To Follow Or Not to Follow

Does this Ring a Bell?

Maybe I should have called this to allow or not to allow!

What a boob! Yeah, I admit it, my actions the first time I learned about backlinks and blogs was a disaster! It was almost 2 years now since buying a process from a woman selling how to set up and blog your way to riches.

So I did – bought the program, set up my own blog, this one you're reading now.

The woman invited us to comment on our results on her own blog. Thing is, I can’t remember her right now and I think I know why.

I commented. I wrote how wonderful her program was and I must have used my new blog link and like phrases over and over. I didn’t know better. I thought I was backlinking to my own blog effectively.

She erased my comments and didn’t even bother to write me about the etiquette of back-linking. Hah!

I was a customer. I was new, and she chose to ignore me instead of retraining me.

First point – please don’t ignore your customers no matter how much they don’t know about your system.

Second point - I learned about backlinks eventually from someone else. Mike from Profit Lance explained the system to me in a way that was easy to understand and I could apply almost immediately. Check out his process if you’re interested in developing online marketing affiliates or your own products. http://about.thebestbizreview.com

So what’s a backlink exactly?

Backlink is simply a link from another website to your own site. The best way is to get links naturally is by writing quality content that other webmaster’s want to link to your website. You could write it on their blog sites or in articles, press releases, and more.

About commenting on other peoples’ websites and blogs:

Yes, you can increase your page rank when you get high quality backlinks to your website.

Most blogs and some websites allow you to leave a comment. You can usually add your website link and this helps in terms of getting some traffic (if your comment is interesting enough) and increasing the number of backlinks to your site.

However, you need to know if where you’re writing has an attribute called “nofollow” which stops your link being counted as a backlink.

If so, don’t bother – really – it’s as effective as you hitch-hiking west to Vancouver and sticking your thumb out on the other side of the highway – facing east! Will you get a ride? Nope.

This tag was invented to prevent spam comments and you can check for the presence of this by viewing the source of the page and searching for “nofollow”. Despite this, there are still many blogs and websites where you can get the benefit of a backlink.
Here is a http://courtneytuttle.com/blogs-that-follow/ list of blogs that do follow to help you get started.

The "dofollow movement" originated in opposition to the rise of nofollow.

Dofollow bloggers are bloggers that agree to manually moderate their blog comments and remove the nofollow tag. What this means for promoting your Web site is that you should spend your time commenting on dofollow blogs. It is difficult to find dofollow blogs, they are very rare, most blogs are nofollow by default.

There are also Dofollow search engines available to solve this problem. Dofollow search engines (specifically those for blogs) allow you to search a list of only approved dofollow blogs. The best way to use one is to search for the keywords that you hope to have your site rank for. Once you've found a good post to comment on, leave a quality comment. Once they have approved it, you will earn a dofollow link. Dofollow links count with search engines as a vote for your site and will help you rank better in search results.

great job today!
Patricia

Analyze This!

A lot of businesses believe that optimizing web sites is costly. The truth is, most of the services and applications are currently free to help you optimize your site.

Google has the top Analytic tool today. Catch a lot of the discussion at Google's blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com

Most business use these tools to count traffic and they exclaim heartily, "Wow, got 10,000 hits this month!"

But the question is, "How many did what you asked? Purchased, clicked onto your ezine, called you?"

Google Analytics can help you measure the effectiveness of your marketing messages and improve the quality of your marketing - online and even off.

Basically, place phrases and words (digital tags) on the pages you want to measure and identify behaviour.

For example, enter the words, "professional party organizer" and in another part of your site, "party developer" and see which link invites more visitors. Google Analytics will create statistics for you with any amount of phrasing.

The ones that work to convert your visitors into customers are the ones you want to focus on your sites.

Hope you like stats - there's a ton to be gained and improve your marketing strategies.

have a great day and success to you!
Patricia

Guest Article: Newsletter Success

10 Tips To Make Your Newsletters A Sure-Fire Success"
		1. Sending out newsletters is one of THE best ways of building relationships with clients. Email is quickest and cheapest so it’s the one I personally prefer most of the time. That said, email is a funny thing – you need to make sure your email newsletters aren’t too heavily sales based. Make sure to include lots of free tips and tricks for clients (as well as your latest offers) so that they look forward to them arriving and open them with anticipation of picking up some new bit of info.
2. Your weekly newsletters are doing lots of your work for you. They are relationship building between you and your clients. If you’re sending them via email, try to make sure to send them each and every week. Even if you’ve run out of time, and it’s just a short tip for the week and nothing else, never skip a week if at all possible. Keep that relationship up and over time you’ll find more and more of them book in regularly. 3. Are you adding all your new clients to your email list? Every single new client or enquiry should be added onto your list. That way you’ll get the best coverage and the most responses. 4. Statistics show that most people only read about one in every 4 emails they receive properly. So if you are sending them a weekly newsletter, they are probably only reading one of them fully once a month. This doesn’t mean you should drop your frequency down to once a month though! If you do this, that means they would only be reading one email from you once every 4 months... which really is not very often! So keep it at once a week and know that you’re getting at least one quality bit of contact with your clients per month. 5. There’s been lots of research and most statistics show that it takes between 5 and 7 contacts with a new client before they want to book or buy. So if you add a new client on your mailing list, it might be several weeks before they then book in to see you. But remember if you don’t put them on your mailing list, you won’t have any contact with them and they may never book. So add all new clients on asap. 6. Getting some clients unsubscribe from your newsletter? Not a problem. It’s very common with email marketing that clients will unsubscribe when they are too busy to read your emails. HOWEVER, it’s also very common for clients to wish to re-subscribe later when they’ve got more time or energy to devote to whatever it is you are offering them. So always be polite and never take an unsubscription personally. If you’re highly professional and always welcoming they may well be back in the future. 7. If someone asks to unsubscribe from your newsletter but you can’t see their email address on your list, ask them if they have an alias or another email address. Many people now days have 3 or 4 different email accounts and if they’ve subscribed to your newsletter under a different email address, you’ll need to know what that is to remove it. 8. ... >> to read the rest and get the last 3 tips go to >> http://rebeccakepple.com/blog/2009/02/10-tips-salons-newsletters/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits. To get instant access to her free insider secrets seminar ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base' visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freebie.