MKLINK Website Tips Newsletter

Thursday 30^th March 2006 - Issue 8

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello again and welcome to your Newsletter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can't remember who coined that phrase, (pretty sure it was Socrates or perhaps Groucho Marx) but I do know that Search Engine Marketing (SEM) was probably the furthest thing from their mind. But not mine. Let's talk about how to lead horses to water--or in the case of web marketing, how to lead visitors to your site and then encourage them to use your products or services. We'll do this by focusing on some basic, yet important SEM concepts that can easily get lost in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of site management.

Remember, the ultimate goal of your site is NOT to garner a ton of traffic--it is to convert visitors from browsers to buyers. But conversion doesn't only mean a sale. Just because you don't sell something directly on your site doesn't mean you can't have a conversion. Conversion can mean that your site generates a lead or a phone call--maybe it's a visitor filling out a form for signing up for a newsletter. Whatever it is, a conversion occurs when a visitor does what you hoped they'd do once they land on your site.

As you plan your site changes make sure that your conversion goals are front and centre, and that everyone on your team knows the importance of them.

So you've got to get your site 'optimized' in order to get those top results. You roll up your sleeves and dive into your site, making sure you follow all of the rules. All of your pages have optimized title tags. You've taken painstaking measures to ensure that every bit of content has that perfect percentage of keywords and you have appropriate text links within your content.

After lovingly hand-tooling your pages, some questions still remain: Did you overdo it? Are your title tags so long that anyone who has bookmarked your site gets stuck with a title tag that's nonsensical *and* three miles long? Is every other word in your content an out-of-context keyword that actually makes your site difficult to read? Are there so many text links in your content that it hurts to look at it?

These questions all speak of good old fashion usability. An answer of 'yes' to even on of them could result in high numbers of human visitors bailing out of your web site. Achieving great position in natural search rankings is important, but not to the point of sacrificing visitor satisfaction. It all comes back to conversion; without it, you're losing revenue.

Paying for clicks magnifies the need for optimized usability and the all-important conversion. One effective approach used with PPC campaigns is to send a PPC visitor to the page most relevant to his/her search term. In order to get the most bang for your PPC buck, SEO should be the last thing on your mind when using this tactic.

Think about it. You already have the click through to your site--which, by the way, you paid for--so why not put them on a page whose sole purpose is to convince the human visitor (not a search engine spider) that your site speaks to exactly what they were searching on? This is the concept of landing page optimization.

The more relevant your landing pages are to the keywords you're buying and the text in the ad that got the click, the more likely you are to get the conversion. In short, making the best first impression you can.

Conversion doesn't always happen during that first visit. It often happens at some time in the future when the visitor returns--a term known as latent conversion. Don't make the mistake of relying on just the basic ROI metrics to judge your SEM success. Keeping an eye on your site within Click Tracks will keep you abreast of your visitor's actions and satisfaction.

A metric like Average Time on Site (ATOS) highlights conversion issues when segmented by campaign, search engine or other criteria. The longer visitor stays on your site, the higher the interest in your offerings.

You can also look for behavioural differences between different search engines, or compare your PPC and natural search traffic. Armed with this knowledge you can more effectively optimize your site for conversion.

Now that conversions are on your mind, it's time to get back to the farm, and show those horses where the watering hole is!

Click Here Now to find out how we increased our conversion rate on one of our sites by over 240% in the first quarter of this year.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That' s right. Imagine having 100's or even 1000's of other sites out there driving highly qualified traffic to your site and you only pay them when someone buys. Interested then read on ...

"Affiliate Programmes and Why you should take advantage of one of the most profitable marketing tools online"

Over the coming issues we are going to take a much closer look at this method of marketing and give you the inside track on how to get the most from them.

For those of you who don' t know, an affiliate programme (also called a Reseller programme or Associate Programme) simply involves allowing other people to promote your products or services and in return you pay them a referral fee (normally a %) of each sale.

Your affiliates send visitors to your site using a number of different means. This could be text links, banner ads, Pay per click ads etc. Each of these affiliates has a unique tracking code that has been allocated to them which then tracks their visitors to your site and registers anytime a successful purchase is made.

These programmes have become so successful over the years that it's claimed that up to 20% of all internet traffic is generated by affiliation. In fact many household names like Amazon, EBay and even Google run affiliation programmes.

"There are no advertising costs"

With an affiliate programme you only pay for a result so you don' t' pay for traffic you simply pay for a sale.
Imagine suggesting this to the magazines or trade journals you advertise in!

One of the affiliate programmes we partner with pay their top affiliates (Super Affiliates) around £100,000 per month and they run a network of over 40,000 affiliates, this network is responsible for generating millions of pounds worth of revenue for the site they affiliate with.

"So let' s sumarise"

• It's a win win partnership
• There are no advertising costs
• It's extremely low risk
• You can literally EXPLODE your online sales

So now I hope we've got your attention to this powerful online tool and in the coming issues we'll look at the different ways for you to tap into the power of affiliation.

However if you can't wait 2 weeks and want to find out how you can start creating more business now why not contact us today for a free appraisal....simply click here  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------    

One £££ Million -How would you like to discover how you can see that number (in real spend-able pounds) in your bank account? It's very possible. Click Here Now to See Just How...