GREETINGS!
From The WEB PRO TIMES EZINE
What A Day!
The Weather's grand all over the net.
Welcome to The WebPro Times. The ezine where business people, opportunity seekers,
entrepreneurs and professional marketers meet.
DELIVERED MONDAYS
VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 104
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Our Format for the WebPro Times is:
--> Editors Article
--> Guest Article (as they are approved)
--> Janes Jingle
--> Contest of the Day (win prizes)
--> Smart Tip of the Day
--> Smart Resources of the Day
--> Smart Fre.ebie of the Day
--> Continuing Saga of J and P
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EDITORS ARTICLE
Web Pro Times Issue 104 August 17th
HANGING IT UP
Phil and I received a letter recently that broke our hearts. It was from one of our
safelist members asking to be removed from one of our lists.
We, of course, obliged him and let him know that he had been removed. We received the
following letter from him (which we are reprinting here with his permission)
"Hi Jane,
Thank you for your help, I appreciate it. I have come to the conclusion that I will not
get rich and be able to retire from the profits off of the 'net' LOL.
Actually, there are sooooo many programs out there and I don't have any luck competing
against all the others who are just trying to recruit each other.
At first the hope of success kept me going but after about a little more than a year now,
I have decided to 'hang up my mouse'.
I don't want you to think that it was anything about your safelists, quite the contrary, I
will be stopping all my safelist memberships.
So again, thanks for your help and I wish you and your ventures the best of success.
Have a great week,
Rod Parker"
We read and re-read the letter. Something about it is haunting and it affected both of us
in a very personal way.
In the course of our correspondence and our work on the net, we read a lot of stories
about people who have been defeated by the net's web - but "hanging up my
mouse", as Rod put it, seemed to us the best description of the frustration so many
people feel on the net when
there is no real guidance to help people wind their way through the spiderweb that is the
net.
HAVEN'T WE ALL BEEN THERE?
I suppose that at one time or another, everyone gets discouraged on the net and feels like
"hanging it up". I know I have felt like that on more then one occasion.
Sometimes I go through a few days of answering one horrid or angry letter after another
and I say to myself " Who Needs this?"
sometimes, no matter what I advertise or how good the product or service is, no one
responds and I think "Why am I bothering with this? What am I doing wrong?"
These are the times when I feel like "hanging up my mouse".
So What do you do when those moments of discouragement seem so overwhelming they almost
engulf you and snuff out the fire you once had? Go back to the drawing board and retool.
RETOOLING FOR THE TIMES
No matter how much we think we know about our business, we can always learn more.
When everything seems to have slowed down to a crawl and on one is purchasing your product
or service, STOP! Take a some time off. Take an hour off, take a few days off and start to
read. Read everything and anything you can get your hands on. Ezines, e-books, other
people's ads - anything and everything that may jar your thinking, pique your curiosity
and give you some new ideas or a new approach.
Secondly, don't panic. If you have a good product or service, you will sell it when you
find the right audience.
Hanging up your mouse is not the solution and the more times we read and reread Rod
Parker's letter, the more Phil and I became determined to keep providing people with
marketing tools and information that will help them succeed on the net and keep their
"mouse's" moving in the right direction.
Stay tuned folks. Our new Mastermind mentoring forum will launch soon to help people just
like Rod as well as seasoned pros.
Jane
SIDEBAR:
For our new readers: You should know: We always end our articles with a jingle to
emphasize the point. You can capture the essence of our articles in the Jane's Jingle
section every week.
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JANES JINGLE
Jane's Jingle is the summary and conclusion of the editors article and
generally captures it's essence so if you need to cut to the chase, you can always skip
straight to the jingle :-)
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If you ever feel like hanging it up
Go for a walk - refill your cup
Refocus your mind, learn what you need
Then apply it diligently until you succeed.
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GUEST ARTICLE
Guest articles are seen here when we receive an article that is in keeping with the theme
of WebPro Times.
Choosing the correct keywords for a site
By Sumantra Roy
In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the keywords for which you
should optimize your site for the search engines. This article will give you the formula
for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a mathematical formula which I have developed
to help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.
Step 1: Open your text editor or word processor and write down all the words and phrases
that you might have searched for if you were looking for a company which offers products
and services similar to yours. For example, suppose your company organizes packaged tours
to Australia. Here's a list of phrases that I might have searched for if I were planning
to make a trip to Australia:
tourism in Australia
travel to Australia
travelling in Australia
travel agencies in Australia
travelling agencies in Australia
Australian travel agencies
Of course, the keywords that came to your mind may have been different. But that's not
important - the important thing is to get an initial list of keywords.
You may be wondering why I have not used single word keywords. Here's why:
Firstly, single word keywords tend to be hyper-competitive. A search for
"tourism" or "travelling" in any search engine will probably generate
hundreds of thousands of pages. While it is possible that you may get your page in the top
10 for such a single word keyword, it is quite unlikely.
Secondly, because of the sheer number of pages that single word searches can throw up,
most search engine users have realized that they can get more relevant pages if they
search for phrases rather than individual words. Statistical research has shown that most
people are now searching for 2 or 3 word phrases rather than for single words.
Thirdly, single word keywords won't get you targeted traffic. When people search for
"tourism", they are not necessarily looking for tourist destinations in
Australia - they may be interested in any other country of the world. Even if you got your
site into the top 10 for tourism, you gain nothing from such visitors. However, when
someone searches for "tourism in Australia", he/she is your potential customer,
and hence, it makes sense for you to try and get a top ranking for your site for that
keyword. Hence, whenever you are trying to generate keywords, try to be location specific.
Try to think of keywords which apply to the geographic area that your product or service
is designed to serve.
Step 2: Open any spreadsheet program that is installed in your hard drive. I assume you
are using Microsoft Excel. If you are using some other spreadsheet program, just change
the spreadsheet related procedures outlined here to fit your program.
Create 4 columns - one for the keyword, one for the popularity of the keyword, one for the
number of sites that appear in AltaVista for that keyword and the last for something I
call the Keyword Effectiveness Index (don't worry - I'll explain what KEI means later on).
In order to ensure that you can follow what I am saying, I recommend that you add the
following column headers to the first four columns of the first row of your spreadsheet:
Keyword
Popularity
No. of Competitors
KEI
In case you don't want to take the trouble of creating your own spreadsheet, download the
keywords.zip file from http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3846&download.htm
The file contains a sample spreadsheet in Excel 97 format.
Step 3: A great way to obtain a list of keywords related to the ones you have developed in
the first step is to use WordTracker's keyword generation service by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3846&wordtracker/
Click on the "Trial" option at the top of the site. In the page that appears,
type in your name and email address and click on the "Start the trial >>"
button. In the next page, click on "Click here to start the trial". In the next
page, type in the first keyword that you developed in Step 1, i.e. "tourism in
Australia", in the text box. Click on the "Proceed >>" button.
Step 4: In the next page, WordTracker will display a list of keywords related to the
keyword that you had typed in. (Just scroll down the left pane to see the keywords). Now,
click on the first keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site. In the
right pane, WordTracker will show a list of keywords which contain the keyword you had
clicked on in the left pane. Then in the table that you have created in your spreadsheet,
copy each of the keywords in the right pane and paste them in the first column of the
table. Also, copy the number of times those keywords have been used (i.e. the figure
present in the Count column in WordTracker) and paste them in the second column. In order
to ensure that you can follow me, make sure that you type the first keyword in the second
row of your spreadsheet. Of course, you should only bother adding a keyword to your
spreadsheet if it is applicable for your site.
Once you have added all the keywords in the right pane which are applicable for your site,
click on the next keyword in the left pane which is applicable for your site. Once again,
WordTracker will display a list of keywords in the right pane which contain the keyword
you had clicked on in the left pane. Again, copy the keywords in the right pane which are
applicable for your site and paste them in the first column of your spreadsheet. Also,
copy the figures present in the Count column and paste them in the second column beside
the corresponding keywords. Repeat this process for each of the keywords in the left pane.
Step 5: Once you have finished with all the keywords in the left pane, press your
browser's Back button a number of times until WordTracker again displays the text box
which asks you to type in a keyword. Type in the second keyword in your original list
(i.e. "travel to Australia"), click on the "Proceed >>" button
and repeat Step 4. Do this for each of the keywords that you developed in Step 1.
Step 6: Go to AltaVista. Search for the first keyword that is present in your spreadsheet
using exact match search (i.e. you should wrap the keyword in quotes, i.e. you should type
a quotation mark before typing the keyword and a quotation mark after typing it).
AltaVista will return the number of sites which are relevant to that keyword. Add this
number to the third column of the spreadsheet in the same row in which the keyword is
present. Repeat this process for each of the keywords present in your spreadsheet. Once
you have done that, your first column will contain the keywords, your second column will
show the popularity of the keywords and your third column will contain the number of sites
you are competing against to get a high ranking for those keywords.
Now it's time to calculate the KEI!
Step 7: The Keyword Effectiveness Index is the square of the popularity of a keyword
multiplied by 1000 and divided by the number of sites which appear in AltaVista for that
keyword. It is designed to measure which keywords are worth optimizing your site for.
Higher the KEI, better the keyword. How the formula for the KEI is arrived at is beyond
the scope of this article. If you want to know, send a blank email to
mailto:kei@1stSearchRanking.com
If you had used the spreadsheet file that I created for you (see Step 2), you won't need
to enter the formula for calculating the KEI yourself. The KEI would be automatically
calculated for you the moment you enter the values in columns 2 and 3. You can go straight
to Step 8.
In case you didn't download the file, here's how you can calculate the KEI.
I am assuming that you have created the spreadsheet columns in the way I recommended in
Step 3 and that you are using Microsoft Excel. If you using some other spreadsheet
program, you will need to adjust the formula to the requirements of your spreadsheet
program. Click on cell D2. Type in the following exactly as it is shown:
=IF(C2<>0,B2^2/C2*1000,B2^2*1000)
Then click on the Copy button to copy the formula, select all the cells in column 4 which
have keywords associated with them and press the Paste button to paste the formula. The
KEI for each keyword will be displayed.
Step 8: Use your spreadsheet program's Sort feature to sort the rows in descending order
of the KEI. In Excel 97, you would click on the Data menu, click on the Sort menu item,
choose KEI from the drop-down combo box named "Sort by", click on the
"Descending" option next to it, and then click on OK.
And guess what - that's it! You now know the keywords which you should optimize your site
for. You can now start optimizing your site one by one for each keyword, starting with the
keyword with the highest KEI. Exactly how many of the keywords you choose to optimize your
site for largely depends on the amount of time that you can spare from your normal
business activities. But whatever the number of keywords that you target, it obviously
makes sense to go for the most effective keywords first.
Tying up the loose ends:
The number of related keywords that WordTracker displays in the trial version is limited.
In order to get all the keywords which are related to the keywords you had developed in
Step 1, you would need to subscribe to WordTracker's paid service. We highly recommend
that you do subscribe to WordTracker's paid service as otherwise, you will miss out on a
lot of keywords that can prove to be extremely valuable to you.
____________________________________________________
Article by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the most respected search engine positioning
specialists on the Internet. To have Sumantra's company place your site at the top of the
search engines, go to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3846
For more advice on how you can take your web site to the top of the search engines,
subscribe to his FR.EE newsletter by going to http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3846&newsletter.htm
____________________________________________________Want to get noticed? Submit an article for review and if your article is just
what our readers need to hear, we will include it here in our guest experts
spot.
Your articles must be on some aspect of online marketing that works. You
must be able to show step by step what you do and what results you get.
Submit your articles here.
mailto:webprotimes@jpeads.com?subject=Articles
You could become quite well known.
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CONTEST OF THE DAY
Contest Winner 8.10.03 Issue 103
Congratulations to the Winner of last week's contest.
Davis Shellabarger
http://www.black-label-marketing.com/WMS/Sales_Page_DS.html
The question was who was Jackson Pollack and what is his famous line?
The answer: An American Painter(1912-1956) who said" Live to paint and Paint to
live"
We Gotcha All!
No one got the whole answer but Davis was in first with the painter part.
Here it this week's contest question.
How many yards are there in a furlong?
(Hint a furlong is a horse racing term)
This weeks prize - Fr.ee ad submitter that will blast your ads out to 2.5 million
websites. This one is a beauty.
Send your answers to...
mailto:webprotimes@jpeads.com?subject=Contest-Answer
Contest Rules: First correct answer we receive WINS!
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SMART TIP OF THE DAY!
In case you are wondering why we use the word fr.ee written like this in the smart
fr.eebies of the day section below. Some ISP's block the word fr.ee and if you want to get
your mail through you need to create little tricks like this in your subject lines and
messages to bypass their filters.
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SMART RESOURCES OF THE DAY
Recommendation:
Phil and I have been toying with the idea of developing a full marketing discount resource
site, but now we see that ISOR has saved us the trouble and come up with something so
fabulous that there is no need to develop anything. This is perfect.
http://www.isoregister.com/9810354341/onlinedetective/
This is one of the most exciting resource sites that we have seen in a very long time.
It was so intriguing to us that we decided to partner with the them and offer a great many
of our own services through their site at discounted rates.
We are in good company. Brian Garvin is a partner as well and you can get great deals on
his products and services as well.
http://www.isoregister.com/9810354341/onlinedetective/
Not only do you get discounts on everything from hosting to software to solo ad runs in
ezines and safelists,but there are so many fr.ee ad- ons that come with your membership,
it will make your head spin.
The discounts and fr.ee resources just keep on coming in every day so each time you go to
the site, there is something new that you haven't seen before. It's incredible.
We just love this site and the membership price is an unbelievable 7.95 per month for a
limited time. The price is going up October 1st so lock in your
membership now!
JOIN for a Full Year and get a FR.EE Membership to give away to anyone you would like to.
http://www.isoregister.com/9810354341/onlinedetective/|
You can become an affiliate and cover your monthly membership fee in a heartbeat. This is
one of the easiest and best program you could sell. It's the real McCoy.
If you join today, we will give you a FR.EE Solo Ad run to all the DSM lists
(65,000 members-value 67.00) - that almost covers your monthly membership to ISOR for one
year.
To get your FR.EE Ad run First Join ISOR
http://www.isoregister.com/9810354341/onlinedetective/
then send us your user id at:
mailto:jpethanks@jpeads.com?subject=I_Joined_ISOR
and put your ISOR membership ID in the body of the message along with your solo ad and we
will run your ad within 24 to 48 hours.
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SMART
FR.EEBIE OF THE DAY
We just ran across a cool fr.ee guide called Money, Time and Traffic. It's a first class
resource and we wanted you to know about it first.
You can pick it up for fr.ee here
http://www.bpcpublishing.com/guide.htm
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THE CONTINUING SAGA OF J AND P
----------------
P?
Yes, J?
I am really disheartened by what I am seeing on the net lately.
Really, J? You disheartened?
That's a new one. Doesn't sound like the NY bombshell I know.
No, P. I'm serious. I don't like seeing people getting hurt and they are leaving in
droves.
Yes, J. I tend to agree with you. So what do you think we should do about it.
I'm not sure, P, but I think we need to try.
Okay, J. I have an idea...Here's the plan...
Let's get people really fired up again, raring to go and thrilled about what they're doing
again. That way their mouse will become so turbo charged that not even the neighbors cat
will be able to catch it.
P? What the heck does that mean?
It means their computer mouse will be singing a new song.
Sound exciting. How do you plan on doing that, P?
I'll let you know shortly, J...
P? Tell me now please...
Shortly, J, shortly...
P?
Yes, J?
Don't start....
Phil Basten & Jane Mark
Publishers - WebPro Times
http://jpeadvertising.com
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