ZK's Internet Marketing Blog

Winner of the Conversation Starter Award

ZK — Tue, 29 May 2012 16:11:14 +0000

WebTrafficROI.com has been awarded the “Conversation Starter Award” by DTA, Digital Talent Agency. Conversations don’t happen without loyal readers and I want to thank you all for making it happen and being a part of the community.

DTA announced their first Most Valuable Publication Awards in the online industry, the nominations were complied by eminent personalities in the online publishing industry and also via the online nomination form.

The 16 MVP Awards recipients for Spring 2012 were spread across categories ie. Most Social, Most Consistent, Most Reader Friendly, Best College Entrepreneur Site, The Thinker Award, Conversation Starter, Rookie Award. You can check the entire list here.

We are honored to be a part of the elite list of winners that include top websites like Portfolio.com, SocialMediaToday.com, Business.com, Under30CEO.com and more.

A big thank you to the entire DTA team for coming with the idea for the “Most Valuable Publication Awards” and for recognizing WebTrafficROI as a valued publisher in the online domain.

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Winner of the Conversation Starter Award

Blog Content – How to ignite the interest of your readers?

Susansmith — Tue, 29 May 2012 09:47:30 +0000

Success of a writer lies in the secret of holding and retaining readers by grabbing their attention with the help of your content. You may be an exceptional writer but you will never be able to build a substantial readership for your blog if you fail to grab the attention of the readers.

Internet is swarming with different types of content but not every blog has a readership. To build traffic for your blog, you need to fish more readers by using the content as bait.

With so many blogs out there on one simple subject, you hardly have a few seconds to grab the attention of your reader and leave an everlasting impression before losing him/her forever. Let’s discover a few easy and impressive ways to catch and retain the interest of your readers.

Give a humorous touch to your writing

Who wants to read a lengthy, boring essay type article on any given subject? We all want a good hearty laugh and prefer to read a blog post in a light mood. You must add a humorous touch to your blog posts.

The best way to do that is to keep a humorous and pleasant title of your post that can appeal to the readers. If you cannot find something funny that is relevant to your content, then you should try to put something catchy and appropriate.

Involve readers by addressing controversial topics

Who does not love a controversy? Write on controversial topics since it incites the readers to participate in the discussion, have their say by leaving a comment.

People love to gossip about the latest controversial happenings around them. Why don’t you address controversial topics and gather people on your blog, forcing people to leave their comments on?

There are several ‘good for all seasons’ topics that still have ‘charm’ for the readers. Pick any relatively recent issue and write about it. Make sure the topic is interesting and recent.

Celebrity Gossip

Do you think there are people who are not interested in what celebrities do, wear or eat even, right? Wrong! If we look at the stats, people love to know about their favourite celebs. Therefore, all the leading newspapers dedicate special space for showbiz and celebrity related news.

Celebrity news and gossips can light a spark in people from every walk of life. Give it a try! Start writing about celebrities and your blog will be flooded with their diehard fans and critics in no time.

Do not use all these techniques in one go. Pick the one that works for you and stick to that.

Image Credit: Fransimo

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Blog Content – How to ignite the interest of your readers?

Good Morning Sunday: Neil Pasricha – The 3A’s Of Awesome

ZK — Sun, 27 May 2012 07:43:51 +0000

Neil Pasricha a fellow Toronto blogger started a hobby blog in 2008. He blogged about everyday simple joys focusing on the positive side of life. He was inspired to start a blog after going through a rough patch in his life.

A marriage headed in the wrong direction and a good friend battling mental illness, two difficult chapters about his life that made it Awesome…Yes, it gave a new lease to his life and made it Awesome

1000awesomethings.com surpassed 45 million hits after a little under four years. The blog spinned off a book deal for Neil Pasricha in April 2010- The Book of Awesome is now in its 3rd edition (The Book of Awesome, The Book of Even More Awesome, The Holiday Book of Awesome) is packed with lots of awesome things that you experience in everyday life. And has sold more than a million copies.

Neil was recently invited to Ted to share about how he made life look awesome. The 18 minute video is very inspiring about how he started a hobby blog that went viral….and how book publishers chased him to sign a book deal. He reveals 3 secrets (all starting with A) to leading an awesome life.

A perfect lesson in attitude adjustment on a Sunday And don’t miss picking you your copy of the The Book of Awesome. You’ll love the book. Share some of you’re own awesomeness by leaving us a comment.

Have an Awesome Sunday and a Great Week Ahead

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Good Morning Sunday: Neil Pasricha – The 3A’s Of Awesome

Does An Ethical Approach to SEO Really Work?

Michelle — Sat, 26 May 2012 10:39:51 +0000

Companies that are looking to build a long-term reputation and a sustainable business both online and in the bricks-and-mortar world will usually consider only ethical (or “white-hat”) SEO methods to promote their company online.

Of course, there are always those in it for a quick buck who will employ unethical methods to achieve top rankings in the search engines through “black-hat” SEO, but then their business models are not about building a sustainable business.

They simply want a quick profit and then move on to the next website so they are not concerned about short-lived rankings and potential penalties from the search engines.

But despite constant algorithm changes designed to outsmart the black-hatters and Google giving away as little information as possible about the factors influencing their ranking algorithm, unethical methods continue to flourish and still, unfortunately, produce top rankings.

SEO Factors & Ranking Influence

Using mass, automated link submissions and link farms to rapidly build up backlinks does work, at least in the short-term. Various experiments on the effects of un-ethical link-building have been done by the likes of the submissions guys at SEOMoz that show a substantial short-term benefit.

But should those businesses taking the ethical approach be unduly worried? I think not – just as there are plenty of examples of unethical SEO methods working there are also plenty of examples of ethical ones.

A question I am often asked is “Why is such-and-such a company ranking ahead of us?” Sometimes a competitor’s site might not be as well designed as your own (from the human perspective); the competitor might not appear to update their content or blog as frequently and have substantially fewer links.

But always, in my experience, when I do some analysis to check out the competitor’s optimisation, a much clearer picture emerges of why a certain site is ranking better than another – it is often simply that they have better quality links and better content.

Ethical SEO Strategy

I always love to use the example of a site I optimized that had 200 links and outranked by several places a competitor that had been around for much longer, had a slicker looking website and 3,000 links. (I know it’s not ALL about the links but…)

If you’ve tried a bit of SEO and not seen great results you might be tempted to think it is only large companies with large budgets and well-known brands who can achieve results ethically.

Certainly there has also been plenty written about Google’s bias towards favoring brands, but I have worked with a small start-up company who have achieved great success in their competitive, niche market with good, ethical SEO plus a large dose of hard work and commitment. They have achieved this success by constantly striving to improve their site.

The company is a UK-based specialist training company – less than 3 years old and they, themselves, have attributed their online success to ethical search engine optimisation and being committed to building up their online presence and authority.

Building Good Content & Quality Linking

Their SEO strategy is based around good content and high-quality links – with the content enabling them to gain the links so they are a classic case of a site following Google’s guidelines. This is done in a number of ways:

Publishing content as articles through the usual reputable article directories
Writing and distributing press releases
Producing unique content for their own blog
Writing unique content for external blogs in their field
Actively building up human relationships to source unique content from external contributors

All of this effort has ensured that the company are now Number 1 in Google nationally and internationally for a range of keywords with high traffic. In some cases they dominate the Top 5 positions and frequently rank second after related not-for-profit organizations.

For a training provider that started out with just two founders in 2009 this is a great example of ethical SEO at its best and an example of just what can be achieved on a modest budget with the right sort of SEO strategy.

It just takes determination to succeed – one of the founders uses a helium balloon analogy for optimization – you keep pumping gas into it and eventually it will take off. Personally, I like listening to the old reggae classic by Althea & Donna as a motivational theme tune when I need reminding that perseverance will produce top rankings – do you know the song I mean?

Invest in Long Term SEO Building

But on a more serious note to all those small companies out there concerned about whether they will ever achieve one of the top 3 positions in Google and whether they really can compete successfully online against rivals with much larger budgets – it really is possible with the right SEO and the commitment to drive a campaign forward.

Too many companies seem to give up once they have reached Page 2 of the search results for a few keywords but the benefits of that last push are enormous. Sitting in the Top 3 for a wide range of keywords will increase your visitor numbers by a massive margin compared with position 10 for just a few keywords.

My client is just one example of an ethical approach to SEO on a modest budget being highly successful – why not leave a comment or share your own examples of small businesses on modest budgets competing with, and outranking, well-established websites through the use of ethical SEO?

Image Credit: Gianina SEO

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Does An Ethical Approach to SEO Really Work?

Marimedia: The Performance based Advertising Network

ZK — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:34:33 +0000

With the explosive growth in online usage and more than 2.26 billion people connected online or 32 % of the world population (Source: Internet World Stats), ad companies are increasingly looking to make the most of their advertising buck by targeting their communities. While the net is a very measurable medium it becomes a great source to measure every activity and evaluate it based on performance.

Performance based initiatives are being pitched at clients by advertising networks alongwith strategic online initiatives to target the right audience and ensuring maximum return for the dollar spent in advertising and promotions.

Performance based adverting has now become the norm where direct user interaction can be measured. Performance based ad networks can tell you the result of a particular ad or a campaign giving you a holistic perspective of the user behavior and interaction with your product, brand or service.

I recently happen to interact with Marimedia, they are a performance based agency based out of US. Their online presence across various publisher network is staggering, they do over 17 billion impressions a month.

Any advertising network that does 17 billion impressions a month is BIG. Marimedia connects 5000 publishers and 1000 advertisers to ensure that you get the best return for your dollar.

How does Marimedia help me as an advertiser ?

1) Performance based campaigns:
- Marimedia is a performance based advertising network. The network has an expert team of management professionals who ensure that you get the best ROI for your campaign. All campaigns are measured on performance.

2) Best possible pricing model:
- The team works on the best possible pricing model based on your budget. The models range from CPA to CPM and are cost effective to ensure targeted traffic at a reasonable price.

3) Focus on the best traffic source:
- The media buys are focused on the best converting traffic source to ensure there is no wastage of money.

4) Dedicated Managers:
- Every account has a dedicated account manager who works closely with you to maximize your campaigns. Marimedia believes in creating close and strong partnerships.

Check out Marimedia

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Marimedia: The Performance based Advertising Network

Creating an Effective Design for Your Email Marketing Campaign

BexF — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:32:46 +0000

Putting together an effective email marketing campaign can be very difficult, as is any interruption marketing. In essence you are filling your subscribers’ inboxes with junk mail so it’s important that you make a good impression and compel your readers to read on.

There has been a definite switch towards the use of HTML email marketing simply because of the range of designs it can afford you – and a good design really does help you to improve on your click-through rates.

Email Marketing Strategy

With such a lot to gain from an effective email marketing campaign, it is well worth investing initially in a certain amount of time and effort to make sure you reap the full benefits from your graft. An effective marketing campaign can really help to boost the traffic to your website, in turn increasing your enquiries and sales.

First of all, before you even think about how the email is going to look, it is important to plan and strategise about the overall campaign.

a) Timescale

A time scale is the first thing to think about, perhaps if your products are seasonal this may be a good place to start, otherwise opting for a weekly, monthly or quarterly email is usually the way to go. To decide on how frequently you will email your mailing list, thinking about what you want to communicate to your readers is the first step to take.

Is the content going to be news or product led? Are you going to offer some kind of discounts or incentives for your readers? Once you have decided how often you’re going to send out your emails plan at least 3 emails ahead so you can structure your emails properly and they can lead on from one to another.

Also try and engage with your readers when it comes to the content, inviting them to communicate through Facebook or Twitter and adding YouTube videos into your emails only helps to make your mailers more effective.

b) Content

Once your content is good and interesting you should see your open rate starting to increase, the next step is to look towards maximising your click-through rate. When it comes to this point, creating high quality design for your emails really is of utmost importance.

Basing your emails on your website design is a really good idea, it allows for some brand consistency which subconsciously helps your audience to connect the dots.

c) Aim to please

The best piece of advice you can follow is ‘aim to please’ – a characteristic which is vital to any successful email marketing campaign.

Emails with a ‘hard sell’ attitude will soon hit the trash pile and if you’re asking people to give up their time to read your email you should reward them with interesting and informative content that leaves them waiting for the next mailer.

d) Design

When actually designing your email there are a number of design hints you might want to follow to make your campaign as effective as possible and encourage readers to click through.

Simplicity

It may sound clichéd but simplicity is always key. Unlike a website design, you shouldn’t be looking for something really fancy, but just a basic design which does the job.

A main header image followed by the main content is a good place to start. When the design is kept simple it is also less likely that there will be problems between various browsers.

Compatibility

Unfortunately, although you might use the latest browser, many do not which can be a pain when it comes to designing HTML emails. For this reason, make sure you make your email compatible with as many internet browsers as possible because an email that can’t be shown will do nothing towards the effectiveness of a campaign.

Alt Tags

HTML emails look messy when images are not displayed, so make sure you style the alt tags to make sure your email looks smooth.

Avoid Background images

I personally feel this should always be the case, when text is involved make sure that the background is a block colour as a complicated image behind the text will only make it difficult to read. And after all, you would quite like those who open it to read it!

Unsubscribe

You may find it a daft idea, but always give your readers an ‘opt out’ sentence. Especially if you are sending your emails out to current clients – it keeps them happy.

e) Don’t forget to test

Just like the proofing of your email, don’t forget to do a final test before you click the send button because once it’s gone it is not retrievable and mistakes are unforgivable.

Follow these simple tips to see an increase in your open rates, boosted click-through rates and in general less people bored towards the ‘unsubscribe’ button.

Image Credit:we are blink

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Creating an Effective Design for Your Email Marketing Campaign

Google’s Penguin Update Goes Mainstream

ZK — Mon, 21 May 2012 10:46:06 +0000

The Penguin

I love The Penguin, the super villain and one of Batman’s greatest enemy, known for his trademark high tech umbrella tricks and under ground black hat dealings. Well it seems that Google has now taken a similar role on being The Penguin, with the recent Google Penguin update to tackle black-hat webspam.

And…I don’t love The Penguin anymore:) and it’s not just me.

SEO experts and webmasters have been slapped hard by the recent Google Penguin update, the damage on search rankings seems worse than the Google Panda series of changes that happened all of last year.

Google’s clamp down on webspam and black hat link building methods have had the SEO industry in a tizzy. If you’ve seen a drastic drop in traffic and sales blame it on the Penguin update.

The Wall Street Journal covered a feature story – As Google Tweaks Searches, Some Get Lost in the Web .

It features online businesses that have been slapped by the Penguin update, one online pet store owner saw his sales drop from $68,000 a month to $25,000 a month after the change.

Another online business owner reported a drop of 30% in his overall traffic from Google. While these are just a few cases, I am sure you’ll read a lot more in the coming days as the impact of the update is felt.

Did you see a drop in traffic for your websites? Have your online sales been impacted by the Penguin update?

Image Credit: Batman Wiki

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Google’s Penguin Update Goes Mainstream

Good Morning Sunday – Success Comes After Hard Work

ZK — Sun, 20 May 2012 08:01:47 +0000

Only in the dictionary does SUCCESS come before WORK. Nothing comes easy in life, there is hard work and struggle in every success that you see.

No man has built a millionaire dollar empire overnight, no success has been achieved without failure, success comes only when you have a burning desire to be successful.

“When you want success as badly as you want the air, then you will get it. There is no other secret of success.” – Socrates

Lance Armstrong (Cancer Survivor)
National and world cycling champion,
2 time Olympic Champion,
5 times winner of Tour De France,
Trains for 12 hours a day…Everyday

Nadia Comaneci (Originator of the perfect 10)
16 hours of practice,
4 hours of theory,
4 hours of sleep…Everyday

Sergei Bubka (Standing Tall)
He set 35 world records, competed against himself everyday all the time.

Michael Schumacher (6 times world champion and counting)
At 350 kmph a split second delay means failure
He practices to perfection…Everyday

Pele (Undisputed King Of Football)
1285 goals in 1321 matches
Knee wrenching practice…Everyday

None of them got lucky, winning was no cakewalk for any of them. Success does not believe in luck, only hard work.

What will happen if each one of us displayed such passion everyday. Think about it.

Have a Super Sunday and a Successful Week Ahead

Image Credit:Marsmet544

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Good Morning Sunday – Success Comes After Hard Work

Why You Are Making a Mistake Spinning Content for Your Site

Jeet — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:06:11 +0000

Of all the dirty tricks in the unscrupulous SEO trick bag, there is one that viewers and the general public probably despise most – spinning content.

The Idea Behind Spinning

For those of you innocent enough to have never come across the concept of spinning, what it essentially is using a piece of automated software in order to take and spin articles into a new format. This means in short that the a program will look at an article you give it and will then replace particular words for synonyms. So in other words the sentence:

The best thing about water balloons is that they create just enough water to shock someone, but not enough to ruin anything.

Becomes:

The greatest thing with water balloons is that they make only enough water to surprise somebody, though not enough to damage something.

These spin engines then allow someone to write one article which takes them half an hour, and put it on hundreds of sites like e-zine articles in order to get back links. The truly evil webmasters meanwhile will go one step further and steel someone else’s work in order to spin articles on e-zine or even I order to populate their own site.

Thus they can flood Google over a very short period and theoretically climb the ranks to get to the top spots in the SERPs.

The Reality

However the reality is quite different, and the problem is that no spin engine is able to create articles that are as good as hand written ones. One problem is that most spin engines make hundreds of articles based on a single source, meaning they have to substitute all kinds of dubious synonyms.

For instance you’ll probably get a few versions of your sentence that read something like this:

The nicest item with aqua bubbles is that they produce nearly enough H2O to scare person, only not adequate to destroy items.

Hang on… that doesn’t quite make sense…

And the other problem with the way they work is that even if they only made one copy of each article, they won’t be context sensitive enough in order to work in every instance.

For example the word ‘have’ can be substituted for the word ‘own’ right? I have that, I own that… Except when you change the context to ‘Have you been there?’ you end up with ‘Own you been there?’. Again… your English teacher would wince.

The Repercussions

And the repercussions of this are bad for you. The only person who benefits from spinning is the person selling the spin software. Here are some of the reasons not to spin.

- First of all if Google notices you’ve spun your content (and it may well as even the best spin engines tend to leave some duplicate content) you will end up being penalized and dropping down the SERPs.

Even sites like e-zine are realizing the danger of having such nonsense on their network and as a result they are removing spun articles and penalizing those who use them. Quite simply Google can now spot this rubbish, so it’s not going to end up being seen.

- At the same time, even if your site does stay at the top of the SERPs and you do get that traffic – that traffic will be practically worthless to you. As soon as people visit your site and see it’s full of nonsense they will leave and that means they aren’t going to click on your adverts or buy your products.

Just getting people to come to your site isn’t good enough, you need to keep them there. In fact it’s better to have 10 people come to your site and actually look around and read than it is to have 1,000 people come to your site and not spend any time there at all. The same goes for putting this spun content on eZine – no one’s going to read it so no one will get to the link at the bottom pointing to your site.

- And this means you will also get no repeat traffic, no links from people sharing your content on forums and no ‘likes’ on Facebook. Your content will be junk, and so it will be left to sink and die. And the same again goes for spinning your article submissions – no one is going to reproduce this content and give you those crucial free links because it’s useless.

- Meanwhile when people see your articles on e-zine when they’re looking for something useful, they won’t just leave; they’ll be genuinely angry you wasted their time. They won’t be very prone to buy anything from you or to click on your links, and they may well blacklist your site in your head – it’s not worth the shot to your reputation that you take when someone sees your site as spammy and no good. And if you go the whole hog and use the spun content on your own website… well let’s not even go there.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the fact that it’s immoral…

Post from: WebTrafficROI.com

Why You Are Making a Mistake Spinning Content for Your Site

Blog Masters Club: Are you Missing out on the Best Blogging Course ?

ZK — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:36:40 +0000

Blog Masters Club with a $477 Bonus Pack ̵ CLOSES IN LESS THAN 48 36 HOURS

My buddy David has been successfully running Blog Masters Club for a few years now, his students have had great success over the years from his coaching and mentorship. A majority of his student today make a full time living from blogging and other online initiatives.

David has been an online marketing entrepreneur and a successful blogger for more than 10 years, he runs a multi million dollar online business by mentor students on making money with blogs and how to start and run profitable membership sites.

David brings all his expertise on blogging and web marketing in “Blog Masters Club”, where he teaches simple and valuable lessons in blogging and how to become a successful blogger. The course is no fluff, no BS marketing tactics…..he shows plain and simple techniques that work very effectively online.

And of course the most valuable part of Blog Masters Club is that you get to spend a lot of time one on one with David.

Now that itself is worth a lot of value…

While a lot of online training programs for bloggers are very good , none of them come close to Blog Masters Club, the depth of content and the quality of the training course content and interactive videos is brilliant.

“Blog Masters Club” is an exhaustive 16 module course for aspiring probloggers. Some of the valuable lessons you’ll learn from the training course are :

- How to attract the right audience through a simple, yet powerful exercise.
- How to create a simple yet powerful blog that will attract and retain loyal customers.
- How to find the hottest niches online and create powerful landing pages.
- How to develop your own products and promote the same to your audience.
- How to use social media to bring in loads of traffic and do it on an ongoing basis.

And the most important and valuable lesson that you’ll learn is how to escape the job rat race and make more than enough money online.

The ultimate goal you need to chase is how to replace your present job income, so that you don’t have to work for anyone ever. Blog Masters Club will show you how you can kick your day job and still make the same income online.

Check out “Blog Masters Club”

What else is included in Blog Masters Club

1) 16 Modules:
16 Modules of Core Training covering all aspects of web marketing and building an online business. This includes 92 videos and more than 30 hours of training personally delivered by David.

2) Downloadable Training Docs:
– All videos have been fully transcribed as well as converted into MP3. You can consume these training videos and content where ever you go.

3) Q&A Calls:
– You will have immediate access to recordings of 12 coaching calls done with prior Club students, comprising 20 hours of Q&A. And, once again, I’ve made it all downloadable for on-the-go listening.

4) Private Email Access to David
– As a member of Blog Masters Club, you’ll have a priority access with David to help you get direct and private answers whenever you need it.

5) Lifetime Access
– All members have full and life time access to training material. You can go through the material at your convenience.

How much does Blog Masters Club Cost?
- The membership is at very low $199 for life with a 30 day FULL MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. You can start making money online immediately once you get your access. A Low $199 to start an online business is a no brainer.

Blog Masters Club with a $477 Bonus Pack ̵ CLOSES IN LESS THAN 48 36 HOURS

And it’s ONLY open for the next 48 hours

If you join and genuinely don’t think it will work for you, simply let David know within the first 30 days. He’ll immediately refund all of your money back to you. David is a genuine and trust worth guy, I can vouch for it.

My MEGA $477 BONUS PACK with Blog Masters Club:

When you join the Blog Masters Club, I’ll also give you access to my BONUS PACK worth $477 mentioned here. All you need to do is contact me I’ll email you the $ 477 bonus pack in the next 24 hours.

Check out “Blog Masters Club”

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Blog Masters Club: Are you Missing out on the Best Blogging Course ?