What if you believe that you just can’t write? What if your grammar and punctuation aren’t up to snuff? Anything worth doing is worth learning to do well. It just takes practice and commitment.

The article backlink is what’s important for SEO. The more backlinks you have, the higher you’ll be in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s important to submit articles to Directories with high PR. These backlinks will have more juice. Here are a few of the best to get you started:

• Ezine Articles    PR 6
• Artcle Base     PR6
• Article Dashboard  PR6
• Article City    PR6
• Article Alley  PR5

When you submit your articles there will be a signature box at the bottom. This is where you put your backlink. Many people make the mistake of linking to their Home Page. Always link to an internal page. This is called deep linking and also helps SEO.

Your deep link can be to another article, a video, an image, or even a squeeze page. A squeeze page has one purpose: To get your reader’s name and email address. Try to write your signature in a way that will arouse curiosity.

I suggest that you post your articles to your own site first. This way your site will be the original source for the article. Don’t worry about duplicate content. This isn’t a problem when the content in question is on another site.

Writing articles and submitting them to Article Directories benefits us in many ways. It helps us hone our writing skills. It gives us backlinks, which help to raise us in the SERPS, while providing immediate traffic to our site. It helps us to gain exposure so that we become known in our field.

Happy Writing!

Best,

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Cheap web hosting is often lacking in features. Support is seldom up to par. This site, in fact, all of my sites are hosted on one Hostgator account. Hostgator isn’t cheap, but it’s very affordable. Here’s what you get for your money…

I use the Hostgator Baby plan which costs $9.95 monthly. The Baby Plan features include:

• Unlimited Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Domains
• Unlimited MySQL Databases
• Unlimited Email Accounts
• PHP 5
• 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
• 24 Hour Toll Free Telephone Support

In short, you’ll have everything you need to get your sites up and to keep them up. Look at that last feature again. 24 hour telephone support! No waiting hours for your support ticket to be answered. Help when you need it.

Let’s face it. You will have the occassional problem with your hosting. What matters is how the company handles these problems. This is where Hostgator really stands out.

I started having problems with my hosting not too long ago. My pages were loading very slowly. Then I started getting database and server errors. I called Hostgator and was told the server had problems. I mentioned that this was becoming frequent and asked to have my account moved to another server.

In about 4 hours my account had been moved to another server. My pages are  rocket fast now. I’ve had no database or server errors. Everything’s running tip top and I couldn’t be more pleased. AND my site was never down during this process.

Hostgator support leaves the others in the dust. It’s just that simple. Hostgator also has Reseller, VPS and Dedicated hosting. If you want the best hosting experience you’ll ever find, sign up with Hostgator today. You’ll be very glad you did.

Best,

PS:  Use the coupon code “HOSTGATOR” and get $9.94 off  any Hostgator plan. You won’t be sorry.

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So, how do you get backlinks? The best way to get backlinks is to have other sites link to yours. They’ll do this if you provide quality content they feel is of interest to their readers.

Articles:

Write articles and submit them to article directories. Include a signature with your articles. In the signature have a link to your squeeze page, or another article. This link is your backlink. Don’t make this a link to your Home page.

It’s better if your signature link is a deep link. A deep link is a link that goes to an internal page on your blog. This can be to an image, article, video, or what have you. If you frame your signature as a question, you’ll arouse your readers curiosity, and they’ll click your link.

Forums:

Many Forums allow you to have a signature on your posts. You’ll frame this signature the same way you did for your articles. This should also be a deep link. Your goal is to get post readers to click to your site.

If you join a Forum for back linking be careful that you aren’t perceived as a spammer. Your posts should be relevant to the topic. You should be contributing to the conversation. Posting just to have your link seen is always a bad idea. People will notice, and you will be banned.

Blog Comments:

The same rules that apply to forum posting also apply to blog comments. The blog should be relevant to your site. If your blog is about model airplanes, commenting on a bull fighting site makes no sense. Your comment should be pertinent to the post your commenting on.

It’s important to comment on popular blogs that you know get a lot of traffic. You can use PR ranking, or Alexa to find out a blog’s popularity. Try for sites with a PR ranking of at least 4. The higher the number, the more popular the site.

You can check the number of backlinks you have, and where they’re coming from using Yahoo Site Explorer. Go to www.yahoo.com  and type link:yourdomainname.com in the search box.  Using this site as an example I’d type link:onlinemarketingreality.com.

You should be spending time  every day getting backlinks to your site. Just an hour a day will go a long way to improving your traffic. Traffic is the bottom line in online marketing. No traffic = no sales. Backlinks bring the traffic and the sales will follow.

Best,

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If you can’t come up with a good .com name, use .net as your second choice. Some people claim that .com should be your only choice. I disagree. People who find your site in a search engine probably won’t even notice your domain name. In my experience .net works just fine.

Should your domain name be stuffed with keywords? It’s a good idea to get your main keyword in your domain name. This does help in the search engines. However, in my opinion, a short, easy to remember domain name is preferable to a keyword stuffed domain name.

First, you  need to come up with a list of possible keywords. I use the Free Wordtracker Keyword Tool. If your niche is broad, this part is easy. If you’ve chosen a narrow, more focused niche, it gets a little harder.

Should you use hyphens in your domain name? Hyphens help to break up the words in a long domain name. They also make it difficult to say a domain name out loud. Some people say the search engines love them. Others say never use hyphens, period. I don’t like typing a hyphenated domain name. I never use hyphens myself.

Now it’s time to go to your registrar’s site to check domains. I use Netfirms for my domains. Netfirms has great telephone customer support. Many Registrars charge extra for Domain Pivacy. With Netfirms this is free.

Once you’ve chosen your domain name, just register, change name servers, and you’re good to go. See, it wasn’t too painful. Now the fun begins.

Best,

PS: At Netfirms you’ll pay $6.95 the first year and $9.95 every year thereafter. Prices are going up soon, so hurry.

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Your domain name is your online address. Your web host is the virtual land upon which you build your store, site, forum, whatever. Without these you have no online presence. Your autoresponder list is your bread and butter.

Domain Name:

There is no trick to choosing a good domain name. It involves Keyword Research, creativity, and even a bit of luck. Your domain name will be your online address for as long as you have your site. Choose your domain name carefully.

Web Hosting:

If you’re going to have a site you must have a web host. Never use a free web host. NEVER! Support is shoddy at best and they’ll put ads all over your site. Your site will look very unprofessional. Remember, you  get what you pay for. You’re paying nothing and you’ll get nothing.

Autoresponder:

As with web hosts NEVER use a free autoresponder. Free autoresponders will put ads in every email you send. Most important for you is that their delivery rates are abyssmal.

In future posts I’ll go into greater detail and give you my recommendations for the best companies I’ve found.

Best,

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Email Marketing involves having a list of people that you will email your product information to. These people have given their permission to email them. NEVER spam!

I'm sure you know that Mail Order companies have a list that they mail their catalog to. They do this so that they can present their products to as many people as possible, as often as possible. Some of these people will become customers. A customer who has purchased once is more likely to purchase again.

In the same way you need a list that you can email your product information to. Some of these people will never buy from you, but some of them will. Some will become repeat customers and this means regular recurring income.

You know how hard you work for the traffic that your websites receive. What's better, to have your visitors come to your site, do nothing and leave, or to have them subscribe to your mailing list? I think the answer is obvious.

It's very important that you have a subscribe form prominently displayed on your websites. Some people display a subscribe form on every page of their site. You should at least have one on your home page.

So, how do you get people to subscribe? You can offer free information in the form of an ebook, an audio download, or even a series of lessons pertaining to a certain topic. You can offer free software or a free script. You can create videos and place them on YouTube and other video sites. Submit articles to Article Directories with a link in your signature file.

I recommend that you always use double opt-in for your email lists. This will help guard against Spam complaints and it's been my experience that your list will be more responsive.

You're going to need an autoresponder that you'll use to email your list. Some people use their own script for this, but I recommend you don't. With your own script, delivery rates are bad, and spam reports are high.

I use and highly recommend Aweber. Their delivery rates are high, and spam control is excellent. With Aweber it's easy to build a subscribe form. If you have questions, their telephone support is excellent. You can't go wrong with Aweber.

Conventional wisdom says to establish a personal relationship with your list. Tell them something about yourself. Throw out a gift or two. Make them care about you. Be a "Buddy."

My thinking is a bit different. The above is fine if you're looking for a penpal. It's good if Online Marketing is your hobby. If you're serious about your business, remember that you aren't in business to establish relationships, you're in business to make money. If this isn't your primary purpose you will fail.

Don't get me wrong. Relationships are important, but they should be kept at a business level. The most important thing to establish is that you are an honest business person and know what you are doing. Be professional at all times. Use proper grammar and spelling. Provide them with solid information.

So, build your list and you build your business and greatly improve your chances for success.

Best,

PS:  Online Marketers need an autoresponder company. Check out Aweber and get the first month for just $1.

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