The exact process for how search engines rank websites is not public. Each of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) has a proprietary algorithm for determining where a website should show up in its search results.

That said, there are specific ranking factors that matter more than others. For a complete list of important ranking factors, I highly recommend SEOMoz’s 2009 Search Engine Ranking Survey, but for readers who just want a quick overview of the basics, here are a few ranking factors you should consider in your small business seo strategy.

On-Page Ranking Factors

On-page ranking factors are those factors that you have some control over. If you just get these right, you should be able to rank for a number of your less competitive keywords within a few weeks to a few months.

• Title Tag Keywords – Your website’s title tag is what shows up in the top left-hand corner of your internet browser above the “File” menu, so it is virtually invisible to your website visitors. However, the title tag shows up in search results as the headline of your listing so it is extremely important both as a search engine ranking factor and as a headline to attract your reader’s attention and get him to click onto your website. Your title tag should contain the keyword or key phrase the page is targeting, preferably within the first few words, and should be no more than 65 characters because that’s the maximum amount that search engines will display.
• Unique Content – Having plenty of unique and informative content on your website will boost your website’s credibility and trustworthiness with search engines. Focus on writing content around your major keywords.
• H1 Headline Tag Keywords – Your H1 tag should be the first headline on your website that tells readers what the page is about. Unlike the title tag, the headline tag is usually prominently displayed on your page – and is usually what visitors see as the page title. Use your main keyword or key phrase in your H1 tag.
• Keywords in Link Anchor Text – Link anchor text is the word or phrase that is clickable when you create a link to your website. Use keywords in your links to internal pages, rather than a generic “click here” or including the page URL. For instance, “marketing consulting firm” instead of “www.morningstarmultimedia.com.”
• Freshness of Page Content – Search engines view pages that are frequently updated as more relevant to searchers, so add new content to your website regularly.
• Proximity to Home Page – How many clicks does it take to get from your “Home” page to the page you are trying to rank? Search engines view the pages that your “Home” page links to as more relevant than those that sit a few clicks away.
• Keywords in first 50-100 words of site content – Write your website’s content to sell, inform, or persuade, but use variations of your keyword or key phrase wherever they make sense, and preferably in the first 50-100 words of your website’s content. You must write your content so it sounds natural to readers, but include keywords when you can.
• Domain Name Keywords – Using your keywords in your root domain name helps to boost its rank in listings. The root domain name is http://www.yourdomain.com. Subdomain names can also play a factor in ranking your website, so if you didn’t get your top keywords for your domain name, you can use them here. Your subdomain name is would look like http://keyword.yourdomain.com.

Off-Page Ranking Factors

While it would be nice if Google ranked websites based solely on the website characteristics we have control over, unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Search engines also look at the quality and quantity of inbound links pointing to your website from other websites. Here are a few of the most important elements for your small business SEO strategy.

• Keywords in Anchor Text – Like with your on-site anchor text, having external sites link to your website with specific keywords plays a large role in how search engines rank your website. The anchor text is so important because it tells visitors what they can expect when they click on that link, so search engines highly rate the importance of that content.
• Number of High-Quality Links – How many links you receive from high-quality and credible websites is extremely important. High-quality links are used in editorial content rather than the footer or sidebar of a website. Search engines also frown on paid links or links from known link brokers. Search engines use high-quality links as a measure of how important of a resource your website is on the Internet.
• Diversity of Link Sources – Not only are high-quality links important, but you also need links from a variety of sources. If you have a well-trusted website giving you plenty of links – that’s good – but it is even better if you can get links from numerous credible sources.
• Trust of Link Sources – The trustworthiness of your link source is important in ranking your website. If you receive a large number of your links from web spam sites or known link brokers, search engines may actually discount your links or lower your website’s ranking. Make sure the site linking to you doesn’t also have links to the 3 Ps of spam – pills, poker, and porn.
• Topic-Related Links – Finally, try to get links from websites that are topically related to your website’s subject.

Small business SEO isn’t rocket science but it does take work to get right. With so many factors influencing your website, it is important to have an SEO strategy in place for how you will target all of your main keywords and phrases on your website. By taking into consideration the above ranking factors, you can create content that search engines will consider high-value, thus giving you a much greater chance of ranking well.

Step 1 – Choose A Topic Based On Keyword Research.

Keyword research is essential to article writing. You need to know exactly what keywords and phrases visitors type into search engines to find content like yours. A great place to research keywords is Google’s Keyword Tool. Simply type in the keywords you’d like to be ranked for, and Google will give you suggestions and synonyms.

Pick a key phrase that is 3-5 words long and gets moderate traffic. Don’t choose keywords with tens of thousands of visitors because they have plenty of competition and will be more difficult to rank for.

Step 2 – Decide What Type of Article To Write.

There are a number of types of articles you can write. Some of the most common include a how-to article, where you lead the reader step-by step through a process; a list, where you give readers a number of tips or ways to achieve a goal; a case study, which asks a question and then offers a few real-life examples; a review, which gives your opinion on a product or service; or an editorial, which offers your opinion on a particular problem, trend, or current event.

Step 3 – Write Your Article.

Your article should include a brief introduction paragraph which tells readers what they can expect; the body of the article, which delivers the main content of the article, and a concluding paragraph. Try to keep your article between 400-700 words, so it’s a fast read, but is long enough to give readers the content they are searching for.

For web articles, keep your paragraphs short and break up your text with sub-headlines, bulleted lists, and bolded font. Use a conversational style and make your content useful to readers.

Step 4 – Give Your Article A Powerful Headline.

Your headline is what grabs reader’s attention immediately, so writing a great headline is key to your article’s success. A good headline peaks your reader’s curiosity so they keep reading. You can promise quantifiable benefits for reading the article, such as what they’ll learn, how they can complete a task, or how they can save time or money. Or you can ask a question about a common problem or fear they have.

Step 5 – Proofread.

Use a spell checker and re-read your article to catch any spelling or grammar mistakes. I find it helpful to read the article aloud to make sure it sounds conversational. You can also ask someone to proofread your content, or wait a day or two and re-read it before publishing it.

Step 6 – Optimize Your Content.

Finally, when publishing your article on your website, the best way to maximize its traffic generating potential is to make sure your keyword is used first in your site’s title tag. So instead of writing:

6 Steps For Generating Free Web Traffic With Article Writing

You’d write:

Article Marketing Tips – 6 Steps For Generating Free Web Traffic With Article Writing

Using your keywords in your website’s title tag is the single best search engine marketing strategy you can use because search engines place considerable weight on what your title tag says when ranking websites.

Anyone can write articles to generate more traffic to their small business website. By following these six steps, you can generate free web traffic quickly. Read more small business web marketing strategies.

Step 1 – Setting Goals and Objectives

Many people believe (erroneously) that getting a top rank in Google is “the goal” of any small business SEO campaign. Unfortunately, a top rank in Google won’t do much for you if no one is searching for those keywords, those who do search for those keywords aren’t looking for your product or service, or if your website isn’t set up to convert those new visitors into subscribers, leads or sales.

Every good small business SEO campaign starts with understanding your website goals and who you want to visit your site. Ask yourself these two questions.

• Who is your target audience? – What types of people do you want to visit your site? In other words, who can benefit the most from your products and services? Put yourself in the mind of your visitors – if they are looking for what you sell, what keywords do you need to target, what content do you need to provide, what offer do you need to make to grab their attention?
• What should they do once they get to your site? – Until your visitors take action, they will remain anonymous. Ideally, you’d like your visitors to raise their hands and let you know they are interested in your information, products or services. In other words, you want to generate leads from your website, so to capture their information, they might join your mailing list, download a free report, request a consultation, subscribe to your blog feed, buy your product, etc. How can you make it as easy as possible for them to do that? What would compel them to take that action immediately?

All successful small business SEO campaigns start with understanding the psychology of your target audience. Yes, you know your product or service can help them. But they don’t. They don’t know anything about you – and they aren’t likely to read every page of your site to see if you can potentially help them.

When your visitors click onto your site, they are in control of what content they read – so it’s up to you to design a site that very clearly explains what you can do for them and what the next step is if they are interested in learning more. How can you make it as easy for them as possible to take that action?

Step 2 – Keyword Research

Once you know a bit about your target audience, you start looking at your website the way they would. Your goal in this step is to make sure your website shows up where your target audience is actually looking – not simply where you think they’ll be looking.

Often, what people actually search for when they are ready to buy a product or service is not what you think that might be. They might use different phrases, terminology, or brand names than those you use to describe your products and services. Alternatively, if you pick keywords that are too generic or seem irrelevant to your services, your visitors won’t be as qualified as you’d like.

Keyword research usually starts with a brainstorming session – which keywords do you think are most relevant? You can also look to your competitors’ websites – which keywords do they target. Keyword suggestion tools like Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Suggestion Tool or SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool are also good resources.

Step 3 – On-Page Optimization

Once you know what keywords your target audience is actually searching for, it’s time to evaluate your website for how well it ranks for those keywords. On-page optimization means everything you can do to your website that will influence its rank in search engines. This can include:

• using those keywords in your content, title tags and other HTML tags
• creating more content about those keywords
• linking to pages using those keywords in the link’s anchor text
• making sure visitors can skim your web copy within a few seconds by providing headlines, bulleted lists, and bolded words
• keeping content up-to-date
• and so forth

Before I get too far, let me stress – concentrate on your visitors first and then worry about search engines. If your site looks like it was written for search engines rather than your visitors, they’ll be able to tell – and will quickly click away.

Never forget the goal of small business SEO – you want visitors to come to your site AND take some sort of action. Conversion is the end goal!

Step 4 – Linking Strategies

On-page SEO will only take you so far. If you are targeting highly competitive search terms, you’ll need to devote considerable effort to getting other quality sites to link to you. Inbound links are a major factor in how search engines rank sites because search engines assume that if other quality sites are linking to you, you must have good content.

Think of it this way – not every site someone wants to be ranked No. 1 on Google for a particular keyword actually deserves that rank. Over the years, webmasters have tried to game search engines by getting as many links as they can without regard to the quality of sites that are actually linking to them. This strategy no longer works anymore.

Now, search engines rank sites based on a number of link-based ranking factors in order to filter out the spammers while promoting the quality sites that do deserve a high ranking. Rather than just look at quantity of links, they look at whether the site linking to you is a relevant, authoritative site that is also considered trustworthy on the web.

What should you be looking for?

• Is the linking site relevant? Search engines give greater weight to links coming from sites that are of a similar nature as yours.
• Is the linking site reputable? Do other websites link out to this site, implicating that this site is an authority on its topic?
• What anchor text does the site use to link to you? Anchor text is the text portion of a link. A link that includes your keywords is better than a link that just includes your site’s title or your URL.
• Where will the link be placed? Links located in the main content of the site are usually weighted more than those in the page footer or near other paid links.
• What type of traffic will the page send your site? – Look for sites with readers who might actually click through to your site rather than just focusing on getting a link back to your site.

A link from a high-quality, relevant site is far more valuable to you than submitting your site to thousands of directory sites or shady sites that will link to anyone.

Step 5 – Measuring Results

Finally, once you’ve implemented your campaign, you must measure and tweak the results.

Where does your site rank for your priority keywords? Are you getting more qualified traffic from those rankings? Are you getting good links from reputable and relevant sites? Are you getting the conversions you want? And specifically, are you getting a good return on your investment?

By following these five steps, you should start to see results from your small business SEO campaign within 30-90 days of implementation. As you monitor your results and make the necessary changes, you’ll soon find your website ranks well – and converts visitors into subscribers, leads and sales.

Read more small business search engine optimization articles.

What is Small Business Search Engine Optimization?

Most people outside the SEO industry equate search engine optimization with getting a No. 1 ranking in Google. While that’s part of what SEO is, it’s not the whole picture.

In the strictest sense, small business SEO is about optimizing elements of your webpage and those pages linking to your site to improve your rank in search engines. But just getting a No. 1 ranking in Google isn’t enough. After all, you could have a No. 1 rank for a keyword that no one searches for. Or you could rank No. 1 for a keyword that people do search for but isn’t relevant to your site’s content. Or you could rank No. 1 for a keyword that people looking for information only – that is, they have no intent to buy your product or hire you – search for.

On the flip side, once people click on your page from search results, you have about three seconds to convince them they should stick around and read more – perhaps take a specific action. If people click onto your page and immediately click away, you’ve lost them. If people skim the page and can’t find the keywords they were searching for, or your content isn’t compelling, or your site looks spammy, they’ll leave without giving you another thought.

So, let’s refine the definition of SEO a bit more: SEO is the practice of improving your site’s ranking in search engines to attract people who are most interested in your information, product, or service. And SEO is about getting those qualified people who do come to your site to take some relevant action – to convert those anonymous browsers into people who are willing to raise their hands and say “I’m interested. Tell me more.”

Common Small Business SEO Myths

Now that I’ve talked about what SEO is, let me clear up a few myths and misconceptions about SEO.

• The goal of a small business SEO campaign is a top 5 ranking in Google. – A top rank in Google can have no effect on your bottom line if you aren’t targeting the right keywords (those keywords aren’t relevant to your website’s content or no one is searching for those terms) or if your website isn’t set up to convert visitors into leads and sales. The goal of an SEO campaign should be to deliver highly targeted visitors who want/need your product or service – and are ready to take action.
• SEO involves secret tactics, smoke and mirrors or ways to trick search engines. – SEO isn’t rocket science, nor is it a secret practice that only experts are privy to. Good SEO doesn’t involve shady “black hat” tactics that go against Google’s best practices or taking advantage of loopholes in how search engines rank sites. The key to higher rankings isn’t in tweaking your “meta tags, adding hidden text to your site, using the proper keyword density, getting lots of low quality sites to link to you, repeatedly re-submitting your site to search engines, buying multiple domains or other tricks you may have heard.
• SEO can guarantee a top search engine position. – You’ve probably received unsolicited emails claiming they can get you a top 10 ranking on Google guaranteed. Unfortunately, when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is – especially in this case. Google even states that no one can guarantee top search engine rankings.
• You won’t need to change your site. – A major component of SEO involves optimizing your website so that search engines can easily determine what your site is about and will rank accordingly. To do so, you will need to change elements of your website to incorporate the keywords you wish to be found for.
• SEO is a one-time event and once you achieve a top rank, it is permanent. – Search engines are always tweaking the way they rank sites. New competitors are always entering the SEO game. In other words, the game is always changing, and you never can just rest on your laurels once you do achieve the rank you’d like.
• SEO is a free way to market your site. – While many SEO strategies can be implemented for free or low cost, you still must put in time and effort on an ongoing basis. In addition, many effective SEO tactics do cost money.
• SEO will send you lots of quick traffic (or it will take years to see results). – SEO won’t drive thousands of visitors to your site in the next 24 hours. It can take months to see the results of your efforts, but you should start to see results within 30-90 days.

What are the components of a Small Business SEO campaign?

There are three basic steps of any small business SEO campaign:

1. Strategy: This stage involves customer, competitor and keyword analysis to create an SEO strategy for your company. First, you must define who your target audience – that is, who are the people who are most likely to need your information, products, and services – is, how they search for information, and what keywords they use. Second, it involves evaluating your competitors’ sites – who are they? How do they rank? What content do they provide? How difficult will it be to rank better than they do? Etc. Finally, it involves prioritizing the most lucrative keywords – those keywords that bring in and convert the most visitors – to create an action-oriented SEO strategy with firm goals and objectives.
2. Implementation: Step 2 builds on the research you did in Step 1. This step includes building an SEO-friendly website with quality content that your visitors want, adding content rich in keywords your customers use, and getting quality links back to your site.
3. Measuring Results: Step 3 involves monitoring how well your SEO campaign is going and making changes to your strategy for continual results.

Small business search engine optimization can be a great way to send high-quality, targeted traffic to your website, but as I’ve stressed in this article, traffic isn’t enough. If you aren’t also focused on converting that traffic to leads and sales, you are wasting a lot of time and money for minimal results. A solid SEO strategy will help you get the most return on investment (ROI) for your SEO efforts.

Read more small business search engine optimization articles.

What You Will Learn:
This podcast will teach listeners what search engine optimization (SEO) is and why it’s important to ranking well in Google. Participants will learn:

• Comparisons/contrasts of information storage and retrieval before and after the Internet
• How search engines find pages
• How search engines return relevant results
• Major problems search engines face
• Why search engines aren’t as accurate as we’d like them to be
• How SEO helps search engines return relevant results

Who Will Benefit?
This podcast is a brief introduction to how search engines work, including how they find pages, how they categorize pages in their database, and how they return relevant results in just a few seconds. It provides a brief overview of what is required for high search engine rankings and problems search engines face such as relevancy issues (relevancy is subjective) and language problems.

Read more search engine optimization articles. ]]> http://www.morningstarmultimedia.com/how-search-engines-rank-sites/feed/ 0 http://www.morningstarmultimedia.com/introduction-to-search-engine-optimization-seo/ http://www.morningstarmultimedia.com/introduction-to-search-engine-optimization-seo/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2007 15:11:10 +0000 Krista http://www.morningstarmultimedia.com/blog/?p=316

What You Will Learn:
This podcast will teach listeners what search engine optimization (SEO) is and why it’s important to ranking well in Google. Participants will learn:

• What is SEO?
• Why SEO is important to small businesses
• The difference between SEO and spamming search engines
• How search engines rank websites
• 5 cornerstones of an SEO campaign
• Why no one can guarantee a top ranking on Google

Who Will Benefit?
Anyone who would like their site to rank well in Google and other search engines. This call will clear up misconceptions about search engine optimization, explain why it’s so difficult to rank well for popular keywords, and discuss the foundations for an effective SEO campaign. This call is directed at beginners.

Read more search engine optimization articles.

Though this video is a humorous poke at search engines, the sad truth is that most sites stink at making their customers’ interests and concerns the focus of their websites. This is especially true for service providers who drone on about themselves, their firm, and the services they provide rather than addressing their prospects’ key problems.

Does your website attempt to understand what prospects are looking for and make it extremely easy for them to find the information they need?

What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is how search engines calculate the quantity and quality of links to a website. Quantity is simply how many websites link back to your site. Quality is how relevant the website linking to your site is to your subject matter.

It’s not enough just to get a large number of links from various websites. To have the most effect on your search ranking, the best links are from websites in a related industry. For instance, a marketing blogger might link to another marketing blogger or a bankruptcy law firm might link to a credit counseling company. The idea is that the website topics are related somehow. If a lawyer links to a dog grooming site, it won’t carry as much weight because the topics are seemingly unrelated.

When you build links to your site, aim for quality links first.

8 Ways to Build Links Back To Your Site

Getting other people to link to you can be challenging. Link building often is time-consuming and you only see gradual results. Years ago, it was much easier to build links because search engines weren’t as strict about which websites linked to others. Now, search engines have cracked down on spam sites whose sole purpose is to link to other spam sites. Here are a few ways to generate links to your website.

1. Reciprocal links – Reciprocal linking isn’t dead. If you run a blog and want to link to exchange links with another blogger, that’s OK. If you run a business and want to link to your partners, that’s fine too. Your links should be of value to the people visiting your website. You might get link exchange request emails from people you have never heard of. If the email doesn’t sound genuine or the website they will place your link on looks spammy, don’t do it.
   
   
2. Directory links – These can work as well if you submit your site to a few high-quality directories. Many directories require you to pay a fee to join, and most aren’t worth it. Some potential directories to check out include the Yahoo Directory ($299/year) and Best of the Web ($299.95). If there are any major directories in your industry, consider submitting to them. Also consider some of the many blog directories if you have a blog.
   
   
3. Produce content – If you regularly publish articles, free reports, podcasts or video, you have a much greater chance of getting people to link back to that content.
   
   
4. Send testimonials – If you have used a product or service, sometimes you can submit your testimonial and the site owner will give you a link back to your website.
   
   
5. Conduct interviews – Interview key players in your niche. Often, the interviewee will link to you, as well as some of his or her readers.
   
   
6. Guest blogging – Build relationships with prominent bloggers in your industry by leaving useful blog comments or interacting with them on social media sites. As you build rapport, ask if you can submit a guest post to their blog for a back link.
   
   
7. Press releases – Many online press release services give you the option to link back to your website.
   
   
8. Submit articles – Article marketing is a great way to build back links. Consider writing and submitting articles to ezinearticles.com and other article directories for back links.

Though it takes work, if you spend a few minutes each day getting quality back links to your website, your results will pay off long-term.

Michael provided an extremely valuable template for asking the right questions and measuring results with analytics software. First, he categorized analytics users into 3 categories:

1. Observers – Making up about 85% of analytics users, these people are mostly concerned with trendlines – specifically, are the numbers going up and to the right? (ie you’re getting more visitors to your site or increasing sales)
   
   
2. Prospectors – These people spend a bit more time than observers digging through numbers. For instance, they might be interested in whether more people opened this month’s email over last months or if conversion rates are going up or which sites are sending them traffic. Like observers, they are still mostly reactive with their analysis and are concerned with trends.
   
   
3. Interrogator – These people are concerned with finding solutions to problems, so they deliberately set up trials to test their hypotheses. For instance, they might be interested in things like which landing page converts better or how a public relations campaign is performing.
   
   

Michael outlined the three steps in any analytics test as follows:

1. Ask: ask a tactical question related to the business strategy
2. Check: pick ways to test this and choose 3-4 of the most possible answers
3. Action: create action steps for each possible answer

He then gave a bunch of examples of implementing this. For instance, say you’re not getting as good return on investment (ROI) for some pay-per-click (PPC) ads you are running. This might break down into:

1. Ask: Which 10% of ads are performing the most poorly
2. Check: Check ads with high costs, low engagement, or low conversion. If you’re using Google Adwords, set up ROI calculations and you’ll be able to see the best and worst performing ads.
3. Action: Stop running ads with poor performance and increase your investment in areas that are performing

Another example he gave was how he might increase traffic from blogs.

1. Ask: Which bloggers send the most traffic and how can I reward them?
2. Check: Analyze referral sources to see which blogs are sending the most traffic. Then look at other factors like which blogs send higher than average time on site (ie if your average visitor spends 2.5 minutes on your site and you have a handful of blogs sending you people that spend 4 minutes on your site on average, that’s great!) or higher conversions (if you know that your conversion rate is 1 in 10 yet some blogs send traffic that converts 1 in 7, those are the ones to reward!)
3. Action:Action: Find ways to do something nice for those bloggers like sending them an Amazon gift card.

As you can see, with each of these examples, you are focusing on a specific question and looking for ways to answer them. When you do find the answer, it’s important to take specific action – like increasing spending on the ads with higher conversion rates or doing something nice for bloggers that send great referrals.

Personally, I haven’t yet used ClickTracks – I’ve been using Google Analytics – but I’m looking forward to trying it out.

I know from my 12 years experience designing and developing websites and online marketing campaigns for clients that most small business owners are clueless about how to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. They tend to try something and if it doesn’t work, move on to something else. They don’t spend time testing different ads to figure out what works best and what doesn’t.

In his talk, David addressed a process for analyzing the results of your ad campaign:

1. Define your purpose. What is it that you’re trying to test? Why do you want to test it? What are you testing for? How will you know if it’s working or not? For instance, let’s say you’re running a pay per click campaign and sending people to a landing page where you make them an offer. Perhaps you want to increase the response rate to that offer from 1% to 2%. That’s your test’s purpose.
2. Gather baseline data. In step two, you now know your purpose. The next step is to look at where your current traffic is coming from. What types of people buy from you? Where does your traffic come from? Of the people who visit your site, what percentage of visitors respond to your offer (like subscribe to your newsletter, download a free report, ask for a consultation, or buy a product)? What keywords drive the most traffic? What about the most sales? Where are your most profitable customers coming from?
3. Use the appropriate tools. To perform comparison testing, you will need to have the appropriate tools in place to test one thing vs another. In the case of testing 2 different landing pages, you’ll need to set up your campaign so that half of the people who click on your ad are taken to landing page 1 and half are taken to landing page 2.
4. Test variations. The easiest way to test two different pages is to have all but 1 or 2 elements the same for each page. For instance, you might want to test whether certain pictures affect your conversion rate. In that case, the only difference between your two landing pages will be what pictures are on them. The text will remain the same. Or, perhaps you’ll test which headers get a better response rate, so the only difference on the two pages will be the headers. You’d then send traffic from your ad randomly to one of the two pages. The page that converts the best will become your new baseline and you’ll try to beat its results in your next round of testing.
5. Rinse. Repeat. Keep testing results against the baseline until you achieve your campaign goals set in #2.

Marketing is a series of setting goals, testing responses, and making changes until you get the results you’re looking for. Rarely do you get the results you want on the first try, so keep testing different ads, headlines, and copy to see what gets

Also, another point David made which I’ll throw in here is that people don’t buy your product or service. They buy a future. It’s up to you to explain how your product or service will improve their lives. Don’t leave that up to their imagination.

David recommended the book, 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias. I’ve also heard people recommend The Story Factor by Annette Simmons and Metaphorically Selling by Anne Miller. And of course, Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars, which talks about the importance of storytelling in marketing and sales.

Here’s David Bullock’s website for more information, or his freebie on Taguchi Marketing.