One challenge with implementing eCommerce for your website is trying to determine the right shopping cart for your business.  There are so many choices to choose from and each the effort to setup different shopping cart solutions ranges in complexity.

A few key questions business owners need to ask to select the right shopping cart includes:

1. What are you going to sell? Digital or Physical products?
2. How are you going to sell the products?  PayPal, eJunkie, Hosted Shopping Carts, Self-Hosted WordPress Shopping Carts
3. What is the size of your product catalog?
4. How will the product be delivered?  Shipping or Digital delivery?
5. How will you collect payment?
6. What is the user’s experience purchasing your product?

In this presentation, you’ll learn the following:

1. Advantages and disadvantages of hosted vs self-hosted shopping carts
2. Learn a simple eCommerce Blueprint with no upfront costs
3. Overview of two free shopping cart solutions with professional upgrade paths – Cart66 and WooCommerce

Shopping Cart Case Study Examples

The presentation provides a case study look at two business owners who sell a variety of products in different markets.  Our two business stakeholders include:

Single Product Sam

Product Mogul Paul

Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup Presentation

Presentation Links

• Free Shopping Cart platforms with Professional Upgrades  Cart66 and WooCommerce
• WooCommerce Shop Example – http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/shop/
• Cart 66 Shop Example – http://www.keithfieldsmagic.com/magic-shop/magic-marker/
• Sales Page Example with WooCommerce  – http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/microsoft-project-tutorials/schedule-development/
• Amazon S3 – http://www.amazon.com/s3

WordPress Sales Page Plugins

• Instabuilder – A powerful plugin that easily creates sales pages, video squeeze pages, email opt in-pages and awesome sales letter graphics
• ShortCodes Deluxe – A useful sale letter plugin that makes creating sales page graphics a snap

Need some WordPress Shopping Cart help?

If need some WordPress Shopping cart consulting, let me know.  I’d be happy to chat with you to understand your shopping cart challenges and help you configure WordPress and select the right shopping cart plugin for you.

The post WordPress Shopping Cart Comparison – A Tale of Two Shopping Carts appeared first on AMAKAR.

More to follow.

The post My New Amazon HTML Book Description Tool appeared first on AMAKAR.

Let’s jump into the numbers.

Sales Figures Video Summary

February 2013 Sales Figures

February 2012 Sales

US and India Net Sales

In total, 158 people paid for the eBook and 2 more people left excellent reviews with 5 star ratings.  By tracking sales daily, I found the book sold better in the night than during the day.  I’ll need to test the emailing an offer at night to see if further sales convert better.  The book is a career development book and buys likely think about their career on their downtime than during their work day.

CreateSpace Sales

On February 11, the CreateSpace version of the book also launched and at a $9.99 price point, 16 copies were sold yielding a $53.76 profit.  By offering the product in a physical book format, I’m meeting additional customers who seek a physical book rather than a digital one.  The CreateSpace process was a surprisingly easy experience and I’ll be sure to highlight the lessons learned in a future blog post.

Prior Month Comparison

January 2013 – February 2013 Sales

The $2.99 price point definitely converted more sales and generated a bigger profit. However,  January was the 1st month using the Amazon marketing engine and it also included the free KDP launch.  I like the idea of reaching more customers interested in my topic however, 158 sales @ 3.99 would’ve been an additional $158 in revenue.  Consider my other professional project management tutorials sell for $24.95 each, I’m adopting a low-cost approach to get the Tactical Project Management brand known.

Insights and Lessons Learned

How well does the Amazon page convert traffic?

On February 7th, I started tracking the number of views to the Amazon page in comparison to the total sales from February 7th to February 28th.

February 2012 Traffic

Based on 1641 hits and 158 sales, I have a conversion rate of 8.17%. In comparison, a ½%  or 1 sale out of every 200 visitors is generally accepted as a good conversion target for web traffic.  Understanding how well the page converts the traffic helps to assess how changes to the Amazon product description or price point affect overall sales.

Based on those sales numbers, in order to generate $1000 at $2.99, I’d need 334 sales. At an 8% conversion rate, I’d need to send 4096 hits to the Amazon sales page.  The past 30 days of traffic has resulted in 1,967 clicks so I need to find ways to double the amount of traffic.  Thankfully, my SEO work has helped contribute to the SERP rankings to further drive traffic.

SEO Contribution to Traffic

As of March 1st, my title ranks #2 for the search term.  The search term gets 6600 traffic per month in the United Status and using the statistics from Tim Yow’s Google Love presentation, the #2 position should receive 13.45% of the traffic or 888 clicks per month.  Based on the conversion rate that’s at least 72 copies or $216.78 in sales from Google traffic alone.  Knowing the #1 position gets 54% of the search traffic encourages me to further apply the SEO strategy for the search term.

Increasing Screen Capture DPI

Another lessons learned was working with screen captures and increasing the DPI (dots per inch) for both the print and electronic books.  Screen captures using tools like SnagIt or good ‘ol Alt-Print-Scrn capture images at 72 dpi.  Print books want 300 dpi and it doesn’t hurt to improve the dpi in the Kindle books either.  I’ll be increasing the dpi for the images in the book to improve overall quality.  If you’re looking for a simple tutorial on how to increase your screen capture images for 300 dpi, please see Getting a printable image from a still-screen capture by Ryan C. Davidson.

Marketing Actions For Next Month

1.  Test the 3.99 price point
2.  Issue a press release for Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy
3.  Withdraw from KDP Select
4.  Complete the first draft of my next Kindle Technique

I’ve got good rank in both Amazon category and the SERPs.  Now is the time to increase the price and test a new price target of $3.99.  If the sales conversion holds, I’ll make a greater profit than the previous $2.99 price and still capitalize on the higher number of purchases.  Remember when the book was selling for $4.99, I had only gained 67 sales.

I’m also removing the book from the KDP Select program.  I know…Shocker!
KDP has done well to do a book promotion in January and get additional reviews.  The reviews provide social proof that the book deliver.  My search engine rankings, overall Kindle ranking and conversion are healthy.

By removing the book from the KDP program, I can also pursue selling the book in iBooks, Kobo and Barnes and Noble PubIt.

March will be another good month exploring Kindle publishing, marketing and sales!

Has this series been helpful?

If you’re a fellow Kindle writer, I’d like to hear about your experiences and lessons learned.  If this series has been helpful to you, please comment below, tweet, FB Like and Google Plus the article!

The post Kindle Marketing Case Study February 2013 Results appeared first on AMAKAR.

Kindle Marketing Sales Figures

January 2013 Sales

In total, 67 people paid for the eBook, 566 downloaded the book during my 2 day Kindle promotion and 13 people left excellent reviews with 5 star ratings.

Kindle Book Price Point

This month I lowered the book from 7.99 to 4.99 for a 3 week test.  In January, I only ran the 7.99 price point for 4 days before I ran the Kindle Select free promotion.  If I consider the full 11 days the book was priced at 7.99, the average sales per day was 2.5 books.  For the remainder of the days using the 4.99, the book sold 2.6 sales per day.  Doing some quick math indicates, I should test again at the $7.99 price point for a longer set of days as I would have fewer sales but much greater profit.

Ofcourse, I still think $9.99 is still way too low for the information provided, but that’s just me being subjective.  Even listing the book at $7.99 and then $4.99 was a hard pill to swallow but I’m relying on volume to drive sales.  However, in my project management niche, the target reader can easily afford a $9.99 price point for a technique that solves a problem.  Price testing will continue each month so look forward to next month’s results.

I’m learning that these Kindle “books” are not really books but rather techniques that solve a specific problem.  If the price point of these techniques is incredibly low, then a portfolio approach with quality techniques and higher volume will continue to drive profitability.  Overall, the revenue isn’t much but considering it only took 3 weeks from start to finish and I now have a product generating small sales each day, I’ll grind out the digital dollars.  Based on the monthly results, the book will generate approximately $3000 for the year.  With a mind map of over 40 different Kindle book ideas, repeating this process could generate a comfortable amount of income.

…but I’m not quitting the day job yet.

Kindle Marketing Actions

In one of the Kindle Forums, there is a theme of just letting the Amazon Kindle platform market the book for you.  I’ve learned there is a financial benefit to placing your product where there is a lot of interested buyers, however, I don’t think it is good business to rely only on one platform for marketing or product distribution.  Under the KDP Select terms, I’m locked into 90 days only on the Amazon platform before I can choose other distribution channels.  Even if I remain on the single distribution platform, I need to have a backup strategy in case Amazon ever decides to change the percentage, distribution or even discontinue the Kindle program.

Below are several key actions I took to help promote the book:

Promote the book across your own platform.

The first sale of the book was from a tweet that I sent out to my project management followers.  It was also the first 5-star review that I received.  I also updated my Tactical Project Management Facebook page, Google Plus account and my LinkedIn profile.  Heck, I even pinned my book cover on my Pinterest account with a link to the book.  Since I have an existing project management blog that receives a modest amount of visitors each month (9000 unique views), I also updated the blog with a link to the book.  By leveraging my blog and my list of email subscribers, I was able to market to the subscribers and let them know about the book.

It was encouraging getting feedback from my professional colleagues and other project managers in the field.  The feedback and sales further validated the book was providing the right message to the target audience.  I also understand why traditional book publishers want you to have an established platform to help promote and sell your own book.

Helpful – Not Spammy – Forum Discussions

In the project management domain, there are several high traffic discussion forums where people ask questions and I help provide quality answers.  Quora and LinkedIn are just two forums where I would answer questions and even ask questions related to the my book topic.  In my responses, I provided a quality answer that demonstrated expertise and included a link to my book in the signature line.

I did this a few times and didn’t always include the link in my response as I didn’t want to look overly spammy.  The response was well received from the virtual community and I received several email and discussion responses indicating they purchased the book.

Freelance Writing

I’m hesitant to refer to publishing articles on other blogs as guest posting.  Guest posting has a hidden assumption that your quality writing should be given away for free all in exchange for a backlink.  As a freelance writer, I publish with popular blogs that have paid editors who seek quality content related to the target market.  TechRepublic.com is a popular page rank 9 website that is owned by CBS Interactive Media.

Here is one way I include a backlink in the Managing Accountability in Outsourced Projects article.

YouTube Presentation

As part of the marketing strategy, YouTube continues to be an excellent source for traffic.  The video I created last month continues to grow in views with over 800+ views to date.  I include a link to my book in the video description as well as a call to action to check out the book to learn more.  Currently, the video ranks on the 2^nd page and continues to climb in the search engines and ranks #3 in the YouTube video search results.

Publishing Content on Popular Platforms

I also took the same presentation and published a Project Management Interview Questions on Scribd.  Since the book references a mind map, I also created a mind map template and posted it on MapsForThat.com and BiggerPlate.com.  The key idea here is to take relevant content that can be easily repurposed and get it published for viewing on other platforms.

What’s the value in all this additional content marketing?

For a $2.99 to $9.99 ebook, you might wonder what the real value is from all this additional content development and content marketing.   Amazon very well may be its own search and marketing engine for your book, however, applying a little search engine optimization with content marketing helps for additional traffic from the search engines.  As of this writing, the book ranks #8 in the search engine results and ranks #1 for the keyword in the Amazon search engine results.

In reviewing my daily sales statistics, I’ve noticed every time a guest post article ran on Techrepublic or my other platforms, the sales increased for the day.  The key is to go where your target market goes and provide relevant content that addresses their question or concern.  There are other theories that you can “set and forget it” on the Kindle platform by simply doing the KDP promotion.  I like to stack the deck in my favor so I’m a fan of promoting my brand of books with content marketing while leveraging the Amazon engine.

KDP Select Promotion Results

The PM Interview Questions Made Easy title was my first KDP Select eBook.  I was looking forward to the results of the 2 day promotion and the subsequent sales on the paid list.  On Day 1 of my free promotion, I pushed the marketing heavily through my various social media channels, forums and related network.  The book ranked #2 in the Decision Making category for Free Kindle books and was #3 in the Job Hunting category.  The book was downloaded 367 times and ranked 884 in the Free Kindle list.  The second day I deliberately decided to do no promotion and just let Amazon promote the free book.  The book went to #1 in its category and was downloaded another 188 times with a best Kindle Rank of 728.

I’ve read other Kindle Marketing Books that talk about 5000 free downloads in a day and if your book doesn’t reach a thousand downloads, your book won’t fair well.  Keep in mind, my book is targeted to project managers seeking a job which in itself is a small niche but it remains a buying one.  I was happy with the results and was looking forward to the first paid day.

After the 2 day promotion, the book rank fell to 214,657 with only ONE sale.

Yep…just 1 sale at the $7.99 price point.  I picked up another sale the following day and decided to drop the price point to $4.99 as a test.  I kept it at the $4.99 price point for the remainder of the month.

Where was the huge sales volume?

There wasn’t any.  Throughout the month, the best KDP rank I achieved on the paid list was 24,471 which isn’t bad and still sells 1 to 10 titles per day.  Ideally, if the book breaks the 8500 rank, the book is selling between 10 and 30 copies per day.  Based on email discussions with Amazon, there is no direct relationship between the paid list vs. the free list.  The paid list and free list is calculated based on the number of sales.  One does not influence the other.

So what is the KDP Select benefit?

I’ve noticed two main benefits with KDP Select – in-category search results ranking and reviews using social proof.

When I enrolled my book in KDP Select, I noticed when I searched for the keywords my book ranked first among the other books with similar titles.  There are other interview questions books written for project managers and prior to KPD select, it didn’t rank as high in comparison.  I’m also doing an exact keyword match so those factors also likely apply.

However, the real benefit with KDP Select is getting Amazon verified reviews.  You can embed social proof and testimonials in your product description but nothing sells a book better than getting 4 and 5 star reviews from Amazon verified purchases.  Below are just some of the reviews.

I’m sure less ethical marketers could go on Fiverr.com and pay for positive reviews; however, getting this type of feedback from actual project managers further validates the book and also helps sell the book.  If the book has enough social proof from Amazon Verified Purchases and it actually solves a problem found in your market, you’ll have a healthy batch of monthly sales.

Kindle Marketing Strategy and Actions for Next Month

In February, I’m taking the following actions:

1. Test the 2.99 price point
2. Apply Conversion and Analytics Tracking
3. Edit the book to cross promote my other Kindle titles
4. Publish a hard copy version on CreateSpace.com
5. Issue a press release

Every Kindle marketing book you read talks about the magic $2.99 price point.  I cringe at pricing the book so low for the information, but I’m willing to test it for a month.  Applying conversion tracking will also help determine my most effective marketing source.  Adding links to my other Kindle books with sample chapters will also help cross promote.  With CreateSpace, I can get a hardcopy version of the book printed on demand which should also help with overall sales.  Once the CreateSpace version is live, I’ll have enough relevant news for a meaningful press release.

What do you think?

If you’re a fellow Kindle writer, I’d like to hear about your experiences.  Do the above results appear similar to yours?  Please comment below.

The post Kindle Marketing Case Study January 2013 Results appeared first on AMAKAR.

What is SEOprofiler?

A web application that helps you get higher rankings in Google and other search engines.  For the monthly investment, it provides one of the best SEO competition modules I’ve seen in the market today.

My SEOprofiler Presentation

Why Use SEOprofiler?

In the SEO tools space, there are a lot of tools available to help you with search engine optimization.  My two favorite tools include SEOprofiler and Market Samurai.  Market Samurai is a one time cost that helps to identify target keywords, track rank and evaluate the competition.  SEOProfiler is a monthly “software as a service” subscription that helps you manage your SEO campaign, track rank, manage backlinks, spy on the competition and my favorite feature is the Top 10 Analyzer tool.

Key Features Include

Just some of the key features that SEOprofiler supports includes:

• Rank Tracker – A rank tracking module across the three major search engines with trend charts and alerts
• Top 10 Analyzer – This tool can be applied on your current websites, competitor’s websites and even used to sell consulting services to prospective clients
• Keyword research and Competition Keyword Tool – Provides keyword research and a detailed keyword difficulty assessment
• Link Building and Link Campaign Management – A web-based link building repository including quick starter links and link research tools
• Automated Reporting – Schedule reports for your sites or your clients using the automated reporting feature

There are a ton of other features in SEOprofiler.  That’s why I encourage you to try it for free!

I only recommend products that I actually use and I’ve found SEOprofiler to be an excellent tool to add to any blogger or consultant’s tool kit who is interested in getting higher rankings.  The Top 10 Analyzer is a powerful analytics tool that helps compare the competition to your site no matter what Google Panda, Penguin or future creature update is released!

Questions?

Did you find the presentation useful?  Feel free to comment in the blog comments below and I’d be happy to chat further about SEOprofiler.

The post SEOProfiler Review appeared first on AMAKAR.

Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy

In mid-December, I published my book Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy on Kindle. At 20,000 words, its is more of an extended technique than a full size 100,000 word book, however, the Kindle publishing market is providing new opportunities for writers to publish useful techniques,novellas and full fledged novels on any digital platform – Web, Kindle, iPad and Android devices. Freelance writers now have an easy mechanism to publish and get paid for their work without having to forgo the variety of royalties. I won’t go into an entire post on the Kindle publishing process, but over the next few months, I’ll be sharing a few useful kindle marketing tips for Kindle authors.

The major draw of the Kindle platform is Amazon’s sales platform and its global reach.  If you are a solo-entrepreneur exploring selling digital products for the first time, Amazon provides low barriers to entry and you don’t have to worry about integrating an e-commerce shopping cart into your blog.   You also don’t need to be a search engine optimization expert to get people to view your book.

(Ofcourse, it helps if you can apply some on-page search engine optimization to the Amazon book description)

 Kindle Marketing Baseline

As a point of reference, I setup the following sales parameters for my Amazon book.

Price point: $7.99

Enrolled in KDP Select: Yes

Date Published: December 13, 2013

A lot of Kindle publishing books will advise a $2.99 price point and the sage advice of testing to find the optimum price point.  I picked $7.99 since it was cheaper than competing books in the project management interview question domain and quite honestly, I think perspective job seekers can afford $8 bucks for an excellent career advice book!  I’ll test the pricing to see the different monthly results.

Kindle Marketing Actions

In hind site, releasing a business book a few weeks before the Christmas holiday, when a lot of people take vacation time, wasn’t the best timing.  However, remaining weeks in December, I took the following actions:

• Sent 1 Tweet to my Twitter followers (Result 1 sale on the first day)
• Posted Update on Tactical Project Management Facebook Page
• Posted a update to my LinkedIn Profile and posted in a few relevant project management LinkedIn discussion forums
• Posted a link to the book in a ProjectManagement.com discussion forum
• Add a link to the book on the Tactical Project Management blog and main homepage.
• Posted the link to my Google Plus profile
• Created a discussion post with a link Quora – What is your favorite project management interview question
• Added the book cover image to my Project Management Pinterest page
• Sent out one newsletter to my Tactical Project Management subscribers
• Posted on Facebook 2nd time
• Continued with discussion forums – LinkedIn and ProjectManagement with links back to the book
• Submitted PM Interview Question to the PMHUB Group – A Yahoo/Google Groups listserve
• Created a presentation, narrated it and published it to YouTube – Project Management Interview Questions
  
• Published the presentation to Scribed
• Scheduled my free book promotion for January 9 and 10th
• Tweaked the Amazon book description to enable HTML tags so it had greater on-page SEO value.

Example – Project Management Interview Questions Video

Kindle Marketing Results

As of December 31st, I’ve sold 16 books and the book was borrowed 3 times.

At $7.99 * 16 * 70% = $89 bucks!

(I know … don’t quit the day job yet)

Considering the book has only been on the market for 2 weeks and it was during a holiday, I was happy just to see a few sales!
As the links are found in the search engines, the book should perform well in the search engine rankings.  It is already ranked #10 for my keyword so seeing it on the first page of Google within 2 weeks is pretty good!

Kindle Marketing Actions for Next Month

In January, I’ll be taking the following marketing actions:

• Include a link to my book in the About the Author line for several blogs where I publish articles each month
• Email my newsletter subscribers for the free Amazon promotion day
• Promote the free promotion on two Facebook groups
• Create a Squidoo lens on the topic
• Post the video and presentation to other project management forums
• Submit a press release
• Identify project management related podcasts and other key project management related websites where I can reach the target audience with my book.

 Stay Tune for Next Month’s Update

Be sure to sign-up for the Smart Ideas for Smart Business newsletter and I’ll keep you updated on my latest kindle marketing and share the results of my kindle marketing strategy.  Ofcourse, if you want to see what a great book in Kindle looks like – check out Project Management Interview Questions Made Easy

The post Publishing on Kindle appeared first on AMAKAR.

Writing a book, Books Berger Frida Survival Co-ops et al—Denna Jones (Flickr.com)

Writing a book is tough when you are working alone.  Writing a book with a writing partner makes quality content creation easier to yet it requires more collaboration.

Even with Google Docs, email and Skype, collaboration across idea generation to the final product can be a difficult take to manage.

If you’ve followed my WordCamp Detroit 2012 Slides – Smart Blogging Tool for Smart Business, then you know I’m a fan of real-world collaboration tools that make writing, blogging and content creation easier.

I recently published an article at Projects@Work that highlights how I use Mindjet, a popular mind mapping and collaboration tool to develop a book outline, collaborate with my writing partner and track relevant tasks.

Mindjet first started out as a mind mapping tool but it has grown into an impressive collaboration tool that helps get work done…all the way from idea generation to actual work management.

Read the Article

The Projects@Work link will likely ask you to create a free account to read the article, but I realize many of you are not project managers so I posted a PDF of the article here:

http://goo.gl/jLAFK

If the article has peaked your interest, then I recommend giving Mindjet a try.  You can sign up for a free account and start brainstorming and collaborating with your writing partner.  If you are a fan of project management and want to follow my monthly column with Projects@Work, then sign-up for a free membership on their website.  I’d be interested in your feedback so please comment below.

The post Writing a Book with Collaboration Tools appeared first on AMAKAR.

Photo by Chris Luckhardt

I was happy to be one of the guest presenters at the WordCamp Detroit 2012 Conference held on October 6, 2012!   The event was held at the Madison Building in downtown Detroit and featured an excellent facility for networking and learning!

Below are my WordCamp Detroit slides on using several great tools to help bloggers manager their blog and their business!

WordCamp Detroit 2012 Presentation

Smart Blogging Tools for Smart Business

Learn how  web-based project management tools can improve your blogging workflow, client management and your overall blogging business.

Full-time and freelance bloggers need simple solutions to capture ideas, plan a blog calendar and manage all the content creation and content promotion for various brand marketing campaigns.

If you are planning content for your own blog or creating content for multiple clients, this session will demonstrate how using these project management tools can improve your blogging business and workflow.

Learning how to use free and low cost project management tools to improve your blogging business is Smart Business!

Click on the presentation image to download the presentation

The tools mentioned in the presentation include:

• Evernote – a note taking application that ensures you’re never forget
• Mindjet – Brainstorm, organize and manage projects anywhere

• Trello- Organize anything, together

• Asana- Shared task list for teams and the place to plan, organize and stay in sync

I’ve used these tools for several years for project management and blog management applications.  I encourage you to give these tools a try and you’ll quickly see how applying project management tools to your blog is smart business!

Did you find the presentation useful?

If you found the presentation helpful, please comment on the blog post below.  If you’ve used these tools previously for blogging, content management, website development or team collaboration, please share your experiences with these tools.

Ofcourse feel free to Tweet, Facebook Like and Google Plus the WordCamp Detroit slides!

I hope to speak again next year!

The post WordCamp Detroit 2012 Slides – Smart Blogging Tools for Smart Business appeared first on AMAKAR.

At a recent Detroit WordPress Meetup session, Tim Yow of YowSEO.com gave an excellent talk about on-page WordPress Search Engine Optimization tips.  Tim’s presentation was entitled “Getting more Google Love for Your WordPress site”.  I always glean another SEO nugget whenever I meet with  consultants who enjoy trying to reverse engineer Google’s search algorithm all in the name of higher rankings.  As a fellow SEO enthusiast, discussing Google’s latest algorithm changes with active SEO practitioners is time well spent.

Getting More Google Love for Your WordPress Site

Getting More Google Love for Your WordPress Site

 Below are a few of the relevant “nuggets” from the presentation:

On-Page Search Engine Optimization Tips

In order of importance, Tim suggests focusing on optimizing the keywords in these on-page factors

1. Title Tag

Ideally a single keyword phrase is used to describe one page on the site.  However, Tim has tested multiple keywords for the same given page when the website owner prefers to constrain the number of pages. Limit the title length to 65 characters and for local businesses, remember to include the actual location in the title tag.

2. Permalink URL Structure

Tim recommends using categories in the permalink structure (i.e. /%category%/%postname%/) and continuing to include keywords in the URLs

3. META Description

Limit the number of characters in the description field to 140 and ensure keywords are in the meta description

4. Main Heading

When creating the main post name, remember to set the page name in the URL structure to include the SEO keyword and then change the actual page or post title to be more user friendly and descriptive.  The actual URL of the post or page can be short yet the Main heading can be descriptive.

5. Sub-headings

Keep including keywords in the H2 and H3 headers

6. Internal links

Every post should have relevant links to other content on the blog structure. This helps make your blog more “sticky” and your reader will drill down deeper into the site which increases the time visited on a site.

7. Anchor Text for internal links

Use anchor text that is logical and properly incorporates the keyword such as “Read more about <insert keyword phrase>”.  Including the title attribute in the anchor text is also recommended.

8. Bold text

Avoid over using bold text in the article text.

9. Image Alt Text

If there are image links, remember to use the ALT tag with the title attribute with the proper keyword phrase.

10. Main content

The main content is the core content of the post and page. For your reader, it is the most important piece of the site, yet in the order of Tim’s SEO priority it is at the bottom.

What about backlink diversity and the latest Google update?

Backlink diversity in off-page links was an open question since Google’s latest algorithm changes had impacted a number of user’s sites.  The overall recommendation is to include a mix of anchor text keywords in your link network.  Including more natural combinations in external backlinks is highly recommended.

The guys over at Market Samuari put together an excellent video on backlink diversity. The video provides a ton of great content that helps the viewer understand the right mix of keyword anchor text, brand urls and human looking backlinks.  If you use Market Samurai, you can export the results of your link network and they will analyze it for free at:

http://www.marketsamurai.com/anchor-text-analyzer.php

Recommended Search Engine Optimization Tools

If you’re looking for several useful on-page and off-page search engine optimization tools, I recommend the following:

• PushButton SEO – A professional WordPress plugin that does on-page SEO optimization analysis for every page and post.  It also makes embedding YouTube, Creative Commons and other Internet snippets very easy.
• SEO Profiler – A monthly Software As a Service tool that provides keyword research, rank tracking and page optimization reports by comparing the competition against your target page.  A very powerful set of software at an affordable price
• Market Samurai – Market Samurai is where I started and I still use the tool to evaluate competition against target pages and analyze the backlink network

Thanks again to Tim Yow of Yow SEO on a great presentation and an informative session on WordPress Search Engine Optimization Tips!

The post WordPress Search Engine Optimization Tips appeared first on AMAKAR.

Twitter Flickr Tuttle ICA Social Club—tonyhall (Flickr.com)

What’s the benefit of putting your business on Twitter?

You can tweet, re-tweet and follow everyone on #FollowFriday and still not see a tangible return on the investment for your time.

The key benefit of Twitter is not in the pipe dream of “Tweet and Grow Rich” but rather in the professional connections made by asking questions and tweeting relevant responses.

(I refuse to use the now overused phrase “contribute to the conversation”)

Tweets don’t lead to revenue. Tweets lead to connections. Connections lead to opportunities.

Opportunities lead to revenue.

If connections lead to opportunities, how do you make those connections?

Ok.  So you’ve sent out a few tweets and have a few people following you.

You’ve identified a few people who actively share and contribute to your slice of the 140 character deluge of shortened links and hash tags.

Assuming you found some helpful people on Twitter, you likely have more questions that exceed 140 characters.

Now what?

The next step really isn’t that difficult.

Simply send them a tweet and ask if its ok to send them an email.

Assuming they confirm with a direct message or a tweet, send them an email with your detailed questions.  Unless the questions are easily answered, their response will likely suggest a phone call for an easier exchange of information.  In less than 140 characters, you’ve went from being an irrelevant Twitter handle to being a person of interest with a meeting.

(If only pitching sitcoms and gathering venture capital was this easy)

The meeting is the start of the connection that may provide opportunities.  An opportunity may not be immediately available but the point of networking is to build a set of relationships that help you and your network solve problems together.  Remember the original point of the meeting was to answer a few questions not pitch your services.

(That’s just bad manners)

How can all these connections help your business?

Business growth is fueled through relationships.  Sure we have contracts, agreements and other formal legalese to protect each parties interest but at the end of the day, trust in your company and meaningful relationships grow your business.

• When is the last time you’ve been able to get a hold of a key decision maker or influencer?
• When is the last time you received free consulting advice?
• How easy is it for you to interact with thought leaders who work with larger brands and businesses?

Twitter can help make these introductions that help answer these questions.

Using Twitter as a friendly engagement tool, I’ve been successful in making connections with product managers from large technology brands and CEOs from Silicon Valley software companies.   Connections lead to discussions and discussions eventually lead to opportunities.  All of these connections help me improve and build upon my business. These connections all started with 140 characters.

Your Twitter Benefits Networking Checklist

Tweet Away.  Make a few connections.  Be helpful.  Foster relationships that generate opportunities.

Opportunities generate revenue…not Tweets.

That’s your ROI.

Other Twitter Benefit Articles

• Twitter’s benefits continue to rise Powersports Business
• Discover The Business Benefits Twitter Marketing Has To Offer You
• The Benefits of Using Twitter for Business

The post Twitter Benefits: What is your ROI on Twitter? appeared first on AMAKAR.