10 ways to increase traffic to your website | Free or under 100 dollars
It is no longer important that you have a large budget, are tech savvy, or have been in business for long: if you know what to do, there are many ways to promote yourself online in ways that are free or so inexpensive that they cash-flow; here are ten of them:
10 ways to increase traffic to your website | Free or under 100 dollars:
- Have your own blog and an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) that originated at your website (domain) – this makes you the source of the information – you can setup an account at hostgator.com for almost nothing that will allow you to install, for instance, WordPress, or any other open source (IE: free) CMS (content management system) for free with the push of a button.
- Let the world know the blog is there – this is very inexpensive: if you let the robots know that you want your pages indexed (use all-in-one SEO plug-in for WordPress) you can be found under organic search, and there are several other things to do:
- Submit the site to the top 50 or so search engines and directories – this is different from what it used to be: a robotic submission is not good enough: this stuff is free but somebody who understands the semantic web needs to do this manually and well to get traffic and good links.
- Get into local search, Google places..These places, Like Bing local search and Google places, are still free (although I do not think it will stay that way for long) – it is important to fill out these profiles and ‘places’ well to create the best possible anchor text links back to your mother site (your blog) you can pay $30 to do this at UBL.org, but I recommend that you have a professional help you maximize the way the data is submitted and maintained, the is the simplest, most effective free advertising available today.
- Use video - in the LA area, or if it can be done remotely or with staff actors, we do professionally edited video for as little as $300, and everyone can do video with their phone. Google mixes video results in worth the regular results, and, if your video is optimized properly (META data) it will appear on key word searches with a thumbnail (huge!) you can embed videos that are on YouTube in the pages or posts and on the front page of your website, even use the HD version we provide to inexpensive cable TV ads. We have done several lately where the website video serves the purpose also for television advertising. Any sustainable solution will include some video marketing.
- Post to groups, forums, social media sites – these sites get lost of traffic and have page rank. By posting carefully split original posts from your blog (see above) with links to read the rest at your blog, you can build traffic and links to your website. You can find these related, specifically niche groups all over the web, including but not limited to linkedin.com, Yahoo.com, Google.com, Live.com, facebook.com, biznik.com meetup.com and thousands of others: by joining the groups for free you often gain instant access to their entire mailing list, sometimes in the thousands, and/or a bulletin or idea board that reaches everyone.
- Post partial posts as above on industry related blogs and magazines, post comments: “related article here” etc. to build traffic and links.
- Hire someone to do some ‘spreading around’ on your behalf – we can have a good article , post, or partial article or contest, survey or other offer posted on the top 100 key-word-specific related sites .
- Issue free press releases – there is a reason why every major PR firm or large company does this. Of course nobody cares that some stranger got promoted: fortunately, thought, news organizations are always starved for news to print: by treating your press releases as news, they fill space, and you get free advertising. There are definitely people who still read the newspaper, and some of them are good clients.
- Join a Business Barter Exchange – mine will start you off with a 1000 dollar line of credit – you may not have thought about this, but even if you never do one single barter transaction, joining the group is the least expensive, most cost effective way to reach thousands of businesses instantly: you can set your own rules, and only accepts a portion of the commissions on barter, for instance, but you still get the calls and the exposure. There are actually people who buy and sell actual property completely on barter. My group is MYTRADEAMERICA.com which is hooked into dobarter.com the worlds largest network of inter-connected barter brokers with common currency. If you join MYTRADEAMERICA.com be sure to enter that you were referred by me, and your initiation fee will be $95 instead of the customary $295 (I do not need to make money off of barter LOL)
It has been my experience that the articles that feed me best are the ones like this with real and free information. Please share your tips here.
Rules of Engagement – 5 Tips will Double Your Income Overnight
If you doubt that you can double your income immediately by following these five steps, you are doing them already:
- Never give up on anybody – before my latest ten years as an Internet advertising consultant, I spent 15 years in fleet lease and Internet sales in a large automotive dealership. In that time, and having sold over 2000 vehicles myself (those are just the ones who bought!), the story and the memory that stands out as teaching me the most of any lesson in my career is this one: like Real Estate, everyone drives, buys, owns cars or trucks. Like a real estate client, an auto client is a consumer – sometimes referred to as “John. Q. Public.” ‘John’ does not know what cars (or real estate) are worth. The marketplace, like real estate, is full of shysters and misinformation: John Q. is apprehensive and does not know who to trust. He is not very sophisticated, does not understand business or technology, and, in some cases, is not all that good at life in general. But John Q., little as he likes it, must pick somebody to trust to buy cars and real estate, and he really does not know enough to do it well without help. Enter the messed up, love-hate relationship our clients have with us, where they must trust our advice but they really don’t; they run everything we say by somebody less qualified to come up with unexpected ways for them to continue to doubt us even after they have signed, constantly challenging the truth we have told them. John Q. is stressed, under pressure, difficult at best to deal with: so we must be psychologists, counselors, therapists, wizards…to maintain them? Naw! It is very simple: in my current business, and everything I have done in the past, I maintain an opt-in newsletter called The Rothman Letter. It was called The Rothman Letter in the auto Business, it is called that now in IT. Regardless of who they are, how the transaction went, or if I like or even remember them; every contact, every business card, every past client, referral, prospect…everybody gets added to the opt-in email I send out now, instead of the manually generated direct mail I once used. I learned this lesson because many years ago I sat in front of a past client where the original transaction went so bad years before, that I actually remembered, and tried to hide when I recognized the client on the lot. The client also recognized me, but not for the reason I thought, and he approached me: “Hey, there you are Israel, bet you didn’t expect to see me again..” He actually had no idea how surprised, because he did not remember the deal at all: all he remembered were my quarterly newsletters, with my daughters cartoon images to make sure people would recognize me. A side note: the client woke up and remembered half way through the deal, and bought the car anyway.
- ABC – In the classic sales film you should all see if you have not, Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, the famous “Coffee is for Closers’ scene includes the advice: Always Be Closing - If you think this simple and obvious think again: this is the single most important factor that defines “closers”, their mind is always on the close, they never miss a chance to close: every question, objection, remark or answer is a chance to close something, if not just the simple acknowledgment of what you have said: it is really so simple: after each statement, you trial close: this makes sense, right? You understand this, don’t you?! We are going to do business, aren’t we?! You are really liking this, aren’t you?! Every time the client acknowledges ANYTHING that you ask them to acknowledge, emotionally you are becoming closer and they are more and more likely to follow through and buy; so simple yet so underutilized. I have been doing this so long that it comes naturally in every conversation, without my thinking about it, IE:, I am what I do.
- Always tell the truth – this one is less obvious, but just as important: I remember the cartoon magazines where everyone had two faces, the one they are holding up, and the real one behind the scenes. This is actually very realistic: they are telling you that they trust and believe you, but the rule is: they will verify everything you say online or with somebody else; John will say you have a deal, then take everything you have told him and shop you and your reputation, and your competition overnight before you get the money he said that he sent today. Tell the truth, know that John will verify it, tell him knowingly about things that you want him to research: and tell him that you know he will research and check and encourage him to: this presents confidence and you are taking away the need for the client to lie to you, which makes them trust you. This will cause more closes, more referrals, and less friction later on.
- Do not be afraid of loosing the client: this is the hardest one to learn, and one of the most important; there is such a thing as a bad client. Like my business (website design and internet advertising) real estate creates a scenario where you are ‘joined at the hip’ or ‘married’ to a client for long periods of time, years in my business, at least months in yours. John will buy another car, another house someday, he is a prospect for you in the future more if he just bought than if you had never met him, statistically speaking. But you are also evaluating John. You do not want his business, now, later, or ever if he is dishonest, is hiding something, is disloyal, tight, greedy…these are all things that will effect the outcome of your relationship, and you, the consultant or Realtor, will be blamed for results whether John listens or not. My advice: tell John this: tell him that you are evaluating him at the same time he evaluates you. Start the relationship on a mutually respectful level, or don’t start it. I am downright skittish when it comes to this: if I suspect that a client may embody any of these despised traits, I confront him or her about it; and if they do not have the right answers, I TERMINATE THE RELATIONSHIP. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT WORTH DOING BUSINESS WITH.
- High touch – whenever a consumer makes any major decision they will have post-sale melancholy feelings: know this, plan for it, make a follow up call when they least expect it to let them know that they still matter even though you already have a down payment
Stay in touch, call often: people need friends, not just vendors.
I sincerely hope these tips serve you as well as they have me. This is the second recession I have survived in business, and, if not for these ‘rules of engagement’, I would not be here now. What are your seasoned salesperson ‘rules of engagement’? Will you share?
BTW, I have offered the training manual I used to build a huge, effective sales force when we had such a sales force (we are all virtual now); people who asked me for the top ten objections and how to handle them from my manual were very pleased – it is free for the asking: mailto:israel@socialmediasystems.com
Trade shows dieing a Slow Death – the future of Social Media
I have been watching the trends closely for 10 years and this is what I think: trade shows are in decline: there is less and less attendance, and more and more competition from online competitors: according to this article from Chicagobusiness.com:
“…conventions and trade shows are sustaining double-digit declines in attendance this year, squeezing local hotels, restaurants and other businesses that cater to conventioneers.
With the recession forcing them to cut costs, companies are sending fewer employees to meetings at the South Side convention center or not showing up at all. The impact is rippling through the local economy, which has lost 17,900 hospitality-related jobs in the past year, a 5.2% drop, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security…”
According to this article about the decline of large automated exhibitions:
“Large, central automation exhibitions used to be major events a couple of decades ago, attracting hundreds of thousands of attendees from all over the world. Today exhibitions are steadily declining because there are more effective ways to disseminate information and provide opportunities for customer and supplier networking.”
“..alas, those days have gone. Attendance at all the large automation exhibitions has declined to a fraction of former times. Attendance at the annual ISA exhibition has declined to about 15,000. The vendor to end-user ratio which used to be as much as 10 to 1 is more like 2:1 today and sometimes less (my estimates). Traffic is sparse, with forlorn exhibitors spending their time reviewing each others products and bemoaning hard times. To offset distance/travel problems, ISA came up with a solution – to have smaller, “local” shows. But this hasn’t worked – and the attendance at those is sparser.”
I agree with Jim Pinto in the above article he wrote for Automation.com, there is a mega trend away from large physical trade shows.
This is saddening to me, as I love trade shows, I love the energy, and it once was a viable way to sell products and services to, for instance, real estate executives.
However, realistically, the trend will continue; and those of us who once got most of our business from these shows must rethink our marketing plans.
Fortunately for me, I have always put all the business cars through a card scanner, and added them to my triple-opt-in newsletter, the Rothman letter:
Although it is not nearly as much fun as the trade shows that no longer cash-flow (as far as I know, I have not been to one for a while); I have been able to replace my income from the trade shows by sending out a newsletter at least quarterly and often monthly.
Opt-in-email marketing is very effective, especially when you have over 9000 prospects that you have met in person opting-in to read whatever you send, and it is much less expensive than a trade show: even if you must still attend the shows, building this list as I have from the attendees is a great way to leverage the investment and make it pay all year long.
A word of caution, though: the stuff you send out must be useful and i do not recommend touching basis more that once per month.
Now that I can reach literally thousands of people on linked-in, Activerain, and Realtown groups ( to name a few of many), I can sell right from here, but it is not nearly as much fun in my opinion.
All of business becomes more exact and competitive all the time, making it more important that ever that you have:
- Good branding
- Good Graphics
- A clear knowledge of who your prospects are and where to find them
- A follow up system to maximize results
- Opt-in (permission based) marketing is the way to go
Seemless Integration of Ihomefinder IDX Into a WordPress Blog
Ihomefinder.com IDX is available almost everywhere, and very easy to integrate into a WordPress Blog site seamlessly using the theme style sheet links and header:
The branded links then look like this:
Notice that I was able to also insert the site navigation on every page of the branded pages! (more…)
ISO 9001 Quality Control Experts – easy to rank for niche searches
If you type into Google search “ISO 9001 Quality Control Experts” or anything else to do with Guaranteed Certification in this niche market, you will find our client: Qualaco, Inc. Even though this is a brand new domain we reserved for them, they already have organic Google rankings targeting their niche market exactly.
They not only rank on Google searches for whatever they write about in this niche market they know so much about: they also have greatly enhanced their business plan. You see: Qualaco, Inc. is a management consulting company with a niche specialty which addresses a huge, lucrative marketplace: there are many companies in aerospace, oil, Government Services, Defense contractors, Food services, Transportation and many other gigantic industries who are compelled to conduct quality control audits in order to maintain certifications necessary to conduct their businesses. While these mandatory third party quality control audits have tremendous value for other areas of Human Resources and efficiency in manufacturing processes improvement, they are absolutely mandatory in order to maintain various government certifications.
We have not only allowed out wonderful efficiency expert consultants to reach their audience in a new way, without the usual very expensive process of calling on Government agencies and large corporations directly and breaking down doors so to speak. We have also installed special plug ins into the WordPress blog we created for them, which allow them to set any number of special permissions providing access to client specific pages, where internal auditing and employee moral monitoring, and anonymous tips information can me collected and monitored all year long; also with special access to the management of clients to have constant information fed to them, and time and date stamped records to be maintained as a permanent record, thereby turning a yearly service into an ongoing one, without almost no internal cost. This has enhanced their ability to provide a value to their clients, and to operate profitably with minimum human man hours, their chief limiting factor because their knowledge and what they do is so very specialized that they cannot duplicate themselves.
What we have done putting them on top of Google was easy (more…)
