Here’s a sneaky way to get FREE website traffic
A website without traffic is like a blunt pencil - pointless *groan*
However (bad jokes aside) a website is like any “real” store in that it needs foot traffic to sustain itself. Today I want to share one way to get traffic for free that perhaps you might not have considered recently.
But first a quick sidebar… Article and Strategic Content marketing is simply the idea of creating valuable content (words, pictures, video and audio) and then publishing it and syndicating it across the web. Actually the idea is to give the content away for free and include a bio box about your site and include a call to action with a link to visit your website.
There’s No Time… Like The Present. Begin Now.
Recently I wrote that Google appears to favour mature websites over young websites, and when it comes to relationships, maturity and tenure are two keys to the vault we call trust. Without trust we will not buy, and trust takes time to build and earn. I was researching another topic when I came across a post by Seth Godin that touched on this topic and here’s what Seth said:
“The best time to look for a job next year is right now. The best time to plan for a sale in three years is right now. The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late.
Publishing your ideas… in books, or on a blog, or in little twits on Twitter… and doing it with patience, over time, is the best way I can think of to lay a foundation for whatever it is you hope to do next.” - Source: Seth’s Blog
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
There Is No Recession Online
Though the North American economic downturn is hurting many traditional magazine, newspaper and television advertising providers, the digital advertising sector is rallying because companies are shifting their marketing budgets to the web.
Big advertisers are getting ‘web savvy’ and advertising online. General Motors recently announced it will spend $1.5 billion–half its annual advertising budget–online. Kimberly-Clark, home of Kleenex and Huggies brands, increased its Internet allocation to 26% from 10% of its marketing budget. And McDonald’s recently inked a digital deal reportedly worth $10 million.
All this spending proves the online advertising trend is real, and Google (the world’s biggest Internet advertising company) recently reported first-quarter earnings that exceeded all the Wall Street estimates, quelling concerns about its growth.
The main reason digital advertising does well is because it’s easier to measure the success of your web ads versus your TV or print ads. On the Web, you can count the number of times consumers look at or click on your ads and the dynamics of the web also let you adjust your adverts rapidly to maximize change.
Bottom line, web spending is growing at a much faster rate than spending on traditional media and there’s no immediate signs of this stopping any time soon.
*Inspired by recent Forbes article.
Thursday Thoughts - LinkedIn or not, you should be online
Last night I attended the Toronto Execunet meeting, our host Martin Buckland of ‘An Elite Resume’ service did a fine job of bringing together more than 50 executives and recruiters. Last night’s focus was on networking through using LinkedIn and for those of you who don’t know what LinkedIn is, it’s a web based social networking tool designed for professionals - think of it as a 21st century Rolodex on steroids! Here’s my LinkedIn profile.
Apart from the great opportunity to meet other fascinating people and learn how we can help each other, I realized once again the need to keep promoting strategic content and online reputation management because far too many people still don’t fully appreciate the impact the Internet has on their personal and professional career and job hunting efforts.
Over 80% of people perform a major search engine ‘background check’ before they purchase a product or patronize a business. Potential employers and professional recruiters now ‘Google’ prospective hires too. [Read more...]
The bottom line is this, you need to be pro actively using the Internet to manage your personal and professional marketing message - be it your resume on LinkedIn, your blog with your white papers and other “proof” you are an expert, or any of the the other social sites where you can express the value you bring to the table.
Remember, if you do not manage your brand, someone else will…
*Offer for Execunet attendees* If you’d like to know more about how you can take preemptive measures to ensure your personal and professional brand and Internet presence is managed properly, email or call me for a free consult.
Websites, Women and Wine
What do websites, women and wine have in common? In my humble opinion the answer is this: they all improve with age.
And apparently Google agrees with me - at least about the websites.
A recent patent application by Big-G (aptly named “Ranking Domains Using Domain Maturity”) indicates one of the many important metrics in judging the quality of a web page is the age of the registered domain.
If you stop and think about this for a moment, it does make sense. Today domains are cheap and therefore easy to acquire. Spammers often create large networks of low quality content websites in an attempt to fool the search engines and these sites are usually “young domains.”
You might say that Google is pro-age!
In fact, I’m happy to finally have some proof of what I suspected for a long time - age matters! Stop waiting to register that domain name, stop waiting to launch your site. don’t wait for perfect - start today. Time is wasting and Google is watching. You get points for aging gracefully online…
Earth Day and Share… no, not Cher.
Happy Earth Day, and in the spirit of all things Googly I thought I’d share today’s Google logo - you may recall they change it from time to time. And speaking of sharing, here’s the latest on the search engine share metrics (you know, who’s got the biggest tool…) No pun intended being ED and all that.
- Google has 58.7%,
- Yahoo holds 18.1%,
- Microsoft 12.0%,
- AOL 4.1
- Ask 2.4%
Blackberry Bloat - Ending Excessive Email
We know Blackberry’s are both a blessing and a curse and today I wanted to share an idea that was inspired by a colleague who told me that website email signups were decreasing because people didn’t want any more email on their Blackberry.
Huh? Website signups decreasing because folks can’t filter email on their Blackberry? I was shocked… but apparently it’s happening. Well I figured you might appreciate knowing how to filter the excessive email on your Blackberry so I made a short 4 minute video showing just how you can do it.
Here it is…
“James, your video is too small to see…”
I just listened to a voicemail about my free training videos and this is a perfect example of ‘proximity blindness’ on my part. This person said my videos were too small to see what I clicking on. I was baffled… these videos take extra time to produce because I specifically render them in high definition using a larger screen setting for this very purpose.
So what was the issue? I realized quickly this person doesn’t realize you can click on the small player window and make it go “Full Screen”. Like I said, ‘proximity blindness’ - I simply “assumed” that folks knew hovering over most of these video players shows you an option to view the video in “Full Screen” mode.
Well, today’s voicemail proves otherwise. And to those who did’t know this - I apologize for not making this clearer. And while I’m on the subject, please accept my apologies for future gaffs on my part - I’ve been in the weeds for so many years that occasionally I overlook the obvious stuff. Remember it’s ok to nudge me - I enjoy being reminded about the obvious and not so obvious steps that make this process so exciting.
Thanks to the person who left me the voice mail… you know who you are.
Searching For Answers - A New Study
A new study recently released about web searchers click behavior shows we click specialized content within general search results more than we do within the results of specialized searches.
Sidebar: You may recall that search engines now combine mixed sources into their results - news, video, images and so forth. Prior to about a year ago, you needed to search news for news, images for images and so on.
“So What’s The Answer Johnny?”
The study shows the following results… [Continue...]
A Random (Monday Morning) Act of Kindness
“It’s the economy stupid!” Immortal words indeed. So in an effort to balance the karmic books, I went rummaging on my hard drive and found this classic inspirational audio recording - and it’s all yours..
By the way, you can click on the link and your computer will figure out whether it wants to play it or download it. Alternatively, you can subscribe to my site’s RSS feed and enjoy any videos, audio or posts with your favourite RSS enabled reader.
- The Art of Money Getting (by PT Barnum)
