CPA Bloger

It’s now common knowledge among all agents and brokers with websites that legitimate links help boost your search engine rankings. But getting those links can be a long and tedious process.

And your links have to be legit. Google will actually penalize your page ranking if you’re caught using one of those “link farms” or automated link exchangers.

The good news is that there are easy, cheap and often free ways to build valuable links to your website. Here are 13 tips alone that can get you dozens of links immediately.

1. Sign up for social networking sites
Social networking sites are all the rage today. Beyond the fad, they’re useful tools for staying in touch with friends and relatives. Because their basic membership is free and allow you to provide a description about yourself, they’re ideal candidates for your first links.

You can sign up for over a dozen of these sites in just a couple of hours. Be prepared to provide some information about who you are and what you do. And don’t forget to include the link to your website.

There are literally hundreds of social networking sites available. Wikipedia has a list of the most popular at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites, including the following:

• www.MySpace.com
• www.FaceBook.com
• www.Ning.com
• www.Friendster.com
• www.Hi5.com
• www.MeetUp.com
• www.Orkut.com
• www.Meetin.org

2. Sign up for professional networking sites.
Professional networking sites have proliferated along with social networks. Some are better than others, but most have no charge for their basic membership. The most popular include the following:

• www.LinkedIn.com
• www.Plaxo.com
• www.Xing.com
• www.Yorz.com
• www.Ryze.com
• www.Ecademy.com

3. Join online e-groups.
Before the above social and professional networking sites emerged, the most popular online groups revolved around listservs. The big ones are still around and have evolved into a type of networking site as well. As soon as you can, sign up with the 4 big internet companies that continue to maintain group sites:

• http://Groups.Yahoo.com
• http://Groups.MSN.com
• http://Groups.Google.com
• http://Groups.AOL.com

The great thing about them is that they’re easy to join. Once you sign up, I recommend you join the various insurance groups. But avoid posting spam. If you want to post, make sure it’s something substantial.

But in addition to joining existing groups, start some of your own. You can create multiple groups, and I recommend creating health insurance discussion groups for each of the states and metropolitan areas you serve. Then add customized descriptions with links to your site in each group. When you issue press releases or make announcements, remember to post a blurb, with links to your site, in your different groups.

4. Get listed in online directories
A variety of online directories offer free listing opportunities for businesses. Use a search engine to find local and regional directory lists of insurance providers and general businesses. Some do require that you swap links with them, which isn’t a bad idea - if you can put their link or ad in a link page separate from your home page.

Don’t overlook media-, city-, county- and state-sponsored directories either. Many newspapers and communities operate directory listings for businesses and organizations in their area. Make sure that your website is on those lists.

5. Post a free classified ad
Several sites let businesses post free classified ads. The most well-known is Craig’s List (www.CraigsList.com). Other free classified ad sites include www.BeatYourPrice.com and the eBay-owned www.Kijiji.com.

However, many of these sites will reject your ad if it’s apparent you’re just using them to drive traffic to your site. The solution is to actually sell or give away something, such as a free eBook, informative brochure or no-obligation quote. For example: “For a free eBook detailing the presidential candidates’ platforms on healthcare, go to (yourinsurancewebsite.com)”

6. Update your alumni directory listing
Many alumni directories have started to develop an online community for their alumni. It’s about time! Check your alma mater’s online alumni directory and update your listing to include a link to your broker website - and don’t overlook your high school.

7. Join cultural, arts and volunteer organizations
Most volunteer organizations now have websites or e-groups. If you’re already volunteering, see if you’re able to add your business listing to their member pages.

If you’re not involved with any group, consider volunteering for a worthwhile cause, church group or community project. Volunteering provides an even greater value than just links.

8. Get accredited with the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
In addition to adding your business to their directory, joining and getting accredited by the BBB gives you a marketing tool. You’ll be able to mention that fact on your website. It’s not going to necessarily sell your programs, but that connection will help alleviate many people’s worries about your company.

9. Join a civic or professional organization
You’re probably already in at least one insurance industry group, and most professional organizations already maintain listings of their members. Make sure your website is included.

In addition, don’t forget about civic organizations such as the Rotary International, Kiwanis and Lions Club. All of these clubs do charge membership dues, but the networking and volunteer opportunities are sometimes worth it.

10. Chamber of commerce.
Even if you’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s still at least one chamber of commerce you can join. If you live in larger communities, you may be able to join two or three chambers: your city’s, your state’s and perhaps even your local neighborhood’s chamber. In addition, certain ethnic groups also have their own chambers of commerce.

Yes, a membership fee is involved, but that fee provides more than just a link.

11. Trade links and articles with new contacts
After a few months with a chamber of commerce and a civic, professional or volunteer organization, you’ll soon be making contacts with fellow professionals and entrepreneurs.

Although they may not buy anything from you, they can still assist your marketing by swapping links or articles with you. Don’t forget that in addition to their website, they can link to you from their blogs, e-groups and online networking pages.

12. Get something back from your suppliers.
Most of your vendors and suppliers already have web pages. They also value your business. Why not ask all of them to add your link to their company websites, as well their rep’s networking pages?

It doesn’t cost them anything, but it improves their standing in your eyes. To sweeten the request, consider giving them a positive testimonial about your experience with their company.

13. Get on your clients’ websites and pages.
Just as your vendors have websites, most of your clients also have websites and personal pages on many of the networking sites. Make it a routine part of your post-closing process to ask your clients to swap links. This will be especially attractive to entrepreneurs who have websites.

You can also ask past clients for links, but make sure that they’re satisfied and trustworthy clients. If your link from their webpage is accompanied by a complaint about your service or product, that complaint could attach itself to your link.

More Next Month
These 13 tips should keep you busy for a while. But don’t delay in implementing them, because we’ve got 14 more free and inexpensive ways to establish more links to your site coming in next month’s newsletter.

Stay tuned…

written by admin

Creating a web-based survey
Unless you know HTML, online surveys can be tough to create. So, why not use an inexpensive online survey provider? They’re cheap, fast, and if you know how to type, you can do an online survey.

But even with survey providers, you still need to design the questionnaire. Here are a few tips:

1. Start with your audience. Who’s your target audience? Who are you trying to reach with the survey? For example, if you are targeting single men in their 40s, you need to tailor the survey toward their needs and situation.

   Which of your products should they be considering? What kind of info do you need to improve your sales to them? Are you looking to boost HSA sales or LTC products?

2. Structure. Everyone gets turned off by long questionnaires. So keep it short and simple, something that can be completed in other five minutes. No more than 10 questions total! You can have open-ended questions, but the majority of the questions should be yes/no or rating the importance of issues.
3. Privacy and purpose. Tell people at the beginning of the survey what it’s for-such as to improve your product offering, educational material or service. You should also restate your privacy policy, to assure them you won’t be sharing their identities or contact information.

   For example: “To better serve our clients’ needs, we’re taking a quick survey of (your county’s or region’s) concerns about health insurance. Please take a moment to complete this brief questionnaire. Per our privacy policy, your contact data and information will not be shared with any other parties without your written permission.”

4. Question objectives. Before writing questions, it helps to establish your survey’s objectives. Are you looking to sell more life insurance to your target audience? Your survey is not just a practice in doing a survey. It’s to further your marketing goals.
5. Specific questions. Once you know where you want the survey to go, your questions will be easier to design. For example, if you’re trying to sell more life insurance policies to single men in their 40s, have the questionnaire filter for men in their 40s-who don’t have life insurance.

   Here are a few questions you could ask them to get them thinking about your products:

   • Do you have life insurance?
   • What kind of life insurance products have you considered?
   • Have you heard of ‘HSA’ plans?
   • Are you insurance costs less than $XXX per month?

Surveys plant the seed for the sale, turning prospects into closings
Just getting your target audience to consider your product or service is big, because you’ve gotten them to start the basic sales process.

You’ve planted the seed in their minds for an eventual sale. Now you have to make sure someone else doesn’t reap what you sowed.

Review your data to get a better understanding of your prospects. Figure out what you need to do to get them from just thinking about it to actually closing a sale.

Do they just need to be asked a few more times? Schedule calls, emails and invitations in your calendar.

Do they need more information? Send it to them, or perhaps schedule and invite them to an information seminar.

Finally, to increase the response (and conversion) rate, you should add a bonus or reward to the survey request. For example, consider raffling off gift certificates to a local restaurant for two or three of the people who complete the questionnaire.

Long-term application
Finally, surveys should be part of your long-term marketing campaign. Schedule a survey at least once a year, if not each quarter. It’s an inexpensive way to stay on top of your prospects-and mine your mailing list for additional sales.

written by admin

Holiday Greetings
Savvy marketers and entrepreneurs all know any holiday is a good excuse to touch base with past clients and prospects. For most it is an excuse to send out advertising.

But why stop at just one (especially if you use the Internet)?

Maximize the advertising potential of holiday missives by planning a holiday campaign that includes Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day and weekly emails after Thanksgiving.

E-cards and online newsletters cost almost nothing, but you should still send out a physical holiday card. Taking the time to send a traditional card, preferably with a handwritten note and signature, means something in an impersonal world.

New Trends on Political Correctness
Political correctness is the accepted business standard today, especially during the holiday season when various faiths and traditions converge.

However, sending a Christmas card to someone who celebrates Christmas and a Hanukkah message to someone who celebrates Hanukkah can be an effective personal touch.

Be careful though: you may end up insulting your clients if you rely on mistaken assumptions about their faith or traditions. Before you send out a personalized, tradition-specific message, take the time to confirm the recipient actually celebrates that holiday.

Also, be careful not to debase the holidays with cheap sales-driven gimmicks. Many people do take their traditions seriously. If they perceive your correspondence as an attempt to exploit their tradition, your marketing will backfire.

Taking Advantage of Down Times

A drop-off in business is natural for many insurance agents. That’s still no excuse to take a five-week holiday vacation.

In such cases, your holiday marketing plan will have two complementary goals: to minimize the drop off in sales during the holidays and to increase the spike-up when the New Year begins.

To maximize your sales, try to build a sense of urgency in your October and November correspondences. Remind consumers how busy the holidays are going to be and encourage them with early offers to obtain or upgrade their insurance coverage right away.

For example, you could give them a “Pre-Holiday Health Insurance Check Up.”

The New Year is a time for resolutions and new goals, which carry their own sense of urgency. Assist potential clients in launching their new year on the right foot by quickly checking off their insurance needs from their list of things to do. Your New Year’s mailings should go out immediately after Christmas, so it doesn’t get lost in the traffic.

Don’t Forget to Breathe

Finally, having a holiday season marketing campaign doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take time off to celebrate it yourself. For many busy agents, the last week of the year may be the only time they can take time off, take a breath and prepare for another busy year.

Spending time with one’s family has become a holiday advertising platitude for many, but it still has meaning and urgency in our increasingly hyper-productive world.

written by admin

written by John Chow

Some may recall my posted titled Google AdSense A Waste Of Time For Bloggers. In that post, I questioned Jim Kukral’s comment that low traffic blogs can’t make money with Google AdSense. Recently Jim used my November blog income for a post to show he way over estimated what a blog at my traffic level should made.

According to Jim, a blog that receives 5000+ visitors per day should make anywhere from $100 to $500 per day. I don’t know where Jim came up with this estimate but that works out to an eCPM of $20 to $100. The number of sites that can command that kind of rate can be counted on one hand. The only one that comes to mind would be WSJ.com. Jim comes back down to Earth when estimating AdSense for lower traffic blogs. He puts the estimate at $1 eCPM, which any blogger should be able to beat with a bit tweaking.

The point of this post isn’t to call out or down Jim in anyways. His post got me doing a lot of thinking into what really is the best money maker for a low traffic blog. Jim is the founder of BlogKits, an ad network created to monetize low traffic blogs. Jim is convinced that his system will out perform Google, but he has not posted any real world results yet. If anyone is running BlogKit, I would love to know how well it’s doing for you.

In my search for finding the biggest money maker for low traffic blogs, I talked to a bunch of fellow bloggers on my AIM and MSN list – most have blogs with traffic ranging from less than 100 to about 1000 page views per day. As expected, everyone runs Google AdSense and many have experimented with other advertising networks and affiliate programs.

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written by admin \\ tags: , advertiser, PayPerPost, traffic blogs

The online media merger and acquisition frenzy may gain more velocity, with an imminent Microsoft acquisition of 24/7 Real Media the buzz of investing and marketing blogs.

That would follow last week’s Yahoo-RightMedia deal and the Google-DoubleClick announcement a couple weeks earlier.

We must start thinking about the implications of the RightMedia merger on search marketers, who increasingly see auction-based keyword/concept-targeted media as “search,” including contextual and behaviorally targeted advertising.

Many in the industry were surprised the RightMedia deal happened so quickly, before the planned synergies had been fully tested and exploited. Clearly, the early working relationship and performance to date convinced Yahoo that waiting would only result in a higher price tag. Perhaps the recent Google-DoubleClick deal also spurred the agreement.

Now everyone, particularly Wall Street, is asking: having lost the DoubleClick deal, does Microsoft have to buy an ad network or a company that includes an ad network, such as 24/7 or ValueClick?

Microsoft doesn’t need to acquire a network — unless it wants speed of growth more than control. Of course, plenty of cash and impatience are sufficient reasons for Microsoft to pull the trigger.

The Yahoo-RightMedia Integration

Yahoo’s integration of RightMedia should allow us to take advantage of RightMedia’s Direct Media Exchange, which allows agencies to tap publishers and networks in an auction model. The auction currently runs on a dynamic CPM (DCPM) basis, which my media team describes as similar to the max bid concept in PPC (define) search.

Many marketers still set target CPCs (or even CPAs (define)) within the system, which will attempt to hit those targets as it learns what kind of inventory works for you. Since most of you won’t open a RightMedia account but wait until something shows up in the Yahoo Direct Traffic Center (DTC), how might Yahoo take advantage of the inventory while retaining the CPC-based pricing search marketers know and love?

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written by admin