1. Be an expert. You need more than just knowledge on how to perform keyword research to become an online marketing consultant. To become effective in this field, you must know the ins and outs of search engine marketing, competition and keyword analysis, SEO, link building, website design, and website creation. You must also know how to use different paid and free marketing tools.

2. Check on your competition. There are now thousands of online marketing consultants who are offering basically the same services. Get ahead of the pack and stay on top of the game by setting yourself apart from the rest. Your consulting services must be way more powerful and more effective compare to these people so you can easily lure your prospects to sign up to your offering.

3. Get a reliable computer and internet service provider. As your clients will heavily rely on you, it’s a must that you can get online 24/7. Invest on getting a reliable computer and ISP. This might mean shelling out more money but it’s the best investment that you can ever make as a marketing consultant.

4. Skills. The skills you need to become a marketing consultant are the following; active listening, problem-solving, analytical, communication, and people skills. If you think that your skills are really not that impressive, I recommend that you consider honing them through constant practice or by taking advantage of relevant seminars and trainings.

Article writing can benefit you personally as well as financially. You can really advance and profit by writing articles. Having the honor of being an expert or high status writer on websites similar to EzineArticles and others, you can increase your profits greatly.

There are seven major ways to really benefit and advance from writing articles:

The first one is to make your name popular by consistently using the same or similar name. It is also called name branding or a calling card. Readers will know who you are and if your work is of quality they will come back on consistent basis. Part of improving your profits is improving your readership and name branding assists in doing just that.

The second way you can advance and profit with article writing is to build quality one way links which can also draw ranking and traffic to your work. Your ranking and importance in search engines will increase as search engines give good weights to quality one way links. Article directories are the best way to get top quality one way links.

The third way is if you write keywords rich articles, which will give you a great chance to get top positions for your targeted keywords. If you target high search volume keywords in your article, you can bring many quality visitors to your site by submitting your article to article directories, online magazines and related business sites etc.

The fourth way you can advance and profit with article writing is to produce very interesting articles that your readers want to read. Think about what is current and hip. You should strive for the latest cutting edge topics that are sure to interest readers. What do people what to know? Or what is there not enough information on? Looking at search engines’ most popular searches and keywords suggestion tools are great ways to find out what people are buzzing about. Stay current and in the know about celebrity gossip and be aware of what other people are inquiring about.

Articles that intrigue and keep visitors coming for new information. Getting your article published on sites and various newsletters that all ready have an enormous amount of traffic will really help you advance and profit.

The fifth way is by building a reputation. Building a great reputation will give you the consistent traffic that you need to really profit from article writing. If you keep at it it’s possible to get to the point where people look for your name to find out the latest information on the internet. Your name will be trusted and associated with top-notch article writing and abundant information.

The sixth way you can advance with article writing and profit is by the advertising blitz that it brings you for practically free. You sneak in your promotion and place ads at the same time you’re posting an article. Advertising is one of the best ways to not only make a name for you but to also make extra money. Many ads bring traffic and we all know that traffic makes you money. The more traffic, the more clicks, and the more your profits will increase. You will have the quality article needed to advance and profit.

The seventh way you can advance with article writing is to help pre-selling of your products and services. Mostly visitors do not want to make a sale straight away.

Then want to get detailed information about your services and products before making a final decision. If you write an article about your services and products that will put visitor to make a informed decision. Also you get an edge over those who do not offer detailed info about their services or products.

Your social networking activities play a key role in your promotional communication. Therefore, they need to communicate the same message as your website, blog and face to face elevator speech — even when you post about personal, everyday events.

One way to grow your business with social networking is to decide that you will apply essential copywriting principles to every tweet and post. In fact, you are writing copy every time you communicate with your target customers, potential joint venture partners and referral sources.

Copywriting doesn’t mean fake. You still retain your authentic voice. In fact, you won’t come across as credible if you turn up the hype.

When you apply your copywriting techniques, you target every sentence and every post to your target audience. So if you’re a financial consultant, you don’t write posts like, “I ate a donut.” Or, “I wonder whether to have tuna or chicken salad for lunch.” But if you’re a diet coach, you can fine-tune posts about food to reach your target audience in a very meaningful way.

When you’re writing copy, you realize you need to be compelling. Readers are easily distracted. But you can’t demand their interest by writing in all capital letters, using questionable Sopranos-type language, or making outrageous claims. Instead, you recognize exactly what draws their interest and you respond.

Even when you’re writing personal posts, you can see your world through the lens of a copywriter. I recommend identifying a few personal topics that you wouldn’t mind disclosing to the world.

Choose activities that wouldn’t embarrass you if they appeared on Sixty Minutes (and anything you post on Facebook could easily end up there, if it’s bizarre enough). Examples include being a die-hard fan of the Florida Gators of the Green Bay Packers, listening to jazz, working out in the gym, playing a musical instrument and taking walks with your dog.

When you mention activities like these, you invite others to bond with you. When you post, “I just ate a piece of triple chocolate cake,” you’re probably not bonding. In fact, you may attract raised eyebrows from some. But if you post, “Just made a triple chocolate cake for my daughter’s birthday! She just turned 10,” you might get into dialogues about birthdays, challenges of getting kids to eat healthy food, and cooking as a hobby.

An internet marketing consultant is a person or a company that has its expertise in providing business solutions for internet marketing businesses. The services offered by these consultants may vary depending on the needs of the clients. They offer advice on marketing strategies in order to increase sales and generate greater income. They can also help you in making the right decisions on how to manage your traffic and increase it as much as possible. They can give you important tips on how to convert your traffic into paying customers. Basically, these marketing consultants are the ones that can help you know what you are doing right with your business and how you are supposed to make it even better. If you belong to the group of beginners who are still looking for ways to improve your internet marketing business, hiring the services of a consultant may be very beneficial for you. If you are looking for ways on how to make your marketing strategies work for the advancement of your business and make it more competitive in the market, these consultants may be the answer to your problem. Finding the right consultants will work to your advantage if you are not so sure of how to manage some of your operational problems. In this regard, what you have to do is to learn from these consultants and apply what you learn from them in order for you to build a confidence in the undertaking that you have chosen.

An internet marketing consultant can be a good way to find help if you are experiencing problems with your internet business. They can help you find meaningful ways in which you can increase your traffic and convert them into customers. They can also provide their services in helping you decide which marketing strategy will give you the best chances of maintaining your competitive nature in your business. By getting the services of these professional consultants, you can be assured that you will get effective internet marketing services that may help you solve business problems and create business solutions that are suited for your plans. And besides, it is assuring to know that there is someone that can assist you in making the right decisions for your business growth which can eventually lead to your business’ success. Hiring a consultant can give you the space to not worry too much on your business undertaking by ensuring that you have your options on hand to make and apply to your business.

1. Content and Credibility

Make sure your website content is of a high standard before you launch any search engine marketing initiatives. Poorly designed websites with uninformative and uninspiring content will lead to low sales conversion rates. Your website needs to make an impact, it needs to look professional and it needs to demonstrate credibility.

2. Give a lot of thought to Keyword Research

Search engine marketing is all about keywords. Selecting the wrong keywords can be a costly mistake. Don’t assume that you know the keywords people are likely to enter into Google and other search engines in order to find your particular products or services. Use Wordtracker, or a similar professional keyword tool, in order to find out both what people are searching for and how many other websites are competing on those terms.

3. Pay attention to your Landing Pages

Do not place all the focus on your website “home” page. If you are setting up a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign, it’s crucial that your advert links to a page relevant to the specific web search. So, for example, if you’re advertising 30 inch television sets, make sure your landing page is about 30 inch television sets. A user who lands on a more generic page will leave your site if they can’t find what they’re looking for in two clicks.

4. Use PPC to launch your website

You will not be able to achieve “organic” (free) listings on Google, Yahoo and the other search engines instantly. Although SEO (search engine optimisation) should be a consideration from the start of planning your website business, it will take time to achieve results. Setting up PPC campaigns, monitoring them closely and analysing which keywords convert to sales the most efficiently will help you to determine which keywords you should be targeting for your SEO efforts.

5. Be informative and clear with your META and Ad Copy

When optimising your landing pages, ensure that you use clear and informative language. Do not cram your META title and description tags full of keywords. Each landing page on your site should be optimised for the search engines on one key-phrase term. With your PPC campaigns, ensure that you use the exact key-phrase in your ad copy, otherwise your click-through rate will suffer and the cost of your ads will escalate.

6. Use Web Analytics to Improve Your Pages

Make sure you install analytics software on your site so that you can analyse crucial information such as page bounce rates and average times spent surfing your site. High bounce rates means your landing page content is irrelevant to the web searcher. If you have a bounce rate over 60% there is a problem with your content that needs to be addressed.

7. Install Conversion Tracking and Set-out your Campaign Metrics

It’s important to know what your objective is in driving traffic to your site. Be it online sales, newsletter sign-ups or contact form enquiries; ensure that you have the correct code installed on your site to track your responses and, more importantly, which keywords created the response. Establish a budget and some campaign parameters. If you find yourself spending too much on keywords that yield little or no response, then redefine your keyword strategy.

8. Give thought to online PR and social networking

Try and think of some creative ideas to generate a buzz about your particular product or service. Viral marketing can be an extremely effective method to get the word out to a very large audience. The buzz this can create online will generate links back to your site and subsequently higher placements in the search engines.

9. Build quality links from content themed sites

Traditional link building methods such as directory submissions are fine for helping to get your website indexed, however, effective link building campaigns should be focused around networking with other sites related to your content. If you run a landscaping business you should look at trying to form partnerships with gardening resource publications, garden centres and landscaping training organisations. On topic links to your site from trusted domains will help you to rank on your target keywords. What you do not want is to enter what’s known as a “bad neighbourhood” by having lots links pointing at your site from low quality, off-topic domains.

10. Keep Generating and Optimising Your Content

Websites can not be built and left to sell themselves. They need to be managed and updated daily. You should aim to build the volume of pages on your site over time. Websites that grow are considered to be “live” by the search engines and, over time, will become trusted authorities on your particular subject matter. Keep building and optimising your content and you will eventually succeed in the search engines.

Call in the Experts.

Though some advertising and marketing ventures seems simple enough to be handled ”in house”, nothing is as costly as a marketing misfire. Not only may you be sending out the wrong messages, to the wrong markets, but also by the time you catch it, your budget may be in no shape to recover and redirect. The truth is, no one can do the job as effectively and efficiently as someone who lives and breathes the industry everyday. Plus, the added perk of consistent media contacts that will prove to be financially beneficial to your business.

Seeing the forest and the trees.

When you hire a consultant you hire an objective opinion, as well as a fresh point of view. Sometimes a business may lose perspective on itself by being too heavily immersed in the day-to-day operations, and lose itself in the big picture, missing the small details… or vice-versa. Sadly, sometimes a business’s marketing will clearly reflect this. The president of a private jet company’s focus is on the bells and whistles of his fleet. It’s what he sees as important in his view of his business. Inevitably, his marketing may also focus on this portion of his business, ignoring what he is really selling to his potential clients: The feeling and the status of private jets.

If you add another ball, technically it is juggling.

If you, as a business owner, or an employee take on the added tasks of the marketing of the business, attention is being taken from other projects and responsibilities. Inescapably, focus and demands are bound to pull from one and take away from others until something falls to the floor. Consultants are dedicated to one, and only one, portion of your business. Their focus is committed, and they allow you to keep yours where it should be.

The Gumby Factor.

Consultants are very flexible. Immediately ready and available to take on assignments at a moment’s notice. Accessibility to getting a new project off the ground is just a phone call away. On the other hand, trying to hire a new employee specifically to handle your marketing needs takes valuable time to places ads; conduct interviews and then sort through applicants, hoping to find the right person for the job.

The M -Word Money.

When you total up the actual cost of bringing on a new employee, you will most likely find that hiring a consultant is much more cost effective. The hourly rates may seem to favor a full time employee, but when you factor in employee benefits, training time, vacation/sick time, 401(k), the added overhead involved in situating a new employee, and the sheer fact that you may be paying full time wages for something that may not need full time attention, the cost effectiveness will fall in favor of a consultant. Which bring us to….

The C- Word Commitment.

Hiring a full time employee is a commitment. And bringing on an employee to handle a special marketing project, or set up an initial marketing plan, may in the long run leave you scrambling to find a new project or position for that employee. Or worse yet, you find yourself paying a full time marketing director to do basic maintenance. Hiring a consultant requires no long-term commitment. When a consultant completes a project, they have the flexibility to move into whatever position you need them, from quarterly analysis, to basic maintenance, to completely out of the picture, but on the sidelines when you’re ready to take a new step forward.

“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Look for Qualification and Experience of a Consultant:

Like I said there are numerous ways to online marketing. For example, search engine optimization, pay per click campaigns, social media marketing, blog marketing, email marketing and many more. There are many consultants who specialize in any one of these many marketing strategies and call themselves marketing consultants. A good consultant is the one who has a good qualification and experience in all of the marketing strategies. Not only that, he should also be able to explain that which marketing strategy will work the best with your business mode and a website design. It is not always required to perform all the marketing methods to any business.

Have an Open and a Frank Conversation:

Most professional consultants will not mind if you ask them to have an open conversation on their background. Ask them all the questions that you have in your mind. Ask them to provide you with their portfolio. Study it carefully and ask questions about the various projects that they performed previously. What strategies they carried out with those projects and why. Also if possible ask them to show the traffic statistics from few of their clients websites. This will make many things clear in your mind. This will also show your consultants professionalism and their ability to perform their tasks.

Make an Honest Check on Your Consultants:

The materials, the records, the data your consultants show you may be fake. You will be paying him for the service he will provide you. So there is no harm in making an honest check on your consultants. To ensure he is up to his feet about what he says about himself, you can go through the clients testimonials. You can also receive their clients contact information and ask them on how the business went through. Since he is an online marketing consultant, there will be his online profile on many websites. Search them through search engines and go through them to find his reliability. Once you make sure that everything meets your requirements, then you are good to go with your online marketing consultant.

Clipping lets you clip specific pieces of web pages, and then share what you clip with your friends on Facebook, MySpace or anywhere else. Unlike bookmarks that let you share a link to an entire page, clipping lets you capture and share the highlights from the page. Clips can also be saved privately, emailed or printed.

Clipping Improves Your Search Engine Ranking

Clipping is an easy way to generate backlinks to your Blog, opportunity pages, landing pages, affiliate clone pages, etc. One of the clipping sites I like is ClipMarks.com. Registration is free, and then you install the Clipmarks Button on your browser. Just one button that lets you share text, images, and videos. With Clipmarks in your browser you’re always a click away from sharing anything you find on the web. But instead of copying and pasting links, Clipmarks is like adding a pair of scissors to your browser, letting you capture exactly what you want others to see.

When you clip something, you can share it anywhere on the web, including Facebook, your blog, by email or on clipmarks.com. Your clip collection is searchable from any computer with an internet connection, including your iPhone, Blackberry, or other mobile device.

ClipMarks has a PR of 4 and an Alexa Rank of 3,162 so by clipping your WebPages you are building High Value Link Juice. Plus, your clips have the possibility of going viral through what ClipMarks calls “Pops” and “Guides” which are explained on the ClipMarks website. Basically, if people like your clips, they pass your clips around.

Search Engines Love Clips

Originally I started clipping to improve my search engine rankings through the backlinks that clipping provided. A few days after I had done some work creating a web of backlinks to one of my affiliate pages I checked on my keyword to see how it was doing. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that my ClipMarks clip had made it to #3 on the first page of Google. My Affiliate site had not made it to the front page yet.

Within 2 days of creating that clip, it had moved to the #3 position. Now, I’m sure it will not always be the case with all keywords especially the highly targeted ones. But, if you are working with micro niche and long tail keywords less competitive in nature this is some wonderful news.

Just the fact that my clip ranked so high and did it so quickly is all the proof I need to believe that the search engines love Clipping. Even if the Clip does not reach the front page, you have to appreciate the link juice!

Earn Extra Cash – Embed Clips on Your Blog or Website

I thought this was pretty cool! ClipMarks has a feature they call “Clip Widget” You can customize and embed the Clip Widget onto your blog or WebPages. I put it on one of my sites to test it out and it has produced 1 or 2 sales a week for the past 2 months without me having to do anything beyond putting the code on my page.

Other Nice Features

If you are going to include ClipMarks in your Link Juice toolbox be sure to complete your “About Me” page. It’s a good place to put a link to your blog and/or one of your money sites, landing pages, etc. It does not seem to permit HTML so you won’t be able to use anchor text. But your URL is clickable if you include http://

Another perk that some people may like is that ClickMarks includes an app to easily invite your friends to your clips.

And you can Syndicate your clips beyond Clipmarks.com by using their simple app for posting clips on FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, and more.

Clipping has definitely found a permanent place in my arsenal. It is easy to register. Easy to set up. Easy to use. And it produces results fast. I highly recommend you include Clipping if you are looking for results.

However, with stiff competition over the internet, many business owners do not have the capability and knowledge to make their site sell. Even if a site is beautifully designed complete with inventory listings and shopping cart facilities, it would be a total failure if the site is unable to generate adequate internet traffic.

This is where the services of an internet marketing consultant come in. The business of an Internet marketing consultant would be to help clients increase web traffic to their internet sites. This can be done in a variety of ways such as through search engine optimization, pay per click advertising or affiliate marketing. Although many website owners may be familiar with these concepts, they may lack the time and expertise to do it the correct way. An internet marketing consultant would be able to apply the appropriate strategies for websites to create the needed traffic and increase sales in the process.

Start Up Costs and Financing Sources:

The core of an internet marketing consulting business is highly dependent on the skills and efforts of the business owner. In fact, as the business is service based, the start-up costs are relatively low as no inventories are required. However, the business owner will need to obtain education, skills and expertise in the area of internet marketing before he can start the business. This can be obtained from self-study in the area of internet marketing, attending a seminar or a course on this area or by working for a mentor who is an expert.

Thus, the start-up costs for this business would primarily be for the cost of education which may vary from $500 to $10,000 depending on the type of education received. A marketing website would be essential to your services as an internet consultant. This would probably cost you another $1000 – $2000 for website development and server space maintenance and support.

In order to obtain financing, a business plan should be drafted to indicate the growth potential of the business including a sound marketing plan. With this, the plan can be used to obtain funding for the business either from commercial lenders or venture capitalists.

Pricing Guidelines for Service:

The pricing for internet marketing consulting can vary greatly depending on the source of internet traffic, advertising efforts required as well as the keywords of the site that would need to be optimized. This is due to the fact that some more common keywords may require more work from the internet marketing consultant in order to produce the expected results.

Advertising such as pay per click can also vary depending on the maximum number of clicks that the site owner has preset. Other areas of concern are the current marketing strategies that the site owner is already implementing, in which an analysis needs to be done by the internet business consultant to determine what is working and what isn’t.

Some internet business consultants charge their clients based on the additional sales generated by their strategies. They may charge based on a percentage of increased sales from the site over a period of time, which is a more justified method of charging the client.

As a rule of thumb, internet marketing consultants can start their charges from $80 an hour just for consulting services alone.

It was the headline for an ad that sold a lackluster mail-order English language course. The company ran the ad for 40 long, successful and profitable years! To be sure, many headlines were tested before that winner was discovered.

One alternate headline read: “Do you make mistakes in English?” Both used the same body copy. Perhaps you’d think results were similar if not equal. Well, this alternate headline failed miserably, as did all others!

The heart of Sackheim’s headline pulses from one apparently innocent word: “these.” When added, the reader wants an answer, “What are these mistakes?” Without the word, it’s an invitation to answer a “Yes/No” question. Savvy sales people know “Yes/No” questions instantly kill interest.

Powerful words – the right words – built into advertising headlines and content are more valuable now than ever before. Test! And then test again. Keep testing until you’ve found a winner. For the whole story on Maxwell Sackheim plug his headline into a Google search.

Turning shoppers into customers is a four-step process: Attract, Offer, Convert and Retain. There’s really no difference between shopping at a mall store or an Internet location. It’s how all businesses live and grow or wither and die.

Please imagine we’re walking by a bakery. There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as the aroma of baking bread. Common sense tells the baker, “Use that aroma to pull customers into your shop. The more people coming in, the more you’ll sell!”

Now we’re inside. But you’re using your defensive autopilot. If asked, “May I help you?” you’ll say, “No thanks, I’m just looking.”

All the breads, cakes, cookies, pies and pastries look tempting. You spot loaves of rustic focaccia and ponder, “Maybe I’ll take one home.”

A sales lady near the rustic bread display notes your interest and approaches, “Our focaccia is a wonderful alternative to garlic bread. Lots of herbs and lots of flavor.” She proffers a wicker basket with samples. You taste and decide to buy. “What else?” she asks. Without hesitation, you point to the muffins.

There’s the power of selecting the right words. By asking “What else” rather than “Is there something else?” she avoids a “Yes/No” question. As a result you bought those delicious cranberry-orange muffins. With the next “What else” you added a loaf of whole-wheat sandwich bread.

One sure way to retain customers is to provide a no-nonsense guarantee. You’ll uncover and resolve problems before they grow out of proportion.

Almost every year since 1962 I order my favorite Christmas fruitcake from Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas. Founded in 1896, they’re 50 miles south of Dallas. They guarantee delivery in perfect condition anywhere in the world. (colinstreet.com)

Regardless of where I called home or where a gift was sent, there was never a problem. But this year my fruitcake wasn’t moist – it was surprisingly dry. So I moistened it with a dose of bourbon. Problem solved. Later, I mentioned dryness to their customer service people. They were concerned and insisted on a credit or replacement. Naturally, I chose replacement. But I’m confident my “dryness report” reached both their marketing and quality control people.

It’s the little things that frequently make a difference. How recently have you questioned your own marketing mindset? Measured it against the basics?