I’m considering a theme change to this blog and request your input.
What’s The Readability Of The
Old Theme Vs. The New Theme
While there’s much I like about my old theme, it didn’t enable me to make font style and size changes that I believe will make it more appealing and readable.
So Johnny Kim, the new technical vice president of Best Books Plus, Inc., has created a new theme. He also set up an A/B test through Google analytics to determine which theme produces the lower bounce rate. But I also want your opinion.
Which Theme
Do You Like Best?
Because of the A/B test, you may see the old theme or the new one. If you then leave the site and come back you should see the other one.
Please leave a comment regarding the one that you like best and what you like and don’t like about each. You’ll get a linkback for your comment. But most importantly, your comments will insure that I select and adapt my theme to best meet your likes and dislikes.
My goal is to make getting information that will help your business enjoyable and easy for you. So please leave your comment.
“Newbee marketing” is the term frequently applied to new Internet marketers. Often new Internet marketers know as little about marketing as they do about running an Internet business.
So this post covers market segmentation, a type of marketing research necessary to identify and successfully gather information about a target market.
It’s more difficult to use market segmentation for Internet marketers who target markets by key words.
This post is the first of two that help Internet marketers to get the demographics to use for their target markets.
It explains how to use your list, pay-per-click and forums to get demographic information on your target market.
Whichever, technique you use to get demographic information on your target market, you have to have that information before you can use market segmentation to get personality characteristics and buying behavior.
This post describes a link building project and the possibility of Google declaring blogs with the list of links a “link farm”.
As a newbee marketer, you’ll find many opportunities like this one to get backlinks easily. But you have to consider how Google and other search engines view each opportunity and decide if it’s right for your business.
This post demonstrates how age of Website visitors demographics reveals needed changes for my blog. It traces my thoughts on those changes and my final decision about whom to target with my blog.
You need to know your website visitor demographics. This post reveals a free tool to get age and gender demographics. In it I show how I use this information in my business.
By using this tool, you’ll learn lots about the people who search for your major keywords so you can improve your site and your marketing appeals.
Newbee Marketing Conclusion
To get your newbee marketing off to a great start, you need to identify your target market and use market segmentation to learn about the people in your target market.
If you like these posts, you can get weekly summaries of my posts by completing the form below:
Search engine ranking marketing provides three major advantages over other ways of driving traffic to your site.
Search engine ranking marketing can be inexpensive if you do your own SEO.
Search engine ranking marketing provides longer term results than social networking.
Search engine ranking marketing is cumulative and continues to grow traffic over time if you keep doing it.
To illustrate how search engine ranking marketing has worked for me and can work for you, I’ll refer to the two tables above.
The first shows growth in descriptive statistics over six months growth of visitors to my blog and StrategicMarketSegmentation.com site. The second shows visitors per day by categories.
None of the statistics include traffic sources like Entrecard. Although I did use entrecard last summer, I quit in August because it was too time consuming for the traffic it provided and for the most part it wasn’t real traffic.
Instead, 85 to 90 percent of my traffic comes directly from the search engines, from people looking for information that I provide.
Search Engine Ranking Marketing
Can Be Inexpensive
Although I hired a SEO company to list my site in directories last spring, by the time I started keeping these records, I was doing all my own SEO. So all it costs is my time to acquire basic search engine information and to implement that information.
I do little off-site search engine optimization. I do submit my site and blog to some directories but have really done little directory submission during the six months shown here. I also comment on dofollow blogs and use keywords and urls for specific posts that are relevant to the blog post that I’m commenting on. I comment more consistently than I submit to directories, but not as much as I should.
So the growth in traffic shown in the tables above represent people clicking on search engine results. For all of my best traffic, my page is listed on the front page of the search engine results for that key word or phrase.
Some keywords that bring less traffic offer many visitors, but also lots of competition. For many of them, I still get some traffic from second page results.
Search Engine Ranking Marketing
Provides Long Term Results
What I like best about search engine ranking marketing is that it continues to bring traffic long after I’ve posted the information. For example, I did a series on the 4 p’s of marketing in June. That series continues to produce traffic 8 months later.
When I wrote the “4 p’s of marketing” series, the keyword phase was getting about 52 searches per day with 9 competitors also using the phase in the title. During February, I still got 26 visits from that keyword.
Now, you may think that’s not much, but when you consider that between pages and posts on just my blog, I have almost 300 articles. Some utilize the same keyword because they are a part of a series, but even they bring different traffic because each post deals with a different aspect of the topic.
Search Engine Ranking Marketing
Is Cumulative
By continuously writing on topics with comparatively low competition and good traffic keywords, I’m constantly doing search engine ranking marketing. I write using all the internal SEO principles that I know and the results are beginning to pay off.
Just look at the tables above.
The first table shows constant growth in vital statistics regarding traffic. Except for a Christmas slow-down that affected December and to a less extent January, these statistics show cumulative traffic growth. For example, my average (mean) traffic per day for September was 85, but by February it had grown to 231. My highest traffic day grew from 165 to 310, and my lowest traffic day from 44 to 108. So my lowest traffic day for February was more than my highest traffic day for September.
The second table shows that for 24 days in September, my traffic was between 50 and 99 visitors. Only five days exceeded more than 100 visitors. But during February, everyday brought more than 100 visitors and five brought more than 300.
Search Engine Ranking Marketing:
Conclusion
Search engine ranking marketing is a slow, but steady way to build traffic to your site or blog. But you do have to pay attention to SEO principles.
For example, I always look for good keywords to go with what I want to write. I look for long-tail keywords or what I call keyword phrases. I use the keyword phrase in the title and all subtitles. I also use it in the first sentence and bold it and use it in italics for my “Posted” line.
I don’t overuse keyword phrases so I rarely get a 3 or 4 keyword density. My keyword density for this post is only 1.5. But I often use latent semantic keywords that go with the keyword phrase.
Many SEO experts are now saying that getting your LSI (latent semantic index) up is more important today than a high keyword density. The keyword service that I use, Nichebot, provides LSI words. You can check it out by clicking the link above.
If you prefer to use a keyword selector tool instead of a keyword service, I provide a comparison of five of them and have linked to that post in this sentence.
If you decide to use search engine ranking marketing as the major way to get traffic to your site, you can do it yourself, but be prepared for a slow growing process. Of course you can complement search engine traffic with social networking, PPC ads, etc.
I’ve mentioned in prior reports on my traffic that I probably rely too much on search engine traffic, and don’t get enough direct and referring traffic, but as I watch my search engine traffic grow, I believe I made the right decision to use search engine ranking marketing as my main traffic generating tactic.
You too can get a top search result from Google. The Google Spot Web Marketing System makes it possible for a fraction of the cost of hiring an SEO company to do it for you.
What search engine ranking marketing tactics do you use? I’d love to hear about them. Tell me in your comment.
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Link Building is vital to Internet marketing. Much of your page rank and search engine optimization depends on it. But it’s not so easy to do.
A Project For
Link Building
I found a linkback project that makes it easier. It works with 100 sites at a time. And it’s now accepting sites for the next list of 100 sites. Every participant posts the entire lists of links and then adds a site. That way every site on the list gets 99 linkbacks.
I’m In, I’m Out
I had decided to participate this time to see how it works. I posted the list on this post. Then one of my subscribers mentioned that Google could consider my blog a link farm because of it. I went to the linkback project site at http://www.linkbackproject.com/ and read the comments on this possibility.
I admire the leader’s and other participants’ courage. Many know that the project will likely get them punished by Google, but they have decided to do it anyway. That is presently a risk that I just can’t afford to take. So I deleted the links and asked that my site be taken off the list.
Am I Cowardly
Or Responsible?
You may think I’m a coward, or you may think that I’m a responsible business person, or anything in between. But I’ve learned through a long career, that it doesn’t pay to challenge the powerful. And face it, Google is the power on the Internet. If you don’t get Google search traffic, you chances of success are greatly reduced.
Still some of you in Internet marketing may think that link building is important enough to take the risk. Then I encourage you to participate in the link building project.
Or you can get insider trade secrets to generating killer backlinks to beat the search engines at their own game with Backlink Formula.
Learn more about link building at the page linked below:
From the time that I started in the Internet business, I’ve heard that Internet marketing is a level playing field. That your race, gender, age, economic status, and business size don’t matter. After 18 months in the business, I disagree with that statement.
From what I’ve experienced and witnessed, Internet marketing is as gender biased as most businesses and professions.
Now before you decide if I’m right or wrong, or just another woman complaining, ask yourself these questions:
Of all the email lists that you are on, what percentage are from women?
Of all the products that you’ve purchased, what percentage of them were created by women?
Of the email promotions that you receive, what percentage of them are for products by women?
Of the sites that you frequently visit, what percentage of them are owned and operated by women?
How did you learn about the sites that you visit? Was it from an email recommendation by a man for another man? Was it from a site owned by a man recommending another site owned by a man?
Is Internet Marketing Just Another
“Good Ole Boy Network”?
It appears to me that the “good ole boy network” is alive and well on the Internet. In fact, the only women that seem to be doing well are women who are “one of the boys” or who have a male mentor, and they are few and far between.
Now by mentor, I don’t mean someone you pay to give you advice and aid. I mean someone who believes in your abilities enough to want to take you under a wing and guide you to success.
I’m always reading about some man, who attracted a successful man Internet marketer as a mentor, and achieved almost instant Internet marketing success. I can’t think of one instance of reading of a man who mentored a women Internet marketer just because he recognized her abilities and potential for success.
When I was young and just starting my academic career, a man told me that every person should hire or help people they are most comfortable with. “I’m most comfortable with men,” he said. “So that makes a man better qualified for the job.”
That seems to be the philosophy of successful Internet marketing men. They help other men because they are comfortable with them. They are chums.
So where does that leave the women? Are we not as smart? Are we not as capable? Are we not as teachable? Or is it that we are just not as “chumable” for men?
Is Internet Marketing Gender Bias
Deliberate or Inadvertent?
Now I’m not accusing the men Internet marketers of deliberating discriminating against women. Most gender bias in the business and professional world has not been a deliberate attempt to block women from success. Instead, it’s been men choosing to “chum” and help other men, not even noticing the potential of the women.
It’s not the deliberate discrimination that’s so damaging because most people recognize that kind of gender bias as wrong. Instead it’s the choice to work only with people like yourself, which usually means a man helping another man, without ever recognizing that women are even there, working just as hard, bringing just as much skill and talent to their work, and just as willing to build relationships.
What Can You Do About
Internet Marketing Gender Bias?
The next time you read your emails, or a recommendation for a site or a product, think about whose recommending whom and why? Consider the effect of those emails and recommendations on Internet marketing as a level playing field. Is it really level or just another business in which women don’t get an equal opportunity?
If you are a successful Internet marketer, look around for talented, hard-working women. You probably won’t have to look beyond your own list. Consider mentoring or just chumming with one or more of them. Bring women into your network.
If you still lack that kind of power but object to gender bias in Internet marketing, there’s still plenty that you can do. Sign up for free products by women. Subscribe to their lists. Read their emails, and buy their products. Judge for yourself if products by women are just as good as those by men.
If you want to start this minute, you can get subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:
And don’t stop with me, there are many capable women Internet marketers with free reports, email lists that offer good information, and great products for sale. Who knows, in your fight against gender bias, you may learn to be a better business person and a better Internet marketer!
One successful female internet marketer goes by the name pot pie girl. I don’t know her personally, but surely see lots of references to her. If you want to discover what she knows, check out her popular internet marketing plan.
Posted 7-22-08:
Internet Marketing Is Gender Biased
Linda holds a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) and is accredited in Public Relations (APR). She has practiced marketing, public relations and communication skills for over 30 years. She is President of Best Books Plus, Inc., an online and off line publishing company.
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