This is a summary of a recent full-length article.  To see the full text, go to “Take Action Today” in our Articles section.

So many times I have given ideas and advice to clients about steps they can take to to increase the number of leads or improve their conversion rates from prospect to customer, yet rarely do I see those ideas put into action.

Doing nothing never has a positive effect on a business.  Absolutely anything you do can have an impact, so chose an action and just do it!
Often times our marketing and relationship building efforts are cumulative so each step you take builds on your previous steps, bringing greater results.

Here are my top five suggestions I give customers for bringing in more prospects- pick one and try it TODAY.

1. Contact your current customers.
2. Send a press release and post it under “News” on your website.
3. Get out and introduce yourself.
4. Follow-up with a past business contact.
5. Write an article in your area of expertise.

Choose one of these action items to do today. Then tomorrow, pick one again, and so on and so forth.  Watch for the immediate effects and keep in mind the cumulative results.

Okay, I started a blog entry about the reasons you may choose to post content on your website in PDF format rather than creating an HTML or other type of web page. It turned out to be a rather long write-up so I chose to post it in the Articles section of the website. Check out the final results at “Five Reasons to Use PDFs on your Website.”

Coming soon, I will also document some ways to create PDFs without buying expensive products like Adobe Acrobat (although I highly recommend Acrobat for people who need to create PDFs on a regular basis).

I finally added to the site the third of three hand-outs from a recent ‘Web Site Content’ presentation I gave at a couple of local networking groups.

I posted this handout as an article called “Writing Content for your Site for Free Promotion & Site Visitors” which can be found in the YNot Web “Articles” section which focuses on topics within the categories of ‘Creating a Web Site‘, ‘Prospecting for Clients‘, and ‘Client Conversion‘.

Creating content that you can distribute as well as post on your own site is a great way to bring in additional traffic (prospecting) as well as helping to build your credibility and your relationship with your visitors leading to more conversions.

There’s a new fad getting pushed by part of the internet marketing community selling paid one-way links on something called ‘Cloud’ sites or ‘500 words’ where there are just various words on their web?site up for bid/purchase as a link text for inbound links. These sites are selling the fact that more one-way inbound links help increase your link popularity and are factored into your ranking and site positioning for keywords used in your inbound link text.

This is reminscent of the recent ‘pixel’ page ad sites where the site owners sell one or more pixels on a website for supposed visibility and inbound links to website owners who want to advertise their website. However, the problem with these sites is that your inbound links are only as good as the site they are on.

First off, hundreds of these flash-in-the-pan sites are popping up and most of them have no ranking or traffic themselves. So you can’t expect to have these help YOUR ranking or traffic. In fact, in my opinion- you should never pay for a link on a site less than PageRank 4. I don’t think there is any problem having free links from sites with PR down to 0, as PR changes and not only is there no penalty for links for lower ranked sites, but search engines like Google expect you to have links from a mix of sites.

Second, many of the major engines often pull ’spammy’ sites from their results altogether. These sites have no real content and are just a bunch of links. They aren’t likely to be in the major engines listings- another indicator that you will not receive any real traffic from them.

Evaluate paid-link or banner ad opportunities wisely. Is the site content related to your site, therefore targetting an audience appropriate to your site? Does the site bring in real traffic? Get some proof of page views and unique visitors. Does the site have a good ranking in Google, MSN or Yahoo?
Don’t be a victim of the latest advertising fads. Use techniques that are proven winners.

Need help finding effective ways to prospect for new customers?
YNot Web can help. Call 916-225-5266 today.

Google provides yet another set of valuable educational resources at its Conversion University. On this site (marketed mostly to Google Analytics users), you will find loads of articles about creating a website that converts visitors into customers and helps retain your existing customers.

My favorite article found here was “Monetizing Non-Ecommerce Sites.” No, its not yet another article about how you can Get Rich with Adsense–it is an editorial on how you can measure the value of a non-Ecommerce site, such as a website that promotes a service-oriented business. Not only will the ideas presented help the average business-owner understand the important connection between their website and sales, but it also emphasizes the importance of tracking for determining your ROI (Return on Investment).

If you need a website that includes more conversion techniques, YNot Web can help. We also provide our own article section on Conversions, for those who want to investigate and test out ideas on their own.