The Secret Lives of
Internet Marketers
At first glance an Internet Marketer looks like anyone else you
might see sitting at a computer. But if you were to watch them
in action you would soon learn that they analyze sites and
utilize the net in a different way that most web users. Internet
Marketers know what makes a web page successful, or
unsuccessful. They even know more about your site than you do.
Pssst... Want To Know A Secret? In this article we will discuss how Internet Marketers are
different and some of the secret tools they use to become
experts on web sites so they can achieve high rankings.
Internet Marketers Understand the Impact Of Syntax Internet Marketers pay attention to their words and how the
words are ordered. Small and subtle changes can create a
dramatic impact. Look at the following three lines, each with
the same three words: Man Eating Shark
Shark Eating Man
Man-Eating Shark While at first glance they appear the same, upon closer review,
the first line might occur at your favorite restaurant while the
last two lines would occur at the shark's favorite restaurant...
the ocean. Internet Marketers Use the RIGHT Words Word subtleties exist on your web site and can dramatically
impact your effectiveness. Internet Marketers understand that
the choice of words can greatly influence how much business you
will generate. Good web sites try to avoid comments that will
alienate visitors and instead use words that will cause visitors
to take positive actions. Wording that can result in lost
visitors include:
- Sexist orientation: Don't use the words he, his, him or other
masculine pronouns unless the site applies only to men. Instead
use phrasing like yours, your family and your home to be more
friendly.
- Over-bluntness: If you offer bad credit loans, be careful
about using words such as crummy, poor, high-risk, etc. These
potential applicants already know what they are and they don't
need to be beaten down anymore. You can use phrases such as, "We
can help you with a fresh-start loan."
Internet Marketers Use Words That Compel Wording that can result in additional clients include:
- Calls to action: Subtle word phrasing can compel visitors to
venture deeper into your site. If you compare the two phrases;
"Visit our online application form" and "Apply now using our
easy 30-second application form" you find the second statement
is not only more direct, but more "clickable." The use of the
word "now" is essentially a polite command to take action. The
removal of a fear factor is accomplished by saying "easy
30-second application form." (By the way if your form takes
longer than 30 seconds to complete, you are asking too much
information for an initial application.)
- Use smart hyperlinks: The wording you use to hyperlink to
other pages within your site is critical to causing your
visitors to click. A link that simply says "next page" is not as
effective as "mortgage rate information" or "home loan FAQ's."
The command statement "click here" is often used, but Internet
Marketers know that search engines provide extra points for
hyperlinked phrases. A much more effective hyperlink might read
"click here for low home loan interest rates."
Internet Marketers Use Stealth Techniques to Study Your Site It is very difficult to tell how busy a site is when you visit
it. Internet Marketers use several tools and tricks to analyze
the performance of web sites so they can determine which aspects
to incorporate in their marketing efforts. Armed with this
information, they then start a comprehensive study on why a
site, your site, and attempt to mimic any success factors.
Internet Marketers Use Your Information Many sites incorporate numeric counters at the bottom of their
main page. Some web owners will start their counter at 10,000 or
100,000 so that visitors will not know how many real people have
arrived. Regardless of the amount, Internet Marketers record the
value of the counter on a specific day, and then visit the site
at regular intervals (every day, every week) to see how many
visitors have been attracted. If the counter on the first day
was 10,250 and then a week later was 12,251, then the Internet
Marketer knows that site is receiving about 8,000 visitors a
month.
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Internet Marketers Use Google (Part 1)
Google offers toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/googlebar.html)
that has a feature which shows you the "Page Rank" of any web
site. Google created Page Rank (PR) as a method to determine the
value and relevancy of a site and, in turn, uses the PR value as
a key factor in determine where your site appears in a search.
The maximum PR you can achieve is 10 and any PR over three is
actually pretty good. Rarely does a site have a PR of eight or
higher. NAMB vs. The Big Boys (oops, make that Big Companies)
A well-advertised company like Ditech has PR of six, eLoan.com
has a PR of seven and little-known NAMB has a PR of six. When
you consider how much Ditech and eLoan spend on marketing; you
might find it confusing that NAMB is comparable with such a high
PR. The reason why is that the PR formula actually sifts out
advertising and brand recognition because PR is determines by a
multitude of factors, one of which is the number of links to
your site and another is the quality of the links. An example of
"quality" would be that a link from Yahoo to your site has
better "quality" than a link from Betty-Bob's home kitchen
cooking web site. Another example of a quality link would be a
link from a mortgage web site to another mortgage related web
site, but not to sports page or a bowling alley.
Not many mortgage sites link to Ditech or eLoan.com because they
are competitors, but many mortgage sites (thus higher quality)
link to NAMB because they offer "community value" and Google
rewards NAMB with a respectable PR of six.
Internet Marketers Use Google (Part 2)
Internet Marketers also use Google to see who is linking to
sites. By examining the number of links, and, again, more
importantly, the quality of the link, an Internet Marketer can
determine why a site is ranked high. In example, if you put
link:http://www.ditech.com/ into the Google search box you find
there are 322 sites linking to Ditech. Additionally you discover
that a site such as eLoan has over 2,500 links to it and
NAMB.org has 2,500 as well. Google adjusts for Spam pages and
adds value for certain types of links (which we won't discuss
here) and you then find out how NAMB receives a Google PR
comparable to Ditech and eLoan.com
Internet Marketers Use Alexa Alexa (Alexa.com) is a free service that involves the
installation of a toolbar that, "Simply by using the toolbar
each member contributes valuable information about the web, how
it is used, what is important and what is not. This information
is returned to the community as Related Links, Traffic Rankings
and more." In short, you can see statistics on how many visitors go to
various sites, including your own, and how many people link to a
site. Remember that each of these services uses their own data
sources so factors such as number of links will vary. Let's
compare the Alexa data for Ditech, eLoan.com and NAMB:
Stats for Ditech.com:
* Traffic Rank: 19,891
* Sites that link to this site: 108
Site Stats eLoan.com:
* Traffic Rank: 13,587
* Sites that link to this site: 747
Site Stats for NAMB.org:
* Traffic Rank: 133,064
* Sites that link to this site: 133 In traffic ranking, the lower the number the better and any
traffic ranking less than 1M-3M is actually quite respectable.
By using these secret data sources, Internet Marketers can
determine specific key information about your site, including
how successful you are, and how much traffic you receive…in just
minutes. Then they can begin to construct a marketing program to
gain higher rankings based on this data. How do they do achieve higher rankings? That is another
secret...
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