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Which Techniques are Tops

Written by: Donald F. Pooley

Article Overview: Hey, we all want to know which are the very best practice- building techniques, so we can stop wasting time on those that don't cut it.

Which Techniques are Tops

Hey, we all want to know which are the very best practice- building techniques, so we can stop wasting time on those that don't cut it.
Issue #3 listed them according to EFFECTIVENESS, while #4's lists were graded by USAGE. Neither told the whole story. So I combined the two ratings into one score for each tool . The top techniques are those with the highest percentages among the high earners. You'll find them in the upper half of the first list below.
If you want more, or better prospects, replace techniques that are low on this list with those that are higher on it.
Replace "Cold calling", say, with "Printed newsletter".
It may surprise you that "Cold Calling" appears at all on the high earner list. But the others take more time to bear fruit, or a prospect dry spell hits, and the only answer is to do it the hard way.
Whenever I was forced to cold-canvass, it reminded me that to avoid it in the future, more effort was needed to get the other techniques working to their fullest.
We will ALWAYS need new clients, because we keep losing the old ones. So prospecting never ends . Sorry, but that's life.
Here's the first list, showing the percentages for 49 HIGH earners (over $100,000/yr.) of Effectiveness/Usage scores in attracting, and retaining clients, sorted from high to low:
1. Referrals from clients, and non-clients............... 94.3%
2. Contacting clients by phone, or in person........... 73.9%
3. Printed newsletter, mailed or hand-delivered...... 47.3%
4. Seminars, teaching classes................................ 43.3%
5. Participation in organizations of clients............... 38.0%
6. Speeches, talks to civic, trade, select groups.... 31.0%
7. Electronic newsletter, faxed, e-mailed, etc......... 29.8%
8. Website focussing on you, and your business... 27.8%
9. Writing articles for papers, magazines, etc. ....... 27.8%
10. Professional public relations............................... 22.9%
11. Cold e-mailing, faxing, mailing brochures, etc..... 21.6%
12. Cold calling, by phone, or in person.................... 18.4%
13. Directory listings.................................................. 18.4%
14. Working with the media........................................ 18.4%
15. Advertising in newspapers, magazines.............. 14.7%
And here's the data for the 45 LOW earners(under $100,000/yr.):
1. Referrals from clients, and non-clients................. 90.5%
2. Contacting clients by phone, or in person............. 76.7%
3. Participation in organizations of clients................. 41.4%
4. Cold calling, by phone, or in person...................... 35.2%
5. Seminars, teaching classes.................................. 35.2%
6. Printed newsletter, mailed or hand-delivered........ 24.8%
7. Advertising in newspapers, magazines............... 22.4%
8. Cold e-mailing, faxing, mailing brochures, etc....... 22.4%
9. Speeches, talks to civic, trade, select audiences. 19.5%
10. Professional public relations................................. 17.1%
11. Electronic newsletter, faxed, e-mailed, etc........... 15.2%
12. Writing articles for newspapers, magazines, etc. 14.8%
13. Directory listings.................................................... 13.3%
14. Working with the media......................................... 10.0%
15. Website focussing on you, and your business...... 8.6%
Cold-calling is in the bottom 1/3 of the high-earners' list, and the top 1/3 of low earners'. Is there a message here?

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Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1jr37kqx]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1jr37kqx] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":1a8vvwse]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:1a8vvwse] I wouldn't think of "relying on keyword metatags", "using lots of javascript", and "implementing your site in Flash" as bad/black hat...just ineffective. The search engines don't pay much attention to keyword metatags, and using javascript/flash just means the search engines can't "read" it (so if your menu is javascript, for instance, the search engine won't see any keywords you might have in there.)
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - [quote="Alan Mater":3gnk0yja][quote="WebBizIdeas.com":3gnk0yja]There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash[/quote:3gnk0yja] Hi Jeff, Thanks for adding to the list. I have one question, though. How would one implement Session IDs for a URL, and what benefit would come from doing so?[/quote:3gnk0yja] Session ID shows up in the URL only if the method of the submitted form is GET, i.e., <form method="get"...>. If you can arrange for the form method to be POST, this particular problem does not arise. Data-transmission paths to the host differ between GET and POST. The latter, as well as being somewhat more secure, completely sidesteps the issue of fake URLs and SE confusion.
Re: SEO... - [quote="tumescentliposuction":1wl7yf0v] Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.[/quote:1wl7yf0v] Is there a list of SEO techniques that was supposed to follow this post? If so please post it so that we can comment. Cheers Phil


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