Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I wanted to take a rest from talking about social media within your online business, as I seem to have done for the past few posts, and take it back to some basics about setting up an online presence

With the proliferation of DIY website tools like Wordpress, anyone can have a site up and running in less than an hour. I visit a lot of sites every day and read a lot of content, and sometimes there can be a real fashion over function mentality to the design – that is, it might look good, but the usability and functionality are terrible.

This can make people put your information in the too hard basket when it comes to finding what they want, or interacting with it how they want. As an online business owner, how your site looks, feels and most of all functions are key to success. Your content might be great but if it’s too hard to digest, it doesn’t matter.  Read more...

Yesterday I was sifting through ninemsn’s News site, when I was confronted by what you see in the screen grabs on the left (click the thumbnails to see what I mean). This all out advertising blitz consisted of no less that eleven advertising placements, two of which expanded even more when rolled over with the mouse. I’ve had to crop the second screen grab because of its size!

Certainly the clash of brands you see will not make advertisers too happy, as they would have all had a reasonable expectation that their ads were going to cut through. While the side panels do relate to the Codral ads, you wouldn’t know it at a glance, and this becomes even more confusing once the wine ad almost pushes Codral branding off the page all together. I really wanted to call this post “When Advertising Attacks”, but I want to use these examples to illustrate a different point.  Read more...

Getting people to any site is a challenge, even more so to a new one. Until your SEO kicks in (and even when it has) and delivers organic search traffic, you need to rely on other methods to get people’s attention.

There are 3 (almost) free tips I can recommend to drive traffic to your site and begin to build awareness (and hopefully quality links).

Blog, and Make Your Content Topical and Current

I am a big believer in blogging, regardless of your niche. Somewhere on your site, you should make room for a blog and write on it regularly. You may think that your insights into your field may not mean much, but to an audience that is coming to your site to know about your product, they may find it useful. And it is a way of actively generating content to a site that may not be otherwise be visited by a potential customer.  Read more...

I’m just back from the first Affili@SYD conference, and wanted to share what I considered some of the highlights and point you in their direction, as I think there was some incredibly valuable content that anyone starting an online business should know.

The keynote was from Jay Berkowitz, the CEO of www.tengoldenrules.com, and was certainly one of the most engaging presentations I have heard on online and affiliate marketing. Jay spoke on 10 Super Success Strategies for Internet marketers, which covered effective SEO, blog building and the importance of personal brand and what tools you can use to build it. One such site was PeoplePond, which allows you to aggregate all of your online presences and manage your reputation, something I will be covering in depth soon. Jay’s advice is incredibly practical, I recommend checking out his site TenGoldenRules.com  Read more...

Before I start covering social media, there are a few final quick tips for SEO that I wanted to add to yesterday’s post:

Submit your URL - Don’t leave it to chance that Google will find you eventually through links and keywords. Submit your URL to Google here – www.google.com/addurl. It may take some time for Google to get to it, but at least you are in the system.

Remember your Keywords – Whenever you are creating content, be conscious of your keywords. But make sure you don’t overdo it as they will lose their relevance. Use tags on your content with keywords where available.

Respect Forums – Make sure you read terms of use on forums before you go putting your URL all over it. Some frown on the use of their forum just to generate links and traffic, and can suspend your account if you do so. Place them where possible and necessary and make sure you are providing value in your contribution, which will in turn generate your traffic.  Read more...