Following the first Penguin update in April 2012, sites began to see significant decreases in organic search traffic from Google since they had low quality or paid links that appeared to be unnatural.

Webmasters who attempt to undertake highly manipulative link building techniques to help boost their Google rankings run a high risk of being penalized for their methods.

Even those who try to stick to the guidelines can find themselves in trouble due to tactics employed in the distant past or by triggering a false positive in the algorithm.

Remember, you should not assume that Google has penalized you for any reason just because you see a drop in rankings or because you notice a drop in search traffic for a few days.

It is natural for your position on the search engine results page to shift around, especially whenever Google decides to roll out any of their 500 changes to the algorithms each year. It is also possible that the drop was due to losing a couple of high authority inbound links.

The first thing to do is check if there has been a publicised Google Update in the past few days; I recommend that you check the SEOmoz Google Algorithm Change History as unfortunately Google rarely publicise these updates any more, alternatively if you use Google Analytics you can sign in to the Panguin Tool to see if you have been penalised by an algorithm update.

Beyond automatic penalties, webmasters need to be aware that the Google Web Spam team can also invoke a manual penalty against a site for behaving outside the Google guidelines and significantly disrupt your organic rankings.

It is important to check your Google Webmaster Tools notifications to see if there are any warning messages from Google in there.

If you have not setup Google Webmaster Tools on your site yet you can follow this quick tutorial.

Link Removals and Recovery

With the right link removal services, you can help regain the lost rankings from an unnatural link penalty by getting rid of any low quality incoming links, footer/site-wide and paid links.

You might ask yourself if it’s really possible to get rid of these links considering you have to contact each individual webmaster in order to manually ask him to remove these links.

The right company can apply various methods to have bad links removed, though this can get fairly costly depending on how many links there are to be removed.

In addition, it can be very difficult to even get this information since most links seem to exist on spam blogs that automatically generate content and offer no kind of contact information whatsoever.

Fortunately, there are some free and paid link removal tools that have appeared on the market to help you out. These services take the time to figure out exactly which links should be removed while also working to find contact information and sending emails out.

Rmoov

The first of these link removal tools is rmoov, a tool that allows you to enter specific URLs. The software then takes these URLs, seeks out contact information, creates and delivers emails requesting the removal of the bad links and returns you reports based on what resulted from the emails. Though this is largely a paid service, there are some free services available for users to utilize.

Link Cleanup

Another option is Link Cleanup and Contact. This is a completely free service that helps find the bad links in the first place. Developed by SEOGadget, this service finds all links that point to your website and uses special algorithms to determine whether it is a safe link or not. It will also try to find the contact information for websites pointing these links to your website.

Link Detective

When I am conducting link clean ups I like to use Link Detective to discover which types of links are pointing to a site. You can easily upload a list of links from your Google Webmaster Tools account and Link Detective will give you a report of what types of links they are e.g. Footer Links, Blog Comments, Forum Links.

Who is Hosting This

If you find that your content has been scraped and copied by low quality blogs and websites then you can use a free site lookup at whoishostingthis to find out which hosting company the site is with and then lodge a DMCA complaint with the web host to have the copied content removed from the website.

Google Disavow Tool

The final step in a link removal exercise is to submit the list of unnatural links you have and have not been able to remove into the Google disavow tool and submit a reconsideration request. It normally takes a couple of weeks to get a response from the Web Spam team and it is not uncommon to be denied on your first couple of attempts. It is also a good idea to ask Google for examples of any links they feel are unnatural at this point to give you more of an idea as to why they have denied your request.

Recovering from a link penalty will take time and can be an expensive exercise so as a webmaster you need to make an informed business decision as to whether or not it might be more cost effective to abandon your site and start a new one…

The post 6 Free Tools to Help You Diagnose and Recover from a Link Penalty appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

This article will teach you how to create user and SEO-friendly web content.

Here are methods of creating great content to avoid the dreaded Google Panda or Google Penguin: appropriate paraphrasing, effective keywords, fonts and formatting, informative and interesting content.

Appropriate Paraphrasing

Remember those annoying lectures on plagiarism in your high school or college English courses? There’s a valid reason for it.

Not only can students fail their courses, but plagiarism affects employers and employees in the workplace. People can be fined, suspended (or worse) from their jobs, and the college or company can lose their credibility.

With the onset of the internet, it is so tempting to just highlight a passage from an article, press copy, and then paste it onto a word document. Voila! Who’s going to know?

This little technique is called “farming” in the internet world, and farming (not to be confused with Farmville, the cute program that allows people to cultivate their online crops) can be detected by editors with a nifty little software program called copyscape that detects this sort of, ahem… “borrowing” of a few lines from someone else’s article.

Even more disconcerting than the embarrassment of having to resubmit an article because a couple of phrases are too close, is Google Panda. Along with Panda’s sidekick, Google Penguin, these programs are designed to detect farming and spam.

If your website has been detected to be farmed, have shoddy content, or contain spam or viruses, Panda or Penguin will “punish” your website by lowering your website on a search.

So, if your website was in the #1 spot after a search, and it was detected by Panda or Penguin, your website could be knocked down significantly to 25, or 250, or lower. You get the idea.

So, now that I have given you the anti-farming lecture, take heart! There are methods to make sure that you paraphrase appropriately.

The rule of thumb is, if an author of a work can read a passage on your website and recognize it as his or her own, then it is too close. (Copyscape would probably detect this as well.)

Research a few different articles, and then paraphrase them. Take a few extra minutes, and put the information into your own words, using sentences that you would normally use. (It’s called the writer’s voice.)

Make sure that your voice is consistent in your work. Otherwise, that is a red flag.  It may seem like a hassle at first, but it’s much faster than having to resubmit the article or try to recover from your website being punished by Google.

Effective Keywords

You probably have seen websites that have awkwardly worded phrases in the middle or at the end of sentences scattered all over an article or blog.

The keywords or phrases are bold or hyperlinked and the page looks like a mess. When a SEO professional uses effective keywords, they are scattered on the page in a neat and orderly way.

The keyword is worked naturally into the sentence rather than being added at the end of the sentence. Also, a keyword that is used too many times in an article will alert Google and they will sic Panda or Penguin on your site.

Fonts and Formatting

If content on a website is formatted in an awkward way, the blog and website will look unprofessional and the content will be hard to read.

Be sure to use a reader-friendly font (Calibri or Times New Roman are two examples.) Make sure to separate your paragraphs with white space. Having spaces in-between paragraphs will make the print easier for the visitors and potential customers to read the content, as internet readers prefer scannable content.

In the same token, you should also be sure not to have too much white space between paragraphs. (It’s easy to make this mistake formatting, because under page layout in Word, the spacing under the page layout tab will default to 10 point.

Change it to zero, and that should solve the problem.

Interesting and Informative Content

This is the key to excellent content creation. Have something interesting and worthwhile to share with your readers. If you have the gift of humor, by all means make the reader laugh! (Follow #Catfoodbreath on Twitter if you need inspiration.) Just be careful that the humor is appropriate and that it relates to the purpose of your blog or website.

Are you an avid reader, film reviewer, or music buff?  You can write reviews on your blog or website. You can include an inspirational quote or feature a new word of the day.  Share a recipe that worked well, or amuse your readers with a recipe that didn’t go well. Have lists for readers.

Are you a trivia person? Share an interesting fact.  If you have the dreaded writer’s block, invite an expert to be a guest blogger on your website. Adding graphics and photographs will accompany your content.

Finally, if possible, have someone check your work for content and grammar. I firmly believe that every writer needs an editor.

Dennis Rodman was fired from “The Celebrity Apprentice: All-Stars” because in the task, Melania Trump’s name on an advertising poster was misspelled during the presentation.

This is an extreme example, but having misspelled words and grammatical errors will diminish your credibility.  Excellent writing skills will enhance your success in content creation.

Conclusion

Having interesting and informative content, appropriate fonts and formatting, effective keywords, and appropriate paraphrasing skills will ensure that you will create and maintain excellent content for your blog or website, keep the Google Pandas and Penguins at bay, and keep visitors and customers coming back!

The post How to Create User and SEO-Friendly Web Content appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

Not having enough time to update your blog, learn a skill, or say communicate with others is among the biggest challenge for me. I’ve found a common trend in my daily life by noticing more and more what others around us do with their daily lives.

Here was my life 2 years ago:

-Wake up at some point between the hours of 7am-9am to go to work for shifts varying between 8:30-5:30 or 11-8 shifts. My commute is 30 miles one way totaling near 1 hour of driving with average traffic (40 minutes with no traffic, driving like a demon)

-On Lunch breaks I would play cell phone games or talk with co-workers

-Come home and either watch TV, movies or play video games

-Car rides consisted of listening to music on my Ipod

Weekends consisted of similar activities and going out doing leisure activities with friends such as socially drinking out at a bar.

So What Changed?

-Today during my commute I more often than not use this time to listen to a popular Podcast to keep learning new tactics and listening to what works from others. I recommend The Smart Passive Income Podcast with Pat Flynn.

-I use my week nights to listen to webinars, write blog posts, or learn new skills.

-During my lunch I use a laptop to be more productive by either completing goals, watching courses, or I use this time to read a personal development book.

These are the main things I have changed during my daily routine that have helped my better manage my time, a bigger challenge for me has also been the people I surround myself with.

If you have your own blog and you commonly write blog posts you may find this blog post on how to write an article in less than one hour really useful for saving time and effectively writing a great post in a short amount of time.

You Are the Top 5 People You Spend Time With

Have you ever heard people talk about this? Something I learned while reading a lot of personal development books that always seems to stick with me is thinking about the people you spend time with, your family, friends and co-workers.

I didn’t realize this 5 years ago but this plays a huge role for me when it comes to time management.

I’m not going to dig into the specifics on this topic as that could be a whole new blog post in itself. I specifically wanted to mention that if you spend time with people who hinder your progress or do not “believe” in what it is that you are working on this will hurt you, not help you.

In my experience if your family & friends do not encourage you to work on your blog or allow you time to pursue learning how to market online than you will struggle.

From my own experience I have found my biggest distractions when it comes to being more productive online is spending far too much time playing video games, my friends LOVE to play video games and this is one of the biggest ways to drain time from my week days and weekends.

You could easily have friends who would prefer to sit around and watch TV and do things that will hinder your ability to progress.

If you do, I highly recommend you take time to really think about who you spend your time with and put your goals before them if they are what is holding you back.

Using Evernote for Better Time Management

I use a program called Evernote to help me stay organized as well as track my goals to keep me productive through out the week, this is something I never did years ago and had helped me tremendously with time management.

If you would like to learn more about Evernote you can checkout my Evernote review.

I personally love this tool as it has made my life a lot easier for keeping all of my notes and goals organized in one place I can access from any device I use no matter where I go.

My Final Time Management Tips : Your Goals and Focus

This is a list of my recommended time management tips you can use to implement right away to start becoming more productive in both your personal life and business.

1 – Stay focused and be consistent
Focus on your goals and what it is you wish to accomplish and stay consistent with what you are doing. Most online marketing strategies require a lot of consistency and do not happen over night.

2 -Write down clear specific goals
If using a tool like Evernote to keep a record of your goals you should write down clear specific goals. A bad example would be “write a guest post for xyz blog” vs. a good example “write a guest post for xyz blog and submit this by May 15th 2013″

3 -Learn new skills
Spend your time learning from mentor’s you believe in. Watch webinars and read knowledgeable blog posts.

4 -Read encouraging positive books
Try to spend 10 minutes a day reading a personal development book to keep your mind flowing with positive thoughts and motivating content to help keep you productive and ready to take action.

Image courtesy of pakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post Time Management Tips for Online Marketers Working 9-5 appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

The harsh truth is that competition is getting tougher and tougher, and new businesses are rapidly expanding. If you want to place yourself at the top of the food chain you must use original techniques.

Sadly, most marketers resort to expensive and time consuming tricks that do more harm than good. The best way to set yourself apart from other companies is by adding a creative touch to your strategies.

Obviously, in order to thrive you will have to create a name for yourself on social media networks, optimize your website, create mobile apps and build a community, but there is one more thing you should definitely consider.

In case you haven’t heard, „omni-channel” marketing has become the latest trend, and for good reason.

What is Omni-Channel Marketing?

For those who are already familiar with the term of multi-channel retailing, omni-channel is similar in many ways. Multi-channel retailing was designed to make the experience of the customer more enjoyable and to facilitate his online journey.

In other words, this type of internet marketing strategy isn’t centered around numbers, but around the needs of the potential client.

Omni-channel marketing is an evolution of multi-channel, with the main difference that it is even more focused on enhancing the user’s experience through all possible channels.

It is basically the sum of all encounters related to the brand, and it is designed to provide the most consistent and seamless experience.

Before multi-channel marketing, businesses were divided into many, separate channels. The mediums, which function with the help of specific software, were considered a touch-point in the customer’s journey.

However, this meant that every channel was divided, independent, and overall, coherent data could not be collected. For the retailer it meant guessing at cross-channel ROI, and never having a clear understanding of what the client wants.

Thanks to omni-channel, we are now able to improve the response rate, loyalty and satisfaction of the potential client.

We will not be making use of multiple campaigns, but of only one that is applicable to all mediums, and which will gradually engage with the customer.

Why is Omni-Channel Marketing Important?

The tremendous growth of social media proved that online success is no longer dependent on traffic and numbers, but on enhancing the customer experience whenever, and wherever he is. With omni-channel, it no longer matters if the client is online, offline, social or mobile, because you will be able to give him the right message, at the right time.

This new marketing method has sent shockwaves through the internet world, so you’d better hop on the wave before it is too late.

As an active internet marketing strategist you are probably aware that there is no falling asleep at the wheel if you want to be successful.

You are probably also aware that in order to create a strong personal brand you will have to perpetually tweak, and optimize your key features. Omni-channel will enable you to secure your position on social media channels, search engines, mobile devices and other communities all at the same time.

Each channel will have awareness of the other, and by putting the data together the website will understand the client on a very personal level.

How Omni-Channel Marketing Works

At this point you are probably thinking that this new marketing strategy is awesome, and you are right. Combining all elements, which were previously treated as separate entities, and later conducting a comprehensive research that in turn generates rigorous and relevant consumer profiles may change the future of internet marketing as we know it.

However, creating the infrastructure for omni-channel is extremely complicated because it requires perfect coordination between IT and marketing practices.

Moreover, the marketer will now be faced with a bigger challenge because it is not only one separate task that he has to complete, but rather interlinked actions that will affect the overall performance of the business.

It is no secret that most successful online ventures are dominated by performance, SEO, monetization and PPC. With the help of omni-channel, which pays close attention to data reports, tagging and customer experience, the retailer can gain the edge.

Omni-channel marketing is still unknown to many, and this means a new opportunity for your company.

If you play your cards well, you can brand your business, make it unforgettable, and offer the best services.

Take Apple for example. This extremely efficient company has become master of digital sales and delivery, but it has yet to harness the massive force that is Social Media.

Try to imagine what would happen if Apple decided to correlate its online presence on social networks with the help of omni-channel strategies?

A Few Things you Should Consider

There has been much heated debate on the subject, but the unanimous opinion was that omni-channels represent key to escaping the „vertical silos” to which we are forced by dedicated mobile sites and truncated plans of action.

If you are seriously thinking of reaching out to your customers across all platforms here are a few points that should be found on your checklist.

 - Omni-Channels

I cannot stress more the importance of correlating different channels in order to take full advantage of the features of omni-channel marketing. Mobile internet, websites, digital screens, social media, and game consoles should be integrated in your strategy. There is no denying the power of these tools, and I can assure you that your customer will thank you for providing him with a continuous story.

- Omni-Tech

NFC and mobile payments will no longer be treated like separated mediums, but rather elements which are working together with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other technologies. Responsive design which has already become very popular will enhance the user’s experience and big data will provide with coherent background.

The list could go on forever, and the reality is that omni-channels have infinite potential because they stretch beyond the goal of generating profits.

They offer the possibility of reaching out to your target audience, building durable relationships, and because nobody has mastered the technique until now, it offers great opportunities for future ventures.

The post Omni-Channels are the Nirvana of Internet Marketing appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

However, in the current world of internet, the business website happens be one of the most important channels for new clients; if not the most important channel.

Let’s see how you can turn your website into your gate for clients to walk through and how to get targeted traffic to it that will be easily turned into buying customers.

1. Local Business Listing Sites

Well I’m not talking about the directory websites. Definitely there are many directory websites that are high in page rank, but that does not mean that you will get visitors from these websites.

I’m talking about the business listing websites where you can list your business with a Google map and your clients can post reviews and ratings.

The local business listing websites can be very helpful for small businesses to get traffic and improve their reputation.

When you are looking for ways to obtain traffic you should consider getting listed on the business listing websites that have good Alexa ranks.

You can register to these websites, all these sites have great Alexa ranks:

http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness

http://listings.local.yahoo.com/

http://www.bing.com/businessportal/

https://biz.yelp.com/

https://listings.mapquest.com/apps/listing

http://www.manta.com/claim

https://foursquare.com/business/merchants

http://www.merchantcircle.com/signup

http://www.citysearch.com/

https://business.angieslist.com/default.aspx

However, this is only the first part of your job. You don’t want your business to be forgotten on the websites that get millions of viewers every day.

Request your clients to post a review there whenever they are happy about the services and products that you have given them.

You can also search for those users who are highly active on given websites. Find users who are located near to your business, invite them to visit your place.

For example if you are an owner of a restaurant, a good review from an active Yelp user is a gold mine. There are a number of people on Yelp that would be glad to review your restaurant.

Offer customers discounts for the snickers in your store, maybe a free dinner. This way, you can obtain some positive ratings and reviews.

However, don’t try to post fake reviews and ratings – these websites are highly sensitive about this matter!

2. Yahoo! Answers

Yahoo Answers is a Yahoo platform where users interact and answer questions for each other. Here, any person that has a Yahoo email or uses Yahoo services is allowed to post a question. The other users would try to answer the question as good as possible.

As for questions, people know that they can get great answers there, so they would use it for any question or uncertainty. This is why you can get serious traffic from Yahoo Answers.

To post a clickable link in an answer you need to have a level 2 account. If you want to see that you are actually getting traffic from Yahoo answers then you will need to post a clickable link.

Google Analytics can be a great tool to gauge your traffic. Even if you do not have a level 2 account you can still post a link in your answer. The only difference is that it will not be a clickable link.

Well, in my case, I always copy-paste the link to the browser when it is non-clickable! Because I know if it is non-clickable then chances are high that it is not promotional or spammy!

I am sure, most of the readers of this blog do that, but other people, who are not so familiar with SEO, that look for answers will probably not copy-paste a non-clickable link because they are lazy or in a hurry!

It is important to get to level two, so you could post a clickable link, which is more convenient for visitors. You will still get traffic with level one answers, but less. In addition, if the link is non-clickable, you lose SEO juice too.

The answer should be professional. Don’t be too spammy or promotional with the content. Don’t post the same answers everywhere.

Yahoo truly sees the value in the Yahoo Answers format so they want the information to be accurate and detailed. The answers should be simple, direct and to the point.

Visitors are looking for answer that they can trust to be true. After all, if you were able to give him the right answer, he will probably find some interesting resources on your website that is related to the topic.

Do not only concentrate on those answers that are related to your niche. You should try to be an active answerer in a large number of categories.

If you post a link in an answer then you should post at least two more answers without your links (just answer 2 questions that are not in your niche – as you don’t need to put your link in those answers), in this way you will stay under the rudder.

It is dangerous to be too promotional, as the experienced users which own a high level account are able to mark your profile as suspicious.

If you get two negative marks associated with inaccuracies, your account will be suspended.  Some accounts are suspended with no apparent reason.

When an account is suspended then the Yahoo Answers send you an e-mail saying that they think you have abused their site, causing the suspension. Yahoo! staffers also say that if you think that the suspension is not fair then you can apply for a review. Applying for reviews is useless, as the account never gets reactivated.

In my opinion, you should always concentrate on several accounts, so if one is suspended, you can always use other accounts, or you can get a new one.

Many of my friends who used Yahoo answers to gain traffic, stopped using Yahoo Answers when their accounts were suspended, even if they agreed that this is a great source of traffic.

However, I’m still using it with several accounts, as I feel that it is a great way to get visitors.  Yahoo Answers is also good for search engine optimization.

As the majority of Q&A websites such as Yahoo Answers are no-follow, you might think that those websites are not good for SEO.

The truth is that, if a website gets many visitors per day, Google will consider it of importance, no matter if the website is a no-follow or do-follow one. If you can’t believe this, just think about the possibility of getting the link to your website on Wikipedia.

Many people pay hundreds of dollars to get a backlink from Wiki. As Wikipedia is a no-follow website, but still webmasters appreciate the traffic received from here, it is likely that Google considers the Wikipedia links pretty important.

3. Social Media

When it comes to Social Media, I’m not saying that you should post your links in all the Social networking websites.  With a simple Google Search, you will find at least one hundred social media sites that have a high page rank, but this does not mean that posting your links here will get you visitors.

Most people use the social media sites only for backlinks, they do not expect to have visitors from these links.

However, a few social media sites can be used to get traffic. The rule is to be active on those accounts, to answer questions when people put it, and to be something like support in the respective niche. Here are the most important social networks that can bring you traffic:

YouTube – this platform is great especially for websites related to media, with many video files. However, even for some other types of services, a nice video that attracts the attention is perfect. If  one says  “I want this one minute back in my life” once the video is finished, it will not do any good for your website. On the other hand, if it offers valuable information, visitors would love to rate it.

StumbleUpon – This is like the social network of websites, where the service actually recommends websites to other StumbleUpon users, and those decide if they like what they see or not. It is useless to talk why this social network could bring you loads of traffic.

Facebook – it is still the number one social network in the world.  Facebook has become a vital part of our online lives.  Facebook is a great tool to drive traffic to your website.  Facebook is a tool that unleashes freedom.  This freedom is something that can drive a ton of traffic to your website!

The post 3 Great Ways to Get Traffic to Your Small Business Website appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

Google has recently launched a brand new product to support businesses called Google Business Photos and Tours. This new feature allows online users to take a Street View style tour around the interior of a business.

This feature also enhances your search page listing and engages online surfers like never before, allowing them to take an immersive 360 degree tour around your business.

This allows you the business owner to showcase all the fantastic features of your business.

Google Business Photos and Tours are ideal for many types of businesses, can you imagine how helpful it would be to take a virtual tour of a restaurant before booking a table, or take a tour to view the décor within a café before popping down for a coffee with friends?

The possibilities in which this can help a wide range of businesses are almost limitless.

Google Business Photos and Virtual Tours have not been around for that long. Many businesses that have had tours done are just starting to see the benefits from getting the tours created.

I am going to share with you some of the benefits local business owners have noticed since getting Google business photos and tours done.

Increased Size in Search Results

When you get Google Business Photos done for your business, your search listing will be enhanced helping your business stand out from the crowd.

Typically search results are just a couple of lines of text, however once you get Google Business Photos done for your business, your search listings will increase as shown in the screen shot below.

This helpfully provides your business with larger screen real estate and several photos which will encourage online visitors to click through to your website or tour.

The size of the Google business photos and tour thumbs nails vary between businesses.

Increase ‘Foot Fall’ into your shop

Getting a Google Business Tour done for your business will allow you to attract online customers back into your shop.

Imagine being able to showcase the beautiful interior of your store to hundreds of online customers every day, 24 hours a day.

These Virtual Tours provide unique opportunities for small businesses to showcase themselves online attracting new customers to their shop.

Hopefully this will increase ‘foot fall’ and sales.

Increased online business awareness

Google has tried to help small businesses by providing them with a set of mainly free tools to improve their online presence from Google + Pages to Google. Google business photo’s requires the business to set up a Google + Local Page to link the virtual tour too.

This has forced many businesses owners to interact more online with their customers increasing their awareness of other competing brands, using keywords and getting instant feedback through online reviews.

Increased interactions with customers online

Through the creation of Google + pages business are generally increasing their interactions with customers online.

Online reviews can make or break a small business, having a virtual tour of your business online may help to prevent people being disappointed when they visit your business in the real world.

Online reviews will allow small local businesses to rapidly adapt to changes within the market place.

Increased Web Traffic to your business listing

Preliminary research from our clients have shown that when an someone stumbles upon a business listing which is enhanced with Google Business Photos they are much more likely to click through to the listing.

If a customer clicks on the “See Inside” icon they will be taken on an immersive 360 tour of the premise.

These Google Business Photo and Tour boxes on your Google Business Listing act as a call to action, improving the click through rates onto your Google + Local Page and ultimately your website.

Embed and share your Business Photos and Tour

Once you have had Business Tours taken for your business and they are uploaded onto your Google + Local Page, you are free to embed them on social media platforms and your website.

The business retains the copy rights of the photographs and tours, Google simply license them from the business.

Currently there is no fee for Google to host your business tours on their servers, just the cost of hiring a certified photographer to take the photographs.

The post Benefits of getting Google Business Photos and Virtual Tours appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

Every blogger wants his articles be attractive, interesting and useful for readers, but very often it happens so, that no inspiration is found for blog posts.

Where to find it? How to write really great blog posts?

It is also very important to remember, that your blog content can have a big influence on your blog’s SEO in general.

The better your articles are – the more people will read them and share them via different social networks!

What does it mean? More traffic for your blog, its better reputation, new readers, its higher positions in searc hengines, and so on.

As far as you can see, not only links and keywords are important for SEO, but a content of your blog too. That is why let’s talk about how to make your blog posts really great and attractive, as this information can really help you improve your SEO much.

We offer you 7 steps that can help find your inspiration and make your blog post really unique. Follow them, and you will always write your articles with pleasure.

And it’s always pleasant to write posts which your readers find interesting, isn’t it?

1 . Write About What You Are Really Interested In

This is the simplest way to develop your unique writing style and attract your inspiration. This can be your springboard to a wide writing world.

To make a long story short, a good writer starts where a passionate writer can be found: write about things interesting for you, or about what you are learning right now. If you can do this, you will be able to write about everything afterwords.

There are 2 ways to start such a writing, and they will depend on a topic: if your blog is too personal, and you write there about your own thoughts, then just sit and write all words and sentences that come to your mind at the moment.

But if you plan to blog on a specific niche, then it would be useful to make a list of topics that interest you most of all. And make a draft.

2 . Read Your Draft and Re-Write It to Another File

This will be your second draft. You can use both of them for the final variant of your article.

Two drafts are often enough for the majority of writers, but don’t be sad if you are not good with that at once.

3 . Make a Small Research

Take a look at other articles of the same topic. What have been written already in comparison with your work?

If you find some additional information, you can add it to your article (with your own words of course).

Do not forget to make a research.

Who knows, maybe you’ve missed any important and interesting information which can be used for your own posts?

4 . Read Your Article

How good were you in expressing your ideas? Do you need to change paragraphs’ location? Is everything logically combined? Has all information been given to a reader?

Make sure that you haven’t missed anything, and told everything you wanted and planned to tell.

5 . Re-Read Your Introduction

Is it good enough to attract your readers’ attention? Think over the best way to introduce your work.

It can be a short story for example, a new information, a surprising and unusual fact, or some research’s results.

6 . Re-Read Your Conclusion

Have you finished your writing or just stopped it?

You better check if your conclusion is REALLY conclusion to make a final point. Use such forms as “to sum up”, “in this regard”, and so on.

7 . Re-Read Your Whole Article Once Again

Make all changes needed. Pay attention to your grammar and punctuation. Re-read it once again.

It may seem strange a bit, but such steps will help you start writing really great blog posts.

When you are experienced enough, you will be able to miss some of these steps as they won’t be necessary for you anymore. And writing experience is easy to get: all you need is writing, writing and more writing.

Oh yes, don’t forget about reading as well: it’s always useful to read other authors too.

Happy writing!

The post 7 Steps Towards Your Great Blog Posts appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

Yeah, right. That was me 4 years ago. 4 years later I make a nice living prospering online, traveling the world. I lived in Bali for 4 months, Phuket for 5 months, and a host of other tropical paradises for a long time.

This was not easy in the beginning. I struggled. Because I did not treat MMO as if I were going to school. I was lazy at first, and over confident, and foolish. Then I woke up. Committed. Succeeded.

My recent Southeast Asia trip lasted 2 years. Why? I treated making money online like going to school. I became a student of prospering.

Think of it this way: if you walked into an advanced Physics classed and got pissed off because you did not receive your PhD in one week, this would sound absurd, right?

So why are you frustrated by not making $30,000 after your first week online? Because you refuse to learn a skill. You refuse to apply your skills for a period of time. You are greedy or delusional and want your laptop to be a trusty ATM.

Reality Check: you will generate cash online after you study, learn new skills and apply these skills for weeks, months and years.

1 – You Must Pay a Tuition

School tuition can be paid by check. Online money making tuition is paid by spending your precious time and energy learning a skill inside out.

People making millions online paid their tuition. They learned and applied skills for months and years before making big bucks.

Be patient. Pay your tuition. Then you can receive your degree, AKA, get paid.

2 – Class in Session

Show up to class. Miss class, you are doomed, unless you are brilliant. You need to learn from your teacher as an offline student.

Use a text book as a reference and follow up by attending classes to soak up knowledge from your professor.

In the online world you need: 1 – A System, 2 – A Mentor.

Your textbook and your teacher. Partner with a trustworthy, helpful mentor and plug into a proven system based on sharing value and targeting your ideal prospects.

Class is always in session. Select your teacher and system carefully, show up and work.

3 – You Must Take Notes

I do not care how hungry you are to soak up knowledge. You generate some 40,000 thoughts daily.

Read this post without taking notes on these lessons and you forget most lessons in 5, 10 or 20 minutes. Take notes. Drill these concepts deeply into your mind so you remember the lessons presented here.

In school I know you filled pads with notes on lectures or lessons. Use the same strategy online. Read a blog post. Take notes. Acquire information to digest at a later time.

4 – Study Time

You spent hours studying in class and out of class to receive your diploma. Study time was a critical part of your academic career. You have notes. You review the notes. Through repetition these notes become part of your knowledge base.

Same deal online. Review your notes frequently. Set aside some time late in the day to review your making money online notes. Review the concepts I shared in this post. Think through the analogy.

I guarantee you will be thinking like an online money making student in no time. Review. Remember.

5 – Test Time!

Test time or exam time revealed to you what you learned and what you did not learn. You attended class, took notes, studied the notes and then it was time to take a test. You passed or failed.

Online entrepreneurs receive tests each day. You apply what you learned and either grow your online ventures and make money online or fail.

Either you are generating home business opt ins or attracting new customers and prospering or you fail to grow your business.

Requirements?

Well, having made money online for over 4 years I can tell you, if you wish to prosper, and succeed, and do stuff like traveling the world, you need to spend time studying THEN applying what you learned each day.

Imagine how much time you spent in class and studying during your high school or college days. Some days you spent 6, 8 or 10 hours acquiring knowledge.

Same deal online. If you do your gig part time spend 2-3 hours daily, or more. If this is a full time gig, 6, 8, 10 or more hours seems practical.

You are learning a new skill. This takes a serious commitment on your behalf. Show up for class daily. Take notes. Put your knowledge into action. Succeed.

Your Turn

Do you treat making money online like going to school?

Are you struggling to make a cent online?

What success tips can you share?

The post Why Is Making Money Online Like Going to School? appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

One of the biggest attractions is the ability to add a variety of filters to the picture enhancing the appearance of the image.

Millions of users upload pictures daily and the hashtag phenomenon that took over Twitter is also widespread on Instagram.

Users are able to track their favourite subject or topic and even compete for the most aesthetically pleasing picture.

Instagram also uses the @ theme for mentioning other users and the ability to share to Twitter, makes it simple to merge between the two.

Other platforms that images can be shared on include Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr and FourSquare making it one of the more versatile platforms, despite its seemingly limited subject matter.

Businesses aspiring to utilise Instagram to its full potential should fully consider its capability for promotion. Relaxed spam settings allow businesses and individuals a lot of freedom to employ some blatant advertising.

Pictures of the product or service you offer in practice could quickly become viral if you market your Instagram campaign successfully.

Here are three reasons that Instagram has marketing influence.

User Participation

Running a campaign for users to upload pictures of themselves using your product gets your clients to do your marketing for you.

Human input is one of the most respected and influential ways of proving your value to an industry.

A campaign asking your followers to a picture of themselves using your product in the most inventive way could not only have a large amount of engagement but will also draw in potential customers.

Instagram is a continuous feed of photos and a great visual tool for your marketing campaign.

Hashtag Incorporation

Twitter has already proved the value of using a hashtag marketing campaign. Countless businesses have run entire campaigns around them and utilise the engagement it receives from users.

Since Instagram’s inclusion of the hashtag feature, the sharing function allows shrewd companies to merge their campaign across the two platforms.

This enables you to promote your new Instagram campaign on Twitter and vice versa.

Cadbury’s Crème Egg’s trademark slogan #HowDoYouEatYours was an obvious Twitter hashtag campaign but when they took the same approach to Instagram, they received even more engagement from users uploading pictures of varying hilarity.

The element of competition among users vying to get the best snap, drives the campaign on with little effort required from your marketing team. Get your audience to do the work for you.

Promotional Gifts

Instagram can be used to run campaigns distributing promotional gifts to users that engage with you, in turn encouraging more users to engage.

By uploading a picture of the promotional stock branded with your business you can tag it with the increasingly searched for hashtags: #Competition and #Win to increase your brands visibility to potential clients.

This is widely received by users, they are more likely to want something if they can see it.

One of the most successful promotional gift campaigns on Instagram was from paper company RAW, who asked users to upload pictures of themselves using RAW paper as inventively as possible.

Winners were sent various promotional gifts and then asked to upload pictures of themselves with these gifts afterwards.

Instagram is the next step for many businesses that are looking to keep up with the ever expanding social media world. Its users are attentive and there is a much higher ratio of engagement than its competitors, largely because of its specificity to pictures.

The ease of cross platform communication, such as sharing a picture to a tweet, gives you the best of both worlds enhancing and broaden your marketing efforts with the click of a button. Make your marketing campaign picture perfect with Instagram.

The post Using Instagram for Business: 3 Visual Marketing Tactics appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.

If you just started using Twitter or have been using it for some time, and it seems like a deserted place to you, read on, because you are going to learn about some simple and free tools that help you attract more followers with each one of your tweets.

Getting the Basics Right

Before we start, let me remind you about the importance of tweeting smart. Your tweets should be catchy and timely.

Composing interesting tweets is largely a subjective matter and depends upon the audience and their choices. If you are doing everything you can to make your tweets interesting, the timings of your tweets are the second most important factor.

There’s no use tweeting at a time when none of your followers are online.

The third most important thing is the frequency of tweeting. All your followers cannot be online at the same time. You should try to achieve a balance between letting every one of your followers see your tweets without flooding the stream.

Remember to follow people who are influential in your particular subject. Interact and engage with other users. Learn from other people’s tweets and observe the kind of stuff they are sharing.

Once you are doing these basics right, you’ll be able to make the best use of the following free tools to supercharge your Twitter marketing.

HootSuite

You might have heard of this one. HootSuite lets you manage up to five social media profiles for free. The profiles can be added from Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Lately, Hootsuite is also featuring a Pinterest plug-in. You can create an account using your email or just login with your Facebook profile.

HootSuite has a pretty elaborate dashboard with multiple displays. When you add your Twitter profile, for instance, the interface shows you four separate feeds.

You can select from 8 different streams including home-feed, mentions, direct messages (inbox and outbox), sent tweets, favorite tweets, retweeted tweets, and scheduled tweets.

Apart from accessing four different streams, HootSuite also lets you schedule tweets in one go, so that you don’t have to login to your Twitter profile every time you want to send an update. If you have an idea about the best timings to tweet, you can use HootSuite to schedule tweets on those timings.

Pros and Cons:

HootSuite allows you to manage multiple social media profiles including Twitter, but it is not exclusively for Twitter. You can access Twitter activity via 4 screens and manage your profile better, maximizing exposure. The down sides are that you still don’t have a clue about the geographical location of your followers and the times when most of them are online.

Buffer

Buffer is the mobile and desktop app that is proven to get 200% more clicks, reach and retweets on your tweets.

Although similar to HootSuite, Buffer is much easier to use, and of course, free. You can sign in using your Twitter account, but you can also include your Facebook, LinkedIn and AppNet profiles and pages.

Buffer also gives you the option to install a browser plug-in using which you can share anything on the web to your Buffer while browsing.

When you add a tweet, it goes into your “buffer” and is retweeted multiple times, depending upon the schedule that you set.

Pros and Cons:

Buffer is a delightful app for managing your Twitter and other social media accounts. Simple to use, you can even install it on you mobile and be on top of Twitter all the time. The down sides are that you still have to figure out the best timings to tweet. The free buffer account also puts a restriction on the maximum number of tweets that you can put into your buffer. Of course, you can “go awesome” any time by subscribing to the paid service, which lets you add up to 12 social media channels and limitless tweets to your buffer.

TweetWhen

Although paid tools (like When to Tweet) also available, this one works just perfect. Just enter your (or anyone else’s!) Twitter handle and click “Analyze my Tweets”.

The wheel spins for about half-a-second before your tweet-when chart is displayed.

Pros and Cons:

You can use TweetWhen regularly to find out the best times for tweeting. The tools suggests the best time of the day and the best day of the week, but you can also find out more by squinting at the timings graph. On the down side, you still don’t know where your followers are located, and you still need HootSuite or Buffer to schedule your tweets. Another con is that you must have tweeted 1000 times before you can use this tool.

Tweroid

Tweroid is still pretty basic in terms of the algorithms it uses and the variables it takes into account when analyzing the best times for you to tweet. If you want something more accurate and professional, use Tweroid.

Tweroid is another free service that you can join just by signing in with your Twitter account. It takes a couple of hours or more to analyze your profile, depending upon the number of followers you have.

Pros and Cons:

Tweroid analyzes your tweets as well as those of your followers in order to calculate the best times to tweet for you. It includes up to 1000 of your followers, so the results are more accurate. Tweroid also filters out non-humans (bots) that might be following you on Twitter, so the results are more focused. The not-so-strong side is scheduling and geographical targeting, for which you have to rely on other tools.

Map My Followers

Map My Followers is a fantastic free tool that helps you do just what it says: map your followers. Just sign in using your twitter account, and wham! You have a comprehensive map showing your followers’ locations right before you.

Pros and Cons:

The app is pretty amazing if you want to have an idea where your followers are located. The information can be used for optimizing your tweets in terms of timings and effectiveness. The down side is that you need to use this tool in combination with other tools to get the best results.

The post Five Fantastic Free Tools to Boost Your Twitter Exposure appeared first on Free MAKE MONEY Advice.