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Blitz Ezine # 182 September 30, 2002

Note: This is an archived issue. Some links and/or content may be outdated

The Blitz-Promotions News Letter.
Issue no. 182, Sept. 30, 2002
************ In This Issue **************
Comments
Food for thought
Articles
The Classifieds
Next Issues
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Blitz Comments
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New this week -

Lots of good stuff in this issue - hopefully you'll be able to find something you can use to improve your business. This includes:

Using Alexa to improve your SEO.

Our Newbie guide Part 2 (choosing your niche) - may help some of the Old-timers as well.

Guest Article - Make your business stand out from the crowd.

We'll be dedicating our October Issues to ways you can increase your sales this holiday season.

Food for thought
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A reputation is something that you have to earn every day. It's not something that you just have and that you keep automatically.
Truett Cathy
Founder and Chairman of Chick-fil-A
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Alexa and how to use it to your advantage.
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Alexa is a powerful tool you can use to help build your search engine rankings. One important note is that I recommend that you DON'T (it contains some spyware programs that you don't need) download the program, you can use it online just as easily.

Alexa can be found here -
http://www.alexa.com/

Again a reminder, you don't have to download the toolbar, you can get plenty of information on the site.

1. Checking your sites ranking.
To check your sites ranking just enter your url in the search box.
I'll use my wife's site as an example - www.crochetnmore.com

The Results page has quite a bit of nice info -
The Average review tells you what people are thinking about your site. In Lisa's case it is five stars, which is a good thing.
Average traffic rank tells you the ranking within Alexa - note it takes these rankings from folks that use the Alexa toolbar. Don't worry if your site is a really high number, your goal should be to gradually lower this number and to track your progress.

The People Who visited this site also visited list is a good place to start thinking about some joint ventures and / or projects with other webmasters.

2. Work on your links.
Enter your search terms in the box.
We searched for crochet - then click on a sites info - this is the top hyperlinked line. In our case we're checking out crochet.org. One other note is that the sponsored listings to the right come from Google Ad Words.

Click on Related links - you'll again find the people who visited this site also visited .... check those sites out. If they have a link page, ask them for a link.

3. Find out what people are searching for on the web.
At the top of the menu you'll find two buttons - the Top 500 and Movers and Shakers. Click on these tabs gives you a good idea of the sites that get a lot of traffic and may give you some expansion ideas or some ideas for alternate avenues of revenue.

I usually start searching the sites between 101 - 200. Be careful though as you click around, some sites definitely don't have family friendly.

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Newbie Guide Part 2 - Picking your niche continued
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1. Picking your niche - the next step.

From last weeks lesson you should now have a list of things you like to do and/or are good at. Review your list and cross off anything that you wouldn't want to spend several hours a day or when you get to that point, the whole day dealing with. You should try to narrow your list down to 5-10 things.

An example

Let's say that here is the list you come up with -

Like to fish
Am good at making homemade lures
Know the best spots to fish in most of the lakes
Like to play computer games
Can beat anyone playing role playing games

You should find that your likes revolve around a couple of subjects. For the time being don't even think of ways to make money with it, just think about what you like to do.

So the subjects we like in the example above would be fishing / lures and computer role playing games.

Taking that information we're now going to see if people on the Internet are interested in our subjects.

Before you do the following make sure you have a full day that you can devote to the project. You'll be using wordtracker which has a one day subscription plan for $6.54 - but you will want a day you can dedicate to the project. We'll be using wordtracker to find out many things including:

How many folks are searching for a particular term.
How much competition you have for those words.
Suggestions for alternative keywords.

Here's how to do it -
1. Go to wordtracker and create an account.
http://www.wordtracker.com

2. Once you've signed up for an account, and started a new database, you'll come to a screen with three frames. The left frame is your search frame, the right frame will be your results frame, the bottom frame gives you some other information.

3. First thing to do is think broad and type in a term in the left hand box - make sure that lateral and thesaurus is checked. So in my case we'll check out fishing - so we type fishing in the box.

This will give you a list of related terms - we'll say that we can tie fly fishing lures - so we click on fishing and a new box appears in the right frame. Click on any word that you think may be related. This word will then be transferred to your keywords basket.

When you've went through the list in the right frame, then click on another term in the left hand frame, and continue on till you're finished with the list.

4. When you're finished with that click on the Step 3 link in the bottom frame. You should have your keywords listed an their counts. But we're not finished yet, now we want some traffic counts and competition results. So click the competition search link near the top right of the page.

5. Put a check mark in the Google box and click proceed.

6. This will present you with a nice list of estimated traffic and your competition. Here were the top five listings for fly fishing.

1 "fly fishing supplies" 185.083== 407== 96== 895
2 "fishing knots" 139.594== 1883== 443== 25400
3 "fly fishing knots" 108.928== 526== 124== 2540
4 "fishing knot tying" 100.125 ==188== 44== 353
5 "fishing lures" 53.851 == 1327 == 312 == 32700

I put the == sign in the listings above - let's take a moment to dissect one of the listings.

1 "fly fishing supplies" 185.083== 407== 96== 895

1 - these are just listing numbers in the order of KEI
2 - fly fishing supplies is the term
3. 185.083 is the KEI - this is a relationship between the number of times the term is searched for and the number of competitors.
4. 407 - this is just the number of times it is found in a database.
5. 96 - estimated number of searches in a 24 hour period.
6. 895 is the number of competitors.

So how can you use the numbers.
1. Make sure you have at least 25 or so listings with a KEI above 50 or better still above 100. If all your KEI numbers are low, then you either have a niche with a lot of competitors, no searches, or both. So try again.

So in our case fly fishing has an excellent market and next week we'll start to explore our niche.

If you have any questions, as always don't hesitate to ask.

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Guest Articles
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Unique Internet Marketing Stands Out From The Crowd
Copyright © 2002
Joshua Rose

Several years ago, I went whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine, while on vacation. I remained in the large, central cabin with my poor seasick infant son when a whale was finally spotted.

The Captain announced, "Whale to the starboard", and a mini-stampede of about 70 tourists scampered over just in time for the briefest of glimpses as it quickly submerged again. Everyone jostled and jockeyed for position to get the perfect camera shot for when that darn whale resurfaced.

But of course, it wasn't going to work out this way. "Whale to the port side", announced the Captain, and the stampede to the other side literally tipped the boat. Naturally, the whale had disappeared by then as well.

This went on like this -- back and forth -- for about twenty minutes. The whale seemed to be toying with human nature -- the tendency for people to do what everyone else was doing.

And EVERYONE was zigging when they should have been zagging. There were no 'individuals'. They moved as a group in their futile quest to snap off a clear and revealing shot.

Are you moving with the crowd on the internet, or are you striking out on your own unique path, one more likely to get noticed?

If you observe your own specific Internet marketplace, it's very likely you'll find that the vast majority of the 'crowd' are doing the sames things in the same ways -- and they're also getting the same poor results.

This presents a golden opportunity to be noticed by doing things differently.

Successful entrepreneurs, both online and off, are innovators and risk takers. They *experiment*, *evaluate* and *evolve* until they successfully convey that both who they are and what they offer is unique in the marketplace, despite all the competition.

To seperate yourself from the pack, you need to look at every aspect of your Internet marketing effort and ask yourself, "What's unique about this?" And, "How does this contribute to my own unique web presence?"

Here's some important areas to look at to get you started.

* Are you playing it safe and trying to please and sell everyone, and consequently selling to almost no one?
* Why should your prospects believe YOU when they are skeptical of so many others?
* How about your ezine? Is it similar to countless others or is there a unique theme or tone running through it?
* While your ads may be well written, is the overall message very much the same as the pack?
* How is your sales page unique? And have you given it a measured dose of your own personality?

This process of developing a distinct 'uniqueness' is subjective, involves risks, takes work to implement, and time to evaluate and change again if necessary. But in doing so, you will develop the factors crucial to successfully setting yourself apart in a very competitive marketplace.

Back onboard, my wife took a chance and went to the OTHER SIDE of the boat, alone. Sure enough, the whale popped up for a few seconds, she got the shot, and that was the last that was seen of that whale, or any other, for the rest of the trip. There were alot of unhappy tourists grumbling on the way back.

Stand out from the crowd. Move to the empty side of the boat -- and you'll stand a much better chance of getting your picture of the whale.

Joshua Rose is the Editor of The Internet Profit Wizards Newsletter, where he writes about the three most important skills to develop for attaining Internet success.

To subscribe, visit:
http://www.internetprofitwizards.com