While most of us are aware that “the money is in the list,” we also know that it can be very difficult to get that list in the first place. Struggling to get that first dozen or so sign ups is one frustration many small business owners encounter, but one which is even more common is the dreaded sign up plateau.

This refers to the time in your campaign when you’ve been stuck at the same number of opt-ins for weeks at a time. Whether you are just starting your newsletter campaign or you’re seasoned pro looking to boost results, here are 3 ways to double your mailing list quickly.

Ask people to sign up.

Ok, so it might seem a bit ridiculous to call this a “tip”, but you may be surprised how many people out there are simply not asking others to sign up for their newsletters. If they are asking, then it is possible they just aren’t asking the right way!

For example, many site owners create opt-in forms that blend in with their site so well that no one even notices them. As a general rule, try using the secondary color in your site’s palette as the background color for your sign up box. Let’s say your site uses three colors: teal, forest green, and sky blue. The background is forest green, and most of the objects are teal. Only a few lines or text here and there is sky blue, so it would be your secondary or accent color. When you create your opt-in box, make the background sky blue and most of the text could be that forest green color. It will stand out while still tying in with your site’s palette.

Another tip that many overlook is the “Sign Up” button on the form. With many auto responder programs, this button is automatically set to say “Sign Up,” but some of us change that to something we think is more witty. Things like “Gimme” or “Let’s Go” and the like are commonly used in place of the traditional text. Studies have shown, however, that given many other options, visitors are up to 28% more likely to click on a button that either says “click here” or “sign up.” Why fix what isn’t broken?

Create a custom Facebook welcome page.

You do know that you should have a Facebook page for your site, right? If not, that should be your first step – go get one set up and then come back to read this.

Traditionally, new visitors to a Facebook page are greeted with that page’s news feed. This is all fine, but what if you could make your page stand out by creating a full-page opt-in or advertisement for your website? Good news! You can do exactly that with a simple Involver Application. Involver allows anyone to use up to two of their applications for free on any page, and one of them just happens to create custom Facebook tabs which can then be set as your “home” page.

If you don’t want to use an Involver application on your page, you will need to code the page yourself using iFrames or have someone else do it for you. If you happen to be lucky enough to already have FBML on your Facebook, then that is still a viable option as well! With so many ways of doing it, there is really no reason not to get one set up for yourself today.

Create a “tips or questions” opt-in

The common opt-in form asks for a name and email. Sometimes there is a variation to this with a business name or occupation field, but for the most part, opt-in forms are pretty short and boring. This is great when they are going to be sitting on the sidelines of a website, but why not try creating one with a life and purpose all its own?

Try creating an opt-in that asks for something extra, like a suggestion for the site or an upcoming event, or any burning questions your visitors might have for you. You can even take it a step further by stating on the squeeze page that each entry qualifies that person for a drawing to win something. This will quickly raise the number of subscriptions to your list, as well as create the image of a site owner who talks with his or her visitors rather than just at them.

With most auto responders, you are able to create multiple opt-in forms which link to the same newsletter or list, so this large opt-in won’t require a whole separate list or additional headache.

Implementing these three strategies won’t take you more than one day. After that, it is time to track and test or simply watch those subscription numbers rise!

Its been a couple weeks since I gave a hard core SEO tip, so guess its time for a good one.

I want to show you an simple way to remedy a typical issue that leads lots of websites to not get the rankings that they could…that they really deserve.

The issue is that most web desingers have never even heard of something called “First Link Priority”. What sucks is that websites (in particular those with lots of pages) are hurting because they fail to address first link priority correctly.

But…it is VERY, VERY easy to repair on your current site(s) and to totally avoid going forward.

According to Leslie Rohde:

“The First Link Priority rule states that when a page links more than once to the same target page, Google will completely ignore all links after the first, often with negative SEO consequences.”

The problem is that most websites have their logo linking to their home page as the first link…or have the word “Home” as the first link. Then they try to link to their home page throughout the site with a rich anchor text link back to their home page.

But Google only sees the graphical link…which contains no anchor text. The subsequnet anchor text links are of no value at all. You’re missing out on a HUGE opportunity by wasting this first link without using anchor text (which is a valuable source of optimization).

This is important because the links you get from around the Internet are much, much harder to control. Usually you don’t get two links on a page other that your own site, so First Link Priority isn’t an issue.

But, almost all websites link to themselves at least twice, so almost 100% of the time, First Link Priority problems are happening within your own website.

This is actually a good thing, because internal linking is VERY easy to control.

How powerful can this be?

Say you have a 1000 page blog where every page on the site links to home using a logo at the top left. That’s 1000 links that have wasted a potential bump from using anchor text.

How can you fix it?

Use this method..or pass along to your web designer (courtesy of NobleSamurai.com):

Using CSS you can have a simple anchor with desired text and replace the text with an image.

HTML Required

<a href=”http://www.google.com” class=”logo”>Your link text</a>

CSS Required

.logo{
display:block;
text-indent:-1000em;
background: url(images/noble-samurai-logo.png) no-repeat 0 0;
width:90px;
height:90px;
}

Lead generation has always been considered a critical part of our marketing . Lead nurturing refers to we build relationships with our prospective customers, as opposed to just blasting sales messages over and over. Strategies have evolved with the continuing advances in technology.

Online marketing has become increasingly intrusive over the last few years. Technology improvements should have led to a more highly targeted strategy; however, consumers seem to be receiving a constant barrage of  ‘spam’ in their email and in the social media world. Consequently, many potential buyers resist any attempt to be ‘sold’.

Successful marketers have realised that prospective customers need to be nurtured. Research shows the following stats:

1. Up to 95% of sales leads can be wasted if the first contact with the prospect is an attempt to sell.
2. 70% of a company’s leads will buy at some point: either to the company trying to sell, or one of its competitors.

Therefore, the emphasis should be on building a relationship with the prospect, not trying sell on the first call.

The ideal prospective customer will be someone who has made the first approach; they may have responded to an offer posted on a website, or made an enquiry at a trade stand, for example. Ideally, the prospect will have given permission to the company, by way of a ticked box on a website or registration form at a trade exhibition, to contact them.

The company should, when they contact the prospect, give them a second opportunity to opt in to receive further information.  A choice of subjects could be offered; also there could be options in the frequency of when the customer receives the information. This could be in the form of an email with links to particular web pages, or an e-zine. You should also invite them to connect with you on the various social media sites.

If possible, you should have an employee or service follow up with a phone call to check if the prospect is happy with the information they are receiving, to ask if there are any questions and ascertain if they would like to receive a call from someone in the sales team. If the prospect agrees, the sales team have a red hot qualified lead.

You may, or may not have notices the “Discussions” option in Google recently.

It allows you to specifically target either forums or Q+A …and it’s killer place to perform competitive intelligence and do a little research.

Here’s 4 ways to leverage discussions for SEO + competitive intel:

1. Search your competition. There’s a good chance you’ll find potential customers asking about features, alternatives, etc. This gives you a shot to present your business or product as an alternative, or simply learn about what makes them happy…or mad.
2. Search your keywords.  You’ll find hot tending topics with engaging content. You can use these as ideas for blog posts or articles, or even just social media posts.
3. Search your name/business name – This will give you opportunities to jump into the conversation…this will blow their socks off…very impressive.
4. Search high-level topics around your keywords – , you’ll find niche forums and blogs based around your topic.  IF there is a lots of activity or members….JOIN and get involved.

I know that you’ll be able to think up other ways to use it…if you have a good one, share it in the comments!

Google changed its search algorithm in January and February of 2011 (known as the Farmer Update), giving basic importance to a website’s content. While in the past many websites that provided duplicate content or low quality content to their readers could reach high ranking levels through just link building, today its easier for websites that provide the public with unique content to be displayed on Google’s first page results.

The internet seems to be acquiring a more balanced way of functioning after the distortions caused by spun and PLR (public label rights) articles that were poorly written and didn’t provide useful information to the public.

You must take advantage of this change and send organic (free) traffic to your website for an unlimited period of time by using quality content, instead of constantly paying for Adwords ads. Your website will attract daily traffic if it contains superior content that cannot be found elsewhere, and you’ll spend a finite amount of money to fill your pages with this content only once.

There are millions of writers online who can provide you with interesting articles that will have a magnetic effect on your readers. These articles will also attract search engine traffic, by containing the keywords typed in by most internet users when they look for the information the articles provide. There are plenty of websites provide website owners with perfect content for the web written by professional writers. There are many other content providers online; you can choose from a great variety, depending on your budget.

You should post your articles’ links at your home page. Whenever your readers click on your links, they will be directed to that article page at your own website. You should add each article in a separate page of your website, so that each page will attract search engine traffic based on the article’s keywords. The more pages you add to your website, the better it will be for its ranking.

Whenever the information given by an article can be related to the information given by another one at your website, you should link both pages through anchor text. This practice will help each page get a better ranking. It will also improve your website’s usage, helping your readers easily find related information. All article pages must also contain a link to your sales letters, so that articles can convert your visitors into customers.

You can also provide your readers with daily content through a blog that can be easily updated. Put widgets at your website pages, linking them to your blog.

If you do maintain a blog you’ll have to keep purchasing new articles. However, you can also write a few short blog posts yourself, linking them to content already provided by various online sources.

You’ll merely give your personal opinion about the information you have collected. Post better articles written by ghostwriters once or twice per week, among your short blog posts, so that your blog will attract daily readers.

Many people on the internet create their own websites from scratch building it up with content and getting it indexed with search engines.

One of the best ways to get a head start on this process, is to purchase an expired domain name.

Everyday there are many domains that are expiring and you can find one that will help grow your business with the domain alone. An expired domain name can range in price. It depends on how valuable the domain is. There are many key things to look for. Find specific websites on Google that cater to expired domains. Sign up to get a daily email list of what is expiring soon.

Here are a few sites you can start with:

1. DeletedDomains.com - gives you a list of domains that have expired on the present day. This site regularly updates with many deleted domains and they have made it easy for you to find the best one.
2. Free Web Master Tools (http://www.free-webmaster-tools.com/domain_expired_domain.htm) - Free Web Master Tools is a site that allows you to search their site for expired domains. They have very huge list of expired domains from which you can find the one that you like and register it. They have many domains that have hyphens.

Though there are many sites, I found these two to be really good and helped me to find some good domain names.

Choose an expired domain that fits the niche of your new website. Buy one that has positive feedback on it.

Do a Google search by typing in the name of the domain name. You can find out if there are any negative ties to the domain by reading what your search brings on. It would be a bad idea to purchase an expired domain that has a lot of negative reviews.

Look for an expired domain that is already built up with website traffic from search engines. Find out if the domain has many back links and who is actually linking to the domain. Always find out traffic statistics from the website owner if he or she is personally selling the domain before it expires.

The domain name you purchase will come along with its existing status. Purchase the expired domain as quickly as possible. There are many domain brokers eyeing up great domains to resell. Buying an expired domain can lead traffic to your business website.

There have been more shakeups over at the “BIG G” since my post last week.

March 2nd

HUGE drops for some serious players that I feel have decent to even good content.  The following data is based on a dataset of one million keywords, which were checked before the update and yesterday.

From this we  can determine the biggest loser of this algorithm-change. See the following chart (from Sistrix.com):

.

Ummm…Damn!  That stings.  Looks like article sites are going the way of the DoDo. Don’t make this a primary part of your SEO. I stopped submitted articles a few years ago because the SEO benefit was so tiny…now there is absolutely no reason to at all since your chance of even getting a long tail keyword article ranked is ZERO now.

It’s also being reported that Mahalo.com, which started out as a search engine, but later turned into a content publisher, has stopped all content production and have laid off nearly 10% of their current workforce. This isn’t surprising, considering the Sistrix report notes that the company lost rankings for nearly 70% of their keywords virtually over night.

March 4th

More info…it seems that  Google is using outside human raters, at least in part, as a form of quality assurance.Google’s Amit Singhal said they asked raters questions like “Would you be comfortable giving this site your credit card? Would you be comfortable giving medicine prescribed by this site to your kids?”

Matt Cutts said other questions Google asked to establish trust include “Do you consider this site to be authoritative? Would it be okay if this was in a magazine? Does this site have excessive ads?”

Some SEOs are interpreting this to mean sites overloaded with AdSense and others advertisements are now in Google’s crosshairs.

This can also mean that overly hyped sales pages…squeeze pages, long form sales letters will be rates low also.  We know for a fact that Google HATES them…basically have banned them from PPC over the last year.

If your site was banned from AdWords…you might even be on the list for a manual review.  I have seen 2 sites that were banned from Adwords last year, but still held top spots in the organic search…until last week.  Totally gone now.  So be VERY, VERY careful.  Dump the squeeze pages and long form sales letters…or you are at risk of getting banned.

Read the “What to Do Now” section from my post last week on how to fix it…and take action ASAP.

You may or may not have seen the story in The New York Times about the SEO debacle involving JC Penney:

The Dirty Little Secrets of Search (if that doesn’t work, read it here too)

Basically, JC Penny got busted for using practices that were not inline with Google’s policies.  They got busted, and dropped from hundreds of #1 spots for terms like “dresses”, “bedding” and “area rugs” to #70 or higher over night.

Internet giant, Overstock.com got busted too:

Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics

Let’s go over the timeline of events, then I’ll cover what you should do going forward.

November 2010

• Google engineer, Matt Cutts spoke at Pubcon and he said that “some of the webspam engineers had been loaned out on other projects but since the completion of most, he is getting them back and there were two big projects they were working on.”
• He was also reported to say that they will be taking a look at “Exact Match Domain” names and that he thinks right now having an exact match domain is giving a site too much power in the ranks and that this will be revealed in the coming months.

January 21^st

• Google released a “State of Search” type of blog post
• Stated that they “have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality”
• Including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content…also known as “content farms”

January 28^th

• Matt Cutts further told us…“ the change was approved at our weekly quality launch meeting last Thursday and launched earlier this week.”
• And he went on to say… “The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site’s content.”
• Very targeted launch: less than half a percent of search results change enough that someone might really notice

February 12^th

• The JC Penny debacle was released to the world in the New York Times
• Other sites suffered the same sort of ranking drops…however most were just a few spots
• According to Google the change noticeably impacts 11.8% of the queries
• Now known as “The Farmer Update”

February 24^th

• This change has ONLY been launched in the US at this point, however Google plans to roll it out elsewhere over time.
• “Exact Match Domains” are history. There are some exceptions of course, but unless they are a .com and have age and size, they have been pushed to the back of the pile.

What To Do Now:

Product Quality Content

• Without question, the focus is now on producing original, quality content.
• Scraper sites are the way of the dodo bird
• Business owners need to be careful about posting content that could be considered “low-quality”
• The focus seems to be shifting toward quality, not necessarily quantity

Build Your User Base

• Search is powerful but it’s not the only way to ensure visitors to your website
• Build a strong following on social networks
• Work hard to increase email sign-ups and newsletter subscribers
• Drive subscribers back to your site on a regular basis

Produce Varied Forms of Content

• In addition to a blog, consider producing:
  • Videos for your YouTube channel
  • Photos on Flickr
  • Create a Podcast for iTunes
  • Squidoo Lenses
  • Press Releases

Hire a Good Writer

• Well-written, compelling content tends to attract links, garner social mentions and spread through online communities .
• For the budget conscious, you can use 99CentArticles.com to get the base articles written…then edit to put into your voice and some personality

Get a Variety of Quality Inbound Links

• Backlinks will remain a pivotal factor in search engine rankings
• Be diligent about networking with like-minded content producers and work to get links

Hope that helps!  Leave comments and questions below.  I’ll check back regularly and answer your questions.