Promoting Ebay Store With Google Base Store Connector

Google no longer allows feeds from independent ebay stores – So this guide does not apply to ebay store sellers.

This is the best thing I’ve come across yet for ebay store owners, and the absolute best part is – It’s totally free.  Google has built a free tool to let you upload all of your auctions into it, so that hundreds of millions of customers worldwide can find your auctions. And buy them.

Getting started is a breeze.  Just go to Google, and search for the Google Base Store Connector.  Run the download, and follow the directions.

The whole process is pretty quick.  It took me about an hour from download to uploading all of my auctions to Google.  Most ebay store owners should find it much quicker than that – the upload time depends upon how many items are in your store.

Sending items to Google is actually a two part process.  First you upload all of your listing to them, and then you have to publish them to Google.    They guide you through each process.

After you’ve got everything uploaded – Go to Froogle, Google’s shopping link, and start typing in some of your auction titles.  I did, and it was amazing.  Of the ten items I searched for, I came up in the top ten hits everytime, and as the number one hit nearly half the time.

One drawback I will share with you though is:  Adding your items with the Google Base Store Connector is not a one time thing.  You should probably update it at least once a week, or more often if you list a lot of items.  When you are done running the Store Connector it will give you some advice on this.

Hope to see you all soon on Froogle and Google.

Did you find this guide helpful?  If so please rate it below.  I spend a lot of time researching and writing these guides, and need you help to keep them up to date, and accurate.  If you have any suggestions, or concerns – please contact me, and if the info is accurate I will include it in the next update of this guide.

How Answering a Question Can Lead To A Sale on eBay

Did you know that simply answering a question from an eBayer could make or break a sale?

Yes, fellow eBayers, you can bring in a sale (or even worse – loose a sale) just by how you handle a question you receive from an fellow eBayer about an item you have for sale.

You try your best to write a description for your listing that covers every single fact about the item you are selling.   However, no matter how much time and effort your put into writing a great description of your item someone will sooner or later ask you a question about the item up for sale that you had not anticipated.

I like to classify questions from eBayers into three catagories:

Questions from eBayers who just do not want to read!  These types of questions are the most frustrating because most of the time if the eBayer would just take the time to read your listing he or she would find the answer to their question.  You can help these reading challenged eBayers by making sure you have a well written description and did not write a novel when you wrote your listing.  I will cover more tips on writing a good description in a future guide.

Questions that you would assume that people would know the answer to themselves: An example of this kind of question would be for a listing that is selling a DVD movie and the possible buyer writes you asking if a DVD player comes with the movie.  (I would not be surprised if this has not happened to somebody on eBay.).  Sure, these types of questions are annoying but you must deal with them.  Remember, when someone makes something idiot proof someone will come along with a better idiot.

Questions that you never even thought of:  of all three types of questions, I like these questions the best.  They are they type of questions that you read and say to yourself “I never thought about adding that information to the listing”.  These type of questions, if used properly, can help you write better descriptions in the future that can only help sales.

The Do’s and Dont’s of handling else questions:

When you receive a question from an eBayer who just does not want to read fight the natural instinct to tell the person to re-read the listing and find the answer themselves (or my favorite response is “If you would have just read my description of the item you would know the answer to your question”).  I know the temptation is hard – I myself have been tempted to tell a few people to go back to Kindergarten and learn how to read.  Just take a deep breath and then copy and paste the information into your response.  If you feel re-wording the information may be helpful, then take the time to do that.

When you receive a question that you would assume people would know the answer to themselves do not reply with “You know what happens when you assume…” Take a deep breath and answer the question in a calm and professional manner.

When a question arrives that falls under the heading of a question you never even thought of you should not only answer the eBayers questions but if you can revise your listing, take a moment and add the newly found tidbit of information to your listing for others to benefit.

When you do reply to the question from the eBayer do not just state the cold hard facts that is the answer to their question, add a personal touch.  (Everyone hates to receive what they feel is a canned response or an impersonal response – you know you hate it.)  I always like to start off each reply to a question with “Thank you for your question”.  This little greetings sets a better tone with the potential buyer than a one word answer, for example “No”.  Next restate the question the possible buyer had asked you.  For example if the possible buyer asked you if the mouse pad you are selling would work well with their optical mouse you might want to write you response as “Yes, the mousepad is suitable for your optical mouse”.  If you want to go for bonus points you can add a little more to the sentence, for example: “Yes, the mouse pad is suitable for your optical mouse.  In fact I have used one of these mouse pads myself with my optical mouse for the past year and never encountered any problems.”  Note: NEVER add information to your answer that is not true just to make a sale.

But Wait – there’s more!

You are not done with the eBayers questions.  You may want to make sure you leave open a line of communications with your possible buyer.  For example, I usually close my responses with “If you hae any further questions, please feel free to contact me again.”  For another round of bonus points I often thank the eBayers for looking at my listings.

Now you have a better idea on how to respond to a question, you are probably thinking this is all well and good but this effort is only for one person.  This is not true if you choose to post the eBayers question with your answer to your listing on eBay.  When you choose to to do this all of your helpfulness you extended to one eBayer can be viewed by other potential buyers allowing your efforts to make a positive impression on others – which could lead to more sales – and I know that is what you really want, right?

Be careful when you do decide to post the question with your answer.  Some questions, in my opinion, should NOT be posted.  For example, if a potential buyer ask you what the shipping charge would be for you to ship your item to his address (and he gives you his complete mailing address) you should not post that question!  NEVER, I repeat NEVER post a members question that would give out any contact information as to where they live, their phone number, e-mail address, etc.  The potential buyer may be new to eBay and he or she may not be thinking of keeping his or her contact information private.  He ir she may not even know the question could be posted publicly.  Look out for your potential buyers – besides the fact that it is against eBay policy to post other members contact information, you should be considerate of your buyers and look out for them, if you do not this could have a negative effect on the publics impression of you and/or your business.

Final thought and words of wisdom:  always answer questions from other eBay members through the eBay message center.  Do not rely to the copy you received via your e-mail account.  When you do reply to a copy of the message eBay sent to your registered e-mail address at least 2 things can happen: 1) The other persons e-mail spam.filtering/protection settings may block your message from getting to them – leaving them an impression that you did not care to answer their question and/or 2) if the member did not uncheck the box to hide their e-mail adress from…(when they completed the ask the buyer a question page on eBay) then your reply will go to the dead letter pile on eBay’s mail server.

5 Ways to “Guarantee” More Sales and Conversions

1.  The Money Back Guarantee

This is probably the most popular guarantee in the world. In fact, it’s so popular that it’s no longer viewed as a benefit, but as a right.

The origins of the money back guarantee go back as long as people have been buying and trading goods…it’s a natural offer.

The problem is that it’s so overused and average that unless your product is extremely valuable (like a car) or easy to return (commodity products, such as retail goods), then you’re going to have an incredibly difficult time overcoming an objection with this guarantee alone.

That being said, it’s certainly better than having no guarantee at all, and if you communicate this well in your sales material, you’ll at least mitigate some of the risk to the buyer.

Chrysler recently tried this with their line of automobiles, but recalled it a few short months later. Almost every existing retail establishment, such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, chain book stores (brick and mortar), Amazon, and Apple (online) offer a guarantee of this caliber, but most of the time, it’s hidden in the fine print, which is a poor idea.

Instead, take the example of Rockable Press and make the benefit clear and concise. You’ll have a much higher success rate as a result.

2.  The Risk-Free Guarantee

This is a close relative of the money back guarantee because it’s essentially the same thing, the only difference being the context surrounding it.

Risk free guarantees work best with high cost products, services, recurring billings, and products with amazing, but yet to be proven claims, such as the ShamWow and/or a variety of Internet Marketing products.

A risk-free guarantee, which has been used by everyone from Frank Kern to Billy Mays, gives your customer a chance to try something before they buy, or at least commit to buying.

SEOMoz offers a risk-free guarantee for their SEO services, as quoted in this line of their pricing and signup page:

“If for any reason you’re not satisfied with your membership, simply e-mail xxx@seomoz.org during your first 30 days and we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.”

The great thing about a guarantee like this is that it pushes people over the hump and moves them from “I’m considering it,” to “what the heck, I’ll try it.”

3.  100% Satisfaction Guarantee

This is the hallmark of the new generation, and is a great take on both the risk-free and the money back guarantee.

How does it work?

Instead of simply offering a customer’s money back or giving them a chance to try before they buy, you create an offer that’s advantageous to both the customerand your business.

A 100% satisfaction guarantee not only guarantees that the customer will be happy, but also guarantees that you’ll get another chance to save the sale by offering an exchange or 2nd chance effort.

From a customer’s perspective, you’re not only reducing risk, but you’re reducing it almost completely. You’re guaranteeing a result, which as we talked about earlier, is the most important aspect of the conversion. You’re guaranteeing their satisfaction, which in turn negates the opportunity for regret.

It’s a win-win.

For a company like Inkd, which expends a tremendous amount of creative resources during the logo design process, the satisfaction guarantee gives them a chance to keep working until they get it right.

Hampton Inn, managed by Hilton Hotels, offers a similar guarantee for their rooms. If you aren’t satisfied, you don’t have to pay. Being that they trust in their overnight experience, they can offer this guarantee, knowing that 99% of the people won’t use it.

When someone does, they get the feedback they need to improve their experience.

4.  The Forever Guarantee

When I was a teenager, I got tired of working for McDonald’s and decided to move into marketing, where I spent 2 years working in direct sales for a company that offered the most incredible guarantee I’d ever seen.

Cutco sold high-priced cutlery that was guaranteed to rock your socks off. The only issue was that most people simply weren’t in the market for high priced cutlery.

However, when I told them that by buying today, they’d never have to buy another knife again, they suddenly re-thought their position. Cutco’s “Forever Guarantee” meant that by buying a set of knives today, they’d save hundreds, if not thousands by never having to buy another.

Most people buy cutlery like they buy pots and pans, which is every few years. Rather than racing to the bottom, Cutco raised prices and improved their guarantee instead.

I can personally attest that this guarantee alone earned me 10-25% increases in revenue, and tens of thousands in sales.

5.  Low Price Guarantee

When a lifetime guarantee, or Forever Guarantee, won’t work, consider taking a page out of the Amazon.com playbook, which is to not only offer returns, but offer a low price guarantee right along with it.

If you pre-order an item from Amazon.com, they’ll guarantee that you’ll be charged the lowest price the item has been sold for, rather than the price at the time of purchase.

Furthermore, they guarantee that low-price for 30 days after purchase, meaning that if it goes on sale, you’ll get a refund of the difference.

Another example of this type of guarantee is with retail outlet Best Buy, who offers price matching on any in-store item.

Though it’s slightly more difficult to use this for online info-products and services offered in only one place, it’s a perfect option for online retailers.

More sales? visit my website here: http://www.smartseoservice.com/convert-web-traffic-into-sales-or-leads/

Facebook Stats that Every Social Marketer Should Know

With over 1.23 billion active users (including 71% of online adults in the United States), a 94% increase in shared content since 2012, and enough spending money to buy several small countries, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t going anywhere soon. Smart marketers are already using Facebook’s impressive reach to their own advantage, but the network is still relatively new and constantly evolving. It’s hard enough to keep up with Facebook’s changing algorithms – how can marketers be sure they’re using Facebook strategically, not just “marketing at random”?

In addition to arming yourself with a rock solid social media tactical plan (click the link for a comprehensive sample plan, including high-level objectives and granular action items), marketers need to approach their Facebook strategy with the most up-to-date insights and stats.

With that in mind, I was excited to read a new report from competitive intelligence platform TrackMaven: The Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook. This report analyzes 5,804 Facebook pages, spanning a total of 1,578,006 posts, and examining patterns in Likes, Comments, and Shares. As a marketer, this kind of data is invaluable – read on to get a prime sample of their findings:

Is There a “Best” Day to Post on Facebook?

TrackMaven focused their investigation on Facebook pages with – at minimum – 1,000 Likes. Of the 5,804 pages they analyzed, posts were published almost evenly throughout the workweek, but then then dropped off during the weekend.

The least popular day for Facebook posts is Sunday, on which only 8.73% of total posts are published. But if you look at effectiveness by day of week, weekend posts actually get a lot more engagement than those published on weekdays:

In fact, posts published on Sundays – the least popular day for posting – are 25% more effective, in terms of engagement (or average interactions per post), than posts published on Wednesdays. So while there’s no “best” day to post on Facebook, if you’re looking to tap into a little more engagement per post, why not experiment with some posts on the weekends? If you see increased engagement, make weekend posts a habit.

How to Make Facebook Work “After Hours”

To get a little more granular, TrackMaven also looked at the time of day most people post, and the time of day posts get the most engagement. Surprisingly, Facebook posts published after work hours (between 5pm and 1am) seem to get the highest engagement.

Keep in mind that because TrackMaven limited their report to official pages, rather than profiles, these posts were coming from brands, not people. So the numbers above show that we’re more likely to engage with brands (not just with our personal networks) during our own free time.

Marketers can find two key takeaways from that fact:

1) Schedule your posts. If you’re not using Facebook’s scheduler function to publish posts after work hours, you should definitely start. Scheduling posts ahead of time will keep your cadence steady throughout the evening.

As you can see below, scheduling posts on your Facebook Page is easy. Simply click on the clock icon below your message, and choose the date/hour. You can actually schedule these out as much as six months in advance.

2) Facebook is a “social” network, not a business network. As we’ve mentioned, consumers are now engaging with marketing messages on Facebook during their free time – in the midst of their personal social networking interactions.

So when you’re posting on Facebook, think about how your sales pitch will look amongst the wedding pictures and new baby photos…that’s right, not so good. Instead, use a conversational (maybe even humorous!) tone, and post content that is fun, entertaining, and human.

Higher Word Count Equals Higher Facebook Engagement

But while a simple, conversational message is key to successful Facebook marketing, you don’t want to dumb your message down. Although TrackMaven’s report found that the average length of a Facebook post is between 10 and 19 words (posts with between 0 and 9 words were the second most common), posts with between 80 and 89 words were actually the most effective:

In fact, posts with over 80 words they had twice the amount of engagement of any other post. This may be because of that intriguing “Keep Reading” link, but it also may be because Facebook users are interested in lengthier, more valuable content that tells a story — not sales pitches.

Need help with more followers, likes or targeted traffic?
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The 5 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress Blogs

Of the world’s top 100 blogs, 48% rely on WordPress, the content management system that makes it easy to blog. In fact, 60 million of the over 634 million websites in existence at the end of 2012 are powered by WordPress. With all these blogs competing for attention online, how will people see your new content these days without good SEO?

Making sure your content is optimized for search engines and distribution across the web is paramount. Fortunately, a number of WordPress plugins, plus some interesting WordPress hacks we’ll discuss later, make it easier.

First, to understand SEO, it helps to understand a bit about how how Google ranks your site. Over 200 factors go unto the search engine’s calculation. These include content, PageRank, incoming links, speed and multiple SEO factors. Google has provided some Webmaster Guidelines to help you with the design, creating quality content, and other technical aspects of your site. Now, once you’ve perfected your site layout and you’re ready to write a post, you’ll then want to optimize your article content to increase its chances of getting discovered by search engines and linked to search queries. That’s SEO optimization and it’s where these plugins come in.

General Search Engine Optimization Guidelines for Content

WordPress SEO plugins typically give you control over setting metadata, like the title and description, for each new post. Here are nine of the very best SEO plugins out there in the market:

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast

Considered by many to be top SEO plugin available, WordPress SEO by Yoast offers a broad range of features to help you take care of technical optimization aspects and to also write better content. The plugin forces you to choose a focus keyword when writing an article to populate it throughout the content. The robust list of features for this plugin include: snippet previews, page analysis, automatically optimizing and inserting meta tags, link elements, XML sitemaps, RSS optimization, breadcrumbs, editing your .htaccess and robots.txt file, social integration, import & export functionality, Google News SEO module and much more.

2. All-In-One SEO Pack

The All-In-One SEO pack is another robust WordPress plugin with a host of SEO features for your site. It does the basic stuff like automatically optimizing titles for search engines and generating meta tags. The plugin also supports Google Analytics, custom post types, advanced canonical URLs, fine tuning page navigation links and has a built-in API to extend its functionality. The plugin also helps you avoid duplicate content found on most typical blogs, and is one of the only plugins to provide SEO integration for WP e-Commerce sites.

3. SEO Ultimate

The SEO Ultimate plugin is another all-in-one SEO plugin with some powerful features. The plugin gives you the ability to rewrite title tags, edit meta descriptions and help you use anchor text to create deeplinks. Some of the advanced functionality includes the rich snippet creator, author highlighter, link mask generator, canonicalizer, 404 monitor, permalink tweaker, slug optimizer and more.

4. FV Simpler SEO Pack

The folks over at foliovision are big WordPress enthusiasts and understand the importance of search engine optimization. It’s common knowledge among Internet marketers these days that keywords in meta data are basically ignored by search engines (due to lots of keyword stuffing previously in an attempt to trick them). So the FV Simpler SEO Pack looks to remove unwanted features from previous SEO Plugins, to minimize the effort of writers. They found that authors were often times confused having to enter both keyword tags and keywords in the meta description when creating a new post. So this plugin looks to make it easier to optimize sites with advanced functionality available but mostly hidden out of the way for simplicity and speed.

5. Scribe for WordPress

Scribe is a powerful SEO plugin that provides you with content marketing tools for research, optimization and interaction. Scribe gives you research tools to help discover topics that matter most to your intended audience. The step-by-step on-page optimization and content development guidance enable you to build a site with greater authority giving you a chance for better PageRank. Scribe also helps you identify authoritative social media users and high-ranking sites in your industry to connect with. What’s also great about Scribe is that it’s compatible with all the WordPress plugins mentioned above giving you some robust options to choose from (like SEO by Yoast + Scribe for example).

Looking for Better SEO?
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4 Tips to Setting Your Social Media Budget in 2016

As we are half-way through the year, many marketers are starting the exercise of looking ahead to 2016 and beginning to think about what their social budgets should be.  Since we frequently consult with brands on social media planning (including the budgeting exercise) we wanted to share some tips on how to set your social media budget for next year.

1. Compare benefits with spend

The first part of every budget exercise should be an evaluation of your spend to its actual performance and benefit.  While every line item may not help you achieve your social
objectives, it’s good to scrutinize costs and to fully understand the benefits you received from them. In this exercise, don’t overlook tool costs.  While they may seem like they are the cost of “keeping the lights on”, they should be cut if they aren’t resulting in efficiencies, insights, or meaningful outcomes to your strategy or tactics.

2. Diversify media dollars beyond Facebook and Twitter

In previous years, most social media advertising dollars were primarily allocated to Facebook and Twitter.  Now that we’ve seen many other platforms starting to offer new media opportunities, it’s important for marketers to think ahead and allocate enough money to test new ad units as they arise. Go ahead and earmark media dollars so that when the opportunities arise your brand can have budget to try them in 2016.

3. Invest in content that is sharable

Take a critical look at the content your brand is producing to-date.  Is it sharable?  If it isn’t – uncover why.  Odds are that your brand doesn’t have a ton of highly visual or organic content at its fingertips. And even if you feel your brand is killing it, I bet your brand still has some work to do if you were to ask your customers.  The truth is, it’s hard to create content that people naturally want to share, simply because the brand always has a hidden agenda.  Creating highly sharable content that accomplishes a business objective is a craft, and you need to invest in the creation of it.

4. Account for rising costs

While highly efficient, the costs of social media marketing are obviously rising.  With more competition entering the space, and continual platform changes that make it more difficult to reach your audiences, you’ll need to account for these rising costs in your budgeting.

The following are a list of rising costs to consider as you plan your budgets:

• Reaching your audience organically and paid (expect increases in media costs per quarter)
• Developing visual & video content
• Working with influencers
• Social network fragmentation (more channels to manage than before)
• Developing social programs with mobile in mind
• Developing & optimizing content
• Retaining & attracting social media talent

Increase your visibility and Sales Today.
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5 Hiring Tips for Small Business Owners

Tired of working long hours and never getting a day off? Then it’s probably time to bring in some help. Here are ten tips for hiring employees for your small business.

As a successful small business owner, you’re accustomed to long hours; non-existent holidays and weekends spent working.

few tips for begin…

Don’t expect to hire a replica of you! Each person you meet and interview will be a living, breathing human, with their own habits, mannerisms and even ideas! This is fine – -as long as their ideas and habits are not philosophically opposed to yours. My first hire, Jen, was pursuing a graduate degree, had just moved to the area and is nearly 20 years younger than I am! She’s detail-oriented and relies on schedules to get things done. I’m a bit more ‘seat of my pants’ type of operator. She’s a perfect fit because she complements my way of working! Over time she’s grown into managing portions of my business that I neglected – like maintaining scheduling and billing.

Know exactly what you expect from your new hire. Before you advertise for help, sit down and write a job description. List your goals for the new hire – do you want someone who can fill in on short notice when you need to take a day off, or do you want someone who can work a regular schedule? Do you want someone who can meet with clients, set their own schedules and attend meetings and events on your behalf or do you simply need someone who can pick up your overflow? By spending time working through your thoughts on hired help you are setting yourself up for a great working relationship. If you can clearly articulate the job to all applicants, they will have the opportunity to determine if this is a mutually agreeable fit. Be sure to concentrate on specific job-related descriptions, and not subjective information.

Know exactly what you expect from your new hire. Before you advertise for help, sit down and write a job description. List your goals for the new hire – do you want someone who can fill in on short notice when you need to take a day off, or do you want someone who can work a regular schedule? Do you want someone who can meet with clients, set their own schedules and attend meetings and events on your behalf or do you simply need someone who can pick up your overflow? By spending time working through your thoughts on hired help you are setting yourself up for a great working relationship. If you can clearly articulate the job to all applicants, they will have the opportunity to determine if this is a mutually agreeable fit. Be sure to concentrate on specific job-related descriptions, and not subjective information.

Determine what type of manager you are! It’s imperative that you’re honest about your work style. After all, if you say you want an independent thinker, but really do a lot of ‘checking-in’ you may end up with an unhappy helper. On the other hand, if you hire someone who needs lots of feedback, you need to be sure that you are cut-out for the ‘people part’ of the management process.

Set aside time. If you expect to hire someone by the 15th of next month you may be setting yourself up for failure. Just as you can’t expect to find a perfect replica of you – you can’t always put a deadline on your hiring process. In other words, plan to advertise, interview and train until you find the RIGHT person. (SECRET TIP: If you find the right person – Hire them right away and then find work for them! Never pass up a great hire!)

Visit my website and Improve your SALES, LEADS today!
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Increasing your site’s visibility to search engines

Use search tools to maintain updates

Search engines won’t notice changes to your site instantaneously. Google and Bing offer search tools to help you manage your site’s search presence. Whenever you make major changes to your site, you can request that a search engine re-index your content by using these services. For help, visit the following guides:

• Verifying your site with Google Search Console
• Verifying your site with Bing Webmaster Tools

Customize page and site titles

Search engines typically prioritize site titles, page titles, blog post titles, and headings. These titles also appear in browser tabs and search results, so it’s important to write them so they’re friendly to both search bots and human readers.

In the SEO panel, you can set default title formats for the homepage, collections like Blog, Gallery, Album, Products, and Event Pages, and items like blog posts and events. You can manually enter text or use default variables. The benefit of using default title formats (versus customizing them for every post) is to keep them consistent for all content.

For step-by-step instructions, visit Customizing title formats.

Differentiate page titles and navigation titles

Every page in your site has a Navigation Title and Page Title. You can edit these titles in Page Settings. Page Titles appear in browser tabs and search results and are indexed by search engines. The Navigation Title is what displays in your navigation menu.

You may want to title these separately. For example, you can use the page title to promote keywords for search engines, but keep the navigation title short to help it fit in your navigation menu. To learn more, visit Renaming a page.

Structure content with headings

When adding content to Text Blocks, select Heading 1 or Heading 2 from the text format drop-down menu to organize content. These styles automatically create <h1> and <h2> tags in the page’s HTML, so there’s no need to add them manually.

Like titles, search engines typically give headings a higher priority. Clear headings that describe the content that follows make it easier for search engines to detect the major themes of your site. At the same time, they helps visitors scan your page and quickly find the information they’re looking for.

Add alt text to images

Alt text is text associated with an image that people can view by hovering over it. Search engines usealt text to identify the content of a page, since bots can only read text. Adding alt text to images lets search engines understand what the image is so they can include it in relevant searches.

When adding alt text, it’s best to use short terms that describe the image and relate to your overall site content. To learn more about adding alt text, visit Adding alt text to images.

Tags and categories

Search engines scan tags and categories to identify what products, blog posts, or gallery images are about. Adding tags and categories that accurately describe the item could help it appear in search results. For our guide on tags and categories, visit Using tags and categories.

Start blogging

All Squarespace sites include blogging capabilities. Blogging involves updating your site frequently, which helps search engines see it as an active site. Even if you’re a business and not a blogger, adding a Blog Page and updating it regularly with relevant content could potentially benefit your SEO while building your brand.

When adding blog posts, use tags, categories, and H1 and H2 tags to label content.

Physical location

If you’re a business with a physical location, listing your address on your site could potentially help visitors find you in location-based services. There are many places where you can add your location:

• Map Blocks
• Basic Information Settings
• Text Blocks on a Contact page
• Text Blocks in a footer

Visit my website and Improve your SEO power!
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4 Secrets to Winning More Sales

Sales is king in the new economy. Your success will be determined by your ability to generate revenue and sell, not just your products and services, but also yourself.

Here are five signs you’re well positioned to succeed at the art ofselling:

1. Remember you’re in the people business.
Lots of salespeople get caught up in what they are selling and forget that they’re in the people business. Your customer wants to be treated personally. I was recently at a dental office that had clearly forgotten they were not in the business of teeth, but of making patients happy and comfortable.

Getting attention and maintaining your customers’ interest is a huge problem today. But walk into any big-box outlet, restaurant or professional office and you might not even be acknowledged. Before I visit or work with any client, I remind myself, “This is a unique individual who deserves distinct treatment.”

2. Focus on the results, not the effort.
The sales game is not one of organizing, planning or meetings — it’s about getting results. Sales people often spend time kidding themselves about doing busy work and don’t get in front of customers who can buy their products.

Your success in selling is about getting results and that means getting your products into the hands of more customers. A great salesperson knows how to get the customer’s attention and present their product or service in a way that causes the customer to buy. Don’t confuse results with efforts. You don’t try to get an appointment — you either get it or you don’t.

3. Do the uncomfortable thing.
The best sales people I have ever known are willing to throw themselves into harms way. So convinced of their offer, they are willing to get in front of the tough customers, ask the hard questions and go for the close. Doing the uncomfortable thing is where the top performers live.

I always call my toughest clients first and keep calling on them long after everyone else has given up. Once a month, I make a list of our company’s most difficult customers and create an attack plan on how to get those accounts. The first month we incorporated this strategy, I landed one of the biggest deals of my career. You can’t bring the big deals home without getting into the deep waters where the big fish swim.

Related: Why So Many People Resist Networking and Miss Out

4. Wow the customer.
Great sales people look for ways to inspire a customer’s emotional involvement and create the urgency to take ownership. When you wow a customer you make a difference and cause them to want to hold onto that experience. You can take any product — even a boring one — and make it a wow presentation.

I once showed a client the glass doors on a home by demonstrating how they would be hurricane proof, slapping on both sides to evidence their construction quality. This immediately got the customer’s full attention and set apart the product and me from the competition. Average doesn’t pay in sales. Wow them with your presentation, your dress, your belief in the product and the service you offer.

4 Ways of Rethinking Your Referral Traffic

1. Reliance on Google Organic

Just as you can be overly reliant on social media, you can also be too reliant on Google organic. While organic search is your best traffic referrer in terms of engagement, site stickiness, and returning visits, if you accidentally trigger an algorithm negatively and it takes a slap at your site, well you might wake up with a cliff dive on your analytics and a sunken feeling in your stomach.

2. Organic Is Still King

Organic traffic is not just Google, though we typically think of that first. It can also be Bing, Duck Duck Go, and Yahoo, or even a contest or event. Whatever your organic source, the users are likely to be more engaged and user intent is typically going to be more aligned with your site content. While Google organic should and will be the largest organic referrer, building up your alternative referral sources will help protect you from getting hit in one area or another.

3. Watch Out for the Bots

Semalt, Buttons-For-Websites, and other bots visit your site and show up in your analytics. These referrals are not real humans, but bots meant to send traffic back to its owner by you clicking on the referrals in your analytics. There is no reason to support this traffic and there is no reason to not get rid of it. There are several methods for doing this, however Jon Henshaw of Raven Tools has the most comprehensive post explaining the issue and how to get rid of it.

4. Reliance on Social Media

Often we see sites that get a lot of their traffic from social media. If your site is one of those sites, congratulations – that is not the easiest code to crack. You have done good things.

Social traffic is a positive signal. It means your site is being shared and talked about. It means your site has relevancy to your user base. However, it is imperfect traffic and a strategy that is unsustainable on its own. Why is this?

First, if you are relying too heavily on your social media presence for traffic and the site you are getting that traffic from decides to change a factor that takes away that traffic, you have little recourse. There is really nothing you can do. Well, you can pay, but that requires more money and time, which following a loss of large amounts of traffic, you might now have to invest.