Speedy Web Videos – Easier Than You Think

Posted on 15. Dec, 2011 by Darling.

How would you like to create a video like the one on this page?

Using videos on your website and with your online marketing strategy returns positive results.   Creating them does not have to cost you an arm and a leg either!  The information I am about to share with you is going to save you a ton of money when it comes to creating web videos, especially speedy web videos!

I am not going to train you on how to create a video.  Other people have already done this and the small investment in their training material is well worth it.

Click Here to Begin Creating Speedy Web Videos Now

 I will provide you information on how to optimize your videos, syndicate them, and promote them so that they actually work for you in the private membership club.  When I say work for you, I mean drive traffic and increase conversions so that you can make a lot more from your online marketing efforts.

See, you can have a professionally produced video that doesn’t do a bit of good to your bottom line.  I have heard stories of people dropping as much as $30,000 on video production with no apparent return on their investment.  YIKES!! 

I have also seen people just like you and I create extremely low cost videos and make thousands of dollars from them over and over again.  Creating speedy web videos is just one step. 

Click Here to Begin Creating Speedy Web Videos Now

The training program above is incredibly affordable and so totally worth it.  Listen, after you create some great videos for your online marketing efforts, sign up for the Be The Obvious Choice Online club and discover how to use them so that you can drive crazy traffic to your website, grow your customer base, and make a lot more money from your online marketing efforts.  Seriously, you can do this stuff.  If you do not, you are missing out on a lot of business out there. 

Let me tell you something, the only software program I had to actually purchase a license to so I could make speedy web videos was Microsoft PowerPoint.  The other pieces of software have free alternatives.  And honestly, if I had the time, I’m sure I could have figured out how to use Open Office to make a suitable slide presentation for this. 

Here are the free software options to make this speedy web video creation possible:

Paint.net for graphics
Audacity.SourceForge.net  for audio
CamStudio.org  for screen capture (CamTasia alternative)
NCHSoftware.com has alternatives for video file conversion and slide show creation/editing
OpenOffice.org if you don’t have Microsoft Office or Keynote for MAC

Be your own speedy web video master!

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Content Development: How Can I Make My Website Stick?

Posted on 28. Oct, 2011 by Darling.

Are You Driving Traffic to a Barren Wasteland? 

Before going out and spending precious time, money, and other resources on driving traffic to your website, be sure that you have something on your site that will help your visitor and keep them sticking around for more of YOU!

Here are 3 things you can do right now for great content development that will add value to your site.  Your site can be sticky and rich in content and information that will convey to your visitor that you are someone to call on when faced with the problem you solve.

The No-Brainer Blog:

A blog is your friend.  It is one of the easiest ways to grow your site, authority, and traffic so that you can grow your business.

If your site does not have a blog function to it then ask your web developer to install one for you. 

Once you have the blog installed, you are sure to have the next big problem hit you hard:  what to write about!

I recommend creating a running list of topics in your niche to write about.  Make your goal 100 topics.  Just keep adding to it.  Take just one topic a week at the bare minimum and write a decent sized post on it.

Of course the more often you blog the better the traffic attraction results but if all you can do is write one post a week go for it! 

Create a Frequently Asked Questions Page:

This one is great for small local businesses.  Often, a small local business may not have time to write or cannot imagine having enough to say in order to write that often.  Actually, what I hear most small local businesses say is that they can’t imagine anyone would want to read much about what they do anyway.

Even if you are a roofer or power washer, you can create a great FAQs page that will provide your visitor with some valuable information that will influence them to contact you in the event they don’t want to do the work themselves.

Use same tactic for generating blog topics to help you create a full FAQs page.  Start a running list of the 100 most frequently asked questions that your customers constantly come to you with.

Each time you add a question to your list; ask yourself… what SHOULD they be asking instead?  This can be another topic or question to write about.

Create a Resources Page

You cannot be all things to all people.  If you try, your business is sure to fail.  So, create a good page for other resources that your customer may need to look into or may find helpful.

I’ll admit, sometimes I look for shortcuts so instead of just making a list of links like I did, try writing some short reviews on the products or services you are providing as resource for your visitor.  

If it is another service provider, write a little story about why you recommend them for what they do.  People do like stories and stories do sell better than most other tactics online.

Sometimes, if you write a really good review or synopsis of what another resource is about, you just might attract some links to that page.  In-bound links are a great thing to get. 

Getting in-bound links is what prompts people to write so much content and place it on sites outside of theirs.  In-bound links influence your ranking ability for your targeted keyword phrases.

In-bound links can also drive floods of traffic if created with quality content and juicy calls to action.

Now, that you have created more quality and rich content on your site, you will keep your visitor longer and increase your authority and conversions.

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  

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How to Choose a WordPress Theme

Posted on 09. Sep, 2011 by Darling.

I LOVE WordPress.   My second area of specialty right behind SEO is WordPress.  Most sites I have built for clients begin with a professional theme.   A commonly asked question is how do I choose a WordPress theme?

Choosing a WordPress theme for your new website is sometimes the most difficult decision.  The reasons many people begin with a theme already created is to have an out of the box design and layout that with just a few customizations, can look unique to their online business.

There are many free themes out there to choose from.  Free themes don’t come with support and sometimes are written with malicious code.  There are a couple of free theme choices out there that I find very versatile, supported, and highly customizable.   One that comes to mind right away is Suffusion.  

Most of the time I choose to go with a professional theme from StudioPress.com or WooThemes.com and customize those from there.  There are other places to look for good professional themes.  iThemes.com and ThemeForest.net are good starting places.

If you have a larger budget, there is the completely custom coded and designed WordPress website option.  With that, you can work with a professional designer to come up with a concept.  Then, you can have the design coded into a Worpdress theme.  Then, you have the pages built, configure all plugins, and navigation.

When trying to decide on a professional theme, I always begin with looking at the overall layout and color scheme choices. 

Look at the home page layout.  A professional theme will have either a widgetized home page layout or one that streams all of the latest posts.

For a business feeling website that looks less like a blog, choose a theme that has a flexible home page layout that you can edit to your preferences.   

You may find that a cool theme has a neat sliding image display on the home page.  Look into it further.  Usually, the default home page layout is the only one that allows the cool sliding image display.  That default home page layout may require your latest blog posts to stream into the home page and give you less control over exactly what you want on your home page.

So, if you want to set a static page as your home page, you will often lose that nifty little image slider display option.

Please keep in mind that I am writing this for people that want a theme that is as close to out-of-the-box ready to go as possible.  The beauty of WordPress is that it is highly customizable.  However, just because it is highly customizable does not mean that you can just pick up a WordPress for Dummies manual and all of a sudden call yourself a WordPress coding specialist! 

I’ve seen simple mistakes take down a WordPress site instantly!  So, unless you are well versed in how PHP, HTML, and CSS all works together, stay out of the theme files editor!

Other things to consider when choosing a theme are:

• How many color schemes or skin options does it come with?
• Does it have support for custom navigation menus?
• How many layouts does it support? How many sidebars?
• Does it support full width layout?
• Is there any sales page functionality that removes distracting header and menu options?
• Does it provide easy set up of a photo or video gallery if you want one?
• Do the content and post pages give you a white or very light background color?  Keep your readers in mind.  Black text on white background is simply best.
• Can you upload a custom header or logo design easily?

If you can land on a good WordPress theme for beginning your site-build, congratulations!  If it is challenging to find one that works perfectly, try going with a very basic one that simply has colors that are closest to what you want long term.  The rest can be built upon down the road as things develop.  

From an SEO standpoint, a WordPress website is the best option for out of the box search friendly functionality.  You still need to put in the proper data to get the best results. 

Please leave your comments and feedback below on this topic.  

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on 25. Nov, 2010 by Darling.

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.  ~W.T. Purkiser

Chris Darling works with service based business owners who struggle with getting their websites found and effectively using local search SEO and Social Media for their business. You get Pain Relief for Your Social Media SEO Aches setting the stage for you to earn more online revenue from new contacts, clicks, and phone calls.  If this speaks to you and your online business goals discover if it is time for Darling Online Marketing.

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What Else Can I Do to Increase My Website Rankings?

Posted on 13. Sep, 2010 by Darling.

Use In Bound Links to Increase Website Rankings

Getting your website found and helping it rise to the top of search results begins with on page optimization.  Once that is taken care of the next step is to move off page.

On page optimization only accounts for about 20% of your SEO efforts.  It is a very important part and should not be over looked.  But the stuff that begins to make a huge difference in your visibility and traffic involves off page SEO.

Off page SEO includes:

• In Bound Links
• Content Sharing for BackLinks
• Articles, Blog Posts, and Videos for Content Sharing
• One Way Back Links (a.k.a. In Bound Links)
• Registering and Listing with Relevant Local Directories
• Press Release Syndication for More Links and Visibility
• Did I say “in bound links”?

A lot of what search engine optimization comes down to is building quality in bound links.  This is a time consuming process.  Each piece of content that goes out on the world wide web should also be optimized completely for the search engines.  That way, it has a better chance of ranking.

Often, syndicated content will rank better or earlier than your very own website.  This is because syndicated content finds it’s way onto domains that already have high page rank and authority.  That is a common strategy used for more competitive keyword phrases.

As each piece of your content goes out to other sites, it should include a link inside of it somewhere that leads back to your website.  Articles usually allow hyperlinks in the author resource box.  Videos allow domain URL’s in the descriptions.  Blog posts often allow text based links in the body of the post.  What type of link you use depends on the site you are placing it on and the type of content you are publishing.

The search engines use very complicated algorithms.  Back links are not the only factor they consider.  However, if you are looking for what you can do next to increase your website rank, building in bound links is it.

Darling Online Marketing works with skilled and professional service based businesses who struggle with getting search engine optimized websites, results, and visibility online within their local market and want to benefit from more targeted website traffic and conversions.

I am different from other online marketing firms because I focus on natural search SEO while providing clients the option to work exclusively with them in their target market.  Exclusivity means I will not work with your direct competitor in the agreed upon market area.

In working with me, clients save more time to focus on serving their new customers and more revenue from using effective local search SEO and Social Media Strategies.

If any of this speaks to you and your online business goals secure a free website analysis now.

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The First Step to Improve Your Website Rankings

Posted on 20. Aug, 2010 by Darling.

The very first thing anyone needs to do to improve your website ranking is make sure your on-page optimization is complete.

On page optimization includes:

• Completing Meta data (title, description, keywords)
• Complete internal linking structure
• Making each page relevant to its targeted keyword phrase

Meta data is included in the source code of your website.  The human visitor does not see this on the web pages.  However, the title and description Meta data is seen on a page of results that a search engine would display for your search terms.  For example, in the following image, the Meta title shows in search engine results as displayed by the top red arrow.  And, the Meta description is displayed as shown by the bottom arrow.

Completing your internal linking structure is important because once a search engine spider hits any page of your website it will crawl all text based links in your website.  One technique used for this is called Silo linking structure.  Knowing all about Silo linking is beyond the scope of this post but basically, the main result of good Silo linking is that it helps the search engines understand the overall theme of your website.

Making each page relevant to your targeted keywords is important for not only search engines but also to your human visitor.  Search engines consider relevancy in their complex algorithms.  The algorithms come up with your page rank.

Your website visitor on the other hand will either decide if the page is relevant to what they are looking for and keep reading or they will keep searching until they find their answer.  So, it won’t matter what your page rank is if your real visitor does not see the relevancy.

Improving your website ranking really gets going with all other off page search engine optimization activities.  In the end, page rank comes down to the quality and quantity of external links that lead back to your website.

Your website can rank from 0-9.  New websites start at 0.  New websites generally do not see an increase in page rank until they have been crawled, indexed, and aged.

As time goes on and you build high quality links from other relevant websites your page rank will go up.  The best long term way to build high quality links comes from creating articles, videos, and blogs on other web 2.0 and social media properties that contribute value to your industry.

Your website rankings will increase over time as you continue promoting your site.  The page rank of your website is really only one piece of the puzzle for your online marketing efforts.

DarlingOnlineMarketing.com offers clients professional SEO solutions that starts with on page optimization and adds email, local, video, mobile, and social media marketing strategies as building blocks to your online success.

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Should I Stop Using Print Advertising?

Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by Darling.

If you are new to online marketing you may be wondering if you should stop using print advertising.  First, if something is working for you, keep doing it.  You might want to be sure that your efforts at making the transition to online advertising or starting an online marketing campaign are solid and will replace the steady stream of customers that your business needs.

It always depends on the business.  The best methods will use as many different marketing mediums as possible.  Of course it all takes an investment of time and money.  That is when you test your methods and determine what works and what is not feasible any longer.  When interested in switching over to primarily using search engine optimization, be sure to hire a professional SEO consultant so that you get things done right the first time.  Quality SEO consulting services are unlikely to come from the Yellow Pages.  So, beware of the dog and pony show you may encounter.

Before you stop using print advertising, look at your numbers.  Decide which one is most cost effective for you now and long term.

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