Author: troy

  • Running A Successful E-Commerce Website for $24 per year

    Hello.

    Post 1. So we are launching a new site very soon. It is a fitness equipment site where we sell an existing retailers products. For legal reasons i can not tell you the domain names of either.

    This blog post will be updated on a regular basis with what we have done and if we make any sales and things like that.

    As the title says we will run this e-commerce website for $24 per year. We have spent that already buying the domain name and the cheapest hosting we could find. If we incur any further costs along the way i will reveal it loud and clear (or change the title of the Post a little bit).

    We have no website yet but we do have a free template and some time on our hands. The domain name was bought from Crazy Domains i think, or maybe a special from Net Registry. I think the hosting is also at 3IX, which is in America somewhere. We just want to keep it cheap. Hope they don't make us look silly down the track.

    Our estimated amount of time before the website is up is one week. But my experience with this stuff tells me that that probably won't be true. I mean we have other things to do too. Ah..Tuesday my mate reckons, with the products and everything. Lets have a bet. I will buy him a lotto ticket if i can see it on my computer at home on Tuesday night.

    We have an agreement with our retailer. Any thing else we need?

    Post 2

    Now it is Friday. The one after Lotto ticket Tuesday. When i Go to our site i can see a shopping cart but no products, for some reason a BMW symbol. So the lotto ticket went to me (only got two numbers). But the guys have been busy with a lot of other things.

    We have set up a seperate Pay Pal account for this website so i can more easily track the money that comes from it. The design is looking good too, so i am pleased about that. Maybe with the Euro 2008 over there will be less tired eyes around here each day.

    Post 3

    One week after lotto Tuesday and everything is set to go. Our supplier is just updating their delivery prices for the new financial year so we are waiting on that. We have decided to go with an E-Way account instead of Pay Pal. We already had an account with them so we are cheating a little bit. They have a set up fee but their ongoing charges are lower. You need an online merchant facility too but we have one of those already. So we have cheated a little bit on the price already. I hope that does not affect the integrity of my post.

  • Link Building Services

    There are many reasons that a successful link building service can benefit your business. Link building is an integral part of any seo process and can also be used to drive targeted traffic to your website. The style of linking used for these different purposes can vary greatly.

    The idea behind seo link building is simple. The more people who link to your site the more Google trusts your site to be an authority. Links are kind of like a vote of confidence to your website. The higher the ranking or trust Google has in the website where your inbound link comes from the more weight that link carries. There are many ways to generate this kind of link but the most common is from directory sites that suit this purpose.

    SEO companies might not admit it to you but the majority of their link building is not at all designed to bring extra traffic to your site. Many of them will be on foreign directories designed mostly for SEO purposes and not for driving traffic. If you saw how tricky many of them are to navigate you could not imagine someone in argentina enquiring about your ‘hair straighteners’ for sale in Australia. But that is fine because the aim is to get higher Google rankings.

    Other links for SEO include press releases, article submissions, and forum or blog advertising. Press releases are interesting articles about achievements or business developments that can be posted on news websites which generally have a high page rank. Similarly articles about your industry will be quickly picked up by authority or information websites that need the fresh content to engage their visitors. Of course these two things need to be well written to get onto various sites. You will get a link either with anchor text in the article or as a footer at the bottom of the article or press release.

    An upside of these linking methods is they will help increase your Google ranking as well as direct some more traffic to your site.

    Then there are links designed to send quality visitors to your website. Some examples are Hot Frog or many other shopping and service directories that are visited by your target demographic. Generally these links are a bit more difficult to be approved for and require much more research to find. Many of them have paid link sections so that you will have a more prominent ad position all of the time.

    Some links are approved immediately when you fill out the online submission form. Others take a while to become live because the a checked for authenticity by a human. I believe the tactic of the site owners here is to get you buy a paid link, just for the convenience of a quick approval. But that’s up to you. The fact that some links take a long time to be live is one reason that SEO can not happen over night.

    The important thing about link building is to just keep at it. More more more. Some every day if you have the time. The link building your SEO provider supplies should be at a steady pace on a wide variety of sites.

    Do you have any exciting or dangerous link building stories. I would love to hear one

  • Choosing an SEO company

    For the inexperienced, choosing an SEO company can be a daunting task. Sure all seo companies are going to tell you how good they are at this and that, but how do you really know what is important and what is just sales hype. Sometimes it is easier to cross potential seo companies off your list by recognising problems with their sales pitch, rather than just believing the things you want to hear. 

    There are many red flags that should arouse your suspision when discussing your SEO with a consultant from a potential SEO company. I have listed some of them below

    1. They suggest that page rank, keyword meta tags or loads of links are a magic solution to high rankings. The truth is that there is no single answer. The truth is there are many factors that go towards quality SEO and these catch phrases don't mean results.

    2. The SEO's website or their clients site have the same title tag on all pages of their website. This is not just poor SEO but suggests they have no idea about what they are doing. put on your running shoes and think of a reason to leave.

    3. The SEO just wants to focus on long tail keyphrases. Although some long tail phrases are a good strategy, they should never be afraid of the generic ones you dream about ranking number one for. Anyone who looks over the shoulder of an SEO expert for a day can rank your site for long tail phrases, but for value you will usually need some generic phrases to rank well.

    4. Your SEO consultant is misleading you if they say it is all about links, or content or keyphrases. There is no all about. Everything needs to be done well in competitive markets and all of these things are important.

    5. You should be suspicious if your consultant tells you there will not have to be any changes at all to your website. If so, why does it not rank already? Sure they can trial many things before any changes need need to be made but the possibility of architectural changes should exist if rankings do not improve much in the first few months.

    6. They can not provide references for previous site optimised. This should include phone numbers if you want to call and speak to past or present clients.

    7. I find it suspicious for the SEO to take on work or offer pricing without investigating your industry. They should know it's competitiveness, demographics etc. I would prefer an SEO who attempts to understand my business.

    8. One of the selling points should never be, 'we know someone at Google' or 'our SEO guy used to work at Yahoo'. This won't help your ranking and is probably not true anyway.

    9. If they suggest submitting your site to hundreds of search engines and thousands of directories, leg it. They sound to me like they have no personal touch and you will not only pay too much for their automated service, but you will also probably get a poor result.

    10. As Google gets more and more clever, attention should be paid to social media. Article posting, forum marketing and press releases are all increasing in value for Google rankings. So a pro SEO should suggest or at least include these in their proposal.

    There are many things that are important when choosing an SEO company. Learn all you can before making a decision and ask your SEO as many questions as possible to work out how experienced they are.

    If you want me to write more things to watch out for, just leave a comment. If you have any to add i will include them on this post with a link for you.

    Go well

    Troy

  • Lead Generation Tips #1

    This is the first of what i hope is a series of online 'lead generation tips' blog entries I hope to write. I just thought it might be useful to share our experiences with others who wish try their habd at what we enjoy doing most.

    The long term driver of our business is lead generation or lead brokering/affiliate sales. Our SEO skills afford us the ability to create whatever websites we like and market them on the internet. Then we can either earn ongoing commision from sales or selling the leads they receive through contact forms.

    That sounds great. And easy. But as we are a young company business experience wise, we are also having to discover not only how to do this successfully, but also hopelessly. Thankfully it is not expensive for us without development of asset costs, just some of our time here and there.

    For example we have one website designed to attract bad credit finance leads. We chose this because we know that there is a lot of money to be made in busy finance websites and noticed a good domain name that was available. Sounds cool so far.

    So we made the site and did some seo work on it and within a couple of weeks, boom, we are getting qualified leads every day. Still sounding good right.

    However, firstly because we did not expect such a quick result, we had not bothered to find a lender to buy the leads. I know that sounds daft, but we just did not expect such a quick result and when we had made a few calls earlier about different loan sites, brokers were jumping at the chance to buy the leads. So no big deal, we will just get a lender.

    Now a couple of weeks and a few phone calls later….no lender. Turns out bad credit finance leads don't convert as well as other finacne leads because a lot of them are just people who are desperate for money, who you must be stupid to lend money too. That makes sense in hind site (?spelling?) but …..it sounded like a good idea at the time.

    A bad credit website we had promoted to the top of Google on phrases like 'bad credit loans' and run a very successful adwords campaign for would have been happy to pay fifty dollars for the leads when we were working for them. But that was a year ago when the finance sector was still cruising. With the 'credit crunch', banks and so forth don't feel so comfy lending money to bad credit type loans.

    Here we are today, offering up these good leads now for $8 each. It does not seem to worth it wouldn't you think. But it is just on autopilot now and as I said there are leads coming every day. So it is not a total loss. The industry will eventually turn around.

    So my first tip is to select your product well and research it thouroughly before you invest your time and money. Will your product still be selling as fast in six months and if not is it worth it?

    And secondly, have everything ready before you launch. Finding a buyer might be easy today when you have the idea but will it still be as easy when you get off the ground? This makes sense not only for online brokers and affiliates, but also for anyone wanting to sell a product or service online.

    I will add other lead generation tips as I have the time and hope you come back to read them too.

    If you have made such mistakes or want to comment on this…..go on, write about it.

  • Fast SEO Results?

    A question every new client asks is how long it will take until they start to see results from their SEO. Firstly this is a tricky question because it is hard to know what results they are speaking about. They could mean ranking results, traffic increase, or sale and enquiry increases. All of these things will take a different amount of time and there are more factors involved besides just the website optimisation when generating sales or leads.

    Fast seo results (rankings) can be achieved if your seo company is knowledgable and diligent when beginning your project. Most of them will first of all apply some of the basic SEO steps on your website to make Googles job of understanding what you do easier. This will have a fast positive response and depending on how competitive your industry is on search engines, you maybe jump to the first few pages. Then they will begin their link building process to continue to increase your rankings. Depending on how hard they work on this and the quality of the links they build, your site should continue taking positive ranking steps.

    It is quite normal for your rankings to woble in the earlier stages of SEO. This is because Google is testing your site in higher positions and rreacting to new activity on and around your website. So do not panic if this happens, it is a good sign if anything because you can be sure Google has noticed there is action to do with your website.

    Your SEO company is usually only responsible for your rankings and not an increase in traffic or sales. We have become more careful not to sell our service with phrases like 'the higher ranking will increase your sales', even though that is very likely to be true.

    We usually expect to see one or two of our clients phrases in the top ten within two months, but again this depends on their industry and how strong their website was before we began working for them. Our goal is to bring another few phrases up every month from then on.

    To help our clients understand this and so they are not so nervous during the initial few months we maintain regular contact with them and explain in as much detail what we are doing and why. People fear what they don't understand, so we want our clients to know what we do. Clients who have had a disappointing SEO result in the past particularly appreciate tis high level of communication.

  • Affordable Search Engine Optimisation

    One of the main obstacles for many businesses who would like to be found on Google is the price. Unfortunately the cost of Google Adwords and search engine optimisation is only likely to increase. As Google becomes more and more dominant in Australia, the prices will follow other similar countries and increase dramatically.

    That is another reason to take action now.

    To offer affordable search engine optimisation on the Sunshine Coast, we have a very flexible pricing structure that we can tailor to suit any business. Whether you have a small budget or want to keep the initial costs to a minimum, we can most likely offer you a solution.

    We think it is not beneficial to the consumer if we create fixed packages, such as the amount of keyphrases we optimise for, or fixed month prices. Every business is unique and we want to cater to all markets.

    If you would like to see some examples of our pricing, you can visit the pricing page on our website. There are performance models there as well as a few different monthly plans. But remember, whatever you can afford to invest, we can work on a plan for that price.

    We want to offer affordable search engine optimisation to business owners from Caloundra to Gympie (and other areas too) and we think our flexible and friendly approach is the best way for us to do that.

    Call us now on 0430 30 6941 or email any questions you have to info@rankfirst.com.au

  • SEO Promotion

    Rank First is holding an SEO promotion.

    Until the end of the financial year we will be offering a twenty percent discount for all new clients that sign up for any of our SEO services before June 30 2008. This discount will apply for the length of the contract and makes our service much more affordable for small businesses.

    To qualify for this SEO promotion, you need to mention this offer before we make an agreement and make the first payment by the end of trading on the 30th of June. This includes the pricing for our performance based seo options and Google Adwords set up and management.

    With our staffs experience working with many different websites, including some household Australian names, you can be sure that you will receive dedicated service and very good results. We have a very strong track record with e-commerce websites, the finance industry, and small business websites. Whatever service you offer this seo promotion can help make adding value to your business more affordable.

    As with all of our projects, while we are not guaranteeing top ten results, we will refund your money if your website is not in the top ten of Google after six months. So this in not just an affordable offer, but it is risk free.

    If you have been curious to explore the possibility of SEO or advertising on Google, then this is a great opportunity for you. All of our work is done in a very open way and we communicate with our clients on a weekly basis. We tell them what we have done for them and why this will improve their position on Google. Each month we also provide a written report, containing the improvements to their rankings.

    With all SEO clients we free Google Adwords management and advice for improving the conversion rate from visitor into sale.

    So give us a call today. We can express the beginning of your project so that you can enjoy this discount. If you want more information about this seo promotion or any of our services, you can also email info@rankfirst.com.au or call 0430 30 6941

  • Affordable SEO Melbourne

    In an effort to make affordable SEO available for small and medium companies in Melbourne, we have a flexible range of services and prices available. We understand the the cost of SEO is often a major factor that restricts small companies from gaining organic Google rankings.

    Some ways we have tried to do this is to introduce performance based SEO pricing and custom pricing options for every client. Instead of pushing off the shelf products that often do not fit many companies, we discuss your situation and create a plan and pricing schedule around your needs.

    For example, having a service like a ten keyphrase SEO package for $1200 per month will limit the access to affordable SEO for many businesses. So we allow our clients to nominate how much they can afford to invest and alter our products to suit that, whatever their budget.

    Gaining access to high rankings on one or two phrases will create the revenue to reinvest into more keyphrases in the future.

    Paying a monthly fee can also be a hurdle for some smaller companies, especially when the rankings required for a return to be delivered can take some time. Our performance based options reduce the upfront costs, and make affordable SEO easier to obtain. Examples of our performance pricing are on our website at www.rankfirst.com.au/seo-pricing.php

    Feel free to add any comments to this post which may help generate new ideas to make seo more affordable to small businesses.

  • Open SEO Process

    As with any investment, people who hire an SEO company naturally want to know what that company will be doing. There is a lot of skepticism about SEO, and mystery about the process SEO companies use. My question is why do SEO companies feel like they have to hide their 'secrets' from their clients.

    The truth about SEO is that there are basic criterea that should be met on your website. If your website is designed in an SEO friendly way, that is a big step towards rankings. Then there is also link building, the more quality relevant inbound links the better.

    Do you think by a company sharing this information, like what they do to a website and why, or showing where some of the links they have built are, they have anything to lose? Do they really think their clients will run off and apply these things to all of their websites and not need them anymore?

    I think not. Firstly no matter how honest and open an SEO company is with their knowledge, you have to have a fairly high level of website development experience to be able to apply that to a website. The same goes with link building. Anyone can build a link, but there are better places and better ways to build them from an SEO point of view.

     And we have not even mentioned the time that is involved in all of this. Which business owners have time to find places to build links and update content, or create a blog or things like that.

    The opinion of Rank First is that by trying to keep the SEO process secret from their clients, other SEO companies are harming our industry and making it more difficult to show the public that good rankings can definately be achieved with their website, without any magic or shady deals.

    That is why at Rank First we not only answer any questions our clients have about what we do openly, we even encourage them to ask us as many questions as the want. This builds the level of communication and trust with our clients, and allows them to feel more comfortable with what we do.

    If you have an experience relevent to this post, I encourage you to leave a comment for other readers.

     Kind Regards

    Troy

  • Performance Based SEO

    In my experience selling search engine optimisation in Australia, I have noticed the price for reliable SEO is often a barrier for many small businesses. For them to pay a monthly fee when it could take them three months or often more to see the returns can be a heavy financial strain. Even worse with one upfront fee. The biggest problem is that this investment has no definate benefit, because no one can acurately predict the result.

    One way to remedy this is with a performance based price schedule. Currently we offer this to some clients to help make SEO more affordable. They pay a once off fee to get things going, and then do not pay again until the rankings start to appear. We set easily definable milestones, whiched are usually linked to increased traffic generation.

    Milestones usually involve keyphrases appearing on the first page of Google. This way they can also see that they are not paying for something every month when they are not even sure if it is working. Clients that have had a disappointing experience in the past also tend to favour an agreement like this because of their increased suspision of the SEO industry.

    I know i would trust in the ability of an seo company more if they were willing to offer this sort of pricing and it definitely could be the factor that influenced my decision when choosing someone to work on my rankings.

    We sometimes seperate the keyphrases our clients want to rank for into different categories depending on how competitive they are. When the less competitive phrases come up they may pay a lower price than they do for their industries most competitive phrases. This is only fair because they will likely get less return for a less competitive phrase too.

    I guess the larger seo companies might struggle to administer an option like this because they have too many clients to monitor. But for personal passionate companies like ours it works very well for both parties. SEO experts that are excited by what they do are kept even more motivated when getting paid depends on getting the rankings quickly.

    Feel free to leave any comments about this post as we are always interested in feedback on pricing and seo satisfaction.