Everyone's done it – you go to a great website. As you flip
through, you find tons of interesting information, great
things you want to buy, ebooks you want to download. You
vow you'll come back later when you have more time to
check it out.
And you don't ever return. Not only do you never return,
you either don't bookmark it or you forget what name the
bookmark was under. You've lost a potential goldmine of
information, and the site owner has lost at least one, and
probably several, potential future sales.
Don't let this happen to your website. Keep your customers
coming back by giving them what they really want: great
information and service.
Hooking Them the First Time
A customer who comes to your site the first time is usually
curious, or thinks that your site has the resources to give
him or her what they are urgently seeking. If you don't
either fully engage their curiosity or demonstrate that you
are what they're looking for within the first ten seconds,
you'll lose the sale, almost guaranteed. If, on the other
hand, you hook the customer, you just might have a sale.
That crucial first ten seconds is all you have to get their
attention, and the best way to do this is by having a clear,
easy-to-read, content-rich homepage that appears to lead
into website that promises the same qualities. The qualities
you should focus on for your site are:
Clear, legible, literate text
Easy navigation
Good content on the very first page.
Easy navigation is, of course, part of good web site design.
To a certain degree, legible text is also part of design. But
clear, literate text delivering good content falls outside web
design. How many times have you seen a beautifullydesigned
web site that has pages filled with jargon or
impossible-to-follow information – or no information at all?
If you can't write well, there are solutions available to you.
The best solution, and one that sets you up as a clear expert
in your field, is to purchase directly from writers or from
content article brokers articles like YourOwnArticles.com
and content that will suit your website. These articles have
the advantage of being well-written by people who know
what they're talking about and who have excellent writing
skills. But because they sell all rights to you, you are able to
put your own name on the article if you like.
Now you have clear, quality content on your page, and
you've established yourself as an expert. But how do you
keep them coming back?
Repeat Customers: "Push" Marketing
If a customer likes your website enough to want to return,
they probably are also interested enough in your information
to sign up for an emailed newsletter. That's your next goal.
If you can send your potential customer pool a newsletter on
a regular basis, you are reminding them that you exist, and
that you have great information as well as good resources
for them to use. In addition, you can sell advertising on your
newsletter to secondary vendors, or you can advertise your
own special bargains and sales.
Fill your newsletters with more content provided to you
through the writer or content article broker, like
YourOwnArticles.com, you already have established a
relationship with. This ensures a couple of things: first, a
consistent voice in your newsletter, instead of one that goes
from formal to informal to chummy, and back to formal. This
isn't something that is immediately obvious to your
customers, but it will make them uncomfortable over time,
and you may lose a significant number of them. Second, you
will be developing a writer or pool of writers who can supply
you with quality information on your topic, and who will be
developing their own expertise in the area without being
potential competitors to you. Third, the longer you work with
a writer or content article broker, the more likely they are to
be able to supply exactly the information you're looking for.
Newsletters are a type of "push" marketing because you're
pushing your information out to your customers, instead of
relying on a hook like a search engine to draw them back to
you. Push marketing is always a better way to go when you
have an identified interested audience; you are more
motivated to sell your service or product than they are to
buy it!
With great content and a newsletter as a tool to keep your
customers coming back, your site has a much better chance
of fulfilling its purpose as an excellent marketing tool.
Higher Rankings Through Private Label Articles
The Internet, above all, is a vast repository of data, and
most data is stored in the form of text. When search engines
prowl the web in search of good sites to rate highly, the only
thing that will register on them is text. If your page is light
on text, chances are you will not rank well. And if your page
has plenty of text but it's put together in the wrong way,
you probably will rank poorly too.
That's where private label articles come in. PRAs are groups
of articles, generally organized into broad categories that
you can purchase in bulk from an article broker like
YourOwnArticles.com. You have a choice between
purchasing a subscription, in which large listings of these
articles are sent to you or made available to you to
download, or making a single purchase of a group of
articles.
These articles are pre-optimized for search engines with
keywords arranged properly, correct grammar and spelling,
and a reasonably generic focus. Best of all, they are yours to
do with as you will. You have purchased all rights to the use
of this article, and you can personalize it in any way you
want, add or delete content, and put your name on it as
author if you like.
After you've chosen the most appropriate keyword for your
website and your sales methodology, you can put private
label articles throughout your website. With their optimized
mention of keywords in appropriate places, your ranking on
the major search engines will start to rise.
Why Not Use Free Articles?
You've probably also seen article directories – large public
databases where you can download as many articles for your
own use as you like, provided you retain the resource box
placed there by the author crediting him or her. Resource
boxes also contain a link to the author's website that you
cannot tamper with.
These articles are free for use, at least financially; however,
they'll cost you in other ways, like loss of prestige, loss of
sales, and loss of customers. One or two of these articles,
particularly if you go for the known experts in the field,
won't hurt you. If you fill your site up with free articles,
you're sending a message you don't want to send.
Specifically, you're telling your customers that you aren't
competent enough in your supposed field of expertise to
write your own information.
You are also giving every person who browses your website
an easy way to get away from your website and onto
someone else's – they just need to click that link in the
reference box. And if the article's good enough to capture
your attention, chances are good it will pique your
customer's attention enough to get them to look for more
from the same author.
In short, the resource boxes steal your customers and your
sales, and you're not even aware of it when it happens.
Other Things To Improve Your Rankings
You can use the article directory system along with private
label articles to boost your search engine ranking, just as
others do. Article directories take most articles submitted to
them, provided they are written with some competence by
people who have not violated their terms of use. You can
donate your private label articles, under your name and with
your resource box, to article directories too.
The first thing this does is set up another link to your
website from the article directory. Every time someone links
to your website, your ranking goes up just a little bit. This
works especially well if the link includes your chosen
keywords as well. Since the resource box is yours to set up,
you can ensure that the keywords used are exactly what you
want.
Now you sit back and wait. Others will come along and, if
your article is a good one and contributes new or necessary
information to someone else's website, they will download
your articles and use them. Each website that uses an article
with your resource box helps boost your search engine
placement a little bit more.
There are dozens of other methods in which you can use
private label articles to boost your ranking: newsletters,
ebooks, viral reports. Experimentation on your website is the
best way to determine which methods are best for you.
