A Longaberger home consultant step-by-step approach for search engine results without breaking the bank.

A Longaberger home consultant step-by-step approach for search engine results without breaking the bank.

Old man "Time" is rather unforgiving, and I bet he didn't mention to you that 192 days have passed since the beginning of 2005?

As if racing off for next year's cork popping celebration, 2005 is rapidly marching on, yet for may web entrepreneurs few visitors are marching over to see what's up. Are they marching to a different drummer or is it that your attempts to generate traffic are just not keeping the beat?

Do you sell home furnishings or decor? Home furnishings is the fastest growing category of merchandise selling online. Roper s survey of online adults earlier this year shows that 25% have purchased a home furnishings or decor item online in the past year, up from 17% a year before. (NOP World s Roper Reports 08/2004)

With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get perhaps one "take action" type visitor to your site per week.

If you're asking "How can I achieve his goal?" Maybe a little internet advertising is in order? Seems that's what a lot of successful online marketers are doing. And of all the methods out there, nothing seems to beat pay per click advertising...

Search engine marketing will grow by 33% this year, with growth slowing to 10% annually by 2010, when spending will hit $11.6 billion. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

In the U.S., Canada, UK or most any internet savvy country you'll discover stories and statistics that prove "it can be done". Yes, online sales are happening. Reports are continuing, sales are up, and the drum beats on.

Q1 online sales for 2005 reached nearly $37 billion, representing an 18% year-over-year increase (Source: Forrester). Yet if you dig through your online sales records it's unlikely you've experienced similar growth.

But I'm A Longaberger home consultant, is it a bit different with what I do?

Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your baskets, kitchenwares, home accessories & decor. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, it is not the product or service that hinders a sale, it boils down to traffic, strategy and page presentation. Whether you advertise using Google's AdWords, or do pay-per-click at Overture, Yahoo or MSN search, it's the campaign strategy that's important.

In my last two blog posts we started our series of PPC search engine tips. These tips will unquestionanly help your marketing campaign and hopefully put some of the statistics on your side. Without any further delay, I'll continue with my tips this week.

PPC Tips:

• Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
• Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
• "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

In earlier blog posts you'll find the first and second installment of my PPC tips.

In addition, I've written a many 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for Longaberger interesting or helpful.

To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.


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Longaberger | PPC | pay per click | AdWords | marketing | search | retail statistics | marketing statistics | sales statistics