Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoreponders

Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoreponders

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your
site has finally come to just what she is looking for and
is about to make a purchase. It's a sunny afternoon, and
her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the
visitor's large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree,
suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and
your sale is dust - unless you have had the foresight to
utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email
address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can
then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the
sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her
precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do
so much more than just automatically answer your email.
Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and
productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual
visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder
to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders
will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested
prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed
about your services or products, while building your
reputation as a credible expert in your particular
business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform
them of current sales you are running and of promotional
material that your affiliates can use themselves to
increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and
techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go
out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books,
movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder.
Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your
affiliate's page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing
targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business
credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your
sales potential. If your articles contain valuable
information, many editors will print what is known as a
resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and
a brief description of your service or product. It can also
contain your autoresponder address. Let's say you've
written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder
accounts and create a master list that contains the titles
of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief
abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally,
include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can
add their articles to your list, increasing the number of
writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your
articles when you've written new ones that they may want to
publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure
repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to
effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your
autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to
numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances
of converting visitors into customers. For example, if
you're selling a particular product, put testimonials about
how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a
detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let's say you sell advertising
on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your
autoresponder to send the information about rates and how
to place an ad automatically to all prospects' email
addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can
also send notification of any special deals you are
currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your
autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that
each lesson has quality content - not a sales pitch. Your
content will do the selling for you, and will do it much
more effectively. You can include tips centered on a
different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your
product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible
benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product.
Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each
lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a
purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after
a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the
possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your
course but are dragging their feet about actually making a
purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new
products or services, and the products and services of your
affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an
idea of the type of information you can provide and the
quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports
are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a
potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the
answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be
motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have
a record of the visitors' email addresses who took your
quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter
send their responses to your autoresponder. Your
autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of
their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your
prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software,
membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste
often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture
their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from
your website. Set up your autoresponder to give
instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then
make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For
example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that
contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links
that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors
that they may have free access to your affiliate page by
simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather
a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your
affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request
form for visitors to be notified of special offers or
discounts in the future. This creates a very effective
mailing list that contains the names of people who are
already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should
contain up to fifty links that would be of particular
interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own
promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used
creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant
ideas of your own!

Until next time,
Free Resource Guy

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking

Increasing Your Search Engine Ranking


The methods employed to increase your search engine
rankings may seem like rocket science to you, so you have
probably avoided dealing with this issue. I am here to tell
you - the time has come to face your website! A high search
engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you
have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your
business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this
issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on
the Internet find websites through search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages
for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted
customers to your site who will be more than likely to make
a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine
results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your
website. That's what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information
available online to figure out how to optimize your web
pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few
simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments,
and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The
first item you should examine is the title bar on your
homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page.
Look at the words that appear there when you access your
home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on
your homepage's title bar should include the most important
keywords or phrases, one of which would include your
company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on
the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page
of your site should contain the most important keywords and
phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very
long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or
less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title
bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to
each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website
content. Search engines generally list sites that contain
quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The
text on your site must contain the most important keywords
- the words that potential customers will be typing into
search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is
not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100
carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high
ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However,
the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning
that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your
cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able
to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not
highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case,
ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format in
order to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this
sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is
really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags
are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality,
they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding
them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags
in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must
access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the
browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a
window revealing the underlying code that created the page.
If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of
the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta
name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that
reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This
may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any
little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a
factor that is extremely important in terms of search
engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link
popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based
on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your
links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular
search engine, the search engine will then show you what
sites are linked to your site. In the case that there
aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites
that are linked up have low search engine rankings,
consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially,
this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that
they exchange links with your site. Of course, this
requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want
to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only
boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more
quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a
successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out
and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking
some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't
boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this
all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the
higher your search engine ranking, the more quality
customers will be directed your way.

Until next time,
Free Resource Guy

DO'S AND DON'Ts For Building Your Site's Link Popularity

Do's and Don'ts forBuilding Your Site's Link Popularity
by Robin Nobles

One thing that rang loud and clear from the Search Engine Strategies 2001 Conference in San Francisco in August was the importance of building a good, solid link popularity for your Web site.
However, there are no free rides when it comes to building link popularity. It takes hard work and dedication, but it certainly is worth the effort. After all, how many ill optimized sites have you seen that are in the top 10 rankings, when the only thing going for the site is a strong link popularity?
So, let's look at some do's and don'ts to consider when trying to build your link popularity.

Do's
* Concentrate on related and important links only. Sheer numbers are no longer important. What's important is that the more popular sites on the Web link to your site, as well as making sure that the links pointing to your site are relevant to your topic area.
* Make sure that your site is listed in all of the major directories: Yahoo!, the Open Directory Project, and LookSmart. Also, see if your site is relevant to a particular About.com area, and submit it to the guide.
* Visit Search Engine Guide and search for vertical engines or directories in your focus area. Search Engine Guide features a listing of over 3,700 engines and directories, so it's an excellent resource for finding focused engines or directories to submit to.
* Visit Link Popularity Check and search for your competitors. Start visiting the sites that are linked to your competitors, and write to see if they'll consider linking to your site.
* Create a list of links before you ever contact sites for linking purposes. If the company sees that you've already added their URL to your list of links, they'll be more apt to add your link on their site in return. Again, concentrate on related links only.
* Consider what other fields are related to your particular industry and concentrate on getting links from those areas. You won't want to add competing sites to your links' page, but you probably won't mind adding links to sites that aren't direct competitors. For example, if you have a site that sells needlework kits, you won't want to list other sites that sell needlework kits. However, you probably won't mind linking to sites offering related products, such as sewing baskets, books on needlework, or online sewing classes.
* When you visit related sites, look to see if they offer guestbooks or forums. If they do, post a message, and include your URL in your signature.
* Consider setting up separate theme-oriented domains and link all of your domains together.
* Offer a discount of your goods or services for anyone who agrees to post a small graphic on their site that links back to your site.
* Create a testimonial page, and write a brief testimonial about any Web site that you'd like to get linked to your site. Inform the site of the testimonial, and encourage them to link to the page.
* Or, write testimonials of particular products, and sign the testimonial with your name and URL. Send the testimonials out to the individual companies, and tell them how much you've enjoyed using their products. Many companies will place testimonials in particular areas of their site, and they're delighted to get rave reviews about their products.
* Offer awards on your site, and give out little graphics that link back to your site.
* Set up an affiliate program, which is an excellent way to boost link popularity.
* Visit the Reciprocal Linkage Topics area of Webmaster World forums and look for new ideas for building link popularity.
* Become a content provider in your focus area, and get your articles posted across the Net in related areas.
* Are there any professional organizations related to your industry? If so, do they have pages of links?
* Develop a plan for boosting link popularity, and then stick to it. Pledge to get so many new links a week, and hire a high school student at minimum wage to work for you, if needed.
* If you need help in developing a linkage program for your site, consider hiring a company like LinkageXpress to do it for you.
* Though I haven't personally used it, I've heard good things about Zeus, a software program that is a reciprocal link generator.
* Remember to link to other important, related sites in your industry from your own site. After all, link popularity is both incoming and outgoing, and related, important sites are what you're after.
Don'ts
* Don't participate in link exchange programs or link farms. Google will ban sites that participate in link exchange programs, and many of the other major engines have also expressed their dislike of artificially created link popularity.
* Don't use hidden links on your page. Again, many of the major engines frown on the use of hidden links.
* Don't make the mistake of thinking that link popularity isn't important or necessary. A high link popularity is sometimes all it takes to achieve top rankings. It's crucial, in many cases, to the success of an online business.
* If you create separate theme focused sites for the purpose of boosting link popularity, don't use redirects on those sites pointing back to your main site. Rather, create a mini site at the new URL with several pages of good, solid content, and then visibly link back to the main site.
* Don't bother with free-for-all pages. Generally the only thing these pages will guarantee is an increase in email spam if you participate.
In Conclusion
Devote some time and energy to the building of a solid link popularity for your site. Not only will it help your site in the rankings, but it will more than likely increase your traffic as well.
Robin Nobles teaches 2-, 3-, and 5-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe (SearchEngineWorkshops.com) as well as online SEO training courses (OnlineWebTraining.com). They have recently launched localized SEO training centers through SearchEngineAcademy.com, and they have expanded their workshops to Europe with Search Engine Workshops UK. They have also opened the first networking community for SEOs, the Workshop Resource Center (WRC).

Free Tools part 2

Link Reputation Tool
http://198.68.180.60/cgi-bin/link-reputation-tool.cgi
We know the importance of link popularity (the number and quality of inbound links pointing to our Web site). Equally important is link reputation - what those inbound links say about our Web site. In other words, link reputation is what is written in the link text, or the clickable text, pointing to our Web site. With this free link reputation tool, you can learn what other sites are saying about your Web site.

Trojan Scanner
http://info-x.co.uk/netools/netools.asp
Wow. This tool really brings back “fond” memories when I had my very own Trojan horse clomping around inside my computer system. (A word of advice: please get a firewall!)
The Trojan Scanner at Information Exchange scans your system for 85 known Trojans. You'll hold your breath as it runs its scan, or at least I did. You'll also find a WhoIs Lookup, a Server Check, and other cool tools.

Quality Assurance ToolBox at the W3C Consortium
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/
The W3C offers a suite of validators that you can use, such as a W3C markup validator, a CSS validator, an XML validator, a log validator, and some that I've never heard of!
As you know, it's important to be in compliance with W3C standards, and these tools and validators will help you to accomplish just that.

FreeWebSubmission Site Ranking Tool
http://www.freewebsubmission.com/site-ranking.html
Plug in your URL and your keyword phrase, and you'll quickly learn your rankings across 12 major search engines in a minute or two. Pretty slick!

SnapFiles
http://www.webattack.com/
Free software (freeware) galore! This is a computer addict's paradise. Enjoy!

Dynamic Drive
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/
Dynamic Drive offers original dynamic scripts (DHTML) and a JavaScript code library, including calendars, mouseover images, DHTML games, scrollers, etc.

Logo Generator
http://www.coolarchive.com/logogen.cfm

Not a Web or graphics designer (like me)? This site has some cool tools just for you. Another one is a button maker.

DNS Report
http://www.dnsreport.com/
Many domains have DNS problems. This handy site will help you find those problems and fix them by providing a DNS report for your domain.

Everything You Want to Know about a URL (and I DO mean EVERYTHING)
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/
URLinfo is a “tool for handling Web pages,” and it includes 107 tools that you can use to dig for information on a URL. You'll be there for hours, so grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee and get ready! There are more nooks and crannies to this site than you can possibly imagine.

What is my IP Address?
http://www.whatismyipaddress.com/
Doesn't take much explanation on this one, does it? If you ever need to know your IP address, this neat little online tool will answer the question for you.

Free Wordtracker Magic Audio Tutorial
http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/audiomagic.html
Sign up for John Alexander's audio tutorial offering tips for doing keyword research using Wordtracker. Two audio tips are sent out by e-mail once a week, and they're approximately 2-3 minutes in length.
These tips are worth their weight in gold as they open your creative mind to researching keywords.

Search Engine Relationship Chart
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm
By far, the best chart to show the relationships between the search engines and directories is Bruce Clay's. He does a tremendous job of keeping it up to date, and you can even download a copy as a PDF.

Free Tools

Customer Focus Calculator (“We We Monitor”!)
http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm
This has got to be one of my favorite cool tools. It analyzes a Web page and lets you know if the Web page is focused on YOU or on your customers. After all, shouldn’t our Web pages be written for our customers . . . not ourselves?

Search Engine Optimization Tools
http://www.webconfs.com
This site has three different tools that are really cool. One is a Search Engine Spider Simulator, which displays exactly what a spider would see when it visits your page. Another free tool is the Google Backlink Checker, which lets you know who’s linking to your site and what link text they’re using. The last tool is the Similar Page Checker. We all know that “duplicate content” is a no no. This neat tool will determine the similarity between two pages.

Marketleap Search Engine Marketing Tools
http://www.marketleap.com/services/freetools/default.htm
My favorite tool on this page is the Link Popularity Check. Enter your URL and up to three comparison URLs, and the site will let you know what your link popularity is in AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Google, Inktomi, and MSN. It also compares your site’s link popularity to other URLs you listed as well as other sites on the Net. The Search Engine Saturation tool determines how many pages a given search engine has in its index for your Web site. You can compare your site to five other sites with this tool. Finally, the Keyword Verification Tool checks to see if your page is in the top three pages of a search engine’s results for a certain keyword or keyword phrase.

Website Security Report
http://security.computer-concierge.net/security/website_security_report.asp
This very cool tool lets you find out how secure your Web site is. When I first used it, it found more holes in the security of my Web site than the laws allows, and I promptly changed to a different hosting company!

Your Computer’s Security
http://grc.com/default.htm
Gibson Research Corporation offers a really neat (and free) tool for checking the security of your computer: ShieldsUp. Scroll down on the page to the Hot Spots area, where you’ll find the link to ShieldsUp. Be sure to go through each of the checks in the ShieldsUp section (File Sharing, Common Ports, etc.).

Reverse DNS Lookup
http://remote.12dt.com/rns/
This service converts an IP address to the host name by searching domain name service tables.

Doctor HTML
http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
Click on Single Page, and the free service will analyze your Web page based on document structure, image syntax, table analysis, browser support, verify hyperlinks, and much more.

GifBot by NetMechanic
http://www.netmechanic.com/accelerate.htm
GifBot will compress your GIF, JPEG, and animated GIF images by decreasing the file size without sacrificing the quality of the image. So, your pages load faster!

Bobby Online
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
This online service allows you to test Web pages to help expose and repair barriers to accessibility and encourage compliance with existing accessibility guidelines. It’s very important to make sure your Web pages are accessible for those who surf the Internet with disabilities.

AnyBrowser.com Screen Size Tester
http://anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html
Have you ever been to a Web site and not been able to scroll to the bottom of the page? The scroll bar is there, but you can’t get down that far to scroll. It’s not a pleasant experience. At the Screen Size Tester, you can test your Web pages in different screen resolutions so that you can be assured that all of your visitors can view your site in its entirety.

Anti-Spam and Security Fix for FormMail.pl Script
http://mailvalley.com/formmail/
“Formmail.pl, one of the most-used perl scripts on the Web, is designed to send data entered into a Web form to an e-mail address. This script could be exploited by a malicious user who could use Formmail as a spam server. If you use this script, spammers may be able to use it to send spam freely using your server's resources.” This site offers a patched version that prevents the script from being used by spammers.

Comprehensive Guide to .htaccess
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml
Though not a “tool” per se, this comprehensive tutorial about how to use the .htaccess file is excellent.

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes for 2002
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html
Though also not a tool, this handy list is something that we should all be aware of. For example, don’t use horizontal scrolling!

Again, thanks to all of you who shared these wonderfully helpful tools with me. If I missed any (which I’m sure I did), please let me know. Click here to read part 2 of this article with another great list of free cool tools.