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 Issue #2 - July 15th, 2002 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you from idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue #2 Monday, July 15th, 2002 In this Issue: ARTICLES: FREE RESOURCES: Welcome to the second issue of the idesignbusiness Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses. I would like to welcome all the new subscribers that have signed up over the past couple weeks. I am excited to tell all subscribers about a new section that was added to idesignbusiness.com last week, a small business forum. This is designed to be a place where small business owners can look for advice, share ideas, and find resources that will help there business. I encourage everyone to visit and help make the forum a success. Visit the Forum We welcome reader input and want to know what is on your mind. Let us know about topics that you would like to read about in this newsletter and we will do our best to accommodate everyone. Send topic ideas to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness ARTICLE WHAT ARE AFFILIATE PROGRAMS AND CAN THEY HELP YOUR BUSINESS? Affiliate Marketing Programs Think of Affiliate Programs as providing your business with a web-based sales team. Businesses with successful affiliate programs have hundreds, or even thousands, of other businesses promoting their products and services on the Internet. Affiliate programs are easy to set-up, proven to work, and best of all…cost-effective. With the exception of some set-up fees, you only spend money if you make money. Are you interested? I thought so, let me explain how they work. There are two parties involved in any Affiliate program, the Publisher, and the Advertiser. Advertisers are usually businesses that sell a product or service and want to increase traffic and sales on their website. Publishers are businesses that are willing to promote Advertisers products and services in exchange for commissions earned on website traffic and revenue they generate for the Advertiser. Think of Publishers as a commission-based sales team that only gets paid if they sell your products and/or services. For the remainder of this article I am going to discuss ways to make an Affiliate Program work for your business from the Advertiser’s perspective. (How to successfully have other websites promoting your business to generate you more traffic and revenue) To start, you need to set up a commission structure that works for both you and your publishers to have a successful Affiliate Program. Once you have established a commission that makes sense, you need to create banner and text links that other websites can use to promote you business. The most complicated part of Affiliate Programs is tracking where traffic and sales are coming from. If you have numerous affiliates, you need to be able to pinpoint who is sending you traffic and who needs to get paid. Luckily, there are several companies dedicated to providing these services so you can concentrate on your core business and let them worry about the technology. Commission Junction (cj.com The best tip I can give if you decide to pursue an Affiliate Program for your website is to spend time promoting the program on your own. You should create a page on your website dedicated to the program and submit that page to each major Search Engine and Directory. There are also several sites dedicated to just listing Affiliate Programs. You should submit your program to as many of these as you can. Finally, determine what types of websites cater to your target market and contact them directly to sign-up for your program. Affiliate Program Service Providers: Commission Junction (cj.com BeFree, Inc. (http://www.befree.com) ClixGalore (http://www.clixgalore.com LinkShare (http://www.linkshare.com Affiliate Network - Webmasters! It is time to Boost Your Revenue! Sign up for the Top50.to Affiliate Network and start making money from your website today. Here you’ll find quality merchants who pay you high commissions each month. Plus, you’ll increase traffic to your site through the Top50.to Top List program. Sign up today – it is free! ARTICLE IS YOUR WEBSITE READY FOR SEARCH ENGINES (Part 1)? If you own or manage a website, I'm sure you've heard the terms "Search Engine Optimization," or "Search Engine Positioning." Do you know what this really means and what steps you need to take to be successful in generating targeted traffic from Search Engines? This article is the first part of a two-part series that will cover the steps required in creating a "Search Engine friendly" website. Look out for Part 2 in the next issue. THE BASICS... The first step in optimizing your website for Search Engines is critically thinking about your target market. As a business owner, I'm sure you've considered who is your ideal customer and how to reach them. You need to put yourself in their shoes and determine how they are finding companies like yours on the Internet. A great place to start is by doing a little competitive research in Search Engines. Search for companies similar to yours and see how they are listed in Search results. Be sure to pay close attention to the titles and descriptions they are using in their search results. Now that you have a better idea of the keywords and search phrases your potential customers are using to find businesses similar to yours on the Internet, you need to design you website to focus on those words. Make sure the text on your site includes these phrases and include them often. The higher the text is positioned on the page, the more it is weighted in Search Engines as well. It is important to find a balance between loading your pages with keywords and phrases you want to appear for in search results and providing well-written descriptions of you products and services. Remember that real people need to read your website too! Next, it’s time to create META Tags. META Tags provide you the best opportunity to control where and how your website is displayed in Search Engines. When you search in any Search Engine, you should notice that all websites appear with a title, description, and URL. META Tags control this, and without them, Search Engines will just display the first text they come across on your site, which is usually not optimal for search results. When creating META Tags, you want to take the same approach mentioned above…understand what keywords your potential visitors are using to search and use those. META Tags in order of importance for displaying search results are the Title Tag, Description Tag, and Keywords Tag. Click here for a detailed description of each META Tag. From this link you can also access the idesignbusiness Free META Tag Generator, which creates the actual META Tag code customized for your website. Free META Tag Generator When creating META Tags for your site, it is important to create unique META Tags for each page of your site. Most Search Engines will accept multiple pages from the same domain and this gives you the opportunity to target different keywords and search phrases on each page of your site. Let’s pretend for a moment that your business sells rare stamps online and you create this title for your homepage – "Yoursite.com – Buy and Sell Rare Stamps Online." Then on another page within your site that lists your stamps for sale, you create this title – "Yoursite.com – The premier online community for serious stamp collectors." By creating unique titles for each page in the example above, you have doubled the number of keywords that your site will appear for in Search Engines. Not to mention that most Search Engines will not include two different pages if they have identical META Tags. You can never include all the potential keywords and phrases you want to target in one page and hope to be successful, so spread them out over a few pages and you will see much better results. Would you like specific tips on ways to optimize your website for Search Engines? idesignbusiness provides free website consultations to determine ways you can better optimize your website for Search Engines. It’s free, objective, and will provide real tips on ways to generate more traffic. Submit your site for a free review by clicking below: Free Website Review STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 OF THE ARTICLE IN THE NEXT ISSUE. FREE RESOURCES: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. Do you have a way to track your website visitors? Do you know where there coming from, what pages they are looking at, and what search phrases they are using to find your site? IndexTools.com Click here for a FREE Trial The idesignbusiness Small Business Forum is designed to be a place where small business owners can come to find answers, advice, and tips on issues that affect their business. We will try our best to answer your questions and encourage all users to communicate via the forum. Visit the forum today and let us know what is on your mind. Small Business Forum ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides Web marketing and technology solutions for small businesses. We utilize a combination of consulting and technology expertise to create customized and flexible solutions. Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an email to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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