Yes Your Title Tags Suck

Yesterday Google changed the game for webmasters, and I think it was a great change that will improve a lot of websites. Of course there will also be webmasters screaming but such is life on the web.

Yesterday Google let webmasters know what pages get impressions and more important the amount of clicks on those pages. You may be saying what’s the big deal about this. Well lets do a little digging, say you have a page on blue widget that is showing 5000 impressions a day (I know most people would love that) but the end user only clicks on the results 5 times. A very low percentage that I don’t even feel like doing the math for. This tells me that the user either wasn’t looking for your type of widget or your title tags and meta descriptions suck.

Odds are your page title says blue widgets and nothing else. Your meta description tag is probably non existant and search engines are grabbing any content from your page and it looks jumbled and uninviting to the end user. Sorry but odds are this is the cold hard truth.

Now lets see, what do you think is gonna happen to this page that only gets 5 clicks out of 5000 impressions. I would bet that page gets a lower spot in organic search results since users are not finding that page as relevant over and over again.

I admit I only spent a hour looking at one of my sites that rank well and I was amazed at what I was looking at. I found about 25 things that I could change ASAP and make my site much better for the end user. Although the search engine guru’s may tell you meta tags are dead I will be using and have been using them on my sites. It only takes a few seconds to include them so why not include them.

Now this is also good news for people not creating spammy pages. Those spammy pages and sites will naturally disapear as webmasters improve their websites based on info found in the new Google webmasters tool section. I will be interested on reading up on this more. Do yourself a favor and log in to webmaster tools and look at your best site and then your worst site you will see why your worst site is ranking badly.

Come back and let me know what you found.

I bet you can find at least five things that your website should be doing or doing better. Odds are you have built a site and you are getting some traffic but things are not exactly how you thought they would go. Well lets take a look at five things that may help you get better results. Some are so simple it may surprise you that you haven’t thought of them on your own.

1) Does your site help the user solve a problem? This is either a yes or no. In this day and age the consumer is looking for an answer for their problem, if your product does that then explain it any way you can. This may be a video or a white paper or something of the sort. Give away the information so that the user remembers how helpful you were, they will end up telling people through word of mouth.

2) Do you know what your visitors are doing on your site? Odds are you think you do but you could be wrong. You need to get some sort of analytics set up and see how a user is navigating through your site. You may not even know what your most popular pages are,or even what your worst pages are. You may be focusing on the wrong things and wasting time.You also need to know how people are finding your site. Get a neighbor to sit down in front of a computer and put them on your site and see how they navigate it, it will not be what you thought. get a pen and paper and tell them to give you the honest truth.

3) Do you have an email newsletter? Getting traffic is hard enough so once you get a customer you should try and make them a returning customer. This saves you the worry of trying to rank in search engines and also decreases your advertising cost as you already have that customer. A lifetime customer is the best investment you can make for your site.

4) Do you have a FAQ page? Whenever you get an email asking questions about your site or product make that question into a line on your FAQ page as it will be looked for again on your site. Your answer will help others find you and use your services. It will also end up being keyword rich content that will attract the search engines and get you good long tail keywords.

5) Do you have trust pages? Every website needs to develop trust with the potential customer. Your site needs a page for privacy policy, contact us, terms of use, disclaimer, and let the customer know what you are doing with their information and what they can expect from your site.

I bet if you are not doing these things your site is not doing what you want it to do.

Just had to delete someone from my Twitterstream as they decided to use sponsored tweets. As much as the next guy I like to monetize what I am doing but sponsored tweets will not be happening in my neck of the woods. Here is why.

By sponsoring tweets I feel that you are using your twitter stream as a way of making yourself look spammy. All you want to do is get my followers to see your sponsored tweet. I will not let that happen, my twitterstream is as important as my opt-in email newsletter list and I will not subject the people that follow me to think that you are someone I would think is follow worthy. (thanks Seinfeld)

Here is the real kicker when it comes to unfollowing you for having sponsored tweets. I will no longer buy any product you are pitching on your website, you have become a spammer in my mind. Not worth my time to see what you are up to since you violated the confidence that I had in you to follow smart people that I could actually learn from or have my twitter stream learn from.

There is also no way I would sign up for any newsletter that you run as how do I know you wouldn’t sell that list to someone, heck if you sold out your Twitter odds are you would sell your opt-in list also.

My Time Is Valuable

You are only on this planet for a little bit of time and if I have to look at your twitter sponsored tweets it is time I could be doing something else, like follow someone that will add to the conversation and not be running adds in my face and the people that follow me.

Most of the time I use my cell phone to receive text messages from people I follow. Not only does your tweet become useless as I cannot click on a link from a text message on my phone but you have wasted my time tweeting about some product odds are you don’t use in the first place.

So you are making pennies on your sponsored tweet but if you were ever to put out an actual product that I may be interested in telling my twitter follows about it is not going to happen. So is it really worth the peanuts you are going to make when you use a service like that.  I also like to spread the word about good people and their products if someone ask me for a referral odds are your name is not going to come up, odds are it isn’t going to come to my mind anyway as I am not following you any longer.

The big picture far outweighs any money you could make by running sponsored tweets. I have stopped following a few people I had respect for in the online world and I am sure some friends will be mad but they chose to make the choice to become an unfollow.

Even though there is never enough hours in the day I found the time to put a new look and feel for this site. Using the Thesis theme from Wordpress makes that job so much easier to do. A few clicks and I changed the background and a few of the fonts.

Moved the navigation to the top and the right hand side took a few clicks of the mouse and all of a sudden I had a new site which looks a lot better then the old plain Wordpress theme. Updrading the Thesis hooks took a few seconds but well worth it as it makes life a lot easier.

Now that I have a new look I need to make some more post here instead of every few months it needs to be every few days.  I found most of my research on themes using Twitter and seeing what everyone else recomended.

Let me tell you a secret which may not necessarily be a secret: on the Internet, anyone can write an eBook. I am not kidding. Each and every one of us has a piece of information nurtured in our minds that, once shared with other people, could net for us countless rewards for marketing and financial purposes. “But I haven’t written anything my entire life,” you might say. Read on, my friend.

Creating Your EBook

The beauty of writing for the Internet is that you don’t have to be a Shakespeare or a Stephen King. In fact, the simpler your style of writing is, the better it would be for your readers. The online audience is much different from those of printed publications. Internet users are less patient, as reading your piece on the monitor is less convenient than having an actual book that you could take to bed.

But even if you’re not blessed with an iota of writing skills, or if you simply don’t have the time to come up with your own work, fret not. You could always hire a ghostwriter. There are a lot of ghostwriters in the World Wide Web, and it’s just a matter of finding the best, and most affordable, one for your particular needs.

Alternative Ways Of Coming Up With An EBook Product

There are many ways by which you could come up with your own eBook even with minimal writing on your part. You could always compile articles that you could freely download from article directories, for example, for as long as you retain their resource boxes. I don’t recommend this but you can do it, Or you could conduct an interview with an expert of a particular field and simply transcribe the same for an easy product. Better yet, you could tap into the almost infinite farm of public domain information for your much needed content, something which you could utilize free of charge.

Marketing Through Your EBook

Regardless of the manner by which you decide to create your eBook, one thing is certain. An ebook is a powerful vehicle for promoting your website. Let us take a look at some of the ways by which you could do this.

1. Your eBook can be the heart of a potent viral marketing campaign to promote your website. Viral marketing is the online equivalent of word-of-mouth advertising. With this strategy, you could achieve an increase in website traffic through the exponential spread of your business message, i.e. your website’s link. Simply populate your eBook with links to your website, and distribute the same for free. Encourage your recipients to distribute the same product to their family and friends, if ever they would love what is inside your eBook. This would result in a wildfire-like spread of your eBook to many, many people, and consequently, a wildfire-like spread of your link as well. Sometimes I tell people after they download my ebook not to share it with anyone, this makes them share it with more people because they think it will make them look smart in front of their family and friends.

2. Your eBook can be packaged as a bonus for the products that other people are offering for sale. Not only will your eBook add to the value of the said product and invite the interest of more potential customers, this tactic would also allow you to win some visitors to your website. Better yet, the visitors you stand to gain from this strategy are quality ones, as they have a history of transacting online, hence, a higher likelihood of doing business with you, if ever you’re maintaining a commercial website.

3. Your eBook can be used as a gift in exchange for a subscription to your mailing list. Your mailing list, of course, is a way for you to acquire repeat visitors. Pumping up your mailing list with more subscribers would give you some guaranteed traffic. This can even be set up using an autoresponder service. If you have a blog Feedburner works really well for that.

4. You could use your eBook in bartering for a spot on the pages of popular websites. Let other people give it away for you. This also establishes you as an expert in your field.

5. Last, but most certainly not the least, you could sell your eBook. By doing this, you stand to earn for every sale, and you could promote your website at the same time through the links contained in the product’s pages.

After being asked that question a million times I decided to make a website about it. There are many ways to do affiliate marketing and some are neither right or wrong. Here is the short version of the way I make my websites.

You make a quality value added website that people find in the search engines and you add a few links to some great online shopping destinations.

When the people click on the ad on your website they go to another website that sponsored the sale. When the people buy from that store you get a commission. That’s right you can make money from the comfort of your own home.

Affiliate programs are without a doubt, the fastest way to make money on the internet. There are countless affiliate programs on the Internet today. Most of the big named stores have one and odds are if you have purchased something online you have been on an affiliate site where you received a product review or something similar before you made your purchase.

The principle behind affiliate programs is quite simple. You will only have to pre-sell the products of an affiliate merchant. For every sale that can be traced through your referral, you stand to earn a generous commission that ranges from 5% to 50%, depending on the affiliate merchant. There is no quota to be met. There is no minimum number of sales that you have to reach. You are not even restricted to join a single affiliate program, as you could enroll in as many affiliate programs as you wish. Be careful though as joining too many programs at once is usually a rookie affiliate mistake. I know this because I did it too. I am still taking down bad affiliate programs html two years later.

Making money through affiliate programs is as easy as 1-2-3. Here are ten proven steps that would help you jumpstart this very good income stream. It is not easy at first but it does pay off in the long run. The best part is you can start from home at first. It will get as big as you want it to be. It can replace your 9-5 job too with a little more work. My family and friends are driving me crazy asking me about it so I decided to help get them and whoever wants to read on all about it.

1. Start your own website. Even if you are involved in an affiliate program, it’s very important that you develop your own site with a clear and solid theme. Don’t fall for the free web site hosting sites as they will be the only ones making money on it. Build a web site with a clear, concise theme that is based around a niche that is supported by tons of quality articles and helpful information on your topic. Choosing a theme is a hardest part as it requires a little research unless you know a lot about a hobby or something. It is better to start with a subject that you know a little about as it will keep your interest while you are building a site and you will develop more pages quickly this way.

2. Find an affiliate program. Everything has to start from here. Integrate related affiliate programs into your site. Your website should be related to your chosen affiliate program. If you decide to make a website that sells jewelry, there is no way you can be successful if you join an affiliate program of a bookstore. It is tempting to join every available affiliate program that sounds lucrative, but in this case, more is not always the best option. It is best to join at least one or two affiliate programs that fit your sites audience and represent the product or services that you sell.

3. Make Your Site Interesting. Your website should not be full of blatant ad and uncontrollable pop-ups. It’s important to that your site is a not just page full of links and advertisements to the company you are affiliated with. You should maintain a unique and well-organized content throughout your website. You should have at least 20 pages of original content and keep building your site from there. Yes I did say 20 pages if you don’t think you can do that quit now.

4. Build A Good Reputation. You should build credibility to encourage visitors to respect and trust your recommendations. A helpful way to build credibility is to provide useful information and Quality articles to your visitors. This will give the impression that you know what you are talking about and that you are trustworthy.

5. Promote High Quality Products. Again, quality is better than quantity when it comes to your site. Don’t ruin your reputation by referring less-than-satisfactory products and services. Don’t waste your time on junk. Build a site full of junk and all you have is a site full of junk that no one wants. Did you ever see a line outside Fred Sanford’s house waiting to buy his stuff? I didn’t think so.

6. Promote Yourself. Encourage potential customers by creating or joining user group forums, e-mail groups, and discussion boards. This way, you are able to target, interest specific groups immediately. Actively participate in the discussions without being too aggressive in promoting yourself. Remember to include your contact information and website in your signature. There is no better website promotion than viral marketing.

7. Create Your Own Mailing List. Customers can also be referrals. Build a mailing list that will keep them updated for new products and services. This will help you in establishing a connection with your customers. This way, you can gain their trust. Just don’t spam them with too many emails or they will hate you.

8. Maximize Affiliate Income Through Referrals. Referrals are an exponential form of marketing where your profits as an affiliate can be can increase. The more traffic you bring to the site, the more you can maximize profits.

9. Maintain Your Website. Your website is your internet portal in making money through affiliate programs. Ensure a pleasurable visit for each visitor by maintaining a clean layout and updating the site contents. It is best to add fresh quality content every now and then to keep the site interesting and up to date.

10. Optimize Your Site For Search Engines. Use available free tools that help in search engine optimization. A favorable ranking for the right key words can mean a consistent, steady flow of targeted traffic for your site. Don’t try any tricks to get better rankings as they only work in the short term.

11. Learn All You Can. I cannot harp on this enough but the more you learn the more you earn. I try to learn something new everyday. I usually put it on my affiliate tips page or my new website www.Nyfalcon.com which happens to be my screen name online.

What I am Really Trying To Say!

So lets just say I make a site about sports, I put up a few links to sporting good stores and when people buy I get a commission. The commissions range anywhere from 2% to 20% of the sale in the sports business. Sounds real simple doesn’t it? Well to tell you the truth it is really a lot of hard work when you first start your website. The rewards are huge once you get your site on its way.

I was fooling around with putting some affiliate links on my site but I really wasn’t making any serious money until I met a man named James Martell and his lovely wife Arlene in New York City. This meeting has changed my whole way of thinking about how affiliate marketing works. James explains how taking practical steps to make money from home.

What you will see on this site:
On this site you will see some places I have traveled and it’s all because of affiliate marketing. It really is a great business to be in. The best part is you can even do it in your spare time until you start making serious money.

I went to Las Vegas in 2004 for a friends of www.Abestweb.com webmasters convention to learn how to make even more money online. Imagine being able to go to Las Vegas or wherever you want in the world and make money. The freedom to do this from wherever I want is the best part of the job. All you need is an internet connection. 

Recently I have been making websites for people that always wanted one for their business or personal use but didn’t know how to make one or was scared about expenses that comes along with it. I have also been making websites that features some of these bargains I find. The way I look at it is if I can make a few bucks why can’t the next guy. So I went through the task of getting a few friends involved and all of a sudden this became a job of sorts. I also get a part of what sells on their site. Pretty cool huh.

I will also be using this site to rant and rave about the newest things out on the market or what I am currently listening to, reading, or watching on television. This site is actually my testing ground to see if I can get a niche subject high in the search engines and to study the competition for that subject. In a way this site is a hobby to me. Life can’t be all about business you know. Speaking about business you can read all about mine here.

Sit back get yourself a cup of coffee and welcome to my world. Along the way I will show you what affiliate programs are good and some that are bad. I will also tell you why they are good or bad. You may want to add my new RSS Feed to keep up with me.  You can sign up for my new E-mail list also.