Squeeze Page Basics

It seems like almost everyone has their own opinion on what makes a good squeeze page. What is a squeeze page? It is a page that offers you something in exchange for filling in your contact details and email address. Usually it contains at the very bottom the website’s privacy policy and contact details.

It is designed so that the visitor will be compelled to take specific action. So it should have a catchy headline, a story or content that catches the interest of the reader, examples of how the product or service is helping people, a testimonial or two and the bonuses the reader will receive when he or she takes the action you desire.

Your visitor follows through with action or decides to leave the site. The only navigation you should have on a squeeze page is a button to your website should they choose not to follow through with signing up.

Here are the important parts of a squeeze page:

  1. The Headline. You have approximately 8 seconds at the most to capture your visitor’s attention. If your headline doesn’t do that, the rest of the content on the page is ineffective. The Headline doesn’t have to be “hypey” but must be compelling. The Headline should tell the visitor why he must have what it is you are offering. Your Headline can be in red and then followed with a smaller sub-heading.
  2. The rest of the page should convince your visitor that what you are offering should not be passed up. By the end of the squeeze page he or she should feel that he or she is going to be getting a tremendous deal just by giving you his or her contact information. Use customer testimonials and other examples of the benefits of your offer.
  3. Make sure that your visitor knows that there is a time limit or a limit to the quantity of what is being offered or that the price will be going up. Give a deadline. If you don’t your visitor will just think he or she will come back to it later and then never does.
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7 Simple Steps to Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

Is your first instinct to click away after you read the headline? Is search engine optimization something you have avoided dealing with?

Well, be brave! Face your website now! I’ll give you some simple tips you can do to improve the ranking of your website. In order to increase your online presence and along with that, increase your sales, it is essential that your website shows up on the first page of the search engines.

85% of people find goods and services that they need through search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and MSN. The whole idea of search engine optimization is to attract targeted customers who are more likely to make a purchase. The better placed your page is on the search engine, the greater traffic will find it. That’s what search engine optimization is about.

You can hire an expert who has all the technical skills to optimize your site or you can make a few simple changes, some small adjustments and improve your rankings rapidly.

Here are 7 simple steps you can take:

  • What does the colored bar at the top of your browser say when you access your home page? The words in your title bar should contain the most important keywords or phrases, including your company name. I prefer to have your “tag line” ahead of your name. For example, “Search Engine Optimization Experts | SEOMasters”.
  • Give each of your pages a unique name using your keywords and phrases and including your company name. Keep the titles down to about six words or less. Try not to repeat the titles and don’t have identical words next to each other.
  • Do you have a squeeze page with a scintillating graphic? You may be missed by the search engines. Sites that contain quality content rather than loaded with graphics are favored by search engines. The content should contain the most important keywords – things your site visitors are search for – and it should make sense. Don’t over do it.
  • Your pages should have 100 to 250 words per page if you want to achieve a high ranking. Of course, the content has to make sense and the search engines must be able to read the text. They can’t read graphics so be sure it is in HTML format. If you have a graphic with text, that will not be found by the search engines.
  • Now I have to get a little technical. You will want to check the meta tags. Meta tags have only a limited effect in adding to high search engine rankings but it is still worth it for the search engines that use meta tags in their ranking formula.In order to do this, go to the “View” button in your browser and select “Source”. This brings up a window showing the code that your web page is built with. A meta tag would read: meta name=”keywords” content=. If it is not there, have your webmaster add it for you. Every little bit helps.
  • Search engines use link popularity to rank your website. If you have good quality, relevant sites linked to your site, you may actually improve your site rankings. Do a search for a free link popularity checker and you can find a tool that will show you what sites are linked to yours.If your site doesn’t come up with very many links, you can check out the rankings of sites you want to link with and then contact them to see if they will share links reciprocally with you. Better quality traffic will then be directed to your site.
  • You can use Alexa.com to check traffic to your site. Also having Google Analytics tracking code installed will help you see where your traffic is coming from, what they are looking at, how long they are staying on site, their entrance page and exit page and much more.

So, take a breath and try some of these steps to boost your rankings yourself. Search engine rankings are important for successful internet marketing so get started and direct more quality visitors to your site.

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It is all in how we say it…

This says it the best.

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Are Keywords Really the Key to Success?

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website and one of the best ways is using proper keyword placement so all of the keywords work to their best potential.

It is not just the keywords you use, but where you place them in the content on your website.

What is a keyword? A keyword is a word or phrase you would use to search to find a certain product or service online. For example, if you want to buy a book on marketing, you would type something like “internet marketing book” in your browser. A keyword can also be a phrase.

When you are “salting” your website with your keywords, you have to be careful how many times you use the word or phrase and where you put it on your site. You don’t want to keep repeating it over and over without its use making sense. Search engines today can see through that ploy and you will be penalized by not having your article or site ranking very well.

The best rule to follow for keyword placement is to use your keyword or keyword phrase in the title, the first and last paragraphs and at least once in the article or content body. You don’t want to be banned by the search engines for keyword stuffing.

To find the best keywords to use, you can start with the free Google Keyword Tool.Keep in mind that you want a keyword list that has a lot of monthly searches and not a lot of competition. You will have to figure out what constitutes a lot of searches and a little bit of competition yourself.

If you have the budget, you can purchase keyword tools that will do a lot more for you.

The two steps to using keywords are first, finding a list of keywords and second, using them in just the right amount and in the right places so that your articles and website will rank high in the search engine results.

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More on using Splash Pages and web design

5 important rules in designing your website

When you design your website, be sure you pay extra attention to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose.

Here are 5 important rules to follow in designing your website:

1) Do not use splash or squeeze pages.

Splash or squeeze pages is the first page you see when you arrive at a website. It normally has a very beautiful image with words like “Welcome”, or “Free (Product)”, or “Click here to enter”. In fact they are just pretty place holders with no real purpose except to gather your visitors’ email address when they sign up for the freebie offering. Give your visitors the value of your site up front without the splash page. Don’t give them a reason to click the “back” button.

2. Use banner advertisements wisely

Net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner ads so you are wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, weave relevant affiliate links into your content and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pitched to buy.

3. Navigation should be simplified

A straightforward navigation menu should be provided so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors get lost or confused about where they want to go or where they came from, they will leave your site.

4. Know your user is

Make sure your visitors know which part of your site they are in at that moment. That way, they will browse to the relevant information or navigate to any section of your site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means lost visitors.

5. Use audio and video wisely

If your visitor is going to remain a long time at your site, reading content, make sure that they are not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it – volume or muting controls work fine. The same goes for auto-play video. If it irritates you when you land on a site with auto-play video, it will irritate others as well.

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Should I do it all myself?

Economic constraints are at the top of everyone’s mind right now. The DIY trend is on a high.

I have this discussion with new clients over and over again. What is the best use of their time? What is their area of expertise?

I offer tutorials and training for people who really feel that they want to have a knowledge of how things work. Some want to be able to update their blog themselves or do quick changes to a web page. That’s great. I truly believe that every webpreneur should have at least a basic understanding of how their website works.

Others insist that they want to have the knowledge and ability do everything themselves.

But is it really cost efficient for them to be doing their own work all the time?

Sadly I hear from clients who have spent hours and hours on a task that literally would take me only a few minutes to do. Usually when they finally contact me they are at their wits end and desperate because their self-imposed deadline to get something done has come and gone.

Worse yet, they may have messed up code or lost or written over precious files.

Personally, I am a DIYer myself. I love learning new skills and am constantly keeping myself updated on the newest online trends. But I recognize that I cannot be an expert at everything. That’s when I call in a professional in that field.

If that expert can make my time more efficient by allowing me to work on projects that I excel at, then what I have to pay that expert has been well spent.

So if you find yourself caught doing projects that you really don’t enjoy and are finding them frustrating, that is a good indication that you should be outsourcing that work to someone who is an expert in that field.

If you recognize that early on, you will find that you will enjoy the work that you are proficient at more and will have more energy to pursue the life you really want to live.

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To squeeze or not to squeeze!

Are squeeze pages a good idea? You know the ones I mean, they just have an ezine sign up box offering a free product and an enter site button.

Sure, they look really pretty. Many have a great graphic of the freebie and/or the site owner. But have you noticed that they actually have little or no information on the page?

To get the “good stuff” you have to decide whether to get squeezed (sign up for the free stuff) or bypass it and click the enter button.

I’m of two minds. They are attractive and attention getting. But do they get good search engine results? After all is not your content the most important search engine driver?

Of course you can add your meta tags and keywords in white in the code on the page which would help SEO. But the real questions are:

  • do people really like them?
  • do they build your list?
  • or do they just irritate your site visitors?

I’m interested in knowing what your thoughts are on getting squeezed.

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Help! I don’t know how to get started!

That’s the first thing my new clients say to me. They don’t know how to get started building their website and, actually, that’s the reason I created this website!

I’m here to help. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of technical experience and feel comfortable creating that new WordPress site yourself from scratch or if you have absolutely no technical experience at all.

Many of my new clients are women who are just stepping out to create their online presence. They may be older and not as comfortable with the new technologies. They may have little or no computer skills.

I offer three easy ways of creating your online presence and making it simple to understand:

  • After an indepth consultation with you I can set absolutely everything up for you and maintain it on an ongoing basis;
  • I can set everything up and then provide the training for you to do your own website updates and maintenance;
  • I can hold your hand and guide you along the path of doing it for yourself.

You really have three choices when it comes to setting up your web presence. You can try and figure it out yourself (and then call me when you can’t! 🙂 ), sign up for one of my training packages or have me set it all up for you.

There is no need to be intimidated or afraid to embrace technology.

All of my packages come with a procedures manual and enough training to give you at least a basic understanding of how everything works. In my mind, it is important for you to have that basic understanding to help you when you are speaking to other techy professionals about doing additional work for you in the future.

What are you waiting for? Why don’t you get started today.

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I pulled out my hair last week!

Ok, maybe not literally but I did have a hair pulling week for sure!

I was transferring two domains and hosting from one provider who shall remain nameless (6 letters, begins with an I) to GoDaddy. GoDaddy not only has awesome tech support but also has some great prices for hosting accounts.

I’ve transferred domains and hosting from one provider to another before. It has always worked smoothly with just the usual amounts of downtime for the transfer and then the change up to the new nameservers.

Last week it actually made me crazy!

First, the domains were protected by privacy. Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Yes, but usually it is something that can be changed simply by unlocking the domain and turning off the privacy with the click of a button through the dashboard.

Not this time! It actually took a phone call to get it turned off. What a pain!

Then the transfer took forever to propagate over to GoDaddy. I know they say it can take up to 5 days but I’ve never had that happen before. Luckily it only took 2 days.

Once everything transitioned to GoDaddy, I installed WordPress and imported the files of the draft site I had created through my own WordPress install on my hosting account.

Up and running!

Take a peek at the two sites here:
Practical Meditation Coach Margret-Anne Cummings

Thinking of doing this for your own site(s)? Let someone else suffer the hair pulling stress for you. Take a peek at our services and decide for yourself!

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Graphic Designer or Graphics Package?

If you are just starting up and don’t have a budget for a graphics designer but don’t want the look of your new website to suffer with poor graphics, Max Rylski has just released his newest graphics package, Marketing Graphics Toolkit V4. It contains 30 different graphics “modules” that will add KILLER visual affects to your website.

The best thing about this package is that it can be used with or without Photoshop! That’s a great deal because not everyone has Photoshop or even design experience and the ability to use any graphics editor is a bonus! Personally, my favorite free graphics editor is GIMP.

The package also includes 2 squeeze page templates, 3 premium headers, 3D eCovers, 5 Web Display Templates, 6 premium banner templates, a collection of web shadows and too much more to list here.

You can find out more about it HERE.

I just bought it and am going to go play now. 🙂

P.S. You can check out these other offers here

Marketing Graphics Toolkit with 6 more quality offers

Marketing Graphics Toolkit PLR offer

PPS Yes, these are affiliate offers.

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