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April 29, 2009
Switch on the 'Uniqueness Factor' for your Web Presence
Thursday April 30, 2009 - new Webinar
Tomorrow in the SEO Workshop Resource Center Robin Nobles and John Alexander will be reviewing a few Web sites. Come watch over their shoulder...
Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 11 a.m. EDT
Webinar - Switch on the "Uniqueness Factor" for your Web Presence Brainstorming session with Robin Nobles and John Alexander
8:00 a.m. PDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT; 3:00 p.m. GMT; 4:00 p.m. BST
Join Robin Nobles and John Alexander for this interactive brainstorming session. Come to this Webinar and get direct feedback from Robin and John about "Switching on the Uniqueness Factor" for your Web Presence.
2 Web sites with be reviewed per session. Students must pre-submit their Web sites for our review and then we'll do our homework and prepare to review 2 different student Web sites during this Webinar.
Not a member yet? Join in here.
NEXT WEBINAR: Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 11 a.m. EDT
Webinar - Panel Discussion - How to Save Time by Sorting True SEO
Priorities for Your Web Site
Panelists: Robin Nobles, John Alexander and Michael Marshall
8:00 a.m. PDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT; 3:00 p.m. GMT; 4:00 p.m. BST
Join Robin Nobles, John Alexander and Michael Marshall for this
informative panel discussion. There will be a Q&A session after the
presentation.
Topics covered:
--Robin - Tips on quality content - a must for the future
--Michael - Tips on Understanding the New Search Landscape
--John - Every set of challenges need a different priority - how to
address what yours should be.
Posted by John at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2009
6 Easy Ways to Make Your Web site Whisper Reassurance
6 Easy Ways to Make Your Web site Whisper Reassurance
By Robin Nobles
Times may seem a little tough and I'll bet that for some, I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. People certainly aren't in a "buy-happy" mood these days.
So let's talk more about what we can do with our Web sites to reach our potential customers and reassure them.
Can we benefit by slightly changing our thought processes to help visitors feel more confident even when the business we're in may feel slower than normal?
Let's give you some easy suggestions and study examples and go from there.
Read Robin Nobles 6 Ways to Make Your Web site Whisper Reassurance
Join Robin Nobles along with myself, John Alexander and Michael Marshall at next month's Complete Las Vegas "Over the Weekend" Workshop on May 14-18 in Las Vegas.
More SEO Workshop details are here.
Posted by John at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)
April 09, 2009
Today's Webinar on Natural Language Processing
New Webinar Today
Webinar - Optimizing Your Content for Relevancy
Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 11 a.m.EDT
Presented by Michael Marshall
8:00 a.m. PDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT; 3:00 p.m. GMT; 4:00 p.m. BST
With developments like the Personalization of Search influencing organic search results and Quality Score influencing paid search results, it has become more important than ever to write content for your pages that is original and more relevant than your competitors. This webinar will demystify the topic of search engine relevance and reveal the Why and How behind themes.
Presented by Michael Marshall - creator of SEO Recon, SEO Sniper and his new SEM S.C.O.U.T.. He is an innovative software developer, trainer at the Search Engine Academy of North Carolina and Search Engine Workshops, and consultant in the Search Marketing industry.
One thing to keep in mind for today is that the technology you will seem demonstrated in todays Webinar by Michael uses NO LSI at all.
It uses another completely different and very powerful (well-tested) method among the many approaches to NLP.
Our Webinars are free to all Workshop Resource Members.
You must register to attend:
For details please go to:
http://www.sew-wrc.com/hub/special-chat-sessions.php
We have dial in numbers for the US and UK (let me know if anyone wants an additional country phone number added and we'll see if we can accommodate you. In addition to calling in via the phone, GoToMeeting now has internal VoIP capabilities that interface with the phone call. All you need is a headset attached to your computer (recommended) or a mic and speakers to participate on the call.
You must be a WRC Member to attend our Webinars and chats:
For existing or past members enter here.
NEXT WEBINAR COMING SOON:
Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 11 a.m. EDT
Webinar - Switch on the "Uniqueness Factor" for your Web Presence
Brainstorming Session with Robin Nobles and John Alexander
8:00 a.m. PDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT; 3:00 p.m. GMT; 4:00 p.m. BST
Join Robin Nobles and John Alexander for this interactive brainstorming session. Come to this Webinar and get direct feedback from Robin and John about "Switching on the Uniqueness Factor" for your Web Presence.
Best wishes,
John Alexander
Posted by John at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2009
E-mail Tips - When is the best day to e-mail?
Think you know the best day and time to send your email newsletter?
Ever wonder if your fellow email marketers are all sending at the same time you do?
Convinced your open rate is too low (or amazingly high)?
Some recent statistics pulled from all AWeber users may help you answer these questions:
If you’re sending HTML emails, you probably use your open rate to help gauge your success.
Even though it’s not a perfect measure of whether people are actually opening and reading your emails, it’s useful as a relative measure:
If it goes up over a short period of time, more people are probably reading. If it falls over a short period of time, it’s almost certain fewer people are reading.
Plus, all other things being equal, it can give you some motivation (if your open rates are lower than other senders’) or satisfaction (if your rates are higher).
So, here goes...
Average Open Rate Last Month: 13.6%
When Is/Was The Best Day To Send?
Some people say on Monday people are just catching up from the weekend, and that on Tuesday morning you’ll have their undivided attention before they jump into their work for the upcoming week.
Do the numbers back up that theory?
Let’s see.
The breakdown of open rates by day of the week according to Aweber:
Monday - 13.67%
Tuesday - 13.21%
Wednesday -14.07%
Thursday - 14.52%
Friday - 13.25%
Saturday - 12.09%
Sunday - 13.26%
Last month, Tuesday was actually the second-worst day to send, at least if you’re measuring by "open rates."
Does that mean you should change to Thursdays?
Please, don’t drastically change your sending times/days just because you see that the average last month, or any month, happened to be higher on a different day or time.
Don’t break with your readers’ expectations just to try to follow the latest day of the week stats. You might actually reduce your open rate by doing so.
You might eventually be able to shift your sending schedule, or split test some broadcasts, but if you up and move everything, you may throw off subscribers who are used to hearing from you at the usual time.
So what is the best action to take?
If everyone switches their sending schedule to send on say, Thursday, then recipients will start getting a ton of email that day, and start paying less attention to each individual email.
Open rates aren’t the be-all, end-all of email metrics. They don’t guarantee that people are reading your emails, only that they have images turned on and that they probably saw your email for at least a moment.
Plus, there’s always room for improvement, right?
Some ideas that can help you raise your open rates:
-Ask people to add you to their address books. Some email programs will display images from senders who are in the recipient’s contact list.
-Add a picture of yourself to your emails, near/next to your signature. People like seeing your smiling face, and if they see it in one of your emails, they may be more likely to turn on images to see it again later.
-There’s a pretty good chance you’re not testing as much as you could, or even as much as you might like to.
Would you like to do more split testing and accurately build your subscriber volumes and your reader retention rates?
Many thanks to Justin Premick for the insider tips above.
We've been using the Aweber system for years and give it a great recommendation for one of the best sequential auto responders with top support and all of the tools you need are built right into it.
John Alexander
http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com
Posted by John at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2009
Tips for putting more time in your day
Here a few suggestions if you are running an online business and feel like you need more time in your day:
--Organize your days into periods of "positive habit" rather than "negative habit."
--Perhaps you want to add new content to your Web site but never feel you have any time to write.
SOLUTION: Schedule Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for 2 hours of writing between 9AM and 11AM.
This means that for 6 hours a week you'll be focused on creating that new content. No answering e-mail, no interruptions or phone calls. Get organized and stay focused. Put away anything that distracts you from being productive.
--Perhaps you want to work on issues concerning your Web site to increase it's performance. Same solution - schedule time out for this to be done. During your site upgrade time, shut off your e-mail, stay focused. Do whatever it takes to have your time organized.
--Examine your hours - can anything be improved by time-shifting?
For errands out of the office can you reorganize to do a number of things while you are out.
--Can you organize the days of your week better?
--Assign certain large tasks to certain days of the week - so you develop positive multitasking habits.
--Examine and list all of your non-favorite but important tasks
(that need to be done consistently to be successful - and assign weekly or monthly time slots to them)
Example - Cold Calling, Bookkeeping, etc.
--Look at ways to reduce your time answering e-mail and fooling with Spam
--Avoid perfectionism.
When you focus on perfection, you will only end up skipping them.
--If you didn’t do something on time that you assigned yourself, try to reschedule it instead of feeling guilty. Feeling guilty is a waste of time.
--Try to avoid thinking of work issues on weekends. You need some down time.
Remember, that it sometimes seems like years of work to better our daily habits, but with a serious effort and 3 weeks of practice, you can make changes that will stick with you.
I'll close with a thought for the day which is a quote from William Arthur Ward:
"Each of us will one day be judged by our standard of life -- not by our standard of living; by our measure of giving -- not by our measure of wealth; by our simple goodness -- not by our seeming greatness."
William Arthur Ward quotes
(American dedicated scholar, author, editor, pastor and teacher)
Read 10 Actions You Can Take - to Tip Your Scales For Online Success
Posted by John at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2009
So you you've ran out of "quotes" to attract traffic
Let's talk about what types of "quotes" can attract traffic.
As you may know, the higher the KEI value is - often represents the easier your optimization job will be. Traditionally, people have looked for KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) values of 400 or more to represent a good to excellent keyword phrase opportunity.
Or a phrase that is being searched fairly often, but does not have astronomical competition. One of the things that people look up on the Internet are "famous quotes" by genre such as inspirational quotes, religious quotes, sports related quotes or historical quotes etc.
By finding some good quotes and including them relevantly into your topical content you can increase your traffic as well as attract new readers. Today, we'll dip into Wordtracker's member area to see what types of specific quotes have high KEI values of 400 (or much higher.)
Get ready, let's see how many "quotes" we can dig out
in about 4 minutes:
"famous quotes about sisters" KEI 425.0
"cute sister quotes" KEI 479.5
"famous quotes on training" KEI 595.1
"famous quotes from the 4th of july" KEI 722.0
"funny ronald reagan quotes" KEI 962.1
"daughter quotes about mothers" KEI 1,041.0
"inspirational quotes by famous women athletes" KEI 1262.0
"quotes for lost loved ones" KEI 1,776.0
"headstone quotes" KEI 1790.0
"quotes about mother and daughter relationships" KEI 1880.0
"quotes for someone special" KEI 1,931.0
"daughter to father poems quotes" KEI 2,157.0
"who quoted absence makes the heart grow fonder" KEI 7,396.0
Okay, times up - but there are tons more high KEI phrases based on quotes that you can research in Wordtracker.
Best regards,
John Alexander
http://www.SearchEngineWorkshops.com
Like the only REAL magic - the magic of knowledge.
Posted by John at 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
Simple traffic formula that works - stress free
When is the last time you stepped up the value of your content?
Give it some thought. Far too often we are thinking only of those
search engine spiders. The good news is that fresh new content that
is created to be of value for your readers, also makes EXCELLENT
"spider food."
Do a little research and watch for some topic areas that you think
would be in high audience interest reading (based on user behavior
research.)
Then write some brand new, original fresh, content based on:
1. Your audience's "true interests."
2. Something that has a genuine value or "useful quality" for your
readers.(ONLY after you have written your content for readers so
that you are proud of it.)
3. Then do a mild re-write for optimization purposes.
Try creating a series of 10 brand new articles, tutorials,
interviews, FAQs or whatever you feel would benefit your readers
in this fashion based on your keyword forensics research.
Finally, here's an important tip...
Do NOT put all 10 articles online at once.
But begin to put each new article or page up (one per week for 10
weeks.) Pick a specific day of the week and add one new article
each and every week consistently on that day.
Not only will you notice more people finding your Web site, but
watch what this does for improving the regularity of those spider
visits.
You will be stepping up the quality of your content for your
readers, but because of those fresh, original and engaging articles
that you have written, you're giving the search engines a buffet of
delicious spider food.
Steady, consistent updates over a period of time produces frequent spider visits.
Remember, you get hundreds of free SEO Tips from me at a rate of one each day. It's free.
Highest regards,
John Alexander
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com
http://www.SearchEngineAcademy.com
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com
Like the only REAL magic - the magic of knowledge!
Posted by John at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
Test you page loading speed
Did you know that if a page takes too long to load, it may not be
spidered by the search engine robots.
Try and ensure your pages load quickly.
How quickly?
Consider how fast the major search engine pages load.
Are heavy graphics slowing your load speed?
Try a test with http://www.optiview.com
Your next SEO tip will arrive tomorrow.
Best regards
John Alexander
john@searchengineworkshops.com
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com
http://www.onlinewebtraining.com
Posted by John at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2009
Original Content Freshness is Still Hot with Google
What does Google have to say about Web sites that contain little
or no original content?
Read it here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66361
Just a reminder tip that there are genuine benefits to updating your site frequently with fresh, original content that
has genuine value for your readers.
Your content needs to be fresh for your visitors or you're not
giving them a reason to come back.
Your content also needs to be fresh for the search engines. If the
search engines see that you're refreshing your content every day or
several times a week, the engines will spider your site much more
often.
Here's to your ongoing success!
John
Search Engine Workshops
(Visit our library of free SEO articles)
Posted by John at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2009
How to Put a Unique Perspective on Your News
When it comes to generating unique news, or turning your latest news
into a "news worthy story," try and learn how to tell your story
from a completely different and more interesting perspective.
One thing that is interesting to study, is how other very successful
marketers made their stories unique.
I'm not just talking about studying your competition, but for example
it can be helpful to study the work of others even from before the
Internet even existed.
Its only news, but people love fresh ideas or a story told from an
alternate approach. My friend Evan Carmichael has recently just
published a story about the early beginnings of HJ Heinz, who once
said:
"To do a common thing, uncommonly well - will bring success."
What do you think you can learn his success and apply it to the
work you do today? Please read
Read How Henry J. Heinz built HJ Heinz by having different ideas.
Wishing you great continued success for your online business.
Highest regards,
John Alexander
Search Engine Workshops
Posted by John at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2009
Examining the "root word" with high KEI for Ingredients
Have you ever wondered about what other aspects of a product that people might be searching for (other than the product itself?)
Today's 5 minute dip into Wordtracker was for the purpose of exploring search terms related to "Ingredients" (or how something is made.)
Here's what we came up with:
"what are the ingredients in a mars bar" KEI 95.5
"smokeless powders ingredients" KEI 100.0
"original coca cola ingredients" KEI 112.3
"what are the ingredients in lucky charms cereal" KEI 113.8
"what are the ingredients in noodles" KEI 162.2
"trident gum ingredients" KEI 173.8
"mcdonalds hamburger ingredients" KEI 250.6
"coca cola ingredients" KEI 644.1
Now things start to jump up a bit....
"what is the ingredients for twix" KEI 1,593.0
"ingredients in sprite drink" KEI 2,520.0
"cheerios ingredients" KEI 7,775.0
"ingredients for pattie melt" KEI 11,010.0
"friendly''s ice cream ingredients" KEI 11,550.0
When ever you optimize your pages, always remember there is much more to researching behavior than just keyword. Watch for keywords that may tell a story about the circumstances in the users life that cause them to search in the way that they do.
What other things are worth exploring?
--Product dimensions
--Color
--Related tools
--words and phrases that form natural dialog
--Questioning terms or reasoning terms
--secondary or related terms (based on what a search engine sees
as being connected)
--"action related" terms that are semantically related
--Descriptive Verbs
Plus for a whole list of ways you can speed up your keyword research in Wordtracker and dig into the behaviorally related terms within just seconds, check out the e-book Keyword Forensics for SEO.
Highest regards
John Alexander
Search Engine Workshop
Like the only REAL magic - the magic of knowledge
Posted by John at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)