Better titles to your blog posts or articles that you have one your site. Here’s an interesting take from the Seattle Times:

Some news sites offer two headlines. One headline, often on the first Web page, is clever, meant to attract human readers. Then, one click to a second Web page, a more ordinary, factual headline appears with the article. The popular BBC News Web site does this routinely on longer articles.

They go on to give an example:

“The search engine has to get a straightforward, factual headline, so it can understand it,” Newman said.

On the Web, space limitations can coincide with search-engine preferences. In the print version of The New York Times, an article last Tuesday on Florida beating UCLA for the men’s college basketball championship carried a longish headline, with allusions to sports history: “It’s Chemistry Over Pedigree as Gators Roll to First Title.”

On the Times Web site, whose staff has undergone search-engine-optimization training, the headline was, “Gators Cap Run With First Title.”

Smart search strategies that please both the reader and the search engines (with a priority to your audience of course) is one strategy for headache-free SEO. That’s not the whole story of how to make your search engine optimization efforts simple, but it’s a good start.
Read the rest of the story in The Seattle Times: Nation & World: “For best search-engine exposure, the answer might be in the tweak.”

Another article that illustrates why you should get those images optimized. Works for Yahoo too.

First, the value exchange. What do I mean by this? I mean, something of value from you, containing information related to why the person came to your site in the first place.

It can be a subscription to your ezine, a free ebook (give as much value as you can, but don’t give away the farm), a software demo, a free mini-course, a feed subscription link – something that your visitor can use long after they’ve come to your site, that requires further interaction with an aspect of your business for them to get more information.

You’re here because you’re looking for that holy grail of traffic sources – free traffic. Or are you? Maybe you’re really here because you want the benefits that come with it – more sales, more money in your pocket, more cost-effective ways to run your online business.

That or you really like it when I ramble. If that’s the case, I have the number to a really good therapist….

I kid with you!

But to continue. I bring that up to say, your customer came there because on some level, they are interested in your gizmo, or something interesting on your pages. What benefits are related to that, that you can give away to a potential client?

Most people come to me wanting their site spidered by Google. I say, I can get you that free, here you go. Have a party. And if you want to do it yourself, sign up for my ezine. I tell you how to do that in the second issue.

But what you really want is to get listed by Google, isn’t it? Well, before I help you figure out how to set Google on your site, why don’t you try a little optimization first – that’s free too.

And that question pops up – why is she giving that away? What’s the catch?

Ha. Try and find one. Big secret? I’m not telling you anything you won’t find on your own after looking on the Net if you know where to look. I just simplified it, and made it easy for you to follow. The thing is, those aren’t my secrets. I’d never re-package someone else’s knowledge just to sell you… and maybe that’s why I’m getting rich slow…

For once, that whole spiel wasn’t just another opportunity for me to drone on about myself. It’s to show you an example of how you can give more than other people do, and not be afraid that it will leave you empty, with nothing left to offer.

Don’t be scared to give someone a good, free tip, or lots of them. I don’t know about you, but I’m busy. And when I’m not busy, I’m lazy. Save people time… they’ll just come back to you over and over again looking for more until one day, something about what you said, or what you offer, with strike them in their sunny spot… and they’ll actually feel good about exchanging currency for your knowledge.

That actually takes care of number two, a follow-up with a value increase. Your information should get progressively better over the follow-up time. Reward the people who stick with you longer. Make them think, man, what’s next?

Which brings us to number three. Make your overall sales presentation better. My favorite two articles, that I refer to again and again, are Willie Crawford’s “20 Simple Things To Do Today To Dramatically Increase Your
Website Sales” and Michael Southon’s (man I always thought it was Southern. Whoops!) “7 Simple Ways To Boost Your E-Book Sales“.

I also like to go to Dr. Joe Vitale’s site. I’m sorry. The man is a copywriting genius. Two free chapters of his hypnotic writing book can teach you more about writing better copy than some people get out of years of study. That link is to his copy writing articles section.

But I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Don’t listen to anyone blindly, especially me. Test and track for yourself, then go with the people whose techniques work for you. Some folks may not ring your bells in getting their message across. If you’re not much of a reader, you might find my articles long and boring.

And that’s cool. I used to try and please everyone, but now I realize, the people who I can best work with are the people who enjoy my flavor. I can’t help the whole world, now can I?

I’m fortunate enough to be able to pick who I want to work with, and filter accordingly. There’s certainly enough people on the Internet for all the honest business people out there, right?

That brings me to my last point… in all of the effort to have a great sales presentation, you’ll want to let some part of you shine through. Nothing on a stalker, ultra-personal level. Unless you’re a poet or a singer, and it somehow works with your business.

Be different. Admit your failings and admit your craziness. Be honest and you’ll end up with a sub-niche of the niche you pursued that you Own. The copycats will never be the original you.

See you in a few with the feed and/or site of the day.

I’m a little busy today with a client’s site, but I couldn’t let you guys down and have no posts at all. So today, I’m going to hit you off with some of the extras that are in my site library.

#1 – The Two Free Ebooks that bring me the most exposure – The Free Google Optimization Guide, and Free Advertising for Life in 9 minutes a Day.

If your advertising budget is a little tight this summer, you’ll want to read both of these.

If you’ve already read my free Google optimization guide, you probably already know all about Gorank.com – but I’ve noticed that the majority of new people reading my blog haven’t ventured into that part of the site yet. I gotta remember to put those links up…

At GoRank.com you can:

Track your Google Rankings
• Track all your keyword rankings
• It’s completely FREE
• View Trends
• Read some great reasearch

I found their recent Google ontology analysis interesting – it basically answers the question- how important are related words and phrases to your rankings in Google?

Visit Gorank.com for more details – if you’re stumped as to how to use it, visit the link upstairs and skim the guide for help.