There’s one area that many entrepreneurs slip upon and that’s about knowing how effective their ads are.

It’s essential that you analyse your ads from front to back so you could answer that question immediately anyone asked it. You need to analyse your ads for each element in this list:

** What they say and how they say it

** The headline and sub head

** The pre head

** If your Unique Selling Point is really clearly presented

** What action you want the prospect, visitor or customer to take

So, you have done all that and that’s great. But it is even more important that you move to the next stage and start to monitor two things: first how much the ads cost you to run, and second the exact conversion rate into hard cash in terms of sales.

It’s all about control:

Thinking your ads are effective doesn’t cut it. You need to have exact figures because that gives you a control you can work with. What do I mean by that? Well in this context, a control is your basic offer, headline, and copy that has brought you some sort of return.

Having that information means you can now start to cut your cost per sale by testing different variations of each element. Now that doesn’t mean changing everything all at once, in fact it’s vital you don’t because then you are not going to know which particular item is working, or failing.

Best place to start? I always jump in and change just the headline. Just doing that and comparing it to the original headline gave us 16 times more results on one of our landing pages than the original headline did.

How often do you change your headlines? Check what you are currently using and then run a test with a new one, I will bet you can come up with an even better headline when you sit down and think about it.

That headline is the first thing a visitor sees so it has to have impact because it’s what you are going to be judged by. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are at marketing, it is easy to underestimate the poewr of having a hard hitting, attention grabbing headline.

You have got around 6 seconds to interest any visitor to your website before they decide to stay – or go. That’s why a killer headline is essential, and I suggest you also experiment with a pre head and a sub head.

For examples of what I am talking about, visit a few sites and look at their sales page and shopping cart and you will generally see how a mixture of attention grabbing headlines, sub heads and pre heads.

In our own business we definitely want to draw attention to specifics in the copy, so we have added in other text elements like bullets, lists, bold and italic and recently we have incorporated video as well.

Don’t stop there: Once you start using your control pages, there is so much you can test. Every single element of your sales page can be analysed, and your copy has six distinct area’s that you can test:

- The Headline

- Your Story or Pitch

- The Proposition

- The Offer

- The Guarantee

- The Call To Action

As I have said before, for me the best place to start is with your headline. It’s the simplest to do and can produce quick and substantial results. Having got that killer headline then you can begin writing alternative messages that you can include in the other five components of your sales copy.

So what do you have to do in order to get that 60 percent increase I talked about in the headline? Simple maths shows you that by repositioning each of the six components could each give you a 10% boost to your sales, and multiply that by the six elements and you could soon see a 60% increase in your success rate.

Actually, you could do even better than that because I have experienced increases of up to 16 times, not percentages but times improvement, by adjusting and monitoring all the copy elements in a sales page.

Once you compound all of the improvements that you have carried out to that page then you could very quickly see a very different profit picture on your business.

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?

Don’t worry, it hasn’t had an impact…yet. Google’s Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.

“Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast,” says Cutts. “It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.”
“I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about ‘how do I have my site be fast,’ how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?’” he says.

I would say that based on Matt’s comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn’t come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.

Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well.

If you’re serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven’t given much thought to load times and such, it’s time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn’t it make sense if your site helped the process along?
Author: Chris Crum

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google’s results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don’t have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It’s not necessary to get as many links as possible. It’s necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:
Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.

Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.

There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.

If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.

Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.

If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

There are many things that can improve the response rate of your link request messages. Details can be found in our free SEO eBook. The eBook covers everything from finding potential link partners to optimizing response rates and it also contains a checklist that helps you to get started as quickly as possible.

If you want to speed things up, use IBP’s link builder to get links from other websites to your site. IBP’s link builder finds related websites, websites that link to your competitors, related blogs, websites that link to your website, etc.

In addition, IBP delivers additional information such as the text that is used for the links to your website, the IP address, the Google PageRank rank of the web pages and much more.

IBP also help you to build links through directory submission, social bookmarking services and many more tools that help you to get the best possible position in the search results of Google and other major search engines. You can download it here.

Can my site rank better with a keyword-rich domain name? Sure.

Can my site rank better without a keyword in the domain name at all? Absolutely.

I get questions (or assumptions) like this regularly. Actually, there are many other things going on behind the scenes that impact rank, and the domain name is rarely a significant factor.

Let’s say your website has been out there for 6 months or more and you assume, for whatever reason, that you can get a higher search engine ranking if you were using a keyword in your domain name instead of the one you have. In addition to your company web domain, maindomain.com, you rush to purchase keyword1.com, keyword2.com and keyword3.com.

From Google’s perspective, there is both a good way and a detrimental way to assign these additional domain names to your site. This can cause a much greater problem in terms of organic ranking if you get it wrong in terms of duplicate content and trust. Have you ever heard of duplicate content? Which domain name does Google have more history and trust with, your current domain name or one you just bought?

Common methods webmasters use to point multiple domain names to your web server include:

• Domain Mirroring/Masking
• Domain Cloaking
• Domain Alias/URL Alias
• Domain Redirecting

Domain mirroring/masking is sometimes called a pointer domain. It looks like it is the domain name when it is used in a browser, but it is simply a mask overlaying the real domain name and its content. When someone types in www.domain.com, it’s really forwarding to domain.blogspot.com without the address changing in the address bar. The user continues to see www.domain.com in the address bar, although the site and its contents are really from domain.blogspot.com.

Domain cloaking uses an iframe or embedded frameset to display the content of another site.

Domain redirecting (also called URL redirecting) requires all traffic that is sent through the new domain name to be redirected to the main domain name. This can also be a domain redirected to a subdirectory of the main domain, or multiple domains redirected to a complex URL. This is different from domain mirroring/masking and domain cloaking because, when a user types in www.domain.com, they end up on www.maindomain.com and the address changes appropriately in the address bar.

But, let’s back up a second and look at the issues you must consider before making this decision.

1. To limit confusion, it’s better to change the brand (or company) name to better reflect the keyword-rich domain name. This could be as simple as recreating the company logo, but you might consult your customer base first.

2. The technical procedure of redirecting domain names must be done so that the search engines do not get confused about what you are trying to do. Otherwise, you risk tripping a duplicate content filter, which would force Google to accept only one domain with that content (explained below). But the biggest risk is setting off an alarm at Google that you are trying to trick them to get a better rank.

Just for fun, let’s say you’ve gone through the trouble of changing the company name to reflect your new keyword-rich domain. Now it’s time to get technical.

If you use any method other than domain redirecting, you are going to be disappointed with your search rank. Domain mirroring, masking, cloaking and aliases confuse search engines because they see the same content under a different domain name. Google then selects one of the domain names to display that content and leaves the others out of the search results. Google chooses for you – since you are not aware of how to manage your duplicate content issues – and no one knows which domain name Google will choose. You could be saying “bye-bye” to all the hard-earned link juice pointed at your main domain name.

The more serious issue with domain mirroring/masking is the probability that Google suspects you are trying to manipulate search rank by suddenly using keywords in additional domain names. The result is either loss of whatever good ranking you did have or your site is banned from Google altogether. Ouch!

This is precisely what happened with a client. Despite my warnings, but thinking they might change the company name eventually, they bought additional keyword-rich domain names and had the webmaster point them at their server (using domain masking). Within a couple weeks Google dropped their domain ranking across the board, but did not ban them.

Of course they came to me with their issue. I gently reminded them about how this should have been done, redirected the domain names properly (using a 301 redirect) and asked them to consult me next time they’re considering a marketing or technical decision regarding the website. It took about 6 weeks – a long and painful 6 weeks – for Google to restore their good rank again.

When a company acquires additional domain names, they should be permanently redirected to the main domain name – the one, central location on the web for all of the company’s or brand’s content.

Redirecting a domain name should be handled differently depending on the type of server hosting your site (Apache or Windows), how much control you have over that server (hosted on a shared or dedicated server) and the purpose of the redirected domain name.

Dont wait until you see another website hosted on your domain before you decide to do anything about it. or extra files running on the domain and suddenly you domain is black listed for spamming. Here are some steps you can take to keep your account safe.

1. Don’t use dictionary words as your password, mix it up a little add a few characters and numbers to the mix. For instance instead of using hello as a password use H3!l0 and also make the password longer preferably between 8 and 13 characters so use H2!l08udcly.

2. remember to change your password on a regular basis so that anyone who may have gotten access before cannot login again.

3. setup the logging in your site so that you can see who is logging in to your account.

4. Block access to folders not needed by users, such as your scripts and ftp folders.

5. Password protect the directories that you have blocked access to. this will prevent anyone from uploading anything to that directory in your domain.

6. Update your scripts and blogging software or any third party software you have loaded onto the server, to prevent access due to a security issue left by the software.

7. Take regular backups of your domain files, so that if you have your account hacked you can reload your latest backup and not loose all your files.

If you are a business owner, then you must know how important it is for you to have your own website. You can use it to be able to reach as many target customers as possible. After all, they are located in almost many parts of the world. You can display all your products and services in your website. But do you know that they can be a great area for hackers to play on? So how can you protect your website against hacking?

1. Protect your files with passwords. Surely, your website will contain scripts, database, and files that are not meant to be shared publicly but for perhaps the search engine bots. To avoid having anyone getting hold of them, it may be ideal to protect them with password. However, you have to make sure that these are very hard to decipher. This is because they can simply make use of a password-deciphering software. You can combine alphanumeric characters and exhaust all the character limits as much as possible.

2. Secure your e-mail address. There may be times when you will be receiving an e-mail address courtesy of your online business form. There are even others who will send a message directly into your mailbox. This may mean that spammers have got hold of your contact information perhaps in the Web or from someone else. To prevent this, you can make use of software that will split your e-mail address. It will then very hard for spamming software to read. You can also just add an E-mail Us link into your website or an image which can be clicked and allow your customers to send an e-mail right away. There’s no need to reveal the e-mail address.

3. Don’t leave e-mail addresses anywhere. Perhaps you’re thinking of marketing your website in forums and other public online networks. This is okay; however, you have to be very cautious. Hackers and spammers are very much interested of your e-mail address. You can make use of a bogus one, and simply add a link of your website in the signature.

4. Secure your source code. There are hackers who are interested in getting your source code to either destroy it or to build a website clone. That’s why it is very important that you can protect it against such individuals. You can make use of scripts that will allow your source code to remain hidden to Internet users. Or you can simply make use of external CSS sheets as well as files for Javascript.

5. Check for software patches. If you have been using some software in building or maintaining your website, make sure that you constantly update all of your files. This may be because the older ones can no longer protect your website from hackers and spammers.

6. Sign up for updates. Majority of the product and software updates may only be announced in their respective websites. This is to encourage their customers to continuously be up-to-date too of any new products that they are currently introducing into the market. To avoid the hassle, sign up using one secure e-mail address in all of their newsletters. If you receive any updates, make sure you take time in reading them.

7. Add a robot.txt. This is a special instruction you will give to search engines who may be visiting your webpages. You can instruct them to only index those files that are meant for users. You can also direct them to not index any that are only meant for webmasters. These may include files and images.

8. Check the permissions you may have set for your uploaded files. This is to prevent any hacker from getting access into your important and confidential files. You can confirm it by selecting CHMOD for your files located in the web hosting server. Otherwise, if you aren’t sure, then you can simply verify it from your webmaster.

9. Take away old or unnecessary files. It’s normal for search engines to keep files from your website, especially if they are being indexed. However, if you remove them from the server, then no one can access them anymore. It will not be obtainable for hackers and spammers.

10. Know your server. Your server is very essential as you basically keep all of your files there, and it will cause your website to run smoothly. Intruders, on the other hand, can add virus or malware into your system, thereby causing damage into your website. If you are running it on your own, you must know your server properly. This way, you can set the right security and permission level for your site.

Companies that have consistently updated blog content with back links to their main company site and it’s interior web pages will always perform much better in the search engines.

So, why don’t most companies have a blog?

The answer lies in one simple word:

CONSISTENCY

That’s right. You need to regularly and constantly post to the blog — and how many business owners have the time for that?

That’s the beauty of our Blog Marketing service.

We not only setup and design TWO blogs, but our professional writers also consistently write and post new content to those blogs on your behalf. Every time we post, we also promote the new blog entries in social bookmarking sites like Digg and others.

So you’re getting all the benefits of a frequently updated and promoted blog — from one of the top and most professional marketing companies on the web — and without having to worry about doing any of the work!

Take a look for yourself:

… get a blog for your company and make the search engines fall in love with YOUR site.

One of our members was kind enough to pass on this link for free website courses, So after much suspense here is the link: 100 Free Cutting-Edge Courses for Web Developers & Designers. I hope you guys gets a few great tips from this site.

and a big thank you to Amber for the link.

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