Selasa, 14 September 2010

SiteProNews


The Importance of Marketing Data

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT

marketingmixDepending upon the size of your business and at what stage of development you are in, the types of marketing data you collect will vary. For a business that has just started recently or will be starting up shortly in the future, you’ll want to do a tremendous amount of market research regarding target markets, advertising and marketing options, customer buying habits, local demographics, transportation and shipping costs, salary ranges, and anything else that may be relevant to your particular business.

If your business has already been established, you’ll hopefully have already collected much of this marketing data. But you should also now be collecting more comprehensive marketing data about your current customers. This includes information as to the regional area that contains the majority of your customers, payment methods, and average spending amounts. You should also be aware of your most popular products or services, your least popular products, and factors that may affect sales seasonally.

Together, all this information can help you better market your products or services. Additionally, it will be beneficial to know what your customers think of your products and services, and your business overall. This can help you gauge customer loyalty, and determine whether you may be in danger of losing customer to the competition. The more you understand about your customer base, the more empowered you are to provide them with expert service and beneficial products.

Obviously, you should also be collecting contact information if feasible, so that you can communicate easily with you customers about upcoming sales events or promotions, or other information regarding your business that they may be interested in receiving. Being aware of what publications your customers read, and what social networking sites they frequent will also enable you to market to them more effectively.

In regards to marketing specific products or services, your most profitable and best-selling products will likely be those that provide the greatest benefits to your customers. Knowing this information can help you to improve existing products as well as develop new ones.

Collecting marketing data on customer’s previous purchases can also help you determine where to focus your marketing efforts, and how better to segment your target markets so that you can even personalize your marketing to a specific customer base.

Collecting marketing data typically occurs in two stages. The first stage, in which primary data is collected, is when you collect marketing data for the first time. Collecting secondary data is the second stage: this type of data is usually data that already exists and is purchased from another source.

Primary data can consist of simple customer contact information, or more comprehensive data culled from customer surveys and questionnaires. Your customer’s purchase habits also fall into this category, as well as the fluctuation of sales data on daily, weekly, or monthly schedules.

Secondary data should never be discounted as meaningless: it can often give you great insight into specific areas and target markets. Additionally, thanks to the availability of vast resources on the Internet, much of this type of marketing data can be obtained for free, provided you have time to do the research and know where to look.

It is beneficial to have a good networking system in place to record and house all the marketing data you collect, as well as data backup and protection tools in place so that you do not accidentally lose your data. You’ll also need to ensure that you comply with the Data Protection Act, which serves to protect the privacy rights of your customers and the data you’ve collected about them.


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Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Importance of Marketing Data

The Psychology Behind a Successful Business Owner

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT

businessBusiness owners have to do much more than offer a quality product or service today. With a market that continues to increase in competition, thanks to the global ramifications of the Internet, successful businesspeople will also be characterized by certain qualities that get them noticed in their industry.

If you thought psychology classes were strictly for the health care professionals, think again. There’s plenty of psychology that goes into the effective running of a business, particularly when joint venture marketing comes into play.

Relationship Building

Successful business owners must know how to form relationships both with potential customers and prospective JV marketing partners. Relationships with joint venture business partners must be professional, but they must also inspire trust and creativity between the two of you. When a JV marketing partnership is healthy and thriving, both businesses benefit.

Make sure your communication with your partner is used to build up rather than tear down the other individual. Offer positive feedback and show enthusiasm for your joint business venture. When you make others feel good about their contributions and their relationship with you, they are more likely to stick around for the long haul.

Networking

Networking is an important part of building a successful business, whether you are interacting with other business owners or potential customers. Networking events are an excellent place to meet other like-minded individuals who might be interested in building a JV partnership with you.

However, these occasions may cause shy individuals to shiver with anxiety and may even result in you missing out on valuable business opportunities because your fears prohibit you from attending. If social networking makes you nervous, take a class on interpersonal communication that can provide you with the skills you need to handle these events with confidence.

Team Playing

An effective business is a team of individuals, all working together toward a common goal. If you want your business to be successful, you will need to learn to play nicely with others. This includes other business owners in your field that might be lucrative JV partners, as well as those who work directly in your business with you. Cooperation, contribution and positive encouragement are all traits that make individuals effective team builders.

If you are lacking in any of these traits, team-building classes will show you how to work well with others. Learning specific techniques like active listening and group brainstorming can also show you how to make the most of the creativity and enthusiasm within your staff to make your business run more smoothly.

Psychology plays an important role in a successful business, whether you are forming JV partnerships with other business owners, working with your staff, or interacting with your customers.

If you feel your interpersonal skills are lacking, now is the time to get educated on the finer points of networking and team building. Professional classes are available in psychology, communication and interpersonal skills through community colleges and professional training forums. The money you invest in building your professional skills will go a long way in helping you run your business more effectively.


Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability. Join his Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report at www.christianfea.com/joint-venture-wealth-report.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Psychology Behind a Successful Business Owner

What Does It Mean to Be Poked on Facebook?

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT

facebook-iconI was doing some research yesterday and stumbled across this question that people were asking. What does it mean to be poked on Facebook? I laughed out loud…a long time! There were more than 1,000 people asking this question!

Well, it really is no mystery as to what “poking” on Facebook means. It just means you poke them. Just like if you walked up to someone at the grocery store and took your finger and poked them. It’s a way of saying hello to your friends on Facebook.

Once you poke someone, they have the option of poking you back or ignoring your poke. When I was growing up the guys would “swap licks” which meant they would take turns hitting each other in the arm with their fist until someone finally said “uncle!” Poking can work in a similar fashion. You poke someone, they poke you back, you poke them again, they poke you back….gets a little monotonous doesn’t it.

You can only poke a confirmed friend, so you can’t go around poking just anyone. And can only poke you if your account is confirmed. Someone poked me several weeks ago, but I didn’t respond, so it’s still on my home page that I have been poked. I can choose to ignore it, which I have obviously done, or I can remove it, which I will probably do.

And just to clarify conformed means that you have to confirm the email address that you set your Facebook account up with and that will enable you to send messages, write on your friends’ Walls, post in discussions, poke, tag your friends, comment, join groups, and fan pages, and basically use your account to it’s fullest.

I guess it could be fun to poke someone, but I really don’t know why. If I want to say Hi, I’ll just go to their Wall or send them a private message and say Hi! But for the thousands of people who have been anxious to get the real story on poking…you have it now.:) And please don’t poke me, I have tender arms!

Learn more social media tips and find useful resources on Terri’s Facebook Fan Page at facebook.com/socialmediatraining.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

What Does It Mean to Be Poked on Facebook?

Spamming Techniques That You Should Avoid

Posted: 13 Sep 2010 02:00 AM PDT

spamThere are many ways to spam search engines and trick search engine spider to increase traffic to websites. Some of these popular methods are better known as ’search engine spamming.’ Let’s know more about these methods in order to gain clarity:

Keyword Stuffing:
It is commonly known as the repeated use of word or phrase in order to make a page look more relevant. There is a specific way of including keywords in a webpage. Determine your exact keywords and use them in different ways to include in the page.

Invisible Text:
In this method, spammers usually insert text that is a combination of repetitive use of keywords on a webpage. The main aspect of this kind of process is that it is discolored and make to look similar as the background color so as to making invisible for common users.

Tiny Text:
Many times, spammers use small font size to place their content. By doing so again and again, search engines may penalize the website.

Page Spoofing / Meta Refresh / Redirection:
This is a process that automatically redirects users to a newly developed webpage. Usually, spammers create a separate page for particular keywords. So, when users click on the link, it will lead users to a different page with very content with no relation with the mentioned keywords. Therefore, most search engines simply decline such pages.

Meta Tag Stuffing:
Usually, adding keywords to a webpage without putting in excess keywords is an accepted form of search engine popularizing. However, many people place high traffic keywords which are directly not related with a webpage in any way.

Common spam indexing techniques are content spam and link spam. Content spam may include: keyword stuffing, hidden or invisible, meta tag stuffing, gateway or doorway pages, scraper sites, article spinning. Link spam includes: hidden links, link building using automated software, page hijacking, cookie stuffing, Sybil attacks and link farms.

Other spam indexing techniques are cloaking, URL redirection.


Road2SEO is a comprehensive Search Engine Optimization Book for the SEO professionals. Road2SEO, one of the effective SEO Book helps you learn search engine optimization to create a powerful pipeline that drives a steady flow of traffic to your site. To learn SEO online use the powerful Internet Marketing tool Road2SEO.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Spamming Techniques That You Should Avoid

16 Ecommerce SEO Tips to Keep You Ahead

Posted: 12 Sep 2010 10:00 PM PDT

SEOptimizationA typical Ecommerce website contains a few hundred pages. An Ecommerce giant like Amazon contains thousands of products and millions of web pages. Optimizing a website like Amazon is not tough; it just requires a strong SEO strategy.

Optimizing an Ecommerce site is slightly different from optimizing a static website. You need to plan and construct your optimization strategy well in advance. This will help save you a lot of time and effort in the future.

16 Ecommerce SEO Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead in Rankings and Traffic

1. Maintain a Uniform and Clean Website Structure: The home page of your website should reflect the product categories; while all the inner pages should follow a common webpage structure.

2. Use a Unique Title Tag: Every product page should have a unique title. An Ecommerce site can contain any number of web pages. You can ask the programmer to code the title from the page content and product name. This makes your SEO more dynamic.

3. Select an Appropriate Keyword: The keywords must be unique for every webpage. They must reflect the important phrases within the webpage content. For an Ecommerce site, you can ask the programmer to select keywords from the content and product name.

4. Create a Relevant Description Per Web Page: The description of a web page is the snippet which appears in the SERPS. Every visitor reads the snippet and then clicks on the search result. It is very important to include a description relevant to the webpage content.

5. Include Breadcrumbs for All Inner Pages: A breadcrumb is like a secondary navigation structure. It helps the visitor to navigate back to the main product category page. A breadcrumb also helps in the internal linking of the website. Overall, including a breadcrumb makes the website SEO friendly.

6. Use a Heading Tag: Searchbots assign a lot of importance to the heading tag. The heading tag is SEO friendly and can be used to format the title of the web page content.

7. Avoid Usage of Flash: Avoid using flash on every web page of your Ecommerce website. This will increase the site loading time. If the use of flash is inevitable, include textual content in the flash. Search engines are capable of reading the text in the flash file.

8. Optimize Images: Add the Alt tag to all the images of your website. Search engines cannot read images. The Alt tag is a means of ensuring that the search engines read the alternate text for images.

9. Optimize Anchor Text: Anchor text appears between the anchor opening and closing tag. It is good practice to use keywords as the anchor text.

10. Create an SEO Friendly URL Structure: The default URL structure of a dynamic website contains parameters. Search engines are not capable of understanding these parameters. A good URL structure must contain words separated by hyphens.

11. Generate a XML Sitemap: A XML sitemap contains all the URLs present in the website and makes it easy for searchbots to find and index all web pages. If the number of web pages on a site is large, you can create a number of XML sitemaps and then submit these sitemaps to Google via Webmaster Tools. E.g. sitemap1.xml, sitemap2.xml.

12. Limit the Number of Outbound Links: Always link to a safe and secure website. If you are not sure about the quality of the website you are linking out to, use the no follow attribute.

13. Submit to Search Directories: Submit your website URL to good quality search directories. Most of the search directories take a few weeks to link back to a site. Fill in the details of the submission form carefully, so that the administrator accepts the submission.

14. Submit to Article Directories and Social Bookmarking Sites: Article submission is the quickest way of obtaining high quality backlinks. You need to select the do follow bookmarking sites and submit the URL to them. Increase in traffic is a plus point of submitting to social bookmarking sites.

15. Integrate a Secure Payment Gateway: A secure payment gateway is the heart of an Ecommerce website. Get a trust seal from Verisign, TrustE, etc. Visitors will be more likely to trust your site and to make an online payment.

16. Track User Behavior with a Good Analytics Tool: You can track and analyze visitor behavior with a good analytics tool. You need to select an analytics tool based on your requirements. If your Ecommerce website operates on a large scale, you can opt for a paid analytics tool. Otherwise you can use a variety of free tools to obtain the best results.

It is very easy to rank well and get quality traffic with these tips. The trick is to maintain the balance of the site being SEO and user friendly.

What steps do you take to optimize your Ecommerce website?


Debbie A. Everson, CEO SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Learn about search engine marketing, pay-per-click, social bookmarking, and email marketing at our SEO Blog. Follow us on Twitter @searchmar or call 866.885.6263 to speak to a SEO Consultant.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

16 Ecommerce SEO Tips to Keep You Ahead