Social Proof For Your Website: More Important Than You Think

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Tom Antion

Social proof is an important feature of a website if you don't want to isolate your visitors.

What is social proof? It's any place on the website where your showing off how many people have visited the site, subscribe to the site or a place where visitors can leave a comment or share the content with their friends. In the old days, visitor counters and guestbooks used to help in establishing the fact that people were visiting and enjoying the site. There days, it's far more powerful to let your visitors share the content with their friends and sound off with their opinions.

There's two main reasons why this may be more important than you think.

1) Google is rewarding websites that people ‘like.' How do they know what people like? Sites that have great content, that is shared using the Twitter, Facebook and Google + sharing buttons, look like sites that are entertaining, educational and relevant. Yes, Google can tell when people share content with their friends, stay on the website longer and leave comments. How is Google rewarding sites that people like? With higher search positioning.

2) No one wants to be the first to buy something they are unfamiliar with. If a visitor can see that others have been sharing, commenting and subscribing to a site, they'll feel better and more assured about buying something. Just like the review feature on Amazon, how others react to a site, product or service has a major impact on the buying decisions of others who follow. If your website has the ability to extract comments from your visitors, that will have a big influence on other people who visit in the future.

Social proof is fairly easy to implement. In WordPress, you can use a ‘comments' plug-in to get people talking. Also, a plug-in such as “Sociable” will give your visitors access to a vast array of social sharing buttons for Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Linkedin and more.

How Google ranks websites in the search results has changed dramatically…

Blogging For Business: keyword tips

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Tom Antion

Just about every business with an online presence has a blog. It's a great way to stay in touch with your prospects and customers, letting them know of new products and changes in your business. It gives your customers a way to comment and be a part of the goings-on, increasing your interactive marketing and client loyalty.

Some blogs do better than others and I'll show you why. Attracting new traffic to your company website is the main reason for blogging. The keywords you use in the post titles are important for search engine optimization and attracting new customers. Keyword research is probably one of the most critical parts of writing a successful blog. How disappointing would it be if all of your hard work and postings were seen by literally no one?

Keyword research needs to be conducted ahead of time — before you start writing your posts. Look at the title of this post for example: Blogging For Business. Using the keyword suggestion tool from Google, I found that nearly 8100 searches a month are conducted for this phrase.

That's pretty good. I try and pick words or phrases that don't have too high a search (1,000,000), because the competition is too high as well. I also don't want to pick a word or phrase with too little searches (87), because no one's really looking for it. 8100 to 15,000 is just about right. That's a lot of potential traffic I could attract to the website.

Besides paying attention to and writing good, compelling content, the title keywords are your most important priority for a successful blog.

Top professional bloggers are living the dream of working from home…

Careers in Internet Marketing: Paid and Free Ads

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Tom Antion

Just like any other business, ads play a huge role in Internet businesses as well.

While most believe that search engines bring in all of the customers to web-based businesses, the amount of competition to get on the first page of a search result leaves ads as an important alternative to attracting traffic. The most popular ads are called pay-per-click and they appear on the top, and often on the right-hand side bar of a search result. PPC ads give a business an opportunity to ‘bid their way' to the top of a search result page in just a few hours.

There are also Facebook ads, banner ads and free classified ads such as backpage.com and Craigslist. Each ad is constructed differently depending on how its used. For a pay-per-click ad, the business owner doesn't have to pay until a searcher ‘clicks' on the ad. That being said, the ad needs to be written very carefully so people who would not be interested in the product don't click on it. This is called ‘qualifying' the ad for a specific target customer, making sure that only the most qualified prospect clicks on it.

Free ads need to be written so the most critical information is presented in the least amount of words. People scour free ads by the thousands and it needs to stand out from the others or it will get lost or be ineffective. Whether ads are paid or free, they need to be conversion-friendly: written enticingly and leading to a landing page that makes money. If this is all done incorrectly, there will be a lot of wasted time and money.

That's where businesses need well trained writers and ad managers for their websites. You just can't have anyone pop an ad on the Internet. There's many variables that take place for an ad to work. Millions of dollars are spent every year on ads that stink. Most businesses are looking for someone with the specialized knowledge that you'll get at IMTC. We teach only the proven and specialized techniques that make money on the web. Get your free career brochure and see what you're missing out on.

WordPress Vs. Blogger

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tom Antion

We get this question all of the time.

It's all about customization. Both blogging platforms have the potential to draw subscribers, get good search positioning and drive traffic to your websites. Both create engaging posts using images, audio and video.

The difference is in what happens after the visitor arrives at the blog itself. With WordPress, you have many options for engagement that are not easily available for Blogger sites. The most powerful option is a side-bar widget for opt-ins. An opt-in form is critical to marketing anything on the Internet. Building a database can lead to many more sales above and beyond just traffic coming and going on the blog. The Blogger platform theme doesn't support side-bar widgets and for the most part, is not at all able to support other popular plug-ins such as store widgets, lightboxes and polls.

The major difference that most people recognize between the two services is the ability to make the site look any way you want. WordPress themes are 100% customizable so they can look exactly how you want it to. Most of the time, you can't even tell a website is using WordPress software unless you look at the code behind the scenes. Blogger, while it can be somewhat customized, still uses the same basic template without the ability to make drastic changes.

I've seen both platforms look great, engage visitors and come up high in search engine results. But because of the vast array of plug-ins available, WordPress wins hands-down in its ability to be a fully customizable tool for your marketing needs.

Are You Using Title Bars to Your Advantage?

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Tom Antion

According to SearchEngine news and Planet Ocean, two of the most respected SEO research firms, the “title bar” area is one of the most important SEO friendly parts of your website. It's where the search engines look first for the respective keywords about your site and carries the most weight of any other area of text for keyword relevance. Are you using these ‘title' area to your advantage?

For most of the website that I look at, the answer is no. Most are still labeled “Home”, “About Us” and “Contact”, etc… In WordPress, the default title is the name of the page itself: /about-susan-jones and other such labels. However, there is a plug-in that can change the title area to whatever you want it to be – and keyword rich titles are the ticket to SEO success.

The All-in-One SEO Pack plug-in is free and easy to use. It installs in seconds and is a powerful tool for exploiting the proper keywords on your website. After installation, the form will appear at the far bottom of every page and post in edit mode. Here is an example of the SEO Pack below:

Using the proper keywords, you can easily attract the search engines so they can match up your website content with those who are searching the web for information. Learn more about proper SEO of a website.

Simple Website Navigation – Best Practices

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Tom Antion

The confused mind votes “no.”

That's an old saying concerning a new concept: website navigation. For some reason, we think that having a ton of links on our websites will make it easier for people to get where they're going or ‘force' them to go where we want them to. The real problem is that when there are too many choices, people tend to freeze up.

Navigating through a website should seem like coming to a series of doors in a hallway. If there are too many, it can instantly seem daunting. Given a clear choice of 3 or 4 can make the process clearer and smoother. We recommend no more than 6 – 7 navigation links on a home page. If you really need more, a drop-down window can help make it easier, because the choice to navigate further into the site becomes that of the visitor instead of something you thrust upon them.

Another way to keep top navigation more simple is page-to-page linking. A simple navigation link “Articles” will take the visitor to a page where more choices are, such as the titles of the individual articles themselves, and then clicking on those would lead to another dedicated page with the article body on it. This is similar to going through a house one door at a time, leading from room to room, instead of 14 doors to choose from as soon as you enter the foyer.

We often have a tendency to want to deliver too much information, just because we know a lot. For the website visitor who's just discovering this information for the first time, too much information can lead to headaches and indicision. Simple website design can make you a valuble resource to any industry.

Who Is IMTC’s Founder….

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Tom Antion

…and how can he help you realize a dream of starting your own business just like he has?

Our founder, Tom Antion has been selling on the commercial Internet since its beginning circa 1994. Since then Tom has made himself an Internet multi-millionaire and helped hundreds of small business owners and entrepreneurs earn full and part time incomes on the Internet. Many have taken what they have learned from Tom and used it on a consulting basis to help other businesses thrive on the web. Many have bolstered their positions in their jobs by bringing great value and return on investment to the companies for which they work.

Tom Antion, founder of IMTC

IMTC Founder Tom Antion

Tom has personally trained over 900 consulting clients and is asked frequently to speak on the topic of Internet marketing at conferences around the world. This school is an effort to make Tom’s training available to a much wider audience and at a much more affordable investment.

Tom is a practical straight shooter type of person and that is reflected in the school he created. He will only allow solid, practical and immediately usable techniques as part of the curriculum of the school.

Get your free Student Guide to discover more!

Online Marketing Secrets: Free Books

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Tom Antion

No, we're not giving away free books. Not at the moment anyway. But it shouldn't stop you from doing so.

Here's a strategy for building a loyal and receptive physical mailing list that can help create brand awareness and make money too. Create a small, physical soft cover book to give away to your email list. It doesn't have to be huge — maybe just 60 pages or so. Use it to have a contest such as “Name The Title” or something creative so people will read it and engage with it.

The book can be printed for very little money up front. Small books like this from CreateSpace or Vervante can be printed for as low as $2.00 or less. Have a promotion where you ‘give the book away' for free, but charge for shipping, maybe $5.00. Have your list read it and come up with a working title for a grand prize at a later date.

Here is why this works:

A physical mailing address is a powerful way to market to your list. With ever decreasing open rates, marketers are turning to direct mail marketing to help advertise their products and services.
When people read the book, they engage with it in a more direct fashion than an ebook that they download, but may not even get around to reading.
A physical, printed book doesn't get thrown into a folder somewhere on the prospect's hard drive, it stays visible on their shelf or office space keeping your brand top-of-mind. Books are often loaned out to friends, spreading the brand awareness to others.
Even after printing and shipping the book out to your list for the $5.00 S&H, you may end up keeping $1.00 for yourself. That's $1000 for every 1000 books you ‘give away.'
Prospects that opt-in to get the book with their physical mailing address are ‘hotter' leads than the rest of your list. They will be more receptive to higher priced services such as live events, seminars and personal coaching. Now you know who they are.
The book is a branding device: it's sole purpose is to make you look like the expert and the ‘good guy.'

Not all Internet marketing strategies take place on the Internet. Reaching out to prospects in a non-digital way is a powerful technique that can make you stand out from your competition. Learn more about offline / direct marketing.