Instead of testing keyword combinations until your fingers are bleeding, why not ask your visitors what keywords they are using to find what they want?

"How?" you say. "I don't know my visitors. How can I ask them anything?"

Well, you don't even have to ask them. Just check and see what they are searching for when they get to your site. Use your analytics software to see what keywords they enter into your site search¹ box. What better way to find out what your visitors want?

What is so powerful about email marketing¹? Opt in. That's right. Opt in. Opt in email makes for laser like precision narrowcasting. Your prospects opt in to your email because they are interested in what you have to offer. Therefore you are marketing to prospects and not to broadcasting¹ to everyone in Florida.

According to Google's chief economist, the expert who may be in greatest demand over the next ten years might be the statistian.

What?

John Quarto-von Tivador seizes upon successful agriculture culture as a metaphor for good website promotion (are you from Calif. John?).

He says that it's the toughest kind of farming, like lettuce growing and not at all a cherry picking operation. Successful sites, like successful lettuce fields require constant tending.

Too many people still look upon websites like print publications. Once they are "launched," they're done. In fact, the launch is just the beginning. Success lies in many hours of careful tending.

Promoting a website requires lots of tools to tell us what's going on.

Fortunately, most of these tools are free. Anyone just starting should not spend a dime on analytical software. Maybe with time your site will require a more sophisitcated approach, but you won't have to spend money on software to find out.

Here is a fabulous list of free keyword and link analysis tools.

What are your customers trying to tell you? Google Analytics can help you to find out. Conceiveably, this is the best kind of market research, because you get to analyze actions and not just the thoughtless answers on a questionaire.

Here are three ways your visitor is telling you about themselves just about as soon as you open Google Analytics.

If your intranet¹ is connected to the Internet, you can hook up Google Analytics and get quite a bit of information about how your intranet is being used.

I told a client recently that too few people were signing up on the Pay Pal page compared to the people visiting the page. In other words, analytics showed visitors were going to the "Buy Now" page and then not signing up. Of course that got me wringing my  hands and wondering why.