As I master my craft in SEO and SEM, I always stumble across these lame looking site with 1980′s header graphics, stating that they’re “experts” in SEO.  Experts eh?

What makes you guys freakin experts?! I had a call with someone from these companies and his pitch was we’re experts in search engine optimization.  Well I started drilling this person with some basic seo concepts and he said “those are all good questions Jack, let me get back to you on that”.  Suuure buddy, how you just tell me that you know shit about SEO and you were hired to pull a commission off new accounts for the company.

Why You Should Never Get Discouraged When They Say They’re Experts

I’m writing this post to help you guys out to not get discouraged when you talk to these so-called experts.  In SEO, I’d rather be a hard worker than an expert because that’s what SEO is all about.  The only things they’re experts at is taking your money!

I’ve read an SEO report done from a firm that charged a few thousand dollars to analyze a site.  Yes, a few thousand dollars to review a site’s and try to see how to better optimize it for search engines.  As I was reading the guide, I couldn’t help but laugh what these “experts” wrote in the report.  Below I will write a few things they had mention for SEO.  Many of you will know these already, I can guarantee you that.  Here it goes:

1. Redirect your domain.com to your www.domain.com – Reasons why you need to do a permanent 301 redirect to www.domain.com is because if you have both urls that opens up the homepage, Google actually sees two homepages for the same site.  Imaging trying to rank for two homepages, yup you guessed it, page rank will get divided and there’s potential duplicate content going on.

2. Alt text for images – This should be used for spiders to crawl your images per se, if you use your keywords in the alt text, your kw density will greatly improve your SERPs.

3. Turn image buttons into text links – This makes sense because you would rather have an anchor text than an image button.

4. Generate sitemap – Sitemaps are just a page stripped from images so that the spiders can easily crawl the pages that your site is made of.

5. Directory submission – Yes, directory submissions for backlinks.  Nothing new here.

People, you seeing what I’m getting at here??

These so-called experts are giving you the fundamentals of SEO.  There is nothing you can’t learn on my blog or others out there for free online.  Don’t let people dirty your mind that there is a little secret out there for SEO, because there really isn’t.  The secret is to be dedicated to one strategy, once you feel comfortable with that strategy, move on to the next.

I hope this help a lot of you guys out there.  Don’t be fooled by these experts, because if you’re on my blog, you probably know more than them already! Cheers!

You’re A SEO Expert You Say? Give Me A Damn Break…. is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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This is a guest post by Laurah Hagan. If you want to become a guest blogger, click here to view my guidelines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a hot topic these days, with many bewildered online businesses struggling to learn the tools for connecting with their markets. If this describes you, a trip to an energetic, content-filled conference could be just the thing you need. Promising to present the latest developments of the SEO field and connect you with leading experts, these conferences will introduce you to the tools for increasing your visibility, developing a web presence, and standing out from your competitors.

PubCon Las Vegas 2010: With a lineup of speakers including Malcolm Gladwell and Guy Kawasaki, this conference is poised to deliver on its promise to be the most important gathering of search and social media innovators ever assembled. You can personalize your conference experience by selecting from eight tracks of topic-specific sessions, lead by leading technology innovators. Downtime is unlikely, but in the case you find a few spare minutes, you’ll be in easy proximity to all the entertainment of Las Vegas.

Search Marketing Expo: This conference is hosted in numerous international cities through 2011, so you can choose a location near you or turn your attendance into adventure travel. All sessions promise to be action-packed with sessions and networking opportunities, and filled with the nitty-gritty information most relevant to wherever you are in the business development process.

DMA:2010: This conference focuses on return on investment; teaching new strategies to optimize your marketing budget, target the markets you’re interested in, increase the visibility of your website, and measure your success. Choose from nine conference tracks to optimize your own investments of time.

SES Conference and Expo: Choose from San Francisco, Hong Kong, Chicago and more for this popular event.  With a special focus on basic and introductory sessions, this approachable conference is relevant for those just starting out in online marketing. More advanced practitioners won’t be disappointed…there are plenty of workshops on highly specified topics as well.

SEO MOZ: Seattle has always been an innovation hub, and this conference does the hosting city justice. There are no sponsors or advertizing. The focus of this conference is purely on the applicable lessons taught by leading experts, in a small community of just 310 attendees. Register early, since this conference is widely recognized as an incredible value for the price.

E-tail 2010: This conference is designed specifically for online retailers. Speakers, 90% of whom are successful online retailers themselves, are required to recap their presentations with three take-away points, so the lessons are clear and easy to recall. With generous opportunities for informal networking, participants are set up to learn from each other as well as the presenters.

High Rankings: If large conferences feel more like three-ring circuses to you, these small, half-day workshops might interest you instead. Taught by experts and focused on your exact needs, these workshops are tailored to your specific questions, interests, and business model.

Ad:Tech: These international expositions focus on empowering attendees with the skills and tools to create competitive marketing. They attract a diverse crowd of technology and marketing professionals, interested in networking as much as staying abreast of the most recent developments of their field.

WBR: Worldwide Business Research hosts topic-specific conferences for specific niches within the online retail industry, from luxury goods to mobile shopping. These conferences deal with SEO and other germane subjects, helping online retailers to connect with their markets and continuously improve.

Affiliate Summit: This three-day conference is focused on the unique needs of affiliate marketers, and the most relevant tools for developing a strong presence online. Having grown significantly since its inception six years ago, the Affiliate Summit is quickly developing a reputation as the leading networking and educational event for professionals in this field.

Laurah Hagan is a guest blogger for My Dog Ate My Blog and a writer on online courses for Guide to Online Schools.

10 Best SEO Conferences Around the World is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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This is a guest post by Christian Arno. If you want to become a guest blogger, click here to view my guidelines.

As the mother tongue of the internet, English is still the single most widely used language online (according to Internet World Stats), but that position is precarious, with Chinese creeping up on the inside, and nearly three quarters of the world’s internet users searching in a language other than English. Clearly, a multilingual approach is necessary for anyone wishing to truly exploit the world wide aspect of the web.

There are a number of options available for translating your site – from using professional translation services provided by native speakers of your target language (the ideal, if most expensive, choice) through to the simple addition of a translation widget such as Babel Fish or Google Translate. The decisions don’t end there, however, as you must also decide whether to target markets by language alone or to fully localise your sites by geography and culture.

You may consider it sufficient to have, say, a single site in Spanish. An estimated 329 million people speak Spanish as a native language and a single site would at least make your content accessible in Spain (naturally) as well as vast swathes of Latin America. There are, however, linguistic differences between the dialects of Spanish spoken in different countries.  A computer is an ordenador in Spain but a computadora in Latin America for example, while a carro would be a cart in Spain and a car or automobile in Latin America. Similarly, there are linguistic and colloquial differences between the French spoken in France, Belgium and Canada and the English spoken in the UK, the USA and India.

If targeting markets by language alone you should ensure that all your original content is as simple and direct as possible and remove any jokes or specific cultural references that will not necessarily translate. This can make the content a little bland but will help make sure you get your information across. Even if you don’t employ a professional translator, having someone from the target country at least give your content a trial read should help avoid any glaring errors.

Targeting specific countries with the help of native speakers (who ideally will also live in that country, as languages are constantly changing) will, on the other hand, allow you to address these linguistic and cultural differences and make for a more engaging localised website.

Domain and webhost

If resources allow, having a dedicated top level domain for each of your target countries (e.g. www.website.co.uk for the UK and www.website.cn for China) will help to improve your ranking with country-specific search engines. It’s also preferable to have your local sites hosted on servers that are actually based in the target country, however you can now avoid the locality issue by setting the location for your country-specific TLD or subdomain in Google Webmaster Tools.

Backlinks

Link building is as important on your localised sites as anywhere else but, as well as considering the relevance and Alexa ranking of your online associates, you’ll want to also pay attention to their location. Strong links located within your target country will help boost your rankings on Google’s local search engines and any competitors. In practical terms, this might involve posting comments on a Spanish blog related to your content in order to provide links back to your own Spanish site.

Keywords

When researching keywords for foreign markets, don’t forget that Google might not rule that particular roost. Local competitors like Baidu (the most commonly used search engine in China) and Yandex (Russia) might not mean much outside their own markets, but they are the dominant forces within and their search algorithms come with their own quirks.

It’s also important not to rely on direct translations of keywords, whichever search engine you’re focusing on, as colloquialisms, abbreviations or simply alternative terms may be more popular. A literal French translation of ‘car insurance’, for example, would be ‘l’assurance automobile’. Google’s keyword tool reveals that this term yields very few results, with the alternatives ‘assurance auto’ and ‘assurance voiture’ being far more popular.  Essentially, the moral is that if you want to effectively market your website across languages and cultures, you need to tailor your approach specifically to each language and country.

Christian Arno is the founder and Managing Director of global translation agency and localisation specialists Lingo24. Launched in 2001, Lingo24 now has over 120 employees spanning four continents and clients in over sixty countries. In the past twelve months, they have translated over thirty million words for businesses in every industry sector and their projected turnover for 2010 is £6.3m. Follow Lingo24 on Twitter: @Lingo24.

image by: woodleywonderworks

Effective SEO For Multilingual Sites is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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Are you still glowing?  Good, because the title might have a slimy, salesman’s type of feel to it….but this post will actually help you.  To get my 3 secrets to getting real traffic to your site, all you need to do is send me 3 easy payments of 49.99.

Relax, I’m kidding….

I can’t tell you how many times I come across a blog post or forum post like the one above.  9 times out of 10 they’re a waste of time bullshit!  What sucks even more is the fact that the majority of the readers are new to blogging, e-commerce, and the internet as a whole.

“But wait a minute Jack, your blog is monetized like the others!”

Good observation.

Look, I do have affiliate links on this blog, and I do have Adsense…..It’s pretty transparent.  But almost all of my posts have great tips that does not ask for anything in return.

And the programs and tools that I market on this blog are the programs that I use everyday for online marketing.  You have a choice and some people appreciates honest posts that helps them out.

Anyways….back to my sales pitch…I mean blog post.

3 Secrets To Getting Real Traffic To Your Site Revealed

So what are the 3 secrets to getting real traffic?  Is it really a secret?

First off, the 3 tips I’m going to give you might be new to you, it might be commonsense, or it might have been a practice often forgotten.  Whatever it is, it’s still good to sharpen our skills.

What is real traffic anyways?

Real traffic to me is when someone is actually interested in reading the content on your site, instead of having your site getting votes because you’ve got a good network from a social media site!

I’ve talked about this before, having your post get voted on the front page of whatever social media site is great.  BUT you need to know what’s the main goal for your site.  Entertainment and video blogs thrive off social media, but it’s different if you’re trying to make sales either from affiliate marketing, display ads, or selling physical products.  If you still don’t understand what I mean, just browse through my previous blog posts.

Now that we got that out of the way….Here are the 3 things you need to FOCUS on when trying to get REAL traffic to your site:

1. Keywords: Not a big surprise right….So why the hell do you expect to rank for something when your blog post’s title is label “This is bomb! Nom nom nom!” when your blog is about BBQ?! I see it all the time.  Look, if you already tons of traffic to your site….you can call your posts whatever the heck you want.  But for most people, don’t do it!  A better title would have been “5 Amazing Backyard BBQ Recipes.”  You getting this?  Good!

Make sure you have your keyword in the title of your post and within the body on your content.  Bold your keyword at least once in your post, and have them appear early in the body of your content.

Have an anchor text with your keyword pointed back to the same post (preferably within the first couple of sentences) in case a scraper sites pulls your work.

Before you go out and write a blog post for every keyword in your niche.  Do your homework first!

a. Keyword Analysis: Use a free tool like Google Adwords Keyword Tool or a more robust tool like Keyword Elite.  I use both tools for my research. 
It’s a deadly combo to have!  Here’s the rule of thumb: The more searches a keyword has, the harder it will be for you to rank in the SERPs.  So what
advise you to do is pick a few long-tail keywords (those keyword phrases with 3+ words in them) because the competition is lower.

“but there’s barely any searches on these long-tail keywords you idiot!”

Yes…..I’m aware of that.  Thanks

What you do is make a list of long-tail keywords to optimize your content for.  Adding the total searches for these long-tail keywords will give you a
a good amount of traffic to start with AND it would be faster to get these ranked high as well.

2. Backlinks: The backbone of seo.  Why?  If you have two identical sites optimized exactly the same on their on-page seo, the only thing that will differentiate one from the other in terms of how well they’re ranked is by the number of quality backlinks they have.  The number of backlinks you need to get depends on how much competition you have for your keywords.  If you’re working your backlink strategy to your long-tails, then you probably won’t need as much.  So where can you get backlinks?

a. Bookmarking Sites: Submit your sites a few bookmarking sites for every post that you write-up.  You can use a service like OnlyWire to speed things up.

b. Article Directories: Write articles for each long-tail and submit them to article directory sites like EzineArticles, GoArticles, etc. If you want to
use a paid service to do all the submission work for you, give iSnare a try.

c. Comments/Signatures: Leave comments with a link back to your post on blogs related to your topic and have a link in your signature when you
join forums.

3. Dedication: Yes….this will bring in traffic.  You need to be dedicated in one method of traffic building in order to see results.  If you want to hit the article marketing angle, fine.  But hit it hard!

Feeling social media?  Fine, but make sure you participate on those sites until your eyes bleed and fingers fall off!  Whatever you feel like doing, do it well!

This is not easy work people, but the reward will come for those willing to put in work. Cheers!

image by: Elizabeth Welsh

3 Secrets To Getting Real Traffic To Your Site…Revealed!!! is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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This is a guest post by Corry Cummings. If you want to become a guest blogger, click here to view my guidelines.

Once you have found a niche market in which you can compete, your next step is to become known as an authority or influential figure in the subject area. Most people consider influential figures in niche markets to be experts that got lucky enough to find a market and worked hard to become well known in it. However, this is not always entirely true. There are 5 steps to becoming influential in your niche with your content.

Even if you are not a great writer, it is important that you are making sure that your content writers are on the same page as you when it comes to showcasing your content to reach your goals. With that said, you can use the following steps to become a powerful authority on the Internet, no matter who is doing your writing for you.

1. Stay Active and Solve Problems

As you first begin to get your name recognized in your niche, remain very active on the subject forums and other people’s blogs. This can include responding to posts with additional comments or suggestions, writing guest blog posts on other sites and answering questions that people may ask on your niche topic’s forums. When you do so, you can link back to your blog or web site to encourage readers to visit your site and read other opinions and advice that you have to offer.

2. Use a Series of Articles on Your Blog

One way to establish authority on a subject is to write a series of articles exploring the finer aspects of the broad topic. By doing so, you allow your readers plenty of opportunities to link to your blog multiple times for different topics. This series of articles can last for as long as you need it to. Remember, the longer your series of articles, the more time your readers have to locate your information. In addition, if readers enjoy reading one post, they are very likely to read the rest of the articles in your series.

3. Create an eBook or Book

You can quickly become influential in a niche market if you can create the authority reference for the subject. One way to accomplish this is by writing an expansive and valuable ebook. You may not even need to charge people for distribution of the book. Simply having your name on such a powerful resource can be enough to drive visitors to your personal blog or web site.

4. Don’t Be Modest

If you are recognized in your niche market, do not hesitate to publish such an achievement on your web site or blog. For example, if you are chosen to do an interview on your subject area, this might be an excellent opportunity to create a post stating that the interview took place. You can link to that interview so that your readers can verify the claim.

5. Pay Attention to Your Audience

Once you have some established members, make sure that you are treating them well by catering to their needs. For example, if you notice that you are drawing a great deal of members that do not have any experience at all with your niche subject area, consider asking them what they would like to know and writing a post or article is response. This sort of approach helps to humanize your web site and can draw more members to your content.

Corry Cummings is the owner of Content Customs, a content creation company that specializes in high quality web content writing services. He also runs a blog over at Content Customs, which is managed and written by one of the head writers of the company.

image by: notsogoodphotography

5 Steps to Becoming Influential in Your Niche with Your Content is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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Yeah…content scrapers suck….Or do they?

Those new to the game are oblivious that this is happening, until they get the dreaded trackback link in their WordPress dashboard that tells all.  Here’s what a newbie would say with this trackback:

“Sweet! Someone just linked to my site on their blog!  What a great, natural backlink!”

An experienced online marketer on the other hand would say:

“F@ck those automated scraper blogs!  Burn them with fire!”

Huh?….How can there be two different reactions for the same backlink?

Why Content Scrapers Exist

Content scrapers is just a term that calls out any site or blog that takes steals any content that’s written by someone else and that’s already on another site/blog.

I know….How on earth does Google let this thing happen right?  Well, because most scraper sites will reference where the content is from, typically near the bottom of the post.  The reason why scraper sites exist is to build organic rankings through your post to make a quick buck off ad clicks on their site!  Now Google has done some work to remove a few of these sites, but there are many more out there.

How To Leverage Scraper Sites

Look, there’s no reason to throw a tantrum about this whole thing….bite your pillow and read on….

Instead of avoiding scraper sites (which is damn near impossible), leverage these automated sites with a few old, but good tricks:

1. First Sentence Link: If a scraper site is going to pull your content, make sure there’s a link pointing back to your post!  Even better, make it an anchor text link!  The rule is to do it on the very first sentence of your post because some scraper sites will only post a teaser of your post and some will post the whole content…Want to see an example?  Check out the first sentence of this post!   Yes, I do apply what I write about……

2. Tynt: So what happens if someone manually copy/paste your content elsewhere?  Tynt is a great solution to this annoying problem!  Usually the people who copies your content don’t really read the content at all, so they’ll copy, paste, and publish your content online in seconds.

Want to see how Tynt works?  Copy a sentence or two from this post and paste it in Notepad or a Word Document.  Go ahead, you have my permission!

What do you see at the bottom?

Yes, this FREE online script automatically posts a link back to your site every time someone copies your content and pastes it somewhere else!

There are other things you can do to avoid people from taking your content, such as creative commons, etc.  But the two methods above is a good start for most.  Cheers!

Content Scrapers – If You Can’t Beat ‘em…Link ‘em! is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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Stating that your traffic stats don’t matter doesn’t sit well for most people…well those people are the ones who need to read this

The last few months I been reading a lot of blogs, both good and bad….Some were great reads and the content from the other blogs were as fresh as gas station sashimi.

As long as you learn a thing or two from the bad apples in the bunch, it’s really not a waste of your time.  Just don’t get paralyzed with information overload because you will read blogs contradicting on the same topic.

Before I get into why traffic sources matter and why you should aim for targeted visitors, you should first understand what type of traffic you’re currently getting.  Here are a few options for you to find out your current traffic stats:

1. Google Analytics: I’m not even going to start talking about why you should have this set-up already.  Just do it!  Not robust enough?  Fine, go find another tool that costs money, but for most bloggers out there…GA is the way to go.
2. Quantcast: Another great free tool online.  The only problem is if your domain or site is pretty new, it will take some time to mine your site’s data for stats.  Or you can just set up GA and get your stats from day 1.
3. Alexa: Say what you will about this tool, it’s still relevant…for advertisers.  Who cares if you don’t feel like Alexa is a good benchmark for telling how much traffic your site or blog is getting, what matters most are the advertisers willing to spend some major cash on sites with a great Alexa standing.  I wrote a post on how to increase your alexa ranking and I think you should give it a quick read through.

There’s 3 for you…yes there are tons of tools out there…If I were to choose any one of the three above to use?  Google Analytics, hands down.

Now that we got that out of the way..

Let Me Ask You Something…..

What’s your purpose for having your site or blog?  This is a very important question to ask yourself.  If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish on your site or blog, there’s a good chance that you’re wasting your time getting the wrong type of traffic.

Yeah I said it….there is such thing as BAD TRAFFIC.

No there isn’t….Uh……Yes there is….read on:

Imagine this…..you decide to create a blog about medieval swords (you dork…jk).  For months you’ve built a great blog with tons of information regarding different types of swords and where to buy them online.

Months have gone by and you decide to market your blog with the social media heavy hitters like StumbleUpon & Digg.  You spend hours on end building relationships for each of these sites (the right way of doing it) by conversing with other Stumble and Digg members, as well as actively participating on the sites each day.

One day you write a post about “21 Weirdest Looking Movie Swords” and you submit this post to both these sites.  You submit this post and a few hours later, you’ve made it on the first page of Digg! Cha-ching right?

Wrong!

You check your traffic stats and your numbers are sky-high, but no one’s buying your damn swords!  Why is that?  Well, its common sense people.  Think about this for a bit:

The traffic coming from these social media sites are not targeted visitors for your site!

If you want to sell swords, you need to target the 40 yr old virgin living in his mom’s basement.  I kid…I kid…

But seriously, you need to find people interested in what you’re offering.  Social media traffic is wonderful, don’t get me wrong….It builds great brand awareness, but there’s no direct response from these visitors.  None of these visitors will convert anything for you if they’re not interested in what you’re selling. 

The only reason why they land on your page was because all of your “friends” voted for you! Curiosity brought you these visits….

So What Should I Do Then?

Like every good coach…

When you scold your players for doing something wrong, you must praise him or show him how to do things right…here are the guidelines:

1. Selling: If you’re trying to sell a product or service on your site or blog, you absolutely must do your keyword research!  Find out what people are searching for online that’s related to the product you’re selling.  I’ve discussed finding keywords many times in my blog…..just browse through it and ask me questions if you have any.

2. Adsense: If you have a blog with Adsense or some other program similar to it, don’t waste your time on social media traffic.  Just don’t do it, you’re wasting your time.  You wont get an ad click if your life depended on it.  The key here is to create a blog that solves a unique problem to the user, find those keyword phrases and do some fundamental seo work on your page like adding your keywords in the title, H1, and H2 tag as well as in the body of the content.

3. Brand: If your main goal is to get your name out there, social media sites are a great way to have your site circulated amongst network of die-hard social media users online.  If you want to do this right, it’s all about building a good relationship with others and actively participating on the site as well.

Damn..I’ve said enough…Now it’s your turn

Cheers!

image by: William Notowidagdo

Your Traffic Stats Don’t Matter, Unless……. is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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This is a guest post by Wayne Barker. If you want to become a guest blogger, click here to view my guidelines.

Optimizing Your Videos On YouTube

For years in Internet Marketing video and YouTube has been associated with viral marketing and driving traffic to your site via a video of a cat playing a piano. As Google moves increasingly towards Universal Search it is incredibly important to make sure your videos are correctly optimised for search.

So here is a checklist for helping your YouTube video appear in the Universal Search results in Google:

• Title – Like your Title tag is SEO this is crucial to optimising on YouTube. You need to keep it below 120 characters but if you can get in another keyword to help your video get found. Make it unique and keyword rich – and use as much original text as possible.
• Description – You are limited to 1000 characters here and it works in a similar manner to your Meta Description in SEO. Get your URL at the beginning of the description because after 140 characters you will get YouTube’s ‘…’ Always optimise your Title and Description with a target audience in mind.
• Tags – Whilst this will not affect your rankings some good quality well thought out tags can help the video get found and help send it viral.
• Incoming Links – Like any optimisation efforts it is crucial to ensure you are actively trying to get links coming in to your video.
• Community – You cannot expect a video to be successful on YouTube just by being there. Interacting is the key – comment on other posts that you target audience will be viewing –contribute to the community. There is nothing wrong with trying to piggyback on the popularity of other videos in your niche.
• Encourage Ratings and Comments – Have a call to action – remember Internet users like to be told what to do! The more comments you get the more relevant content appears on that page – much like the comments on a blog.
• Internal Links and Playlists – Build internal links from relevant pages and try and get your video in a (related) playlist. Playlist often end up high in the YouTube search results giving your video a better chance of getting traffic.
• Why just YouTube? Get your videos on all sorts of video sites for maximum exposure – just change the title and description a little bit – get that traffic flowing in. If you were unaware there are loads of video sites:

1. Blip.tv
2. Vimeo
3. Metacafe
4. BlogTV
5. Dailymotion
6. Zoopy
7. Break
8. Google Video
9. Revver
10. vidiLife

Video sharing and video marketing is now a two pronged attack – you need to make sure all your videos are optimised for Universal Search, and hope that they are unique enough to go viral.

Wayne Barker works for Hallam Communications, an Internet Marketing training and consultancy company in Nottingham, England.

How To Optimize Your Videos On YouTube + 10 More Video Sites For Maximum Exposure! is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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Have you ever depersonalized your search in Google?

Here’s the scenario:

You go online and enter one of your keywords into Google to check your ranking in the search engine results page (SERPs).  You see that you’re ranked in the 2 spot in Google! Woohooo!!

Congratulations!!

Feeling like the CEO of SEO, you decide to tell brag to all your friends about the great news.

You call everyone and tell them to type in your keyword into Google and see what pops up as #2 (I know you guys do this…no use lying about this!)

Your friends type in your keyword and your site’s not there…

You beg to differ and checked the keyword again on your computer.  Sure enough, your site’s sittin’ pretty in the #2 spot.

At this point, you’re probably questioning your friend’s intelligence and ask them to check again.

Nope, still not showing on your friend’s computer.  So what gives???

You just got PERSONALIZED!

There are a couple of reasons why you are seeing different rankings than everyone else.  Personalization exists in Google because for the average user, it helps them find sites that they have clicked on before.  Google is smart enough to know which sites should get bumped up in the rankings based on your past click-throughs.  Is it spyware? No….because you’re logged into Google. How?

If you’re logged into Gmail, then you’re allowing Google to personalize your searches.

So how do you find your real rankings?  Simple.

There are 3 ways you can do this, well I’m sure there are more ways to do it but whatevers….

3 Ways To Depersonalize Your Search

1. &pws=0: Adding the command &pws=0 to the URL of a search query will depersonalize your search rankings without you having to log out of your gmail account.  For example, if you enter the keyword “seo” into Google, the url path for that search results page looks like this:

http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&source=hp&q=seo&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=ff274912d96214e6

To depersonalize that search query add the &pws=0 command at the end of the URL path like this:

http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&source=hp&q=seo&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=ff274912d96214e6&pws=0

2. Depersonalizer: Don’t want to keep logging out of your Gmail account?  No problem!  Use this free online Google depersonalizer tool to check your rankings while logged into Gmail!

3. Rank Checker – This is a great FireFox plugin to check your rankings for your site.  Although it’s not super accurate, seems like it’s always off by one position.  If hate FireFox, then go back to options 1 & 2. 

image by: Danard Vincente

3 Fast Ways To Depersonalize Your Google Search Results Page is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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Search Engine Marketing: SEO vs PPC a debate written numerous times in the past, but here’s the explanation in English:

Many marketers online will stay true to either SEO or PPC strategies online.  Which side are you on?  At first blush, the thought of paying someone to visit your site would take the shirt right off your back as we speak.  Why would anyone pay for someone to click on your site right??

“SEO is free so you really have nothing to lose…….”

Whoever agreed to that statement above has A LOT to learn about the advantages and disadvantages of SEO vs. PPC.  Before I get into the differences between the two and why you should become a hybrid marketer, nothing makes it easier to understand things than analogies!!

Last week I attended The Internet Retailer Convention Expo in Chicago and a speaker mentioned this great analogy that would hopefully clear things up between the rhyme and reason of SEO and PPC.

SEO/PPC Analogy

Imagine yourself blindfolded and were given a handful of darts.  Your job is to throw these darts at the target.  Now, if you’re lucky one of your darts will hit near the bullseye and many won’t even hit cork!

Each dart represents a keyword you’re trying to rank for, so this means that some of your keywords will get high rankings and some won’t.  Heck, you might realize that some of these keywords aren’t even worth ranking for anymore.

Now imagine a sniper that can control what he/she can hit without ever having to miss a shot.  Think of this sniper strategy as your PPC ad campaign.  You can build an ad copy with a keyword phrase you wish to rank for.

Analyze the conversion, and make a decision whether it’s worth your time to work your SEO strategy around that keyword. Get it?

So what should you do? BOTH!

First get a good keyword research tool to create a list of keyword phrases you would like to rank high for in the SERPs.  Remember to always use the exact match option for building your PPC keyword list.  Build a CPC campaign for each individual keyword and see if there are people clicking on those ads.  Next, trash the low click-through keyword phrases and start working your SEO strategy with your site.

Reasons why you shouldn’t do any SEO until you find your keywords worth optimizing for is because SEO takes awhile to increase your organic rankings.  So why do all that work and find out that the keyword phrase was a dud?

So tell me, are you applying both strategies in your marketing plan?

image by: Bogdan Suditu

Search Engine Marketing: SEO vs PPC is a post from: Jack Nguyen - Online Marketing Blog

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