Category: Traffic & Conversion

Article Quality Guidelines

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date December 9, 2011

There’s a big difference between articles, especially with regards to article quality.In short, if you want to have any quality to your site at all, you need to set some article quality guidelines.

Now, for all of my blogs and websites that have to do with Internet Marketing, I write my own stuff. All of it. So the words you’re reading now and the words you read on any of my marketing or web development sites are all me. 100%.

But I’ve got lots of other sites, too. For example, I’ve got a website that’s all about orthopedic braces, the Atkins Diet, and many other non-IM sites. And while I don’t necessarily write all of the content for those sites, I do care that the content is of high quality, helpful to its readers, and profitable for me.

Article quality has a lot to do with all of that.

An Article Marketing Quality Story

Following is an email I sent to my partner on one of those sites — a man who used to be an intern of mine but has now gone on to a successful IM career of his own — regarding articles that were written about Ankle Braces. Please read it to learn about the article standards that I require.

Article Quality Guidelines will improve your response from your Ezine Articles submissions and conversions on your blog.

I’m sure it will be helpful to you when you’re having content written for your own sites.

We use the tools mentioned below (see the links) to

Traffic & Conversion

Google+ WordPress Plugin

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date September 30, 2011

Google+ (aka Google Plus) is competing with Facebook in the social media space. Admittedly, there are not nearly as many people on Google+ as there are on Facebook right now, but perhaps in time, there will be.

Okay, that’s kind of obvious. So why do I mention it?

It’s that old “big fish in a small pond” thing.

The more active you are in Google+, and the better you can position yourself and your marketing there, the better off you will be when it takes off.

That’s why my partner Dan Nickerson and I are so fascinated by this new premium WordPress Plugin.

It basically let’s you hide content on your WordPress post or page and display it ONLY when someone has clicked the PLUS button on your post.

Clicking PLUS is a lot like clicking “Like” on Facebook.

The result is that a lot of your casual blog readers will have an incentive to

copywriting Traffic & Conversion

The Most Common Marketing Problem

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date April 14, 2011

A marketing friend recently shared with me that a health-oriented launch he ran, complete with videos, an email series, and lots of excitement…had been a huge disappointment.

Does that mean that launches don’t work?

Does that mean that videos don’t matter?

Does that mean that people think every email they receive is spam?

No, not at all.

But it can point to a very simple problem that many people have with their marketing. Here’s what I wrote in my email reply to him:

Product Launches Traffic & Conversion

Product Launch Blueprint

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date February 24, 2011

About four months ago, a consulting client of mine asked me to sketch out a “Product Launch Blueprint” for his new membership site he was planning.

He knows that I sometimes run product launches, and so he knew I’d be a good person to ask.

So, I wrote him a quick half-page summary of how to do an effective product launch and sent it to him in an email.

He was thankful, and a good student. His goal was 100 new members to his site during his initial site launch, and as I recall he

Conversion Landing Pages Marketing Tools Split Testing squeeze pages Traffic & Conversion

Very Small Tweaks To Improve Your Website

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date November 30, 2010

Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or you sell your own stuff, chances are, your website can make you A LOT more money than it does now.

What kind of difference would a mere doubling of sales do for you? I don’t know your personal situation, but it might mean you’re able to make a MUCH better Christmas for your kids than in years past. Or it might mean being able to expand your business, hire more people, and give yourself a raise.

Or maybe it means you can pay a few bills.

Whatever it means to you, it’s NOT TOO LATE. All you need is a little help.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

The difference between an average or poorly performing sales or squeeze page, and a page that works twice as well might be a VERY SMALL TWEAK. It could a difference of one

Conversion Marketing Tools Split Testing Traffic & Conversion

Why Your Landing Page Isn’t As Good As It Could Be

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date November 22, 2010

If you’ve ever wondered whether your landing page, squeeze page, or entire website was as good as it could be, I’ve got an answer for you.

IT ISN’T.

And there are two reasons why that’s probably the case:

1) “You’re probably not split testing.”

Split testing is the probably the single best way to improve the performance of your website. If you wanted to get more opt-ins, make more sales, and overall just make more money, split testing can get you there more quickly than any other method I know.

If you’re not split testing, start now.

** ON THE OTHER HAND… **

If you’re already split testing, there is one more demon that may be getting in your way. And that brings us to the second reason why your site isn’t as good as it could be. It’s that…

Bad Squeeze Pages Conversion Landing Pages squeeze pages Traffic & Conversion

Even Worse Squeeze Pages

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date November 18, 2010

Last week, I wrote you about the “worst squeeze page ever,” a post that got a LOT of interest on my blog. I even asked for you to send me your own squeeze page, if you thought it was worse than the one I wrote about.

I thought I’d see some that are bad…and wow are they BAD, each for their own special reason!

As a prize for the loser…err, I mean winner… I offered a web-page evaluation worth about $125. But there were some classic examples of “squeeze pages gone bad,” that I also decided to do a few additional quick reviews for three runners-up because the lessons you can learn from seeing how other people put a page together can be very valuable.

You might be making the same mistakes on your own pages.

One note before you look: I wrote my reviews of the pages very impersonally. I didn’t pull any punches or try to be nice or polite. In fact, in a few cases, I wasn’t polite at all. I just wrote about what I saw, and what I thought about it. My apologies if you’re offended.

So here are the runners-up. Learn from them. The winner will be revealed in my next post.

Conversion Landing Pages squeeze pages Traffic & Conversion

Squeeze Page Response

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date November 11, 2010

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post on my blog called “Is this the worst squeeze page ever?”

Did you read it? If not, go take a look.

I showed you a squeeze page which I thought was pretty darn bad. It actually does have *two* redeeming qualities, but overall, it really looks like a stinker to me.

In response to that blog post, I got a comment from “Lyn”, who wrote…

“For me, the “worst” landing pages are those with video that starts playing automatically. I like to leave browser tabs open, those products that interest me, that I want to consider. And once you have several of the auto playing type opening the browser becomes a nightmare. But that’s from a consumer viewpoint.”

I wrote back to Lyn because I think that her observation was a good one. In fact, you probably agree with it. But that’s only part of the story.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind with respect to Landing Page conversions (or squeeze page conversions, or any website performance metric) is that just because someone

Bad Squeeze Pages Traffic & Conversion

Is This The Worst Squeeze Page Ever?

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date November 8, 2010

The thing about Landing Page conversions that most people don’t understand is that it doesn’t matter what you like to look at, it doesn’t matter what you think works, and it doesn’t matter whether you tell me you won’t opt into a page that looks like this or that.

What matters is whether the page actually works.

So earlier today when I was on a popular internet marketing forum and a member wrote for some “suggestions to improve my conversion rate”, I wasn’t quite prepared to see what I saw.

Now I’ve seen some bad squeeze pages before, but this one was different in an eerily familiar way. In fact, it was downright weird. And bad. Or, I should say it was bad based on the fundamentals of good squeeze page design that I’ve studied and used for the last half dozen years.

The strangest part, though, was that the owner of the site claimed that

copywriting Landing Pages Traffic & Conversion

How long should your sales letter be?

Post author By WPadminMark
Post date October 6, 2010

One of the very common questions I get about internet marketing is “How long should my sales letter be?”

I actually got this question again just last week.

I was talking with one of my private consulting clients who told me that he recently read in a marketing book that a sales letter ought to be about as long as one printed typewritten page. I don’t recall the name of the product or “expert” he was quoting from, but it seemed to me that anyone who knows what they’re talking about with marketing knows that ‘short’ is not the answer.

Neither is ANY specific length. Your letter needs to be as long as it takes to tell your story. No more. No less.

The reason WHY your sales letter should not be artificially shortened touches on a few important marketing lessons that you need to know and remember.

For example, you might believe that