Altameroy Blog

We couldn’t have asked for a better more cost effective way to market a product or service than the Internet. The beauty of how the Internet is tied together is the search engines.

With the search engines comes a focused way to market to potential customers. When it all boils down you need to set up your seo tactics so your page is working for and with the search engines as well as your customers.

Following the search engine optimization standards is just good business both for the search engines and for the quality of your page as well.

They don’t require these things just for the heck of it.

Your marketing power where search engines are concerned is based a lot on how tight your seo practices are.

If you do everything right you still will have a bit of a struggle to get to the top but since this marketing game is always being one step ahead of the next guy you always have your shot to beat someone out.

Getting your marketing practices down so your making the search engines algorithm happy as well as your customers and you don’t necessarily have to be the first site on the list to get really good rankings.

Getting to the first page is good enough, and is a pretty nifty feat as well!

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It’s no secret that testimonials sell. Why should you believe me when I say my super-duper, new and improved, does-everything gizmo is the best of its kind? But if a celebrity puts her reputation on the line, or a real user gets all excited about how great my gizmo works for her, you are much more likely to trust the value of my product.

Here are ten ways you can use testimonials to expand your online business.

Use a snippet on your sales page. This is possibly the most common usage online. There you are, reading the sales copy, when all of a sudden you run into a box with a testimonial. This works well for product-specific testimonials. I used that technique several times here:
http://www.seo-writer.net/books/seo-book.html .

Use a snippet on a separate testimonials page. People who are considering hiring you want to know if you are reliable, and this provides them a sense of security. This is best for overall reputation testimonials, such as the ones I have set up here:

http://www.thehappyguy.com/happiness-quote-testimonials.html.

Use whole letters. Sometimes whole letters are more effective, especially if customers need security, such as when making a large monetary commitment.

Recommend by email. Ezine publishers have a great credibility with their readership. Harness that to your advantage by getting them to make a recommendation to their readership. I don’t often make recommendations to my A Daily Dose of Happiness readership, but when I do, people buy.

Get testimonials from users. These are best for product-specific testimonials. Before buying something, I want to know how well it works in real life. Only users can tell me that. Here is an example of where I gave a testimonial as a user This one actually promotes my business:

http://www.resource-a-day.net/memtestimony.html.

Here’s another testimonial I gave as a user, but it doesn’t promote my business. Why did I do it? Well, for starters, I really enjoyed the play. But also there is a link, and that doesn’t hurt my search engine rankings. Plus, some people are bound to click on that link and find my site:

http://www.mwos.org/testimonials.html.

Get testimonials from experts. These are best when you absolutely need credibility on something people might feel skeptical about, especially something requiring a big investment, such as health or money. Here is a good example:

http://www.nutritionstreet.com/kelly.shtml.

Place testimonials on the product. That’s what I did on my book, Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness. Right on the back cover are three book review snippets saying what a glorious and wonderful book it is.

Of course, the ultimate testimonial is media coverage. People say “You just can’t believe what you read these days.” But busy people don’t have time to check everything out, and just assume that what they saw in the media is accurate. Build yourself a media relations plan.

The best testimonials strategy uses a combination of the techniques outlined above. How many of them do you have working for you?

David Leonhardt is a website marketing strategies consultant, building innovative ways to make small business into big business.

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