I noticed a huge spike in traffic recently to this blog and Google Analytics identified all visits as around 2 seconds and all as direct traffic. This immediately made me suspect image hot linking.

For those who haven’t come across hot linking of images, it’s when someone links to an image on your site directly, therefore stealing it. So rather than purchase an image or create an image of their own to use, they trawl through Google Image search of similar, copy the path to an image they like and then use that image on their site. Because the images are hosted, in this case, on my blog…. every time those images get loaded elsewhere they register as a hit on my traffic.

So what can you do?

There are a number of solutions, I am currently trying this one…. and you may very well have got here today because you saw one of these images….

Simply create an .htaccess file or modify your existing .htaccess to include this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?PUT-YOUR-SITE-NAME-HERE\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/nohotlink.jpe [L]/images/nohotlink.jpe [L]

Hi all, over the next few days running into Christmas I’m going to post a number of tips to help tweak your holiday marketing and also carry you into the New year with some great tips and tricks to really step up your Online Marketing.

Let’s kick off with some Google Adwords tips….

When setting up a new Adwords campaign many small businesses tend to stick to text ads where you enter a headline, body text and display URL. These Ads are then shown on Google search results and if specified, syndicated across third party Websites as well.

Image Ads can be created when you select “New Ad”

Text Ads are great, and do work well within Google’s search results but when your Ad appears on a different Website within the network it’s likely to be competing in a block of up to three other Ads.

For example, Four Ads competing…

Versus, one Ad dominating…

Image Ads are a great way to not only reinforce your brand across selected sites outside of Google but also give you an opportunity to “own” that Ad Space without competitor Ads alongside. Image Ads don’t have to be complicated either, as with everything we do it’s wise to test a number of creatives but don’t worry too much if you’re not a professional designer because even a large version of a Text Ad can work wonders.

For example, see this basic Text Ad created…

Now see a 250 x 250 image Ad created which gives the same message but allows me to take over this Ad spot in its entirety.

This Ad was created in Windows Paint!

You may also be suprised by the low cost you can get on these types of Ads depending on your bidding strategy.

Stay tuned this week because I’ll be showing you why most people fail miserably with Image Ads and how you can ensure you get the best return on investment possible…

If your a keen follower of the blog you may have read the ULTIMATE Landing Page series of articles I put together.

Since publishing the articles i’ve had a fair few emails from people asking if I develop landing pages for others and how they can get the landing page template. I have now decided to create a neat service where I will design your very own landing page following all my tips and tricks, host it for you and even setup the autoresponder software which ensures everything is automated.

There’s no gimmicks here like “first 10 get it 50% off” – I’m offering a genuine personal service to work with you to create your very own optimised landing page which you can use to capture leads for your business.

Here’s what you’ll get….

• Your own landing page designed personally by me to fit your business and service/product following all my landing page tips and tricks
• Page and code optimisation for your chosen keywords to improve page relevancy for both PPC and SEO
• Complete auto responder setup and hosting with aweber to allow you to capture a users name and email, store the data and follow up with them with regular emails and promotions, all on autopilot!
• Full hosting on our dedicated servers
• Evaluation of your current online marketing campaigns such as Adsense and tips and tricks on how you can improve them to take advantage of your new Landing Page

The cost….. just $47 per month

If you have a product or service you sell online and would like to generate more leads/sales then I am positive I can help you. The above package is a great starting place for us to work together, if you have any questions before you purchase please email me directly

To get started click subscribe below… (You can cancel at any time)

I had a message left on my office voicemail last week from a smooth talking sales guy who informed me I needed to call him back regarding a “legal matter”. That was all he said apart from quoting his number and company name.

The Voicemail immediately got my back up because I pretty much knew it was a sales tactic to get me to respond and after googling his company I could see he worked for a legal help company who help businesses with various employment  laws in the UK. I obviously didn’t call him back and wouldn’t do business with this company now out of principle. Then this morning I got an invite from the Managing Director inviting me to their legal event, at the end he signs off “P.S. Looking for a good night’s sleep, book now!” – which is ironic considering some people would have already lost sleep worrying that his sales guys had a law suit lined up against them!

I have no idea if this company encourage these kind of sales tactics but they are just another indication at how desperate companies are becoming with their cold calling. The bottom line is cold calling does not fit in with today’s way of business. It interrupts peoples already manic schedules and if you ever actually get through to the decision maker they are already pissed off you’re interrupting their day and unlikely therefore to be interested in what your selling. Cold calling is out of date…. it’s frankly lazy and most people will simply no longer put up with it. Cold calling is reserved now for those companies who are in a rut, they are no longer producing anything remarkable or of massive value and therefore just churn out a thousand calls a day in the vain hope 3 of them might be people who feel bad for hanging up instead of being honest and saying “Stop wasting my fucking time!”

People hate being sold to. If we want something we go online and find it or we ask someone we trust – and what’s more we do this WHEN we want it. Instead of wasting money and effort trying to force people to buy your product, invest it in making something remarkable that people will want to come to you for. Focus on marketing to those already looking for your products, WHEN they are looking….for example pay per click advertising. Then once you have a lead via your Website or word of mouth make that call! Now you have someone who’s listening.

Try comparing 1000 clicks on your Website from targeted Pay per click Ads Vs. 1000 un-targeted cold calls. Weigh up the overheads of a sales person, telephone, seat, desk, coffee consumed! etc and you have a clear winner.

So you rank top for your main keyword in Google? nice, how much business does that generate for you? ….hello?

I speak to new people every day who tell me how they aren’t interested in PPC  and that they have lost money, never had any real success with it and they already rank top for their main keywords. That’s like me saying I’ve purchased a new kitchen and never managed to get the thing constructed properly. The reason is I have ZERO experience with building kitchens and therefore I should be listening to the guys who do it every day and demonstrate great results. Why do some people think Internet Marketing is any different? To run a successful online marketing campaign you need to know what your doing, you need to have made mistakes, tested what works and actually had some success.

Google make it sound all very easy to setup an Adwords campaign and that’s because it IS easy. What is not easy is to actually construct and then optimise a profitable campaign. Anyone can enter a bunch of keywords, write some ads and throw $50 in the budget… it’s making a profit on that $50 which is important.

PPC is a very effective tool for growing your business but you need to either decide your going to research and test your campaigns properly or hire someone who can demonstrate previous success. For all those SEO lovers out there that say PPC is expensive and a waste of time, if they had spent time researching what keywords actually deliver a return on investment first then they wouldn’t be wasting their time telling everyone how they rank number 1 for keywords which haven’t ever delivered any real business to them. Just because a keyword gets a millions searches a month doesn’t mean you will make any money from being top. It’s important to know what traffic delivers a bottom line and focus on that, PPC is perfect for this as you can instantly test a number of keywords and see which work.

Today’s post is aimed at publishers who already operate a Website(s) but want to take their advertising beyond just Adsense or another third pary Ad network and sell their inventory out to individual companies.

Being able to serve your Ad space efficiently is very important not just for your client but also for your bottom line. For example if you run a Website that has traffic from all over the world then you can split your advertising inventory and serve specific Ads to specific audiences / countries. Say you have 2 UK clients, 3 US clients and a client in Australia. Now rather than serve 100% of all your ad impressions to each client you can specify which Ads are shown when certain geographical criteria is met. So now your US client only has their Ads shown to US traffic, and that is extremely valuable especially if the other percentage of traffic is currently being wasted on them due to the fact they only sell within the US.

There are a few different advertising server options but one pretty neat (and free) one is called DFP – Small Business by Google

With DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) you can now negotiate your own advertising deals on your Websites and then serve those Ad impressions with varying control on dates, weight, browsing criteria and geography. So if you have for example 100,000 ad impressions per month available for sale you can allocate 25,000 of those which are UK traffic to a UK advertiser who is specifically interested in UK business. This leaves the rest of your inventory free for other clients.

The system is pretty straight forward to use but if you have any questions just post in the comments.

Everyone loves a SALE, the chance to purchase something cheaper and save money, it’s one of the biggest hooks to making a buying decision so why do some companies not SHOUT enough about them?

Here’s a recent experience I had with a company called vBulletin Solutions who make the popular Forum software vBulletin. I’ve used their software for years and can absolutely recommend it if you need to set-up a community on your Website.

Basically vBulletin have just launched vBulletin mobile, which is a great idea considering how the mobile market is exploding right now. The vBulletin mobile app is designed to allow visitors to your forum who are using a mobile device to browse using an App much like what you would purchase from the iTunes store. Great idea and to introduce the product to their existing customers (Those most likely to adopt and shout about their their products) they offered a 50% discount off the $199 full price.

I remember getting the email a couple of weeks back and spent a few minutes watching the video and already being a fan of their products I had already made a decision in my head to purchase. The fact is I didn’t purchase right at that second because the email had already interrupted me from another task. Like tons of people I made a decision to purchase but delayed the actual purchase until when I had more time to dig our my login details, find my wallet etc etc.

Anyway, fast forward 13 days and I sat down this morning to action this. I visited the site and went to purchase and found that the $99 introductory rate had vanished! I’d had no warning whatsoever, no emails saying “Don’t miss out, offer ends in 24 hours!” etc etc. The introductory offer had simply ended. Why on earth did vBulletin Solutions not tell me? I’m an avid user of their software and love their products and support, I was a done deal, I likely would have purchased the introductory licence then upgraded not just my other licences but also encouraged other admins of large forums I know to do the same. I emailed their support team this morning who informed me the introductory offer was no longer available which of course is their prerogative but I hate to think how many other customers of theirs missed the boat.

I’m not saying I wont at some point upgrade at the full price but it does leave a sour taste in your mouth and it’s human nature that we are always likely to recall our last dealings with a company/person. You can have immaculate service for years and then have one bad experience which can ruin all that hard work.

So if you decide to have a sale then make sure you tell your customers and then make them aware they are about to miss it. Your customers are the most important people to keep in the loop as they will be the ones who help spread the word, Just because someone doesn’t respond to email 1 or 2 doesn’t mean they wont bite on email 3, make it clear how long the sale lasts and then follow through with your deadline so that next time your customers know they need to act.

I’ll be honest I don’t set aside nearly enough time to read books.

I spend most my day online and I read an awful lot of articles but the issue with the Internet is that one minute you’re reading an interesting article the next an email drops in and your attention is diverted. Some of my best ideas and inspiration have come after reading a good book so today I wanted to share a couple that I read and enjoyed and I was hoping you might suggest a couple back! I am looking for books which have inspired you in your own business.

A couple of books I would recommend and managed to read without interuption…. all are available on Amazon or other good book retailers.

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

From the book….While driving through France a few years ago, my family and I were enchanted by the hundreds of storybook cows grazing in lovely pastures right next to the road. For dozens of kilometers, we all gazed out the window, marveling at the beauty. Then, within a few minutes, we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common. Worse than common: It was boring.

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring. A Purple Cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow — the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows — is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.

The 4-hour work week

What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question. Depending on when you ask this
controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:

“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”

He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.

I am currently reading Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin as well which is all about how marketing has changed and how it’s transforming the way business is done today. Very good so far, looking forward to any suggestions in the comments below!

Being able to track Adwords conversions is extremely important in order to run a profitable Adwords campaign but how do you know the conversion numbers are accurate?

Google Adwords has a facility which allows you to track a conversion when someone clicks through from one of you Google Ads. This conversion may be a signup for something or perhaps a sale. The bottom line is it allows you to run a cost per conversion stat on your marketing to ascertain a return on investment. For example, 5 clicks costing $5 each from Google Ads totals a cost of $25 from which I make one conversion at a value of $30 – Profit = $5.

The issue with this conversions statistic though is how accurate is it? The web can still be a particularly unreliable arena when it comes to scripts and cookies. Everyone has different browsers and different security settings and even a small glitch on the numbers could throw out your stats by a fair degree. So if you’re concerned that your Google Adwords conversions might be showing some inaccuracies checkout these possible reasons:

Google Partner Network conversions

Are you running Ads on Google’s partner network? Google Adwords actually only reports conversions for ads shown on Google and only some sites in the Google Network. What this means is not all conversions originating from your campaign across these other sites will get reported. Google do say that your conversion rate, cost-per-conversion and value / click are adjusted to reflect only those sites from which they can track conversions but the bottom line is their is a possible leak here.

30 day tracking

Conversion tracking on Google Adwords only reports conversions that occur within 30 days of a click on one of your Adwords Ads. If a conversion is made after that 30 day window then the conversion will not get reported. Be aware that if you view a certain time period of conversions that have happened Google Adwords will report the date the Ad click happened, not the date the conversion happened. The ‘many-per-click’ column for conversions will show you where a user has completed more than one conversion, different to the (1 per click) or unique conversions statistic.

Don’t like cookies?

Google Adwords does not report conversions for those who have cookies disabled in their browsers. Users may have a number of reasons for blocking cookies and may even selectively block them to prevent Adwords conversion tracking taking place.

Conversions from non-Adwords clicks

If a user is reaching your site from a source other than Adwords this conversion will not display. Conversion tracking for Adwords only works when the source is an Adwords Ad.

If you have any comments of questions just drop me a line below.

In Part 1 we looked at the basic layout of our Landing Page.

In Part 2 we looked at the initial design of our Landing Page.

In Part 3 we worked on The Headline elements of our Landing Page

In Part 4 we worked on The Action area of our Landing Page

Part 5

Today I’d like to touch on optimising the page content for search engines otherwise know as SEO. It’s good practise to always design and code your pages with search engine optimisation in mind to compliment your SEO strategy but with a landing page like this it’s probably more important for PPC traffic.

Many of you will be familar with Google Adwords and may be thinking about creating a campaign for your new landing page. Depending on the competitiveness of your chosen keywords you will pay a certain cost per click or CPC for those Ads. One of the key factors of the CPC you pay is Adwords Quality Score.

Google will assign each of your keywords in your campaign a Quality Score from 1 – 10 and the reason this is important in our Landing Page design and coding is that one of the factors for quality score is Landing Page Relevancy. Google will want to see that the landing page where you are sending someone is of very high relevance to the keyword they have used and the Ad you have served with your offer.

Previously we spoke about keeping a Landing Page concentrated on one particular goal and also on one particular topic. This is important to get a clear message across to your visitor but also helps now with relevancy to your PPC campaign. If I’m promoting a free ebook on “contemporary interior design” I want to keep this landing page focused on those keywords and that exact subject. I’ll then reflect that in my PPC campaign so my keywords and Ad copy mirror the subject of the landing page. If you need to expand then create more than one landing page and then create another Ad Group to cater for it.

The same goes for Facebook Ads, there is a page relevancy factor involved here as well so it’s best to design and code the page correctly from the start.

• Ensure your page title is clear and targeted to your main keyword – i.e. “Contemporary Interior Design”
• Use <h1> tags for you main page title
• Keep the content focused around your main keywords and subject
• Where appropriate name images correctly with keywords in the file name and also use the ALT tag. For example if you have a picture of a room with a contemporary interior then name the image “contemporary-interior-design”

Coding of the page is also important, if you don’t know how to create the page yourself you can easily outsource this. The key is to have someone code the page for you so that all the main content such as headings and text is structured higher up in the page code. You’ll also want to make sure that code is as clean as possible. If you need help with this stay tuned as I’ll have some great resources available to you soon.