Here’s a little secret your own competitors might use against you and even if they aren’t there’s no reason why you can’t do it against them.

Basically you are opening up your competitor’s source code and using it to help you.

I use FireFox so the instructions are open up FireFox go to View, then Page Source.

For Internet Explorer it’s View, then Source.

The reason we’re opening up their source code is because there are important factors for each page for example the title, description and somewhat the metatags.

Since most of the content you can view on the page;  these are the three things you should be focusing on.  Personally I like looking at metatags and harvesting keywords off of them.  Of course viewing the title and description will also help you form ideas for your own.

The major search engines don’t put a big focus or even any focus on the metatags, but sites that are ranking usually use some or most of the keywords in these tags.  If you copy them and include them in your current SEO strategy it will help you rank for more keywords and for their keywords.

Sorry for the long delay in between posts.  I’ve been insanely busy lately, which of course means business is booming.  Which brings me to the point of this post.  How can you make your business boom?

It’s easy look for clients in places you don’t normally look and of course SEO (search engine optimization) helps out a ton.

Business wasn’t exactly slow a few months ago, but I decided to try different tactics in my spare time to drum up added business.  I’m a workaholic so working 16 hours a day doesn’t bother me (as long as it’s not manual labor), but I can’t work 16 hours a day because I do have a family.  The first step I took was figure out a way to turn every day into a 16 hour day without doing 16 hours a day of work.

So I looked around and found tons of unpoached leads and generated several of my own leads (through SEO), a long story short I got myself up to 16 hour days by getting new clients, but my family was almost being neglected, so I decided to have two of me.  In the last month or two, I’ve hired three people.  Two of them I let go because their performance wasn’t up to par with the way I work.  I’m left with one (who’s doing an excellent job), but it’s really making me much more efficient and now there’s more working hours available in the day.  I’ll probably hire someone else because I think having two people help me would be even better and I probably do need two people because I’m creeping back up to those 16 hour work days (and have had several in the last week).

The point of that whole statement was I found leads in unlikely sources, I converted the leads, I hired more help which motivates me to generate even more business (because now more can get accomplished), and I’m going to expand again in the near future because I don’t want to start a waiting list and lose out on customers.  Don’t stop trying to generate leads.  The minute you stop new clients might stop showing up.  Word of mouth can get you tons of clients, but even that can be tapped depending on your business.

I know you’re probably waiting for the unlikely lead source.  Sorry that’s not included here (or for sale).  Look back on some of my posts and you’ll find several ways of creating leads, that work.

SEO won’t let you down no matter how you look at it, SEO being your first form of attack will get you noticed no matter what business it is you do.  There are so many people searching online that the yellow pages…dare I say…is just about obsolete.  I read recently that some companies are planning on doing away with local yellow pages unless you request them.  Online is the place to be.  If you don’t have a website you better get one designed and created now.  I don’t care if you’re a carpenter in Howell or a dentist in Toms River get yourself online now.

Sometimes you need to work harder and then smarter.

Some people think long sales letters and hype pages are the best way to get sales and convert visitors.  While it can be true and it can help, the arguably most important part of your page are bullet points.

I skip through long sales pages and I know a lot of others that do this and go straight to the bullet points after reading a little bit from the first couple of paragraphs.  I don’t have time to spend an hour reading a page.

Bullet points are bold, easy to distinguish from the rest of the content and should have the most important and relevant information in them.

If you aren’t using bullet points in your sales copy you better start now.  Sales pages aren’t one size fits all.  For some demographics they’ll want a long sales letter, others a short sales letter, others prefer video.  The good thing is you can create your page however you want, but don’t forget those bullet points.  Even if someone decides to skip your sales letter or video they will know the main benefits of your product.  If they see a compelling reason within your bullet points they might just read the rest of the page or order.

Don’t skimp on the bullet points and make sure the top reasons to purchase your product are in there.

I just found a great offer for free business cards.

You don’t even need to pay shipping like with VistaPrint.  The only bad thing is it says Printed for Free on the back.  These are good as backup cards if you run out of good business cards or really as business cards in general.  I’m ordering.  Free is always a good price.  I figure free emergency cards can’t be beat.

Did you know that your site’s navigation can also play a role in search engine optimization for your site?  The search engines look for keywords and keyword rich URLs are given added weight in your rankings.

You sell wicker lawn chairs and your page navigation looks like this:

Home

Products

Etc….

Where it says Home you can rename it to Wicker Lawn Chairs Home Page.  Where it says Products a way to get a little more bang for your search engine buck, would be to rename it to Wicker Lawn Chair Products.   Of course this is a simplified example and you should do it to all or most of your URLs as you see appropriate.

The navigation text we are adding is technically called anchor text.  You want your anchor text to have the keywords you’re trying to rank for.  This helps the search engines figure out what’s on your pages, which in turn boosts your rankings a bit.  Anchor text is not only important with on site SEO, but it is also important for off site SEO.