Some great SEO Blog posts

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

A blog I wrote today on our SEO Blog templates site, enjoy:

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

I rarely will write a blog on some other blogs of our sites, and publish it here. The main reason is that this is our most valued blog, as it gets the most focused visitors, which mainly is SEO and Internet Marketing centric. The standards I have set for this blog are pretty high, but I wrote a blog on my personal blog and it fits here very well. I do however publish posts from here to my other blogs, as I rarely write on those other blogs. I tell you all this, as you should always stick to the focus of your blogs topics and have different blogs. I see rookies make the mistake of mixing their business blogs with personal ones. The objective of any online business is to sell products or services, and if it’s too hard to sell the product online. The website or online businesses objective is to generate leads, that is why this article fits so well, so read on and remember to blog your way to the top, but stay focused on your keywords:

The Art of Capturing Online Leads

March 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm by Vipin K. Singh in B2B

We just had a great meeting to discuss online lead capturing with our tech, marketing, and small group at ITEX. So this topic is fresh in my mind and makes for a perfect blog for our Online Marketplace, as the biggest Value we provide in the MyTypes and ITEX marketplace is for businesses to generate online leads . We are working on a lead capturing strategy to spotlight local businesses, such as Massage therapists, Lawyers, Dentists, and local restaurants. We are going to launch our online Businesses Spotlight pages today. One of the things that we were discussing was the benefits of memberships and getting people to actually sign-up, and capturing the online leads. This is a topic that is very near and dear to all online businesses. And, one that I have worked on and discussed professionally for years, especially back in 2003-2004 for my first real estate website, UrbanTango.com. The goal back than and still today has been pretty consistent, give visitors lots of free stuff online, but get people to sign up by giving them more benefits for signing up.

Capturing Leads is a tricky business, and some thing that all online businesses have to deal with. A friend of mine, did not give much away for free information, he was #1 on Google and wanted everyone to sign-up before they could access any of his information. He ended up capturing a great amount of leads, and did quite well, so there is something for not giving away anything until people give you some information. Regardless, both sides of the argument have a point here.

But at the end of the day, you have to have the Best Sentence or ways for you to capturing online leads, regardless if you offer information or not, and that is what we are focusing on here. The Art of capturing online leads for your online businesses. I am actually going to use at least one of these in one of our online businesses. So here are the best Sentences, some are futile attempts at being humorous, but for showing real value and capturing online leads:

1. Hey baby, you want some of this, give me your email? **it may work for some online businesses, such as Adult entertainment, but not many:-)

2. Wow handsome fellow, you want some of this cats meow, come on over sweetie pie? Well same genre but had to add the opposing view of the first sentence.

3. We offer our members the best secrets, the best products, and we will call you tomorrow to ask you to buy, and than the week after, and on and on, until you start hating us or buying from us. So sign-up and we will call you tomorrow? Do we wonder why most people fill out wrong information for online leads, yikes.

4. Today and only for the next 60 minutes, you have once in a life-time opportunity to get the best deal ever on our Widget, but sign-up now, because tomorrow the deal will be gone? Yeah right?

5. By signing up, you get access to our members only section, with the following benefits:; #1 You can browse all listings, #2 You can get detailed product information, #3 See who else is part of our community, #4 You can try before you buy, there is no obligation? This one is quite good, but needs to be shortened for our purposes.

I actually studied a course created by a very successful real estate agent on the art of capturing leads, he sells 450 homes a year, which is an amazing number, so his system actually is world renowned. His basic premise is to give people the sizzle and get them to sign up by offering report or more information. I actually learned the are of capturing online leads from his training seminars, this works for all businesses, not just online businesses. We have also studied a few other online lead generation companies, such as HouseValues.com and AllStarDirectories.com.

The net net is give them the benefit of signing up. Be upfront, be honest, make it short and sweet. Here is what we think is really good for our own site.

Allows Free/Temporary access, to view thousands of members like you, marketplace details, try before you buy and there is No-obligation.

Sign-up Now for a Free/Temporary access to full membership benefits.

Allows Immediate access to full members site, for a limited time:

Don't forget Footer Links

A blog I wrote yesterday, not bad for an SEO article, one of the most forgotten sources of links:

Don’t forget the Footer for great SEO Links

I was talking to a casual friend of mine earlier today, he owns and runs a very successful website with 13million page views, we rarely talk business. He and I have actually been talking politics lately more so. Some how the topic got to SEO and how he is not taking advantage of his powerful hundreds of thousands of pages on his own website. He admitted that he really never did SEO, his word mouth viral internet marketing has lead to his success. He makes a six figure income from the website, great job to him. I did a quick analysis of his site, and gave him a bunch of tips to increase his SEO rankings in major keywords. The biggest advice I give businesses or actually people who run them about SEO is that they need to focus on three things. Here are they are below, let me make my point now, I will get back to you the footer, just wait a second or two:-)

1. Meta Tags: This is what your website is about

2. Content: for which I always recommend blogs and possibly forums.

3. Contextual Links from blogs or News types sites.

Now after you do the first two well, you still usually compete with hundreds of websites in your SEO Rankings. To be #1 you have to do all three well, that is especially true in Google, which is the search engine we care about the most here, at MyTypes.com SEO Blog templates.

So what is the deal with a footer, you say? Footers on your own websites have the ability to provide you many powerful links. It’s as simple as that, footers are a great source for content and links for your online businesses. I often advice strategic SEO clients, businesses or friends, never ignore the footers. Here are too examples, read the realEstate.com content before their footers, you will see the proper use of Keywords within the content.

Salesforce.com’s Footer, incredible use of contextual links:

As always enjoy our blog templates, and if you are blogging use our platform. If you happen to be buying, selling, or trading (Barter), use our sites for those. Oh, How can I forget our Cross Rings, I can’t these are the best from one of my best friends wife’s site @ LoveRelic.com she has the only designer Cross jewelry.

Consistency of Blogging + Links = SEO Rankings Success

Consistency of blogging + links = SEO Rankings Success

After you have done all of your education of what SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is, what it takes to do the right thing, to avoid doing the wrong thing, and if you still don’t have the top rankings in Google? What to do? Worse yet, you don’t even see yourself in the top 100 in Google for your keywords, what to do? The world of SEO rankings, blogging, and Internet marketing can be very troubling and stressful, just like the real world. I have certainly have had my ups and downs, lost top rankings gained them back, and lost them again. I have been very successful, and have dismal failures. But, one of my biggest assets is that I never, ever give up. And, this trait of mind over matter stuff works, not just in business or life, but also in SEO.

Now days, I have less of this trouble of inconsistent rankings, why you ask? We consistently rank in the top spot or the top 10 of many keywords we target. How do we do it? And how can you, the small business owner, or a just starting out SEO consultant, how can you be the best in your world? Or at least rank high on Google for your keywords? It’s simple, you have to consistently apply the rules of success in your field, in SEO it’s about great content and contextual links. You may have noticed that Amazon, eBay, and craigslist pages get’s ranked higher than most other websites. This is a result of google respecting these online marketplaces, because of their deep embedded contextual linking systems. We are working on a similar system with our marketplace, if you have noticed that within our front page of MyTypes.com.

But the question becomes how? It’s usually never the What and Why? But, how? I want to talk a little inspiration here, I did blog at 7am today on our new Spirituality blog, about the spiritual laws of success. The ancient secrets are as true today as they were back then. Success is not rocket science, it takes action, proper actions, focused actions. Success in any endeavor requires patience, persistence, hard work, and most importantly consistent effort. Now where is this more prevalent than in SEO, no where, but I am sure you can find your field to be tough. Any way, SEO is a very, very tough business, with competition breathing down your neck and constantly changing, it can also be a very difficult business.

Some times the competition on keywords is very tough, so many companies trying to achieve high rankings in the sake keywords. And the mechanics of SEO are constantly changing, Google is always trying to enhance it’s system. Sorry, I don’t care about Yahoo and MSN too much. I just play the numbers game here, and try to go for the most traffic. The other search engines just don’t have the traffic, and they usually copy what Google does any way. So be consistent with your efforts, don’t give up even if you don’t see results in weeks and months. Do try to learn what is happening, with your circumstances, with Google’s algorithms with the current keywords, who is coming up, who is going down. In Internet marketing and in the world of technology things are happening at a very fast pace. Reading journals, reading amazing blogs, and reading special books are important to keeping your rankings and maintaining your edge. No matter how tough it is don’t ever give up, just do whatever it takes, and to do that you need to keep your spirits up. By the way, when I say do whatever it takes, don’t ever be unethical, it will come back to bight you, Karma goes both ways always.

I want to give you an edge, because SEO business can get you down, and it can be very addicting. One minute you are doing really well, the other minute you are not in the top 10, in fact you may loose all of your rankings. What to do, you ask? Just like anything and everything, always do the right thing. Try to never break the Google rankings, it’s easy, don’t try to cheat the system, create great content, and own your own link sources. This way, if you ever need links, go blog about certain topics, own your own blogs and you will have your links. Create great and interesting ways to write great content. I have been a fan of blogging for ever, since I learned about it back in 2003. I have been preaching about the use of it in SEO, this is nothing new to SEO consultants, but the simple person doesn’t seem to get how easy and how difficult it can be.

So my message again, is blog a lot, on different platforms such as ours, ebay, blogger, and use your proper keywords, and hyperlink them to the sites or blogs you are trying to SEO. It’s that easy, but if you are not ranked in the top 10 or top 100 for those keywords, it’s simple, it’s because you don’t have more Contextual links coming to your blog/site than your competitors. The more contextual links from blogging type sources, news sites, from high Google PR rank sites you have, the better. And, to make sure you have sources for those links, you need to have enough blogs and places where you blog. It’s best if they are yours, it’s good to have partnerships, but the more you own the better you can control your destiny. If you are trying to SEO a site, you need to blog and add links every day, and if you just blog for about 2-3 hours a day, and go to certain sites of your own, you will accomplish your goals. This is for some of the most challenging of sites, but only an hour or less is required if your keywords are not very competitive. You see SEO is simple, just like the beauty in the picture. Keep it simple, blog a lot and add contextual links.

You see the power of accumulation of links, of blogs, of SEO rankings comes from the ancient secret wisdom of the law of success. Which is, tada, drum roll please, CONSISTENCY!