Search Engine Marketing Spot

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As you all know there are thousands of website themes to choose from on the internet. It is impossible to use a free theme that will not be used by someone else. In the past few years Wordpress themes have become the popular choice by many people, many of those people do not have the technical ability to alter there themes. By not altering the themes, you will end up with exact duplicate layouts for many different websites. You could create your own site layout yourself or hire to have it done. That will not ensure though that your site will be one of a kind. People see your site and like the look of it, they will just duplicate your site layout to use for there own. All of the image names, alt tags (if there even are any), all the way down to the CSS will be the same. Some people may alter the header image, color scheme or navigation, but that is about it. The rest of the code stays the same through out the website.

So now you might be thinking this could cause a problem to your search engine marketing that you have been working so hard on. Well you do not have to worry, having duplicate layouts will not have any effect on your search engine rankings. It all comes down the content you provide in your layout that makes the difference. The search engines know that free layouts and custom layouts are used by many people and duplicated by just as many. That is why you hear everywhere that content makes the big difference, not only for the search engines, but for your viewers as well. There are many other factors that go into how your website gets ranked, page titles, proper link structure, incoming and outgoing links are just to name a few.

The only time you have to worry about duplicate layouts becoming a problem is if you are hosting them all on the same IP address and linking them all together. The search engines will see this pattern and consider this a link farm and penalize you. You can try and stretch the websites out on several different IP addresses, but this will not help you in the end if they are all still linked together. The image above represents your hosting IP address and how many sites are all hosted on that IP. The blue lines indicate the sites are all linked together which is what you do not want to do. If you had twenty websites all linked together then the search engines will consider it a link farm. Even if each of the sites have a separate layout, since they are all linked together a penalty can be given to your sites. The red lines simply indicate the websites pointing all to the same IP address.

Penalties will occur if:

1. Duplicate website content is used
2. Scraping content from other websites or RSS feeds
3. Linking all of your websites together
4. Linking out to unrelated sites
5. Keyword stuffing your content, alt tags, description, title, etc.
6. Participating heavily in a link exchange program
7. Getting to many backlinks in a short amount of time

If you do not have the technical ability to alter any free theme you have found, do not worry about getting a penalty for having the same exact look as another website. Just make sure the content you use is your own, and make it the best you possibly can. There are some people that are new to marketing a website on the internet and have read about duplicate content penalties and feel that it also applies to the layout of there site. Do not worry about your site layout being the same as another site. Make your content worth reading and build up your one way backlinks to help improve your search engine rankings. There are several other factors in helping increase your rankings, but we can discuss this another day.

This article was originally written on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog

I was browsing through some a client’s competitor’s websites and one of them utilized an exit popup window. This window was not your typical popup window, it activates once you move your mouse over the X or back button of your browser. I had never seen this done before, so I had to find out how they made that window. Looking at the source code on the site it was all encrypted so there was no simple copy and paste to use on another site. Encrypted is not the proper term, however I am drawing a blank at the moment on the name for this. You cannot encrypt JavaScript, html, or css, there is a term for this but I cannot remember off the top of my head. Anyhow the example code looked something like this:

<!– ExitGrabber.com Code Begins –>
<script>s=unescape(’%3CRVZH%40%26sqyo6.ykwd%3Eq%60g7%28%1A%127%7
EshprhIOFLS%5E%2B-XFYBXDAA%0A%11SQGZZBL%5C%0166_QM%24%240ydw6%3F
h%3A%25%27%25%29n-%3C018oX%5C%211%2A39517%2B%19%5BB%0Bieffj%3E%0
B%0Djhi%60k%7Faz%7Eu%3Fp%7Byye%229msui%7B%24-%2B_..%28%2C%09L%5B
KL%01EOAT%5DWH9%3FFV%5C%5DSU%5B%07%1E%0E09yNN1%23%3F%3Cd%23%25%2
8%28%20%3Bjqa%23%2Cn%5B%5D%3E64%2Ff%7D%3C0%0C%05BR4qz%23Ewofd2%0
7%01nlmdwc%7Dfzq%3Btwuui%26%3D%3D%5Ca%11%12%13%14%1E%2B-KFFD%5E%
17%0EXXXFV%0F8%3CTMKITN%07%1ER%2F7%27xIO%291-%3B%2C%27%23%3Ato88
671%3BmZR.3%3F%285d%7F%01%14%16%0C%3B%0C%08%7E%09%0F%0B%0D%26mxj
k%20fn%7Eu%7Ev4%3Brey%7E7xssjmOMQX%29%2FVH%5B%40%5EBCC%14%0FQSA%
5CX%40BR%0340IUZVKzas3%3C%7EKM%3C%26%3Aql%7F%3E7k%5CX0%21%27%258
%2Acz3%3D3%3Admk%01%16rrmq%3E%25vhag%7En%7E6%03%05m%1C%18%1E%1E%
18%1C9%7Ck%7B%7C1%7EqqTDLWEWCFS%24%20IC_JJB%1CF%5CD%0F%16%06HA%1
AHSQW%5B%60%230%2C3%2B%7DJB%2B%2B%28%27%2A%3C%20%25%3F6%7E7%3…

So after decrypting the above code I was able to find the true source to that exit window. The code itself is around 375 lines so I did not want to put it directly into the post, rather keep it clean and add it to an external text file for you to copy and paste from. You may download the text file here.You can edit the CSS to change the color of the window bar, around line 374 is where you will change the page title, height, width and link to your exit window. You can adjust the timer if you like; however this timer seems to only have the window open up one time for the user. Here is a screenshot of the window.

This gets by pop up blockers and would work great for any landing page you are using. It gives the viewer a second chance to change there mind and purchase what you are selling or fill out an information form to collect there data. I would only use this for landing pages and not on any main site. I personally hate seeing exit windows when trying to leave a site. With a landing page, most people will only go there one time to see what you have to offer. An exit window like this can help increase your conversion rate immensely. If you can remember the proper term in “decrypting” the above code please let me know as it is driving me crazy!

This article was originally written on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog

Whether you are just starting out with search engine marketing or you have been involved with it for years, you need to realize that not everything you read is true. Separating truth from speculation is something that will take time, your own testing, plenty of reading and getting to know other people in the industry. Just because you read something on a forum or a blog, does not mean it is always true. Some people do not look much further past what they have read. Instead they start making changes to there site or marketing campaign based on a single discussion in hopes of it working. Later to find out that it did more harm then good for them. Before making any major changes, participate in the discussion to ask further questions. You need to fully understand what the topic is at hand, realize the good and bad from it. Try and dissect the theory behind what is being talked about before trying to utilize it for your self. By doing this you will not only have a better understanding of what it is you are trying to do, you will be educating yourself further on the subject for future reference. By referencing back to it in the future, you can then start to come up with your own ideas for your marketing efforts.

Realize that in many cases what you read is not the entire story; it is nothing more then a bit of information to start with. Some parts could have been left out on purpose in an effort for that person to have there 15 minutes of fame. What they left out though was probably what makes the technique effective. In some cases what you read is a flat out lie in an effort to deceive people into thinking it really works. It sucks to have to read that last sentence, but it is true. Some search engine marketers will say whatever they think sounds good to throw other people off and even harm there rankings. That is why it is important to follow up more before implementing it to your website.

After spending a good amount of time at your favorite forums, you should be able to tell the good people from the ones that are full of crap. These are the people that you can, for the most part, trust in what they say. Get in contact with them, introduce yourself, and even try and help them out if you can. If you scratch there back, they will scratch yours. The search engine marketing industry does have some really helpful people in it; you just have to find them.

Here is a short list of people and there websites that I trust on what they say. This list could be much longer, but I am just going with a quick 15 to start. Some on the list are household names in the search industry. Even though I have never met them, what I have read by them along with there reputation is why they are on the list. You can read them on your own and discover other marketing methods that can help you.

Danny Sullivan
Barry Swartz
Andy Beard
Sebastian
Jill Whalen
Marty Weintraub (AimClear)
Jaan Kanellis (Incrediblehelp)
Michael Gray (Graywolf)
Rand Fishkin
Bill Slawski
Donna Fontenot (Dazzlin Donna)
Tamar Weinberg
Aaron Wall
Ruck
Lisa Barone

One thing you have to realize is there are circle’s of friends in this industry that help each other out. In these circle’s there are techniques that each of them use that they hardly tell anyone. In the end improving your SERP’s is a competition, so if you have found something that is really helping out, chances are you are not going to share it right away.

I hope you come to understand the difference between truth and speculation in this industry. You will find the truth by exploring, researching, and participating more on what it is you have read. You then can determine if the technique is worth the time and effort and how it COULD help or hurt you.

This can be compared to a drag race, where what you have read tells you how to run a 9 second ¼ mile time. “Just increase the boost of your turbo, increase the fuel flow and use nitrous”. Ok great, you just increased the boost to 22lbs. (22 was a good number to use I guess since I didn’t bother to research what effect it has), increased the fuel flow by over ½ and I will use nitrous right at the start and not let off until I reach the finish line in 9 seconds. After reading about it for the first time, implementing into your car you head down to the track. Your up next and start to shake in anticipation…will what I read really work for me…I can’t wait! The light turns greet, you drop the clutch and hit stage 1 of your nitrous and your…oh shit……BOOOOOMMMMM! You then realize that your fuel management system was turned up to high, thus flooding the car at the start and by hitting the nitrous you just shot your pistons out the side of your fender.

See what can happen when you speculate on something that was supposed to work. I guess next time you might look a little deeper into the source of your information.

The image you use is just as important as the rest of the text layout and color scheme. In today’s advertising world, we are all aware of the fact that sex sells. You see the TV commercials, billboard ads, magazine ads, even ads that are on the side of a bus that showcase a beautiful model. Oh yea, I almost forgot along with that model there is some product or service that someone is trying to sell. The same concept applies to online marketing, people take a beautiful woman and showcase them on there landing page in hopes that it will help the viewer convert. That is not always the case, and I am afraid that people end up changing there text and colors around more then they might have to on there landing pages in hopes to have it convert better. I bet you have never thought about changing your image though now have you?

Here we have two images of the same person, the only difference is the direction she is looking. With the first image she is making eye contact with the viewer, and in the second image she has here eyes focused to the viewer’s right. Many people make the mistake of using faces that are looking straight at the viewer, as to make eye contact with them and hopefully hold there attention. Problem with that is the image is not the one that needs all the attention, your contact form, special offer, the product itself should be getting the attention in the effort to convert the viewer.

The better image to use is the second, for the eyes are focusing on the viewers right side. It is human habit to focus on the eyes and then direct your attention in that same direction. The problem with the first image is her eyes are focused right back at yours because she is staring directly at you. With the eyes looking to the right, you are able to put what you are trying to sell or your capture form since in most cases the viewer’s eyes will be diverted in that direction. Remember using a pretty face is a nice touch, just make sure that the face is focusing the attention on what you are trying to sell. By having the face focus right back at the viewer, you are taking away the viewers habit to look in the same direction that the face is. So next time you are wondering what changes you can make on your landing page or creative, look at what type of image you are using.

 

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

 

 

 

 

When you hear someone say website advertising or website marketing, do you think it means the same thing? In today’s fast paced society many people believe they mean the same thing, or they get the two mixed up. There is a big difference between the two, and I am here to try and break it down for you.

Website advertising is building your brand recognition and showing the general public what services or products you are offing. There are many forms of advertising your website, such include PPC, banner placement, text links (yes I did just say it), article writing, pod casting, targeted email campaigns. All of these are nothing more the different methods used to advertise a website. Website advertising is just a small piece to the big puzzle, many just seem to overlook it.

Website marketing is the strategic planning you do in an effort to help your website grow. Website marketing is the big puzzle, if you can put it together properly then you have a chance at succeeding with your website. However theirs no guarantee that a marketing plan will be successful even though you have taken all of the right steps in putting the puzzle together. So what is website marketing then?

Concepts – Here you will come up with and think about all possible concepts that you would like to use when advertising your website.

Research – Research is a very important step to take in your marketing strategy, you need to research your competition and see what they are doing. What keywords are they targeting, what websites have linked back to them, what anchor text are they using, what is the dominant catch phrases they are using in there online advertisements, etc. You do this not to copy them, but to see what is working for them and just better your efforts. You will then want to research and try to find other keywords that you can use as well, there could be highly searched keywords in your niche that your competition has not found yet. That will be a good ticket to punch in, finding those other highly searched keywords that have little to no competition. You will also want to take a look at Google or Yahoo and see what those keywords are going to cost you per click so you can factor that into your budget. The same thing goes for buying banner space, you will want to look for the sites you want to advertise on and see how much they charge and what size banner you get. Even a small 125×125 banner can cost a good amount of money on some high traffic websites. Do not try and rush through your research, you do not want to overlook something that could have propelled your website to the top.

Planning – Planning your website marketing is almost as crucial as the research you do beforehand. Here you will need to determine what roads you want to take your website down. Are you going to be heavily involved in PPC campaigns? Plan on buying up a lot of banner space on high traffic websites? Maybe you will want to write some good articles for your website in hopes that the social media craze will come and blow up your website. In some cases making the front page of Digg has taken some website offline due to poor hosting. A big factor in determine what you will be doing is your budget. Can you afford a highly target PPC campaign or buying banner space on high traffic sites? This goes back to the research you did before, you should know how much your keywords and banner ads will cost you. Now just take those figures and divvy them up among the direction you want to take your marketing campaign.

Design – Designing the right material (banner ads, PPC ads, email ads mainly) is very important for your marketing campaign to succeed. If your ads look and sound like crap, well then there is a good chance your marketing campaign will end up that way. You always want to design multiple ads no matter what. With multiple banner ads, you can then go over each design with your team, family or friends to see what everyone else’s opinion is and which would be the best to use. The same thing goes for your PPC ads because you have very little room to make a big impact on the person reading them. With PPC though, you have more room to test them and see which ones are converting better for you. They can be changed almost instantly with little effort, unlike banner ads or an email campaign.

Testing – Testing is pretty straight forward, here you test out your designs to see which ones you want to invest fully with.

Advertise – There is that other word, advertise. When you have finalized your designs and they have passed your quality tests you then begin advertising your website. If you chose PPC, banner ads and a dozen text links, then you are using three forms of advertising in your marketing campaign. This is the second to last step and the one where you go for it and see if your marketing strategies will pay off.

Research – Research again? Yes you do some more research again, this time though you need to find out what forms of advertising you used that paid off the best for you. This is where you will take a look at your website analytics or your PPC campaign to see where the traffic and conversions were coming from. After you have taken this data, you can go back and design any new ads that you see fit.

In the end, I want you to understand that website marketing is the strategic planning that you do for long term results. Website advertising is nothing more then a small piece of your planning and is really the “action phase”. When you advertise your website, you are putting forth the actions you designed and to implement in your marketing strategy.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

Not everyone has the ability to design a great site, they just know how to effectively market it.  So a designer is hired to make there site for them and of course hopefully take the burden away as well.  How your site is designed is a very important factor when launching your SEM campaign.  I understand that some designers have no idea about optimizing a website with proper marketing strategies in mind.  To some, they simply made a site and expect the owner to advertise with PPC or simple word of mouth.  They do not grasp the concept of proper optimization techniques that go into marketing a website online.  There is more then just simply optimizing your website for the search engines.  You need to optimize your layout for the viewer, optimize your content for both the viewer (more important) and the search engines, optimize your pictures, how they are used.  I will have a guest post on Monday over at PoorSEM in regards to optimizing your images for your marketing campaign.

Yesterday my daughter came home sick from school, so she was in my office most of the day with me and wanted to help me work.  She wanted to make her own website, have her favorite Hannah Montana song playing, she wanted the buttons to bounce around and wanted to make her own video to put on her site.  I love it when she tries to help me, it not only makes her think creatively, it also makes me think as well.  This time though it got me thinking of some of the worst things you can do that will crush your marketing efforts and my 7 year old just listed 3 of them for me.

Using Frames – If you use frames to design your website around then you have just killed any real chances at having a successful SEM campaign.  This technique was popular 10 years ago, so please leave this technique in the past and move on to a more up to date design method.

Resizing the Browser – It is very annoying when visit a site then all of a sudden your browser gets resized.  You are running a campaign for your new landing page to generate leads for whatever.  When the viewer clicks on a link to your site, there browser is resized on the fly.  Yea I just closed my browser to…People do not like drastic changes like that, they did not ask to have there browser resized to fit your poorly designed layout.

Flash Intro’s - Using a flash 20%….. introduction that 40%…..makes the user wait 60%……to view your……80%……website and 90% then they have 95% to wait again to watch it.  100% Why have a flash intro that makes the user have to wait that long to load?  Remember you only have about 15 seconds before most people will move on to another site.  Also keep in mind that the search engines really have no content so spider on that flash intro.  You might want to think about adding links that point to internal pages on your website so the bots have something to start with besides just the flash.

100% Flash Sites – Some company’s think that the interactive site that uses flash is best for the visitor because the site talks, moves, and has all the bells and whistles.  Well try and rank that flash site a top the organic search listings without having to make some major changes.  I won’t drag this out, everyone knows that trying to optimize a site made entirely of flash is a train wreck.

Music or Speech – You arrive at a site and all of a sudden music starts to play and you cannot find your volume button fast enough.  How about the site that has a speech going about how great there product is or why there services are top of the line.  Majority of the visitors will get annoyed having to listen to something while they are trying to read what you wrote.  Also, who is to say the viewer even wanted to listen to your speech in the first place?  Instead you should have given them the option to listen to it.  Have a small heading at the top that has a link to it or make a graphic that stands out so they can see the option to listen to it.

Interactive Flash Navigation (That Does Not Work) – Most navigation menus are on the top, left or right side.  The navigation flows together and is in unison with the design and layout.  Then comes along a 3D spinning box made in flash.  When you put your mouse over the side, the box spins around, the top opens and you see the page name to click on.  Try click on that page name and the box top closes and spins back around.  How about site navigation that is done in flash and when you go to click on the button nothing happens.  Instead you have to put your mouse exactly on the word in the box because whoever made the button made it for the text only and not the entire box itself.  This is a great way to frustrate your visitor who has probably just left the site and moved on. If you insist on using a flash navigation that actually works property, please make sure to have a footer on your site that has the same links so the engines are able to spider the rest of your site.

Cross Browser Compatibility – Try paying a bill online just to find out there site doesn’t recognize firefox and forces me to use IE.  How about going to check out and then get hit with “your browser is incompatible with our checkout system”.  Well what the heck, I had no problems finding the items and adding them to your cart.  Now your payment process wants an IE only user to be able to checkout and pay.  Yea you just shot yourself in the foot if your website does not work with all major browsers.

Quick Loading Time – Having a site that loads fast is crucial. We know the average time you have to capture a visitor’s attention and keep them is about 15 seconds.  Well if they have to wait 15 seconds for your page to load then chances are you have lost there attention already.  I will be writing an article on techniques you can use to have a faster loading page tomorrow.

Showing Video - Use an embedded player in flash to show your videos.  Do not ask the user which speed they would like to view and which player (real player, QuickTime, windows media player).  There are people out there that would get confused with all the choices that they have.  Then when they click on QuickTime and realize nothing happens and they are then taken to download and install the software you just lost a visitor.  Chances are they will be there for an hour trying to figure out how to install QuickTime and realize they forgot why they were installing it in the first place.  Once it gets installed, they then have to reboot there computer.  Ok the user just got up to go watch some TV now because there computer takes 10 minutes to boot up.

Right Click – When I am browsing sites, I have made a habit to right click on a link and open it in a tab to browse that page.  Well when I go to a site and it tells me “sorry, right click is disabled” I want to scream.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

In the past flash was used to redirect visitors from Myspace pages to whatever website you wanted to send them to.  Now you can use this code below on your Myspace profile to redirect traffic to any site you like with one line of code.  This is a nice way of getting links on a high authority website in very little time.  I would not try and abuse this, I am sure if you tried spamming them with the same redirect link through multiple accounts they would see that and just filter it out.  I bet they will be fixing this soon though, anyhow here is the code to use:

http://dect.myspace.com/event.ng/Type=click&FlightID=32281&AdID=53575
&TargetID=5380&Values=710&Redirect=http://www.YOURSITE.com

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

You take the time and put in the effort to write great content for your site, once you have published it you then realize another site has just published the exact same content on there website. This happens in a matter of seconds after publishing your content, and think to yourself how is that possible. Well it is quite easy since your RSS feed is publishing a full article for each post you make, that website just scrapes your content from your feed and republishes it on there site. This has happened recently to both myself and Maki over at DoshDosh. The site gives us credit on the side for being so called contributors, however straight up theft of content is a far cry from any contribution on my part. What can really be done about this though? There are not running any ads on the site, I do not see any form to where they are trying to capture any information, except maybe the email box for feedburner which could be fake. Anyhow what can be done about this? You can try and complain to there hosting company by doing a whois on the domain name and seeing who the NS servers belong to. I do not see that working really in the long run, but its a shot. You could send a cease and desist order to them, but there whois information is hidden and there is no contact information so you can try and send one to the hosting company.

Well i am not going to do any of that, instead I am putting in each of my post where it originated from and links back to this site. Yes I understand about the duplicate content issue at hand, but I want to see what the engines do in the coming weeks/month with this other website and my content. A few things I am trying out is using the term search engine marketing blog as my anchor text for my site. I am using absolute URL’s in all of my post’s and I am considering adding other links to posts on this blog. I am not sure how well this is going to work since it is duplicate content, we shall see. What would you do about a website that is scraping content straight from your RSS feed?

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

One of the biggest problems for any forum moderator is having to deal with spam posts made by either users or a piece of automated software. These posts are normally short and have links inserted in them to a variety of different websites depending on what the person is trying to advertise for. Forums get these types of messages everyday, so the moderators are always having to delete them. So lets say you have 100 people spamming your forum on a daily basis with there links. That means the moderators will only have to delete 100 posts a day. What if the moderators had to watch there PM (private message) system on the forum now as well? The use of instant message marketing (can call it spam I guess) has been around for over 10 years. In the mid 90’s there were programs created that would harvest screen names of AOL users from chat rooms and eventually profiles once that was implemented. It would take those screen names and send them all an instant message with a link or asking for a reply back. Take that same concept and apply it to today’s marketing world. Forums are visited by millions of people everyday for almost any type of market. Well sad to say I have come across a piece of software that will spam your forum automatically. Luckily however the program is poorly designed and the creator has been making a bad name for him/herself already over at BlackHatWorld.

This program creates an account, spiders the forum and collects all the usernames it can find and tries to send each person a PM. In theory this sounds great for the person running the program, and bad for the forum moderators. However there are a few things wrong that makes this program useless. Most forums have a time limit on the amount of PM’s you can send through it, when trying to send more then the allowed limit you either get a warning message or an account ban. Luckily forums also have an outbox that can get full, so after sending so many PM’s the user has to go in and delete these as well. The program is suppose to do this for you, but that does not work either. So people who bought the software are left in the dark now with no updates, no support and no responses to there questions or problems.

 

People ask all the time about black hat marketing, well the theory behind this program is a perfect example of black hat marketing technique. It could work if done the right way; however I do not condone spamming any forum. The moderators spend a lot of time keeping there forums spam free and most do not get paid either. This blog though is meant to teach people on techniques weather white or black hat.

 

How this could work:

• Have the program create multiple user accounts on the same forum

• Have it be able to store a list of email addresses in it to use when signing up so it rotates through them for different user names.

• Have it check the email accounts and look for verification links to go to.

• Have the program use proxies so your IP will not get banned by any forum.

• When sending out messages, have the program use multiple threads (connections) and log into various forums so it can get around the 1 minute timer allowed to send each PM. If you have accounts made on 500 forums you could just have it rotate through them all making sure not to hit the same forum in under a minute.

• Have it actually delete the sent message in the forum outbox.

Black hat style marketing is all around you, most just over look it and never think of the “What If’s”. A lot of places do not talk about these types of marketing strategies because they would not be used for any real client. They do exist however and I will try and show you some other examples in the future.

 

 

I cannot believe some of the clients I have worked with that have a large user database and they really do not utilize it at all.  Your data is a great income source if used the proper way and everyone should be trying to maximize the potential of it.  Now if your website does not keep track of its customer information, I high recommend you start doing that as soon as possible.  By keeping track of your customer data, that gives you the chance to contact them again in the future offering them online discounts, new product launch or even an entire new website launch from your company.  Sending out a monthly newsletter to these customers is also a great way to keep in contact with them and shows them you are still in business and growing. 

You have a new product or service you are launching in the coming weeks, how are you going to generate sales for this?  Maybe with a huge adsense campaign, Yahoo network, or just going to blanket the internet with this new product to try and generate the most sales.  If you have deep pockets then sure go ahead, but the smart thing to do that will not cost you any money out of your pocket and will probably generate a good amount of sales is to contact your user or customer database.  These are the people who are either interested in your website or who have purchased from you in the past.  This data is like a pre-qualified lead which is worth a great deal of money in the open market.  You know they are or even at one time interested in your website so why look them over?  You should never over look your data and that should be the first place you with your new marketing campaign.  The revenue you can generate from that could pay for the coming months advertising campaigns.  That is why it is so important to not only keep track of your users but to also use this data to your advantage.  It is one thing to say you are going to do it, or say you will send out an email to them.  You need to act on it though, by acting on using that data to its full potential can bring in more profits for your business.  That is the purpose of being in business, to make money for your business to grow and for yourself to live.