Email me direct:
Tel: +27 54 332-3456
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Ms Moneybags...
..Will she find you?
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Email me direct: Tel: +27 54 332-3456 |
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Ms Moneybags... ..Will she find you? | |
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| Why Visitors won't find your web site! | Rate your traffic | Webstats not negotiable! | | Fix your traffic - DIY | Fix your web site - Check list | Fix your marketing - Links | | Turn those percentages in your favour! | Fix your graphics | Services | Contact me |
- and how the Search Engines can be your friends! Before June 2005, this web site tried to be a resource about all aspects of small business marketing. For marketing help, I'm now referring you to some of the premium resources on the Internet. I can't compete with the likes of David Frey of "Marketing Best Practices" fame! or Cody Moya. No-one can be expert in everything, and when you can't beat them, join them, so there you are!. You now find a fresh focus on that aspect which causes people the most worry and that loses them the most money: How to start, fix or build your own business or hobby web site - and how to attract more ready to buy visitors to your web site! You can also call it "How to get more traffic", if you want to, but that title subtly misses the point. As the owner of several "no traffic" web sites since 1996. (Wayback machine). I've had a marked increase in traffic on both my Business and hobby sites since November 2003. That was when I first applied these principles on a part time basis. I am now doing so well traffic wise, that I am on the verge of giving up a (fairly) successful scientific career in the Chemistry and Water Quality Field. It is only in the last six months that these concepts have finally come together for me in a big way. I'm now ready to change the way you look at your web site forever, so if you are ready, let's go!. There are more than 56,5 million active web sites on the internet and the number is growing by the month. The number of surfers are at least a hundred times more, perhaps even a 1000 times more! - This sounds like a good opportunity for large and small businesses alike. Many of the new web sites that have come online this year, are web sites of aspiring business men or women and entrepreneurs, who have a great idea or service, and who the potential of internet web site marketing, or who have heard stories of successes, and who now wants a bit of this lucrative action. But brother, are they in for a rude surprise! Did you Note that little word "potential"? That is where the trouble lies. The internet or WWW is a young medium with a intelligent and sophisticated audience and it is quite different from the traditional media. You can sucessfully market and do business on the internet, but then you must understand the medium. More than 95% of the new web sites (and even some long time web sites!) are extremely disappointed at the small number of visitors they get to their websites. (That is to say if they even know how few visitors they are getting). Now listen to this: Less than 10% of all websites (based on my experience, but you are welcome to ask around!) makes back more than their design and running costs. Yet people seems to be blissfully unaware of this, and keep on losing money month after month, and year after year! If you want to learn the truth about web site traffic and how to improve it, please read on. If you find that I have wasted your time please phone or e-mail me and tell me so! My telephone number and e-mail is right up there, under my ugly mug. Now you can help me do a little mental experiment: Lets say I show you this large crowd below, gathered on a rugby field. They cannot see or hear you as you are in the press box, high above the field. Now say I offer you a million rands if you can contact Dr. Smith on his cell-phone (mobile phone). Now think about how you will go about doing this.  I don't think there is any way that you can, with the conditions as they are given. If you were told the city perhaps, and if Dr Smith had his cell-phone listed with his land-line number in the telephone directory, or if you could phone his secretary and ask for the cell number, you might just be able to it, that is if this city only have a single Dr Smith! But those are not the conditions given! Now lets say I show you a guy standing near you, who have a hand-written list, about 2000 pages in all, with the names of the people in the stadion. This list is not in alphabetical order, but in the order that they entered the stadium. Certainly you will see a glimmering of hope. You start paging through the list in high hopes!. Now you loose hope again, some people have not given their cell numbers or occupations, and some have written so illegibly that you cannot read it. If you are very very lucky, you may just spot the required Dr. Smith in a few hours, but I wouldn't count on it! The chances are good that you will never find him. Now let's say you can call 20 friends to come and help. Would that improve your chances? Sure would! Now try and visualise a crowd of 56,5 million, rather than the few thousand you have on the rugby field. This is the approximate number of active web sites on the internet. Try and visualise this, and you will realise the immense odds of ever finding a specific unknown web site on the internet. You may just be lucky, but then again you may not be lucky! Exactly the same odds are at work to prevent your customer from ever finding your web site. That is right: 56,6 000 000:1! As far a I know, not even the worst gambling man ever would take on those sort of odds! Yet small business owners (and large do this every day! You can sit and sulk about this, or you can be complacent, I don't care. Or if you want to, you can learn to do something about it! If you want to do something to attract more visistors to your web site, you have come to the right place. Most web sites are like the people on that rugby field above - blissfully unaware that any-one is trying to find them, and not doing anything to increase their chances of being found - Yet, they are all hoping to be found! Poor lost souls! It's a little bit like putting up a notice board and a shop on a little dirt road in the Kalahari desert: Your chances of getting any customers, is to say the least, remote. Of course the guy with the list can be used to represent the search engines or site indexes. And there are many more millions of people looking for all sorts of info and for people, and some (incidentally, for Dr. Smith! Fortunately, things are not completely as bad as all this, but almost. In the first place, your visitor may be trying to contact a business or person that he or she already knows. They can use a telephone directory or yellow pages, or even take a guess at the spelling of the domain on the internet. Your customer will have at least some success. I have a strong suspicion that more than 90% the traffic that most web sites get on the internet is either accidental, or from known clients, or from off-line advertising. Very little comes through the Search Engines. I suspect this, because I can see that they don't get a reasonable amount of traffic and I can also see that they have not even done the very basic things that are needed to attract traffic and the search engines. (I will give you a link to tools to rate your traffic and that of competitors, a little later). I also know, from the university of hard knocks, exactly how difficult it is to attract a decent amount of visitors in competition with 56,5 million others! There's a valuable lesson to be learnt from that seemingly obvious paragraph about off-line advertising: Put you web site url on every letterhead, brochure and corporate gift, even on a pen or ruler, so that your customers can find you easily. Furthermore, you should explore off-line avenues to the fullest extend that your budget allows! Any strategy that will generate traffic outside the search engines gives you an added advantage. Against odds of 56,5 million against 1, every little advantage counts! You will be glad to hear that with a little understanding and the right help and advice, it is possible to reduce these massive odds quite substantially. Thats what I am going to teach you here, and that is what I hope to do for you with the range of services ranging from free, to reasonable, to expensive and other resources such as the e-book. Now, try and relax, maybe get a cup of coffee or tea or whatever, and get ready to change gear completely. I want you to think about how you yourself go about finding things on the internet. This may sound like somethging rather silly to do, but as you will see shortly, this battle for traffic, (and the individual fights) are won time and again by the person that is best able to think like his or her visitor. Now think carefully about how you go about finding information on the internet. Lets say you want to find info about "Volcanoes". Let me take you through the steps that you would most likely follow, and your reaction to certain web sites. What you have just done, is examine your actions and psychology as a "visitor" or "customer" trying to find some-one else's web site. When you design your web site, and more specifically your key words, you must try and think like your visitor, if you want your visitor to find you. Try to think like your customer, as best as you can. What words will he or she use to find you and your business? The better you can succeed in thinking like your customer, the better you will be able to attract the right customer and leave your opposition sitting in the shade. Some pointers on the use of keywords:Use the right Keywords - Never use high ranking keywords like for instance "sex", that doesn't have anything at all to do with your web site. Just imagine, in the scenario on the rugby field above, that you actually found a Dr. Smith in the thousands of pages, and phoned him, just to hear that "sorry, he isn't really Dr. Smith, but Mr. Smith, and he tried to be funny." I guess you will be mighty upset! The same happens when your visitors land on a web site and doesn't find wahat your key words suggested. On top of this, the search engines are becoming more sophisticated in measuring the reaction of your human visitor's ("so-called off-site indicators") such as clicking away moments after landing etc., and all the SEO tricks and keyword spamming is becoming less and less effective.Good solid content, that gives your visitor the information that he seeks, will make him or her come back time and again, maybe add a link to your site, and recommend it to all his friends and even perhaps on bulletin-boards etc. Free advertising that costs you nothing and that you should cultivate with everything at your disposal. You have seen how difficult it is to get visitors in the first place - You want to convince them of your expertise and good will, you want them to come back and maybe buy or buy again, and it is a proven marketing principle that repeat customers buy more and do more readily, because they know you and have experienced your service levels. You don't want to do anything to drive them away! I sincerely wish that the perpetrators and dispersers of advertising spam would get this simple concept into their heads! Who in his right mind would want to antgonise precisely the customer that they want to reach? Makes no sense whatsoever. But many people don't think, and they are so desperate for business that they will try anything.
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