New Affiliate Discoveries

My accountant.

Naturally he is analytically inclined. I hired him not only because he has the patience to climb mountains of receipts and separate the important from unimportant, But also because he gets me a good (and ethical) refund on my taxes.

His inclination, however, is not just with dollar figures. He recently started a blog for his business services. How many clients can he service? Right now he’s a one man show. Twelve to twenty-four clients is probably a lot for him. So why does he need a blog for less than twenty clients?

Well, my accountant does more than just crunch numbers. He’s a “small business evangelist.” He works solely with small business owners who face unique and challenging situations compared to the corporate world. Impossibilities are overcome daily when you are a small business owner, and you can never have too much pertinant advice when it comes to managing business affairs.

“Is Every Dollar Pulling it’s Weight?”

In comes my accountant…

Jim writes articles that help small business owners make sure every dollar is working for them. His Articles re-frame common problems business owners face and offer solutions for solving them. He’s not just trying to win clients, he’s trying to evangelize to small business owners.

He describes a sense of peace that overcomes him when he has the opportunity to explain to a small business owner how to overcome payroll obstacles, how to face the IRS and how to save time & money when filing paperwork. By blogging, he reaches scores more people than his current clients.

The Ebb and Flow of “E-Tides”

Being the astute statistician that he is, he noticed that he was getting a lot of blog visits from Google searches on the word “etides”, which is an online sales tax payment system in his state. While he has only mentioned etides once or twice on his blog, it’s clear that people–likely small business owners in his state–are searching for information on the subject.

Instead of ignoring the hits and trying to force his blog in a different direction, he’s recognized this as an opportunity to reach even more people. a chance to make his blog #1 when a small business owner searches on information on “ETides”.

He told me tonight that he was going to write an article on ETides, make it a subpage of his “sales tax” section, and then create a new Ad Words ad, using his “ETides” page is the landing page for the Ad.

Brilliant!

He thought of it all himself, without any input from me or any internet marketing gurus.

Maybe it’s time for him to switch careers!

I suggest you take these action steps for your own blog:

1. If you haven’t already, sign up for Google Analytics to track information about hits to your blog, landing pages, exit pages and track campaign statistics.
2. Find out what search engine queries are resulting in hits to your blog.
3. If you haven’t already, create a dedicated article that is linked to from your homepage on these specific search queries.
4. Create a new AdWords campaign that uses the keywords in your article, and uses that article as your landing page.
5. Within that article, create cross-links within your own site to other related pages, especially if you can send someone to a sales page on your site.
6. Remove AdSense accounts from your article page so that navigation choices are limited to other pags within your site (don’t give the visitor an easy out)
7. Create a way, either on the article page or the sales page, to grab that visitors email address for your e-newsletter service. While the visitor is there, you want to capture their information so you can reach them instead of them finding you again.

By following the above steps, you will create:

• unique and useful content for your web visitors,
• increase targeted search engine hits to your site,
• increase your click through ratio of your Google AdWords, (and in turn increasing your quality score & lowering your click through price),

and most importantly,

• increase actual sales on your website of either your product or your service.

Here are some direct links to products and services that may help you with teh above action steps (some are affiliate sites…if you sign up through these links, I’ll make a little commission.)

Google AdWords -

Google AdSense -

Google Analytics - track visitors, campaigns, ads, search engine keywords and more on your website
AWeber - Email list service with auto-responder follow up messages - great way to convert more sales to your visitors. 30 day free trial.
WordPress - Open source (free) blogging software. Free hosting available on word press.
LunarPages - Great hosting services with auto-installation of word press,

Do you have any brilliant implementations of what to do with your search engine hits? If so, let’s hear them!

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Filed under: Case Studies, Building Traffic, Online Advertising by adventurebear