Daniel L. James

Why Web Design and SEO Are So Important

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:51:50 +0000

Face it: We’re in the 21st Century and the Internet is used by just about everyone to find just about everything.

A company’s website is either the first or second impression a customer has about the business. I’ve had many customers look up my company’s website while I was on the phone with them. The website will often influence a customer’s perception of the quality of the products and services being offered. If the site is plain-looking, boring, short on content, poorly designed, hard to navigate, or hard to find in search engines, you’d be better off not having a website at all!

I’ve lost count of how many business clients I’ve encountered who give their web presence last priority. The same clients wouldn’t dream of allowing their field sales reps to show up at customers’ offices wearing jeans and T-shirts, but many websites give the impression that their owners just don’t care about quality.

A successful business, whether or not it processes online transactions, whether it’s global, national or local, needs to regard its website as a “first contact sales rep” for marketing purposes.

And I’m not just talking about the appearance of the site, but its search engine ranking. Without the proper structure, tagging, keyword selection and content management, the site will be virtually invisible to potential customers.

Web developers and designers are plentiful; true Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts are not. The SEO goal of every website project should be: to make the site easier to find than the competition. This means raising the Google “Page Rank” of a site’s landing pages, and ensuring that these pages have been optimized to the most important keywords/phrases the business is targeting.

There are dozens of ways to build the SEO profile of a website, and despite rumors to the contrary, not all of Google’s ranking algorithms are secret. Reaching Page-One of Google is a science – it just looks like magic! One of the most efficient ways to rank-up a web page is to have other highly-ranked pages link to it. Without quality “backlinks,” you could have a gorgeous and perfectly-structured website on the Internet and still end up on page-100.

There are many SEO tools available that help reduce the time and cost of optimizing a website, including Market Samurai, Commission Blueprint, and Google’s own Keyword Analyzer. But having great wiz-bang tools isn’t enough. You must fully understand how SEO and social media influence rankings on Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

If you haven’t been giving your website the priority and attention it deserves, whether it’s just a WordPress blog or a full-blown commercial site, then you’re leaving money on the table. If your customers can’t find you in the search engines, then you don’t exist!

For more information about SEO and how web pages can quickly appear on page-one of Google, please visit LarkinSoft.

Why Parties Are More Effective Than Marketing

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:29:09 +0000

It astounds me every day that marketing professionals would have the etiquette to attend a friend’s party without trying to pitch everyone within three feet of them; but use social media to try to have sex without first saying hello.

I know, it sounds harsh, but the analogy is sound.

I’ve attended hundreds of parties – admittedly, mostly in college – and have always come to expect at least one dingbat who presumes that everyone else attended the party just to buy from him. It was like dropping fresh garlic in the middle of a petry dish filled with common cold virus. The bugs all flee to the outer rims of the dish!

The party pooper is seen later all by himself – no friends, no fun, and NO SALES. I’m sure you know the type.

The phenomenon we call Social Media is no different. Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter – for example – are places where we can meet people, have fun, and build relationships. They’ve never been very effective as marketing venues. But this fact doesn’t stop marketing wannabes from dumping pitches on everyone else’s parties.

For example, I get automated direct messages on Twitter every time I follow someone, and more than 60 percent of the messages go something like: “Hi, thanks for following. To make money from your Twitter traffic, click here http://blah.blah”

They don’t even know my name yet, but want to stick their hands into my wallet. No relationship. No fun. And – you guessed it – NO SALE. I simply delete their feeble and transparent marketing attempt and UN-follow them.

The most effective marketing utilizing social media is still “attraction marketing” – which makes friends first by offering free, useful information, attracting visitors to a central hub – usually a well-optimized WordPress blog, where they are given opportunities to learn more from the person they’ve already deemed to be an expert in the given topic AND with whom they’ve already developed a relationship.

Ask yourself this: If I’m marketing to everyone on social media and NOT selling very much, should I continue to do what doesn’t work and expect the results to change for the better?

Exploding Twitter Followings, Automatically

admin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:43:17 +0000

Out of the hundreds of offers I get every day to increase my followings on Social Media sites like Twitter, one method has proven to actually work – and it happens to be the cheapest of the lot. I watched Bill Crosby’s promo video on Friday, June 12th, and was not initially impressed. It was a rather amateurish sales pitch and not terribly convincing. Plus, the video was a bit old, but the screenshot of Crosby’s Twitter following at that time showed a pretty good count.

While watching the video, I opened a new window and visited his current Twitter page. He had over 40,000 followers! That did it! As of that morning, I had about 250 followers, and I had struggled to find them. Crosby claimed I could increase my following by 16,000 within 90 days, using FREE tools to automate the process. The “magic” was in how those tools were combined to send a steady stream of useful content through one’s Twitter account, attracting people to follow, then having another free service automatically follow them back. Voila! Automated growth.

I couldn’t resist. I paid for the training – I think it was a paltry $27 or something like that, and I spent an hour watching Crosby actually set up the entire process, click-by-click. After each step, I paused the video and performed the step myself. This continued until the end of the training – approximately an hour later.

Just prior to launching Crosby’s “Twitter Traffic Machine,” I captured a screenshot of my Twitter page, which showed 258 followers. During this past week, I’ve made very few Tweets myself, mostly humorous one-liners, but my “Machine” has been averaging one or two Tweets every hour, around the clock, all related to my interests (see my Twitter profile at @Danorator for details).

This morning – one week later – I checked my Twitter account and saw over 1,147 followers (click an image to view full, dated screenshots). How many of these new friends are guitar or jazz enthusiasts, or dominoes players, I have no idea yet, but the point of the exercise was to prove Crosby’s assertion that Twitter followings could be attracted through an automated process of sharing content with the world.

As this auto-pilot syndication process continues, the rate of growth should steadily increase, since many of my Tweets will be Re-tweeted to my followers’ followers. Crosby’s claim, therefore, should be easily achieved.

Could I have figured out this Twitter “magic” myself? Of course, but it might’ve taken months to put it all together. Crosby says it took him over 2,000 hours of research to perfect the “Machine.” My experience proves that his time investment was worth it, and saves me both time and effort to build my social networks.

One word of caution about any automated follower-gathering system: If the traffic that matters is highly targeted, make sure that the “following” being generated is properly filtered. Having a huge mass of friends isn’t the point — having friends that trust you and like you, and want what you have to offer, is the point. In the end, the person with the most sales wins, even if someone else has the most Tweeters!

You can learn more about Crosby’s Twitter Traffic Machine here, and can follow him at @BillCrosby on Twitter.

Attraction Marketing, the Breakfast of Champions

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:20:02 +0000

I’ve been studying the videos, blogs and published materials from some of the champions in Attraction Marketing, including Mike Dillard, Mark Wieser, Jonathan Budd, Katie Freiling, Scott Brandon Hoffman, and many others. The manner in which these folks operate is very similar, just from diverse perspectives, since each has a different passion or niche. But, boiling down their approaches to what they share in common yields the following evidence:

They have all mastered the art of generating online traffic and directing it to their blogs or opt-in capture pages. Much of this traffic is free, but some is through Pay-Per-Click (AdWords, etc.).

They have all employed an online “engine” of sorts, to automatically provide free content and training to those who opt-in as well as a “back office” for use by those who wish to implement their training.

They have all made generic training materials available for purchase or subscription to those who opt-in, to help advance the skills necessary to succeed.

They have all produced high-quality capture pages and sales letters that generate high conversion rates.

They have all leveraged Social Networks to exponentially syndicate their content and produce significant “free” traffic.

They have all realized that “Attraction Marketing” must both attract and sort their prospects, separating the truly motivated entrepreneurs from the unqualified.

Only the “qualified” are offered anything beyond the generic training, but it’s usually the prospect’s idea and timing that dictates any further dealings.

They have all mastered the art of converting prospects into superstar network marketers, or certainly the art of attracting those who are already superstars.

Meanwhile, the front-end generic materials more than pay for the cost of prospecting for back-end network marketing representatives, thus offering them “funded prospecting,” making a profit on every lead whether or not a purchase is made.

Setting up these businesses was neither “simple” nor “quick”. However, the parts of the business that would drain them of their productive time were automated, leaving them free to create new content, respond to their qualified prospects, and have a life outside of the Internet.

If an automated online business that can do all this intrigues you, or excites you, or keeps you up at night thinking of the possibilities, stay tuned to this site and those mentioned above for the free training necessary to do it. We are finishing the videos for a Free Attraction Marketing Video Boot Camp, with the strategies and tactics needed to build an Attraction Marketing business. You’ll be able to opt-in very shortly!

Attraction Marketing – Giving First, Getting Last

admin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:05:37 +0000

“If you can help enough other people achieve their financial goals, yours will be met automatically.”
~~J.D. Rockefeller

The universal Law of Reciprocity holds that whenever we give, without expecting anything in return, we will often receive in a measure greater than our gift. Nice philosophy, right? While I can’t say with certainty that it works in every aspect of our daily lives, in the world of Online Marketing, the principle has been proven over and over.

Let me put it this way: Which of the following types of people attract you the most?

When you first meet this person he/she immediately tries to sell you on whatever MLM program or product they’re representing;
When you first meet this person he/she is genuinely interested in your activities and offers some free advice or proven suggestions that could help you succeed.

If you answered #1, you might as well close this page now!

Some elite web-based marketing gurus have applied this principle to their approach, and are earning five- to six-figure returns each month. How?

They have come to the realization that traditional products, services, and opportunities don’t solve people’s needs. The traditional model tries to sell specific tools like saws, drills, vitamins or home-based businesses when, in fact, the customer needs a specific sized piece of wood, a hole in that wood, better health or financial well-being.

The customer doesn’t care about the brand of tool or vitamin, or what home-business it is, as long as he/she receives the “solution” to their need and trusts the person offering it.

Successful online marketers, therefore, have become experts in solving problems, offering free advice to anyone who asks for it. After awhile, the customer – on his/her own timetable – will make the decision based on who they perceive has their best interests at heart and who they trust.

That’s “Attraction Marketing” in a nutshell, and it’s exactly what 99% of network marketers fail to do.

The secret is to create – or plug into – a system that guarantees:

You don’t have to “sell.”
You don’t have to ask people to join your business – people ask you!
You don’t have to post “work at home” flyers on car windows and home doorknobs.
You get paid to prospect people.
You can duplicate your success by just plugging customers into an automated system.
You can make cash quickly, even from the people who DON’T join the business.
You can start making money your very first day.

For example, let’s say that you are trying to supplement your primary job with a home-based source of income, such as a network-marketing plan around health supplements. Will others be as excited about your company or product line as you are? Probably not.

However, if you offer free training on how to attract an endless source of qualified prospects for any home business, once people learn it, they will naturally trust your guidance on which opportunities can make them the best return for their efforts. They will know that you have an interest in their individual success – no matter which opportunity they choose to join. And a few may ask you about your supplement business.

The great thing about this is that you will have earned money along the way just to prospect these people, and by the time they join your business they will have already been trained on how to recruit new prospects!

Your expertise and experience on the subject will naturally make you the hunted. Putting these proven methods into practice, you will no longer need to search for prospects, because they’ll already be drawn to you like magnets.

If this approach interests you, please consider continuing your education with this FREE 7-part video series on “Magnetic Sponsoring” by marketing guru, Mike Dillard. It will open your eyes to financial freedom. Check it out!