How to Write an SEO Plan For a Website

If you are launching a new site and want to do SEO for your site, you will initially need to work on preparing a plan regarding how to implement your SEO strategies.

Here are few steps you can implement while designing a SEO plan. I understand that every website is different but you can follow the below simple steps while launching any new site.

Identifying the market: Identify your market, where you find your targeted customers. Write a short description of people to whom you intend to sell your products.

Competitors: Understand your competitors. Identify your players. Look beyond the 10 results in search engines for your search queries. Divide your competitors into major competitors and minor competitors and try to understand how they are doing SEO for their site.

Resources: Make a list of websites you can leverage to promote your new site. Make a list of below resources.

a. Advertising resources.
b. Networking resources.
c. Event Handling.
d. News
e. Joint ventures.

List of goals: Make a list of goals and enter a brief description on how you utilize the above resources to promote your site. Later, write first 10 goals you will work towards your plan. If you are trying to promote your site using content marketing techniques, then your goal could be

Publishing specific number of articles, ebooks, pdfs, white papers etc...

Your goal could be

a. Building daily visitor count of 50.
b. Obtaining daily links of 50.
c. Networking with n number of people a day.

After that, make a brief description of how you intend to deliver the result. For example, "Building daily visit count of 50: I do this by buying an ad space in warrior forum." etc when you are about to finish achieving these 10 goals, sit down and write the next 10 goals.

Now that you have written what you intend to do, go back and refer the notes every week. You may sometimes need to modify your plan depending on the results occurring.

Custom Writing Services: Market Overview

Market identification

Custom writing services market is a sector of the e-commerce industry. Custom writing services are fee-based.

Market size

The precise size of custom writing services market is unknown, though some rough estimate could be made. The number of competitors in the market approaches nearly 200. It is also known that around 30 percent of organizations in the industry have annual turnover amounting to $120,000 approximately, whereas other 70 percent have almost twice as low annual turnover. Total market size is estimated at $10,800,000 annually. The size of the market in relation to the economy is yet unknown.

Segmentation

Segmentation is the process of allocation of particular homogeneous sub-markets within a heterogeneous market. A market is a multitude of sub-markets that have similar motivations.

In the case with the market concerned, segmentation is interpreted as follows. Companies that operate within the market could be divided in accordance to specialization differences into such categories: (a) generally-oriented companies; (b) particularly-oriented companies. Generally-oriented companies are those that produce custom-written papers on a wide variety of topics. As a rule, such organizations hire writers representing different specialties or simply those able to perform on appropriate level in one or several fields. Companies ascribed to another organizational category usually operate within a narrower framework. In the market there are companies that offer custom-written papers exclusively on math, physics, sociology, the African-Americans, William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, etc.

Other products and services offered by the industry representatives include proofreading and editing services, and pre-written papers.

It is noteworthy that there are companies in the market that offer both custom-written and pre-written papers. This, however, may have nothing to do with violation of ethics, but what about privacy of those students who previously ordered a custom-written paper, which might have been later re-sold to another student?

Growth speed

Growth rates of the market are varying over the time. Thus, in 2000 there were nearly 25-30 companies offering custom-written/pre-written essays, term papers, cases studies, and other types of research papers. Over the 5-year period the number of companies in the market grew up to nearly two hundreds.

The leap in growth rates of the market is noticed to take place in 2003-2004 when sudden change in pricing occurred. The number of companies in the market increased almost 30 percent and now estimates around 80 companies. This leap was probably caused by the tendency towards ecommerce solutions being new to hoards of entrepreneurs in a number of developing countries like India, Ukraine, Poland and other countries. Companies headquartered in these countries began offering similar services but with lower fees as compared to those located in the U.S., Canada, or Australia. More on pricing policies see in Pricing.

Today, market's growth speed is rather low as the market is full-fledged due to a variety of services offered by market participants.

Geographical distribution of services

It is worth mentioning that the researched market is a subdivision of ecommerce industry. This gives ground to conclude that either products or services produced by industry's parties are of intangible character rather than of tangible. This especially concerns custom writing services market, which offers its customers intangible products delivered to them mostly via email.

It should be clear that no matter where a company holds its general/backup office, it operates worldwide.

The only principle that regulates geographical distribution of custom-written papers is linguistic attachment. Among major countries using the service are: the United States of America, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and some European and Asian countries.

Seasonal character of the market

Another aspect of the market is its seasonality. Seasonal character of the examined market is sharply defined. As services offered by the market participants are oriented at student needs throughout the academic year only, the season of active sales almost coincides with the academic year. The first half of September - usually passive - is compensated with several weeks in June.

Such seasonality of the market explains its instability of prices. It was noticed that prices for services increase throughout the year with peaks in December - January and April - May; and drop dramatically during the summer season.

Customers/Clients

Customers of online services such as custom writing services are usually students of high schools, colleges, and Universities, of 16 to 25 years old. As pricing in the market is relatively low, target group of the market covers the so-called middle class and higher. A research shows that in 2005 from 14 percent to 23 percent of students (considering seasonality correction) have in due time applied to custom writing services (IAS, 2005). In other words, one-seventh to one-fourth of students has bought at least one paper during 2004-2005 academic years. The same research provides data that gives ground to conclude about the growth of the market. It is declared that in 2003 peak rate of students who applied to the service at least once was 25 percent, whereas in 2005 it is estimated to reach 36 percent (IAS, 2005).

Customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is obviously a behavior demonstrated by frequent or systematic purchases of a company's product or service. Customer loyalty could be achieved through customer-friendly pricing policies, various discount programs, incentive plans etc. Customer loyalty is also an aspect of a company's customer retention or loyalty programs.

Customer retention programs are usually complex systems that include two or more elements listed above. As regards the market of custom writing services, the following was noticed in the course of the research held by the author: (a) more than 80 percent of the market uses basic techniques in acquiring customer loyalty such as permanently variable prices that depend on demand for the product or service throughout the year, bonus plans (such as bonus key that allows up to 4 percent reduction), and other techniques; and (b) nearly 10 percent of companies within the market use complex customer loyalty programs such as flexible discounts (sometimes up to 30 percent!) in a combination with weekly feedback bonuses, personal selection of a writer, order status check, 24/7 customer care, and other modes of customer attraction.

Factors that influence buyer's choice

Among factors that have impact on customers' choice in the market of custom writing services are price, quality of products and services (including exclusiveness, professionalism, and compliance with the requirements), and delivery time.

As to price and quality of a specific service, these two factors are the most important. It is vital for companies to balance between price and quality values since optimum correlation between these two categories benefits both a service provider and a customer. It is worth mentioning that there are companies that offer papers written by Ph.D.s for "as low as $8.95 per page". Quality of a paper is directly related to its price and vice versa.

In respect of the delivery time, many companies offer urgent order accomplishment within 12 (and sometimes even 8) hours. Some of them limit the volume of an order to certain number of pages, though there are some companies that accept urgent orders without volume limitation.

Pricing

Custom writing services market has been experiencing a decline in prices lately. As it was mentioned earlier in this research, there had been fall in prices in 2003-2004 caused by sudden increase in market's growth rates. By far, average fees are kept at the level of $15 per page for regular (5+ days) orders, $20 per page for urgent (24 to 48h) orders, and $30 a page for extremely urgent orders (within 24h).

There are companies offering custom-written papers half price as compared to average pricing. This fact may indicate that a company either hires instant workers from developing countries or is new to the market and provides such a low pricing policy in order to enter the full market and gain certain status.

Principles of operation

Principles of operation are the same throughout the industry. Intangible nature of products produced by competitors in the market implies single system of relationships between a company and a customer irrespective of an organization's capacities.

Companies that offer custom-written papers (essays, term papers, case studies, literature reviews, executive summaries, dissertations) operate through their websites. Websites are supplied with all necessary and optional features such as credit card processing system (necessary), online customer service (optional), and auto-responder to provide existing customers with automated thank yous and newsletters, and other features.
A customer places an order, which is then forwarded to a writer. This step is omitted in small companies where two or three people wear several hats, e.g. one person could perform as an administrator, a writer, and a customer service representative. If there ARE a couple of writers working for a company, one of them accomplishes an order, which is then delivered to the customer via email.

It is worth noting that major attention is paid to a company's website. It is common for a company producing custom-written papers to have as many webmasters as writers. Hard to believe? In your opinion, what is the correlation between webmasters/programmers and book reviewers working for Amazon.com?

Competitors and leaders

As mentioned above, the number of competitors in the market estimates nearly 200. Leadership in the market where companies offer custom-written papers of any kind is defined exclusively due to a company's website's ranking in various search engines. The most powerful search engines are Google, MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, and Alltheweb. Moreover, websites are ranked in accordance to their content oriented at different key words. Thus, different websites could be leaders in the same search engine, though for different keywords or phrases.

Regulations

Being a subdivision of the ecommerce industry, custom writing services market is regulated by nothing but several codes like BBB Online that refer to web entrepreneurs. In general, ecommerce industry is poorly regulated.

Current trends within the industry and market success factors

Among current trends in the market particularly three aspects are worth mentioning: (a) constant fall in price; (b) constant increase in the number of competitors; and (c) diversification of services offered by companies.
Constant increase in the number of competitors is obviously caused by simplicity of operations and growing number of freelance writers who once decided to start out their own business.

Permanent fall in price is caused by growing number of competitors and similarity of services offered by companies in the market.
Finally, diversification of services is a logic consequence of the same increase in the number of competitors.

Among factors for success in the market the following issues could be mentioned: ...

Writing Articles - 4 Methods to Generate Traffic

There are two main reasons for generating articles. The most popular reason is to generate direct traffic to your website.

To create articles you need to come up with a compelling title, write some good content and include a hard-to-resist free offer. When your readers see this offer they click onto your website and there's your traffic.

If you want to develop a strong business over the internet you should seriously consider writing articles. If you can create quality traffic, you more than likely will succeed in selling your products and developing relationships with your customers. Writing articles is one of the most powerful and cost-effective methods of doing so.

There are four different methods you can use to generate traffic:

#1 - Submit your articles to multiple article directories where your article will be read by members of the directories and by surfers searching the net.

#2 - When other website owners download and publish your articles on their site because they are interested in your content. Your content will then be read by the website owners membership list.

#3 - When publishers who own e-zines download your articles for content within their newsletters.

#4 - And finally, when you have generated and created plenty of back links and the search engines notice your high volume of links to your website, they will increase your website ranking.

If you use all four methods to increase your traffic, you will experience the very highest forms of traffic in terms of quantity and quality.

You see, those are the four main reasons why anyone, any surfer will happen across your article. And when they read your article, they will either like or dislike your style of writing. If they like your style of writing, read to the end of the article and click on to your website, it is more than likely you would have generated a new subscriber. Don't get me wrong. There are other forms of creating traffic, but for me, the others come second.

Other methods such as pay-per-click advertising, classified ads advertising or if you purchase your traffic from expired domains or obtain your traffic from exit traffic, pop-ups, pop-unders or any form of traffic that you have to pay for in advance, these are far less superior to article marketing.

The other additional benefit is that if you learn the nuances of writing and submitting articles, you will be using one of the best forms of marketing over the Internet that will generate quality, loyal and sound traffic.

Writing Articles For Your Business

There is a lot being published lately about the importance of writing articles in relation to Search Engine Optimization.

The reason articles are so important are quite simple if you think about it.

First, you are writing new content on your website, this gives the "spiders" something to crawl and shows your site is an active site.

Second, if you are writing articles that are relevant to your websites purpose, such as; your services or products, then you are supplying the "crawlers" with relevant content, which holds key words and phrases necessary for indexing your site in the rankings of other sites.

Third, people who search the Internet are looking for information. If you articles are well written and informative they will consider your site a resource, thus coming back to it, digging deeper into your pages, gaining trust in your existence, refer you to others.

Forth, when you distribute your articles to the proper article directories, you are able to leave a link back to your site in the ~Author Signature~, this helps to drive traffic to your site, spread your name and build potential customers.

Writing articles is not really that hard to do. Simply take a service or product you have to offer. Write it's title down on a piece of paper. Now think of the major categories that that service or product can be broken into.

Example:

Your business is fixing watches - so your can start by writing your list like this;

1) Fixing Watches

a.) Wind up Watches
b.) Battery operated Watches
c.) Pocket Watches
d.) Water Proof Watches
e.) Antique Watches
f.) Expensive Watches

and so on........

Once you have the major categories listed, break those up into smaller categories, such as other issues, types, brands, eras..... anything you know about them, and don't forget if you don't know something you can always educate yourself by reading other articles and post and then write about different topics that are relevant you your site.

Another demonstration about what I mean;

c.) Water Proof Watches

1.) Fresh water
2.) Salt Water
3.) Water in plastic face covering
4.) How do I know if my watch is water proof?
5.) Can you dry your watch out in a microwave?

and so on.......

You will want to break it up into as many categories as you can think of, it does not matter if there is no different procedure for fixing one category compared to another. The key is to have many different articles for as many separate categories as you can, when an individual searches for a specific item or phrase you want to come up in the relevant search results. Also when you write your articles, have a link to other articles in your content. Like this:

Wind up watches and pocket watches have a lot of the same issues when it comes to fixing internal problems.....

You can link the words Pocket Watches to another article that you have written about Pocket Watches.
This isn't really hard to do. All you do is click on the add link button in your text editor and paste in the URL of the page that your "pocket watches" article is on.

Articles do not have to be long. Infact most people get bored and distracted if it is to long. So stick to the facts of each given subject, a page of valuable information is sufficient.

It takes a little work and time to write the articles and submit them, but it is well worth it in the long run. One of the most important things about having an online presence in relation to your business is using the resources that are available to you, how much effort you put in will be a direct reflection of what you get back

How to Create a Lifetime Customer When you Sell Real Estate

How often have you seen a customer buy from one agency and then a few years later, list with a different agency? I've seen it far too often! I always wonder if the agent did something wrong, or just didn't bother to turn that person into a lifetime customer.

I'll admit, real estate customers aren't known for their loyalty. In fact, if you list a house and it doesn't sell right away, they might take their listing elsewhere even if you've spent hundreds on advertising for them. But there are ways to improve your chances of keeping them. And there are ways to turn satisfied buyers and sellers into "Lifetime customers."

And remember, if your commission averages $10,000 per transaction and people move every 5 years, you stand to gain an extra $30,000 over the next 15 years. Then consider those buyers who like to do rehab. They sometimes buy more than one each year. Add in the friends and family each customer could bring you, and there's only one conclusion: Customers are worth keeping!

How to keep a listing: Stay in touch during the listing period. I can't count how many times I've gotten listings that used to belong to someone else, just because the sellers felt ignored.

So, rule #1 is "Stay in touch, even when it's difficult."

It is difficult to call and speak with the seller when there's been no action, but call anyway. You can tell him or her where you've advertised, how many flyers you've given out to office drop-ins, how many flyers you've mailed to long distance inquiries, etc. Perhaps you took new photos and posted them on your virtual tour. Whatever you've done, let the seller know you did it.

In my office we kept track of all activity and mailed a monthly report, along with copies of each ad we had placed in a newspaper or magazine. In addition, we called mid-month just to stay in touch. This practice was responsible for most listing renewals. The important point is, you must make sure that the seller knows you're doing something regularly to promote the house.

OK, you sold the house. Everyone passed go and collected their money. Now what?

Now you send a thank you letter with a brief questionnaire asking for feedback on your service. It will let you know what you did right - and occasionally you'll hear what you did wrong! Don't be afraid of that. Welcome that kind of feedback because it gives you the opportunity to make a friend out of an unhappy customer. Write back and thank them for letting you know and for helping your career by letting you improve your service.

Next, put those names and addresses in a data base and start staying in touch. Every 2 to 4 months is often enough, unless you know that they have friends or relatives who are about to make a move.

Send a magazine article about their hobby, birthday cards, a postcard with a funny joke, a pretty picture, or perhaps an article about getting the house ready for winter. Anything that will interest them and keep your name in front of them will do.

I wrote a monthly newsletter, and if I was late getting it out customers would call to see why it wasn't there. That was before email became so popular. Now you could do it electronically at zero cost if you write it yourself, and you could add a personal note to really special customers.

You're going for "Top of mind awareness," and you can only get that through regular contact. Your goal is for them to think of you first when anyone mentions needing a Realtor.

That brings me to Rule #2: Stay in Touch!