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Whoa! An Online Business Just Like A Relationship?

It struck me this week how operating an online business is just like a relationship.

We start out full of enthusiasm and potential for what can be and very quickly we find that what we thought would move us towards out goals just doesn’t seem to be working.

Often times we head off along one path only to find that we reach a “dead end”, and things stall or worse end up moving us away from where we want to be.

So what’s the answer?

Well… just like a relationship  where we go to next is just a matter of choice.

We can throw our hands up and give up in frustration that what we are doing is not working, or you can educate yourself on what will work (based on those that do) if you apply yourself and work with known success formulas.

Online business can be just as fickle, just as frustrating, and just as quirky as a relationship. Knowing and applying what gives the results you want is the key to success, and educating yourself allows you the best opportunity for success.

Of course relationships involve a coming together of personalities, values, and shared common interests and goals, just as operating an online business involves clear goals, sharing information towards a common goal, and creating a distinct personality for your site.

Success is simply a choice. When you fall down you get up. You try something different. You model your business on other successful online businesses. You apply your focus towards what you do want, not what you don’t want.

Get to know how to nurture and grow your business, doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

Attaining loyal customers requires freely giving information which visitors appreciate and assists them. It requires letting your visitors know what you have to offer. It requires being diligent to their needs and wants. It requires delivering - even over delivering to win their heart and affections. It requires offering personalised service making them feel “special”. It requires your focus.

Yes.. operating an online business is just like a relationship. You reap what you sow. For some it comes together quickly. For others it takes some time, and all the while you are mindful that if you don’t keep meeting the needs of the visitor, just like a partner, they can turn away from you and look elsewhere. Worse, their opinion of you can be far reaching and seriously undermine your chances of success.

So the key is to have a critical look at what you are doing with your business to guarantee its success.

  • Are you giving your online business the attention it deserves?
  • Are you mindful of the needs and wants of the visitor you want to attract and keep?
  • Are you maintaining a personal relationship?
  • Are you asking for testimonials and seeking referrals to encourage others to buy based on the good experience of others who already know you?
  • Are you keeping abreast of your competition?
  • Are you keeping up to date with the latest strategies to assist with your success?
  • Are you providing value for money?

Plan for success - “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”

Just like a relationship if you have a plan for your success and diligently apply your plan which moves you towards what you want you will reap the rewards.

Quick Tip - Using Email Signatures

One of the quickest ways to get your website details out is to add an email signature to your outgoing mail.

And it never ceases to amaze me how often it doesn’t happen! This is web real estate just begging to be utilized.

Every time you send an email you are effectively letting your recipient know about your site.

So what makes a good email signature?

Let me show you a good signature:

(your name) Joe Citizen
(your position) Sales Manager
(your webaddress) web: www.yourbusiness.com
(email address) email:joe@yourbusiness.com
(your tagline) Minding Your Business”

Subscribe now to my newsletter with tips, tricks and how to’s on growing your business. To subscribe click here

You can also use your email signature to let everyone know about promotions you are doing at the time. Just change your tag line to something like.. Click here to view my amazing offer where you can save up to 50% off…”

(for instructions on how to add an email signature using Outlook 2003 click here)

Another option is to use Feedburners Headline Animator as part of your email signature. Feedburner’s headline animator offers a rotating headline from your blog.

You can use the headline animator on MySpace, bulletin boards - in fact anywhere you can use html you can use this nifty animator.

From viewing my Feedburner site statistics I have found this is a great way to get people reading your blog.

Do you use an email signature?

Upgrade! Upgrade!! Upgrade!!!

I recently had a problem with hyperlinks not working in a PDF e-book which was written by a client to include in a website I was creating for her (see TravelPlanningChecklist.com)

The software I was using to edit the PDF (Adobe Professional 8) became corrupt, so I deleted it and downloaded another copy. Each time the download would not install without errors, so in frustration I headed off to Google to find a PDF writer. I ended up downloading Cute PDF writer and Voila! The hyperlinks were happening again.

I then sent the PDF to the client and they informed me the hyperlinks wouldn’t work! (head bangs against desk). I asked he to leave it with me and I would investigate (again).

The e-book had been through a number of version edits to reach the final ebook. During the process, both the client and I were sending the PDF backwards and forwards via email. I initially thought this had created the problem. No doubt on some occasions the file edits were done at her work PC, and other times on the home PC.

Sometimes, the obvious is never quite obvious enough, and many hours later, many Google searches later, I had a call from her to say that she could open the PDF on her home PC but not her work PC (cue light-bulb moment).

I immediately knew the problem. Her work PC had not been upgraded to a more current version of Adobe. She was using an earlier version of Adobe which wasn’t compatible with the PDF I had sent her - so the hyperlinks wouldn’t work!.

Which leads me to this morning spending time upgrade this Wordpress blog to the latest version. The upgrade is not a problem to do. If you can read instructions you can upgrade fairy quickly. As I was in “tecchie mode”, I decided to sort out my Blogroll problem.

I have always had a problem with my Blogroll not showing up in the side-bar, and just kept putting off resolving the problem.

Of course my first port of call was Google search which turned up many posts about the problem, but what caught my eye was a link to a Blogroll widget - Better Blogroll Widget for Wordpress, and within minutes my Blogroll problem was sorted out. (I love it when stuff works) :-)

I’m not a coder, so being able to download and install a snippet of code makes me want to give a big shout of ‘thanks” to whoever these people are who create these widgets.

Wordpress plug-ins and widgets I have installed which make life easier when blogging or SEO are:

Anchor Text - How It Can Increase Your SEO

I came across an article today at Webpronews.com which gives a really good information and advice about using anchor text when undertaking a website.

So… What is anchor text? Simply put, anchor text is the visible hyperlinked text on a page.

Here’s a snippet of information from the article to whet your appetite.

Here the words “SEO case studies” and “search engine optimization” are hyper linked to the hidden URLs http://www.seorank.com/seo-casestudies.htm and www.seorank.com respectively. The words within the hyperlink, “SEO case studies” and “search engine optimization“, are called the anchor text.

Anchor text is usually used to indicate the subject matter of the page that it links to.

For example, the text “SEO case studies” indicates to visitors that they can expect to see content about case studies pertaining to SEO if they visit the link. This pattern of usage has been applied in search engine algorithms to enhance the relevance of the “target” or the “landing page” URL for the keywords appearing within the anchor text.

Anchor Text Enhances the Relevance of the Target Page

How to Optimize Anchor Text Within Your Site

Anchor text optimization can be deployed throughout your site to enhance the relevance of most of the web pages based on individual page content. You’ll be surprised, how easy it is to find suitable instances of hyperlinking structures to make use of optimized anchor text.

When linking to internal pages, it is better to use the format:

Read all about Anchor Text Optimization.

Instead of - Read all about Anchor Text Optimization here.

In the example above it shows us that you can leverage the hyperlinking of important keyword phrases instead of hyperlinking unrelated text wherever possible. It’s always a good to idea to restructure your sentences if keywords don’t fit in anchor text.

I highly recommend you read the full article.
Anchor Text Optimization