Introduction

There are two ways to improve your SEO. One is to do it yourself. If you are not an SEO expert, you may not help yourself much. The reason is that the search engine algorithms change and it is a job in itself just to keep up.

The second way to get optimization is to hire someone to do it. There are lots of scams in this area so watch out.

I suggest that if you are new, just follow some simple rules so that the search engines will give you an edge. I'm not an expert in this area but, here are a few things you can do:

Outline your site content before you write it. Label the Main headings as H1 and your Secondary headings as H2. The search engine spider will be looking at headings.

Make sure your content is relevant and comprehensive. The better your content, the better the spider will like you as it crawls your site reading word for word.

Make sure you have links on your site to other relevant information. Have other sites link to your site too. Very important! Your blog should link to your page, for example. The spider will be looking at and following your links.

Don't write a lot of ads into your content on an information site.

Site Activity

Google recently increased interest in site activity. They will give you a much higher rating if you have a lot of site activity. For trhat reason blogs are good as folks continue to comment on the site and add inputs. THIS is very important so find some way to get things going on your site. A forum is great. If comments are allowed after a blog addition, great for you! Activity is very important indeed!

Like I said, I'm no expert so read the information at the reference site (http://www.seo-dictionary.com/) and go from there.

One last word. Use your META title, description, and keywords on each page of your site. Also, some say to submit each of your pages to the search engines/spiders. Some spiders read your (onsite) links and go right to the various pages and index them.

Use Offline Methods to Drive Traffic to Your Site

A traffic exchange like I use at AdlandPro can bring lots of traffic. You will see my banner at the bottom of the page.

You can drive traffic to your site by offline methods. You can put your site URL on your business card, your letterhead, and in my case, I have http://www.AAAFlagpoles.com on a sign on the back of my car.

The Following is an article I published in a magazine some years back:

Use Classified Ads to Build Your Home or Internet Business

by

John T. Jones, Ph.D.

There are two kinds of businesses, those that are making money and those that are not. The ones that are reaching their customers are getting orders that sustain the business. The others that are not reaching their customers are doomed to failure. The major task of an otherwise efficient operation is to find new customers and to keep them satisfied through excellent customer service.

Internet Marketing

At one time, Internet marketing methods were much more effective than they are today. Obtaining top positions on search engines can be a difficult and slow process. Random placing of Internet ads on directories, etc., can be futile, bringing zero response. Opt-in list e-mail is usually ignored and deleted. Pop-up ads are seldom seen with blockers on many computers. Even pop-under ads are going the way of banners and the passenger pigeon. Having said this, selective placing of ads in ezines can be effective. The ezines that work are the ones that target your traffic and make you "stand in line" to place your ad. In other words, your ad may not be placed for several weeks.

Direct Mail versus Mail Order

We all know from experience that Direct Mail is expensive. The postal rates can knock you to your financial knees in a very short time. Mailing post cards to gain enquires is less expensive, but even there, the cost can be prohibitive. However, print advertising, if properly used, can be effective in bringing in enquires (and some orders) either to your mail box or to your Internet site. This is usually called Mail Order. The inquiries can be effectively developed into sales by your direct mail package or by telephone.

Did you get the point? Sending your direct mail offer blindly, or even to a "good" mailing list, can be too costly for profit. However, classified ads in magazines that target your audience can bring you a list of interested folks or companies that will respond to your direct mail package at a high enough level to generate profits.

Use Print Ads to Bring Potential Customers to Your Internet Site

One problem to Internet business operators is that ads must be tracked to determine the advertising dollar return. If a visitor comes to the site from a print ad, how do you track it? Well, the simplest way is to have your ad send them to a page (URL) used only for a specific ad. Place a counter on that page to see what traffic is generated by the ad. From this page, your customer can than move to your desired URL and message.

You may want to welcome the visitor to the page with a request for his or her first name and e-mail address. That way, you will know which enquires place orders and those that can be contacted later by e-mail to persuade them to buy your product or service.

Some operators request more information than the first name and e-mail address. Is that a good idea? How do you feel about it? Remember that the visitor is there to find the information described in your print ad. He is not there for the Spanish Inquisition. With this in mind, you may not want to ask more than two or three questions.

One Advantage of Print Advertising That Directs Traffic to Your URL

Your URL can be an ad in itself. That is if it is named correctly. I have a dozen web sites. I’ve tried to give them descriptive names that make the URLs ads in themselves. For example, one of my sites is www.secret-cash.com.

Another is www.money-making-books.com.

Do you get the point?

These URLs are small ads in themselves. This allows me to use fewer words or just the URL to promote my business.

Some Precautions

I was Vice President of Research and Development for a product driven Fortune 500 Company for many years. After I retired, I wrote two detective and two western novels and two other books that I sold by direct mail and on the Internet. I set up an Internet book business which I sold, and then started selling wealth-success books on the Internet. I’ve also been engaged in MLM and other money-making program. Over the years since I retired, I’ve tried to use the experience I gained working in industry. Well, I learned that I needed more than that experience to succeed in an Internet business. I had to learn many things about Internet Marketing from scratch.

I’ve had more than one failure at running a home-based business. Every successful entrepreneur I know has had failures. We had failures when I was in industry. I like to talk with Internet entrepreneurs on these matters so that I can help my own customers and associates. Mistakes are costly and every precaution should be taken to avoid them. Big business can take the financial cost of failure. Small businesses can’t!

To review some of my hopefully entertaining articles on why certain businesses fail or succeed, go to my site http://www.new-letter.com

You Need a Product or Service That People Need or Desire

A product or service is required for your business. In industry, we had plenty of resources for determining the market for a potential product. Our design people worked with my engineers to produce a prototype of the product. The prototype was discussed with our customers and shown to consumer test groups. The product was then improved based on these studies. Then the production process was designed and specified. We often started with a plowed field, which we turned into a factory, traveling around this beautiful globe of ours in search for equipment, materials, and technology. The product was tested in every means of possible failure. Such operations are not available to most small businesses. You must find a supplier (see below) or create the product yourself.

First, Identify the Market

In industry, we were usually successful in our pursuits. One of our failures was that we produced an undesired product for a non-existing market. In other words, the group we identified was not a distinct group that thought differently from the mass of our buyers. We thought one way and they thought the old way. So the product was not salable, not that it wasn’t a perfectly good product, but that we were advertising it in the wrong way.

We had two choices. We could change the target and advertising or we could abandon the product. We chose the later. However, the technology we gained was used in the next product, an improved version of the first that appealed to all of our customers. That’s called turning lemons into lemonade.

You May Need to Find a Supplier

We also outsourced product while we were gearing up for production. Once we overpaid for a product. Our competitor drove us out of business for that particular product overnight simply by giving three items for the cost of two. That killed our profit margin. Since we required a high return on our investment (15%), we dumped our inventory and tried again. Later, I went to Japan with the marketer that had arranged for the outsourcing. There we found that the company was the laughing stock of Nagoya because we had paid too much!

You must be able to obtain your product at lowest price for best quality. Wal-Mart is currently being accused of forcing industry out of the United States due to being over zealous on this point. But it is a fact that you must have the lowest cost for the desired quality of product. That’s what shoppers do on the Internet. They decide they want a Fun Dooley with Attachment A and they search for the lowest-cost supplier, hopefully one with free shipping and handling.

There are many available sources for product. But you had better watch out! Unfortunately, there are too many crooks offering their services to help you find product. They tell you that they have a list of drop shippers that will supply your customers. My suggestion is that you do not deal with middlemen. Deal with the manufacturers. If you can obtain a patented product exclusive, that is a preferred way to have a stable business. I sell flagpoles on the Internet. I deal directly with the factory that drop ships them for me. The design is patented and they are not available from other suppliers.

You can have books drop shipped. Better maybe to write your own so that they remain exclusive and at low cost. The way many make money on the Internet is to provide e-books to their customers by simple download. There are no printing costs in such operations and the markup is therefore high. E-books are a major source of revenue, and in many cases, the only source, for many Internet entrepreneurs. The more specialized the book, the more money you will make. If you are an expert in bookbinding, then your book How I Make $2000 a Week Binding Books is exclusive and saleable.

You Must Target Traffic

You can not be successful in business if you can not target your traffic. If you’re making and selling trout fishing flies, don’t advertise in House and Garden. Try fishing magazines that cater to trout fishermen. I placed an ad in a new classified section of a well-known national magazine that went to millions of homes in the United States. It cost me over $800.00 and the magazine told me that I would have a very profitable response.

I thought with my clever engineering brain that I only needed to sell to one of ten thousand readers to make a good profit. I may as well have walked down to the local senior center and given them the money as a donation. My response was zilch. I learned what I had already read but didn’t learn: Don’t place ads in magazines that do not have a long-standing classified section and don’t place ads in publications with broad appeal but do not target your market. The same ad in JackPot gave me enough response to let me improve the ad. The revised ad is in this issue.

Broad advertising in newspapers will probably not bring you many customers, at least too few to pay for the ads. However, newspapers give fast response compared to magazines and you can test ad copy by using newspapers. You can know in a few days what it would take you months to learn from magazine ads.

In general, you must receive at least three times the cost of an ad in orders to survive. Therefore, make sure you have the target in mind. I use national business magazines and this publication to reach opportunity seekers.

Always Test Your Ads

There are many sources to learn how to write ads. I suggest that you go to Amazon.com or Alibris.com or Abebooks.com and buy low-cost used copies of books that can teach you how to write ads, how to manage direct mail and mail order operations, etc. JackPot often publishes articles giving excellent advice on such matters.

Simple changes in wording often change ad response dramatically. Smaller ads may out pull larger ads. Study the ads in this and other publications. What do you see? Has the ad been running for a long time? What words are used that make the ad either exciting or yuck? Is there more than one version of an ad running? What identifies the ad so that the company can track the response? Does it say Dept. C or Suite JP in the address?

How are capital letters used in the ads? What other layout ideas are used? Is part of the ad in italics, black-on-white, etc? Learn the tricks of the trade!

Classified ads are good for testing and for obtaining enquiries. Such ads are too small to sell product, but they can send your customer to your Internet site where you have all the room in the world to sell him or her.

Also, you can give your address in your classified ad so that you can send responders a direct mail package.

And finally, you can send ad readers to a telephone number.

I’ve found that my regular telephone number is very effective in bringing prospective customers to me from national magazines—more so than when I provide an 800 number. I don’t give my telephone number in every magazine ad I purchase. But I do in the national slick page business rags. These customers are always provided information by direct mail. Why? Because they are the few in our society with no computer and they can’t go to one of my web sites. Some of these are poor souls, some are handicapped, and some are just in a hurry. Dealing with these folks is the one reason I’m in business. I don’t need the money, but I do need to help others obtain their goals in life. Years ago, I taught engineering for eight years at Iowa State University so I still like to teach others how to do things.

Run an Ad Campaign

I start an ad campaign by running classified ads of about 10 words. I’m looking for enquires, not sales. If the classified ad pulls, I consider and often switch to a 1-column inch ad. Then I go to a 2- or 3- column inch ad. Success here makes me think about ¼, ½, and finally full-page ads. (By the way, this publication is a very good test publication that can lead you to a national campaign in other publications.)

An ad may pull for a few months and then the competition or other factors drop sales. That is the time to suspend your ads but not to give up on the publication. Wait a few months and try again, and make sure you test different ad wordings too. Also test different classified categories. Your book might sell under Books and under Opportunities, etc.

Newspaper ads produce about ½ of your total response in about a week. Magazine ads produce ½ of your total response in about one month. The last half may come trickling in over many months.

Conclusion

Print advertising has made many an entrepreneur rich. In our age of the Internet, you can provide a well-written sales letter on your Internet site that will bring you sales if you have visitors to your site. Internet advertising methods are not as effective as they were in the past. Print advertising to targeted prospective buyers can give you the push you need to gain success in your home-based or Internet business.

John T. Jones may be contacted at TJ Books, 213 3rd Ave. N., Buhl, ID 83316 or by e-mail at tjbooks@earthlink.net. He has a dozen web sites. The e-commerce site where he sells wealth-success books and kits is http://www.bookfindhelp.com.

CLICK HERE For Information on Ivana's Low-Cost Traffic Guide which give a number of free ways to develop traffic.