I have done work with several companies who have come to me and ask what I think of their “Sales Page”. Sometimes I think they have a great page and everything is fine, but most of the time I get pages that lack what it takes for their “Sales Page” to actual sell!

For a recent client I wrote this outline to help him turn his sales page into an effective selling tool!
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I realize that there are a lot of people out there looking for ways to market their services and their products on the internet. With this trend of internet marketing, which really seems to have taken off in 2009, I have seen some differences in results and in the effort that people put in.

My thoughts, and these are just that, this not meant to tell what is right and what is wrong only to provide some insight from a web professional who has done both blog marketing and pay per click marketing.

What seems to be the trend that everyone has started to implement into their marketing and advertising blue prints is the use of pay per click advertising. Using sites like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to advertise their products and services. Her is an example of what this looks like on Google search page…

The first three search results in the yellow box on the left side of the page are pay per click ads, and the whole column on the right is filled with pay per click ads. People are simply creating and account with google adwords, creating their ads, selecting keywords that they want to use to target when their ad is shown on a google search page and then they pay for the ad every time someone clicks on it.

The other search results on the page are what we refer to as organic search results, the searches that google naturally selects to display based on the importance of the website and the article. It is also based on the content in the article, google verifies that the article really does in fact have the keywords used in the search within the article. In this case the keywords were, ’seo marketing’, and the articles and ads are all associated with those keywords in some way.

So in my opinion the best place to be is not in the top 3 ad sports or the first 10 ads in the right column that show on the first page of a google search. Where I think you should work to be listed is in the first 10 or 12 organic search results on that page.

Fight for the Organic Search Results

The best way to win the Organic Search is with a blog!!

When I do a Google search, and I do a lot of them in a day. I am only looking at the ads because I am a web marketer and I like to evaluate what ads are getting the best results. I do not however look at the ads to find results for the information that I am searching for. Simply because the ad results can be manipulated far more then an organic search result.

When you place an ad with Google you are purchasing keywords. You are paying Google to say here I want my ad to show up for this keyword and these other keywords. Sure Google does verify to make sure that you are really directing people to a website that provides content or products associated with the keywords you used in your search. My opinion and my experience has been that the ads do not provide me with the info I am typically searching for. I find what I am looking for much easier and effectively in the organic results.

Studies have also shown that people are less distracted by the ads then they once were, and have found it to be annoying and when we are annoyed we usually ignore or avoid the things that are annoying us. Meaning that less and less people are even looking at the ad results, they are jumping straight to the organic results!

It is far more beneficial and cost effective to focus on fighting for those top 12 or top 10 organic search results. This is where at lest 88% of your web traffic is going to come from!

How do you fight for the Organic search results and win?

There are really only a couple things that you need to do. And you can do them yourself, or you can hire a web development firm like mine to do it for you. I think that everyone makes a big deal out of things that are relatively simple enough for anyone to do if you take a few minutes to learn about the task you are tying to accomplish.

– First, you want to make sure that your blog is properly optimized for search engines.
Now a little secret that I am not sure many people mention, is that, blogging platforms like Wordpress are designed to be search engine friendly (this is the self hosted software you can download). They are designed to make your blog findable by the search engines. When you use a hosted blogging platform like wordpress.com or blogger.com, these sites are optimized by professionals at Wordpress and Google because they want a bunch of traffic coming to the millions of blogs that people have hosted on their site. They advertise on these blogs and in other areas of their main sites. So you are essentially helping them make money by blogging about things that interest you.

With Wordpress, and I can not speak for the other blogging platforms, there are a lot of plugins that make it easy for you to optimize each page and blog post within you site. The two things that I have found which makes it so difficult for people to do this simple task are 1. it is tedious and 2. you don’t know what your doing.

I am not going to go into the how to of SEO in this article, but your can research it in Google and find a tone of advice.

– Second, you want to be sure to write blog post on a regular bases.
A regular bases is daily!! If that is to complected for you then you can back it down to every other day, but never do less then 2 a week! You need to be sure that your articles have catchy titles and that you are using the keywords that someone might use to search for your information. Make sure that the info you write about is interesting to other people and considered valuable.

What does it cost to fight for the organic results?

If you do it your self, only your time. What do you charge for an hour of your time? If you have a firm like mine do it, then you have a couple of options. We can either teach you how to do it, or we can do it for you! I prefer to teach you how, so that you can save the money latter when you are ready to do it again. Good SEO is something that is not just done once, it is done with every blog post, and it is even often done every month to target new keywords or to refocus on more effective keywords.

The training is all determined on your needs, typically we do not do less than 2 sessions with you and each session is $85. The price is adjusted with the more sessions you do, but two is usually enough to get you the basics you need to effectively start optimizing your blog.

If you want us to do it for you, for blogs we typically charge $275 a month. If you just want us to do it for you one time, then the prices is the same.

Cost of Pay Per Click

If you are inexperienced it could cost you thousands. If you are paying another company to run your pay per click (ppc) ads for you, then it will likely cost you $250 a month at the very lest, and I have seen it go as high as $1200 a month.

One of the things that I really like about blogging as apposed to ppc is the personalization of it. People are going to go from a Google search directly to your blog post. Most ppc ads (when done correctly) are redirected to a landing page that is designed to sell you something. Most of the time when people are looking for info on the web they do not want to be taken to a sales page, they want to find the answer to their question!!

This article is unlike most in the sense that any time we talk about Blog Marketing here at blogging for business 101 we will not be talking about ways to market your blog, but rather how your blog works as a marketing tool for your business or brand.
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Are you constantly banging your head in frustration on not receiving all the internet traffic you would like to get to your web site? Are you tormented from information overload listening to all the latest free website traffic tactics and not being able to understand any of it? Are you dejected of people trying day and night to harassing you to max out your credit card and get loans for Google clicks, and in the process loose your credit score? Are you stupefied by the way your website just dropped out of the Google search results? Or are you just too broke and all you have to rely on is getting some free website traffic tactics?
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Fantastic Tactics:

Advanced website traffic tactics might sound daunting, but if you make it low cost then you have nothing but a win-win situation. Employ low cost advanced website traffic tactics and you’re in for a huge online success.

What are these low cost advanced website traffic tactics anyway? Surprise yourself by finding out that some of these tactics you can practice without having to spend a cent!
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