My wife Phyllis walked into my office an hour ago and told me how weird I’m becoming. She had just listened to my latest poker lesson, broadcast from www.pokerpages.com. I’m really having a lot of fun supplying those audios free to the world on the Internet, and I’m packing them with my very best poker advice.

Phyllis said, “Those might be the best thing you’ve ever done, except for the strange parts. Can’t you just do anything straight?” So, I’ve decided to dedicate this column to my beloved Phyllis. Herein, I present one of the most important poker secrets I know. And I’ll share it with you in the least weird way I know how, without any gimmicks whatsoever. Here goes…

Getting Up From The Table

Imagine you’re my student and I asked you to leave your chips on the table and follow me.

“Do we have to do this now?” you whine. “I’m stuck four thousand dollars and this game’s too good to get up from.”

“Yes, now. We need to meet away from the table,” I tell you. “I know why you’re losing.”

“I know why I’m losing, too,” you insist. “It’s because I keep guessing wrong against Jack and Jill. Everyone else is easy, but they’re trying to run over the game. And I’m not going to let ‘em.”

At this point, I provide you with a sympathetic nod that is partially fake and partially felt. But you continue to lament, “So, I try to make them pay by running over them right back. But I’m getting really unlucky by always bluffing at the wrong times and raising when they have better hands. Things will change. I can feel it.”

“Get Up Now,” I Repeat Sternly.

So, you leave your chips on the table and we go for a drive together. Outside, the sun is directly overhead. It’s 72 degrees with a slight wind coming from the southwest. The humidity is about 81 percent. But since none of that has anything to do with poker, we ignore it and walk to my car in silence.

Poker Truth In The Mountains

“Where are you taking me?” you want to know, once we’ve driven 10 miles out of town.

“To the mountains,” I say simply.

You grumble and I drive. Sure enough, 20 minutes later we’re in the mountains a hundred yards from the roadway, sitting on boulders and listening to the birds chirp unseen among the trees that surround us.

“No what?” you say.

“Now I share the secret. First, tell me what bothers you about Jack and Jill.”

You fumble your first words as you try to think, slapping your hand painfully against the boulder in disgust. Then your thoughts crystallize and you blurt, “Well, Jack’s a good guy, but he just keeps raising so much it’s frustrating. And Jill does the same thing, and she’s a bitch, besides.”

“Jill’s really nice once you get to know her,” I correct. “And you don’t have to like her. You just have to keep her from taking your money. Tell me what really bothers you about playing poker with Jack and Jill,” I prod.

“Well,” you confide, “it makes my head hurt. Every time I think about putting my chips in the pot, I’m secretly looking at them, worried about what they’re going to do. It’s comfortable playing against everyone else, but against those two I feel threatened all the time. They’re always betting and raising. Jack’s the worst. He’s always trying to bull the game, if you know what I mean.”

Improving Your Poker Prospects Forever

So, I begin to tell you the powerful truth that will change your poker prospects forever - for the better. In the next half hour, I convince you that:

1. First, you’ve got to identify opponents who habitually use deception, since these are the ones that bother you and interfere with your prospects of making profit from weaker foes. It’s easy to identify them.

They slow play hands that at surprising times. At other times, they bet and keep betting. They raise often and sometimes unexpectedly. They bluff often, along with all those other annoying and aggressive maneuvers. In short, it’s hard for you to determine what they’re doing at any moment.

But, even though they’re hard to figure out, they’re not really playing a profitable game of poker. They suffer from what I call “Fancy Play Syndrome” - the habit of trying to find the most creative play instead of the most profitable, more obvious one. (We’ll probably delve into that more in a future column.)

All you know about Jack and Jill is they’re tricky and, on balance, way too aggressive for your taste. Identifying these deceptive players is easy. What to do about them is what might not be obvious, but all I’m asking you to do first is identify them by their traits.

2. Now that you’ve identified these aggressive-and-deceptive opponents, here’s the simple part of the secret. Whenever you’re faced with this type of opponent, you should bet into them less often and call their bets more often. You should also raise them less often.

The governing logic is that you can make marginal “value bets” against opponents who are timid and who are intimidated by you. Remember, all this super-aggressive betting and raising, when used at the right times, means you’re targeting a few extra dollars of profit. You’re pushing things to the limit. But all this backfires when your opponents are aggressive and unpredictable. Those are the opponents that you don’t what to value bet into and that you don’t want to make marginal raises against.

Sure, sometimes you might make a forceful raise just to encourage an opponent to back off and “play nice.” But this doesn’t work often with players like Jack and Jill. It’s especially unlikely to work if they have superior position, meaning they are seated close to your left, acting after you most of the time.

And if they’re seated to your left, you should do a lot of checking and calling. That will drive them nuts and completely dismantle their aggressive-and-deceptive tactics.

Checking and calling is especially good if they bluff a lot. Repeat: On each betting round, just check and call. That way, you’ll get maximum value from their bluff attempts. Betting with marginal hands isn’t good (even though this would be long-range profitable against timid opponents), because they’ll maximize their profit by raising too often when they do have you beat. Additionally, by betting, you give them less opportunity to lose money by making their mistake of bluffing too often.

3. Another part of the secret is that trying to get even with Jack and Jill is interfering with your strategy against the weaker players, which is where your profit lies. Even if you could fight back to an even footing against J and J by using their own tactics, you will have diminished your profit by neglecting to concentrate on extracting money from the weak, timid opponents. So, let them have the stage. Let them try to destroy you with their too-forceful tactics. Realize that it’s impossible for them to succeed unless you let them.

“Wow,” you whisper. “That’s the secret. I can destroy Jack and Jill just by calling more and betting less.”

“Yes,” I say. And when I’m finished, you are energized. You have heard the truth about something that’s bothered you at poker all your life. You understand it completely now. And profit waits back at the poker table.

“But why did we have to come to the mountain for this?” you wonder.

“Because it was important enough,” I explain.

Thanks to Phyllis, I enjoyed talking to you today about plain poker strategy, without any weirdness. Maybe I’ll do it again soon.

Once there was life without drive-up fast food. Hard to imagine, I know, but true. I called my local Burger King manager and asked, “How much of your business goes out the drive-up window?”

“More than 50%,” was the answer.

I expect, though, that to restaurants used to a sit-down business, opening a drive-up window seemed pretty radical. It involved a whole new way of understanding the food store business. But now it’s taken for granted among the fast food giants.

Doing business on the Web requires the same kind of quantum leap. It’s hard to get your head around it right away, since it is so different from what you’ve been used to.

My 92-year-old mother won a state championship for typing speed when she was in high school. But we have this conversation occasionally:

“Ralph, just what is it you do?”

“I do business on the Internet, Mom.”

“What’s the Internet? Is that like broadcasting to people?”

“Well, sort of….”

I get no farther, since she has no real point of comparison. No, I’m not going to introduce the Internet to you. But I hope to convey six opportunities it opens to your business.

Opportunity 1: Branch Office

Newbies see the Internet as advertising. But a business website is better understood as a branch office, a place of doing business. It’s like opening a second office where you can entertain customers, except this office has the lights on and coffee ready 24 hours a day, seven days per week.

People can stop in at their convenience any time they want and browse through your offerings. They’ll

• Read the brochures in the rack by the door,
• Pick up a copy of your “Common Questions People Ask About our Business,”
• Solve their own problems with your detailed Troubleshooting Guide,
• Scribble messages on the pad of question forms you’ve provided,
• Look at detailed information and specs about each product you offer, and, if you have a vending machine in your lobby,
• Make purchases day or night.

What’s the monthly rent? Somewhere between $20 to $100 per month for smaller businesses. And the initial build-out of your branch office costs only a few thousand dollars. Sure, you’ll need to remodel every year or two to keep it up-to-date. But that’s a small price to pay for the new customers your branch office will bring.

Remember, don’t think “advertising,” think “branch office,” and you’ll begin to grasp the Internet opportunity.

Opportunity 2: World Market

I’m amazed how many people are blind to the second business opportunity the Internet offers — a world market. Not too long ago a medium-size mail order executive told me, “The boss insists that we need to prevent people from other countries from ordering on our new site. We just don’t do much international business, and it’s a pain to ship outside the country.”

I gritted my teeth and tried to smile.

A rapidly increasing number of people around the world use the Internet to purchase items they can’t find locally. In early 1999, for example, 1.5 million Chinese now are connected to the Internet, along with half a million from India and a quarter million Malaysians. One million in France are now online, and nearly half the population of Sweden. Israel boasts half a million Internet users, and the list goes on and on.

If you’re fast on your feet, you have the opportunity to make some of them your customers. Don’t know how to market to those abroad? You’ll find lots of free information online (such as http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/global.htm and http://www.wilsonweb.com/research/export.htm). Don’t neglect the resources your national government provides. They want to help you bring more money flowing into your country.

Think about it. The Internet provides a small business in Peoria, Illinois, or Istanbul, Turkey, the opportunity to be a global company, with little expenditure except time given to learning.

On the Internet, geography has ceased to be a barrier. A small business market used to be limited to a one hour drive from its store or office. No more. People now shop a global directory on the Web and let the best site win.

Of course, some products don’t lend themselves to a global market. Take pizza, for example. Can you imagine delivery of a flat box containing two-day-old pepperoni with anchovies? Gross! When I first began to write and speak about the Internet in 1995, I’d say, “If you sell pizza, you probably won’t do well on the Internet.” Then I heard about Pizza Hut in Santa Cruz, California, taking orders from students at the nearby University of California campus. The store hurdled convenience barriers (busy signals on a Friday night) and propelled this savvy local businesses to increased sales.

Brainstorm, my friends. Dream! A global opportunity awaits you.

Opportunity 3: Direct Sales

A third opportunity is direct sales, jumping the existing distribution chain that ratchets up prices to the end user.

Many online-only businesses are essentially order-taking front offices. Product fulfillment is through manufacturers and distributors who agree to drop-ship directly to the customer. This way the Web retailer doesn’t incur expenses for inventory and warehousing. (Nor does he have the ability for superior customer service, but that’s another story.)

A really scary development to many manufacturers is the growing temptation to sell directly on the Web and by-pass the complex distribution chain they have built over many years. The manufacturer doesn’t want to anger distributors and dealers. But increasingly, competing manufacturers sell direct from the factory and undercut the price to the end user. For many manufacturers, it’s a decision to either sell directly or lose marketshare. Agony! What do you do when the Dell Computer equivalent in your industry sells directly over the Web, pulls in $14 million per day in revenue, and grows faster than any other competitor? You sweat bullets, and finally bite the bullet. (Oh, the agony of mixed metaphors!)

Direct retail sales via the Internet is growing exponentially. What an opportunity for your business!

Opportunity 4: Networking

Why does a company network its desktop computers? To increase communication, collaboration, and productivity. The Internet networks half the computers in the world!

Think of the possibilities. Now Bern, Switzerland, is closer to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, than ever before. Small businesses partner with others half a continent away to allow both of them to tackle contracts they could never handle alone. Virtual companies operate from inexpensive offices thousands of miles apart. Talk about opportunities for your business!

But this network aids commerce in other ways, too. You can hyperlink shoppers to products at Amazon.com and earn a referral fee. For a fraction of the cost of other advertising, your online store can acquire new customers by means of an affiliate network. New opportunities abound.

Opportunity 5: Segmented Market

Better yet, this vast network automatically segments the market into demographic units.

Want to market only to those searching for your particular product or service? Purchase a banner ad that pops up only when someone searches on “life insurance” and you’ve suddenly begun to strike gold. It’s even less expensive to position one of your webpages to come up #3 on an Excite search for the phrase “body surfing” or “sand candles.”

If you search Deja News (http://www.dejanews.com) for an industry keyword, you’ll find e-mail discussion lists and newsgroups populated by just the people you want to reach. Now, be careful to observe established Netiquette, or you’ll blow your company’s chances for good. But there are your prospects, chatting happily away, a neatly segmented market. Join in the discussion as a fellow learner rather than a salesman, and you’ll begin to attract new business. What an opportunity!

Opportunity 6: Competitive Advantage

One of my friends tells of a call from a Japanese businessman a couple of years ago. “Several of us will visit San Francisco next month,” said the caller. “Can we arrange a tour of your world headquarters while we’re in the area?”

After my friend had replied, as graciously as he could, that San Francisco was a long way from his city, he walked from his home office to the kitchen. “Dear, there’s a group of Japanese businessmen who want to visit the world headquarters of our company next month.”

His wife’s face showed panic. “Are they coming here?” she gasped.

No, they didn’t come, but ever after this couple shows off to their friends the room they jokingly call “our company’s world headquarters.”

What I’m describing is the ability of an Internet-savvy businessperson to be every bit as competitive on the Web as a 20- or 200- or 2,000-employee business. It’s harder than it used to be. Large companies now budget tens of millions of dollars for their websites. That’s hard to match with a $2,000 to $20,000 small business website. But it’s not impossible to do a very credible job, nevertheless. The market is so huge that even a small slice can generate a quite substantial income for a small business. Opportunities are boundless.

Smarts + Sweat + Swiftness = Opportunity

But we are years beyond the day when you could slap up a website and expect the world to beat a path to your door. These days it takes smarts, sweat, and swiftness to compete with the Big Dogs. The opportunity is surely here, but it’s not a freebie.

The stupid need not apply. I hear slick salesmen hawking the Internet: “Get your company on the Internet. You don’t even have to have a computer.” Wrong! To compete on today’s Web you must climb a steep learning ladder to discover how to do business on the Web. If you can’t afford the time to learn how to use the tools, don’t waste your money. There are no short cuts, not even if an infomercial tells you so. You need smarts.

Sweat is the next ingredient. I get dozens of calls from people who assume that making money on the Internet is easy. Wrong again! Developing a successful business on the Web is just as hard as building a small business in the local strip mall. Oh, the financial investment is much less. But it requires as much work or more. They say that only 20% of new small businesses will celebrate their fifth anniversary. I’m sure this holds true for the Net, as well. The attrition rate is high partly because people aren’t willing to work hard enough to succeed.

Swiftness is the final ingredient. And here is where smaller businesses hold a big advantage. Changing from a strategy that isn’t working can take a big company months if not years. It’s like turning an ocean liner. But small businesses, like speed boats, can turn quickly and zoom off in a new and promising direction. The environment and business climate on the Web are changing so rapidly that you must be swiftfooted to stay in business, and be ready to grasp the opportunities as they come. No points are awarded for being late.

The opportunities the Internet opens to your business are huge. If you apply smarts, sweat, and swiftness you can transform these six opportunities into your business success.

How can you get more visitors to your website? What can you do to stimulate traffic? Here’s a checklist of 32 items you need to consider. Many of these you’re probably doing already; others you meant to do and forgot about; still others you’ve never heard of. Of course, a great deal has been written about this. You’ll find links to thousands of articles on site promotion in our Web Marketing Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/research). While we’re not breaking any new ground here, we’ve tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.

Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important — and inexpensive — strategy is to rank high for your preferred words on the main search engines in “organic” or “natural” searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot “spiders” to index the content on your webpage, so let’s begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about.

1. Write a Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many “filler” words from the title, such as “the,” “and,” etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: <TITLE>Web Marketing Checklist — 32 Ways to Promote Your Website</TITLE>. (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that’s what people will be searching for, don’t just use your company name “Acme Ammunition, Inc.” use “Silver and Platinum Bullets — Acme Ammunition, Inc.” The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called “keyword prominence”). Remember, this title is nearly your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

2. Write a Description and Keyword META Tag. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. If you include keywords that aren’t used on the webpage, you could hurt yourself. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the <HEAD></HEAD> tags, in this format: Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title.

<META NAME=”DESCRIPTION” CONTENT=”Increase visitor hits, attract traffic through submitting URLs, META tags, news releases, banner ads, and reciprocal links”>.

Your maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag. Then for the keywords META tag, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases. The keywords META tag is no longer used for ranking by Google, but it is currently used by Yahoo, so I’m leaving it in. Who knows when more search engines will consider it important again? Every webpage in your site should have a title, and META description tag.

3. Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3. Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don’t expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines — it won’t. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That’s a mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document — where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don’t want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don’t overdo it. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags, though few search engines give these much if any weight.

5. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your page. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm — another clue for the search engine.

6. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. Some webmasters use frames, but frames can cause serious problems with search engines. Even if search engines can find your content pages, they could be missing the key navigation to help visitors get to the rest of your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash. Supplement them with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. A site map with links to all your pages can help, too. If your site isn’t getting indexed fully, make sure you submit a Google Sitemap following directions on Google’s site (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login). Greg Tarrant’s Google Sitemap Generator and Editor (www.sitemapdoc.com) is a free tool to build these. Be aware that some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages. You can sometimes recognize them by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes stop at the question mark and refuse to go farther. If you find the search engines aren’t indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, and targeted content pages (see below). Commercial solutions include Bruce Clay’s Dynamic Site Mapping (www.bruceclay.com/web_dsm.htm) and YourAmigo.com’s SpiderLinker (www.youramigo.com)

7. Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content. You can’t fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but these focused-content webpages you’ll want to spend lots of time tweaking to improve their rank.

8. Submit Your Webpage URL to Search Engines. Next, submit your homepage URL to the important Web search engines that robotically index the Web. Look for a link on the search engine for “Add Your URL.” In the US, the most used search engines are: Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL Search, and Ask.com. Some of these feed search content to the other main search engines and portal sites. For Europe and other areas you’ll want to submit to regional search engines. It’s a waste of money to pay someone to submit your site to hundreds of search engines. Avoid registering with FFA (Free For All pages) and other link farms. They don’t work well, bring you lots of spam e-mails, and could cause you to be penalized by the search engines. We’ll talk about submitting to directories under “Linking Strategies” below. If your page is already indexed by a search engine, don’t re-submit it unless you’ve made significant changes; the search engine spider will come back and revisit it soon anyway.

9. Fine-tune with Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages (described in point 7), and perhaps your home page, by making minor adjustments to help them rank high. Software such as WebPosition (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm) allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition’s Page Critic provides analysis of a search engine’s preferred statistics for each part of your webpage. You can do this yourself with WebPosition. The best set of SEO tools by far is Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). You can find links to hundreds of articles on search engine strategies in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_Search). If you want more detail, consider purchasing my inexpensive book Dr. Wilson’s Plain-Spoken Guide to Search Engine Optimization (http://www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm). Many small and large businesses outsource search engine positioning because of the considerable time investment it requires. If you outline your needs, I can point you the right direction to SEO firms I know and trust (www.wilsonweb.com/recommendations/seo-services.htm).

10. Promote Your Local Business on the Internet. These days many people search for local businesses on the Internet. To make sure they find you include on every page of your website the street address, zip code, phone number, and the five or 10 other local community place names your business serves. If you can, include place names in the title tag, too. When you seek links to your site (see below), a local business should get links from local businesses with place names in the communities you serve and complementary businesses in your industry nationwide. For more information, see my book How to Promote Your Local Business on the Internet (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/local.htm).

Linking Strategies

Links to your site from other sites bring additional traffic. But since Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website (”link popularity”) as an important factor in ranking, more links will help you rank higher in the search engines, too. Google has introduced a 10-point scale called PageRank (10 is the highest rank) to indicate the quantity and quality of incoming links. All links, however, are not created equal. Links from popular information hubs will help your site rank higher than those from low traffic sites. You’ll find links to articles on linking strategies in our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_Linking).

11. Submit Your Site to Key Directories, since a link from a directory will help your ranking — and get you traffic. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.com), overseen by overworked volunteer human editors. This hierarchical directory provides content feeds to all the major search engines. Plus it provides a link to your site from an information hub that Google deems important. But don’t be impatient and resubmit or you’ll go to the end of the queue.

Yahoo! Directory is another important directory to be listed in, though their search results recently haven’t been featuring their own directory as prominently. Real humans will read (and too often, pare down) your 200-character sentence, so be very careful and follow their instructions (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/). Hint: Use somewhat less than the maximum number of characters allowable, so you don’t have wordy text that will tempt the Yahoo! editor to begin chopping. Business sites require a $299 annual recurring fee for Yahoo! Express to have your site considered for inclusion within seven business days (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/busexpress.html). Other directories to consider might be About.com and Business.com.

12. Submit Your Site to Industry Sites and Specialized Directories. You may find some directories focused on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member sites. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link, it may help boost your PageRank. Beware of directories that solicit you for “upgraded listings.” Unless a directory is widely used in your field, your premium ad won’t help — but the link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking. Marginal directories come and go very quickly, making it hard to keep up. Don’t try to be exhaustive here.

13. Request Reciprocal Links. Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites — so you don’t send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site. High-traffic site webmasters are too busy to answer your requests for a link and don’t have anything to gain. Look for smaller sites that may have linking pages.

Check out Ken Evoy’s free SiteSell Value Exchange. It (1) registers your site as one that is willing to exchange links with other sites that have a similar theme/topic content and (2) searches for sites with similar topical content (http://sales.sitesell.com/value-exchange/). Additionally, two automated link building software programs stand out — Zeus and Arelis. These search for complementary sites, help you maintain a link directory, and manage reciprocal links. However, use these programs to identify the complementary sites, not to send impersonal automated e-mail spam to site owners. When you locate sites, send a personal e-mail to the administrative contact found in the Whois Directory (www.networksolutions.com/whois/). If e-mail doesn’t get a response, try a phone call. I’ve written a brief e-book on Reciprocal Linking Tools outlining various linking strategies and other software you can use to make the task easier. (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/linkingtools.htm) One warning: Be sure to only link to complementary sites, no matter how often you are bombarded with requests to exchange links with a mortgage site that has nothing to do with yours. One way Google determines what your site is about is who you link to and who links to you. It’s not just links, but quality links you seek.

14. Write Articles for Others to Use in their Newsletters. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective “viral” approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.

15. Begin a Business Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site’s PageRank. Learn more about business blogs in our Research Room. (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&querytype=category&subcat=ms_Blogs). If you have a blog on a third-party blog site, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

16. Issue News Releases. Find newsworthy events and send news releases to print and Web periodicals in your industry. The links to your site in online news databases may remain for years and have some clout with link popularity. However, opening or redesigning a website is seldom newsworthy these days. You may want to use a Web news release service such as PR Web (http://wilsonweb.prwebdirect.com). Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity some. More info on PR is available in our Research Room. (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/cat.cfm?page=1&subcat=mp_PR) Issuing press releases is a traditional promotional strategy, but there are other traditional approaches that can help you as well.

Traditional Strategies

Just because “old media” strategies aren’t on the Internet doesn’t mean they aren’t effective. A mixed media approach can be very effective.

17. Include Your URL on Stationery, Cards, and Literature. This is a no-brainer that is sometimes overlooked. Make sure that all reprints of cards, stationery, brochures, and literature contain your company’s URL. And see that your printer gets the URL syntax correct. In print, I recommend leaving off the http:// part and including only the www.domain.com portion.

18. Promote using traditional media. Don’t discontinue print advertising that you’ve found effective. But be sure to include your URL in any display or classified ads you purchase in trade journals, newspapers, yellow pages, etc. View your website as an information adjunct to the ad. Use a two-step approach: (1) capture readers’ attention with the ad, (2) then refer them to a URL where they can obtain more information and perhaps place an order. Look carefully at small display or classified ads in the back of narrowly-targeted magazines or trade periodicals. Sometimes these ads are more targeted, more effective, and less expensive than online advertising. Consider other traditional media to drive people to your site, such as direct mail, classifieds, post cards, etc. TV can be used to promote websites, especially in a local market.

19. Develop a Free Service. It’s boring to invite people, “Come to our site and learn about our business.” It’s quite another to say “Use the free kitchen remodeling calculator available exclusively on our site.” Make no mistake, it’s expensive in time and energy to develop free resources, such as our Research Room (www.wilsonweb.com/cat/), but it is very rewarding in increased traffic to your site. Make sure that your free service is closely related to what you are selling so the visitors you attract will be good prospects for your business. Give visitors multiple opportunities and links to cross over to the sales part of your site.

E-Mail Strategies

Don’t neglect e-mail as an important way to bring people to your website. Just don’t spam. That is, don’t send bulk unsolicited e-mails without permission to people with whom you have no relationship. You can find lots to details and tips in my book The E-Mail Marketing Handbook (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/handbook.htm).

20. Install a “Signature” in your E-Mail Program to help potential customers get in touch with you. Most e-mail programs such as AOL, Netscape, and Outlook allow you to designate a “signature” to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples on e-mail messages sent to you.

21. Publish an E-Mail Newsletter. While it’s a big commitment in time, publishing a monthly e-mail newsletter (”ezine”) is one of the very best ways to keep in touch with your prospects, generate trust, develop brand awareness, and build future business. It also helps you collect e-mail addresses from those who visit your site but aren’t yet ready to make a purchase. Ask for an e-mail address and first name so you can personalize the newsletter. You can distribute your newsletter using listservers such as:

• Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/roving.htm)
• Got Marketing Campaigner (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gotmarketing.htm)
• AWeber (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/aweber.htm)
• Topica Email Publisher (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/topica.htm)
• Gammadyne Mailer (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gammadyne.htm)

1. The Law of the Dead End Street

The first law goes like this: Setting up a website is like building a storefront on a dead-end street. If you want any shoppers, you must give them a reason to come.

You’ve heard too many times “If you build it, they will come.” We know that doesn’t work on the Internet. But why do novices again and again build websites without the least thought to a viable marketing plan? Maybe it’s because FrontPage promises you a “professional looking site” and Microsoft hasn’t yet offered WebMarket 2000. (Don’t worry, they probably will pretty soon. Hi, Bill!) more…