ProBizTips Newsletter
** ISSUE #302 **

Tuesday, February 8th, 2005

A Word From Diane

ProBizTips Mid-Sponsors

ProBizTips Feature Article
Creating Content: The Easy Way

ProBizTips Business Tidbit
10 Hot Ways To Sell Your Products Like Crazy

ProBizTips Guest Article
Is Your Website Ready For Local Search Engine Traffic?

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Weekly F*R*E*E*B*I*E
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Leaving With a Laugh

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Hey!

Good Day to you and I hope your day is going well so far! :)

Welcome to all our new subscribers this week and I hope you grow to love us as so many have... we couldn't do this without you!

Well -- definitely not much longer now. If this little girl doesn't decide to come out sooner, February 22nd will be her birthday. I'm at that big, miserable stage (for those women who have had babies and understand what I'm talking about) with a swollen face, hands, legs, feet... I feel very unattractive right now and I've decided I want my body back. :P

My husband insists that I'm beautiful but I don't see it. I'm just ready for her to make her appearance so this can all be done... never to do again... not that I don't love children. But two pregnancies are enough! :)

Without further ado -- sit back, relax and enjoy today's issue!

Your Friend,

Diane Hughes
ProBizTips Weekly

P.S. Just a reminder -- you can check out all the special deals,
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Creating Content: The Easy Way
by Steve Shaw

There is little doubt that quality content has a number of real benefits for your web site, not least increasing levels of repeat visitors, and valuable revenue streams such as advertising and the sale of products or services related to the content you provide.

The only difficulty is that creating such content can be costly, taking up valuable time and resources. This article examines different ways you can add content to your web site quickly, giving you maximum benefit for the minimum cost.

Syndicated Content Streams

Syndicated content is content provided by others for use on your web site. Certain sites provide 'content streams', where you can simply place a few lines of code on your web page, and forget about it. The content provider then regularly updates the content it provides. The end result is that your site remains fresh and dynamic, at virtually no cost to you.

The content provider either charges a fee for the privilege of using their content, or they prefer to benefit through traffic, such as by placing a link adjacent to or within the content. One provider at interestalert.com even offers to pay you for adding a news feed to your site.

Here are a few examples of some content providers you may wish to try:

1. http://www.1afm.com/free_content/ - provides a range of different content types such as news headlines or jokes.

2. http://submityourarticle.com/syndicate - a number of different content feeds you can add to your site, displaying articles relating to internet marketing and online business.

3. http://www.brainyquote.com - adds 'quote of the day' to your web site, from a range of different topics and authors.

4. http://freesticky.com - an index of resources you can use to quickly add content to your site, with a wide range of content areas to choose from.

Free Reprint Articles

Free reprint articles are a type of syndicated content, and they are widely available.

The benefit for you is the provision of quality content on your web site, attracting targeted visitors via inbound links from the search engines. The benefit for the author of the article is their name and URL in the resource box (or 'author bylines'), which builds up targeted traffic to their web site, and builds up their 'brand' and online credibility.

Here are just some places where you can find articles to quickly put up at your web site:

1. http://articlecentral.com
2. http://goarticles.com
3. http://ideamarketers.com

Invite Content

Add a page to your web site where you invite your visitors to submit their content, in return for a link back to their own web sites. This will give you a steady stream of content you can choose from, and save you time in searching for it elsewhere.

As a twist on this, if you create original content on your own site, make it easy for visitors to use it on their own sites - remember, many of your visitors will be actively or passively looking for content for their own web sites. Just make sure they always include a link back to your site in return, so that you stand to benefit too.

Over time, as well as increasing the amount of content on your own site, providing your content to others will gradually but significantly increase your traffic levels, and is far more effective than the more popular 'link swapping' craze, that usually just leaves your link sitting unclicked in an unvisited links page.

The common phrase is that 'content is king' - the Internet is a content-driven medium, and the more successful web sites are those with the best content. By using some of the techniques above, you can increase the amount of quality content on your site with the minimum amount of effort and expense.

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

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10 Hot Ways To Sell Your Products Like Crazy

1. Turn your ad copy into a story or article. Your visitors won't be as hesitant to read your ad and will become more interested in your product.

2. Give visitors a freebie for filling out your online survey or they usually won't. Surveys will give your business valuable intelligence for your business.

3. Enhance the power of your ad copy benefits by using attention getting words, highlighting keywords, using color, bolding key phrases, underlining, etc.

4. Give your visitors tons of choices so they don't get the feeling of being controlled. Offer them a variety of ways to order, contact you, navigate, etc.

5. Put yourself in your visitors shoes. Design your site for them, not for yourself. Create your product around your visitors not because you would buy it.

6. Get free advice from successful online business owners. Participate in business chat rooms and message boards to chat with them.

7. Use your free bonuses to create an urgency for your visitors to buy. Only offer them for a limited time with your main product.

8. Offer your customers extra add-on products at the point of purchase. For example, if they are buying an electronic toy try to sell batteries with it.

9. Make your visitors feel good about themselves by giving them compliments. If they feel good they will also feel good about buying from your web site.

10. Add multiple profits to your web site. If you're selling business books try to sell business services, courses and supplies too.

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

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Is Your Website Ready For Local Search Engine Traffic?
by John Jantsch

I suppose the real reason for a local small business to have a website at all is to provide information for the local market, generate leads from local shoppers. Up until now too many small businesses have created websites more like monuments to their company name. If someone knew the name of the company, they could probably find the website. That was good to a point but what about those people who just know they need what you sell but they don't know anybody who sells it?

What if, instead, local businesses began to think about their websites more like a listing in a phone directory. What if they began to build and optimize their websites with the primary intent of being found in their hometown as the leader in a category. Someone looking for "Farm Fresh Tuna in Upper Cutbank, Montana" is going to enter just such a search, right?

Google and Yahoo both announced this month their model for tapping into the local search traffic. In other words they are now going to make it easier for web surfers that want to find an accountant in their home town to do so.

Everyone knew they would eventually get around to this very lucrative market so now more than ever you need to prepare your website to be found in your town.

More about local search at these sites.
http://www.google.com/lochp - Beta site
http://www.google.com/help/faq_local.html#what FAQ
http://local.yahoo.com/u_s__states - yahoo local

What I'm talking about today is "local" search engine optimization. In one sense the principles are the same as everyday regular search engine optimization but the way of thinking about them is a bit different.

~~~~~~
gEEk Term definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science of making sure web pages are "designed" in such a way that search engines can find, index, and rank them according to the value of their content. For those of you who don't know, there is an entire industry built around this science.
~~~~~~

In the old day the mindset was to create a website and optimize it for anyone looking for a certain topic.

Local SEO focuses first on being found in your town....for a certain topic. Geo targeting is the key. When someone is looking for a veterinarian, they don't search locally (at the moment) for the name of your firm. Think in terms of a Yellow Pages directory. They go to city they are looking for and then the category and then the name of the firm to call.

Local search is structured much the same. People who are looking for an auto mechanic online will search "Kansas City Auto mechanic" In order to win the local search game you must be able to win that type of search.

There are no hard and fast rules and even if there were they would change but here are some things you need to begin to think about to bury your competition in the local search game.

Title tags - Probably one of the most important info on your page anyway so make sure your title reads something like "YOURFIRMNAME Kansas City's oldest bakery

H1 tags - Make sure that your keywords for your site and your geography have H1 tags - The Best Baked Brioche in Peoria, Il

Content - Add your address and phone number early and prominently (not a bad thing for every page really)

Meta tags - Opinions vary on the usefulness of these but there are some tags that may gain usefulness depending on how the search engines refine their methods.

meta name="zipcode" content="64105,64113,64112,64110,64106,66207,66208,66210
meta name="city" content="Kansas City"
meta name="state" content="Missouri, Kansas"
meta name="ICBM" content="39.10246, -94.59009

City, State, and Zip code tags are pretty self explanatory but the ICBM one is a bit out there but kind of cool too.

If you go to the GEOUrl Address Server you can locate the exact latitude and longitude of your business. That's what those two numbers after the ICBM tag are. (Of course I think that is the same system they use to target bombs.)

Linking - Make your internal links local friendly - Instead of "Remodeling Projects" use "Omaha Kitchen Projects"

DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is a directory of sites that are listed by human volunteers. It seems that getting listed here gives you high marks with search engines so you need to do it but make sure that you go for the Regional listings all the way down to your town. It is unlikely (and not very useful) that you will get listed for a broad category, particularly if you don't provide world-wide service. Go for the poodle clipping section of your town and you will have better luck.

Other Directories - Another good reason to get listed in DMOZ for your town is that other local directories like Verizon's Smart Pages and SBC's Yellow Pages rely on these listing as well. By the way, get listed in as many of these phone book type of directories like Smart Pages as you can. Some are free and there is speculation that initially the big search engines will rely on these already built local directories.

There...that should keep you busy

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

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo.
He writes frequently on real world small business marketing
tactics and is the creator of “Duct Tape Marketing” a turn-key
small business marketing system. Check out his blog at
http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php

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Sitting on the side of the highway waiting to catch speeding drivers, a State Police Officer sees a car puttering along at 22 MPH. He thinks to himself, "This driver is just as dangerous as a speeder!" So he turns on his lights and pulls the driver over.

Approaching the car, he notices that there are five old ladies -- two in the front seat and three in the back - eyes wide and white as ghosts.

The driver, obviously confused, says to him, "Officer, I don't understand, I was doing exactly the speed limit! What seems to be the problem?"

"Ma'am," the officer replies, "You weren't speeding, but you should know that driving slower than the speed limit can also be a danger to other drivers."

"Slower than the speed limit?" she asked. No sir, I was doing the speed limit exactly... Twenty-Two miles an hour!" the old woman says a bit proudly. The State Police officer, trying to contain a chuckle explains to her that "22" was the route number, not the speed limit. A bit embarrassed, the woman grinned and thanked the officer for pointing out her error.

"But before I let you go, Ma'am, I have to ask... Is everyone in this car ok? These women seem awfully shaken and they haven't muttered a single peep this whole time." the officer asks.

"Oh, they'll be alright in a minute officer. We just got off Route 119."

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