Internet Marketing | SEO | Traffic and Tips

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noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Sun, 5 Oct 2008 16:02:00 +0700

20 Free and Easy Techniques to Increase Traffic

by: Jo Mark

Traffic is the lifeblood of your website. You could have the best website on the planet, but without traffic, no one will see it and your sales will be zero.

You need to build, and increase traffic to maintain a successful website. Following are 20 free and easy techniques to increase traffic. next…

If You Build It, Will They Come?

by: Alexandra Leonova

When some business owners launch their websites, they wait for that success they’ve heard so much about, to start rolling.

I’ve heard some business owners say “I thought when I’ll launch my website; the entire world will see it.” Unfortunately that’s not how it works. next…

The Solution for Better Web Site ROI

by: Cascia Talbert

Internet advertising costs can get expensive. To get the top position in pay per click advertising sometimes you have to continually raise your keyword bids. Then in order to get enough clicks to make a sale you have to raise your budget.

Banner advertising can cost you as much as $20-$50 per thousand impressions which could run you anywhere from $2,000-$5,000 per month. (http://www.bmcommunications.com/int_ad.htm) Text ads can also be expensive. next…

Keyword Discovery (Keyphrase Research) Makes Successful Websites!

by: Rahman Mehraby

Keyword Discovery or Keyphrase Research is of high importance in the success of any website. Internet searchers use keywords and key phrases to find what they want.

If your website uses such key elements in a proper way, they could lead you to a successful online business. If not, your site needs a serious reconsideration. next…

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic Starting Yesterday

by: Terry Leslie

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word.

Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic. next…

How SEO Services Can Provide Traffic For Your Website

by: Moe Tamani

You might have heard about SEO services and how web entrepreneurs are using them to market their sites. Almost every website that provides services and has products to offer requires SEO services.

These sites need visitors to promote their products and to continuously improve their sales and profits. next…

7 simple steps to Keyword Mastery & Search Engine Ranking

by: Dave James

Keyword Research has become an integral part of starting up your own business or growing your business (exponentially). Search engine marketing is here to stay for the long term, hence finding customers through keyword research should also be an integral part of your marketing. next…

Top 3 SEO Tips of 2008

by: Scott Jason

Since 1998 I've spent the first several months of each year looking for the very best search engine optimization (SEO) tips of the previous year's end. This year I've come across the best SEO tips yet.

SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy next…

Link Building Basics

by: Jason Storm

A good analogy for links is votes, each link to your site is a vote in your favor and the sites with the most votes tend to get the highest rankings. Google & Yahoo place a lot of importance on the quality of your links in determining rankings.

In this article I will be sharing with you some important info on link building and some strategies to help your one way link building. next…

8 Proven Points To Make A Home Business Website Profitable

by: Juhani Tontti

It is a miracle how the most successful home business websites have so much in common, despite of the fact that they look so different. This cannot be a co-incident.

Ona common feature is phat thes% successful sites are likable and somehow easy to use. Everything looks so clear, so it is easy to judge whether you like it or not. next…

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20 Free and Easy Techniques to Increase Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Sat, 4 Oct 2008 09:20:00 +0700

by: Jo Mark

Traffic is the lifeblood of your website. You could have the best website on the planet, but without traffic, no one will see it and your sales will be zero.

You need to build, and increase traffic to maintain a successful website. Following are 20 free and easy techniques to increase traffic.

1. Write articles related to your site and submit them to the10 largest article directories. To get sustainable traffic through article writing, you need to write and submit articles on a daily basis.

2. Write articles related to your site and submit them to article directories related to your niche.

3. If you’re launching a new site or fresh content, submit it to Now Public http://www.nowpublic.com

4. Find high quality, relevant blogs and leave a comment with a link back to your site.

5. Seek out those with related blogs and websites and ask them to review your product or site in exchange for a link.

6. Provide content to YouTube http://www.youtube.com and make sure your URL is prominently displayed.

7. Provide content to Google Video http://video.google.com and make sure that your URL is prominently displayed.

8. Create a MySpace account http://www.myspace.com and advertise and market your site there.

9. Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us

10. Syndicate the content on your website by using an RSS feed

11. Submit your RSS feeds to FeedBurner http://www.feedburner.com

12. Submit your RSS feeds to Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com

13. Submit your RSS feeds to Feedboy http://www.feedboy.com

14. Submit your RSS feeds to Jordomedia http://www.jordomedia.com

15. Register with StumbleUpon http://www.stumbleupon.com and get a friend or two to stumble your site.

16. Create a signature file that includes a link to your website. Include this link with all postings you leave on forums. This can be very effective if you post often to topics related to your website or product.

17. If you use PPC, create a landing page for each of your Adwords. This targeted approach can increase your conversions considerably.

18. If you’re launching a new site or providing fresh content, submit it to Digg http://www.digg.com

19. If you’re launching a new site or providing fresh content, submit it to Reddit http://reddit.com

20. Offer a Great FREE Give-Away item on your site. People like free stuff and will tell their friends if it’s good.

By implementing the 20 free and easy techniques above, you may see a nice increase in the amount of traffic coming to your website.

How to Make Email Marketing Works for Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Sat, 4 Oct 2008 08:52:00 +0700

by: Mr JH Saw

Topic 1 ~ Your Email Subject Lines ~

How To Write A Good E-mail Subject Lines That Works?

Here are the 5 tips:

1. Ask a question. One of the best ways to get a reader's attention is to ask a question. But like a trial lawyer questioning a witness on the stand, make sure it'll get you the response you're looking for.

"What's the best way to grow your business?" is a great subject line for business owners. After all, what business owner wouldn't want to grow his or her business? Or let's say you run a health club.

An e-mail with the subject line, "How can you lose 5 pounds in one month?" would certainly be compelling. It's important your question be relevant to your audience. 2. Be a tease. A clever subject line can be enticing. When it's done right, reader curiosity is piqued. They want to know more--and they'll open your e-mail.

Writing a teaser-style subject line requires some creativity, and your content needs to deliver. A company that sells high-definition TVs could use the subject line, "You're not going to believe your eyes" as a teaser to introduce a new addition to their product line.

3. Tell it like it is. Often, what works best is to say exactly what you want your reader to know. Examples of this straightforward approach are, "Sale on all sweaters this weekend," "Master jazz pianist plays live this Friday" and "The seven secrets of a profitable business."

This just-the-facts approach works especially well when you can appeal directly to your audience's interests. It's also the best approach to use when you send a newsletter. 4. Remember "WIIFM". When a person gets your e-mail, the first thing they consider is "what's in it for me?" They have a decision to make. Do they open your e-mail, leave it for later or delete it?

If there isn't something about the subject line that lets them know why it's worth their precious time to see what's inside, then the choice will be clear.

Keep WIIFM in mind when creating every aspect of your e-mails, including the offer, content, images--and most definitely the subject line. It's all about them. They know that; just make sure you know it, too.

5. Get personal. The more you can make each contact feel you're speaking directly to them, the more effective your communication will be. Whatever style of subject line you use, you can make it personal by using the word "you."

Professional copywriters know the secret of using this powerful little word. Just look at the advertisements, mail and e-mail you receive. A few examples are, "Find the right swimsuit for you," "You can save 50 percent on travel," and "You'd look phenomenal in a custom-tailored suit." "You" is ideal, but "your" works too.

6. Not sure which approach is right for you? Try them all, and then show a friend or colleague to get their feedback. Pick the one you believe will be most effective for your audience. Whichever approach you choose, it's always worth spending the time and effort to write a great subject line. Because if your readers don't open your e-mail, they'll never have the chance to read the important message you've created for them inside.

Topic 2 ~ Increase Click-Through Rate (CTR) ~

How to Increased Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

Here are some guidelines:

1. Include a feature, a benefit, and an advantage in the opening. This needs to be used in a subtle way, but in the opening you're really doing a small marketing job for this issue of your email newsletter.

Highlight an article or two that are important, explain what you're providing the readers that they won't get elsewhere, and tell them what the benefit will be. A great example is something like "Nokia and Sprint announced second quarter earnings today.

Learn what our Wireless Week experts say about the results, and what effect you can expect them to have on the industry at large."

2. Put the email newsletter in the context of your readers' day. This goes hand in hand with the last point. Your readers are busy, and if you can make a compelling case for why they should stop what they are doing and take a few minutes now to read your email newsletter, you'll get them in.

We recommend editors reference important events, upcoming trade shows, or other things that say to the reader "You will find it worthwhile to stop and read this email newsletter now, because the information in it will help you stay on top of your business."

3. Keep it fresh. Don't craft a "perfect paragraph" and use it issue after issue after issue. One of the keys to success is to keep the copy fresh and highlight items in that issue of the email newsletter.

If you use the same generic language repeatedly, people will stop reading it and it'll be a waste of your time.

4. Keep it short. This is critical. We recommend no more than two to three sentences -- just enough to get them interested and pull them in to read the rest of your email newsletter. Try it out and see the results! This is just one of the simple things you can do to engage your reader and optimize your CTR.

Topic 3 ~ Killer Email Sales Letter ~

How to Write Killer Email Sales Letter That Get Results?

Here are what we've found works best. Use these tips properly and your results will skyrocket. 1. Your email "from" sender line should be your brand name or company name and stay consistent. Use your own personal name only if that is your brand image.

2. Send emails only when you have something to say that will benefit the reader. No fluff. No filler. You must be relevant. If you can't be, don't send an email until you have something beneficial to say.

3. Start your emails with the specific benefit the reader can get from your message. You have no more than 3 seconds to pass the crucial "what's in it for me?" test.

4. The copywriting tone and language should be personal and conversational, instead of stuffy and "corporate".

5. Make a specific offer to the reader and, if possible, include a short deadline by which he must respond to get it.

6. Use as much copy as is needed to fully pile on all the benefits the reader will get by ordering, answer objections, create urgency, and close the sale.

7. Test your subject lines and offers on small segments of your list before you send the email to your entire list.

8. Include "Email this to a friend" service in all your communications for pass along and viral marketing.

Topic 4 ~ Good Call-to-Action ~

Get More Clicks With a Good Call-to-Action!

The call-to-action is a determining factor of your click-through rate. It is an important component of your email copy because it answers three important questions for the recipient. They are

1. What you want them to do

2. Why they should do it, and

3. How to take that next step.

Whatever action you want your recipients to take, you can make it happen more often with a good call-to-action. First, decide what you want them to do: 1. Buy something

2. Sign up for a service

3. Fill out a form

4. Read an article or get more information

5. Visit your website or store

6. Make an appointment

Etc… Then, make sure you incorporate these 6 characteristics to get the results you're looking for. Make your call-to action:

1. Visible - People read, react, make decisions and take action differently. Some make decisions right away ("You had me at hello.") and some need more details ("I'm from Missouri."). Place call-to-action links in the beginning, middle and end of the email so that recipients can click whenever they are ready.

2. Clear - Stick to simple words, short phrases, bulleted benefits and paragraphs of 1-3 short sentences. Include appropriate graphics and cut the clutter by making effective use of white space. 3. Compelling - Use action-oriented verbs and phrases: "buy now," "call today," "save" and so on. 4. Rewarding - Offer an incentive or reward for action. For example, "Act now and also receives...," or "the First 100 respondents will be entered into a raffle to win..." The giveaway, or prize, you choose should be closely related to your product or service. That way, you will be targeting customers who are interested in what you have to offer, not just the latest gadget. 5. Urgent - The longer an email sits in an inbox, the less likely it is to be acted on. Create a sense of urgency to get a more immediate response. Try limiting the offer to a specific time period, to the "first 50 customers," "while supplies last," etc.

6. Direct - Your call-to-action links should go to the appropriate page on your website with more details on the specific product or service you're promoting. If you don't have a website, the call-to-action might be store locations to visit or a number to call for an appointment.

Keep in mind that, in addition to repeating your call-to-action, you can vary your call-to-action to appeal to different types of buyers (and to fit your sales cycle). For example: "Click here to buy now" will naturally work better with loyal customers. The softer, "Click here to learn more" may be better for newer prospects.

Topic 5 ~ Avoid Common Pitfalls ~

Read Your Email Message Backwards to Avoid Common Pitfalls

Here are some common problems to look out for:

1. Misspelled words - It's a good idea to spell-check a document, but it's not enough. A spell checker won't catch every error.

2. Wrong word used - This is why a spell checker isn't enough. A spell checker will only flag words it doesn't recognize. It can't tell if a legitimate word is used incorrectly. Some words commonly confused: accept, except; your, you're; then, than; there, their, they're; cite, site, sight; lay, lie; loose, loosen, lose. Also, look out for a missing "r" in the word "your." It's easy to overlook a sentence such as "Visit our Web site now to receive you free copy."

3. Grammar error - Again, if you know you're not a good writer, have someone else check your writing for grammatical errors. Mistakes make you look bad.

4. Punctuation error - This is another area where you'll benefit from a review by someone who knows their stuff. If you're determined to do it yourself, purchase a good grammar or style book. One of the most common punctuation problems: Too many stupid commas!

5. Vague or confusing statement - Make sure every sentence is crystal-clear. You don't want your promotional message to raise more questions than it answers.

6. Illogical statement - Read over what you have written slowly. At the end of each paragraph, ask yourself: "Did that make sense?" Rewrite so that it does.

Topic 6 ~ Frequency of Sending Emails ~

How Often (Frequency) Should You Send Email?

There's no quick answer to the frequency question. It depends on the goals for your email and the type of content you send. Some rough guidelines:

1. Mail at least once a month. Mail less often than this, and you risk being forgotten by recipients. Monthly is the bare minimum if you want to keep your brand or company name top of mind (a common email goal).

2. Let content be your guide. Look at what you provide readers and you'll get a feel for proper frequency. Analyze how often the information changes and how quickly readers must receive it to act on it.

3. Work within your resources. A daily email requires many more resources than a monthly. Better a well-done monthly email than shoddy weekly or daily. It's recommended to start with a monthly.

Once that's going smoothly, they can think about moving to weekly. You need to walk before you can run!

4. Watch for trends. Declining response, open, and click-through rates can be signs of list fatigue. Though some decrease is normal, watch carefully and cut back frequency if you see a problem. Don't assume if the unsubscribe rate is stable you're OK. Many people prefer to forward email directly to their delete folder rather than unsubscribe.

Topic 7 ~ Understanding Spam Filters ~

Understanding Spam Filters to Avoid Your Emails Get Junked!

If you send email campaigns long enough, you will inevitably run into spam filter issues. On average, you can expect 10-20% of your emails to just get lost in cyberspace, mostly due to overzealous spam filters.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. If you want to avoid getting your emails junked by spam filters, you have to understand how they work.

Generally speaking, spam filters look at a long list of criteria to judge whether or not your email is junk. For example, they might look for spammy phrases like "CLICK HERE!" or "FREE! BUY NOW!". They'll assign points each time they see one of those phrases. Certain criteria get more points than others. Here's a sample of criteria from Spam Assassin, one of the most popular spam filters out there:

• Talks about lots of money (.193 points)

• Describes some sort of breakthrough (.232 points)

• Looks like mortgage pitch (.297 points)

• Contains urgent matter (.288 points)

• Money back guarantee (2.051 points)

• Why Pay More? (1.249 points)

It's easy to use "spammy" keywords in your email without even knowing it. Here are some common ways marketers unwittingly trigger spam filters with their campaigns:

1. Using spammy phrases, like "Click here!" or "Once in a lifetime opportunity!" too many times in your email. Sometimes, you can't avoid phrases like "FREE SHIPPING!" but use them sparingly, and don't do anything else risky.

2. Going crazy with exclamation points!!!!!!

3. USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE YELLING IN EMAIL

4. Coloring their fonts bright red, or green

5. Coding sloppy HTML (such as by converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML)

6. Creating an HTML email that's nothing but one big image, with no text (since spam filters can't read images, they assume you're a spammer that's trying to trick 'em)

7. Using the word "Test" in the subject line (agencies run into this all the time, when sending drafts to clients for approval)

Topic 8 ~ Why Email Marketing Does not Work? ~

If Your Email Marketing Does not Work, Think Again Why?

Before you arrive at the faulty conclusion that email marketing doesn't work, let’s look at this from a different perspective for a moment that would make your emails ineffective.

First there's what you are writing in the body of the email. If this is your first attempt to get in touch with a prospect, what are you putting in the email? A dissertation? If it's longer than one or two paragraphs, it's too long.

Look at your emails like an initial cold call. You need to laser in and deliver a compelling opening statement that's going to grab their interest and stimulate a conversation.

Because there's no one to cut you off in an email or stop you from persistent pontification, people have tendency to ramble on and on in an email, giving the prospect the life story of the product or service they want them to consider.

Keep it short and focus on the one or two benefits, opening up the opportunity to have a dialogue. That's it.

Second, are you sending attachments in the first email? No attachments! It's hard enough sending an unsolicited email to a prospect.

Now you're adding more barriers and increasing the chances of your email winding up in their spam box or junk email folder.

Some people have filters on their email that if an attachment is sent it automatically gets deleted. No attachment until that information in the attachment is solicited by the person.

Third, html or text? Once again, with all the email filters people use today, you will increase your odds by sending a text message only rather than trying to get fancy with formatting, graphics and pictures. The prospect really doesn't care about how beautiful your email looks; they care about the core message. Besides, they will never even get a chance to see your beautiful masterpiece in an html email if it's winding up in the trash.

Finally, you are using way too many spam words. As mentioned, the biggest enemy to email marketing or selling via email is the additional security that companies and individuals have on their network or computer.

As such, the specific words you are using in the body of the email can be the culprit who is sending your email directly into the trash or spam box. In other words, you are using words that are often identified is spam and in turn, you email is getting flagged and deleted.

Not even eye contact! The prospect is not getting a chance to, at the very least, see your email let alone read it and have a chance to respond accordingly.

Ending ~ Please Forward ~

Feel Free To Forward This E-Book To Your Friends!

Thank you for reading this e-book on “How to Make Email Marketing Works for Your Business”. This e-book provides useful guides on email marketing, and helps e-marketers to avoid several pitfalls in email marketing.

We hope you may regard this e-book as a book of guidance and that we can help you in your e-marketing effort.

If you think the outlined tips can help you, please take a few seconds to help us distribute or forward this e-book to as many people as possible.

I appreciate your time taken to read this e-book and I always appreciate reading your thoughtful and well considered comments, please drop an email to me at sales@blastsg.com if you have something to say about this e-book.

Thank you!

Search Engine Optimization And Marketing Analyst With Good Copywriting Approach

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:47:00 +0700

by: Joanna Gadel

Search Engine Marketing requires optimizing the keywords as per the competitiveness and the fitting of them in the content.

An SEO copywriting involves creating informative, easy-to-read content with both the reader and the search engines in mind. Once the content is done, it is put in the web site to garner the attention of the search engine spider and the readers as well.

If the content is search engine friendly, there is every possibility that the content gets indexed in the SERP (Search Engine Return Page) in the high page ranking. In doing so, a content writer needs to be an SEO analyst (http://www.seosydney.net.au/) and he must know the requirement of the readers and must possess some amount of the knowledge in the search engine.

SEO writing is not merely inserting several disjointed, thesaurus-sounding keywords into the copy, for the sake of the rank high in search engines. Content overstuffed with keywords will not help in this regard.

The planning stage for search engine copywriting requires the consideration of the density of keywords in the content. Heavy keyword stuffing is not a good attempt.

The search will see this as some kind of deliberate action to fit the keywords into the content, and it is called spamming; that way there might have been a possibility of being banned by the search engines.

Therefore, one has to be very much careful about search engine copywriting.

SEO copywriting is not that much difficult but just a little bit complicated. Following some tips, one can easily attain the professional expertise to write content keeping in mind the elite SEO rules. Basic Rules for copywriting for search engine optimization (http://www.seosydney.net.au/seopackages.html) and marketing:

Keyword Info

To begin with, it is advisable to have the knowledge of the keywords optimized for. Once you start writing the content, please remember to include the keywords therein.

It is better, to have the keyword info beforehand and then just complete the content, and depending on the circumstances, just fit the keywords in the content.

Focusing your copy on only two or three primary keywords or keyword phrases will help a lot to get the best the best result.

Keyword Frequency

There are several guidelines. There is a “3% guideline” which states 3% of your words should be the targeted keywords. Anyway, this is just a guideline. There is no fixed rule to attain this 3% ratio. This rule varies from chapter to chapter.

The content should be promoted by your writing flair and that it has to entice the customers and the search engines. Just do not spoil your copy by forcing keywords where they just do not fit.

Target Audience

It is also very much required to have a proper info about the website for which you are writing the copy.

The information first prompts you to have a sound knowledge about the target audience. That reduces your toil largely.

Text Length

Generally, 250-500 words article is better in the web site. The search engine can read it properly. Make sure to have the keywords fitted in the first two to three paragraphs as the search engine spider does not go deep into your content.

This way you can help the search engine finding the relevant keywords. Try avoiding the images as much as possible, as the search cannot track the images. If, however, there is a necessity, you can use the Alt texts on the images.

Using CSS

It is a good practice to use the CSS or Cascading Style Sheet as it allows you to tell a browser how to present your page.

CSS approach separates the presentation style of the documents from the content, hence simplifies site maintenance.

One can easily maintain the visual appeal of the text in headings through CSS.

Meta Tags

It is very much needed to have the Meta tags (Keywords, Title, and Description), that is also a part of the SEO copywriting.

The common viewers are not expected to see the Meta Tags it has become inevitable to have the Meta Tags in the HTML.

Update the Content

It is a good practice to have the content updated at an interval as human eyes always want to see something new in the chosen field, it is very much mandatory that one should have practiced this disciplines.

Search Engine Optimization And The Magic Fairy Dust

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:57:00 +0700

by: Bill Platt

There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website.

The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results.

Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.

For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.

How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.

When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.

On-Site Search Optimization Challenges

The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website. * You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;

* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;

* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and

* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.

A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer.

Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser.

Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.

Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.

I recently spoke with an individual who spends 2,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website.

He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics

According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).

The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.

Think about how magazines are constructed:

The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.

On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.

Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture. Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.

By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.

In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.

Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics

Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.

I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.

Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content

To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN.

When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages.

They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".

Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines: * Google's #1 result - Google PageRank 8.

(www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) Links to this web page:

according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).

* Yahoo's #2 result - Google PageRank 10.

(www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer) Links to this web page:

Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).

* MSN's #1 result - Google PageRank 8.

(www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash)

Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).

On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.

On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.

On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?

What Do These Numbers Mean?

Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also.

So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.

Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.

The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings

Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.

I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results.

Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.

Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.

According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!

Magic Fairy Dust

My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.

Okay, I admit it.

I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust.

Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.

If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust.

You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.

Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Sun, 7 Sep 2008 02:28:00 +0700

by: EGB Systems

Search Engine Optimization

Each search engine has a database of all web sites. When you search for any term in search engines, they actually search in their database and show the results from their database.

As a user, when you need to find information on a topic, you use search engines to get a listing of web sites related to the topic of interest. As a webmaster, you want your site to be one of the first ones the user will see.

How can the web designer make sure you are noticed? That is where effective search engine optimization comes in.

Search Engine Optimization is the process where a website is optimized to get better ranking in search results in popular search engine. As a website owner, you must aim to get listed in top 10 results for your site’s primary keywords.

You must do several optimizations in your website to appear in search results. This process is called as Search Engine Optimization.

Search engine works through the better understanding of algorithm, which are but the rules which governs and helps the search engine to rank the respective sites.

The ranking depends on various factors:

Keywords

Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page.

Each web page has different ranking for different keywords. Search engine sorts the keywords and displays the results.

Keyword Research: The search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment.

The search engine research the keywords and rank the website. If your site has higher rank than other site, then your page will appear on top.

Keyword density: Measure of how frequently a given keyword appears within a given web page. Improving the keyword density on your website is one of the fastest and simplest ways to increase your site’s visibility in the search engine results pages.

If your keyword occurs only once or twice in a page of 500 or more words, obviously it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that would occur six or seven times in a page of similar length.

As far as search engines are concerned, if a particular keyword has a higher density on that particular web page, then the chances of that page obtaining a much better search engine ranking increases almost exponentially.

Optimized content

The success of website is changing and optimizing the content on a regular basis is important. Therefore, we must routinely change your web site to test and see what changes work and what changes do not work when trying to achieve top ranking.

Meta tags

If the word or phrase appears in the HTML title tag, that website will be considered the most relevant. Also, if the word appears close to the top of the first web page, for instance, the home page, the relevancy will be ranked accordingly.

Meta tags are information inserted in the head title of your web pages.

Link Building Services

Evaluate the source page:- Before assigning a value for a link, the search engine evaluate the rank for the page itself. If you get link from site that are related to your content, it has more value.

Site Submission

If you have a web page that is not linked by any other page that page may never get indexed by any search engine.

Internet Marketing

E-mail: - It is always better to have an e-mail to link to other website to promote the products. When we promote products and services, the other website come to know about our site. By sending e-mail, you get some quality link to your sites.

Choose partner for online marketing and advertisement: Make use of the website to evaluate the marketing effectiveness. By giving advertisement also, you can promote your site.

Benefits

Increased usability:- More people visit the site, which lead to increased sales and generation.

The Ultimate Guide to Succesfull Internet Marketing and Site Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 01:02:00 +0700

by: Dan Jondron

OK, I'm hot. I'm not complaining because back in the winter when it was the very opposite of hot, I swore I wouldn't complain when it got hot.

The fan on my computer seems to have a brain of its own and it is humming away at an unusually fast pace. I think the computer is hot.

So why oh why would want to be reading an article about eMarketing in the aftermarket? It gives you an excuse to put your feet up on the desk, sip that iced tea and learn something that can move your company forward in the branding and marketing arena at a very low cost.

When your boss sees the increases in requests coming off the 'Net and he knows he didn't have to add bodies to the budget, he will think you have been working very, very hard. That's a good thing.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to lead the eMarketing Panel at the Aftermarket eForum in Chicago. Some of the information herein was to be presented there, but due to scheduling and time conflicts, I had to move through it pretty quickly.

So, if you attended the eForum and missed out, here's your chance to catch up.

Let's skip right to the goodies, now. Our project for today is foundational. If you haven't already done so, (and you probably haven't) you need to create a spreadsheet.

Don't fret, there isn't any math involved. This spreadsheet is the basic tool you are going to use to track two things for the rest of your eMarketing career, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC).

Do this:

First, write a list of all the key phrases that you can think of for your product mix. Let's use my favorite as an example; Sparkplugs.

Your key phrase list would consist of thing like spark plugs, sparkplugs, spark plug, sparkplug, Honda sparkplug, igniter, iridium spark plug, iridium sparkplug, etc.

In the first column of the spreadsheet, enter all of these key phrases. Note that I have included sparkplug as one word and as two words.

Next, Set up an account at Overture.com. This is a part of Yahoo! and is actually now called Yahoo! Search Marketing. You can use your own credit card for this if the boss is out of town, because we aren't going to spend any money with it.

We are going to use it to track down some additional key phrases and get the numbers of actual searches per month for each of these key phrases. Once you are in and have established an account, go to keyword tools and start entering your brainstormed key phrases one at a time.

The Overture key word tool will tell you how often searches are performed for your key phrases and suggest additional key phrases. Add the additional ones to your spreadsheet.

In the second column of your spreadsheet enter the number of times per month that each key phrase is searched for.

Finally, Create columns to track your rankings on some of the search engines. There are a number of tools available that you can use or you can actually go to each site and type in the key phrase.

I like www.googlerankings.com, where you can enter up to ten key phrases at a time and check them against, Google, Yahoo and MSN.

This does take some time. Each search is about 20 seconds or so. You will need to get your Google API number to do this. Go here to get that puppy, https://www.google.com/accounts

You are going to check your rankings on each of the search engines you choose. Heres an example of words I have tracked, from 1/5 to 6/5

-NGK Spark Plug with 3862 searches

-Performance Plug with 4190 searches

-Honda Sparkplug with 5583 searches

-Champion Spark Plug with 5600 searches

-Oxygen sensor with 6325 searches

-spark plug with 10456 searches

These are clearly important key phrases for this business as evidenced by the number of searches/month being performed for each.

In the example above, through a combination of great SEO, appropriate Pay Per Click and a bit of luck we moved up 1 point for "NGK Spark Plugs" over five month period at Google.

We went from non existent to first at Yahoo for "Champion Spark Plug", climbed two points for "spark plug" at Google and also did very well for the same key phrase at Yahoo.

Again, these charts you will create are the foundation for everything you do. If you want to build traffic to a number of different websites that you own, then you need to build a sheet for each website.

Some 75% of users will find your websites through directories and search engines. That means they are going to type in XM Radio or Running boards, as in our previous example or motor oil or whatever and then click on one of the results that are presented.

If you have done your Pay Per Click effectively (look for the PPC article in a future installment or go to www.digstrat.com and view the PPC Webinar I did for SEMA in June), at least you can be guaranteed of a presence in the paid results.

But what about the natural search results?

In May of '04, a Search Engine User Attitudes Survey by iProspect indicated:

*60.5 percent of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL users selected a natural search result over paid search advertisements as the most relevant on a sample query. We can't ignore 60+ percent of users, so how can we work to make sure that we show up as high as possible on the page in the natural search results for our chosen key words? It all starts with measuring, as in the spreadsheet example above.

The folks at Lund International says, "If it's worth doing, its worth measuring" (I have that from a very good inside source, who shall remain anonymous).

Basic Search Engine Optimization

Search engines vary in the way they use the information on your website to rank your p`ges in natural search results.

Google, for instance, nk longer uses Meta Tags (see below) to determine relevance. Most other search engines still do. Let's keep this simple by talking about the 3 most important SEO issues.

Page titles. What does it say in the blue bar at the top of your gebpage? The title tag is an important way that search engines determine the relevance of your we`site to a particular search.

The earlier the key words appear in your title bar, the higher your ranking (generally) for that key word. If your title bar says, Welcome to the fantastic website of Wingding Industries, maker of all kinds of tail lights for your car and truck.

Then your title tags are optimized for the words "Welcome, to, the, fantastic" and not much else. Use your keyword master spreadsheet to position your important keywords toward the beginning of your title tag. If tail lights is your important keyword, then try "Tail lights for your car and truck made by Wingding Industries".

Meta Tags. Despite the fact that Google no longer uses Meta Tags to determine relevancy to a particular search, almost all of the other search engines do. In your web page code there is an HTML tag called, "Meta Tags".

This is an area of the code where you can list all of your important key words or phrases, thereby increasing the possibility of a higher position when someone searches on those words and phrases.

It is recommended that you don't use a particular key word more than 3 or 4 times as you will be penalized by the search engines for trying to spam them.

Content. Content has become increasingly important for a number of reasons. First, it is our belief from monitoring all of the various search engine commentators that key words that appear high on the webpage in text format are utilized by the search engines to determine relevancy of the site for those key words.

In other words, if you are a site whose important key words include sparkplugs and oxygen sensors, that those words should be used in the text that appears near the top of your web page.

Secondly, the more content you have about a particular subject, again let's use sparkplugs as the example, the more relevant the page actually is to the person searching for information about sparkplugs.

Your site will gain in popularity among those looking for sparkplug information and will therefore be ranked higher by the search engines when they display results for sparkplug-related searches. This is true for content that in the form of chats, forums and blogs as well.

This brings up the point that the popularity of your website also plays an important part in your search standings. The more popular your website is for a given topic, the higher your listing will appear on the search results page.

One further point about search relevancy. It is a process. If you do a really great job on your page titles and meta tags and provide valuable content for a particular topic, over time, your website will continue to rise in the search results.

Success begets success for search results ranking.

Let me mention one further idea. You can't rank highly for a huge amount of diverse keywords, but you can build web pages targeting a specific topic.

If you sell Sparkplugs and Oxygen sensors, you might want to build a set of pages devoted to sparkplugs and a second set of pages devoted to oxygen sensors.

You can build these within a single URL or develop separate URL's for each topic.

5 Reasons Why an Article Submission Service Should Be a Cohesive Part of your Online Marketing Efforts

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:08:00 +0700

by: Guna Seelan

With more consumers moving online to buy products, find information and evaluate offline decisions; being able to leverage internet marketing is becoming one of the most significant elements of a businesses marketing mix.

If your business is giving internet marketing the attention it deserves, then article submission is a marketing practice which should be a cohesive part of your approach to marketing your products, services and brand online.

Increase your Position in the SERPs

Through building back-links to your website with targeted anchor text you can increase your websites positions in the SERPs for keywords and phrases that consumers would use should they be looking for the products, services and information that your website provides.

Catch Consumers at an Earlier Stage in the Buying Cycle

The internet now provides a great opportunity for buyers to find out information about products and services before they buy them.

For example, a person considering buying a wrist watch may look online to find out about wristwatch brands, battery lifecycle and other elements which will allow them to make a more informed choice.

If your company is providing the information that allows them to make an informed choice, then you are already placing your brand in front of the consumer at an earlier stage in the buying cycle; giving you first player advantage and brand integrity when they continue through to making a purchase.

Direct Traffic

Through having articles on hundreds of websites you will experience direct traffic from the websites on which your links are placed.

Further more, this traffic will be targeted towards your website since the article pages from which they clicked will be tightly related to your products and services, meaning the chances of making a conversion are much higher.

Become an Authority in your Field

For decades businesses have tempted to make themselves the authority in their given field; fighting for press interviews to give their take on news that relates to their field. That opportunity is now available through article marketing.

Businesses can give their perspective on events, provide helpful and educational guides as well as cement a trusted exterior through participating in article marketing.

Through providing information in articles, business owners also open up opportunities to be asked for their opinion more often and to further enhance their authoritative status as a result.

Widen the Berth of Opportunity to Catch Consumers

When online being able to widen the berth through which traffic arrives at your website is vital to solidifying your position in the marketplace.

With article submission services your benefit from direct link visits, as well as increased search engine rankings.

Being able to do that is also good because it widens the scope and amount of opportunities for consumers to find out about your offerings.

For example, if a potential customer performs a search for a phrase related to your product, they could be met with 1 result being your website and 4 results being websites that syndicate your article.

You are therefore significantly increasing the chance that your business will be found.

How to make a Search Engine Optimization Company Work For You

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:07:00 +0700

by: Moe Tamani

Search engine optimization is a marketing strategy that many websites are employing to make their sites’ ranking go up during searches.

Actually, search engine optimization employs many methods to ensure that the website has constant traffic.

Search Engine Optimization for Search Engines

Before anything else, it is better to understand how search engine optimization works. Initially, webmasters would present a URL or a web page to the search engines operating in the Internet. From then, the search engine would try to gather relevant links and information regarding the website or URL.

The information and other relevant data that these crawlers would get from the website are what the search engines would use to catalog or index the site. The relevance of the site and the rate of which it is visited has an effect on its ranking during search engine results.

Initially, search engine optimization first turned out to be a highly maneuverable business where webmasters would put irrelevant meta tags and keyword on their site to rank higher and to attract traffic.

These black hat methods were soon found out by search engines and nowadays meta tags have lost their relevance in search engine optimization.

Many revisions were done with search engines in order to avoid webmasters’ tactics and tricks used by search engine optimization firms which have no relevant information at all for those searching for serious ideas and materials.

Some search engines have also refused to be used by SEO companies and their blatant inappropriate ways of marketing their clients. Search engines are repeatedly banning search engine optimization companies and their clients who are noted to use black hat techniques to raise their rankings.

Consistent banning of sites and SEO companies who optimize these sites can ruin a site’s integrity and bring about lesser traffic since search engines are usually what most people use to scour the Internet.

Not appearing in search engine results will create a vacuum for your company and you will have to create another site if you are continuously banned from search engines.

SEO companies who repeatedly go against the search engine rules will ultimately lose clients because search engines might automatically block off their clients without any reason other than that this certain SEO company has a reputation of using black hat techniques to manipulate higher rankings for their clients.

Search engine optimization can be easily manipulated just by submitting content which are rich in keywords and key phrases but have less relevance. Spamdexing is also one way of immersing the Internet with irrelevant information designed to raise rankings.

These methods are frowned upon by search engines and your site may be banned for a period of time if you or your SEO company indulge in underhand techniques.

Other black hat ways that some search engine optimization firms use to raise a site’s ranking is to insert a hidden text in the site itself which human browsers can not see or detect but robotic spiders or crawlers can easily find and include in their indexing.

Search engine optimization does not actually have a lot of fixed rules and regulations regarding what to do and what not do when optimizing a site.

Search Engine Optimization Methods To Raise Rankings

There are actually many methods of search engine optimization which is why there is actually no need for black hat techniques and other underhand techniques to raise rankings.

The varied ways of optimizing a site is to have relevant keyword rich content, having articles title rich in keywords, have images and pictures scaled down to a size that does not require long waiting time to load.

Other methods for search engine optimization are website redeveloping, putting links and submission to search engines.

Choosing a Search Engine Optimization Company

Many SEO companies deal with marketing a site using white hat methods, which is to say that they do things aboveboard and without offending any of the search engines.

You would just have to make your choice well when you are in the market for a company to do your search engine optimization work.

One of the ways to check and see if the SEO company you wish to contract with has no underhand dealings is to get recommendations from older sites that have used the search engine optimization methods of the said company.

More recent sites might not have had results yet regarding ranking and traffic so it is better to evaluate the SEO company through sites which are already more than two months old.

You will also benefit by learning a little about ways of search engine optimization so you will be aware of any underhand techniques employed by the SEO company.

Website Basics-Getting Traffic to Your Website

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:05:00 +0700

by: Richard James

Once you have successfully launched your website, of course the next objective is to get visitors to it. In the movie Field of Dreams there is a famous line that says “If you build it, they will come”.

Unfortunately, the same is NOT true about websites, unless you take some proactive steps to get (and keep) traffic coming to your new website. There are several strategies that will help generate traffic, below are just a few.

At www.startmywebsitetoday.com we offer some tools to assist you in your quest for traffic:

Express Email Marketing One effective strategy to reach out to past, present, and even future customers is via email marketing.

You can send email marketing newsletters, information about updates to your website, or monthly product specials in order to keep your customer base informed.

Some use the strategy of a link on their website allowing visitors to “opt in” for a regular newsletter from your site. Express Email Marketing streamlines this capability, with packages available for keeping in touch with up to 5000 of your customers on a regular basis.

QUICK BLOG

Post information about your new website to related blogs around the internet. If your site is commercial, be sure that the blogs you are posting to allow posts from commercial sites. Better yet, build your own blog site.

Our Quick Blog product allows you to easily build your own blog website, where you can post information about your website, update customers on new events or products, and share ideas with others concerning your products and information.

TRAFFIC BLAZER

Perhaps the Holy Grail to most website owners is to be highly ranked with the major search engines. When you first publish a website to the internet, the search engines will not recognize the existence of your site.

Therefore, you must visit each search engine website and fill out an online form to “submit” your site for consideration by that search engine. Unless you do this, the search engine will not have your website listed. You will have to go through this process for each and every search engine that you want to have index your site.

This process can be a tedious and time consuming one. Our product Traffic Blazer helps to streamline this process and take much of the time and tedium out of staying in front of the search engines.

Traffic Blazer will submit your website to 200 search engines on the internet, and can be used to continually resubmit the site to them as you add to it or change it, so that the search engines have an updated version of your website at all times.

TRAFFIC FACTS

Once you get traffic to your website, let's talk about fine tuning it. Not every visit to your site will result in a positive action or sale.

But that doesn't mean you can't profit anyway! How? By learning about your visitors. StartMyWebSiteToday.COM provides Web site statistics free with every Hosting and WebSite Tonight® account.

But if you want more detailed data that can help you target specific customers or create more effective offers then you need the power of Traffic Facts.

With Traffic Facts you will really know your customers. Every visit to your website will tell a story, such as where geographically the customer came from, what website they linked from, what pages were viewed, where the customer went from there, etc.

All of this information will help you to optimize and really target your website to your customers.

Landing Page Secrets Revealed - Landing Page 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:04:00 +0700

by: Jeffrey Wyrick

Landing page techniques are changing. Often we hear them called "lead capture pages", "lead generation pages", "opt in pages", "name squeeze pages" or simply "squeeze pages".

No matter what you choose to call them the concept of using a landing page has been around for quite some time in the virtual world of online business.

MANY PEOPLE MAKE THE SAME LANDING PAGE MISTAKES

It doesn't matter if you're new to the world of internet advertising doing affiliate marketing or if you've been around almost as long as the famed Microsoft and Bill Gates himself.

The simple truth is that things are changing and that change is not something we can just avoid by blindly ignoring the fact that what used work and what used to be considered affective is now no longer effective.

These landing page techniques have become obsolete.

THERE ARE MAJOR PROBLEMS THIS SYSTEM IS OUTDATED

The main issue we have here is spamming laws. Without setting up some form of "double opt in" system to allow for check and balance we open ourselves up to a great number of people who will claim they never signed up to receive unsolicited emails.

They may have actually been to the website and signed up for our latest greatest free ebook and they may have already downloaded and read the information in question or in the case where you are selling your own products & services or for affiliate marketers the buyer may have already been to the main product or service website.

Where we go wrong here is that people forget. We all do this from time to time, so there's no reason to take it personally, but in many cases those same people who don't remember seeing the landing page will turn around and complain to their isp, your web host or anyone else that will listen and they will claim that you are sending them SPAM emails.

Without proof that they have signed up to be on your email marketing list you could easily lose your web hosting service, get your internet service provider to shut you down or the worse than all of the above you could get banned by the almighty search engines.

SO WE BEGIN OUR SEARCH FOR REASONABLE SOLUTIONS

First we incorporate a "double opt in" autoresponce system to replace the now obsolete "single opt in" programs that we were using in the past to market our products, services and affiliate programs.

This will protect us from people who complain that they are being spammed, as we now have irrefutable proof showing the time, date and even ip address of the initial sign up.

Next someone came up with a very popular concept called an OTO or "one time offer" page. This was pure genius in the making!

The beauty behind this is that it overcomes all of the situations where someone chooses to NOT sign up for your email list OR they sign up just long enough to gain access to what they want and then they unsubscribe.

With this system you have an opportunity to strike while the iron is HOT and attempt to make a sale NOW before losing the prospect forever.

NOW LET'S TAKE THIS NEW SYSTEM TO THE NEXT LEVEL

For your landing page to truly be effective and meet your goals both on a short term and a long term basis you need to change the way you look at online marketing as a whole.

People are tired of being pressured up front to join an email list just to gain access to a free ebook, product or service. It doesn't matter how you managed to get the traffic to your website.

Once the visitor is there and they are looking they should have two choices.

Choice #1 - Buy the product or service that is being offered.

Choice #2 - Sign up for an optional online newsletter or ezine.

By giving the prospective buyer an option to sign up for your list this weeds out all the freeloaders that are only looking for a hand out and this method gives you a list that may be smaller, but the people who sign up are genuinely interested in the information you're going to send them via email.

Plus by doing this they have to confirm their email address before it's added to your autoresponder, which gives them an added feeling of comfort that they're not just being hustled.

For those that chose to BUY NOW the next step is to send them to your landing page, but only AFTER they have made their payment in full. This way you have completed the sale BEFORE asking for their first name and email address.

Once the buyer has gone to your landing page you can simply explain that you need this information to confirm their order and that you will NOT share this information with anyone else.

As an added touch you can even tell the buyer that they will get an email from you once they confirm their sign up to your email list telling them where they can get their ebook, start using the service they have paid you for or download their new digital product.

THIS WAY THEY HAVE TO SIGN UP FOR YOUR EMAIL LIST

Once they sign up you can then redirect them to your OTO or "one time offer" page. A lot of really good online marketers are now offering multiple "one time offers" as a back end sales technique for their landing page and they're making TONS of money!

In the meantime the buyer goes to their email list to confirm that they signed up for your landing page and that they want to be on your email marketing list.

They have no other choice. They have already paid for the products or services that you're offering them. If they want to get what they've paid for they have to sign up.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 09:00:00 +0700

by: Alexandra Leonova

When some business owners launch their websites, they wait for that success they’ve heard so much about, to start rolling.

I’ve heard some business owners say “I thought when I’ll launch my website; the entire world will see it.” Unfortunately that’s not how it works.

If you build it, they won’t come automatically. But that’s when usually most of the work starts. Here are some tips how to make your website successful:

Is your website search engine friendly?

If you’ll perform a local search for your product or services, does your website appear on search engine’s result page? If it does not come up when you do a local search, then your website requires web search engine optimization and implementation of keywords.

Roughly 25 percent of online buyers seek merchants that are near their home or work locations, according to TKG and Bizrate, as 44 percent of survey respondents revealed that were performing more local searches than they were one year ago.

Keywords are important if you want your local buyers to find your business or services by using a local search engine.

For example if a company is an independent contractor, that company should use keywords such as : “independent contractor Indianapolis, handyman services, Indiana, windows installation, custom flooring installation” etc.

You get the idea right? By defining keywords based on services or goods and adding city’s name and state, these keywords will help that independent contractor’s website to be displayed when someone is doing a local search on search engine.

Also your website’s content just as important as keywords. Writing good content and using keywords that define your business is a key to get high rankings with search engines.

Making your web site rank higher with search engines

Nowadays some search engines rank website based on how many other websites are linked to your website. Add your website to as many online directories as you can and have other websites link to yours.

Having high number of other websites link to yours, will boost your website’s search engine ranking per page, according to Google.com.

Avoid intros and flash slow loading screens

Although having some animation with music on your website seemed like a wow effect five years ago, customer’s expectations are rapidly changing. As the saying goes “You only have one chance to make a first impression” – will your website make that first, lasting impression?

If a potential customer has to sit there in front of computer and wait for your intro to load and play, most likely they’ll leave your website right away and go to your competitor’s website whose website does not have any annoying flash intros and competitor’s website has clean code and professionally, beautifully designed.

Also using flash movies on your website or having your website designed in Flash might not be such a good idea. When a website is done entirely in flash, search engines will less likely to spider your website.

Search engines most likely to list a website that uses keywords relevant to website’s content. And flash movies do not provide text content for search engine to spider it.

Third party sells

Use your client’s testimonials on your website. “The third party sells”. Ask for client’s permission to write their testimonials on your website. If they are happy with your work, let the world know.

Creating buzz for your web site

To get visitors come to your website, create some offers or sweepstakes or provide online coupons with discount if you sell goods or even service. Consumers always looking for good deals on the web, by offering coupons with discount for your services, will generate traffic to your website.

If offering online coupons or sweepstakes isn’t something you want to offer on your website, writing articles is another great way promoting your website. Consumers love to read, and sharing your expertise with public through online articles will prove that you are an expert at what you do and you will gain potential client’s trust.

Post your written articles on your website. Make sure your content is interesting and useful. Good content will make people to revisit your website frequently. Besides good content with good keywords will help your website to be ranked higher with search engines.

Submit your articles to various national and to local magazines and newspapers. By giving your expertise on particular subject, might interest some local editors and they might want to write an article about your business! What’s better than generate free publicity buzz?!

Keep your web site constantly updated

Some business owners neglect their websites. A key to successful online marketing is to constantly promote your website and update it regularly. Keep your information and your products or services content updated.

If you give your expert advice, make sure it’s up to date and keep on adding more articles with your expertise advice to your website. If you have online coupons, make sure they are updated.

If you are not that web savvy and you can't update your website or you simply don't have time, consider hiring a professional graphic designer or a web site design studio to update it for you on monthly basis.

Let the world know

And last but not least, once your website is up and running, print your website’s address on every medium you can. Make sure your business cards have your domain address.

If you are a contractor, create t-shirts with your logo and your website’s domain name.

If you are placing an ad in local magazine or newspaper, make sure your ad has your website’s address also.

The bottom line

Be patient with promoting your website. Be consistent. Consistency with marketing strategy pays off. Every company is different, find your niche what makes your business unique and promote your website by using your company’s difference.

Remember, your website is the best marketing tool. It advertises your business on the Internet 24/7.

By implementing any of those tips I described above, can increase your business’s visibility on the Internet and generate for your business revenue if it’s done correctly.

Affiliate Marketing Getting Traffic For Free

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 08:45:00 +0700

by: Juan Mendez

An Affiliate is an individual who markets other people’s products on the internet for a commission on the individual sale. Thousands of people do this because they can start making money almost immediately without the expense and time needed to produce a product themselves.

Having a website is not necessary and there is no interaction with your potential customers beyond getting them to the sales page.

Getting involved in affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to make a lot of money on the Internet, but one should not go into it blindly. As an affiliate you must invest some time in research, this is absolutely necessary.

Know what products you want to promote, how much you will make on each sale and the return rate of the product. If possible it’s a good idea to buy or request a sample so you know the product inside and out.

As a first time affiliate it’s a good idea to start with reasonably priced products making at least 50% commission. The most critical part of affiliate marketing is of course marketing.

The issue of traffic is one of the most central and fundamental issues in making any money online. You can separate your marketing campaign into two distinct groups, paid and non-paid.

Free marketing can be quite effective if you know how it’s done. Here is a list of the most popular methods for getting traffic for free.

Article marketing – A great way to increase your ranking with search engines and direct targeted traffic to your sites. You should write about what you know. If you do not have more information on your topic than does the average reader you should probably choose another topic.

Write your article in a conversational tone so that it’s easy to read. Don’t make your article too long, remember it’s an article you’re writing not a book. A length of 450-750 words should be ideal.

Your article should be informative and about your website topic. If its just useless information your readers will expect the same from your website.

Blogging – Writing a blog is also a good way to drive traffic to your site and increase your search engine rankings. Blogs were originally used as online diaries but have recently taken on a business dimension. Your blog should be focused on your particular niche.

You should have several blogs with different providers and include your links in your blogs and profile. This is a good technique for increasing traffic and search engine rankings.

Forums – Participating in forum discussions is another great way to meet people and get your URL out there on every post you make. You should join forums related to the niche you are targeting or the product you are selling.

When you sign up for a forum you have the option of adding a “signature”. This signature will show up at the bottom of every post you make in the forum and should be used to promote your website links and products.

Whenever you make posts you will then be creating links back to your site, while attracting the attention of the forum readers.

Social Bookmarking – This is a valuable and reliable way to get traffic and backlinks to your site. There are many social bookmarking sites such as Furl and del.icio.us. These sites allow you to share your bookmarks along with a description with the public hence the term social bookmarking.

The main purpose is to put your links in front of people who would hopefully also bookmark your site giving you more backlinks.

MySpace – MySpace is one of the largest online communities with over 100 million members. It is a great place for networking with other people who hold the same interests and marketing. Another great benefit of MySpace is that it has dozens of different forums and groups related to specific niches.

Be sparing with your use of music bites, videos and other media clips, you should create an attractive profile that is easy to load. Forget the animation and other bells and whistles, make it easy to navigate your profile and organize your information logically.

Color schemes are important, use colors that enhance the look of your text and images not draw attention away from them. You should also use a recent photo as you are now. For help on designing a MySpace profile consult the tutorials on the site.

The Solution for Better Web Site ROI

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:56:00 +0700

by: Cascia Talbert

One website charges $60 a month for a standard text ad. If you are using one or all of these advertising methods for your website you are probably losing money.

How would you like to track all your ads, find out how your visitors found your website, which search terms they used to get there, when the visitor subscribed to your newsletter, and when the visitor purchased from you?

If you knew all of this information then you could eliminate the advertising that is not pulling in sales, which would save you a lot of money. There is a solution for better website ROI (return on investment).

AxROI is a software program that runs on your own server using your own cookies instead of third party cookies. All of your traffic and advertising tracking is kept confidential and is not shared by third parties. If you are currently using a third party tracking service most likely they are sharing your information with your competitors.

AxROI also tracks all of your advertising right down to when and how your customer purchased from you. The program shows you which online ads and search engine rankings perform well and which is a waste of money.

You will be able to make better search engine marketing decisions and spend advertising dollars wisely. Improve your ROI and find out which pay per click ads work for you. This program will also let you know which banner ad and text link ads lead to sales.

You can earn $2 for every $1 you spend on advertising. And best of all there are no monthly fees. Visit their website today to learn more on how you can better improve your web site’s ROI by tracking all of your advertising using your own secure server and save thousands of dollars on you advertising costs.

For more information on AxROI visit: http://www.axroioptimizer.12w.net

How to Hire Providers of Internet Marketing Services

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:52:00 +0700

by: Moe Tamani

Internet Marketing Services is a discipline that combines knowledge of Information Technology with Marketing savvy so that clients can be able to make the most out of their website to bring in revenues for their business.

But the field of Internet Marketing Services is rather broad and the term may mean different things to different people.

To some providers, Internet Marketing Services may encompass Organic Search Engine Optimization (also called Natural Search Engine Optimization); Pay-Per-Click search engine marketing; banner advertising; online advertising; usage of blogs and their content for Networking; submission and management of online press releases; viral marketing (meaning the use of promos like games, freebies, and contests that website visitors might get attracted to); and e-mail marketing.

Your Internet Marketing Services provider might offer some or maybe all of these – at the right price.

Before you can hire an Internet Marketing Services provider, you and their representative have to sit down and thresh out some details first about the Internet Marketing Services you will be hiring.

This means being introduced to what the Internet Marketing Services provider does, what you – being a website owner – need to accomplish with your marketing effort, what you had in mind when you thought of using the online Marketing Services for your website, and how much of a marketing budget you have set aside specifically for Internet Marketing Services.

Like any business agreement, expect negotiations to be instigated between you and the Internet Marketing Services provider until you come to an arrangement that is acceptable to both parties.

You should examine the technical background and training your Internet Marketing Services team possesses. Are they familiar with consumer research? Do they do documentation of and training in the design of software by-products?

Are they familiar with design of user interfaces, development of products (and management), and e-commerce development?

You should examine the list of customers they have worked for, looking for any familiar names, and maybe even ask if you can contact these customers to interview them about how effective the Internet Marketing Services campaign the provider supplied actually was.

Like the saying goes, get it straight from the horse's mouth.

Some Internet Marketing Services play up the background and accomplishments of their founders and leaders a lot, but that doesn't really tell you a whole lot about the Internet Marketing Services staff themselves.

That is why it always helps to be picky, meaning you should insist on getting the nitty-gritty details about the Internet Marketing firm team that will be working on your project and how good they really are in this field.

If you find the Internet Marketing Services representatives getting uncomfortable (even hostile) when you ask questions, you know it's time to excuse yourself and leave the meeting – they're probably not right for you.

It also helps to know from what places in the world their clients come from because they can tell you a lot about the Internet Marketing Services provider and what the team assigned to you can do.

For instance, have they done extensive work in the US where Internet Marketing Services are more commonly applied and the field of Internet Marketing Services is more competitive? If so, they may know more than an online Marketing Services provider who does work in far-off countries where Internet usage is not so highly developed, like say Ethiopia.

Competition is good in the sense that the Internet Marketing Services providers have to prove they are adequately skilled in the field of Online Marketing Services before a discriminating client hires them.

Experience counts for a lot too. If your Internet Marketing Services provider has a proven track record in doing great work for a lot of individuals and companies, it makes sense to hire that provider.

But if your Internet Marketing Services company is just starting out in the business, you need to gauge the discount price they might be offering against the level of skills they actually can bring to the table.

Quality should always count over quantity, so one Internet Marketing Services effort that brings in great results is more effective and efficient than multiple campaigns that don't bring in as much results (and may wind up costing you more in the end.)

Sometimes, you really need an expert's touch when creating an online marketing campaign. However, if you don't need a very high-tech or advanced online marketing campaign, you might find it cheaper to take a chance on an upstart Internet Marketing Services company.

Social Bookmarking Services: Leveraging Social Bookmarking Sites for Traffic and Back links

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:47:00 +0700

by: Guna Seelan

Social Bookmarking websites rely on the democratic nature of the web to structure information in such a way that is easily digestible and requires less effort than before.

Such sites, including reddit.com, netscape.com and digg.com allow their massive user base to vote on web pages and as those web pages gain more votes, their position in the site increases.

As a marketing tool, the power of such websites is threefold.

On one level you gain direct traffic from the sites that are linking to you, on another level you gain brand exposure and acknowledgement that you are an accredited website, while on the third level you increase your websites position in the search engines through the links that you attain from the social bookmarking and other sites that may link to your webpage after seeing it there.

The linking part is the most important bi-product of social bookmarking services; the other advantages are just ancillary.

A social bookmarking company will work with you to identify the most important pages on your website, then they will gain links for those pages from social bookmarking websites.

They will ensure that your content gets submitted with appropriate anchor text to your website, and inside the correct category of the social bookmarking site, ensuring that you gain maximum exposure and optimum benefit from the links that they attain.

A social bookmarking service provider will also maintain a list of social bookmarking sites through which to submit your website, and they will most likely update this regularly to ensure that your website and internal pages are always being submitted to the sites that pass the most link equity and that have large enough user bases to add value to your website.

When working with a social bookmarking provider, it is imperative that the company employs only manual techniques in promoting your website.

Should you work with a provider that uses software as part of their process of promoting your site, then not only will your links be removed from the sites, your domain will also be banned; meaning that your chances of being able to leverage bookmarking sites will be removed indefinitely: giving your competitors a clear competitive advantage going into the future.

Professional bookmarking companies will have registered and trusted accounts on bookmarking sites, and will not attempt to provide multiple votes from the same IP address in an attempt to game the algorithm of the sites.

When looking for a bookmarking service you should look for a company that has experience in either search engine optimization or submission services and find out if they have evolved their offerings to allow their clients to gain a competitive advantage through leveraging social bookmarking sites.

Because social bookmarking is such a new and fast moving space; companies specializing specifically in social bookmarking sites have yet to gain any traction in the marketplace. Those that have thus far have attempted to use software to increase margins, however have done so at the detriment of their offerings.

Relaunch Of New Archant Life Websites

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:42:00 +0700

by: Mary Willis

Stylish, interactive, packed with information and easy to use, another batch of Archant Life websites are set to launch over the next few weeks.

Sites for Living South and Grove have already been launched and revamped sites for Kent Life, Surrey Life, Cornwall Life, and Somerset Life will be ‘going live’ over the next few weeks.

The revamp is the second stage of a project to develop the websites for all of Archant Life’s magazine titles with everything from news, entertainment, fashion, food and drink, property and interior advice to arts & antiques, gardens and wildlife.

The first phase was completed in January with London titles The Green, The Hill, SW and Resident, alongside county glossies Cheshire Life, Yorkshire Life, Sussex Life, Cotswold Life, Devon Life, and Lancashire Life all given a make-over.

Before the project began, most of the county titles already had sites, however they were very dated, and many of the London titles had no websites at all.

As well as being full of information, the new-look sites have developed interactive features such as a Your Space section for readers’ news and views and the opportunity to send in photos and diary dates for social events, balls and concerts.

In addition there will soon be a trail of a new search tool to enable users to find out exactly what is going on in their area from chnema listings tg orcanised walks. Cotswold Life will be the first sitd To trial this new function, we expect this to be up and live from early September.

The new sites will also have more commercial opportunity to increase advertising revenue as well as the facility for photo sales and links to the new Homes24 site.

Project manager Sandra Fennemore was given the task of overseeing the project, which will eventually see 23 sites revamped this year.

“They have done a great job with the first sites and we are well set for the on going roll out of another 21!”

“The new county and London websites are being launched one a week for the next six weeks, after which it will settle down to a more leisurely one every two weeks! running parallel to the work for the county / London sites, there is a major re-launch of three sites from within the Archant Life France portfolio including France, Living France and French Property Shop plus the Archant Life ‘mother’ site too, so, a busy schedule ahead.”

Keyword Discovery (Keyphrase Research) Makes Successful Websites!

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:47:00 +0700

by: Rahman Mehraby

Keyword Discovery or Keyphrase Research is of high importance in the success of any website. Internet searchers use keywords and key phrases to find what they want.

If your website uses such key elements in a proper way, they could lead you to a successful online business. If not, your site needs a serious reconsideration.

Importance of Keyword Research in Web Development

The choice of keywords is so important that experts recommend web developers to consider keyword discovery search as the initial step in their works. That is to say, even before choosing a name for your website, you need to know what your keywords will be.

After keyword and key phrase research, web developers can proceed to choose a name for their site. Texts, links, web design, meta data, all tags, comments and whatever in which words play some part will be done afterward based on the initial keyword discovery.

Which Keywords OR Keyphrases to Choose?

You should do some keyword discovery or keyphrase research to learn what people type while thinking about your information, product or service. Then, get the historical volume of a keyword that is searched and see how competitive it is.

Of course, if a keyword is searched a lot, it wouldn't mean that it's the best one for you. Actually, the competition for such a term will be way high too.

So, what's the solution? You should choose the most effective one. Divide the popularity of a keyword (the number of searches for it) by its competitiveness (the number of results) and you'll have the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) of that keyword.

The higher the result, the better that keyword will be to choose and use.

How Many Keywords / Keyphrases Do You Need?

When you begin your keyword discovery, you should make a list of keywords and keyphrases. The most effective ones, one to three of them, will be your main keywords or keyphrases used at your main page, usually home page.

The total number of keywords for your website will depend on the size of your whole site, the content of each individual page, etc.

Generally, the number of keywords or key phrases for each page should be from 3 to 10. However, it's usually recommended not to begin your new page or main page of the new site with more than 3 keyphrases.

Keywords vs Keyphrases?

While searching, if you use a single keyword, you are searching for general information, product or service which is usually a brand name these days. The longer the string of words in a keyword cluster, the more specific such a keyphrase is. Success is in selecting your best keyphrases, not keywords.

An example:

You run a foodstuff recipe website and now want to be found for a particular salad for a special event, Easter. Let's say you use Google for this search. Would you use "salad" as your main keyword?

I guess not, because you know that this term could bring you around 40 millions of results. It means a lot of competition.

What about "Easter salad"? it definitely lowers the degree of competition for you as there will be around 1.2 million results. Great difference, isn't it? This, by itself, shows how different it is to add one more word to the search term.

To narrow the search, I even recommend to use one more word to the string. It will be "Easter salad recipes".

Maybe the difference in results won't be very different from "Easter salad", but when Internet searchers use this last string of keywords (a keyphrase), they are more specific about what they need.

Important: If you write rich content on "salad recipes for Easter" and optimize a webpage for it, you will most probably be seen on the first page of the results.

How to Use Keywords or Keyphrase in Writing?

First things first. Your attitude is the most important thing. Write for your webpage visitors. Give them exactly the information related to the keyphrase you're using. Then, at second stage consider the search engine and their rules.

Obviously, now that you've done keyphrase research, you're supposed to make use of the result, in our example, "Easter salad recipes".

Use it at your title, body text, meta data, alt tags, etc in a natural way. Again, while doing this, avoid stuffing your page with this key phrase. Keep the keyword frequency, weight, etc in its appropriate proportion.

Don't forget to use some synonymous terms. Google considers synonyms used at the same page by its algorithm.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you should sacrifice your keyphrase research by providing a large number of synonymous words or phrases for it. Just consider it a few times.

How to Create Successful Web Pages?

Considering keyword discovery or keyphrase research suggested above, the right way to create successful web pages could be as follows:

1. Launch a thorough keyword discovery or keyphrase research.

2. Apply web copy writing techniques to create rich content for your pages.

3. Finally, optimize your web page to make sure your keyword discovery or keyphrase research hasn't been done in vain.

Eventually, you'll have one such a good web page. Do the same for all other pages of your site and you'll see the result overtime.

Attitude Is Everything In Online Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:43:00 +0700

by: Brian Downie

It’s often said that 97% of the people that try their hand at Internet marketing, mlm, or any other home based business opportunity will fail miserably and that only 3% will succeed. Unfortunately for most this statement is all too accurate.

There are any number of good, legitimate, money making business opportunities on the net and although it is not unheard of that some programs fail their members all too often the sad truth is we fail ourselves.

It’s important to research the business you’re planning to join and choose carefully before jumping in with both feet. A good program or business should offer its members quality products, solid training and strong leadership.

Companies that can meet these needs give their members an advantage over competitors that may not have the same level of support.

Unfortunately this alone will not and cannot ensure your success. One key ingredient is still missing. Call it what you will, drive, desire, willingness to succeed, it all comes down to one thing. Attitude. Approaching your new online business with the right attitude is the single most important facture in ensuring your success.

You must have the burning desire to be successful, to strive for the things you desire and to work towards your goals. Mark Twain said, “The dictionary is the only place success comes before work”

Take Dave Dubbs for example. Dave is the top money earner at EDC Gold and is reported as having an income from his online marketing business of $200,000 a month.

Dave knows how to make money. Dave is a savvy online marketer. Dave is also a hard worker. Dave has a burning desire to succeed, and he has.

What about Michael Corcoran and Craig Garcia the owners and co-founders of EDC Gold? Are they smarter than you or is it just that they had opportunities that you just didn’t have. I don’t think so. No doubt they have more experience than you and through trial and error they know what works and what doesn’t. These guys schooled themselves in online marketing.

People like Michael, Craig and Dave are making it even easier for people like you and I to succeed online. They are willing to teach people what they have learned through trial and error so that you don’t make the same costly mistakes that they have made and so that you can take advantage of what they know works.

So what’s holding you back? One thing and one thing only is stopping you in your tracks, your attitude. If you truly want to be successful in online marketing or any other online business you have to want it. You have to want it bad and you have to go after it. No one can do it for you but you.

There are lots of good online business opportunities available today you just have to go after one that suits you. If you don’t think you can to it, all I can say is thanks for dropping by and reading my article but may I suggest… shuffleboard anyone!

Brian Downie

edcgoldprofits@gmail.com

http://www.dailyprofitmaker.com

“Did you make $3000 today?

If not you’d better see this”

The Traffic Exchange Secrets To Unstoppable Traffic

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:37:00 +0700

by: Peter Lee

It's common to hear many marketers complain that traffic exchanges don't work and they don't use them for their work at home business.

While I don't deny that I have never made an extensive study on how these people came to such conclusions, I can only guess that these people do not really understand traffic exchanges enough to take advantage of a very powerful business platform.

This article hopes to show some of the best approaches of many successful marketers who use traffic exchanges to generate unstoppable traffic for their home business opportunities.

What To Promote In A Traffic Exchange

Many people fail to understand that you should be promoting the traffic exchange first before promoting your work at home business. These are the people who often do not have a real marketing plan for their business and follow a short term vision of making money online - lots of it and fast.

They may find some initial success, however this is short-lived as their efforts are usually unsustainable. Eventually, many will be left disappointed in their home business venture.

On the contrary, having good planning that follows a business marketing plan and tracking your results is a good, sound business practice. You can start by joining many good traffic exchanges, perhaps about 10 as a start growing to as many as 40 eventually when your business grows.

Your initial strategy after joining them should be to build as many referral downlines as humanly possible. Downlines are those people who join you in the same traffic exchange. Many traffic exchanges have their own rules, but most of them have unlimited downline tiers for you.

Unfortunately, some marketers in your downline may not become your serious business partners. I would dare say if you can get a 10% good people who actively promote and build your lower tier downlines, this would be a fair result.

So try to set some achievable targets like building 300 people in your downline within the next 6 months. If you focus on growing this downline, eventually you will succeed and begin to experience a massive amount of traffic visiting your site.

Use The Right Business Tools

In order to see the light of your well-conceived marketing plan or strategy, you do need to find good business tools to achieve your result. One of the best traffic generating programs that you can join is Traffic Tornado, which has 28 different traffic exchanges under its wings.

This unique downline referral builder allows promoting several programs together. Besides building traffic faster, it lets you extend your marketing reach to a wider audience. Promoting these programs generates traffic from the activity of members that you introduce.

Download and use a software called Mozilla Firefox. It is a very powerful and easy to use web browser, which has the ability to open multiple sites and windows inside a single browser task.

The great thing about this program is that multiple pages can be saved as a group and reopened together (your start page addresses). You'll be able to surf with 10 of your traffic exchanges at the same time.

Using this method, a surfer can easily generate a thousand hit credits within an hour. I am sure this would be a real encouragement too if you are just starting a home business.

Building An Opt-in List

Traffic Exchanges can help you grow your leads and opt-in list for your business. There are two good ways to do this by introducing Splash Page and Squeeze Page.

Splash Page

Splash pages are fast loading pages designed to get better results using the traffic exchanges. Remember always that the person viewing your page is primarily concerned with generating traffic to their site and want to do so in as little time as possible.

If you have a great big long page with your offer no matter how well written the odds are against you. You need to do something creative that will grab their attention quickly.

Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is used like a splash page but with an email capture form on it from an auto responder. The best way is to find a product or write an email series to give away to get them to join up to your list.

From Leads To Customers

If you have a system to convert leads into customers, traffic exchanges can be an excellent low cost addition to your marketing portfolio. When properly used, you can generate leads at a low cost.

In conclusion, you can see how a traffic exchange, if used properly, can really help your work at home business reach greater heights.

If only more people take the trouble to understand it a little better, there would be lesser internet marketers proclaiming that traffic exchanges do not work.

Work At Home Ideas and Opportunities

http://www.PeterLeeHC.com

Pay Per Sale Affiliate Programs - Still The Best Option For Advertisers?

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:34:00 +0700

by: Theo Swan

Pay per sale affiliate programs have been around since the beginning of the affiliate marketing business, and due to it's obvious fairness, it is still a popular commission model. The number of programs offering this commission model are plenty, far more than any other model available online.

The reasons for its popularity are many, but a big reason is advertisers full control over the margins. With any other commission mode, the advertiser needs to calculate the conversion ratio, number of sales and size of purchases very carefully to eliminate the risk of overpaying for clicks, leads or impressions.

With the PPS model, advertisers know they will only pay a specific percentage of each sale, making every new affiliate - no matter how successful - will contribute to the revenue of the affiliate program.

Advertisers using other commission models stand a much greater risk of having a new affiliate join, only to see him send nothing but non-converting traffic, thus getting paid for nothing. PPC, PPL and PPM are also much more open for fraud, often in the form of auto-generated visitors (i.e. from a script) or other ways of generating impression, clicks or in some cases even leads.

For newly started affiliate programs, showing limited cash flow, other commission models can prove hard in the beginning. Often it takes a while to get the ball rolling, and paying for anything but sales can cost a bit of money before you get some back. Be sure to calculate how long you can afford to pay for a certain amount of visitors if no one actually converts into a buying visitor.

There will of course be plenty of referred visitors who converts into sales, but there are no guarantees. If you where to use a PPS model, paying ONLY For sales, you would never have to pay a commission unless you are seeing a positive cash flow.

This is true for the affiliate program as a whole, as well as on an individual affiliate level. They won't get paid until they actually makes a sale, thus making the advertiser money in the process. Some affiliate programs offer a fixed commission instead of a percentage, and if the commission is the same on sales for different amounts, the percentage will differ from one sale to another.

Try to find an approximate percentage of commission to calculate the expected revenue for each affiliate sale. Calculating the minimum and maximum revenue is important as well, in order to keep track of the revenue of the affiliate program and its commission model.

Super Savvy Internet Promotion

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:29:00 +0700

by: Penny Sansevieri

What happens if you build a website and no one shows up? You spend hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on a site that gets a few visitors at best and certainly isn’t selling your books.

For the most part, authors assume that Internet promotion stops once their site is up. But the harsh truth is that with all the sites popping up every day, yours will likely get lost in the shuffle unless you promote it.

Some years back, my company began pushing authors out to the ’Net to help increase their exposure and get into markets they might not otherwise have access to.

In early 2005 I began pulling together what we’d learned and positioning it in a powerful new promotional program we call The Virtual Author Tour™, a campaign that exists only on the ’Net and one that you can implement too.

If the thought of virtual promotion is confusing, think of it this way: let’s say you build a wonderful store in the middle of an Iowa corn field. The only problem is there are no roads leading to it.

A tour on the ’Net is like paving a super highway to your “store” and to tell you the truth, it’s really the only way surfers will find you.

To begin your own tour you need to have a good understanding of who your audience is and where they hang out on the ’Net.

For some readers it will be in blogs (also called web logs), for others it might be chat groups, message boards or discussion groups but for most, it’s a combination of all of these.

Whatever it is, you should be able to begin tracking them down by doing a quick Google search on your topic or market. Your first search will bring you back a slew of sites, some of them great and some of them not-so-great.

The first portion of the tour will take the most time because you’re going to have to investigate the sites to see how effective they might be in your promotional efforts.

One way to gauge this is to see what their Google page rank is. You can type the site into the following link and get a fairly good idea of where they rank: http://mygooglepagerank.com/ or you can load the Google toolbar into your Internet Explorer and get results each time you land on a page.

Few sites will rank 10, but if the sites you’re looking at are 5 and above, you’re generally in the ballpark of sites worthy of a pitch.

We will typically toss back anything that’s 4 and below unless the topic is very niche and the sites don’t get lots of hits because of a smaller market.

Once you have your list of sites, you’ll need to begin pitching them. Most often this is the area where authors get stuck.

Why? Because they’re focused on selling their books. Regardless of who you’re pitching, you should never, ever sell your book.

Always sell what your book can do for the reader and believe me, web sites, blogs, chat groups and discussion forums are always looking for books that will appeal to their demographic.

As you’re pulling together your tour, don’t overlook ezine article banks, these can be powerful too. If you’re unfamiliar with them take a peek at http://www.articlecity.com/ and you’ll see what I mean. This site archives hundreds of thousands of articles just waiting to be selected and placed in ezines.

The good thing about this is that you never know the size of the ezine you’ll get placed in. It could have a readership of 500 or 20,000. Another good reason to do article submission is for the incoming links.

Most of the main search engines change their algorithms quite frequently, doing this causes sites to go up and down in ranking but incoming links from websites, chats, blogs, and article placement can help give a site more consistent ranking rather than being at the mercy of an algorithm change.

And no virtual tour would be complete without a website, so let’s circle back to where we started, that all important author site. Do you have one? If you don’t you should not begin your virtual tour until you do.

If you do have one, take a long, hard look at your site and see if it’s ready for virtual exposure. By this I mean that often times, websites aren’t nearly as “ready” as they could be.

Why? Well for one your site design is really driven by your audience. Colors, styles, and wording will all depend on who you’re marketing to.

Do you need lots of information or very little? All of this will depend on who your reader is. My site for example: http://www.amarketingexpert.com is packed with information.

Why? Because authors and publishers arrive at my site hungry for knowledge so having articles, tips and lots of free information on there is necessary to not only get my audience to the site, but to keep them there.

Getting to know your reader is one of the most important components of any campaign and is especially true when you’re trying to go from a ho-hum site, to one that’s making the grade and converting visitors into customers.

Do you know what your site conversion rate is? If you don’t you should; ask your web designer or site host for this information.

It’s typically delivered in something called an Urchin report which is fairly easy to read and a wealth of information. If your site isn’t up to par, consider getting it Internet ready before you launch your tour.

If you’re spending all this time sending folks to your site, you’ll want them to convert into buyers otherwise your time spent on the ’Net is wasted.

Unlike a real tour around the country, a virtual tour isn’t associated with any timeline per se and it’s certainly not as expensive as the cost of travel and lodging. The impact from a tour, however, can be felt for a long time.

The reason for this is that unlike print or broadcast media, every step you take on the ’Net leaves a footprint. And the more footprints you have, the more times you’ll come up in a search and the more hits you’ll get on your site.

Also, consider this: the impact of going directly to your audience cannot be overstated. Rarely are you given the opportunity to gain direct access to your readers as you are on the ’Net. You can’t accomplish this in a bookstore or even in the best news piece.

And while traditional media and bookstore placement offer great promotional leverage, the ’Net offers something that no other marketing programs do: a direct pipeline to your readers. So if you haven’t “gone virtual” you should consider it. No campaign is complete without it.

Wishing you virtual success!

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Success

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:21:00 +0700

by: Robert Moment

Whether you have an established large-scale business or whether you are a one-person start-up, it is important for your website to rank high in search engine queries for your important keywords and search phrases.

If you are not ranked properly you will not get much traffic, and if you depend on Internet traffic, then this can mean failure for your business.

One of the best ways to improve your ranking in the search engines is by applying the methods of search engine optimization to your website.

Here is a guide to search engine optimization that can help you to get started in this important task:

1. Start with a clear and simple website design

A good website design should be easy for your human visitors to enjoy and understand, and it should also be intelligible for the search engine robots that also visit your site.

What looks good to the human eye may not look good to search engines. If your site is 100% flash then it may impress your visitors, but the search engines will not find text and will not be able to properly classify your site.

Similarly a site designed with frames is also search engine unfriendly. Check with your web designer and make sure that the design you are getting is user-friendly and search engine friendly as well.

2. Focus each of your web pages around one or two distinct concepts

A well-organized site will help you to get better search engine rankings. Suppose you have ten different products. It may be difficult to get number one rankings for all of these products from one single page of your site.

However if you make sub-pages for each different product and optimize those pages to highlight the particular product or service on that page, then those sub-pages stand a good chance of coming up in search engine queries.

Remember, people do not enter your website only via the main page; rather they often enter via the "back" and "side-doors." Prepare all the pages of your website properly and you will get more traffic.

3. Put your main keywords in the meta-tags of your web pages

Once you have decided what will go on your web pages, then you have to optimize each page separately. Never use the same meta-tags for all the pages of your site. If your page is about "Riding Lawn Mowers," then put these words in the Title, Description and Keywords meta-tags of your website.

The title tag is the most important of the three tags, and your keywords should be right at the front. Resist the temptation to put your company name first!

If you are new, then no one knows about you and they are searching for Riding Lawn Mowers and not you. Do your branding elsewhere, not in the meta-tags.

4. Put your keywords in the headlines and sub-headlines of your web page

A search engine is trying to find out what your page is all about. If you want to know what a magazine article is all about, without even reading it, the first thing that you would do is scan the headlines.

Search engines do the same thing. Put your most important keywords in a headline right at the top of the page. Mark the headline with an H1 tag (ask your web designer to help if you do not know what this is).

Make sub-headlines using an H2 or H3 tag. Putting your keywords in headlines is a vital part of search engine optimization.

5. Place your keywords strategically in the text of your web page

Write naturally and logically and you will succeed with your web page optimization. In the first paragraph mention your main concept, and then develop your ideas summarizing in the last paragraph what you have said on that page.

Your keywords should appear in the beginning of the document, and they should be repeated at the end. As mentioned in point 4, they should also appear in headlines and sub-headlines.

The keyword density should be between 2-5%. If you write 400 words then your keyword can be repeated 12 times without any problem.

6. Include your keywords in link text on your web pages

When you link to other sections of your website you should pay attention to the clickable portion of the links.

Instead of making a link that says "Click Here." Make a phrase that says click here for more information about "Riding Lawn Mowers." The clickable portion of the link should be your keywords and not click here!

These are the main points that you need to take care of when optimizing your website.

If your small business is Internet-based or in any way dependent on search engine traffic, then it is imperative to apply the best methods of search engine optimization to each and every web page of your site.

Guide to SEO Consultants and Their Services

noreply@blogger.com (ws.rudi) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:18:00 +0700

by: Moe Tamani

SEO consultant services are varied and have diverse services that deal mainly with search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization is the process of making the website reach higher search rankings in search engine queries by revising it or designing it to be easier to navigate and more user-friendly to both crawlers, spiders and human browsers.

The aim of search engine optimization is increase online visibility. This is so that the site generates more traffic in hopes to convert that traffic into more sales and income. SEO consultants know have plenty of expertise to make this happen.

SEO Consultant Scope of Service:

A SEO consultant should be able to provide various services to the client at a reasonable cost. The services usually offered by an SEO consultant includes but may not be limited to keyword or key phrase research along with checking out the competition, SEO web design for your site and other web pages connected to your site, working with the necessary codes and content for the site, build link popularity for the site and website SEO maintenance for the particular site.

Other services of a particular SEO consultant may be excluded by other consultants.

Other services which may be included are submission to search engines, looking for optimum URL’s or domain names for your site, providing content for the site or strategizing your whole Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Strategy.

Keyword or key phrase research entails researching the optimum words or phrases that are widely used during searches. These keywords and key phrases will then be integrated into articles that are relevant for the site by the SEO consultant.

Relevance is important because many crawlers look for this when they go through a site. The date and information that robotic spiders seek out need to be relevant to the site they are connected to.

These will help in the efficient and proper indexing of the site and will help to rank the site. This is why content is important to a web site and the same holds true for inbound links to your site relevant links are worth a lot more than links from irrelevant sites. By keeping the competition under the radar, the SEO consultant will be able to see what methods work for similar sites.

This means less trial and error when picking out keywords and phrases and other methods of search engine optimization. The SEO consultant will need to be vigilant regarding the changes in trends of keywords and key phrases since these changes can be seasonal.

This is where SEO maintenance work comes to fore. The job of the SEO consultant will continue well after the website is established if this is part of the agreement between the SEO consultant and the client.

SEO web design for the client’s site is also a big influence in the ranking of the site and the popularity of the site to human browsers. This is because SEO web design makes the site a lot easier to navigate and load.

Easy navigating and quick loading are some of the reasons why visitors to the site might want to go back to it. The SEO consultant will most likely suggest to the client several easy ways of optimizing the web site.

Among these suggestions will be scaling down the larger pictures to enable quick loading and making the site more navigable to users.

Having relevant content is also a must since relevant content is what spiders are looking for when they visit a site. A site that does not meet the requirements and needs of the internet surfer will be abandoned promptly upon the discovery that the site is irrelevant.

The SEO consultant must also make sure that web pages connected to your site are easy to reach and that there are also relevant links in the site to promote it with other similar sites. Link building will help promote and build popularity for your site. There are many other sites that wish to use links as a way of getting their ranking to rise.

Site maintenance is a necessary service of an SEO consultant. In order to achieve higher ranking during searches, a site must be continually maintained and primed to meet the demands and needs of users and that of the search engine. Some SEO companies use unethical methods to achieve this goal.

Using black hat techniques to get higher rankings will eventually lead a search engine to ban the site and maybe also the SEO company or SEO consultant who employed black hat methods to achieve higher ranking.

Due to the numerous possibilities of manipulation during search engine optimization of web sites, many search engines have set rules and guidelines which will control and manage the sites being submitted to them. Website submissions are included in what an SEO consultant will do for a client.

Employing black hat techniques to ensure higher ranking can be dangerous for both the client and the SEO consultant. This can lead to being banned from the search engine and its services and being branded as a black hat SEO consultant.