“I Need a Website Today — HELP!”

By Todd · Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

To start from scratch in getting your business online, you’ll need a domain name, hosting, a website design and some content.  If you’re short on time, that can seem like a daunting task.

GoDaddy is a good start and a great place to purchase your domains.  Just be aware that they make every effort to upsell you.  Just buy basic domain hosting which should end up being about $11 per year.

Regarding hosting, assuming you’re in the USA, I recommend HostGator.com or BlueHost.com since they offer a wide variety of services for a very reasonable price.  Plus, they offer “cpanel” hosting, which simplifies the management of your hosting account–for you.  I would not recommend buying hosting through GoDaddy–just domain registration.

Furthermore, I would recommend that you install WordPress for your new website, which both HostGator and BlueHost support easily.  Choose a simple theme to get started (the ‘Weaver’ theme is great for us info-marketers and service providers and is extremely customizable) and build your site on that.  Basically, all you have to do is write some content.

WordPress is a fantastic way to get started quickly, but it can also grow with you to support a $multi-million business.

The resources page at: https://strategicgains.com/resources offers more details.  I’m happy to answer further questions if you want to contact me directly.

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Categories : Blogging, Getting Online, Web Site
Tags : , ,

SEO Begins with Keyword Research

By Todd
Thursday, October 14th, 2010

As I’ve mentioned before (e.g. in SEO is an Ongoing Effort ), there are two aspects to search engine optimization (SEO): on-page and off-page.  However, before we can perform that optimization, we have to know what keywords and key phrases we’re optimizing for.  Therefore, all SEO efforts begin with keyword/phrase research.

Basically, you want to get a list of 100+ key phrases that are relevant to your business ranked by search volume and understand the competition for those phrases.  Sounds daunting doesn’t it?  Bear with me for a second.  There are numerous tools out there, each with their own strengths that can help with the task.  My favorites are:

These can help you drill into what people search for when they are looking for you.  That’s important–your goal is to discover what people search for when they are looking for you. Not how you think about looking up your business.  Think like your customer and use the tools to come up with at least 10 phrases that people would use to find you.  Rank them by search volume.  Now you have a foundation to start on.

Categories : Keyword Research, SEO, Web Strategy

Simplify Your Life–And Your Website!

By Todd · Comments (0)
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

There is soooo much information out there about how to create your web presence!  It is confusing and often conflicting–inducing a lot of stress.  Here’s a tip: don’t sweat it! Relax about the technology already.  The single-most important facet of your website is the opt-in and compelling free offer. If you want to stress about something choose to stress about that.  Make your offer compelling, talk about benefits and give value away in exchange for an email address.  Period.

I hear you saying, “But ‘big’ sites rank better!”  Bah!  Total bunk–well, ranking doesn’t matter right away.  What should you do with the other 47 pages of valuable content you’ve gathered and created?  You’d like to create an equivalent 47 individual web pages navigable by your visitors, wouldn’t you?  Take my advise–throw it all out.  Keep your navigation simple.  Don’t waste your time creating those individual pages full of content your visitors will never see.

Now that I’ve got you all riled up, take that content, chop it into bite-sized, digestible pieces and begin to post it on your blog.  Utilize appropriate tags and categories so your viewers can sort, index and access it various ways.  Schedule entries to show up later (preferably on Monday thru Friday), entering several blog entries per sitting until your content is all entered, categorized and tagged on your blog.  Your readers will love you for it.

Products for sale are a different story of course, but that’s a topic for later…

There.  Isn’t that easier?  Say ahhhh….

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Categories : Blogging, Business, Design, Web Site, Web Strategy

You Cannot Make Money With Social Media Marketing–Unless…

By Todd · Comments (0)
Friday, October 8th, 2010

Forget about social marketing for a second. Everyone wants to know how to make money on Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple–you can’t… Unless you get those names into your own emarketing database! The key is really your own blog–focus on getting your Facebook friends and Twitter followers back to your blog–and opt-in.

Instead of thinking, “How do I get my Twitter and Facebook feeds to show up on my website?” turn it around. Think, “How do I get links to my blog entries to show up on my Twitter feed and Facebook pages and refer people back to my valuable information?” Encourage your following to view your website as the source for valuable information on your topic. Train them to visit your blog and site.

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Categories : Business

Design Is Dead!

By Todd · Comments (0)
Friday, September 10th, 2010

Okay, maybe not.  But it’s important to keep in mind that filling your marketing funnel and making sales is the primary consideration of any infopreneur or emarketer.  A plain web site with a compelling offer and a functional opt-in will outsell a site that emphasizes design and lacks that compelling offer and functional opt-in any day of the week.  The most important thing you can do to get your business online is to take action and do it now!  Create your offer, build your list.  Design can wait.

However, make sure your logo and business name accurately reflect your business’s vision.  Spend the hours and days it takes to agonize over them to get them just right.  Hah!  Gotcha!  Those don’t matter one bit.  Get going.  Do things wrong quickly, testing as you go.  Let’s make some money!  Design is, if not dead, not nearly as important as we make it out to be.  Quit stalling.

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Categories : Business, Getting Online, Marketing, Web Site

SEO is an Ongoing Effort

By Todd · Comments (0)
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Someone mentioned to me the other day that their web person didn’t do SEO.  Others regularly ask about how to do it.  As StrategicGains builds WordPress-based sites for eMarketers, I get those kinds of comments and questions a lot.  Here’s a couple of tips.

There are two types of SEO and both must be done in order to be fully optimized:

1) On-page optimization–pages on your site that are optimized for your chosen keywords.  This is about 20% of your SEO value.

2) Off-page optimization–pages outside your site that have authority with the search engines that contain back-links to pages within your website (e.g. article sites, HubPages, Squidoo, etc.).  This is the other 80% of your SEO value.

On-page optimization may be a one-time effort, placing your keywords in meta tags and in page content and links as the pages are created.  As mentioned, though, that’s only going to be 20% effective.

The big value comes with off-page optimizations, posting to article sites and other authority sites such as Squidoo, HubPages, Tumblr, etc.  And it’s important to note that this is an ongoing effort.  It’s more like social marketing than a one-time deal.

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Categories : Marketing
Tags : , ,

Why the Plain Vanilla?

By admin
Friday, July 23rd, 2010

You may wonder why this site is so plain and uninviting.  Well, I’ll tell you… because as I’m currently blessed with an inundation of great work projects, and actively looking for help in getting all of the web projects completed.  This site ends up being like the proverbial mechanic’s car… the last to get fixed.

My plan is to fix it soon–bear with me!

Categories : Business

Experts at Getting You Online Quickly!

By admin
Monday, July 12th, 2010

An online presence that fully supports your marketing funnel, builds your database and allows you to automate many of your marketing tasks is imperative to your business thriving in today’s world.  In fact, other than income, building your database should be priority one–it’s the asset that keeps on giving!

Getting your business online with even a simple page can be a daunting, technical proposition, especially when it’s not what you do.  So do what you do best and let us get your business online quickly.

Categories : Business
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