Internet Marketing Made Easy

Michael Cheney

One-Line Bio

He`s a dreamer, a believer and a do-er.

Biography

He started out in this web game in 1995 by developing websites.

His 'big break' came in 2000 when I launched www.Seniority.co.uk - an online community for over 50s. The site has grown from an unknown entity to the UK's leading website for this age group.

He then founded Magnet4web - his Internet Consultancy business.

He had a degree in Business and German from Keele University UK and a background in Marketing and IT.

Alongside the Internet exploits he also worked for ExxonMobil in their IT division for two years before starting his own businesses.

Interests

Writing, reading (currently addicted to Tony Robbins and Seth Godin), goal setting and staying healthy.

He had been building and marketing websites since 1995. His online businesses include magnet4web, Seniority.co.uk and The Website Marketing BibleTM. He`s an avid writer and regular public speaker on Internet Marketing issues.

It is his sincere hope to make the World Wide Web a better place with the advice he offers.

You can contact Michael by clicking here

The Website Marketing BibleTM is a collection of the most powerful and effective Internet marketing strategies he had learnt since starting out in this game in 1995.

The book has been critically acclaimed by some of the most famous names in marketing including Jay Conrad Levinson, Al Ries, Andy Mindel and Robert Heller.

People Laughed At Him When He Said 'My Websites Will Attract Millions And Make Thousands Every Week' But Guess Who’s Laughing Now?

You Will Discover EXACTLY How To Create A Daily Avalanche Of Sales And Red-Hot Leads By Learning The Killer Techniques he’d Spent A Decade Mastering And Can Show You In An Instant.

"How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet"

Your web site is online. You are waiting for orders or enquiries to come in. Your web site might be the best in the world but if it is not marketed well enough online nobody will ever find it. The World Wide Web is huge.

So huge in fact that there are now more web pages in the world than there are people! The web is becoming an increasingly popular way of attracting more customers to your business and that’s how you should look at it - as just another method of attracting more customers.

And that’s why, over the coming days, I am going to give you unique insights into how you get more traffic INTO your website and more sales OUT of it.

“Do You Know The ‘Secret’ 5th Way To Get New Business?”

You will probably have heard people say that there are only four ways of getting new business;

Way No. 1 - Advertising
Way No. 2 - Public Relations
Way No. 3 - Word of mouth referrals
Way No. 4 - Cold calling

But, like me, you know there is a fifth way – using the web. The way your potential customers use the World Wide Web is totally different from the way they use any other medium.

With TV, for example, you - the advertiser, are hoping that people interested in buying your product or service are watching TV at the precise moment your advertisement appears. If you use a newspaper to advertise you hope your elusive customers are reading that particular newspaper advert.

With the web your potential customers have already made the decision to buy your type of product or service.

This means that it is easier for you to convert them once they land on your web site - because, and this is the important bit - they are looking for you and not the other way around.

You have what they are looking for and they have already made a decision that they need a particular product or service - all they are looking for is the right company to satisfy that need.

This is why your web site needs to be like a magnet and attract high volumes of targeted prospects. But with billions and billions of web pages out there you are going to need a plan of attack…

“You Need To Get Your Website Listed On The Search Engines – But That’s Only The Beginning!”

You need to focus on attracting targeted traffic rather than just pushing high numbers of irrelevant visitors to your web site. The spike in the graph may be exciting at first but this temporary euphoria will soon give way to disappointment as very few, if any, of the visitors actually convert into sales for you.

No matter what strategy you adopt, this targeted approach is paramount to your web site’s over all success.

“Just listing your web site at the search engines doesn’t mean you’ll be found!”

You need to register at the right places, choose the right keywords for your web site and you need to work out how the search engines decide what ranking to give each site so you can start climbing the ranks.

It is only by focusing your efforts on a variety of methods that you will achieve success with your web site marketing strategy.

If you get too caught up in attaining top rankings in the search engines though, you will miss out on far more important ways to turn your web site into a customer magnet.

Search engines are necessary but there are many other highly effective ways of attracting customers to your web site..

“Don’t Ignore The Power Of The Missing Link”

You shouldn’t underestimate the value of links in attracting high volumes of targeted traffic to your web site.

Not only are inbound links the best way to attract quality traffic to your web site they are also invaluable in your long-term battle to rise to the top of the search engines. But you shouldn’t expect things to happen over night – it will take you many, many hours of work to find the right web sites to link with, contact the site owners and establish the reciprocal links.

When you start the long process of exchanging reciprocal links with other related web sites it is with the understanding that it is fundamental to your over all online marketing mix. The more links you have throughout the web on other relevant web sites the more visitors you will attract.

It is essentially like a free form of advertising - you can dictate the wording of the link, perhaps even include your logo and best of all – you hand pick where your link will be displayed thereby targeting very specifically the type of web users you would like to come through to your web site.

You will see more and more traffic coming through to your web site because of the reciprocal links as people click through from other places and your ever-growing links section on your web site will become a useful resource for your web site's visitors.

If you have a list of 50 links that are all highly relevant to your target audience and will be of great use to them then you may even find over time that they visit your web site specifically to view the links section.

Once you have the visitors on your site you can then encourage them to click onto other areas that will result in sales or enquiries for you.

“Is Establishing All These Reciprocal Links Really Worth All This Hassle?”

The main beauty of links is that, normally, the more you have coming into your web site the higher you will be listed in the search engine rankings.

If your web site and another similar web site are matched for various criteria but yours has more inbound links than the other then it is, as a rule of thumb, your web site that will be listed higher in the search engine rankings.

You should remember one important thing when considering reciprocal links - no matter what happens an inbound link cannot have a negative effect on your web site's search engine ranking.

Even if nobody ever clicks on your link it will still have a boosting effect on your ranking.

You should always try to establish links with web sites that share your potential online customer base but are not in competition with you.

“The Longest Journey You’ll Ever Make Begins With A Single Step…”

You’re about to start out on a very long and arduous journey that will take up a great deal of your time and will be an ongoing journey – you need to make a plan.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to run the whole show. There will be parts of the marketing work that you will be best suited to and other parts that you might be better passing on to someone else.

Here is a brief overview for you of the essential building blocks of a successful website marketing:

You need to optimise your website in preparation for high volumes of visitors
You need to register your website at global, national, regional and industry-specific search engines
You need to register your website at global, national, regional and industry-specific directories
You need to develop a list of potential websites with which to swap links
You need to set aside time to contact each web site owner, get their linking details, give them your linking details, code each one into your web site etc.
You need to consider email marketing / newsletter campaigns / online advertising etc.
You need to monitor progress every step of the way then review and improve
You need to set measurable targets for your website
You need to adopt a long-term view to proceedings – nothing will happen over night!

“The Very Fact You Are Reading This Makes You One Of The Early Internet Pioneers!”

Remember – we all started somewhere. The World Wide Web as we know it has really only been around for 10 years or so.

If you have a website already, or you are just getting started with developing one, you are still in at the ground floor of the Internet revolution.

With the advice and techniques I’ll share with you in the remaining lessons of this course you will be armed with the knowledge to rise above your competitors in no time.

"This One Simple Word Helped Triple My Site's Profits"

I first started using this word on my website about a year ago. Using the word changed the whole focus of my website, my business and my life!

Sounds unbelievable doesn't it?

But it's not, it's entirely true and I want to share it with you.

You want to know what this word is don't you? Okay then - no more messing around then.

This word is the reason you are reading this lesson in the first place and the reason you carried on reading after the first paragraph. Have you guessed it already? The single
most important word you need to use on your homepage is "YOU"!.

You. You. You.

Using 'YOU' Brings Success

Using the word 'you' on your homepage can have dramatic effects on how effective your website is at converting visitors into enquiries and sales. Using the word 'YOU' gets across your business' message in the only way that truly works - from the customer's point of view.

Now you might be thinking this is all obvious stuff. And it is! But just remember to look at the next few homepages you visit and see how many site owners are not following this simplest but most effective of rules.

Most businesses fall into the trap of wording things in this way:

"We provide such and such a product. We are industry-leaders.. We are based in .."

What you should be doing is changing the entire angle and 'voice' of your website around from an anonymous corporate 'brochure-type-speak' into a more personal YOU-focused angle. Take a look at my homepage and you'll see what I mean.

Now take a look at your homepage - how many 'YOU's have you got on your page?

So Why Is Using 'YOU' So Important?

Because YOU are the most important thing in YOUR universe. You don't want to hear about me, my company, what we do or what our strengths are - you want to hear what's in it for YOU.

Studies show that you should have around 70% of all sales and marketing literature comprised of words like 'YOU', 'YOUR', 'YOURS' etc. This might seem like an uphill struggle at first and your initial attempts might not read too well but you will soon get the hang of it.

Can You Play YOU-Gymnastics?

You can actually start treating it like a game. It takes time but eventually you will master the skill of turning any sentence around from a 'WE', 'US' or 'OUR' statement into a 'YOU' or 'YOUR' statement. I urge you to revamp your homepage and get rid of any 'WE's or 'OUR's that you have and reword everything to put the customer at the heart of the matter. Now we're just talking about the homepage here but really you should be applying this principle to your entire website.

How The Word "YOU" Changed My Life

When I first learned of this golden rule it changed my website totally. I went from talking about my business and products on the site to talking directly to my customers and
putting things across in a way which meant most to THEM. It also made me take a step back and re-draft all my corporate literature adopting this same YOU principle. But the story doesn't end there..

I realised that putting 'YOU' at the heart of my business communications and my business as a whole was actually the starting point for something far deeper. Ask any successful
person and they will tell you that 'givers gain' - that is, if you give first and receive second you will achieve more than the person who takes first and thinks of giving afterwards.

It was then that I realised that I needed to start putting the 'YOU' at the centre of my whole life. I realised that to every other single person in the world - they were the most important thing that existed.

I listened more and made better relationships.

I empathised more and made more sales.

I gave more and felt more rewarded.

I could go on but feel that YOU need to go off now and start implementing this powerful technique for YOUR website!

I wish YOU great success!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson - remember - don't just read it, act on it! Before I send you the next lesson look at the content of YOUR website and start using that little three-letter word that makes all the difference!

From Zero To Hero

Now the main focus of it is essentially getting more sales from your website. Now, it doesn’t matter if you are not actually selling anything over the web, and most people aren’t. It could be to get more subscribers to a newsletter or maybe you are looking to get more enquiries or more leads. Or maybe even to get more downloads from a certain area of your site or whatever it might be.

Whatever your main focus for your website is, this Master Class will help you improve your website in that regard. Now you may want to take notes as we go along as I will be motoring through things quite quickly and I don’t mind if you pause me or whatever as we go along. Now you will also benefit from the experiences I have built up, over a decade now, of actually marketing and developing websites. But why should you listen to what I have got to say?

Well, I used to actually work for ExxonMobil which is the world’s third largest company. I jumped ship and basically set up my own business on the Internet and now have two successful companies. One, Seniority.co.uk is rated the UK’s number one on-line community for over-fifties and has been featured in places like the Times, Daily Mirror and also Site of the Day on Yahoo. My other business is Magnet4web. Magnet4web was set up, basically to help other companies market themselves online. So that is the pleasantries out of the way. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin.

The Four Cornerstones of Success on The Internet

Now the four cornerstones that are essential to achieving success with your website are as follows and before we go into them what I will say is that we are going to cover them, just now in basically overview format and later on in the Master Class we will delve into each one in a bit more detail.

So just now we will go over what the four cornerstones are. As I say I haven’t dreamt these up, these are the four principals that I have used over the past nine years to help me generate thousands of pounds worth of revenue and attract tens of thousands of visitors to my website every single week.

Cornerstone Number One - Volumes

You need obviously volumes of visitors to your website. People need to track you down. You essentially need a website that is magnetic and not pathetic. So what we will talk about is actually how you will grow your profile on the web. Now there are millions and millions of words and website and e-books and courses and seminars and audio files like this that talk about this one single question but we will go through some proven steps that I have used and you will be able to use to which will be able to improve your profile.

Cornerstone Number Two - Targeting

Volumes mean absolutely nothing unless you are getting targeted visitors into your website. You could be getting 10,000 visitors a day into your site or more but if they don’t buy from you or they are not relevant there is no point.

So we will talk about how you can pinpoint visitors, how you can target the visitors you get into your website more effectively and that brings us onto:

Cornerstone Number Three – Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is often ignored or even forgotten or not considered by a lot of website owners. Now you probably know some website owners out there that focus on the numbers all the time;

“You know we are getting 500 people a day!” or “Last month we got 20,000 people a day”

So what!

Conversion rate is the most important factor. If you don’t convert them you don’t get the sales, you don’t get the enquiries, you don’t get more people on the list.

So we will talk about how you can improve the profitability of your website by getting more out of it; by converting more of the visitors that you are getting in the first place.

Cornerstone Number Four - Testing

Now you might have heard quite a lot about testing on the web and how important it is and we will go through a few ways that you can actually test how your website is performing and improve on that and actually use it to increase all the other elements that we have just covered.

So to summarise, this is what we are going to talk about – we are going to look at;

Number one - getting more volumes of people into your website

Number two - we are going to look at improving the targeting of your visitors coming into your website. Obviously volume on its own is not going to do you any good. You need to have targeted visitors.

Number three - we are going to look at conversion rates. How you actually convert more of those people that are finding you into leads, into sales, into subscribers.

Number four - we are going to look at a couple of ways you can actually test your web site. What is testing all about? We will go into that as well.

Volume of Visitors

So rewinding then, let’s look at volume of visitors. Now there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to get people to your website; some more effective than others. From my experience the following three ways we will look at are the big boys if you like. If you get these right, then you are on the home run.

Way Number 1 – Search Engines

A lot of people talk about search engines and some people actually feel that website marketing IS the search engines; that these two things are one and the same and that absolutely hacks me off. There is nothing further from the truth. Search engines are just one small percentage of website marketing. Now, yes, they are important and it is important if not essential to get a good rank on search engines but they are just one small part of the equation.

I will try to explain just why I feel this way. If you imagine someone visits Google.com and they type in the phrase “Golf News” a series of results comes up, let’s just say 6 million and they click on one of the results and they get taken to a web site that has Tiger Woods on it and news about Tiger Woods.

Now the website owner who owns the site about Tiger Woods has just got a visitor, Hurrah! Well no. Why? The person who had just typed in Golf News into Google was actually looking for new items about the Volkswagen Golf! So the website only got a visit but it was totally irrelevant, it will not convert, that person will not buy anything to do with the sport golf, they are not interested in articles about the sport golf, they will disappear for every.

Now that is obviously not going to be the case with all search engine visitors, but no matter which methods you employ, no matter how much time you waste or devote, depending on what your state of mind is, to getting high search engine rankings for certain phrases, there is always a chance of what you think and what the visitor thinks, there is going to be a mismatch there. What they expect to see and what is actually in front of them is not the same thing.

That is why search engines, although they are important are not the best way to get traffic. They generally provide you with a low quality of traffic, but, they are one way to increase volumes.

Way Number 2 – Directories

The second big way to increase the volume of visitors is through directories. Directories are like search engines, they are an online resource that people use to find information but generally the quality of visitors you get from a directory is usually much higher than you get from a search engine. Why? Because they are categorised and people actually drill down into the relevant areas.

So using the example from before, the person wouldn’t usually type in “golf news” or search for something in the directory in that way, they would actually drill down and click into the relevant categories. So they would click recreation, leisure, motoring, manufacturers and then golf. So the visitors you get from directories are of a higher quality, although the quantity will usually be lower.

But if we just wind back to the beginning then numbers do not matter on their own. It is the numbers on the end of this particular process not what you push into your website but what actually comes out if it on the sales front. So directories are the second way to increase volumes. What many people don’t realise is that there are loads of directories out there. There are directories for certain countries, for certain regions, for certain industries, and although these directories won’t send you masses of people, anybody who does click on a link from a directory is far more likely to convert than somebody who has just stumbled across you perhaps. Which brings us onto the third way to increase volumes to your site.

Way Number 3 - Exchanging Links

Now this, for me, is one of the best ways to get people, targeted people, into your website. Why? Because you are pinpointing the exact nature of the visitor that you want. You are going out to other websites where you feel your potential customers will be visiting and you are exchanging links with that website.

So for example, if you are in the hotel industry, you may approach a website owner for a tourist attraction and say “please link to us from your tourist attraction web site”. People on the web who are visiting the tourist attraction web site might not have booked their accommodation yet, they see your link, click, they come straight though.

Now versus search engines and directories, links, individual links are going to send you less traffic but the emphasis here is on relevance, on how likely they are going to convert. That is why links are one of the best ways of getting traffic. You have pinpointed where your visitors go on line and you have placed a free ad, essentially, with the wording of your choosing from another website into yours.

Now I know the reason links are an amazing way to build your profile on the web it is not just because of the people that click on them, but also the added benefit you get from the search engines. Now you might know that the more links coming into your website from other places, the higher, generally speaking, your ranking will be in the search engines. Now the reason for that is that search engines need all the information they can get to ascertain why a certain website should be listed number one and why another website should be listed 1,001.

And they essentially have an equation or what they call an algorithm that determines this. An important factor within the algorithm is how many websites are linking to your website. So if there are two similar websites and one has more links going into it from other places, it will generally be listed higher in the search engines than the other ones, because the search engines feel that sight has essentially been referred to or voted for, or has a bigger profile on the web and that is why exchanging links is so important.

So that is a little bit about volume of visitors and we will touch on a couple more ideas that you can implement on improving the volumes in moment. But as I say, volumes without targeting are pointless so let’s move onto the second cornerstone, how you improve the targeting of visitors.

 Targeting The Right Visitors

One of the best ways to target visitors effectively is to exchange links with the right websites in the first place. It used to be the case that any link from another link into your website had a positive effect, not only from visitors clicking on that link but from a search engines point of view.

Now although that still holds true to a certain extent what has started to happen is that search engines now will reward you more if the link to you is from a website which is in your sector or in your industry type. So if you are an architect, having say 100 links from casinos or human growth hormones or whatever is not going to do you many favours, but if you have got a few links from highly relevant places, that are related to the architectural industry, the building industry, the commerce industry or whatever it might be, they will have a far greater effect on your profile than lots of irrelevant links.

So you can target your visitors more effectively by actually mapping essentially where else they visit on line and trying to get links from those places. Another great way to actually target your visitors is to write articles. Now you might be listening to this and thinking;

‘Well Michael, you have told me I need to write articles. I am not an author, I have never written a book, I am not really into writing so why are you telling me this, what is the point?’

Article writing is one of the secrets, one of the key secrets that people have yet to really cotton onto on the web in the terms of building a profile. Now it is not suited for every industry. I am not, for example, suggesting that if you were a funeral director that you start writing articles about embalming or what ever, that is not going to work, well it may work but probably not.

However there are businesses that it will work for and only you will know that. What you need to do is start asking yourself “What knowledge do I have that would be of value to others? What is my core business? What do I know that other people don’t know or don’t know as much about?” and you need to start putting it down in writing.

Try and get into the habit of writing an article of 400-500 words and publishing it on the web. What do I mean by this? Well there are places out there, website owners out there that are starving for content. Absolutely starving for content and starving for articles. What you need to do is track these people down. They want your free content. They will publish your content, happily, without charge.

Now what you get in return is additional profile. At the bottom of each article you would just put something like “If you want more information visit our site” or “For more articles click here”. One of the best things about this is it is FREE. Okay, so you have to actually invest time to write the articles but there are not many ways out there to get people to your site in large volumes that are, from the financial point of view at least free.

I brought this up in a tele-seminar last week and I was feeling quite happy with myself chucking this idea in here and people said “This is all very good but what do I do now?”.

Well, what I will do is give you a few websites that you can check out just so that you can see the idea of what I am talking about. Check these out:-

Articlecity.com; also goarticles.com; workoninternet.com and ideamarketers.com. Check these out and you will get an idea of what I am talking about. You have to start pumping out articles that have a reference through to your website and target them to the website owners of what you are looking to provide. Now for certain industries there are a lot of website owners looking for this stuff, obviously the Internet marketing industry being one, or web development or marketing generally or business growth but I am sure you will find websites specific to your industry that are looking for the content you can provide.

So we have touched briefly on increasing volumes and we have spoken there on targeting of your website. What we are now going to touch on is the third cornerstone, conversion.

Improving Conversion Rate

You need to improve the conversion rates of your websites. Now a lot of people get caught up in the numbers. They come to me and say;

“Michael, I just don’t know what to do. We are not getting sales, nobody is signing up, we are not making any money. What is going wrong?”

They start thinking about search engines and marketing and advertising. What they need to be doing is taking a step back and saying;

“Why aren’t the people who are already finding me doing what it is I want them to do?”

If you can get to the bottom of that problem you might not even need to get more people to your website if you can convert the ones that are already finding you. Some quickfire ways on how you can improve the conversion rate..

You have probably heard a lot of figures and the kind of average seems to be about 4 – 5 seconds is how long you have when somebody lands on your home page to actually convince them to remain on your site. You don’t have long. What happens is when I come to your site - I am looking to get a series of questions I have in my mind answered as quickly as possible.

I want to know for example;

Why you are different to your competitors, maybe where you ship to, how many products do you have on your site

What sets you apart from everyone else in your region?

What do your customers say about you?

Do you have any testimonials?

Do you have any press coverage?

Do you have any accreditations?

What makes your product so special?

What do you actually do on this website?

I want to know all of those things in about five or six seconds.

Now it is not easy, nobody is saying that it is easy, but you do need to get over these benefits as soon as you can on your home page. One of the ways you can start to do this is to actually bullet point information.

Take a look at your web site and essentially pare down everything that you think is not essential. Try to take a step back, put yourself in the shoes of the customer and look at your website and look at every element of the home page for example and say;

“If I removed that would my web site be any worse?”

As a customer would that make the experience any worse, would that give me less information?

It is quite a scary thing to do. I have been down this road as well. When you start to do this it turns around you whole perspective on what your website is actually trying to do. I have landed on some websites, I am sure you have seen them as well, you land on the site and it says;

“Welcome to our home page. Welcome to ABC Ltd. We were formed in 1973 and we have 50 staff. Our core services are………”

and it just goes on and on and on, boring long paragraphs. People just don’t read like that on the web. They just want something now, they want it yesterday. So you need to think about how your website is constructed.

Don’t put things on there that the managing director wants on there or what you want on there or the graphic designer or developer wants on there. Put things on there that your customer wants.

Another way you can actually improve the conversion rate is to try to focus on one single goal for the web site or for each page. The problems I have seen a lot of people have is that they are trying to do too much with their web site; they are trying to sell a product; they are trying to get people on their subscriber list; they are trying to give information to their employees; they are trying to get new business; they are trying to get information to customers; they are trying to give information about the community.

Just hold fire a minute and zero in on the ultimate goal of the site.

What is the primary objective? You need to have one goal for the site or at least one goal for each page. Now to help your thinking in this there are really only two things that a web site should do. Your website should do one or both of the following things. If you are in the position that you can sell directly over the web that is what you need to do.

You need to be selling through your website. If you can’t do that, and there are a lot of companies that can’t do that due to the type of business they are in, then you need to be getting people’s contact information. That is it. Just two things. Either sell to them or get their contact information.

Once you realise that, it might not be a nice thing to hear, because you might look at your site and think that page is now redundant, and that page doesn’t sell anything or get contact information, that paragraph isn’t getting contact information or selling anything it becomes a totally different exercise.

But if you don’t focus on one of those two things then nothing is going to happen. I know from experience people do not read through your home page, through the about page, through the services page and then dawdle along and click on contact and say;

“I will go to the enquiry form and see how much do you charge.”

You might get the odd one. You are not going to get 10s or 100s or 1,000s or 10,000s. You need to sell something or get contact information. Your website needs to be a machine that does one or both of those things and that is it. So that it conversion and how to improve your conversion rate. Now the fourth cornerstone that is woven throughout all of these is Testing.

Testing Your Way To Success

I will be honest with you here. I used to hate testing. I read information about testing and it bored me to death. I could not bear to even think, to even consider doing testing. I thought;

“No, I’m going to blag it. I don’t care. I am going to go down this route and I am going to try this and if it doesn’t work I am going to try something else.”

That to me was testing. What a mistake. You need to be testing everything on your website. When you read the sort of information, you may be listening to me now and saying;

“This sounds like so much work.”

You can start small. For example. - what you can do is look at your home page and look at the headline you have got. I urge you to get a headline on your home page which is not “Welcome to my homepage” or “Welcome to our Business”. Something that grabs people.

One of the simplest tests you can do is just change that headline. So get yourself a spreadsheet. Record how many people are coming through your website in a month, or how many page views to the home page you are getting per month and then from one month to the next or maybe each week, you may want to do it over a week, change the headline and see how many people subscribe to your newsletter if that is what you do on your home page, or change the headline on your sales page, does that have an effect?

It is only by doing this that you are going to improve the conversion rate once you have got the basic elements in place. A headline can sometimes improve the conversion rate by up to 3 times / 4 times. You could have a website at the moment that is getting enough visitors to make you 4 times what you are getting at the moment, but you just have not tested the right headlines or the right sign-up text or the right position of the form or the right price for the product.

Now the thing about testing is that it does take patience; it takes time and if your website is not attracting a massive amount of traffic in the first place it is going to take you longer to get the test results back. Don’t let that put you off. If you test for a month and you have some people coming through, you have changed the headline the following month and it gives you a 5% increase on people signing up or buying, that’s 5% more than you had the previous month.

It is not going to get worse that than that. You test again the following month and go on from there. So testing is crucial and I urge you now to get a spreadsheet or some form of document and start small, only change one thing at a time and see what effect that has.

I never really used to believe or get enthused about testing, but once you get into it, it becomes extremely exciting because you can uncover cash, you know profit that is there already, that is there now, if only you knew how the best way to phrase something and that is why testing is central to success on the web. We are coming to the end of this master class. We have gone through, just to summarise, the four cornerstones to getting success for your web site.

We have talked about how you can increase the volume of visitors to your website and the three main areas to focus on there.

We have talked about how you can target visitors more effectively, looking at the right places to link from for example.

We have looked at conversion rate, how you can improve the conversion rate of your web site and how you can get more people converting to leads, sales, contacts, whatever.

Then finally we looked briefly at how you can test on your web site and how testing is so important.

So the next steps: your homework, your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to take these things on board, take these four cornerstones and don’t change, don’t do anything with your website unless it is improving one or more of these four cornerstones.

If you get these four elements right you will achieve success on the web - it is that simple. I would like to thank you again for listening. I hope you have got as much out of it as I have doing it and if you do know someone who you think would benefit from this master class please feel free to send it on to them. Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best for your business and your website.

3.5 Tips To Help You Avoid Becoming The Next Search Engine Outlaw

Want to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines and banished to the sin bin never to receive a single search engine visitor ever again? Thought so. Here's some tips to help you..

Tip 1 - "Hide And Seek"

Do not use hidden text on your website. This means having words and phrases in your pages somewhere that can't be seen to the naked eye. The tactic of having text on your page that is the same colour as the background, and is therefore 'hidden', will almost certainly result in your wanted poster being pinned up by most search engines.

Hiding your keywords and phrases as descriptive text for all your images can also do more harm than good if you go overboard with it. It is okay to have relevant descriptions with all the images on your website but if you start using too many of the same words, too often and on too many images it may trigger a warning light with the search engines.

Tip 2 - "Your Website Is Not A Turkey"

Do not cram your hands full of keywords and phrases and start trying to stuff them into your website's... pages.

You need to have some phrases in there, yes, but don't overdo it. The search engine owners spend millions every year on their software so guess what - they know when you're trying to beat the system!

Your best bet is to write the content of your website primarily with your potential customer in mind - when was the last time a search engine placed an order for your
product?

Of course it will help your cause to mention relevant key phrases and words in areas of your website but make sure that your content is still readable to the human eye.

Tip 3 - "Man vs. The Machines"

Do not build your website for the search engine robots - build it for those squishy pink things - human beings! If you focus too much on having a search engine optimised site you can quickly lose track of why your website is there in the first place - to generate you business by people visiting it and doing what you want them to do.

Would you create a new reception area in your office that was tailored specifically to the floor-waxing machine so it could get the best access? No. You would build it for people - do the same with your website.

Tip 3.5 - "Don't Be A Bunny Boiler"

Do not start pinning up pictures in your dark room of each search engine and then start stalking them by submitting your website every day, week or even month. Search engines hate this - if you over-step the mark you'll be well on the way to that blacklist..

You only need to submit your website to most search engines just one time - ever. Once it's done, it's done. Despite what some 'experts' might tell you - you don't need to constantly re-submit your site.

Website Marketing Products Exposed

#1 – “Gorilla Website Marketing”, Glenn Cannady Page 3

#2 – “The Whole Truth”, Stephen Pierce Page 5

#3 – “Internet Marketing Strategies”, Jay Abraham Page 7

#4 – “Super Affiliate Handbook”, Rosalind Gardner Page 9

#5 - “33 Days To Online profits”, Yanik Silver and Jim Edwards Page 11

#6 – “Internet Marketing Tips & Secrets”, Corey Rudl Page 13

(Note: The # assigned to each product is merely its order in this document and not an indication of a rating or rank in relation to the other products).

Skip The Learning Curve In An Instant - Buy The Website Marketing BibleTM: I liked the way the book got right into things from the very start and didn’t mess about with lengthy intros, testimonials or repetitions from the website. The style was relatively easy to take on board and though not exactly riveting it was, if nothing else, informative and kept my attention throughout.

Product No. 1 – “Gorilla Website Marketing” from Glenn Cannady

Price: $97
No. of Pages: 104
Bonuses: “Free Traffic in 24 Hours”
Site: http://www.gorillawebsitemarketing.com
/cgi-bin/at.cgi?a=309194

Glenn's style is in your face and the sales pitch on his homepage is certainly convincing.

I bought the book as I was intrigued about how Glenn has been able to achieve such high rankings in the search engines for products as diverse as website marketing, car lubes and roses.

So I bought the book through his website and started reading.

You can actually get the book in hardcopy format with an accompanying CD but being an impatient soul I opted for the PDF format and instant delivery.

Like I imagine most people do - I opened the file and did a quick scan of the document to see how many pages I was getting - around 100 as it turned out.

Now obviously this is irrelevant to the quality of a book but you always like to feel as if you're getting something substantial for your money don't you?

I liked the way the book got right into things from the very start and did`nt mess about the lengthy intros , testimonials or repititions from the website. The style was relatively easy to take on the board and though not exactly riveting it was , if nothing else , informative and kept my attention throughout.

The big problem I have with Glenn's book is its over-reliance and reference to a link-harvesting piece of software called Zeus.

Now, we all know that exchanging links is important but to devote entire sections of the book to the ins and outs of this particular piece of software seems a bit of a cheat to me. Glenn is quick to defend this and says that it is possible to attain his level of success without using Zeus but it's just the fact that he in effect ‘wastes’ so many pages of the book explaining how to use the software when I, and many others I’m sure, have no intention of ever buying it.

There are a few bits of good advice in the book but it mainly focuses on using Zeus to build links to your site. There isn't a great deal devoted to your actual website - Glenn preferring rather to focus on getting people into your site rather than what happens once they get there.

As with most of these books, this one is peppered liberally throughout with a sprinkling of affiliate links designed to generate more cash for Glenn. I realize his reasons for doing this but it does raise the question of whether the resources are there purely through recommendation or just because they earn him more dollars.

All in all “Gorilla Website Marketing” is not a bad book but if you're not going to buy the Zeus software and use it as the prime tool for your website marketing efforts it's probably best avoided.

It is also worth noting that at the time of writing Glenn’s site has been totally removed from Google so they obviously don’t agree with some of the marketing techniques he recommends.

Gold Nuggets: Some good general advice on website marketing

Chicken Nuggets: Over-reference to Zeus software that requires additional purchase and learning time

MagnetMarks: 5 out of 10
Site: http://www.gorillawebsitemarketing.com
/cgi-bin/at.cgi?a=309194 

Product No. 2 – “The Whole Truth” from Stephen Pierce .

Price: $47.97
No. of Pages: 206
Bonuses: “Pierce Safe Internet Marketing Report” (products and services reviewed – essentially to enable Stephen to get affiliate sales on various products)
Site:  http://trilochan.wholetruth.hop.clickbank.net 

This eBook caused somewhat of a storm when it first came on the scene after people caught wind that it recommends some rather dubious techniques for getting high Google rankings. People flocked to the site and bought the book up in great numbers after the hype.

But what’s the real story?

Well, there is no denying that the book has some good information in it and general pointers for getting more from your website. It is certainly more comprehensive than both Glenn Cannady’s book and many others out there.

One of the main selling points and pretexts of the book is that it contains ‘red hot’ methods to help you get top rankings on Google. Whilst this might have been the case some months ago Google have obviously gotten wise to it now, as they have clamped down on what Stephen refers to as ‘Smart Pages’.

In fact – Stephen’s website is not listed by Google so read into that what you will.

These Smart Pages are an attempt to load a page with relevant phrases in an attempt to fool the search engines into thinking it is a great page of high relevance to people typing that particular search into the search engines.

But Smart Pages aside there is some good stuff in this book though it does feel a little padded at times - the book doesn’t really get started until page 22 – up until then it’s just testimonials. Everybody who reads it, no matter what their level of knowledge, will get something new from it.

It’s a close call as to whether the book is worth the money considering the first 21 pages are worthless, the last 16 are selling something and a fair few in the middle talk about Smart Pages.

The bonus material that comes with this one is a series of reviews on products and services that Stephen has ‘road tested’. In reality he has affiliations to virtually every product that he scores highly so if you take his comments on merit and sign up for these products or services he ends up getting paid.

Hardly unbiased but I suppose it’s always worth getting other people’s opinions on the vast range of products and services that are out there.

Gold nuggets: New ways of thinking about your website, techniques that work and clear explanations

Chicken nuggets: Lots of testimonials that don’t teach you much, the last 16 pages are selling something and many pages in the middle of the book are related to Smart Pages, which are to be avoided

MagnetMarks: 6 out of 10

Site: http://trilochan.wholetruth.hop.clickbank.net 

Are you tired of internet marketing that doesn't work? If After Using The Truth About Internet Marketing You're Not Accuse Of Having Robbed A Bank For All Your New Cash. You Can Keep The Book And Get A 100% Refund! I swear to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth Click Here for Instant Access

Product No.3 –“Internet Marketing Strategies” from Jay Abraham

Price: $0
No. of Pages: 76 (split up into 7 Reports)
Bonuses: Pre-recorded Audio seminar with Jay
Site:    JAY ABRAHAM

Jay Abraham is one of the leading marketing gurus in the world. He says he is. I say he is. Everyone says he is.

Jay gets paid $25,000 per hour or over $30,000 per delegate for a one-day conference with hundreds of people attending - it’s clear that what he has to say is worth listening to!

So when Jay comes along and starts offering you free information it’s worth grabbing it while you can.

Now don’t get me wrong – his motives for doing this are clear to all – he didn’t get to be one of the best marketers in the world by missing an opportunity to sell.

But if you hold firm and try to take a stand against Jay’s persuasive efforts to convert you into a paying customer (if only for a short while) you can truly reap the benefits of his thinking by getting access to seven reports that each contain valuable information on Internet marketing.

Jay admits that he has very little knowledge of Internet marketing itself

just take a look at his main website www.abraham.com and you can see he’s a few years behind at least! But the strength of his ideas and writing comes from the fact he has so much marketing experience, regardless of whether it has been learned and practiced in an online environment.

One of the best things about these reports is that they are absolutely free – all you need to pay out is the time it takes to work your way through them.

Set aside a couple of hours a week to digest each report and take notes specific to your site as you go along. You will get something of value from each report. And if Jay works his magic and converts you into a paying customer I’m sure you’ll benefit even more but even you never pay him a cent – you’ve just had a powerful lesson from one of the leading marketing minds on the planet free of charge.

Now that has got to be worth the time it takes to download the reports!

Gold nuggets: It's free. Jay is THE marketing guru. He makes you think.

Chicken nuggets: Not quite detailed enough - no 'How To' stuff but what do you expect for $0? Jay will try his utmost to convert you into a paying customer via emails etc. but hey – that’s his prerogative right?

MagnetMarks: 8 out of 10 (The reports have got gold dust in them and they’re free, what more can I say?)

Site:    JAY ABRAHAM

Product No. 4 – “Super Affiliate Handbook” from Rosalind Gardner

Price: $47
No. of Pages: 270
Bonuses: None
Site: http://hop.clickbank.net/?trilochan/webvista2

If you’ve spent any amount of time surfing around the web looking into website marketing and affiliate marketing the chances are you will have seen Rosalind’s Book “The Super Affiliate Handbook”.

The book is essentially sold on the basis that it shows you how Rosalind makes a fortune by ‘selling other people’s stuff online’. So not surprisingly her book loaded with affiliate links that earn Rosalind money each time you click on them.

I don’t have a problem with this as such, it’s just that you do start to wonder whether the resources are as useful as she says they are or whether they’ve just been included because of their commission levels!

I was eager to get started with this one after seeing it promoted in so many places but pages 27 to 41 dealt solely with the ‘basics’ such as:

Phone lines
Choosing a computer
Printers
Using email
Using a text editor

I couldn’t believe what I was reading at one point when it was explained how

to download Adobe Acrobat PDF reader software – the book came in Adobe format so if you didn’t already have the software you wouldn’t be able to read it anyway!

If you already have a website and a business, or at least are part-way down the line of establishing both, much of the information may not be relevant to you. There’s a lot of content on choosing a business, selecting the right products, choosing a domain name and other topics that will appeal to people who are just starting out.

On the whole I found Rosalind’s book relatively readable but not exactly a page-turner. There were around 10 pages of the book that really made me think – as usual with these books there will always be parts that are irrelevant to you and others that will be extremely valuable.

When you first open the book it seems like huge mountain of information until you realize that much of it is very common sense and may not be relevant to you if you have been online for any length of time. I would also have liked a free bonus or two to accompany the book.

Gold nuggets: If you are looking to generate money solely through affiliate programs then you should seriously consider buying this book.

Chicken nuggets: Some of the basic information covered in the early sections of the book is a little condescending:

“To do business on the Web, you need to be connected to the Web.”

MagnetMarks: 6 out of 10

Site: http://hop.clickbank.net/?trilochan/webvista2

Amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earns $435,000+ per year ... selling other people's stuff on line! In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the 'Net. In 236 pages, and more than 68,000 words, you'll learn how to pick the best programs, negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting. To learn  Click Here

Product No. 5 - “33 Days To Online profits” from Yanik Silver and Jim Edwards .

Price: $29
No. of Pages: 246
Bonuses: “Insider Conversations with Internet Marketing Pros”, “Warp Speed Info Product Creator Pack”, “Insider Conversations with Internet Marketing Pros”

Site: http://www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/?36269

This book has a great concept – you follow a series of steps each day for 33 days. If you are just starting out and have next to no experience of the Internet, computers and websites then every single lesson will be of interest to you.

However, if you have some experience already you may find yourself skipping the early lessons and fast-forwarding through the book to the more ‘advanced’ recommendations.

On the plus side “33 Days..” does have some cool content in it including excellent sections on copywriting and marketing your website. There are some useful examples of wordings and such like for some of the main tools you are likely to employ when promoting your site.

There is some basic information on submitting to search engines but the book makes no claims about furnishing you with detailed information on how to go about achieving high search engine rankings. Jim and Yanik give some useful articles on what to look out for but don’t go into it in more detail preferring rather to focus on other marketing methods.

You won’t want to invest in this book if you’re looking for lots of advice on

how to build or improve your website in its own right. In total there are just 11 pages devoted to the design, layout and navigational issues associated with building a website.

Unfortunately I didn’t rate the bonuses that highly either. One of them flat out didn’t work and another one was just a list of links laden with advertising. You opened the bonus ‘product’ and it displayed links with a description next to each one – when I closed the ‘programme’ it launched a browser window advertising another product. This came across as very unprofessional - it was just a waste of my time and was trying to sell me something else.

One of the bonuses “Killer Mini Sites”, a small eBook, was quite good but it did include a lot of repetition from the content in the main “33 Days” product.

The best thing about this book is that it guides you through the marketing process in a day-to-day way. If you find it difficult to set your own plan for a project or require some ‘hand-holding’ to guide you through a process then this product is ideal.

Gold nuggets: Some excellent information on creating copy for your web site, useful templates and ideas for other marketing techniques

Chicken nuggets: Some of the information is geared solely towards total web beginners and I found the Bonuses of little value

MagnetMarks: 6 out of 10

Jim Edwards and Yanik Silver hit the Internet nail right on the head in their brilliant and realistic '33 Days to Online Profits.' They actually lead you by the hand from total online innocence to mastery of profits on the Net. Give me 33 days and I’ll prove you can be making real money online or I’ll refund every penny you paid  Click Here for access.

Product No. 6 – “Internet Marketing Tips & Secrets” from Corey Rudl

Price: $197
No. of Pages: 650
Bonuses: "Corey's Rolodex of 167 Must-Have Internet Marketing Resources", "Earn Staggering Fees Selling Your Service on the Internet", "The #1 Fatal Mistake Made by Internet Marketers", “Sixteen Letters, Promotions, and Contracts You Can Outright STEAL!", "The Definitive Guidebook for Starting Your Own Highly Successful Affiliate Program", "Create a 'Bidding Frenzy' and Sell More Using the Online Auctions", "MORE Advanced Campaigns and Promotions", "FREE Traffic for Your Web Site"

Site: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/828439/ 

Corey’s product is different to the other products mentioned as it is in hardcopy format and is sent to you in two binders. It arrived on my doorstep with a thud in about two days’ of ordering it.

At first, the amount of information that’s presented looks pretty daunting but it is definitely a case of picking and choosing what is most relevant to you depending on where you are with your business and website.

I read through the first binder in around 90 minutes. It is jam-packed with many references to a lot of Corey’s own products throughout which is fair enough though, again, you have to wonder if these are always going to be the very best solutions out there.

There is quite a lot of repetition from his website and the ‘success stories’ that are mentioned in the materials are all fine and well but not that useful for learning how to market your website! There is only so much you can get from reading the same case study on Corey’s website, in his emails and again in this product.

If you already have a business and a website the first 84 pages are largely irrelevant as they deal with choosing a product and setting up your site etc.

Some material in the initial stages is direct repetition from Corey’s website such as testimonials, his success story, why The Internet Marketing Center is the greatest etc.

This is all fine but I found myself thinking:

“I’ve bought the product now Corey! It is physically in my hands – you can stop selling it to me now!”

I remember watching a TV programme recently where one of the world’s youngest and most successful business people was giving out advice. This guy was 11 years old and imparted the following piece of wisdom to a Harvard MBA:

“If there is one thing I have learned in business it is to stop selling once the sale has been made.”

Maybe Corey didn’t see that programme..

At 8pm on the same day the product was delivered my phone rang and it was someone from Corey’s company.

I thought this was great customer service until I realised it was just a selling technique to promote Corey’s mentoring programme (that I had already said I wasn’t interested in when I ordered). They never even asked me if I’d received the course or what my initial impressions were. Still - getting in touch me by phone is a nice idea in principle.

The second binder, labeled “Advanced Techniques”, had some good information in it. I read it in just under two hours and found it much more useful than the first but was a little aggrieved by repetition of certain aspects that had already been covered elsewhere.

The bonuses did contain lots more information with much of this being in the form of short articles, links, Q & A and templates etc. Although there was some direct overlap of content that had already been covered (and the focus was more on the ‘benefits and whys’ rather than the ‘actions and hows’) the bonuses are worth going through to pull out the information that is pertinent to you.

Gold nuggets: A lot of sound information in this one, particularly for beginners - a great resource for boosting your Internet marketing knowledge.

Chicken nuggets: Some repetition of content from Corey’s website and a little too much product-pushing

MagnetMarks: 7 out of 10

Site: http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/828439/

So, whichever Marketing Products you use to develop your knowledge, and give you the upper hand over your competitors, I wish you all the very best in your online marketing ventures!

5 Reasons Why Link Swapping Is Killing Your Website

I created my first website in 1995 - it was so long ago that I had to build it out of rock and wood, not HTML.

Shortly after it went live I realised that nobody apart from me could see it and it started to dawn on me what this 'Internet thing' is all about. It is not about having a stand-alone website plonked somewhere that nobody will ever see - it is about being part of an
INTERconnected NETwork of other websites. INTER-NET. The penny dropped - I needed to start getting connected to other websites.

Much has changed since then (my hair got longer, shorter and has since started to recede further up my head for one thing) but it seems the desire and pressure you face as a website owner to exchange links shows no signs of fading. But link swapping is killing your website! Here's 5 Reasons why...

Reason No. 1 - "It's Addictive!"

It's true. You might not be that far down the link-swapping path yet but I promise you it will happen sooner or later. One day you'll find yourself laughing like a maniac as you run a report to see how many in-bound links you have and start rubbing your hands gleefully as you reach that magic milestone you set yourself six months ago. You'll start mainlining reciprocal links:

"Just one more link. Please - all I need is one more link!"

Take a deep breath, step back from the precipice and think for a moment. Why do you want all these links pointing to your website? No, honestly - why do you REALLY want all these links pointing to your website? To improve link popularity? You're falling into the trap. Do you want it to boost that little green bar that Google assigns to your page? (see toolbar.google.com) Wise up!

Reason No. 2 - "It Is Eating Away At Your Time Like A Hungry Hippo!"

Just take a look at the last time you went out looking for a link and got it. How long did it take you? Not long?

Well, let me put this another way - how long did it take you to find the right type of websites, look through those and find ones that even have a links page, find the contact information for the websites you wanted to contact, create the email, send the email, respond to the email, place their link on your website, check that they reciprocated with you, email back and forth a few times more and so on...?

If you add up all the minutes that each of these elements takes you could be looking at half an hour per reciprocal link established - maybe even longer!

And don't think you're cutting corners if you're using software. It might be quicker to find possible linking partners using software but it's a false economy as, to my knowledge, people are still cleverer than machines.

What I mean by this is I can tell if you email me using software rather than using your own fingers. If you go looking for reciprocal links using software you are FAR less likely to get a response so the whole process will probably take you as long in terms of time spent per link established.

Reason No. 3 - "You Are Spending More Time On Other People's Websites Than Your Own"

If you spend a lot of your time researching and creating reciprocal links you'd better make sure that your website is perfect. Remember - all that time you're spending developing reciprocal links could be spent adding new content to your website, sending out an up to date Ezine to your mailing list or even sitting down and writing out goals for your website.

If you spend all the time on improving your website, adding great content, providing excellent service, keeping it up to date, testing different headlines and homepage layouts INSTEAD of spending the time building links guess what? You will magically find that more people link to you anyway! In fact - your website will become such a great resource because of all the time you're dedicating to it that people will go OUT OF THEIR WAY to link to you! How ironic is that?!

You go hunting for links and your site suffers and therefore hardly anybody links to you. You spend time on making your website THE BEST IT CAN BE and everyone starts linking to you as, shock horror, you have a brilliant website that is worth referring to..

Reason No. 4 - "You Don't Have A Multi-Million Dollar Budget To Beat The Boffins"

Those white-cloaked geeks over at Google towers and the like have millions of dollars at their disposal to create the latest technology that can sniff out the merest whiff of unfair play when it comes to link swapping.

If they think something is suspect you might get penalised. First you started to see sites that used the same phrase for their inbound links get penalised. Then it was sites that engaged with link farms. Who knows what's next?

Ultimately you can bet your bottom dollar that the search engines will change their tack with reciprocal links and their importance - some of them are already starting to look at the words that appear before and after each link to make sure it is on a relevant page and not just created as part of a reciprocal linking deal.

It's a risky game we're all playing and my money's on the guys with the white coats and millions of dollars..

Reason No. 5 - "You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!"

When push comes to shove this whole website marketing game is about balance.

Imagine you are a tightrope walker. Fifty metres beneath you is a huge vat of boiling hot lava. To help you across the rope from the podium of "website launch" to the podium of "website success" you get a balancing rod.

Spending too much time and effort on reciprocal link building is like having a large sack on one end of the rod. This sack has an elephant in it. The elephant is wearing boots. Made from concrete. Get the picture?