Achieving organic traffic, what is a site to do?

To open the topic I would like to pose a question. What is it that you have control of within search engines and online? Honestly... not much. You can’t control the searchers, you can’t control the search engines, so what can you control? Mostly your optimization, and that’s what we want to introduce in the succeeding information.

Lets go through the process from start to finish. First the searcher comes up with an idea of they want and they go to a search engine to find it. We can’t control what search engines they use, what phrases they search, or what results they select. Sounding a little pessimistic? It’s actually a lot better situation than it sounds, with online searching we actually have a leg up. Online we can actually track what people are searching and market towards their demands. Using tools like Google’s adwords keyword tool we can research the best possible phrases to market towards within our respective industries.

So now have done the research and we know what people are searching for, meaning we can market towards their demands. That brings us to the next thing outside of our control, how the search engines place us in the results listings. We can control how much marketing we do and our marketing strategy, but with search engine’s hard to understand ever changing algorithms and ways of determining relevancy we can never tell where we are going to rank. However, there are two aspects of control we can exercise to positively influence the flow of organic traffic. First is the display information you provide to the search engines including your page title, description, and URL. And second is your website itself and the keywords used on it. These will be your factors in achieving online marketing success.

Let’s look at your display information first, starting with your page title. Consider your title 55 characters to success. You need to use your title to introduce your website to the world and draw attention to your site. Using your primary keywords in your meta title will help you twofold. First, it will embolden them when they are used in search —drawing more attention. And second, it will help your optimization efforts as your page title is one of the foremost priorities in the eyes of search engines.

Next, your meta description. The description is even more important than your title when it comes down to the eyes of the searchers. Research suggests that 80% of all searchers will look to the meta description before making their choice among the results, that means you need to make the most of it. When generating a description you need to make it appealing to readers by making sure that it is relevant to their search, utilizing a complete thought, and has some kind of call to action or incentive. When writing your description there are character limits as well to prevent your thought from ending prematurely in an ellipsis. Google will display up to 160 characters, Yahoo! 165, and MSN 200; to be safe staying below 160 is your best bet.

And now to the final aspect of your display information, your URL. Your domain name is again important to both the searchers and the search engines. You want to have a domain name that first and foremost relates to your market. You want your URL to be short and to the point, this will help keep things memorable and eventually leads to customer retention and brand building. When possible directly containing your keywords within your URL is beneficial for optimization purposes.

And now moving on to the second item within your control, your site! Within your site there are various optimization techniques all stemming from keyword optimization. Ensuring you are utilizing keywords and phrases that are in demand within relative content on your site is really what search engines want. Proving your site to be relevant will help your display information be shown to the right searchers, and —presuming it is done correctly, your display information will then draw searchers to your site were the rest is in your hands!

So say you develop a site optimized within all recommended guidelines and you’re getting organic traffic, what next? Well optimization never really ends, but you’ve made it to a great starting point and it’s time to transition your focus from SEO to SEM. Utilizing the keywords you’ve found to be successful throughout the process of identifying your market strategy you can now open yourself up to new worlds of article marketing, blogging, social networking, and more!

4 Ingredients For a Delicious Marketing Strategy

Though there are many methods to developing traffic, just like creating a meal. You can do it extravagantly with high costs, very complex and intricate to bring out the most in every bite, and you can create a simple well balanced meal with all of the staples. Here are some of our favorite ingredients to creating a delicious marketing dish. Hopefully you can create and share some new and exciting recipes as we do.

A bit of Blog

Running a frequently updated blog is always a good idea. A blog linked to your site will generate additional traffic by providing a quality link from a site with quality related content. Your market will grow to see you as an authority when you are putting valuable information in front of them. You will also be showing search engines that you're related to the new content and frequent updates.

A dash of Article Marketing

Creating articles for your business online gives you many of the same benefits of blogging, such as the ability to put new and interesting content in front of your viewers. Linking articles to your website however do it with an added twist. You may not be fully in control of the guidelines and approval of your articles, but receiving a link from a highly ranked article site such as eZineArticles.Com gives your article and link even more credibility because of the more stringent requirements. Article directories can also give you a new audience apart from people who may have never found your blog.

A pinch of Link Building

Sure, it is a known fact that just like sugar is sweet, links from highly ranked sites help your search engine ranking. Just because you know it to be true doesn't mean you should leave it out because it's common. You wouldn't take the sugar out of your grandma's famous apple pie just because someone else's grandma uses it too would you?? Continuing to submit to directories, social bookmarking sites, and other websites related to your own will really help boost your search engine ranking. Even having friends or family link to it from their website, forums, personal blogs, or facebook page can benefit.

A smidgen of time

Once you've mixed the ingredients you need to let it cook. One major factor that Google likes to looks at for search engine ranking is how long your website has been around. Brand new websites tend to be ranked lower on the search engines, simply because Google doesn't allow these fresh websites to scale the search engines until they've been around for a while. More or less making sure your site is ripe for the picking. Being around longer will also naturally give you more traffic and further boost your search engine ranking. No matter what you do Google will take between 3 and 30 days to change your search engine ranking so don't expect instant results.

It is also important to remember that no company, online or off, steps right into the market and immediately dominates it. It takes time for sales to build up. They say that on average a customer will visit your site 3 times before purchasing. However, when they get their product and like it as well as your service, they will potentially become a return customer, refer their friends to your site, etc. It is important to not only give your marketing strategy time, but time to let your sales catch up to this time gap.

With these weapons in your pantry of productivity you have the tools to get traffic. But remember, you need to track the effects when you change a recipe. Every time you make an alteration to your website be it text, images, promotions, or Ad Campaigns, it is important to track the results. You need to know what ingredients are affecting your success. Every change that you make has the potential to effect your bounce rate, click through rate, or even your conversion rate. Noting things such as where your traffic is coming from and what searches you're appearing on will help you find out what efforts are the most fruitful.

Real rapport is measured by raving fans

With running a business there are aspects related to marketing and getting clients to you, and there are aspects of gaining them as a client and keeping them happy. Establishing and building your rapport with your clients is important to understanding their needs and making them happy. When you have rapport, the sales and fulfilment processes move forward with both parties on the same page. When you don't have it, every step becomes more and more arduous.

There are a lot of techniques out there to build rapport, but unfortunately a lot of them are short lived or in-genuine. The truth is building rapport is already part of your day to day life. When you want your relationship to improve with someone you know where you want it to go and you know what you need to do to get it there. You already have the skills. Running a successful business with true longevity comes from meeting the customers needs and wanting your service to be a real benefit to them. If you understand that you are already likely trying to build true rapport, but we’ve put together these three simple tips to help you make the most of it.

1. Get out of the rut

Through everyday communication we get into the habit of having undirected conversations. We don't realize the end goal when we initiate communication and that often leaves it lacking personality or needed information. This is all to frequent when dealing in regular customer service. The conversation is so often question and answer based and both parties come in preoccupied with the tasks they want to see completed. Keeping in mind how you want your relationship to improve with a company or an individual through the course of a conversation can help ensure both parties come out satisfied. Being able to empathize with your customers helps you understand that there may be more to helping them to simply answering their questions.

2. Guide the conversation

Guiding the conversation and understanding the clients needs are the best ways to get the client the right product or service for them. You are the expert in your product and you need to make sure to get that across. Through guiding the conversation using questions, you can probe their feelings as well as use their own reasoning to establish your authority in the matter. Asking the right questions will help solidify the information you already know to be true and gain their agreement. If something needs to be completed on the client’s part, don’t be afraid to hold their feet to the fire. Give them a call to action and make them want to take the next step.

3. Join them on their path to their success

It’s a common cliche that a business’s success is based off of it’s client’s success. Isn’t it sick how often these overused stereotypes are true? You want to make sure to help them find what will really make them happy. Your clients come to you having thoughts and ideas that are already occupying their attention, make sure not to ignore these if they don’t meet up with your goals. Find the best solution to satisfy. If the conversation is progressing the way the client wants it to you will often see that the conversation’s momentum progresses as well. When you can get your client excited about your service meeting their goals, your service becomes part of their mental path to meeting those goals and that is how you create not just customers, but fans.

As you ponder these simple tips remember this final piece of advice, you don't need to be in a face-to-face situation to establish rapport. No matter how you are working with your clients you can establish rapport; be it over the phone, on an instant messenger or live chat, or even through email if need be. With online business your first contact with a client is more often than not through in direct means, meaning you have to be even more clear and receptive.