It’s a sad thing to know when you have a website developed at great cost and then it doesn’t get any visitors. When the launching party is over, then you begin waiting for any good signs, but soon you find out that the visitor counter remains at zero. If you’re one of these unlucky website owners, there is no need to despair. It’s probably only because you do not know how to drive free targeted traffic to your website.

The very first step you should take is to submit the URL of your website to the many search engines and search directories on the web. Overtime, most of the search engines will pick up your site, but this can take quite long. Search directories do not really crawl the web, so they won’t find your site. You have to manually submit it. The general search directories are important for another reason as well – quite a lot of the small search engines use directory listings for their search results.

Then you also get niche directories for specific interest groups. Should you for example have an affiliate website where you try to sell website hosting, you will find a large number of web hosting directories where website owners can submit their URL for free. Even if you are a blog owner, there should be more than one specific directory to which you can submit the URL.

Social bookmarking sites are becoming more and more popular. Many people are nowadays using them to locate what they’re looking for instead of the search engines, simply because the results are more targeted. With social bookmarking sites, you rely on your fellow web searchers to provide you with websites they deem important enough to visit.

A further great way to drive free targeted traffic to your website is by publishing a press release. There are a surprising number of free press release services where you can submit a press release about your company for free. They will not only publish it, but also submit it to other sites in their group.

Article submission is another way of promoting a website that is fast gaining popularity. The way this works is that you write an article about any subject, but preferably something that relates to your own site. You’re allowed to add a link to your own website at the bottom. You then submit this article to one or more of the various free article directories found all over the net.

Last but certainly not the least, there are the growing number of social media websites. Getting your own page at one of these means you can promote your blog or website for free. You can also network online and meet many potential customers. And what is very important is, your page will be included in their website’s search results, making it possible for potentially millions of visitors to find you – surely an excellent way to drive free targeted to your website.

Leo is an article marketing expert, freelance article writer, and link builder who is offering freelance SEO services: InternetMarketingClix.com
This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

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Having a niche is the key to building an online business that succeeds. A niche, when thoroughly researched and prepared for, is the key to not only great website traffic and a top search engine result, it’s also the key to profits. Therefore, the first step when considering any online business is to discover your online niche. Here are a few tips to get you started.

#1 Make a list of topics you’re interested and/or passionate about. Assuming your online business is a rousing success, you’re going to be writing, speaking, and planning your business almost every day of the year. It really helps if you enjoy what you’re working on.

#2 Once you have a list of topics you’re interested in and/or passionate about, it’s time to see if there is any demand for that topic. It’s time to do a bit of keyword research. Keyword research involves using a few keyword sites like the Google AdWords tool and Wordtracker to accomplish two key things:

You want to see if there is a lot of demand for your topic(s) and you want to see if there is a lot of supply for your chosen topic(s). What you’re looking for are topics with high demand and low supply. Meaning lots of people are looking for your information and very few websites are providing it. Now if you find that absolutely no one is providing any information on your topic then you’ll want to investigate why. It may mean that it isn’t a viable topic.

Each keyword tool operates a little differently but you’ll see numbers that represent the number of people searching for that topic or keyword and the number of sites or pages that are optimized for that keyword. So if you see that 1000 people are searching gingerbread cookies each day and there are only 20 pages that are optimized for that keyword, it may be time to dig deeper.

#3 Research your competition. Using those same keyword tools and a few keyword tools that help you dig deeper into the keywords your competition is using to market and optimize their site, you will spend some time visiting potential competitors to explore what their niche focus is.

For example, you may visit those website pages optimized for gingerbread cookies and find that only five of them are cookie recipe sites. The others may be parenting sites or just random blog posts. So, you now know that you really only have five competitors and can position yourself amongst them by perhaps narrowing your niche even further.

You could, for example, choose to have a website devoted entirely to cookie cutter cookies rather than all cookies, assuming there is high demand and low supply for that topic.

#4 Finally, analyze your topics based on profitability – which topics have the potential to make the most money. For example, a website based on cookie cutter cookies may be great fun for you but are there many moneymaking opportunities? A website based on a high-end luxury product, like Italian Espresso Makers, may have more income opportunities.

Choosing your online niche is a process. It can take a little while to find a topic that meets all of the criteria we mentioned however, it is time well spent. A well-researched niche topic can help you achieve all of your online entrepreneur dreams.

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Even with sky high postage costs, a properly executed direct mail campaign still provides a solid ROI. What? You’ve bought into the myth that direct mail is dead?

You’re not alone. And while people are entitled to their own opinions about direct mail, they’re not entitled to their own facts. Here are the facts: According to an annual study from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), spending on direct mail marketing is expected to increase by more than $1 billion in 2010. Yes, that’s billion with a “B”. Hmmmm…it would appear that rumors of direct mail’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Don’t People Hate Junk Mail?

And if you’ve also bought into the myth that people hate junk mail (and that’s exactly what it is a myth), here are the myth-busting facts: According to the 2010 DMA Statistical Fact Book, 79% of households either read or skim junk mail advertising sent to their home.

That study is right in line with an International Communications Research survey commissioned by postal automation giant, Pitney Bowes. The survey found, despite the immense popularity, and widespread use of digital media, consumers still prefer mail over e-mail, as it relates to receiving new product announcements, as well as confidential business communications such as bank statements and other financial information.

Here’s how the numbers breakdown: 73 percent of consumers prefer mail for receiving new product announcements or offers from companies they do business with, as compared to 18 percent for e-mail.

For important and confidential communications such as bills, bank statements and other financial information, a huge majority of respondents (86 percent)preferred mail as their communication method of choice, as compared with 10 percent for e-mail.

But wait, the news gets even better: The survey also found that 31 percent of consumers are less likely to discard unopened mail – including new product announcements, coupons, brochures, catalogs, etc. – than they are to delete unsolicited e-mails (spam) regarding new product announcements (53.2 percent).

When consumers were asked what specific advantages they saw in junk mail versus unsolicited e-mail and telemarketing calls, 45.3 percent of respondents found mail to be, get this – less intrusive; (40.2) percent more convenient – can be saved and considered at leisure; (30.2) less high-pressured – lets you consider your decision; (22.7 percent)more descriptive – lets you picture the offer; and (12 percent)more persuasive – encourages you to respond. I don’t know about you, but those numbers definitely got my attention.

What is Cooperative Direct Mail?

If you haven’t considered trying direct mail, maybe you should. A properly executed direct mail campaign combined with online marketing methods could be an unbeatable combination. Don’t know where to start? No problem. Cooperative direct mail companies like Valpak and Clipper Magazine make launching a direct mail campaign easy and affordable, for even the most budget conscious small business.

So what exactly is cooperative direct mail? Cooperative direct mail simply means you share an envelope with other advertisers – mostly local merchants, but usually a couple of national companies as well. Sharing an envelope with other advertisers reduces your costs significantly.

For example, if you were to do a mailing on your own to 10,000 homes, it would cost you thousands of dollars – even at reduced bulk rate postage costs. However, that same mailing shared with other advertisers would only cost you a few hundred dollars. That’s a huge difference that allows you to free up valuable marketing dollars that can be used elsewhere.

And if you’re a “push the envelope” type of marketer and really want to take your direct mail campaign to the next level, a new company named Dukky (pronounced ducky) is merging “junk mail” with social marketing and web technology – creating an amazingly effective and powerful marketing combination. Dukky’s web address is www.dukky.com.

In closing, if you do decide to give direct mail a try, whatever you do, don’t approach the process blindly. In order to utilize direct mail to its optimum effectiveness, you need to know what you’re doing.

In that regard, I highly recommend you purchase the book Million Dollar Mailing$ by the undisputed King of direct mail, Denny Hatch.

Just remember:

“You will go only as far as the limits of your knowledge. If you want to go farther, increase your knowledge.” – David Jackson

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

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It’s not an easy task to be successful at online marketing. One slip and you can practically watch your leads and sales roll down a hill and end up with some other company.

Here are 10 key tips and suggestions to keep in mind as you make your way along online marketing routes.

1. Grow thick skin.

Encourage your staff or consultants to tell you the plain truth instead of going out of their way not to offend or upset you.

If your website design has serious issues, own up to them so the rest of your campaign can really pay off. In other words, if you invest in getting more traffic and visitors give up on your website, then you’ve failed.

2. Pick the right keywords for search engine optimization (SEO).

It’s not about just researching keywords. It’s about selecting keywords. You need to think about site age, keywords in the domain, competition, current rankings, existing content, planned content, page headers, keywords in URLs and more.

3. Learn how paid search really works.

The primary pay-per-click tools are easy. You can have an ad up in no time. If you waste your money, it’s not Google’s fault. If you send your paid search visitors to your home page and can make a good profit, great. Odds are, you’re better off directing them to a specific interior page. In fact, you’d be wise to make some outstanding custom landing pages with clear Calls to Action and not a lot of distracting navigation.

4. Use paid search negative keywords.

Why should you pay for the wrong keywords? Think of all of the ways you don’t want to be found. Maybe you sell men’s jackets. You better rule out women’s jackets. Your options – broad, phrase and exact match can make a huge difference.

5. Use misspellings with paid search.

You can find different tools to generate misspellings, including one at SEO Chat.

Sure, these phrases won’t get a lot of traffic. But it could be worth while adding a number of them to your overall mix.

6. Write content – lots of content.

At least from an SEO perspective, tiny websites get what they support – tiny traffic. Whether you expand the website with a blog or regular pages following existing navigation, write more words. Yes, you may rank well for keywords on a single page. However, several pages with cross-linked pages can make a big impact on rankings.

7. Don’t bury your calls to action.

Too often, I see pages with 12 paragraphs followed by a phone number that’s probably going to be overlooked. Promote the phone number up high. Add a short form – you can easily see. Create an image that points visitors to case studies, white papers, demos, how-to guides, etc.

8. Track everything.

Are website analytics on every page? Did you set up your goals (Google Analytics makes it easy)? Are you using all of the right settings with your paid search? For example, are your ads running all of the time or just when you want them to appear? Are you favoring certain ads or giving all of your ads a shot?

9. Don’t ignore link building.

It takes time – a lot of time. Sure, you can register with hundreds of free directories. But what’s the impact? Make sure you get links from industry-related websites and credible directories with structures categories that relate to your services and products. Swap links with some other businesses (try to get them to include strategic keywords when they link to you). Create a blog and get involved in other blogs. If you participate, you’ll increase the odds that someone will link back to you. Share your knowledge – write articles for online publications (you always get a good link in your bio). Speak at conferences (you’ll get another link).

10. Test and measure everything.

If people get lost on your website, fix it. If your keywords don’t rank, change them. If no one is calling, stop hiding your phone number next to your outdated 2003 copyright notice. Make note of where people leave their shopping carts in your digital aisle. Shorten your long response forms. Seriously, do you really need their address, zip code, state in all cases? Look at your competition. Are you charging more than they are and can you defend your pricing? Add some testimonials – real ones (the fake variety turn me off).

Bonus Tip:

Don’t neglect e-mail marketing. You have e-mail addresses. Treat them like gold on a regular basis. Get a real designer to craft a professional message with great offers and brief introductions to your expert article (lead them to your website for all of the details and insights).

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Starting competitive advantages in the business is vital both in online and offline aspects. If you are a business organization, you need to distinguish your organization from the competition, especially if your business is not on commodity products. You can easily distinguish these advantages on the internet because of the already established fundamentals of the business.

For some companies, they get their edge from targeted advertising from high-traffic websites. For others, it is through social media marketing.

But one relatively easy way to drive relevant traffic to your website without too much effort is to optimize your images for search engines. Think of it as a tiny webpage within the website structure. It is recommended for you to include an anchor text, descriptive tagging, and URL structure to maximize results.

Search for the Right Image

Successful bloggers, writers, and website owners know the value of using the right image for their text content. It adds another dimension to articles and enables readers to appreciate their webpage even more. However, many fail to use images for search engine optimization purposes. It is in fact a good way to drive backlinks and visitors. There’s no need to upload your own pictures. A lot of stock photos are available from free from sites like Flickr and iStockPhoto among others. It is also a good idea to use Google Search to find good photos. Make sure that you are not violating any copyright if you do this (look for Creative Commons licensing).

Make Proper Use of Keywords

Keywords are an integral part of any search engine optimization effort. It is used to optimize all kinds of digital assets from videos to podcasts. You will really benefit if you use keywords wisely for your images. Rename the image because having “012345RR.jpg” as the file name isn’t going to help. It is a very simple step and can go a long way in helping your website rank better.

Use Descriptive Text

It is important to use descriptive tags, file names, and alt text for your images. This is because search engines cannot read images and would use its surrounding text as reference. Make use of this feature by adding keywords on the descriptive text, anchor text, and any other tags (related to the image). Bear in mind that anchor text is one of the most important elements to optimize your image effectively so take advantage of it.

As you can see, image SEO is a straight-forward process that provides tenfold benefit from your efforts. Follow the guidelines outlined above and you’ll see your more traffic coming in from image search soon.

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If you’ve delayed learning about the myriads of ways you can earn money in advertising online, now’s the time to jump in. While the economy may be soft, this gives companies more of an incentive to focus more on this type of advertising. The traditional avenues of advertising like television, newspapers, and magazines are struggling with fewer viewers, subscribers, and buyers. However, free sources of entertainment and media like the Internet and radio are bound to gain in audience during the recession. So, while companies are advertising more in this media, there is also a greater opportunity to make money in advertising online.

Fine-Tune Your Advertising Strategy

Just as your competitors gear up big campaigns online, you also need to check out what strategies are going to work best for you. You can hire copywriters to beef up your sales pages or provide the right psychological triggers for buyers who are scared to spend right now. Then you want to see if there are places you can monetize your websites with other people’s advertisements in order to bring in some additional income. Make sure that any advertising copy that you provide to your affiliate partners for your own affiliate program comes with the training that tells them how to make the most effective use of it. In a recession, the competition can be fierce for the consumer’s dollars and advertising effectively is going to give you an edge.

Keep Up With The Jones’

Except, in this instance, the Jones’ are really your competitors. Sign up to some of their affiliate programs or newsletters. Make sure you are aware of what promotions your competitors are promoting and how they are using their advertising to squeeze the dollar out of their subscriber’s pocketbooks. Try to learn from what your competitors do and then raise the bar by being even more innovative and creative.

The Nitty-Gritty Details

It may not be fun or glamorous, but understanding the difference between pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-sale and how much of each you want to implement is important for optimizing your advertising revenues. You may even want to check out cost-per-action networks to see if they provide more money than the traditional product-oriented models. You can expect the area of advertising to become even more creative as marketers attempt to provide flexible and innovative options in a tough economy and you want to do all you can to be in the front lines of that action.

If you are looking for a place to start, memberships to the Logic Path marketing club include significant discounts on all types of online marketing.

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The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from strict liability for copyright infringement to online service providers that satisfy its requirements.

A June, 2010 ruling by a U.S. District Court in New York in favor of YouTube established an important precedent for blog sites for avoiding strict liability for copyright infringement by blog posters.

The DMCA

Online service providers such as blog sites are vulnerable to claims for copyright infringement if visitors post infringing material on their websites, even if the service providers are unaware that the material is infringing. This unfortunate result – that’s often quite surprising to blog site webmasters who are unfamiliar with copyright law – is due to the strict liability principles of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Signed into law in 1998, the DMCA protects online service providers from strict liability for copyright infringement by their users if they:

* post a specific DMCA notice prominently on their websites,

* register with the US Copyright Office, and

* promptly block access to, or take down, allegedly infringing materials if they receive a notice from a copyright owner claiming infringement, or if the service provider has “actual knowledge” that it is hosting infringing material or if the service provider is aware of facts or circumstances that should make it “readily apparent” that there is infringing activity.

This protection by DMCA is known as a “safe harbor”; it completely protects the service provider from vicarious liability for copyright infringement.

The YouTube Case

YouTube’s online video sharing service permits users to post videos to the YouTube site which then can be accessed and viewed by anyone who visits the YouTube site.

Viacom International sued YouTube alleging that YouTube was liable for copyright infringement of numerous videos for which Viacom owned the copyrights. Viacom argued that YouTube was aware that some of its users posted infringing videos on the YouTube site and that this awareness disqualified YouTube from the safe harbor protection of DMCA.

The YouTube case involved the third bullet point above – whether YouTube’s general knowledge that some of its users post infringing content on the YouTube website can amount to either:

* “actual knowledge” of infringement, or

* qualify to make it “readily apparent” to YouTube that there was infringing material on the YouTube website.

The court rejected Viacom’s argument and ruled that YouTube was not disqualified from the DMCA safe harbor. Specifically, the court found that YouTube’s general awareness of infringing activity by some of its users did not rise to the level of “actual knowledge” or knowledge that would make it “readily apparent” which videos were infringing. The court noted that YouTube had removed allegedly infringing videos promptly after receipt of notice sufficient to identify specific infringing videos.

Finally, the court ruled that YouTube had no general obligation to police its website for infringing videos and to determine whether specific videos were infringing.

Conclusion

In general terms, the key rulings of interest to blog sites were that:

* YouTube had no general obligation to police its site for infringing videos, and

* that YouTube’s general knowledge of infringement, but not of specific infringing videos, was insufficient to disqualify YouTube from the DMCA safe harbor.

Blog site webmasters should be aware, however, that there are specific requirements that must be satisfied in order to take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor. It’s essential that these specific requirements be satisfied in order to qualify for DMCA?s valuable protections.

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RSS (real simple syndication) feeds provide online business owners, bloggers, and marketers the opportunity to connect with members of their target market in an ‘ongoing fashion’. While it is still essential for a website to feature valuable content which interests others to be successful, RSS has the ability for a site owner or blogger to send out notification of new content or promotions to interested subscribers. Thus, allowing them to stay in contact with previous visitors like never before.

Visitors who find a site or blog useful and entertaining could easily subscribe to the RSS feed and receive notification and have and easy access to any future site updates. This adds to an advantage of being able to keep in touch with past visitors, and in this way, would increase repeat business for a site. There are a couple other reasons why businesses are now embracing the use of RSS feeds:

1. Feeds increase your chances of others linking to your content, mentioning your site, and spreading your business around by word of mouth.

2. Having an RSS feed to your site aids in your ranking with search engines.

3. With RSS feeds, you could be able to get your content indexed with search engines much faster.

4. It is possible to attract traffic to your site which does not come from the search engines results pages, if you have RSS feeds installed on your site

5. Since your content is distributed to all subscribers, there are chances of your content catching on and “going viral” as it spreads from one person to another.

When you have RSS feeds operating with multiple sites, you could essentially get free marketing and traffic for your business! Some websites which operate RSS feed directories receive thousands upon thousands of visits every single day.So, you are listed with them, you get to benefit from this tremendous business exposure. The result is a constant flow of traffic which you do not have to pay for!

Most people do not realize how powerful RSS feeds can be, and are not using this tool to its greatest ability. They use it to some minor extent, but they do not understand or know how to get the back links that they should be receiving from the usage of RSS feeds. Most, as well, do not understand that RSS feeds can improve their page ranking. All in all, if you could grasp the concept and understand the application of RSS feeds, you could take a huge leap ahead of all your competition!

If you want to see substantial increases of traffic to your site and watch your business explode, you really can’t afford to pass up on RSS feeds.

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Most small business owners understand traditional marketing very well. They know to advertise in the newspaper, on television, or on the radio. They realize the importance of having an ad in the phone book. But few small business owners understand internet marketing strategies. Having a website is a good start, but internet marketing is about more than having a website.

A website is the first step to a successful internet marketing campaign. The website should be easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye, and optimized with keywords related to your business in order to give the site a high Google ranking. A majority of local searches result in purchases. If your website is optimized to show up high in the searches for your chosen keywords, and your website is easy to navigate, you can increase the odds that the resulting purchase is from you.

So, after your website is done, it’s time to spread the word. There are hundreds of ways to get website traffic – article marketing, press releases, video marketing, search engine marketing, web 2.0 marketing, and on and on it goes. Is your head spinning yet?

Unfortunately many small business owners, if not strapped for cash, are strapped for time. Take a moment to evaluate your business website. Is it working for you? If you don’t think so, perhaps you would benefit from hiring an internet marketing consultant. The consultant can give you a professional opinion on how you can improve your website, both in design and functionality. Google is constantly changing their rules for what makes a website ‘optimized’…what works today might not work tomorrow. Keeping up with the changes can be a rather daunting, and time-consuming, task.

Why spend your time with tedious marketing details when you can let a professional handle it? If your website isn’t performing well or you want to turbo-charge your internet marketing, you might want to consider utilizing the services of an internet marketing consultant.

Please visit our solutions page to find out what we offer to help you improve your marketing campaigns.

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