With so many businesses pulling back in today’s shaken economy, especially with advertising dollars, maybe you could be taking advantage of the situation by setting your goals to thrive, not just survive.

Below are 5 Steps to set a good foundation for consistent growth for an online business looking to expand.  To learn more, stay tuned for an upcoming video interview with Brent of ThriveAmerica.com and yours truly.

STEP ONE : Identify your Biggest Pains

Don’t act desperate and just try everything out there that claims to make your business succeed. You’ll drown. You know your business better than anyone, so decide what key “pains” you have right now and focus on solving them first. Keep an open mind, however. Recognize new opportunities without getting sidetracked.

Action Item: Do a mind map or make a drawing of some sort to help get your ideas on paper. You’ll be surprised how much better you feel after getting everything on paper.

STEP TWO : Know Your Competitor

If the sites you consider as your competitor is getting over 4x the traffic you are, they probably aren’t your competitors. They will be, however, if you dissect valuable information from a competitive analysis and learn more about your market. Focus on data such as, where your competitor is getting traffic from, what keywords your competitor is using, and visitor trending.

Action Item: Compare your site’s traffic to a few of your competitor’s websites by using Alexa, Compete, or Quantcast. Pay particular attention to trends that might tell you something.

STEP THREE : Study Keywords

Keywords will tell you how to best direct your online marketing campaign. Not only can you find where the largest search volume is, but you can also find what most professional SEO professionals would consider “low-hanging fruit,” terms that get decent traffic but have low competition to rank well on search engines. Finally, a keyword study can help identify a niche that you might not have even originally considered.

Action Item: Start out with at least 5 seed keywords. These keywords should be a somewhat vague assumption as what you imagine someone would type to find you or keywords that you would consider to be the most beneficial to be ranked #1. Use keyword discovery tools such as Wordtracker, Trellian, or KeywordSpy to help you find even more relevant keywords and even niche keywords or “low-hanging fruit.”

STEP FOUR : Time to Test and Drive Qualified Traffic

It’s time to put the competitive analysis and keyword study to use. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is a very quick way to quickly bring traffic to your site and begin collecting valuable data from real live and qualified prospects.

Action Item: Start a Google Adwords campaign and commit to an advertising budget that you feel comfortable with for at least two weeks, preferably one month. Load up your first campaign with the seed keywords you’ve started with and additional keywords you’ve discovered. Follow Google’s instructions carefully. Now may be the time for you to look for professional help in setting up and managing a well run PPC campaign.

STEP FIVE : Optimize your Site for SEO and Conversion

Hopefully you’ve seen some success in your test! Now that you have some data to analyze, you can use it to improve On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO to drive organic search engine traffic to your site. Focus on making your site convert. Is there a call to action? Can the visitor see how to contact you easily? What is the value? What makes you different from any other competitor? Is it being advertised?

Action Item: Use a reputable free website seo optimizer to show how you can improve On-Page SEO for your site. Follow the instructions carefully or get a trusted seo company to do the work for you. Use other great web analytics tools such as ClickTale, CrazyEgg, or RobotReplay to further analyze your visitors behaviors on your site. Start out by finding where bounce rates are highest and identifying conversion funnels.

This of course isn’t all there is, but these 5 simple steps are a great way to get a solid foundation for a long lasting growth oriented online marketing campaign.  Please comment!

One of the most overrated factors in the world of search engine optimization is the value of pagerank. According to most expert articles about SEO, a site’s page ranking holds great importance especially when one wants to make a lot of money online. It is because your page rank entails not just your popularity as a website following a certain niche, but as your site’s substance and functionality in catering to your audience’s needs.

There are many views and opinions that revolve around the value of pagerank. While a lot of people rely on their pagerank to track the performance of their business, some experts meanwhile say that PR is just one of those SEO myths that only help boost competition among different websites. But how exactly important is your site’s page ranking? Yahoo Answers has some points which you have to consider:

Traditionally, it is the pagerank that plays a big part in establishing the overall value of a website. All websites start from PR 0, and eventually rise to the top, i.e. PR 10. The increase of your page rank depends on how well you market your site in your chosen niche, and be gaining more incoming traffic to your site. You can get more traffic by following the different SEO techniques such as link building, keyword optimization and the like. If you have an ecommerce website, then tracking your stats and pageranks greatly important since you need more clients to serve and support your business.

However, the internet business has grown and ceased to be a popularity contest, and these days you no longer need to have a popular site just to incur profit. You can find some insights in Yahoo Answers that stress the value of a site’s functionality and target, organic traffic, as they are the ones that bring in more money to your site. In this light, you don’t actually need big traffic, as long as your visitors sign up and subscribe to your site’s goods and services.

There are also some sites that don’t do well with high PR. Rather than helping them succeed in the business, they only get lower profits due to the random traffic they receive. Unless they cater to general masses and are supported by sponsors (and can afford to be free sites), these sites would only lose more income, since users would only visit their page and not do anything of monetary value. This can be an SEO myth for some people, but there are actually isolated cases that prove true to this kind of occurrence in the internet business.

In ecommerce meanwhile, page ranking is always included in one’s site statistics. This kind of site needs high page rankings in order to be known in the business, as it not only needs subscribers as well as partnerships with other business sites. If you want to put up an ecommerce site then you should be able to understand the technicalities of page ranking, as people still rely on this factor with regards to tracking the performance of their sites.

The value of page ranking can be an SEO myth for some experts in the online business, but still a lot rely on PR in evaluating their sites. Yahoo Answers has a lot more differing opinions about this subject, so why not go and check them out to gain a better understanding of the value of PR.

Should you be selling a product or a service?

The Internet is primarily used to communicate, entertain, educate and research. It is thus no wonder that nonperishable, information-intensive products – including computers and software, books, travel, consumer electronics, magazine subscriptions – are the most popular online products at present. Content-rich sites, subscription-based sites to advertiser-supported sites focusing on a wide range of topics, have been sprouting all over the Internet. The Google Adword Recommended SEO

Services such as hotel reservation, air travel and investments have successfully translated themselves to the Internet.

Unique services such as Online driving schools have been prospering. Some states in the US have set up online payment sites for Government services. Residents of a state can log on to a common site to pay all bills and other expenses, such as parking tickets to the local/County courts.

However, all kinds of services cannot be run entirely on the Internet. The Internet is less effective when face-to-face selling is needed to close a deal. The Internet can give lots of preliminary information that’s useful in setting the scene for the closing. But the actual closing takes place offline – i.e., not on the Internet.

Products can also be marketed and sold successfully on the Internet. The kinds of products and services that sell best on the Internet are those that take advantage of the convenience of the Net. Remember that convenience is the primary reason why consumers flock to the Internet in the first place. People can shop any hour of the day at any site. They can avoid crowded stores, irritating sales clerks, and even avoid pickpockets.

Offbeat or unusual products and services often attract online attention and sell strongly. You would generally not try to sell items people can get at the corner store. Thus, few toothbrushes are sold on the Net; the same thing with daily food and beverage purchases. But special cheeses, rare cigars, Turkish plates, long-aged wines, even diamonds, can and do sell on the Net.

Most products sold by catalog and mail order also sell well on the Net. However, people tend to buy only those products that could be shipped at a reasonable price. Higher shipping costs diminish the price competitiveness of online products and turns-off a lot of potential buyers. In fact, high shipping costs is the primary factor that discourages people from buying online more than any other single reason. An Ernst and Young report shows that 53 percent of online shoppers are concerned with shipping costs that are too high, compared to only 19 percent who are concerned with credit cards being stolen.

As an online merchant, you have to work out the advantages as well as disadvantages of selling either products or services. However, in the recent past, online services have known to flourish. Nevertheless, if you chose to sell products you need to rethink your product offering if the total costs of the product and the shipping are higher than what is offered elsewhere. Free the Google Adword Recommended SEO

When you decide to have an opt-in list, it is not just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or catalogs. There are many things to consider in avoiding many complications,just like dealing with seo service, website design or web traffic. While there are lots of ways you can make people subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to avoid subscribers from wanting to get off from your list.

Aside from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are so many laws which aim to} help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. With the popularity of email as a medium of marketing due to low cost, many company’s have seized the opportunity and have flooded many people’s e-mail accounts with promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you avoid this annoyance because people subscribe to the list; they would like to receive the newsletters and promotional materials. they have agreed to be on the list by subscribing themselves just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe feature everytime in your opt-in list so that you avoid any confusion. There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. Use the many tools and technologies available for your opt-in list when arranging your lists. Do not worry; once all of your coverage will be converted into sales and then into profit, then your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it.

Always keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean. Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, not successfully recieved by the recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. There are some bounce messages that are simply undeliverable ever. The reason for this is that it may be an a misspelled or invalid address or an email address that was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce. Never hesitate to erase an email account from your list so that you have an accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail. You can also check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

2) Make sure to provide an unsubscribe feature in your site and an unsubscribe link in your mails. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously. If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, most likely, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. may get into trouble and be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will indeed lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Never ever provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. It is hard to determine the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these. Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers. Just stick to the nature of your site and business.

Just keep in mind and remember these tips in this article so that you can have a good relationship with your subscribers as well as be kept within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending mails to an opt-in list.

Your IP Address is Your Email Identity.

A critical factor for the in-house marketer is the ability that you gain domain control and management. Your domain is a critical piece of the email communications puzzle. If somebody reports you as a spammer, they report your IP address, thus it is critical to avoid sharing IP’s with strangers and to manage IP’s effectively. Your email server should have the ability to use various IP addresses for various purposes. For new list signups, or optin’s, the IP address used should be a different address than those used to send email to long time list recipients. This ensures that the IP address used to send emails to long-term recipients is much less likely to be blacklisted as spam. This also empowers list managers with the ability to hold clean, or backup, IP addresses.

When you use an ESP you are likely sharing IP addresses with multiple, maybe thousands, of list managers. Many of whom are not concerned with keeping the ESP’s IP addresses from becoming blacklisted as spam. Some list management firms offer the ability to use separate IP addresses, however the cost is typically quite high. Your status as a valid sender of email is critical to your ability to deliver email messages. Also, to protect your reputation, email server technology should empower managers with the ability to easily implement popular identification protocols**.

List Hygiene: Keeping it clean

1) Email Capture
There are various ways to validate email addresses. In addition to the time of capture many list mangers run validity checks on a recurring basis. Example: A Web browser placing an order with XYZ Company accidentally types “.con” rather than “.com.” A validation tool will inform the individual that email addresses cannot end with “.con” and the address is not valid. In addition, a validator will go one step further and ensure that the URL in the email address can actually receive email. This is not an exact science, but if it prevents losing a list recipient forever and ensures one less email bounce to a recipient Email provider then your reputation is better protected.

Bounce Processing
Removing bounced email addresses from your list will ensure that your status as a valid sender of email is protected. Sending to non-existent addresses is a clear signal that you are a spammer and should be avoided. Many list systems do not allow for easy management of bounce data. There are thousands of different bounce types and most email servers do not allow the proper parsing of bounce data. Many times a soft bounce occurs since the email recipient’s inbox is full. Without proper bounce data processing this legitimate email recipient might be removed from your list.

A hard bounce is caused when the recipient server reports that the user does not exist and is almost always, sometimes automatically, removed from the list. Newer email server technology empowers marketers with the ability to interact with challenge bounces. These are bounces caused by spam systems that require a manual interaction in order to prove you are not a spammer. Existing email server technologies do not allow the ability to process this recipient and they will likely be lost. There are almost three thousand (3,000) defined bounce formats and your email server, or ESP, should have the ability to identify all types of bounced email.