Why Your Website Never Ranks Well

In terms of cost-efficiency, the most crucial method for attracting traffic to your website is through organic searches. They allow you to reach people who don't even know about your site initially but are searching for a specific product or service related to your website. The primary factor of the success in organic searches boils down to the ranking of your website on search engine results pages (SERPs).
There are a ton of factors that may contribute to your website may not be ranking well on search engines. Some of these reasons are:

A Slow Website

Millions of search results are available to the user as soon as they enter a keyword into a search engine like Google. With such a massive amount of data available on the Web, it's become challenging to hold users' attention for extended periods of time.

Pages that load faster not only provide excellent user experiences but also play a huge role in SEO ranking. Site speed is an official search ranking algorithm in Google that should be kept in mind during website development and management. If your website is not being ranked well, you must ensure that it can be loaded quickly on any desktop along with mobile devices. Mobile site speed is just as important.

Ambiguous Keywords and Title Tags

Ranking your website will become difficult; it is not clear to search engines what kind of products, services, and solutions you are providing to your users and their concerns. Content must be made clear. Make it easily understandable people, what they are reading. The use of appropriate keywords is a necessity in achieving clarity in your content.
Title tags are a crucial part of website ranking. Tags that start with a critical keywords perform much better than those in which the keyword is placed in different positions. Make sure that the title tags of your website are appropriate and work with the content of your website.

Similarly, many publishers make the mistake of writing an ambiguous descriptions and headings that are not related to the content of the page. As a result, such pages are penalized in the ranking.

Unoptimized Content

Content optimization is essential for the ranking of a website. It includes the optimization of the written content as well as images, audio, and other visuals used on a website. Many people use Google to search visual content, and if your website does not have optimized images, it is unlikely to be ranked high on the SERPs. High-quality images, videos, infographics, and other media content must be used to provide a good signal to Google for more top content ranking.

Poor Quantity and Quality of Inbound Links

Generally, a large number of links from other websites to your pages will ensure a high ranking of your website. The quality of the links also matters in this regard, so the links should originate from authority websites.
Irregular Publishing

It is not enough to just publish an optimized post on your website every week or so. Instead, the publishing should be regular and consistent to boost website rankings.

It has been shown that many websites are don't rank well because of irregular publications. Usually, SEO ranking experts suggest uploading at least two to three high-quality posts per week. Regular updates from your website help in engaging your audience, and the traffic will increase too.

The latest content on your sites makes it clear to search engines that you are still active on the website and working on it to make the content fresh and relevant. Moreover, the material should be adapted according to the circumstances of the publication time. In other words, stay up to date. This way, you're most likely to rank very high on search engines. Why? Because your page will provide relevant content about what's going on NOW.

SEO Practices are not being followed

SEO is one of the hottest topics in website management today. Many courses, books, blogs, and guides are available on the internet about the best practices of SEO. Having an SSL certification on your website, using suitable title tags, uploading relevant content, writing engaging meta descriptions, and implementing on-page SEO practices are some of the many latest SEO trends that increase the ranking of your website.

The focus of strong SEO is how content of your website will stand out in the search engines to ensure its ranking improves. If you've had trouble ranking your website, you probably haven't implemented good SEO practices.
If you have a website that's not seeing the ranks you desire consider programs like Web Fire. You'll be able to root out issues with your website and substantially improve its rankings in a fraction of the time and cost it would entail if you tried to go without.

How To Sell To Other Businesses

Business to marketing seems like a foreign language to many people who are trying it for the first time. The consumer markets seems so much plainer and easier, after all, we're dealing with every day people. With businesses we feel we are dealing with some mysterious entity or some divine VIP, a thing whose persona is foreign to everything we knew in the every day human consciousness.

The reality that most people miss, and it's a well-kept secret, businesses are people. They are decision makers, executives, highly paid company officers, and even midgrade managers. At the end of the day though, they are people, selling to other businesses is no different than selling to people, except that you have to consider the kind of person you're selling to. Much of this involves trying to get into a person's head. What does a business owner or manager need and/or want? What things will improve their lives, and more importantly, the operations of their business? Answering these questions is the first key to selling to other businesses.

1: Identify Your VIP

The first step in creating a strong pitch for your product and service is considering your VIP, there may be more than one to consider depending on how the decisions are made. You have to know who you're selling to and then consider how your business can benefit them personally. As we discussed, you're dealing with real people, and they taking their own needs and desires into consideration as well as their roles in serving the greater needs of the company. Is your contact a buyer, a manger, or a business owner?

Depending on who you're speaking to, you'll want to come with ideas and features about what you have to offer and how it makes their lives easy as well benefiting their employer.

2: Don't Just Sell, Give Them Something They Can Use

Whoever your VIP may be, you can expect that someone has found them too, and they probably get multiple pitches a day for what you have to offer. A simple letter with a sales pitch is no longer enough to draw people in anymore. Because of this, you want to attach your sales pitch to something they can use. Many companies do this by offering white papers. White papers may be written as guides on important industry topics and trends, and may even highlight problems the industry is facing. This can be accompanied by a pitch explaining how you offer a solution. Either way the white papers are free and useful, so there's no harm in reading.

Writing effective white papers isn't easy, but it can be done.

3: Start With Value Over Price

When you're making a pitch to any business, you may find yourselves in the middle of a bidding war. Too many entrepreneurs focus in only on their prices as a way to put their best foot forward. While pricing certainly is important, it's far more vital to highlight the value your product has to offer. What can your product do that others can't. Can it save the company time or money even while requiring an investment? Can it make life easier for managers or help improve employee morale and productivity?

When you're making your bid don't advertise that you are cheap. If anything this will raise red flags if it's all you have to offer.

4: Highlight The Business Benefits

Whether it's in consumer to consumer or business to business marketing, even professionals have made this terrible mistake in copy-writing. Never just tell someone about the features of what you have to offer. Features are boring and no one wants to hear you list them all day long. They want to know how what you have to offer is going to solve a common problem. Just don't tell them “My computers have a lot of RAM” but instead consider, “Are you tired of losing valuable company time and money waiting for your computers to load? With our CPUs high RAM capability your upload, download, and processing speeds will be through the roof. You'll save time, money, and your business will be moving at lightning speed when processing your data!”

Benefits are everything. Nobody wants to know what you can do, everyone wants to know what you can do “For me”

5: Make it Easy To Act

Your call to action (CTA) is the grand finale of any pitch you write. It needs be dazzling and out of the park, but more importantly, it needs to be easy to act upon. Links in emails should be large, thought not obnoxious, and easy to see and click on, and MUST NOT BE BROKEN OR INACCURATE. Contact info should be prominent, accurate, and very visible. Like it or not, nobody likes a hassle. If your final pitch is hard to act on, even a little, or your lead finds it hard to get in touch you may lose your sale to someone else out of sheer convenience.


6: Gather Leads
This probably should have been the first step, but you need to gather solid prospective leads to sell to. It means nothing if you have the greatest product in the world and killer sales pitch to back it up, and no relevant people to sell it to. Gathering leads can be tricky, but made much easier by programs like Macroleads that help you organize, streamline, and even somewhat automate the process.

How to Build a List by Solving People’s Problems

So you’re looking to build a list? This strategy is a great way to build a list of people that are interested in your niche. First, find relevant Facebook groups in your niche, join them, and take the time to see what people are complaining about. What are the common complaints that keep coming up again and again? What product or service could you come up with to provide a solution to these complaints? Once you’ve come up with a solution, sell it or give it away for free to build a list or following.

For example, if you run a wedding planning business, join Facebook groups in that niche and see what the common complaints among brides-to-be are. Perhaps they find that it’s very overwhelming, trying to remember everything to organize and knowing when to do what. You could create a timeline checklist, of what to organize when in the countdown to the big day, and offer it free to build a list of potential clients.

So join Facebook groups within your niche and see what the most common complaints are, then find a solution to these complaints and either sell it or use it to build a list or following by giving it away free.

For help with finding leads and building your list, you can check out a demo of WebFire's tools here and grab a special deal!  Web Fire

How Offering A Premium Support Service Can Increase Your Profits And Margins

You’ve probably bought electronics before and been offered the purchase an additional warranty. Or maybe you’ve purchased furniture before and been offered a white glove service to deliver and setup your new couch.

These are all examples of premium support services that can have very large profit margins, so even if only a smaller percentage of customers take you up on them, they can add a lot to your bottom line.

Some of these premium support services can be at little to no cost to you. For instance, one business we’ve seen had a warranty offer where you could get free replacement charger cables forever on your phone, if they ever fail, for a small one time extra fee as long as you just cover the small shipping and handling fee. However, these cables have such huge margins anyway that the small S&H fee literally covered the cost of the cables and the shipping. The “warranty” that was sold was essentially 100% pure profit, despite how it would appear to be an awesome deal for the buyers (paying $5 for S&H instead of $29 for a new cable sounds like, and is, a pretty good deal).

You can even sell access to one on one help, a Facebook group page for extra (and faster) help, etc. Some of these offers you can literally put together in a few minutes, yet some people will naturally buy them just because they think they might have a use for it one day.

Another example would be offering faster support, faster shipping, faster service, etc. All of these can have huge margins for little to no extra work!

So brainstorm at least a couple of extra premium support services that you can offer your buyers (like extra warranties, faster support, faster service, etc.) that come with huge margins despite not really increasing your costs much, if at all.

To find out more tweaks that could drastically change and increase your business, check out our business analyzing tool here BizFire's Free Business Analyzer and Growth Tool.

Want to Charge More for Your Services? And Still Have People Lining Up to Buy From You? Here’s How!

So how can you charge more for your services? How can you increase your price tag and still have customers lining up to buy from you? One easy way is to change your offer from a simple product/service to a done-for-you offer. What does this mean? Check out this example below.

Say, instead of charging $5 to write an article, you instead charge $497 to $997+ to write five articles, create a blog, post the articles up, optimize it for their keywords, and have a custom graphic or two. If you were to outsource a $5 article for $3, the first example only gives you a $2 profit, or if you were to write it yourself, you'd be trading $5 for 30 minutes, at best, of your time ($10 an hour on the higher end if you’re super fast).  However, if you were to offer the second, more premium example, you could outsource the articles for $15, allocate $10 for some custom graphics on Fiverr.com, and put in $25 to $50 to outsource the custom blog with SEO (blogger.com blogs, for instance, can be made in a matter of minutes).  That's a raw cost of $50 to $100 for a $400 to $950 profit. Or, if you were to do the work mostly yourself, you'd be talking about maybe 3 to 5 hours of work, easily putting you in the range of earning $100 to $200+ per hour compared to $10 per hour just selling a $5 article.

So, see what you can add to your offer, or bundle it with, to make it a more premium offer. Or, look at how you can make your offer more “done-for-you.” and price your offer respectively. The kicker is that more people like to buy a premium offer than a basic offer, as it's more appealing and more "done-for-you" than just an item that they'd have to do all the rest of the work on themselves.  And less people offer premium services/offers, so you're competing against less.

This doesn’t just apply to services either, as the same can be done for almost any kind of product out there. For instance, instead of just selling a book on how to lose weight, you could also sell a product or program that gives them daily exercises either through e-mail, a mobile app, software, etc.. So instead of someone just reading how to lose weight, you can make it more easy and “done for you” by literally giving them a way where they simply have to follow the daily tip. Or instead of selling a 50¢ apple at a gas station, one could sell a pre-sliced apple with caramel dipping sauce ready to go for $4+ (even though the raw cost is only a tinge more than the standard apple).

One great example we’ve done is instead of selling a course on how to rank on search engines and get traffic, which would be a challenge to sell even in the $25 to $50 range, we created software that helps do a lot of those tasks for people. And instead of having a challenge of selling a course for $25 to $50, we can charge $997 / year to $2,997 / year much more easily. We’re able to do that because it’s more “done for you” and involves far less time for the end user.

A similar example outside of software was with a real estate investing instructor that we know of who at one point sold several courses on how to invest in real estate. Most of these courses originally were on the lower end of the price point, but she was able to turn those “books” into “webinar trainings” and online courses and charge closer to $997 on up, but she didn’t stop there. She was able to partner with one of us to create software that helped do what she was teaching and sold it for around $4,000 a pop. But she still didn’t stop there. She then took all her teachings and tools and basically made an offer that would be as hands free as possible for the user. That was accomplished by setting up an offer where you’d be able to purchase a $25,000 package where you’d get on a bus with others, tour dozens and dozens of homes in a day that they already did the math on and knew were awesome deals, and then be able to make offers on the spot with bankers, agents, mortgage brokers, etc. all right there with you in one place. Granted, this wasn’t for the average mom and pop investor, but for some big investors, including overseas ones looking to take advantage of the U.S. market at the time, this was an opportunity to jump into it as hands free as possible. And they were willing to pay for it.

An interesting twist on making any offer more premium or done for you is that it doesn’t have to always start with your own product or service! You can find existing service providers or products out there, see how you can make them better / more “done for you,” and then try to either form a partnership with them or just use the outsourced provider to fulfill the work for a service. A few simple tweaks to their package / offer and sales pitch can turn a $5 offer into a $500 or even a $5,000 one without even having the need to make your own offer from scratch!

Now start looking at how you can apply this to your business. How can you make your offer a premium or “done-for-you” offer by adding more things to your service or bundling your products together to give more value? This then allows you to increase your prices substantially, your premium pricing reflecting your premium product.

Now you have ideas for a premium product, need help getting leads to sell this to? For help with how to get leads to promote your product or service to, check out this cool tool: Domain Lead Pro.

Why Some Businesses Fail?

Business is a complex concept that many fail to gasp. A business only emerges to be successful if it is implemented after thorough planning with passion, discipline, and after a great deal of research. Sustaining a business can become extremely difficult after a certain period of time due to budget constraints and poor planning. According to a survey, in the USA alone, 70% of new businesses take a hit within a decade of their conception.

A truly successful business is not one that booms and experiences a short and vibrant period of success. A truly successful company is one that enjoys sustainable success that lasts long term and withstands the test of time. Many business owners make the mistake of ignoring critical issues during the first few years, which in turn damages the business operations down the road in later years, and sometimes it's too late for the problem to be fixed.

A number of reasons can lead to your business becoming a failure. Some of the common reasons are:

1. Weak Leadership

Strong and effective leadership is important in ensuring the success of your business. An ineffective leader ends up micromanaging the employees and will try to control all aspects of the company. Unfortunately a poor leader will fail to understand that for one man, that is simply not possible. As a result, the business environment starts to crumble. A good leader is the one that imparts knowledge to the workers and tries to give specific duties to responsible people. A good leader knows how to delegate so that every aspect of that business gets taken care of quickly and efficiently.

In new businesses there are many different requirements and responsibility for different departments, and this can be difficult to manager at first. Unseasoned leaders are overwhelmed by juggling so many responsibilities and challenges and cave under the stress they can bring. Leaders need to be strong, bold, and unafraid of making quick, but calculated decisions. Good leaders also pay attention to details and are constantly looking for means of improvement. Without good, solid leadership, it doesn't matter how much money a business has or good a product it offers, it will fail.
If you don't plan for the long-haul, your business will fail before it even begins.

2. Lack Of Long-Term Investment

A far-reaching, powerful, long-term vision is essential for a good business. Many businesses make the mistake of getting overexcited during the first few years as soon as they start earning money. As a result they often fail to develop long term strategies for growth, and don't make investments in the future, clinging instead to immediate profits. Such an attitude in business will inevitably lead to poor quality products, stagnant growth and innovation, and customers who will eventually lose business. The customer base will diminish and the business will fail.

3. Lack Of Market Research

Thorough planning and research are needed at the time of launching a business. A primary reason that leads to business failure is that it gets launched without proper research and does not target a specific market. Market research is vital and should be conducted before you even think about starting a business. Even if a business enjoys success for a short period of time, ultimately, it is bound to crash without any kind of research. Without conducting research beforehand, a business might as well be stumbling around blind. How can you expect to succeed in business if you don't know anything about your hopeful customers?

A successful business is defined by the ability to predict the consumer’s requirements and behaviors. With this knowledge they can then deliver products and services that perfectly fit the needs and desires of the needs of the customers they want. You don't necessarily have to have a unique or incredible product. What you do need is to able to offer premium quality to customers who are looking for something from you in particular.

Collecting and analyzing information about market trends and procedures is important in keeping your business ahead of your competitors by offering new products, services, and deals to keep up.

4. Lack Of Customer Retention

Many businesses ignore customer retention strategies because they keep focusing on finding new customers. However, it is counterproductive strategy because old and loyal customers are important not only in increasing the sales of a business, but also popularizing it through good reviews and word-of-mouth. Not only that but old customers are easier, and cheaper to keep, compared to the process of finding new ones.

5. No Expansion Or Personal Growth

Growth does not only mean establishing a business in different locations or expanding operations. It means you also need to keep your business inspiring and innovative. Fresh talent should be welcomed in your business because they bring a lot of modern and fresh ideas to improve your business. Moreover, leaders of a business should also keep attending different seminars and training sessions to make sure they are keeping up with the times and adopting the latest entrepreneurship strategies.

If you want a deep examinations of things that may be holding your business down, you also should considering looking into programs like BizFire's Free Business Analyzer and Growth ToolTOOL, which may provide many valuable insights in a fraction of the time.

How Creating A Sense of Urgency Can Help Improve Sales: Reducing/Offering Free Shipping Within A Certain Time Frame

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now.

For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop up on your website or the first thing your customer sees.

So consider, for a limited time, offering reduced or free shipping on your products. The limited time frame creates a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to purchase now, as opposed to at a later date, and encourages customers who may have been on the fence to make the purchase.

For more tips on boosting sales within your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.