Landing Pages for Websites cont'd

And the most important aspect (as text is related)?

The headline.

THe headlines of your pages should directly correlate to the place they came from. Your customer clicked to your landing page for a reason, and they need confirmation that they are in the right place.

As mentioned before, as an internet marketer you know that you have about 8 sec. to convince a visitor to stay- and the headline is the easiest way to confort them into investing more time.

Lets look at this heatmap- how much of anything else besides the Headline and picture are even looked at?






The point is that the visitor makes the decision off of those initial aspects,period. So no matter what the programmers and designers say, the decision needs to be based off of what the consumer does; the behavior of the consumer. Reverse marketing ring a bell? Yep, consumer focused websites are a must.

SEO Tools Online

I found this list online and plan on adding a few of my own links to it- so look for more links added to the list in a couple of days.

Feel free to use this list on any sites. I jujst ask that you in turn link back to my site here. To make it easy, here is the code for my site that you can just copy and paste into your template:

<a href="reversemarketing.blogpsot.com"> Reverse Marketing Blog</a>


Also, give credit where credit is due. Thanks to Wayne at World Famous Gift Baskets


Enjoy!


1. Reporting Spam to Google - http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
2. Use Google to search your website - http://www.google.com/services/free.html
3. Submit your website to Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
4. Monitor Keyword Phrases - http://google.com/webalerts (This is neat to check out however does not help that much)
5. Googles Guidelines for Websmasters - http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html (A must read new people)
6. Facts for Webmasters - http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html
7. Having Trouble? Contact Google Directly - http://www.google.com/ads/offices.html
8. Googles Top 3 asked Questions - http://www.google.com/contact/search.html


Froogle
1. Get your products into Froogle - http://services.google.com/froogle/merchant_email


Advertising
1. PPC with Espotting - http://www.espotting.com/advertisers/list_yoursite.asp?ReferralID=2625&ReferralTypeID=1


Website Design & Tools
1. Free Forms for your website TFMail - http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/
2. Validate Your HTML - http://validator.w3.org/
3. HTTP Error Code Meanings - http://www.searchengineworld.com/validator/httperrorcodes.htm
4. Keyword Tracking - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
5. Link Checker - http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/perl/modules/W3C/LinkChecker/docs/checklink.html?content-type=text/html;%20charset=utf-8
6. Search Engine Relationship Chart - http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm
Bruce Clay does an excellent job of keeping this updated.
7. Link Popularity Checker (Uptime Bot) - http://www.uptimebot.com/
8. Character Counting - http://a1portal.com/freetools/charcount.htm (This is great when optimizing your title or meta tags)
9. Character Encoding - http://www.itnews.org.uk/w_qrefs/w_international/p_charsets.cfm (Ever wonder what those iso-8859-4 or utf-8 were or how to use them?)
10. Converting Hex to Dec or Vias Versa - http://www.hypersolutions.org/pages/hex.html#DectoHex
11. Ascii-Dec-Hex Conversion Code Chart - http://www.sonofsofaman.com/misc/ascii/default.asp
12. Ascii-HTML View Conversion Chart - http://a1portal.com/freetools/asciicodes.htm (This is an excellent resource when placing ascii code on your website. Remember to use the correct character encoding)
13. Ascii Chart in .GIF Format - http://www.jimprice.com/ascii-0-127.gif
14. Customer Focus Tool - http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm (Tells you whether your website is focused on your customers or not)
15. Dead Link Checker - http://www.dead-links.com/ (Doesn't crawl links within Frames or JavaScript)
16. Adsense Simulator - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/ (This will give you an idea of what ads will be displayed on your website before you place them)
17. Google Page Rank Calculator - http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank_calculator.php3?pgs= (This is an advanced tool for finding out what you need to get your PR to the next level.)
18. Page Rank Finder - http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php (This is a great tool to find quality websites with the PR that you are looking for to exchange websites with. This tool only looks at the home page not the link pages. This tool looks at 10 pages or 100 results)
19. Future Google PR - http://www.searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums/action::thread/thread::1085961600/forum::google/type::orphans/ - This is an article that tells you what datacenter your Google PR is udpated on first.
20. Keyword Analysis Tool - http://www.mcdar.net/ - This tool is a must. It's quick and easy to use
21. Keyword Density Analyzer - http://www.webjectives.com/keyword.htm
22. Keyword Difficulty Checker - http://www.searchguild.com/cgi-bin/difficulty.pl (You will need a Google API for this one)
23. Free Google API - http://www.google.com/api
24. Rocket Rank - http://www.rocketrank.com/ - This will only check the top 20 of the following SE's:
(All The Web DMOZ AltaVista Overture Excite Web Crawler HotBot Lycos What U Seek Yahoo)

Keyword Suggestion Tools:
25. WordTracker & Overture Suggestions http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ - This is the best one of the three
26. Adwords Suggestion - https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
27. Overture Suggestion - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
28. Link Analyzer - http://www.scribbling.net/analyze-web-page-links Analyze the ratio of internal liinks vs. external links. This is a good tool when determining page rank leakage.
29. Link Appeal - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml (Want to know whether or not you actually want your link on that page?)
30. Link City - http://showcase.netins.net/web/phdss/linkcity/ (This place has EVERY tool under the sun for everything you could ever possibly want)
31. Link Reputation - http://198.68.180.60/cgi-bin/link-reputation-tool.cgi (Reveals baclinks pointing to the target URL along with a link survey for eack backlink.)
32. Google PR Tools - http://www.thinkbling.com/tools.php (This guy has tons of fantastic tools. He is not as popular as some of the rest but the tools are great)
33. Protect Your e-mail address - http://www.fingerlakesbmw.org/main/flobfuscate.php (Obfuscates your e-mail so spambots don't pick it up from the Internet)
34. Digital Points Ad Network - http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=2197 - After using all of the tools and more on this page. This has helped out the rankings faster than anything else.
35. Sandbox Detection Tool - http://www.socengine.com/seo/tools/sandbox-tool.php - Is your website being sandboxed?
36. Spider Simulation - http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/ - See what the spider sees on your website
37. SEO-Toys - http://seo-toys.com/ - These are some things that I had in my favorites. Some of them are okay.
38. Multiple SEO Tools - http://www.free-seo-tools.com/ - This website has a variety of misc. tools on it that you can use to better your search engine rankings.
39. Bot Spotter - http://sourceforge.net/projects/botspotter - This is a phenomenal script that will track what bots hit your website at what times. (Runs on PHP enabled websites)
40. Net Mechanic - http://www.netmechanic.com/toolbox/power_user.htm - This will break your website down and tell you any errors that you may be unaware of.
41. Statcounter - http://www.statcounter.com/ - This will track your clients throughout the dynamically created pages of your website. This is a free service. (of course I don't have to mention this to you guys)
42. Dr. HTML - http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/drhtml.html - This will test your website for any errors that you may be unaware of and tell you how to fix them.
43. Page Rank Calculation - http://www.sitepronews.com/pagerank.html


Webmaster Forums
1. Web Pro World - http://www.webproworld.com/forum.php
2. Webmaster World - www.webmasterworld.com
3. Digital Point - http://forums.digitalpoint.com
4. Search Engine World - www.searchengineworld.com
(There are 10,000,000 others but those are some good ones)

Newsletters & Articles
1. Ezine Publishing- http://www.ezinearticles.com/ Great site for free submition of articles. Good way to start building links. Sign up(for free) and get 10 free submitions.
2. Site Pro News - www.sitepronews.com (This guy has some great articles however he tells you up front he knows nothing of SEO)
3. In Stat - http://www.instat.com/ (This has some decent insite)
4. Page Rank Explained - http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html#toolbar_pagerank
5. Seach Engine Ratings and Reviews - http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/
6. Database of Robots - http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/active/html/index.html
(Ever wondered anything about the spiders that are out there?)
7. Guide to deisgning a website - http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html?/contents.html - This is an online book that tells you the basics of website design.


Webmaster Information


1. Want to know where all of the Internet traffic is at? - http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm


ISAPI Rewrites
1. URL Replacer - (Free) - http://www.motobit.com/help/url-replacer-rewriter/iis-mod-rewrite.asp
2. Mod Rewrite2 - ($39.90US) - http://www.iismods.com/url-rewrite/index.htm
3. URL Rewrite - (23.00EUR) - http://www.smalig.com/url_rewrite-en.htm

Link Exchanging
1. Links Manager ($20.00US /mo)- http://linksmanager.com/cgi-bin/cook/control_panel.cgi (This is great for the beginner however you will find out that you need to majorly adjust your pages manually in order to pread page rank throughout them otherwise you end up with 20 pages with no PR and 1 page with PR.)
2. Page Rank Finder - http://www.seo-guy.com/seo-tools/google-pr.php (This is a great tool to find quality websites with the PR that you are looking for to exchange websites with. This tool only looks at the home page not the link pages. This tool looks at 10 pages or 100 results)
3. Link Appeal - http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-appeal.shtml (Want to know whether or not you actually want your link on that page?)
4. 131 Link Building Strategies- http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2160301 Great article with lots of tips. Some of the recommended sites are out of date, but the concepts are still valid.


Search Engine Submissions
1. Submit Express - http://www.submitexpress.com/newsletters/dec_15_00.html (A lot of people utilize this service. I don't utilize it)
2. Alexa - http://pages.alexa.com/help/webmasters/index.html#crawl_site
3. AOL - http://search.aol.com/aolcom/add.jsp
4. DMOZ Dummies Guide - http://www.dummies-guide-to-dmoz.org/we_are_not_google.htm
5. DMOZ Instructions - http://dmoz.org/add.html
6. DMOZ Resource Forum - http://resource-zone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=396 (This is where you go when you website doesn't show up in DMOZ after you have submitted READ THEIR RULES FOR ASKING)
7. ExactSeek - http://www.exactseek.com/freemember.html
8. Google - http://www.google.com/addurl.html
9. Yahoo http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request (You must have an account)
10. Yahoo Directory Help - http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/appropriate.html
11. Yahoo Express Submit TOS - https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/terms (After reading the TOS for Yahoo, I would never submit my website to Yahoo and pay the $300.00 to due so- Everyone, I broke down and was forced to pay the $300.00. The website would not get past 30 for months and about 2 weeks after we paid it we are now number 10.)
12. Yahoo Submit Help - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html
13. MSN - http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?
14. Links Manger Bizweb 2000- http://linksmanager.com/bizweb2000/ A small portal to submit you r website services.


If you have any tools that are not listed here and would like to add them, please do. This is only a partial list of the tools that I utilize.

Tips for Landing Pages (from Marketing Sherpa)

Here is some free information for you internet marketers that most people have to pay a lot of money for!!!

As any internet marketer knows, a very useful resource/newsletter is the Marketing Sherpa. They recently put out a "Landing Page Handbook" study that was excellent.



I have access to this guide and made notes as I read the whole thing. It is amazing that even though the guide was meant directly for landing pages off of promotions and similar things, the concepts discussed can actually be applied to internet marketing in general. Most of these tips will also relate directly to reverse marketing concepts applied to eCommerce and internet marketing. So here are a few notes to begin with from this $250 guide:

Tip #1- The outbound campaign driving prospects into your landing page is relatively unimportant compared to what the actual landing page asks them to do.

Tip #2- At least 50% of viewers to your landing page will decide with a quick glance (usually within 8 sec.) whether your page is the one they want to be at or not.

Tip #3- One major problem and misunderstanding is that your landing page can accomplish multiple goals to multiple targets- this is FALSE! Only have one goal, with one purpose focused on one target group.

Tip #3- The single most important part of your landing page?.... (this tip is to come with my next post)

I will continue to post my notes from this guide for those who care to take advantage of it. Let me know what you think about these tips and/or related articles.

Creative Work atmosphere Part 2

I wanted to add some additional insight to my last post. I know that certain companies actually "force" employees to contribute ideas. Certain companies, Google being one, ask for each employee to submit ideas every week. The result? Well, lets just say that Google isn't hurting, nor are the other companies.

Just the fact that a portion of the an employees job is to focus on creating new ideas- that in itself promotes reverse marketing. You see, then you get input from every level of the organization (especially customer service). Aggregate, you will probably get something useful.

Creating and encouraging more ideas

I know that the most successful marketers/ marketing teams in the world are the ones who are able to stay on top of current trends. As I sit in Paul Allen's class today and listen to him talk about problems in many of the companies he consults with, he talked about this very issue.

How do you encourage new ideas and creative marketing ideas?

Make room for it!!! Most companies keep their employees so busy on daily operations and projects that "need to get done" that marketers and the marketing team do not have time to try out new things or look into implementing great ideas.

Heck, I even experience this very thing at my current job. SO many projects and things that need to be done to fix problems and whatnot, that there is not room for new ideas.
I am full of new ideas and reverse marketing strategies that could be very beneficial, but I usually get shot down. Or even if it seems like a good idea, I get the "we will put it on the list of things to do" response.

So I can see how most companies run into this problem. You just need to find people like me that actually spend time online reading cases and getting news and papers and are wanting to try new things. More little bits of advice.