Link Building Strategies

Many website owners feel that getting links is very difficult or that their website is not good enough to get backlinks. Link Building can be a time consuming process, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.  Here are some of the Link Building Hints and Tips that were raised at the recent Brisbane SEO Meetup :

1. Make sure that your website is link worthy

One of the fundamental strategies  for getting backlinks (and probably the easiest way to ensure natural, relevant and quality link building) is to ensure that there is actually something on your wbesitye that is worth linking to.

If you stumbled across your site, would you link to it ? If not, why would anyone else bother?  Here are some questions that you should consider to help you determine what type of ciontent could lead to oitheres wanting to link to you :

• What types of sites do you link to?
• What types of things are relevant/interesting/linkworthy for your niche?
• What makes your company unique? (How are you different to your competitors?)
• Do you offer giveaways or competitions?
• Are there any news or stories about the people in your company?

Create pages/posts on your website that deal with the type f content that others will find useful content and they are more inclined to link if you ask – you also might be pleasnetly surprised at how many links you start to get without even asking for them.

2. Directory Listings

One of the quickest and easiest ways to start a link building campaign is to add links to some of the many online business directories.  Theer are many many dirtectories out there, some are general, others might be specific to your niche, some are free and others require a listing fee.  You should be very careful about where you list.  Some free directories are actually quite good, many paid directories can be a waste of money.  Spend some time reviewing the types of sites listed – and also check to see whether your competitors are listed.  when you do searches in your niche you may start to notice particular directories that are showing up consistently – you should consider listing with these.

Some of the Australian Directories worth considering are TrueLocal, HotFrog and AussieWeb.

Some of the paid directorties which have historically been worth opaying for listings are Yahoo Directory, Best of the Web, Joe Ant.

Remember, directory listings may be a good start, but because theye are relatively easy to do, it is likely that many of your competitorsa are also using this – so if you want to sta6y ahead of the pack, you will need to do more than they do.

3. Forum/Blog Comments

Where does your target market go online? Which websites, forums and networks are used by your customers? These websites and forums are the types of sites from which you should try to get backlinks.Adding comments to relevant forums has also long been considered a useful backlinking strategy.  The technique is to find a forum (or blog post) that is relevant to your niche, and leave a comment – along with a link back to your site (whether as a suggested source of further information, or as part of your “signature”).

It is importanat that when you plan to comment on a forum, that you actually add value.  Participate in the forum, get a feel for the conversion, and try to ensure that your comment is informative, helpful or useful.  A comment such as “Come to my website – xyz.com” is likely to be considered as span and could give you (and ytour sitre) a bad reputation amiongst fiorm members, whereas a seroies of helpful, useful and relevat comments and interactions over a period, with a few subtle references to your site is likley to be more successful.

There has been loads of debate over how the “nofollow” attribute may affect your backlinks from forums, but whether or not this has a direct impact, the value of these tyopes of links is considered to be not as useful as it once was.  But there are plenty of other reasons why participating in forums can be of benefit.  Forums where your potential customers hang out are a great place to find out what people are talking about in your niche.  What are their problems? What do they need? What are they saying (if anything) about your business?  Visitors to these forums might also directky follow a link back to your site and become a customer.

It is possble to use “clever” search queries to identify relevant forms to your niche.  Queries in Google (or other search engines)  based on the following can make it easier for you to find places to leave comments :

“your niche keyword” +forum site:.com.au
“keyword” +comment site:.edu.au
“keyword” +”post a comment” site:.gov.au

4. Product reviews

Consider sending out a free product (or offer a free trial of a service) to influential bloggers/users in your niche in return for writing a review on their site.

5.  Offer a Competition

What are a bunch of links worth to you??? Consider buying something “cool” in your niche (or use an unwanted gift) and offer it as a prize in a competition.  Notify relevant websites/bloggers and encourage them to link to the competition.

6. Review your business memberships

Are you a member in a business association? Have your company or your products received any awards? Is there a local Chamber of Commerce? What are the governing bodies for your industry? Check if these websites link to your site and try to find new business associations that might be related to your business.  This can be particularly useful for getting Locality targeted links.

7.  Indirect Competitors

A link from a closely related, relevant website is better than one from a site which has little or nothing to do with your niche.  You probably wouldn’t get a link from a direct competitor, but if your product/service is only avaialble in a certain geographic area, it could be mutually beneficial (and sensible) to exchange links with a similar business in anotjer location.  For exampler,  A Brisbane based BMW dealer, is unlikley to see a Perth BMR dealer as a competitor, but linikinbg to each others websites might be a good idea.

8. Leverage your offline relationships

Offline relationship that you have with other businesses, people and publications can often be turned into online relationships that include links to your website.

9.Write testimonials

If you like the product or service of a company, send them a testimonial. Your testimonial may be listed on the company website along with a link to your site.

10.Sponsorships and social activities

Does your company sponsor any local activities? Do you support relief organisations? If you do, you can get direct links from the organiser of the activity and you can create linkworthy content on your website by writing about your activities.

11. Review your existing backlinks

Analysing the websites that already link to your website (and where they link to) can help you to get an idea of the linkworthy content on your website. You will also learn why other websites link to your site.

12. Review your competitors backlinks

Analyse your competitors backlinks to see which websites link to them – some (but probably not all) of these sites may be suitable backlinks for you.  See what type of content their backlinks go to – and consider creating similar content of your own.

13. Write And Submit A Press Release

If you or your business has done something newsworthy (and linkworthy) then tell the world about it. Write a short Press release about it (including a link back to your site) and submit it via a submission service like PR Web and send it to your local media outlets.

14. Track Who’s Republishing Your Content And Offer Them Unique Articles

Publish articles in various popular article directories (e.g. ezinearticles.com). A few weeks later, Google the exact title of the article and your name to see what sites have picked up the article. Then contact the owner of each website that has published the article and offer them additional unique articles (which of course link back to your site).

15. Offer to be a Guest Blogger

Find an authority site or blog that is related to your niche, contact the owner and offer to write a unique post or article for them. This is a great way to raise your profile and give you credibilty within your niche, and if the post is good, you may be invited to write more.  Include a bio with the post (with a link back to your site of course).

“ Filename” has failed to upload due to an error
This file exceeds the maximum upload size for this site.

This error typically occurs when the hosting environment imposes a memory or file size limit. The error indicates that there is a restriction on the amount of memory the system can allocate to perform a file upload, and there is not currently enough memory available.

Usually this issue can be resolved as follows

Create a php.ini file

Create (using notepad) a file called php.ini with the following contents (or edit the existing file if one already exists) and upload it to the wp-admin directory :

;; set memory limit for cache.php
memory_limit = 64M
upload_max_filesize = 5M
post_max_size = 5M

And that’s it. Save, upload, test and check for additional errors.

What if it doesn’t work !!!

Your host may not allow the Memory Limit increase, or they may have a setting which overwrites (or limits) the changes you made. If nothing seems to work, contact your host provider and find out if they allow you to increase that limit and which method ought to be used.

“filename” has failed to upload due to an error The uploaded file could not be moved to DirectoryStructure

This problem prevents you from uploading media to you blog posts

Cause

As far as I can tell the problem has occurred after the WordPress  site has been migrated to a new host – and the old upload directory location has not been correctly updated.

Solution

Fortunately the solution is pretty simple :

• From WP Administration, go to Settings > Media
• Check the “Uploading Files” section and change the “Store uploads in this folder” field to the default setting – wp-content/uploads – and “Save the Changes“
• Try another upload,
  • if it still does not work, change the permissions on the uploads directory to 766 or 777

I regularly get enquiries from my clients who have received a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” email or even a letter in the post from some official sounding business (such as “Domain Renewal Group” or plenty of others).  However, I suspect that many of them just receive n invoice, assume it is legitimate and go ahead an pay it. This initiates a transfer of the domain to a new registrar, and means that future renewals will continue to be at the inflated price (unless of course they get another domain renewal scam letter in the interim)

Unfortunately, it is usually the small business owners who normally get burnt by these schemes.  They know that they have a domain name, and that it needs to be renewed every now and again, but get confused by the technical details, assume it is OK, and go ahead an pay.

One of the problems is that these renewal scams are in many cases not illegal, but they are certainly unethical. They prey on the naivety of website owners who assume that the notifications and invoices they receive are legitimate.

How do Domain Renewal Scams work?

Domain name renewal scams are setup to work in a number of ways.

• You might be sent an invoice for a domain name that is very similar to your current domain name – the scammer hopes that you don’t notice the difference and just pay the invoice.
• You might receive notification that someone is trying to register your domain with a different top level domain or country domain and they are trying to help you “protect your intellectual property” by offering you first option.
• Alternatively, you could be sent a letter that looks like a renewal notice for your actual domain name, but is from a different company to the one which your domain is actually registered.

Check your Domain

The job for domain renewal scammers is pretty easy, because in most cases information about who owns domains (including contact details) is publicly available, although, there is often an option for you to make this information private as a part of the registration process – for an additional fee.

You (and anyone else, including domain scammers) can check the details of your own domain by using a WHOIS service such as www.domaintools.com.   Simply enter your domain name, and click submit to see what information is publicly available.  Different types of information are available depending on the type of domain name you have, but the main things that you should be aware of is :

• who your registrar is (this is the organisation that your domain is registered with) and
• when is the domain due to expire.

How to avoid Domain Scams?

To ensure that you don’t get ripped of by scammers – either by paying too much for the renewal of your own domain, or tricked into buying a new domain that you may not need, you should:

• Be aware of Domain Prices – make sure that you have at least some idea of what you should expect to be paying for your domain name.  Take a look at WebConsulting’s domain name prices for an idea of costs for registering most common domains names
• Be suspicious of ANY unsolicited bills – be sceptical of any emails, letters  or invoices you receive that you weren’t expecting or that are from organisations that you don;t recognise
• Know your domain details – follow the “Check your Domain” instructions above and make sure you know who your domain is registered with, and when it is due for renewal
• Is your domain renewal due soon? – scam domain notification renewals will often be sent out several months before the renewal id actually due, whereas legitimate ones tend to be sent out with month or less notice.
• Carefully read the Invoice – make  sure to check that the domain name listed in the invoice is the same as your actual domain name. If it is the same, also check to make sure that the invoice is from the company that you have previously used to register your domain name.

Domain renewals and transfers

Whenever you receive a renewal notification – whether it is legitimate or otherwise, take a little time to check out current domain registration costs.  These prices tend to have reduced over the years and can vary significantly even for legitimate domain registration providers.  For example MelbourneIT (One of Australias original and for a long time largest, domain registration services) currently charges $75.60 for a single years .com registration and $140 for renewing a .com.au domain name for 2 years, whereas Webconsulting’s domain registration service currently charges just $12 a year for a .com and $28 for two years for .com.,au domains – a MUCH cheaper option for exactly the same service.

Transferring a domain name to another registrar is a pretty straightforward process, but do not leave it to the last minute, as in my experience there can sometimes be problems if a transfer is initiated within 1 week of it’s renewal date.  If you think you are paying too much for your domains, and are looking at a making some significant savings on your domain registration costs, check out WebConsulting’s domain name prices , and why not transfer your domain today.

In determining rankings, all search engines also take into account the “value” that the rest of the web places on a particular website or page. One of the best ways for search engines to determine this “value“, is the way that websites link to each other. How often related websites mention a particular site and, most importantly, how they link to it, is a pretty accurate way for a search engine to determine which pages are going to be useful to searchers.

Link Building Tips

Establishing inbound links to your pages is crucial, and Link Building, should be a fundamental strategy in any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign. But exactly how do you go about generating links to your site? Traditionally building up this “link juice” can be a hard and tiresome process, but I’ve outlined below some tips for beginners on How to Get Links:

1. Link Farms? – Not any more

First up – something that you should NOT be doing… Once upon a time – not so very long ago, a technique – called link farming – involving the creation of lots of (usually junk) sites, with plenty of cross linking  was a reasonably effective way to build rankings. However, the search engines quickly realised that most of these sites were of little or no benefit to users, so they adjusted their algorithms to give priority to relevant and authoritative websites. The quantity of links to your website is not as important as the quality.

Don’t waste your time or money creating (or even worse – paying for) hundreds of questionable links hoping it will help your rankings – it won’t. At best, search engines will ignore these types of links; at worst they may tarnish the credibility of your site, and result in penalties being applied.

2. Content is Key

An obvious, but often overlooked, fact is that “if you want someone to link to your site, you have to give them something worth linking to“. If you ask someone to link to you – why would they bother unless there was something on your site that interested them or would be of interest to their users. The perfect way to encourage inbound links is simply to fill your pages with useful, informative, interesting, entertaining, or relevant content.

3. Blog about it

One great way to add content to your site is to set up a blog. Search engines LOVE Blogs as they typically contain topical, dynamic content. Blog posts are generally crawled and indexed by search engines very quickly, and can be often found in the search results within minutes of being posted. If your posts are interesting, topical, controversial, humorous, or informative people will naturally link to them, and by adding their own comments, will automatically generate extra, relevant content to your site.

4. Going Viral

Sometimes, you may hit a nerve, or strike a chord with the online community by publishing a post that becomes very popular and “goes viral“. These types of posts, for a variety of reasons, get attention and tend to have a snowball effect, as more and more people become aware of them, and feel compelled to spread the word. Articles of this type are known as ‘link bait’, because people naturally want to link to them, and can very quickly generates hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. It is worth striving for a viral post, but it is extremely difficult to do. You also need to consider the impact on your credibility – a shocking or controversial post, might generate amazing link juice, but keep in mind what long term impact it might it have on you or your sites reputation.

5. Be Social

Be active in the Blogs/Forums/Social Media sites that are relevant to your industry. Don’t just read about it, participate, and make an effort to actively comment on topics and issues that you are knowledgeable about. Develop a “presence” and over time you can subtly include references and possibly links to your site. Do NOT push this too hard – no one likes a pushy salesman.

6. Network

One very important way to develop inbound links to your web pages is to capitalise on your contacts in the industry. In your day to day dealings with suppliers, customers, industry associations, and even competitors, keep the possibility of a backlink in mind – and don’t be shy to ask. The best backlinks are those that come from relevant sites – and could there be anything more relevant than other sites within your industry?

7. Anchors Away

Not only are the quality and quantity of backlinks important – but the way the links are applied also plays a part. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in the link, and although you may not always have control over what anchor text is used – wherever possible try to use primary keywords rather than generic text. A link to your site with the anchor text “click here” is likely to be of much less value than “buy keyword now“.

8. Deep Link

Wherever possible mix up the links to your site. Although the majority of backlinks will often go to a websites home page, a natural link profile will also include links to other pages within a site. Try to establish targeted backlinks, with more specific anchor text, to pages deep within the structure of your site.

There are literally hundreds of ways you can generate backlinks to your website, this post has outlined some of the fundamentals, and provides some quick and easy tips about how you can develop links to your website, with the aim of raising your online profile and improving your rankings. If you’d like further assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting SEO.

As you are probably aware, Link Building is a very important part of optimising your site. Having quality backlinks from authoritative third party websites is almost as important as having good quality unique content on your own site.

There are plenty of business directories around where you can get free listings, but most of these are of limited “link value”.  There are also plenty of paid directories, although many of these are a complete waste of money.  However, there are a relatively small number of paid directories which are well recognised as authority directories, and are known to pass on valuable “link juice” and will help with your rankings.

For larger businesses, getting listings on these important directories is a standard part of their marketing strategy, but for small business, with limited budgets, the cost can be an issue.  Many of the best paid directories are based in the United States – with listings being charged in US$, so right now with the high AU$, these listings are more affordable than they ever have been.

Hint : You can identify other potentially useful directories to list in by examining the backlinks of you main online competitors (the sites that are already achieving top 10 rankings for your primary keywords) and looking for patterns.

Don’t  be concerned that  these directories are US based, and your clients are in Australia – you are not listing on these directories for the direct traffic they generate (although you may be surprised how much you get), you are listing because of the “link love” that they will pass onto you.  Listings in quality directories can have a direct impact on your organic rankings – and are also likely to improve your Google Places Page rankings in the “7 pack”.

Best Paid Directories

I have listed below some of the best paid directories currently available.  Each of these directories works on a “review” fee rather than a “listing” fee basis and offer no guarantee that your site will be listed.  However, as long as you follow their guidelines you should not have any problems with having your site listed.

Best of the Web – US$149.95

BOTW  provides  listings for an annual recurring review fee of US$149,95 (this can be cancelled whenever you wish).

Currently (during October 2010) BOTW are offering a 20% discount on this – Just US$119.96 if you use the promo code “save20“.

If you are interested in receiving additional exposure and want to customise your advertising message, you can get a Free 30 day trial of sponsoring a category on BOTW at   (hint: this can be cancelled at any time).

Yahoo Directory – US$299

Yahoo Directory is probably one of the most important directories.  Your single listing will appear in more than a dozen international directories.  You need to register your listig via Yahoo Express on the US site

Business.com – US$299 per year

You can find out more and Register Here (and get $50 Off)

Joe Ant – US$39.99

Directory World – US$24.95

Hint: many directories require you to specify which category you think is the most appropriate for your listing – and you may need to submit your site from the category that you think is best.  Spend some time looking through the directory – there are often several categories where your site could belong.  Take a note of where your competitors are listed.

Submitting your listing should be reasonable straightforward, but be careful about how you describe your business, what keywords you target, and what category you choose.  If you’d like some assistance, please feel free to contact us at WebConsulting for advice.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of XX bytes exhausted (tried to allocate XX bytes) in /directory/filename.php on line XX

This error may occur for various elements on the dashboard, or when trying to upgrade WordPress.

The error indicates that there is a restriction on the amount of memory the system can allocate to perform a particular task, and there is not currently enough memory available.  The problem sometimes starts to show up after a new plugin has been installed.

To resolve this issue you need to try and either reduce the memory requirements of your WP implementation, or increase the available memory.

Decrease WordPress memory requirements

If the error only shows up when trying to upgrade WP, you may be able to temporarily deactivate all plugins, undertake the upgrade, and then reactivate them.  However, if the error is impacting on the functionality of your installation, then try and deactivate any unnecessary plugins.

If this works, and the error is resolved, be aware, that the problems may very well recur if you install more plugins.

Increase System Memory

Depending on your hosting environment, you may be able to allocate additional memory via the following steps.  However, there will be a limit on how much memory is available to you, so there is a chance that these “fixes” will have no impact.  If this is the case, you should contact your host provider and see if they are able to allocate more memory for you (this may involve upgrading your hosting, and / or paying extra)

To try and increase memory allocation, use the following following processes :

(note their are various methods to do this – depending on what version of WordPress you are running, so some of these suggested methods may not apply to you)

1.  php.ini

Create or edit a local php.ini file in the wp-admin directory (and also, possibly the directory where the error is occuring and insert the following:

;; set memory limit for cache.php
memory_limit = 64M

2. Cache.php

open the file wp-includes/cache.php and place the following code immediately after the opening <?php  tag:

ini_set(‘memory_limit’,’64M’); // set memory to prevent fatal errors

3. .htaccess

Create a .htaccess file in the wp-includes directory and insert the following directive:

# set memory limit for cache.php
php_value memory_limit 64M

4.  wp-settings.php

open the file wp-settings.php (in the root  directory) and increase the  :

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

entry. Save the file and refresh.

5.  default-constants.php

open the file wp-includes/default-constants.php and increase the  :

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

entry  (note there may be different setting for Multisite configurations)

Save the file and refresh.

6.  wp-config.php

In your WP installation root folder, find the file named: wp-config.php

Open the file to be edited in your favorite editor

after the lines :

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define(‘DB_CHARSET’, ‘utf8′);

/** The Database Collate type. Don’t change this if in doubt. */
define(‘DB_COLLATE’, ”);

Add this code to your wp-config.php file

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

Save the file and refresh your wordpress page and it should not give the error again.

And that’s it. Save, upload, test and check for additional errors. If necessary, you may wish to try alternate values for the memory limit (e.g. 32, 64, 128, 256) – although be aware that there will be a physical limit imposed by your hosting environment, so any values greater than that will have no benefit.

What if Nothing works !!!

Your host may not allow the Memory Limit  increase, or they may have a setting which overwrites (or limits) the changes you made. If nothing seems to work, contact your host provider and find out if they allow you to increase that limit and which method ought to be used.

I am actually a professional Search Engine Optimiser, and my website is all about Search Engine Optimisation, so you might think that I should be a little miffed, or at least a bit concerned, that perhaps my own site might be under performing.  Is this a classic case of “The plumber with the leaky taps” or is there more to these emails than meets the eye.

• Most of these emails tell me that my site is rubbish, has no hope of appearing in search results, and will be outranked by all of my competitors – Oh dear….
• Many of these emails actually contain some SEO related terms and jargon which sort of makes sense
• Some of these emails even offer some useful (if general) information about optimising my site
• Only a very few of these emails actually mention my site
• Many of these emails contain poor English or bad grammar
• Most of these emails seem to originate from another Country (often India)

Should the warning bells be starting to ring ? Do these emails inspire confidence that the person who is offering to improve my site actually knows what they are doing?  Did they really spend any time looking at my site, and how do they know what my business is, or what keywords I want to rank for anyway?

Email Marketing Spam

Of course, most of these emails are just another example of email marketing spam.  Someone (who may or may not be capable of optimising a website) has got hold of my email address – by scraping my site, buying a list, or some other weird or wonderful means – and decided to send me an email on the off chance that I would be willing to pay them to optimise my website.  I guess that some people might actually respond to these emails, and they might even convince a few to pay them something.  But if they were any good at what they were doing, why would they need to resort to this type of marketing strategy?

I just don’t know where these people get the time or energy for these types of email marketing campaigns.  I tend to be busy doing SEO and spend very little time or money on marketing. I seem to get most of my work as a result of referrals from happy customers.  If these SEO email spammers put some of their energy into actually learning about SEO, they may find that they get some happy customers of their own to help spread the word.

Here are some things to look out for that should ring warning bells for you :

• unsolicited offers to optimise your site
• general content that doesn’t specifically mention your name, website or any keywords associated with your business
• sender is using a gmail or hotmal email address (if they are a legitimate business why not use a legitimate email address)
• originates from overseas (often India) – don’t get me wrong, there are some very good SEO firms in India, but the good ones do not have to resort to these spammy tactics

What You Should Do

If I were you, I would be very dubious about responding to any email of this type, but if the email looks legitimate, you could dig a bit deeper by taking a look at their website or Googling their name.

Of course, if you are serious about improving your rankings, increasing your traffic, or optimising your conversion rates, you could always contact me.  No matter what your website is – or how well it has already been optimised, there is always something that could be done to further optimise it.  I’ve never seen a site (even my own) that could not be improved.

Useful Content

Make sure the information you are using is interesting, useful, practical and most of all relevant. When building your site be sure to consider your objectives and goals and then implement them into your site. Be sure to include links, articles, newsletters and promotions within your site as well. There is nothing quite as sad and annoying than a web site that has been neglected, be sure to go back frequently and update you site often. This will makes sure that your visitors will come back because they know you are offering up-to-date information.

Simple to Navigate

Make your site easy to navigate. If you really want your site to be easy to navigate then you should group all of your site links together in one place. The directs the attention of your visitors to one area of the page from which they have easy access to the rest of the site. You can place other links such as: media, career opportunities, contact us and about us at the top or the bottom of the page. These links are important in their own right but they are definitely not what your visitors came to see. When you have created the links and all the new pages for your site, be sure to include a home link on each of the new pages. These links will help you to guide your visitors back to the main page whilst removing the need for them to clink back several times to get there. Navigation is crucial so you should spend some time checking and rechecking all of your page and homes links.

Fast Load Time

Don’t let your visitors get bogged down in loading times. You should try to avoid large graphics that will increase the amount of time it will take your site to load. You should try and keep in mind the idea that not all of your viewers will be packing the best technology available. Try to keep your site as open as possible to as many people as possible so that everyone has access to it no matter what kind of equipment they are using.

Targeted

You should always know who are the people you are aiming the site toward. These people are your target audience, they are the people you want to visit your site. You need to identify what the age group, gender, class and spending habits of your target audience are. This will help you to create a likeable atmosphere on the your site. You want to create a space for the few not the many.

Ask for Feedback

Aim to have your visitors tell you what they think and what they want. If you are looking for consumer to business contact then on your contact us page you should put your phone, email, fax and postal information here as well as a text box of instant feedback. This gives you the opportunity to hear from your visitors in way that benefits both you and customer. Make sure you never leave your customers hanging and always answer their comments, concerns and questions. If you are looking for ways to keep in contact with your customers then you might want to think about a simple newsletter or email marketing to keep your customers informed about what is going on even if they don’t visit all that often.

Use the information contained in this article not only to improve your own but to evaluate other websites. These tips will not only help you to make your web site strong and professional it will also help you to identify those web sites that aren’t.

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When someone contacts you, make sure you answer as soon as possible. Do your best to answer any messages within a 24 hour period. Responses should be personal messages written by you. Sending out messages generated by an automated system are not really responses at all. Responding quickly to any questions, remarks or complaints shows people that you are a real person who cares about them. If you had a retail store, would you leave customers standing there while you did something else? It’s not likely! You need to consider the latest trends in web marketing like what is seen on this Halloween Super Affiliate bonus web site

Run a giveaway for past customers. People will take the incentive to contact you. This doesn’t mean you have to give every customer something for free. Make it into a contest. If they win, people get really excited. You could opt to pick a random name from those who reply to your email. Then, you could offer that person a free service or item. You could use the question to get business feedback, or you could simply ask a trivia question. Regardless of the type of question you ask, be prepared to receive lots of responses. You could even find some correspondence from someone who isn’t even on your list.

Offer your clients and customers information for free every once in a while. Make sure you communicate with the people on your list by sending out more than sales promos, it is helpful to send out newsletters or other items. You’ll risk the chance of having your emails deleted before they are even opened if you become known as someone who’s only after the sale. But if you provide them with useful information, they will be more apt to read the emails you are sending. You will become even more popular if you send out an e-mail that highlights projects other people are working on. In addition to appreciating you for the free information they love to receive, your customers will view you as someone who isn’t just interested in making money but who cares about the market you are serving. Keeping up with all the latest online trends is not hard just take a look at this Halloween Super Affiliate internet site

Good customer service does not have to be hard. In fact, good customer service should only take up a little bit of your time-if you do it correctly. As a matter of fact, if you will only take ten or fifteen minutes of each day to ensure that your customers are satisfied, you can become successful. Especially when those few additional minutes each day could mean hundreds or thousands of dollars in sales for your business. Now that you know how little it takes to make your customers happy, shouldn’t you try it out? It can only help you!

Niche Marketing