If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting and enjoy! -- Maria Reyes-McDavis

Sarah, over at SEOMoz has posted an excellent blog with very practical, step-by-step tips to protect your online content from copyright infringement. Your online content is a valuable assets, and in most cases, will determine the value of your real estate online.

Get to reading about how to protect your online content from copyright infringement.

(Click the link silly)

To Your Success,

Maria Reyes-McDavis

The Web Success Diva

Internet Marketing Safe Zone

Popularity: 100% [?]

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Yep.  I know its free.  Sometimes, you don’t always get what you pay for.  Infact, for most online entrepreneurs Google analytics will be beyond the scope of their need… during the formative years.  You know, when you first start out, its all so new — keeping track of traffic?  Are you kidding?  …. Been there.  Done that.

Listen, if your smart — which I’m sure your right up there — you’ll know, that decisions on how you need to do something start with deciding what to do.  In other words, if you don’t have good information backing your online marketing decisions, how the haiti can you come up with what you need to do to achieve your goals.  Better yet.  How would you even know what realistic goals to set, if you were not aware of where you stand online.

In a nutshell, Google Analytics can tell you this and more.  Yep.  It will take time to learn.  Not that much, and its worth it.  Imagine the decisions that can be made when you understand how your visitor travels through your site; to see what pages are creating a huge exit door for your viewers; and so on.  Making smarter decisions can save you time, money, and a lot of grief when marketing online.

So, what is Google Analytics you say.  Its a service, provider by our friend Google.  After sign-up, your given a snippet of code that should be placed on every page of your website, when feasible.  If your running a CMS or blog-based system, I’m 100% certain there is a module/plugin/or code you can use to insert the Google code. 

Once your Google code is installed, the fun can begin.  Google can track when your visitors coming in, all the way through your site, then going out.  You’ll be able to see numbers and graphs of “referring sites” — those that send traffic to your site.   These are my top 4 reasons why, even though we could afford top-shelf tracking, we use Google:

• Most all sites do some level of geo-targeted marketing.  If you’re working with a professional internet marketer, your doing geo-targeted marketing.  Google Analytics provide a map overlay helping in this process.  You may not use this as a novice, or even quick learner — but along the lines you will. 
• Google provides a way to get a very good visual picture of your “funnel” (the path visitors should be taking) and your goals (if you should choose to set them).  By taking a monthly (minimum - we do weekly, sometimes daily) look at these visual presentations - even the most un-techie could start to make better decisions based on this information.
• Pictures baby!  I was always the kid in school who loved picture books.  Google provides every statistic in some form of useful graphical representation.  For those just starting out, instead of getting bogged down by numbers, your able to “see” a picture of your marketing effort results. 
• And likely the most useful tool Google provides includes the “site overlay.”  With this feature, you can visually view your traffic’s behaviors - as detailed as covering every single link on every single page.  Imagine the things you could learn by visually seeing your traffic on your website.

90% of my readers outsource part, if not all, of their internet marketing needs.  So, what’s my point?

I hope you can absolutely trust who your working with , because chances are, your spending way more money than you ever should to get traffic, that probably isn’t converting like it should.  My advice?  At least have basic knowledge of what your paying for.  Understanding how to look at your traffic will help you at the core of your decision making.  Even if you outsource, knowledge is power in internet marketing — saving you time and money.

To Your Success,

Maria Reyes-McDavis

The Web Success Diva

Need help understanding  your traffic?  My eCoach service may be your answer!

Popularity: 26% [?]

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EvanCarMichael.com put together a great list “Top 50 Marketing Blogs to Watch in 2008.”  Great, great list… I’ve one concern:  If you have that much time to read 50 blogs regularly, you can’t possibly be a full-time marketer… Geesh, where do you get that much stinkin’ time?

5 from the list I read regularly:

• SearchEngineLand.com:  Anything related to search engine marketing can be found at this excellent blog.  Very technical, and definately for the savvy.
• SEORoundTable.com:  Again, search engine marketing.   But these guys are great at spotting trends.  Technical and for the savvy.
• Top Rank Blog: Super, duper blog regarding all things SEO and internet marketing.  This can be read by anybody at any level in the online marketing field.
• CopyBlogger:  Copy is serious business online.  Very serious.  If everything else is good, and your copy stinks, its not pretty.  This is a great blog for learning copywriting.  I’m a regular reader.
• ClickNewz.com:  Lynn Terry has been in the game for a while, power to the females :-)  Practical tips and good resources.  Less technical.

To Your Success,

Maria Reyes-McDavis

Web Success Diva 

Popularity: 30% [?]

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… hands down, it’s 1ShoppingCart. 

Yep.  I’m aware they did a terrible job implementing their upgrade.  Yep, again.  I know they just increased their rates. 

I’m still convinced that 1ShoppingCart - for the money and time involved in carts as an online entrepreneur - they are the best pick.  Its just too close to the total package to not give them a serious look, or re-look.

My main reasons?

• They are usually ahead of the curve on technology.  Headed by some brilliant minds, they’ve thought of it to automate online business.  You can even add a membership site package to the deal.  Auto-responders, split-test capabilities, and more.
• Their cart customization options are great.  You don’t have to be stuck with looking like a chop-shop.  Best part, simple HTML and inline CSS, your good to go.
• Great tracking and link tracing capabilities.  You can use many of their features to make better marketing and sales decisions.
• Their email deliverability rates are right up there and if you set up your list right in the first place, making sure to have all the QA steps (within your processes), then you’ve probably got an excellent deliverability rate.  Most people don’t understand, its partly the way an opt-in process is set-up that makes it low quality.

All Diva companies, websites, landing pages, and otherwise utilize the 1ShoppingCart system.  Its just too easy to manage the whole kit-n-kaboodle there.

To Your Success,

Maria Reyes-McDavis

The Web Success Diva

P.S. Affiliate income yes, after using for over 3 years, happily, we can highly recommend with a clear conscience.  ;-)  Just in case you were wondering.

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These are the who’s who of article directories and hubs. Each chosen for searchability, traffic, quality, and PR (Google Page Rank)… all of which are important to achieve the results you are likely looking for…

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Popularity: 51% [?]