One guy though that I don’t believe I’ll ever unsubscribe from his Mike Hill. I’ve only been online for 3 years, he’s been 11.
Whats more, he’s a good guy and he really knows what he’s talking about.

If your at all interested as to what will happen with Internet marketing, and modern marketing in general, do yourself a favour and check this out!

http://mikehillsblog.com/the-future-of-marketing/

First video is here or click clink above to go to Mike’s blog.

In the video, Mike was a speaker at an event called “The Magic Bullet” – Amish is another
guy whom I follow, and will continue to follow – he’s come from being a 16 year hacker getting busted by the feds
before the Internet even existed to earning many millions per year – with a very small team.

I read this earlier this year and it does indeed really get you to challenge the norms in terms of how we define “productivity”.

Two years ago I walked out of a corner office, 10 staff, flash harry cell phones and 14 hour work days to do just what Tim talks about here – unplug – take stock of whats important and begin designing the life that I want to have rather than a life that I’ve settled for.

Is it possible? It’s certainly not easy – but yes, yes it is very possible.

Let me know what you think of his view of the world in the comments field below.

However, if your talking about the number of times links to your web site appear on the first page of google search results when people go looking for the product or service that you are offering – you’re in pretty good shape.

The field of property conveyancing in New Zealand is a relatively new thing.  Up until only a few shorts years ago, the only option available to you if you were buying or selling a house was to have a lawyer or solicitor to handle the ins and outs of the legal process. However thanks to the efforts and tenacity of one man and a small band of supporters the law was changed in New Zealand  and now private certified practitioners can handle all of the various required parts of the sale.

As with any changes in any market, the opening up of that market gives customers more options, the ability to personalise the service to greater extent and to innovate in the way those services are delivered.

When we were in engaged back in 2009 they had a simple website that had generated only a few leads in the past year.

We rebuilt the site from the ground up with the specific intention of being super search engine friendly.

That’s why today, thanks to following some simple rules around both onsite and offsite search optimisation and despite the fact this term has over 300,000 competing pages, they now hold 7 of the first 10 spots.

With Web SEO there has to be a strategy around site structure, nature of the content, amount of activity on the site, as well as a program to create and maintain links from other quality websites via different mediums.

We use video, press releases, web 2.0 properties, social bookmarking and social networking platforms to name just the main influences. It’s about diversification and it’s about relevance and providing value.

Web SEO in Action

]]> http://www.networxnz.com/blog/31/when-is-7-out-of-10-ok/feed/ 0 http://www.networxnz.com/blog/28/web-traffic-is-your-lifeblood/ http://www.networxnz.com/blog/28/web-traffic-is-your-lifeblood/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:20:41 +0000 admin http://www.networxnz.com/blog/?p=28 When your website IS your business – traffic is the lifeblood of that business.

If your offline business has a website to promote it’s services or to generate sales leads, traffic is just as important.

And how do you get more traffic? By attracting more visitors.

What are those visitors doing when they sit down at their computers to find a product or service that your offering?
Often times they are starting with a search. Using a word or series of words generally, they try to define what they are looking for – it’s how they articulate their problem or define their area of interest.

“Weekend golfing holidays”, “natural cure for sore throat” “buy new chainsaw for home use” – there are literally billions of searches occurring everyday. And when you understand how most people go about looking for your product or service and even better still, understand which words and phrases they are most likely to use when they get close to a buying decision, your in a very strong position to then be able to attract them to your website. The interesting thing about this science is that a searchers queries and the terms they use to find what they need will indeed improve and get more precise and defined in time. An increase in sophistication over time can occur.

A great example is the difference of the search term “head aches” and “head ache” – the latter is usually dealing with a problem they have right now and wants a solution – right now. As opposed the plural of the word which is usually associated with researching the causes of headaches in general or perhaps a longer term continual problem.

By monitoring and then predicting the structure of your ideal customers search queries and building web pages and content that are considerate of those queries – you are more likely to be able to attract them to you.

Moreover, when you know what is the number search phrase that really is the essence of your business and you can then use web-seo or search engine optimisation techniques to ensure that you are ranked highly for that phrase, you are in a far stronger position than a competitor, either offline or online, that may not even be aware that that phrase exists.

When we consider that 90% of searchers never get past page one of Google search results – if your website is languishing on page two or three – you are at a very distinct disadvantage compared to the web site owner that possess any of the top three spots.

Having spent the past three years building websites for various different affiliate offers in a variety of different niches I’ve seen first hand the difference that position makes to traffic. This always translates to more sales (even when your sales copy stinks – which is a topic of another day) – pouring more traffic in can help.

When you get the combination of Traffic + Conversion = Profits working though – it’s a beautiful thing.

Major point of note – Google ranks web pages – not websites. So each page can count and if your smart, each page will be targeting a different facet of your business.
Think of it this way – if your getting web traffic today, that traffic will be arriving for a variety of reasons foremost of which will be because Google has indexed a particular page with a variety of phrases and therefore you do indeed get traffic for those phrases. But – if those particular phrases are in fact only getting say 400 searches per month as opposed to the main keyword phrase for your industry that might get say 40,000 searches per month – your leaving a lot of money on the table.

Wouldn’t it be good to know that what the most people are looking for is what your being found as?

Here’s a simple exercise you can try at any time – think about how customers might go about finding your product or service. Don’t include your company or brand name – remember they’ve not heard of you and just what to find someone who is the best at XYZ. Google that phrase – where do you appear in the search rankings?

Next major point of note: – the firm that sits at number one position will be perceived as being the industry leader, the best option for that given problem.  There is a huge amount of credibility being associated with where firms are now placed in search rankings. If your number one – your number one – if your number 14 – your no one. Further more – that number one spot will be getting nearly half of all the search traffic. Between the top three spots, they share over 50% of all search click through. That’s why, if your serious about getting more leads and more sales from your website – you really need to be in that top three.

This is why, twitter has become so popular so fast and “social media” is an important part of the overall customer communication strategy, even more so though, what happens when the customer actually arrives at your website?

Most often, visitors that come are not induced in someway to hang around or to come back. There has to be fresh content, it wants to be fun or informative, presented well, but then also coupled with something that can help that person answer the problem that he or she may have been seeking a solution for. When you think about site structure and then also how you engage with people, from the perspective of what are you giving to people and what sorts of problems they might be having – you begin to see the world in their eyes.

Another of my early mentors, Ken McCarthy – a man that has helped many create significant and steady Internet wealth – has a very simple formula when thinking about how to measure if your website is working;

Traffic + Conversion = Profits

and he’s right – you can have all the traffic coming in the world but if nothing ever happens with that traffic you may as well not be trying to get traffic.

If however as soon as a visitor arrives, you give away some of your best stuff – for free, it’s highly likely your visitor will return and to be very open and happy to have an ongoing relationship.

Sadly, many people lead quiet, desperate lives where they hunger to have a connection with another person.

And, that’s why, when you ask nicely and give before you expect to receive – many folk are keen to hear from you again.

If you create the follow up email messages and keep giving more and more value – people will actually start to looking forward to hearing from you again. When we think about connecting with others with the intention to work together in the spirit of mutual better outcomes,our business and/or employment can become more of a lifestyle, rather than a job!

These services are today delivered with low monthly costs, high levels of mail deliver ability and  a large and very satisfied base of very smart customers.

Improve your odds of winning business in our new economy, enjoy a risk free trail for 30 days and then pay only $19 per month.

It’s a fair question and one that often time business owners don’t take enough time to consider and truley embrace.

In the past the reasons may have included, “to tell people about us”, “to list our products and services” etc etc

The reality is today, your website needs to be part of your sales machine.

At worst it should be an effective lead generation system, at best it should generate leads, nurture understanding and trust with potential clients and then pre qualify those leads so that you lower your customer aquistion costs and shorten your sales cycle.

This is not a process that happens overnight but with the right Internet marketing strategies in place – it can be a reality.

The Importance of Web SEO – Being Found!

But integral to this is the ability to be found in the first place.  If people do not find your website when they are typing in the keywords that people are using to find your product or service – you may as well not have a website.

The life blood of your website is traffic – and what drives quality traffic – is well structured content + correct and sensible onpage and offpage web seo (or web search engine optimisation).

I’ve been reading over the past two days about the demise of paid advertising and what is now becoming whats known as “banner blindness“. This is a phenomena whereby people are ignoring the ads on the top and to the right of Google search results and consequently organic (or free) search results are now becoming even more important than ever.

What’s more, the difference in having a #1 position for instance in Google versus a number #5 position for instance is huge.

Have a look at these numbers;

or to illustrate this another way;

Based on this data, if you are ranking 8, 9, or 10 you may be able to increase your traffic for that keyword 1,400% by ranking #1.

Even jumping from #8 to #3 can triple your traffic.

Source: http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value

The Demise of PPC?

If you think thats disturbing or that it doesn’t matter because you get traffic from paid sources like Google Adwords – here’s where it gets even more interesting.

or once again – to state this another way;

If you’re getting 100 clicks a day from Google AdWords, your competitor who’s ranking #1 organically is getting 1000 – 2000 clicks a day!

And while experts may argue over the exact percentages, none of that really matters. What does matter is that the percentage of clicks to sponsored search listings are on a decline, and few expect it to rebound.

So – what does this mean? It means that to get the best out of your web presence you simply must ensure that your web site is optimised for the keywords that your customers are likely to be using to find you AND you must put in place an active program to improve and maintain your websites ranking if you are to get more business from the web.

To find out more about how we can help you with effective web search engine optimisation stratagies click here.

For a free phone based consultation on putting an effective Internet Marketing Strategy to improve your bottom line – contact us here.