Posts Tagged ‘improve search engine ranking’

In the online world, there are tons of different ways that you can go about promoting your own business. It’s very important that you understand Internet marketing, or your online business will never make it. That is because people have to know that you are selling something before they can buy from you. There are tons of different online stores out there that are more than likely selling the same thing that you are selling. So what is the one thing that is going to make them choose your store over a different store? That is how well you market your online business. You have to get the name of your business out there, and you have to get it out there as much as you can. The more you can do that, the better chance you have of running a successful business.

The first and best way to get your name out there is to get it notice by Search Engine sites like Yahoo! or Google. These are sites that even have programs where you can add your business to different websites that are related to your product. This is called Google AdWords. They will help you place online ads all over the Internet. This is a great way to start out when trying to get your business noticed. Although this is a great way to start out, it’s not going to be the only thing that you need to do. After you get your online business noticed, you need to find other ways to market it. One great way is to visit online forums and have your business name and link in your posts. This can be easy to do by attaching it to the bottom of every post. However, for this to work, whatever site you join has to be related to what you are selling.

The next thing you need to do is look around at a whole bunch of social marketing sites. These are some of the biggest sites on the Internet to date. Some of these sites include places like MySpace, Yuwie, and of course myLot. These are places where you are going to want to place ads if you can. Talk to these sites about how you would go about getting ads placed on their site. Millions of people use these sites every day, and because of that, they are the prime area to place an ad. You will notice that your site’s hit counter is going to go through the roof after placing ads at these places.

Last, but not least, you need to keep up with what the stats are doing on your webpage. Make sure that you are getting quality leads to your site. This can be done by checking around and getting stat counters for your webpage. When you are talking about stat counters, you are talking about more than just Hit counters. Those are helpful, but you are going to need counters that are going to see how many people are coming to your site, how long they are staying, if they are buying anything, and what links they are clicking on.

So you understand your user documentation project and you’ve specced it out. Now you’re ready to write. Here’s some tips to help you on your way. This article isn’t about the actual writing itself; it’s about the things which go along with the writing. (For information on writing online help, see www.divinewrite.com/helpfulhelp.htm.)

NOTE: This is the final article in a series of three outlining the key elements of a good user documentation process.

Indexing

Index keywords should be defined while the topic is being written. At this time, the subject matter is clear in the author’s mind, and they are very conversant with all of the intricate details. Indexing during the writing stage also means that your keywords are reviewed as part of the draft process.
Some authoring tools don’t really facilitate this kind of approach particularly well (e.g., some don’t allow multiple author access to the files needed for indexing), but at least the keywords should be listed at the end of each draft. (Depending on the authoring tool, this may actually be easier for the reviewers, anyway.) TIP: For further information on indexing, see The Art of Indexing (1994) by Bonura.

User documentation reviews

To ensure that your user documentation is technically correct and readable, you need to get it reviewed by an intelligent selection of people. For a software project, your review list should include a subject matter expert (generally the programmer), the software architect, perhaps the project manager, and another writer. The review requirements will vary with each draft, so your reviewers and review procedures should be documented in your work pracs.

Testing your user documentation

Testing can be performed at a number of levels:

• Each writer should test their own user documentation by following it to use the product. But remember, this kind of testing isn’t very powerful, because there’s a tendency for writers to follow instructions as they think they’ve written them, not as they’ve actually written them.
• The second level is for the testing to be performed by other writers… as part of the peer review.
• The third level is for the testing department to do formal testing on the user documentation. This type of testing doesn’t often happen, but it’s good to try to get it happening.
• The fourth level is/should be conducted as part of Beta testing (see Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.452-453).

No matter what level of testing you use, it should be designed to ensure that the tasks documented are true to the product, and that any online help functions correctly. For the user documentation to pass testing, it needs to satisfy the goals you specified in the earlier stages of the project.

Localising your user documentation

Although localisation is often considered a post-writing activity, it’s best to do it as part of the writing stage. The exact timing may vary project to project, but a good rule of thumb is to get the translators working on the second drafts (but only if you’re not expecting many changes to the draft). TIP: Most translators will probably prefer to work on a sizable piece of user documentation, rather than individual topics sent to them piece-meal, so you should wait ’til you have something of a respectable size to send them – perhaps a whole subject area, as opposed to a single topic.

With localisation, you’re performing a balancing act. If you send the user documentation to the translators too soon, you’ll spend a lot of money on changes to the translations. If you send it too late, it won’t be ready in time for the release of the product.

Managing change

It’s important that you minimise the impact of changes to the product and/or development schedule. To do this, you need to develop a technique which:

1. Identifies the change
2. Estimates the impact in time and/or resources *
3. Informs the project manager

* You can use the same estimating techniques as you used earlier in the project.

Tracking writing progress

It is important to note that the writing stage is not simply about writing. If you track your progress at every step along the way, you’ll be able to see whether you will meet your milestones and deadlines, and you’ll also be able to use this project as a learning experience… to better plan the next one. (You should ensure that all project records are easily accessible for ongoing maintenance and future project reference.)

You should track the time taken to perform every step outlined in this procedure as well as each draft stage, review times, total turnaround times, etc.

Conducting regular team meetings

In order to keep all team members informed of writing progress, you should conduct regular team meetings. These meetings should be a forum for taking a look at your tracking metrics and discussing the estimated percentage complete for the various topics currently under way. If the estimated percentage complete is lower than it should be given the time already spent, then you can act on it. These meetings allow you to identify hitches in the writing progress.

Writing progress reports

Your management also need to be kept informed of the status of the project. You should write periodic progress reports outlining:

• Where the project is at
• What you’ve done over the last month
• What you plan to do over the next month
• Any issues you’ve encountered

Manage Production

The meaning of “production” varies depending on what kind of documentation you’re working on and who the audience is. It can encompass such things as:

• Printing
• Binding
• Product build (when the help is compiled into the product)

Although the production stage generally only requires management, you still need to spend a fair bit of time on proofing and liaising with production people.

Evaluate the Project

The purpose of the evaluation stage is to consider:

• Did the project go according to plan?
• Why? / Why not?
• How individual team members contributed to the overall project.
• How the project manager performed.
• Whether the documentation achieved its goals.

Your tracking metrics will come in handy during this stage; if there were any flaws in the project progress, they should go some way towards identifying them. You might also use the sample evaluation report provided by Hackos in Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.514-518.

Is your documentation successful?

Now that you’ve written and released the documentation, you need to determine whether it has achieved your goals. The only way to accurately do this is to conduct further user research.

TIP: For details on research methods, take a look at Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish (1998), Social Marketing: New Imperative for Public Health by Manoff (1985), Designing Qualitative Research 2nd Edition by Marshall & Rossman (1995), and “Conducting Focus Groups – A Guide for First-Time Users”, in Marketing Intelligence and Planning by Tynan & Drayton (1988).

And that’s it! Remember, this process is an ‘ideal’ process. Take the bits that suit you and your project, and leave the bits that don’t.

Good luck!

Thursday, May 27th – FREE Social Marketing Webinar with @BilleBaty! You can find the invite here http://twtvite.com/socialsmm and signup using the box on the left – the topics include Twitter and social media branding and strategy tips presented by Darren Williger, Bille Baty, Kristen Ruby, and Larry Wentz.

There’s going to be some incredible things discussed so please try to attend.

May 27th at 2:00pm Central SIGNUP NOW with box on left!

Marketing on Social network sites is not an easy feat. It relies on a lot of user interaction, especially with existing contacts. Know the benefits Social sites can do to your business. Understand how social networking can drive targeted traffic to your website today.

Social network sites are the new breed of online social hubs. More and more users turn to social networking sites to find loved ones, reconnect with old friends, or even host a high school reunion. However, social networking sites offer more than just meeting new and old friends, it can also be an avenue to promote your latest book, show online users about your website and updates, or even use the social sites to promote your views and agendas. Social network sites or User-created content sites like blogs, forums, or dating websites are basically places online where users can congregate to share information, give advice, or work on similar interests. Users flock social network sites, making it a good vantage point for web marketers to launch their products.

There are two types of marketing involved over social networking sites. Different types of individuals who promote their products or skills over social networking sites often employ varying tactics to get their message across. Several online marketers employ the use of the comments system on social marketing sites to post information about their products or use social sites to improve search engine placement for their websites. Though some web marketers would go overboard with the promotion and quite literally spam their target audience with useless data just to lure them to clicking a link which will direct them to the website being promoted. Other types of web marketers employ a subtle technique of social engineering to make users trust them and to make them purchase their products or click on a link to their main website. Other marketers would go as far as using black hat search optimization techniques to force web browsers into redirecting to another site. This type of marketing is not allowed on most social communities, and could get you banned on that social site, if caught.

Taking the different strategies piece by piece we identify different patterns on how web marketers coordinate their efforts to capture a wider scope of online users on a social networking site and achieve better search engine placement for their websites. Web marketers who operate viral marketing strategies often use software tools that will allow them to harvest different user profiles or account numbers, which they would use to send or post messages on. Web marketers meticulously gather user details and interest, and seek out vital social community sections like forums and rant pages where their messages can go around with the least possible chance of getting erased by members. Web marketers usually lace their promotional words with entertaining music or videos. But this can still be the tip of the iceberg on the grand scheme of online promotions. Once you give into the advertising, you will see yourself clicking on different links which will make you download or get redirected to another website which can force you to download a certain application or Trojan which they can then use to either force your browser to redirect to other web pages when you are browsing or quite literally force your computer to accept different ads from their website.

Social engineering on the other hand employs more interaction between the marketer and the end users. Web marketers who employ social engineering often use chatrooms or utilize the email system of social network sites to send messages to users. VoIP or Internet telephoning can also be used to improve marketer and user interaction. This type of online marketing may take awhile to be realized, but is often more successful in landing repeat customers, if done right.

History the practice of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself. A market was in the beginning simply a sourcilleux place where people with a supply articles or capacity to ensure a service could meet those which could wish the articles or the services, perhaps at a time arranged as a preliminary. Such meetings incarnated many aspects of the methods of today of sale, although sometimes in a manner without ceremony. The salesmen and the purchasers sought to include/understand the needs, of the capacities, and the psychology of each one, all with the goal to obtain the exchange of the articles or the services to take place.

The Stock Market of today of New York had its humble beginnings like market in the open air located at Wall Street in New York City. The rise in agriculture undoubtedly influenced markets like first means “of series production” of an article, namely foodstuff. While agriculture made it possible one to cultivate more food which could be eaten by the farmer, and the majority alone of food are perishable, there was probable motivation to seek others which could employ excessive food, before it was corrupted, in exchange of other articles.

As a Theodore 1960 Levitt wrote an article of newspaper called Marketing Myopia. It is said that this begins really the mania of sale. In him it discussed that the large-scale industries then badly interpreted of which industry they formed part. It declared that until you entirely included/understood industry that you belonged to you were likely to fail. For example the industry of rail was not in the businesses of the rail-bound transport but in the industry of transport in general they always competed with the tastes of the cars and public transport. Levitt would be one of the founders of the discipline of sale, and contributed to the manufacture of the framework 4Ps that the compromise sale is based around. The sale of report/ratio is a form of marketing which evolved/moved of the marketing direct of response in the Sixties and emerged in the Eighties, lesoù the accent is put on longer-term reports/ratios of building with customers rather than on various transactions. It implies arrangement the needs for customer while they pass by their cycles of life.

It underlines to provide a line of goods or customer services existing while they need them. Phillip Kotler presented the social marketing 1971 which is an enlightened concept which supports that a company should make good decisions of sale by considering the consumers wants, the requirements of the company and the interests of long duration of the company. These efforts are now known as a responsibility.