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[T1096]Top 10 In America

by Pete Moret, Pet

In the past few years the SEO contests are popping up in the search engine optimization world like crazy. There are always contests running, and everytime there is a prize to win, sometimes a big one, sometimes a small one. But it doesn't matter in what contest you're participating, you will allways find things that have gone wrong, or could've done better. In this article I point out the top 10 most common mistakes in participating in an SEO contest.

1) The first mistake is the fact that webmasters get so excited when they see a lot of money, that they point links to their contest page from all the pages of their already existing websites. You would have thousands of backlinks in just a few days, which would cause a sandbox penalty. You need to remember that you can allways point those links to your contest page, you are not in a hurry, are you?

2) The second mistake is that people don't plan. You have to make yourself a scheme where you write down what you do every day/week. Make a linkbuilding scheme, a content writing scheme etc. Just make sure that you do what you tell yourself to do.

3) Make short term goals, the long term goal is offcourse the winning of the SEO contest. But if you make short term goals you don't get demotivated and you have offcourse more chance of winning the SEO contest. For example doing 5 article submissions, 40 link directory submissions and write 20 quality pages by the end of may. Or make a goal like this: I will be indexed by the first of may. Or, I will be on the third page in week 5 of the contest.

4) Write content, A lot of people start a contest blog, but they forget to write content. In the beginning you often write a lot of posts, but in the long run you get more focused on backlinks. Remember that content is still king. And if you have it, and others don't, you already have a head start.

5) Quality backlinks over crappy backlinks. A lot of people start by searching for easy backlinks like directories and buying high pagerank links, but you can do that any time you want in the contest. Do that half way, you have all the time! The first thing you do in participating in an SEO contest is writing content and finding topic related backlinks. The crappy backlinks can wait. You are not in a hurry!

6) Article submission, it's easy and really effective, this article is actually written to boost my ranking for the pvmultimedia seo contest. If I wasn't participating, this article would've never been written. The good thing with article submission is that you can decide what the article is about. So in some way you control the onsite optimization of your backlink, so you can make yourself a highly onpage optimized quality backlink that is related to your contest page. You can also use the main contest keyword as much as you like, so right now I'll take the opportunity to use the words pvmultimedia seo contest once more if you don't mind :).

7) Onsite optimization, don't do it!!! Why? very simple, if you can rank yourself to the top without using for instance your main keywords in your title, you have a backup plan, namely your onpage optimization. A few weeks before the contest you can highly optimize your website for the main keyphrase to get a good boost that can get you to the top, or if you already are at the first spot, you made yourself a really more solid position. And onpage optimization is something you can manipulate and control, offpage optimization is a component that can't be manipulated quickly. But make sure you don't overdo your onpage optimization in the end, because that could cause a penalty or even a ban.

8) Old and wise. If you have a question, would you ask an old wise man or a little boy? Probably the old man, right? Search engines think the same. If a website is new it is less valuable than if there is an old website/domain about the same topic. So stop registering new domains for your contest websites, just use an old one, or a subdomain of an old domain. Maybe you won't have the perfect url, but you do have the perfect age to take advantage from.

9) Authority, like I said before, I'm participating in the pvmultimedia seo contest. On dutch forums there was some discussion about how the hell it was possible that the top 10 for pvmultimedia seo contest was dominated by blogspot blogs. Well, because blogspot is an authority domain, even owned by google itself. Use that authority if you can. Or if you have yourself an authority website it's even better to use that website.

10) Analyse other participants, most people don't look at other participating websites. But if you do take a look at them you can actually find out how they're getting links, how many links they get in a specific period of time, from what websites the links are from, are the links quality topic related high pagerank links? How can I get those links? What do they do with their onpage optimization? etc...

So in fact there are many things you can do or must not do in order to get a chance to win an SEO contest. One last tip from me: start small, if you can win a small/local SEO contest with a small price, you can later on participate in the bigass SEO contests and become rich...

1. Format

A picture only aids if it is compelling and aids in telling the story. NOT a picture of an empty restaurant or dining room or your logo. If you have a photo of food or people make sure it demonstrates they are enjoying themselves.

2. Headline

This is often the major flaw of the restaurant marketing I see. All of your marketing needs to have a strong, offer based headline that answers the question in the guests mind "What's in it for me?"

One option is including the offer in your headline, and on the delivery address side. the more outrageous or bold, the better.

3. Personalization

Tests show that this will increase response by 30%. When you speak directly to your audience you'll get better results. When you can put someone's name in the headline it will get better results.

It also means you should segment your lists and match the message to each list.

Existing guests should get a different mailing than those that came from a purchased list. It's easier to get existing guests to come back to celebrate their birthday and as a result it requires less sales effort. Often a well designed postcard is good enough.

However with a new guest that hasn't visited your restaurant before it requires more sales effort. That's hard to do effectively with one postcard. That's why I advocate a full blown sales letter with first class stamp with the personalized approach.

4. Call to Action

You need to give them a specific direction. Tell them exactly what to do and how to do it.

Sometimes this is combined it with the deadline below. "Bring in the enclosed certificate before XXX to receive your FREE Dinner ".

If you are mailing to a cold list of people that have not been to restaurant before you should give them directions. That's why you should include a map to your restaurant on the back of the certificate so people end up somewhere else when they intended to come to your restaurant.

5. Story

When you justify your offer, typically your response will go up. Engage the reader. Use your own voice, as if you were talking to a familiar friend. Talk about how your restaurant is different/better than all the other options available to them what makes you standout, unique.

The reason is that once they try your restaurant you know they'll come back. It saves you hiring some fancy New York advertising agency. It doesn't have to be a complicated reason you just need one.

6. Deadline

Everything has deadlines to need a valid offer. I recommend you feature an expiry date in large print and underlined, designed to stand out in the middle of the postcard. On a birthday anytime during their birthday month is usually very effective.

7. Offer

Test until you find a couple of offers that make people want to respond. Keep in mind the long term value of a customer. If it costs you a $10 offer ($3.50 if you consider you are only paying for the food) to get a new customer, it's still worth it.

Once you have them in your database, you can get them onto the newsletter list and get them coming back again and again. Once they are on your database and a regular guest it shouldn't take as big of an offer to get them to come in.

8. Testimonials

What others say about you is at least 10 times more believable than what you say about yourself. Use testimonials on all of your restaurant's marketing. Why keep your happy guests' positive opinion of you a secret?

9. Ability to Track Response

Make sure you keep detailed numbers for all your promotions. Not having accurate statistics may mean that you are making marketing decisions on emotion rather than the facts. That is a problem if you make decisions based on a few people instead of your overall results.

Track each of your restaurant's marketing pieces using the same formula each time. Track the changes you make to each subsequent piece, making only one change at a time so you know what works and what doesn't.

Once you find something that works, keep using it until you notice a change in response.

10. Guarantee

Come up with a big, bold and solid guarantee as a marketing selling point. If a customer is unhappy it's in your best interest to make the customer happy anyway. By promoting a guarantee you just get added mileage from something you would have done anyway.

As long as you are providing a good quality product the amount of people that will take advantage of you are very small compared to the benefits of using it in your restaurant's marketing material.

Article Source : SEO Search Engine Optimization

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Both Pete Moret & Rory Fatt are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Pete Moret has sinced written about articles on various topics from Teeth Whitening, Birthday Party and Mobile Phone Reviews. The writer of this article is participating in the dutch . And is also a participant in the. Pete Moret's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.

Rory Fatt has sinced written about articles on various topics from SEO Search Engine Optimization. . Rory Fatt's top article generates over 27100 views. to your Favourites.