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I’m sure you’re aware of all the online directories you can sign up for – or maybe you’re not!

You can sign your business up on tons of online business directories; most of them for free. You’ve got Google Local Business Center, Local.com, Yellowpages.com, Yahoo.com, local business group sites such as BNI.com, and lots more.

Then, there’s the social media craze. Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and a bunch of others.

One common and important thread among all these resources is what’s called your profile, or your bio (short for biography).

Your profile or bio is a section in your account for each of these services giving you a chance to describe you, your business, your achievements, and sometimes your person interests.

Creating a profile anywhere you can provides you with one more chance to talk about what you do and it gets stored on each provider’s website for others all over the Internet to see.

People, hopefully prospects, look at your profile to see if you’re someone who they might want to interact with or do business with, so it’s important to create one that describes you and your services accurately.

It’s one of the places you can promote yourself for free, so why not take advantage of it. Some even allow you to post a picture, which helps with personal branding, a secondary marketing technique.

Many of these sites allow you to search profiles to find others in the same profession or professions that might be complimentary to yours.

Each has their own limitations on the amount of characters you can use to create your personal profile, usually between 140 and 350 total characters. Also, you can usually include one URL to put in your website, too.

So be clear and concise about your services.

Personally, I am on Twitter, and when people follow me, I’ll look at their profile before I follow them. Generally, if they aren’t serious enough to create a profile, I won’t follow them, but if I think they fit in with the types and personality of people I want to talk with and find their tweets interesting, I will.

So go for it. Take the plunge and set up some online profiles. It will get you some good exposure – plus you can’t beat the price! The only cost is a bit of your time.

I’d love to hear your comments about this, good, bad, or ugly.

If you want me to write powerful subject lines for your email campaigns, to get more information about SEO, the benefits of powerful copy, about this post, web/online advice, or about my direct response web copywriting services, e-mail me or call me at 603-686-5140.

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

To your website’s success!

Merrill Clark
Website and Direct Response Copywriter
Crestview Marketing Services LLC

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If you don’t know where you are now – how will you get to where you’re going?

Fortunately, tools such as Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools come to the rescue.

In my previous post, I talked about constantly changing and testing variables on your website for maximum results.

The question then becomes: You’ve got your site online, but what do you do next?

First, install a traffic statistics program from your hosting company or install the free Google Analytics code on each web page. All you need to do is set up a free Google account, and once you go into the Analytics control panel, tell it the domain name, and it will display a short snippet of code that you just copy and paste onto each page.

Next, it’s time to start collecting various traffic and keyword statistics (Google Analytics does this automatically behind the scenes). Don’t make any changes to the site for a period of time, maybe a month or so depending on traffic. This will give you a baseline average. Now you’ll know where you are…

Then, any time you make any changes (make sure to change only one variable at a time), wait for the same time period and watch your numbers.

This will give you an idea if the change improved things, or if it made it worse.

Google Analytics is pretty cool and gives you a ton of great information. Information such as all sorts of different traffic stats, visitor techie details, maps, and keywords used. Plus, it’s pretty easy to use.

Google Webmaster Tools is another free resource you can use to check out other useful statistics and information about your site.

Now go get started and find out what your baseline numbers are, so you can start making all the positive changes and testing on your way to get the spectacular results you really want.

To get more information about writing compelling web copy, about this post, web/online advice, or about my direct response web copywriting services, e-mail me or call me at 603-686-5140.

To your website’s success!

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

Merrill Clark
Website and Marketing Copywriter
Crestview Marketing Services LLC

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How many websites related to yours include links to your site?

Of the many off-page SEO factors that search engines such as Google use to determine the results of a search query, incoming links from other relevant sites are one of the most important.

That means sites containing content that pertains to your business that also have a good history with Google.

It doesn’t mean bulk reciprocal link swaps or paying to get links on sites that have absolutely nothing to do with what you offer. There are many rip-off artists that will promise to put links on thousands of sites, but be aware…you’ll probably get penalized by Google if you do that.

The best way to get good quality links are by creating profiles on online business directories, submit articles to online article directories such as ezinarticles.com and putting your link in the resource box, answer questions in online forums or respond to blog posts related to your business and include a link.

To get more details about how Google thinks, here’s the link for their Google Webmaster Guidelines:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

And the best part – most of them are free, you just need to put in a little time and the results will improve over time.

There are many factors, on-page and off-page, that determine your placement in the search results, but the more “high quality” sites that have been around that link to your site, the better.

For more information, about how I can help you write more effective sales copy and improve your search engine results for your website, shoot me an email or call me at 603-686-5140.

To your website success!

Merrill Clark
Web SEO Copywriter and Online Strategist
www.webcontentnh.com
www.crestviewmarketing.com