* Meta Tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. Like title tags these should be kept brief, informative and up to date.
* Alt Tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.
Tip #2 Add content to your site daily
Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders look for and index – without it there’s nothing to index or rank. Give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily, optimized content and your traffic will skyrocket……
Tip #3 Procure valuable and relevant incoming links
The more websites which link to your webpages the more valuable search engines perceive you to be, though not all links are created equal. Search engines give more leverage to links from sites which are popular and credible and from sites which are relevant to your website topic.
There are different types of links.
- A direct link looks like a basic website address, for example, www.carlosanastacio.com
- A text link occurs when the webpage address is embedded in the text. Readers simply click on the link and are redirected to a new website page.
- If the link is to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page, it is called a ìdeep link.î
You can encourage linking to your website by:
* Adding content to your site.
* Submitting to article directories.
* Publishing press releases.
* Blogging and participating in social networking forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.
Tip #4 Be Social!
Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site and create a profile and then post comments, links to your site and ideas which generate conversation.
Get involved – many forums , find those which cater to your industry, and begin participating. Speak to and connect with a highly targeted audience.
Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic
Advertising, when handled strategically, can be used to promote your content and products or services. PPC advertising is often the tool of choice because you control the advertising budget on a daily basis and have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts. Once you’ve masterd your PPC ads the return on investment can be outstanding in terms of traffic and purchases.
For maximum results, create a traffic and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and your goals and then take the necessary action.
Take advantage of these five traffic and search engine tips to boost your business.
Save Money For Future Business Goals
For singles, creating a budget is relatively easy. They tend to have a good handle on how much money they have coming in, and when tracking expenses, they only have their own to think about. But creating a family budget is a whole new ball game.
Most families have multiple sources of income. And when there are multiple spenders, that makes things much more confusing. This is one of the main reasons that families lack a formal budget. But having a budget and sticking to it can greatly improve a family’s financial outlook.
Making a family budget may be tricky, but it can be done. Here’s how.
- 1. Take inventory of all income. If a certain source of income fluctuates from month to month, use the lowest amount or average it out.
- 2. Keep track of all expenses for a month or so. Keep all of your receipts, and ask all family members to turn theirs in to you each day.
- 3. Add up your monthly expenses. Be sure to include bills, debt payments, groceries, and everyday expenses such as morning coffee, lunch money and transportation costs.
- 4. Get the family together and discuss ways you can trim the budget. Getting input from other family members will help you determine which expenses are necessary and which ones could be cut down or eliminated. Maybe you or your spouse could start taking lunch to work instead of eating out, or maybe the kids can drop an extracurricular activity.
- 5. In addition to individual expenses, discuss how you can cut down on the electric bill, groceries and other necessary family expenses. Consider such things as carpooling or taking public transportation, buying more generic foods and adjusting the thermostat.
- 6. Estimate how much you can save on regular expenses, and cut the completely unnecessary items out of the budget. Then refigure it and see where you stand.
- 7. If you end up with a surplus, allocate a portion of it to savings. If you’re in the red, go back and rework the budget until you have more income than expenses.
Being Realistic
One reason that family budgets often fail is because they’re just not realistic. It’s great to cut down on expenses, but sometimes we tend to go too far. For example, cutting entertainment out of the budget completely might look good on paper, but we all need a little diversion every now and then.
Instead of cutting such things out of the budget completely, consider finding ways to lower the cost. Going back to the entertainment example, maybe you’ve been going to dinner and a movie as a family twice a month. But eating in and renting a new release would be much cheaper, and you would still get to spend quality time together.
Individual expenses can also be tricky. This can be resolved by allocating a certain amount for each family member to spend each week. If someone spends his entire amount before the week is up, reevaluate his expenses and adjust if necessary.
Creating a family budget can help keep spending under control, leaving more money to pay down debts and save for future business goals. But in order to succeed, close monitoring is essential. Your efforts will be rewarded, however, with less financial stress and more money in the long run.
Carlos Anastacio recommends this website on how to save money for future business goals
“Mentoring For Free”: A Review
Mentoring For Free is a training program that can also be used as a recruitment tool for network marketing distributors. The owner is Michael Dlouhy, a 26-year veteran of the network marketing industry. Mr. Dlouhy also gives away an e-book, Success in 10 Steps and sells an audio CD, Colors to Success.
This review of Mentoring For Free suggests that the program offers valuable training for network marketers provided a few caveats are kept in mind. The advantages and disadvantages of the program are as follows:
Advantages
- Mastermind Call
- Personality Types
- Compensation Plans
- How to Talk with Prospects
- Relationship Focus
- The Saturday night Mastermind call provides an opportunity to achieve personal growth with a group of network marketers who are, for the most part, caring and sincere.
- The description of the 4 personality types, while not unique, is a valuable heuristic, which I found improved my ability to quickly tailor my presentation to prospects. I’m a psychologist so I think it says a lot that Mr. Dlouhy’s description of the personality types was so helpful.
- The overview of comp plans and the relationship between personality types and comp plans will help many people make a better decision when choosing an MLM or in working their own comp plan (although see below for the other side of the coin).
- Mr. Dlouhy and others talk with live prospects, which can be educational although see my opinion about his practice below. The general discussions about talking with prospects are very helpful.
- Whether you like this aspect of the program might depend on your personality type. Thus, because I am a “Yellow/Green,” I think the focus on building relationships is the only way to go!
Disadvantages
- Live Prospecting Calls
- Policy & Procedure Bias –
- Comp Plan Bias
- Not Completely Generic
- Strong Personality
- I realize this might be a minority opinion but I don’t like the fact that with this program and other training programs, prospects are called while dozens of people are secretly listening to the conversation. I strikes me as voyeuristic and a violation of privacy. But if you don’t mind this approach, you might see this as a big positive. Be aware that if you sign up for the free e-book, order the CD, or try the free version of the prospecting system that you could very well get a call from the person whose link you clicked on, then Mr. Dlouhy will come on the call (”I’ve got the author of the e-book on the line”), and dozens of people will be listening to everything you say.
Mr. Dlouhy emphasizes reading a company’s Policies & Procedures (P&P), which certainly makes good sense, and he offers advice for identifying rules that could jeopardize a distributor’s financial success. However, it seems more than a coincidence that the type of Policies & Procedures Mr. Dlouhy advocates is nearly identical to the P&P of his company and he seems to find fault with the majority of other company’s Policies & Procedures.
- Similar to the P&P bias, many companies are found to have bad comp plans when reviewed on the calls. Company names aren’t mentioned but callers sometimes have an idea of the company and it’s also clear that the company Mr. Dlouhy–and at least half the participants on the calls–represents has a good comp plan.
- If a participant to the calls finds that his or her company’s P&P or comp plan does not fit the recommendations made on the calls, there is a natural tendency to want to join a “good” company with a trusted sponsor. It’s also a natural tendency for such a person to want to sign up with a leader whom they have come to know and trust. Mr. Dlouhy is an obvious choice for many participants since he clearly knows a lot about network marketing and he has a charismatic personality (I mean that in a good way).
To be fair, Mr. Dlouhy states that he will always refer a person back to the person who invited them to Mentoring For Free (the system uses affiliate links to track visitors to the websites) and I have no reason to doubt him. At the same time, people have the freedom to join the company of their choice. Consequently, they can say, “no thanks” to the person who invited them to Mentoring For Free and sign up with Mr. Dlouhy’s company (VitaMark). This might be particularly true if the person who invited them on the call is with a company that has a “negative” P&P or comp plan in Mr. Dlouhy’s opinion.
- Although I found Mr. Dlouhy to be likeable and engaging, he is a “Red/Blue” personality type. Consequently, he dominates the calls to some extent. He often is not very open to feedback; particularly when participants express–in a sincere, polite manner–concerns about his biases.
I went through three phases during my participation with Mentoring For Free:
- Excitement at a very good educational program, which also looked like an ideal way to find new distributors for my business and train them;
- Disillusionment and jealousy when the above negatives became apparent;
- Respect for an ingenious viral marketing strategy that I suspect others will emulate in the near future.
In summary, I’m glad I participated in Mentoring For Free for a couple of months. I learned a lot and it gave me some great marketing and training ideas for my own business. Irecommend it provided you keep the above caveats in mind.
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Mark Worthen, Psy.D. is a clinical/forensic psychologist trained at Baylor and Harvard who now makes a living from home via Internet & Network Marketing. You can contact Mark via his web site: MarkWorthen.com
Setting Up Your Home Office
Before you can start your own home business, the one
thing that you should do is to designate a place for
you to work. The area that you work in should be free
of distractions and have a computer,a desk, a phone, a
connection to the Internet, and, if possible, a
bathroom, lol. This way you will have everything you need
until you take your lunch break.
Something to remember is that you are ‘at work’ in
this area. An ideal solution is to have every
distraction taken care of. This means that you have
someone looking after your child, if possible. If your
child is younger than school age, hire someone to look
after them during the day.
This may seem strange since you are working at home,
but would you take a baby into your office with you?
Probably not – your boss wouldn’t allow it. Having
someone look after them while you are working ensures
that you will get everything done during business
hours.
If your children are school age and old enough to
understand, let them know that you are working, and
that you should only be disturbed if it’s an
emergency. If they are still young, have someone watch
them after school.
This may seem like an unnecessary expense, but if you
are talking to someone on the phone they won’t take
you seriously if they hear a crying baby in the
background, or children fighting. You want to make
yourself seem as professional as you can so that
people know they can trust you.
