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"The Diary of an Online Business Professional"
Website Promotion Blogby Lee Gilbert |
Latest Posts
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5 Outsourcing Tips To Help You Get More For Your Money
A freelance writer friend of mine suggested that I give you all some outsourcing tips today to help you get a better return on your investment. After all, outsourcing is a business investment. You're paying someone to provide some type of content for your website, whether it's articles or graphics or the platform design or backlinking, in the hope that it will help increase your sales. And if it doesn't, then you've just wasted a lot of money and you generally blame the person who provided the service. So you either never use that person again or you go back to trying to do everything yourself. The outsourcing tips I'm going to give you will show you how you can get a better return on your investment.
Most people find the need to outsource some type of service for their website. It's almost guaranteed. You may be able to handle everything by yourself now but eventually your business is going to get too big to handle alone and you're going to need help. You may want a more professional looking website than what you can design yourself. Or you may have so many sites that you can no longer keep up with all the article writing yourself. Or you may need someone to design a special program or script for your site to help you provide additional services for your customers. There are people out there who can help you with anything you need to accomplish. Finding the right person to handle your outsourcing, though, is only half the battle.
Once you've found someone to handle your outsourcing needs, your part of the job doesn't stop there. My writer friend tells me that people who are new to outsourcing all seem to make the same general mistake. Most people working online have never owned or operated a business before so they have no idea what's involved when you hire employees. And basically, that's what you're doing when you pay someone to handle your outsourcing needs. You're hiring someone to work for you. If you owned a restaurant and you hired help, you'd train them – you'd tell them exactly what you want them to do and let them know what goals or results you wanted to see for the money you're paying them. You need to do this same thing when you hire someone to help you with your websites. You need to let them know what your goals are for your site so they can work accordingly.
Who is your target audience?
The number one mistake that most marketers make when hiring someone to handle their outsourcing needs is they don't identify their target audience for the service provider. Who is it that you're trying to attract to your site? If you have a gaming website then you may want your content to be geared for a younger audience. You want graphics that will attract young people and articles and text written to speak to teenagers.
But let's say you've found a really good graphics design person to handle your new site design – someone who comes highly recommended and you've seen their work and loved it. That designer can probably give you exactly what you want but if you don't TELL them what you want you could end up with a site design that attracts tech people who design gaming software instead of the game players who you really want to visit your site.
The same thing is true when you outsource articles or blog posts or ebooks. We all know the importance of using keywords in your web content and you've probably already done the research to determine which keywords are right for your needs. A writer experienced in SEO writing will be able to do the keyword research for you, too, but you still need to tell them who it is you want to attract to your site. There's a big difference between “Games To Play On Your Laptop” and “Best Laptop To Play Games On”. With one you're going to attract people who want to play your games but with the other you're going to attract people looking for laptops. So just telling your writer that you want to use the keywords “Games” and “Laptop” isn't enough. You have to tell them WHO you're trying to attract with your content so they can write accordingly.
Submission services who submit your articles and bookmarks also need to know who you're trying to attract to your site. Not many teenagers are going to go to Ezine Articles or a Business Directory to find information on new gaming sites. But if you let the submission service provider know WHO you're trying to attract to your site, they can make sure your site it submitted to directories that teenagers do visit like Digg and StumbleUpon.
What goal are you trying to achieve?
This is the second biggest mistake that people make when hiring someone for outsourcing and it goes hand in hand with identifying your target audience - What goal are you trying to achieve with the service they're providing you? Are you trying to sell something? Because if you are you'll get much better results from those articles you're paying for if you tell the writer exactly what it is you're trying to sell.
If you're offering a service, tell the writer what service you're offering and why your service is better than the next guy's so they can point that out in their articles. After all, most of the written content you use on your site is for promotional purposes – so let the writer know what you're trying to promote. If you're ordering articles for your gaming membership site you'll get much better results with articles that talk about the benefits of belonging to a membership site than you will with articles that just talk about playing online games on your laptop.
The graphics and design of your site play a huge role in telling your visitors what you site is all about. If you're trying to attract game players you want graphics that are fun and exciting that will let your visitors know they're going to have a good time on your site. But if, on their first visit, they see a lot of serious graphics, like people in suits and ties working away on their laptops, they're going to think your site is for business professionals and go elsewhere for their fun.
You need to let your submission service know your goals, too. Are you just looking for as many backlinks as possible or do you want fewer backlinks but from higher PR sites? Do you want your articles spread all over the internet or are you trying to build up a presence on a particular article directory?
Provide examples
We all surf the net from time to time. When you see site designs that you like or a particular writing style – bookmark it for future reference. If it attracted your attention it's probably attracting the attention of others, too. Show these examples to the people you're hiring for your outsourcing needs to give them a better idea of what it is you're looking for.
Ask for advice
Don't be afraid to ask your provider for advice. You're probably not the first person who has come to them for help with a gaming site. Most people who provide outsourcing services track their success rates just like you track the success rate of your site. They know what works and what doesn't and they can usually provide some very valuable insights that will help you get more out of the service you're paying for. If asked for advice they're very willing to give it. If not, they assume you know what you want and since you're the one paying for it they're going to give you what you ask for – whether it works for you or not.
Work with your provider
You may not get exactly the results you're looking for the first time you use an outsource service. You needed time to learn about your product and what works best for your site so it's unrealistic to expect that someone writing articles for the first time for your site is going to give you exactly what you want right out of the chute.
You've probably chosen that provider on the recommendation of someone else so you know they have a good reputation. If this is your first time working with them, ask them to let you see the first article or two or the first draft of your header image so you can discuss your marketing strategy with them. Remember, service providers are not mind readers. If you work to develop a relationship with your provider you'll get much better results from your overall investment than you will if you keep jumping from one service to the next.
Are You Using Online Directories To Increase Your Traffic?
Does your marketing strategy include submitting your blog or website to the online directories? Because if it doesn't – it should. Submitting your site to the many online blog and website directories is a key method of generating traffic but an additional benefit is the high PR backlinks that you can get from some of these directories. Let's take a look at how online directories work.
What Is An Online Blog Directory?
An online blog directory is, in a way, a type of social network similar to social bookmarking sites except that you list your entire blog, not just a post or article. I'm sure you've heard of sites like Technorati and Boing Boing. These sites have a huge community of users who not only list their own blogs but search those sites when they're looking for blogs for their own purposes or to recommend to others. Typically you submit your blog URL and, in some cases, the feed URL as well. Then you select what category it should be listed in and provide a brief description.
It's important to note that not all online directories will immediately accept your blog for inclusion. And there's a very good reason for that. They're trying to protect their own rankings which is one of the key reasons it's so beneficial for you to claim your blog at these directory sites.
How Does An Online Directory Work?
The purpose of submitting your blog to these directories is first of all to gain exposure and increase your traffic. Most directories have some sort of internal rating system where the users can rate blogs and recommend them to the community. And of course, if your blog happens to receive a higher rating then the users in that community will visit and possibly recommend it – either on their own blogs or through other forms of social networking.
However, the larger benefit is in the value of the backlinks you'll receive when you submit to these directories. When you're generating backlinks for your blog there are backlinks – and then there are BACKLINKS.
The search engines not only look at how many backlinks you have coming into your blog but they also look at where those links are coming from. Links coming from higher PR sites carry much more authority and they bring that authority to your site. When the search engines see that a high ranking site is linking to yours they assume that you must be providing useful, valuable content, otherwise that higher ranking site wouldn't be linking to yours.
However, that same scenario can also be harmful to the higher ranking site. If they link to you and your site is of very poor quality then they can actually lose some of their respect and authority with the search engines. Think about it. You've taken a lot of time to create a blog that's full of top quality content and you're attracting a lot of visitors everyday. Would you want to take the chance of posting a link to a blog that has nothing to offer other than a lot of PLR content and banners in the sidebar? It might be OK to do this once or twice but if you did it on a regular basis your readers would quickly stop following your blog.
Which is why some online directories are so particular about the blogs that they'll accept. They've put a lot of effort into getting that page rank and they don't want to risk it by linking to just any blog who happens by. The people who visit those directories recognize that they're visiting a high quality site and they know they can trust the information they're going to find there. That trust is what earned them that high page rank and they're not going to risk either one – the page rank or the trust – by linking to poor quality blogs.
If you've ever hired anyone to do any type of submissions for you, then you've seen the effect that page rank has on your fees. If all you want is to generate a few hundred backlinks and you're not concerned about the quality you can generally find someone who'll perform this service for a very cheap price. But if you want quality backlinks that come from High PR sites, you're going to be paying extra. That's because they're higher quality links – they carry much more weight with the search engines and they'll move you up the index faster. But they're also harder to come by.
The same is true for online blog directories. There are lower quality directories who will accept any blog that's submitted and you can find thousands of them on the Internet. And by submitting to these lower PR directories you'll be guaranteed to generate thousands of backlinks. Which is all well and good because that's one thing the search engines look for – the number of backlinks you have coming into your site.
But you also want to make sure your blog is submitted – and accepted – by those high PR directories, too, so that the backlinks you develop from them will lend authority to your site and help increase your index rankings. And the best way to make sure your blog is accepted is to provide quality content.
In the world of online marketing everything always comes back to the quality of your content. If you want visitors to come to your blog then you need to provide quality information that answers they're questions. If you want the search engines to give you a place on their index then you have to provide quality information that's not already found somewhere else on the internet. And if you want someone to risk their reputation and link to you, and send their own visitors to YOUR blog, then you have to provide quality information. But you already knew all of that, so let's look at a couple of online directories that will get you traffic and high PR backlinks.
Technorati – One of the internet's top search engines for blogs, Technorati is a PR 8 directory that carries tremendous weight with the search engines, it's own users and just about anyone who surfs the net. Having your blog indexed by Technorati will allow it to be reviewed and linked to by other bloggers and s Technorati sees other blogs linking to yours you could potentially end up on the Top 100 Blogs list. It's not difficult at all to claim your blog here and you'll get the benefit of the PR 8 backlink.
Blog Catalog – Another important blog search engine, Blog Catalog carries a PR 7 ranking and is also very easy to submit to. Whenever you submit to any type of online directory always make sure to set up a profile with a link to your site, using keywords whenever possible in your description.
Boing Boing – Boing Boing is another PR 8 site with a little bit of a difference. Instead of submitting your whole blog you need to provide a link to the post you want to submit. They state clearly on their submission page that you shouldn't even consider using an automation tool to submit to their site. Which means they are only going to look at quality content. Which means...if they accept you you can expect huge amounts of traffic because this is one of the most trusted sites on the internet.
Blog Universe – Blog Universe is a newer directory – a PR3 – but all of their sites are manually reviewed by a human being. They will not accept spammy blogs or blogs whose sole purpose is to pollute cyberspace with countless Pay-Per-Click banners. A little tougher to get into, but well worth the effort.
Then next time you set out to do your link building don't forget to submit your blog to some of the online blog directories too. You can develop some very strong backlinks from some of these directory sites and the increase in traffic that you'll see will help, too.
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