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The key to success of a website is to make sure

a) you have an atractive and informative site

b) to rank well in the search engines

Before engaging a web marketer or seo firm, make sure to get an accurate baseline report from them to see what your current rankings are if any. This then allows you to have a benchmark or baseline to compare their work. I do this with all my clients as it saves hassle in the long run. We both know how good a job I did since they can see where they were and where they are now.

The second thing you need to be very aware of is google may report your search engine rankings “incorrectly”

This is not a flaw in google rather what they term a feature.  If you have a gmail account or any other account with google your search results may often be shown based on your previous searches or web history. What this means is that although your site may appear in the top ten, this could be based on your surfing history not actually on where it is placed. Can you see the danger here? An seo company shows you your listings in google and within a week they have improved your rankings! Unbeknown to you they are showing you a “personalised” result based on your or their search history!

One way of ensuring you see correct results is to make sure you or they are logged out of their gmail accounts.

The second way is to use a third party piece of software such as Internet Business Promoter which will give you results independent of your search history.

Now a proviso on this. I have found that sometimes reports generated by this software may say I am ranked number 2 for a keyword in google.ie or google.com but when I do a normal google search I don’t find my ranking. Why is this? Since google is running its services over a huge array of servers, it may take time for each server to have the most up to date search rankings. Perhaps each server is updated every 30 minutes. This means that when you go to google.ie you may connect to server 57 the next time you run the same search it may connect to server 557 – which might not have the exact same information.  Note these are my observations over the last number of years.

Bottoms line – always make sure you get fully documented results with screenshots to prove your ranking!

In my previous article I talked about double optin and ensuring you had this setup when you decide to buy an email marketing system.  Now the idea of list building is this:

You offer a person an “ethical bribe” to join your list – ie a free report on the subject that you website is about. Once they join and double optin you provide them with a link do download the report. This is step one.

So now you have a list of people in your email marketing system what do you do now? You begin to build a relationship. Most email marketing systems will allow you to set up automated timed messages that are sent out on a regular basis. For example you can set it up so that a new message is delivered to a subscriber every 10 days.  This is all automated – you set it up once and then as new people join your mailing list they will automatically get the sequence of messages.  Many people don’t know about this really essential sequencing system which has many uses and advantages which I discuss below.

The first thing that is happening is that the person is seeing your brand come into their email box every X amount of days. So you are following up with them. The second thing is you are “training” your email list to expect emails every X days.  If the system was manual, you would have to remember to send out an email every X days, but in this case it is not. The third thing is that your list members need to build up a relationship with you. They need to trust you before they will ever buy from you. It is said that you need to contact the person 7 – 10 times before they will buy from you.

Here’s what happens. People set up a website and expect that once a visitor visits the site once they will buy from them – they don’t. Then the visitor leaves the site and never returns. However if you have them sign up to your mailing list you now have a way of contacting them.

They key thing you must remember is to give quality information to your list. Don’t send them an offer or a sales pitch in the first 8 – 10 emails. You want to always provide them with useful information, and then perhaps give them a review or a recommendation of a product. Now look at how this works.

Let’s say at the beginning of the year you set up your mailing list. You right out your sequence of messages. The first 8 – 10 are informational, the 11^th is a product or service review with your affiliate link in it.  Out of every 100 who receive the 11^th email maybe 10 will click and maybe one will buy thru your affiliate link. As your list grows you now begin to have a way of generating automated income. This happens to me all the time. I get commission payments for lists that I set up a year to 18 months ago.  I do the work once, and then let my list build and promote the services I am promoting while also providing good information.

One key thing to remember is that many people don’t know about that the messages are automatically generated so they feel great that you have personally emailed them.  All good email marketing systems will provide a personalisation option so each email is addressed to the person, ie Dear Richard rather than dear reader or dear friend.

In my next article I’ll talk more about the types of emails you should be sending out.