Meet the Press

After reading an article at CareerBuilder.com about things you should avoid in a job interview, Nettie Hartsock was inspired to come up with her own list of dos and don'ts for media interviews. Here's a peek at her advice:

Do your homework. Says Hartsock, "Make sure you're familiar with the journalist's or interviewer's work so that you can understand how they interview and be responsive to their techniques."

Don't boast or exaggerate. Superlatives might have their place in marketing materials, but a journalist doing a news story can't use quotes that are riddled with self-reverential worship. Likewise, don't trash-talk other companies. Says Hartsock, "Highlight the differences from competitors without denigrating [them]."

Be conversational, but wary. Do what you can to make it an interesting interview, but remember that journalists love TMI. So keep the overly personal anecdotes to yourself, and don't get tricked into revealing too much about your company.

Avoid subtle humor. Sarcasm, irony and snark rarely come across in print as you intended. The reader can't hear the playful tone in your voice, or see your wry smile.

Never ask to preview an article before it's published. Not only is the request a waste of time—no reputable journalist will comply—but it sends one of two messages: Either you don't trust her to be fair, or you're a control freak when it comes to your public image.

The Po!nt: When you're eager to promote your product or service, it's easy to make the wrong impression—so keep Hartsock's tips in mind when you talk to the press.

Source: Nettie Hartsock's blog. Click here for the post.

The Slow Art of Customer Seduction

In a post at MarketingProfs' Daily Fix blog, Cam Beck says the days of the traditional publishing model—attracting an audience through compelling content and selling advertising to those who want to reach them—are effectively over.



The problem, he argues, is that readers were overwhelmed and stopped paying attention. To compensate, companies became increasingly intrusive with even more ads than before. The audience fled to innovative content providers—especially online—where they could ignore the advertising, and content seemed "free."

As a result, Beck says readers have developed five attributes:

-They dislike being interrupted by advertising.
-They don't want to pay for things that are usually free.
-They want advertising appropriately labeled as advertising.
-They sometimes appreciate finding out about unique products that will benefit them.
-They don't want to tell publishers more about themselves than is absolutely necessary.

"We can either stand and curse the situation or seek to do something about it," he says. And working within the paradoxical framework of this new reality means evolving the way you reach your audience.

Your Marketing Inspiration: "The marketplace can no longer be driven by simple, traditional advertising but will instead be driven by content and the slow art of the customer seduction," says Beck.

How to Optimize for Google: Part 2 of 3‏

By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth

Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.

LINKS
Links are very important in today's Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves.

Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better.

First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need.

There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases.

Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links.

Paid Links
Google frowns on paid links, however that is not to say that they don't work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.

Articles
Writing and distributing industry specific articles is a great way to help boost both your link counts and site traffic; for examples of such content see StepForth's SEO Blog News articles. Consider writing articles on a regular basis and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Be sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at the very least within your bio. Try to use a target phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.

Press Releases
If something of importance has happened to your company such as a new product launch, or other notable achievement - essentially anything news worthy, put out a press release. Submit this press release through services such as PRWeb or PRNewsWire. Again, be sure to include a target phrase as part of the anchor text.

There are also a number of places you can get links that have basically turned south, and are not generally recommended. These include signatures in form posts, guest books, and other typically free links.

Forum Posts
Forum posts can help to marginally raise your link counts; however, with this one you must be careful. Only add a link to your site in your signature if both the forum allows it, and you are a respected member of the forum. If you are a solid contributor and your posts have depth and meaning, and the forum is highly relevant to your site, then having a link in your signature may give your site some juice. Posting wildly to random forums will in most cases get yourself banned, and will be both a waste of time and potentially make you and your site look bad.

Guest Books
In nearly all cases, do not post your link to guest books. If you happen to stumble upon a guestbook that is highly relevant to your site, the other comments are relevant to your site, and you have something useful (and again relevant) to say, then perhaps consider it, but typically focusing on links from guest books is considered SPAM and is best avoided all together.

Blog Comments
Having a link from your blog comments is not necessarily a bad thing. If you find a relevant blog post of use, and have something relevant and constructive to say, don't be afraid to enter your link into the "URL" field of the form, but don't try stuffing links into the comment itself.

Link Farms & Bad Neighborhoods
These are sites that allow you to simply post your link no stríngs attached. They are mostly long scrolling pages with countless links. Stay away from them. If you see one, run in the other direction. These links are bad, will not help with your rankings, and in some cases can actually damage your rankings.

Stay away from sites that cross link with obvious spammers. These networks of SPAM sites are not ones you would want your site associated with, and if you achieve links from enough of these sites it can adversely impact your rankings. Even more important, NEVER link to any of these sites - as that will certainly tie in your connection to them and give Google reason to discount your rankings.

DMOZ, Yahoo and Other Directories
Directory based links can be of significant help, especially if they are from highly reputable directories, the two biggest being DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory.

Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. The big catch however is actually getting your site into the directory in the first place. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link "Volunteer to edit this category" try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually.

Yahoo Directory is seen as an authority in the eyes of Google, and getting your site in will help your link reputation. This link does come at a price of $299 per year, but will play a role in helping your website achieve top rankings.

There are a number of other valuable directories out there that can help you with your search rankings. Before submittíng to any directory the key is a combination of relevance and authority. If the directory is relevant and active, it may be worth considering.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
Google Webmaster Tools can be very useful for your optimization efforts. It may not directly help you obtain higher rankings, but can help you trouble shoot if you are experiencing problems. It will also allow you to remove URL's that you don't want indexed and set various preferences such as your domain, crawl rate, and geographic target.

XML Sitemaps
This is the most common reason people use Google Webmaster Tools - the submission of their XML sitemap. While you can use your robots.txt to have Google find your XML sitemap, by submitting it directly to Google you can check up on the spidering status.

Error checking
Webmaster Tools is also quite useful for checking on various error URL's that Google may know about. Under the Diagnostics > Web Crawl you can view any errors that Google has to report on your site. By cleaning up any errors you can help boost your chances of rankings.

Links
From inside Google Webmaster Tools you can get a much clearer look at what sites Google is noting as having links to you, and give you a better indication of the need, if any, to raise your link counts.

WWW Preference
Be sure to select your domain preference under Tools > Set Preferred Domain. In nearly all cases you will want to select the version including the "www" .

SUMMARY
Inbound links play a significant role in successful Google rankings. By focusing on relevant links, as well as by diversifying where you get those links from, you can build a solid foundation for your search rankings today and into the future.

Stay tuned for Part 3 (of 3) where I will discuss other considerations including redirects, HTTP headers, and a number of other factors which play a role in successfully conquering Google.

About The Author
Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc., based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott's articles and those of the StepForth team at news.stepforth.com or contact us at StepForth.com, Tel - 250-385-1190, TollFree - 877-385-5526, Fax - 250-385-1198

Give to Receive

When you work with the media, your first priority is probably figuring out what they can do for you. But Christina Kerley—widely known as CK—says the greater long-term payoff lies in flipping the equation around. She argues that concentrating on what a journalist gets out of the interaction lays the groundwork for future rewards.



In a post at her blog, she tells the story of a reporter with a tight deadline who needed a crash course in social media. It proved more complicated than he expected, and at the end of the conversation he scrambled to get CK's corporate information. She shocked him by saying, "I don't care if you promote me in the article, I care that you promote the right message. Otherwise I'm not doing right by my markets." Not something journalists hear every day.

But CK didn't stop there. She offered to connect him to other trusted colleagues in the social media scene who could elaborate on topics from advertising and research to PR and user experience.

CK undoubtedly became a valued and trustworthy resource. And it would be surprising if the reporter didn't go out of his way to mention her company in the article. It's the perfect template for a win-win situation.

The Po!nt: "[F]ocusing on his needs and those of his readers—not my need for promotion—is how I best provide value," says CK. "Consequently, it's also the best way to form a long-term relationship with him." And, she notes, a path to revenues.

Source: CK's Blog. Click here for the post.

The Truth Will Out

When you start to see how effective word-of-mouth marketing can be, you might feel the temptation to juice it up in little ways. Maybe you notice that no one in your online forum seems to be chatting about your fantastic customer service—what's the harm in an anonymous comment on the topic that praises a new policy? But Andy Sernovitz wants to remind you that actions like these are not only unethical, they teeter on the edge of a slippery slope that can lead to more devious—and sometimes illegal—actions like:

-Using your in-house staff or hiring an agency to post phony recommendations and comments on a systematic basis.
-Getting buzzers to hype your product or service even though they've never used it.
-Asking your fans to disguise their involvement in a campaign.

According to Sernovitz, determining how to handle any word-of-mouth marketing situation comes down to three basic principles spelled out by WOMMA's ethics code:

-Honesty of Relationship: You say who you're speaking for
-Honesty of Opinion: You say what you believe
-Honesty of Identity: You never obscure your identity

Says Sernovitz, "The truth is that word of mouth is based on truth, that liars will always be exposed, and honest companies will be richly rewarded by adoring fans." And that's a helpful bit of Marketing Inspiration.

The Social Part of Blogging‏

Whether you have been blogging (for business purposes) for years or have recently started, it is important to not forget the social aspects of it. What are you doing to partcipate?

Think of your blog like your own little community, and like other communities such as forums or social networks, participation is of the utmost importance.

You may think to yourself, "I've already written the posts. I've obviously participated," but it should go well beyond that.

Keeping Up

Like any social media media page you maintain, your blog should be updated often if you want people to keep reading. If you wait for weeks between posts, there is a good chance readers will forget about you. With so much information available on the Internet, and new blogs being started constantly, there is only so much time for any one person to read posts. If you want to remain in their regular cycle, you better keep giving them a reason.

Comments

Sometimes you have to encourage readers to leave you comments to initiate conversation (in case you were wondering why I'm always asking questions in my articles). Respected blogger Neville Hobson has some great tips on the subject.

Once you get some comments, keep up with them and respond to them whether you encouraged them or not. For one, it will give the commenters a reason to come back, and conversations that come from comments can often inspire future posts. There also may be some things that fit right into your article that you hadn't thought of and they will be there as additional resources for your readers.

Do your best to keep spam out of the comments though, because nobody wants to scroll through a bunch of nonsense to try to find legitimate conversation.

Blogroll

Your blogroll will show others what you are reading, and could inspire those listed to include you in their own.

From the reader's perspective, they may see some familiar names in your blogroll and think, "this person is into some of the same blogs that I am", and may identify with that, giving them further reason to come back to your blog.

It is also a good idea to network with those in your blogroll, and leave thoughtful (not spammy) comments on their posts - a good way to get some additional traffic.

Search Engines

When you submit your blog to blog search engines, see if they have social features like Blog Catalog (thanks Missy!). Chances are that users are there to find new blogs, and having a presence there can inspire more readership of your own.

Blogging is more than just writing. It's interacting. If you're not encouraging conversation, it's just writing articles. Why not be involved with your readers? If anyone has anything to add, I encourage you to comment!

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Microsoft and Yahoo!, Search Engine Partners?

By Scott Buresh

How Mergers and Acquisitions May Change the Search
Engine Playing Field - and Where Google Comes In

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What's Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace's parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!'s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft's board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I'm assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft's.

Will Ask.com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with Google and to position itself as one of the top Internet search engines - period. You may remember the "algorithm" ads that it ran for a time on television. However, recently Ask.com announced that it will instead be tailoring itself to the niche market share of which it already has control. In other words, they're no longer trying to be all things to all people in the way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo! and Google are.

What we know about Ask.com's demographic is that it is largely female, although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing on "older women." According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com spokesperson said that:

...reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women are false and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press article that has since been changed. Ask acknowledged that married women do compose a lot of its core users and these matronly queries are often dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia type queries - as well as categories like health and entertainment(1)...

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same time that it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no longer aiming to be considered one of the top Internet search engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine technologies dominating the entire landscape: Google and a MSN/Yahoo! search engine hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines, the industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other, smaller players like RC Cola that some people will be brand loyal about, but for the most part it's either Big Guy One or Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that were getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the Yahoo! search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top Internet search engines, there will be less real estate to compete for and the same number of businesses vying for this real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job easier for search engine optimization companies - there's just less algorithms to absorb and master. However, it makes the opportunity for volatility much more likely. Before, if the Google or Yahoo! search engine changed its algorithm, you had three or four other engines to fall back on while you worked to update your practices. But with only two major players, a tweak to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine algorithm could have much further reaching implications to individual companies in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the underdog in the industry - the cool, hip engine to use that's not owned by the big guys. However, search engine optimization practitioners have started to see some cracks in that veneer. The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is seen as a huge corporate conglomerate, with Google starting to be seen similarly. And now Google has to answer to shareholders, rather than just going along trying "not to be evil." Google has its own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest, such as its recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO company. [See my recent article A Slippery Slope: Google Owns a Search Engine Optimization Company on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the door is opened for competition. If another company can come along technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo! search engine algorithms and that does not have huge corporate considerations, it could very well start gaining some market share in this space. I'll let you know if I see any contenders.

Sources

1. Forbes.com

(c) Medium Blue 2008

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.

Baby Steps to Blogging Superstardom

In a recent post at his blog, Seth Godin explains how you can use a blogger's sensibility to improve your other writing—from ad copy to thank-you notes. But the post also serves up some solid ideas for improving your blog itself. Here are a few of his key points:



A blog post is not a PhD dissertation. "Bloggers don't have to say everything at once," says Godin. "We can add a new idea every day, piling on a thesis over time." Take a look at his blog's archive and you'll see what he means. Entries range from brief notations to lengthy discussions, but—taken as a whole—each continues to develop his central themes.

People like lists. How often do you see magazine cover lines and online headlines trumpeting, say, The Top 25 Reasons You Need to [Fill In the Blank]? They're fun, and almost certain to drive traffic to your blog.

No one likes an online dead-end. Go ahead and link to other sites, even if it's a hyperlink in the middle of a paragraph. If you have interesting content, you haven't lost your readers forever—they'll come back for more.

Social media is about conversation. Writes Godin, "Your readers care about someone's opinion even more than yours…their own. So reading your email or your comments or your trackbacks (your choice) makes it easy to stay relevant."

The Po!nt: Since the blog format enables you to make continual improvements, it's never too late to integrate solid new ideas.

Source: Seth Godin's Blog. Click here for the post.

Note to Banks: Think Small

Logically, if a product costs $10 and consumers like it, they should be willing to pay for it, right? Maybe not. According to researchers at the University of Iowa, it might depend on the denomination of the bills they have in their wallets.



Apparently consumers are less likely to spend money on something when they have one large bill (say $50) than if they have a few small ones (five $10 bills). One big bill just looks like it's worth holding onto longer.

"The denominations of the bills plays significantly into a customer's willingness to spend," claim the authors.

Researchers think that this "bias for the whole" occurs because having a whole amount is pleasing. Consumers readily understand that a $100.00 bill is worth—hey!—100 bucks! It's more difficult to visualize smaller bills making up the same amount. To shoppers, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

Since ATMs are the primary source of cash for many consumers, these authors conclude that banks can actually influence consumer spending by the denominations of money they distribute through their ATMs. Time to encourage your local bankers to think small.

The Po!nt: What customers see in their wallets can hurt you. Their feelings about spending money may well be tied into what denominations of bills they carry.

Source: "Money: A Bias for the Whole", by Himanshu Mishra, Arul Mishra, and Dhananjay Nayakankuppam. Journal of Consumer Research, 2006.

Google, Social Media & The SEO Pyramid‏

About a month ago, I mentioned that Small Business Marketing Unleashed, a 2-day hands-on event with marketing workshops would be coming up starting April 21st.

Well, the month has flown by and Small Business Marketing Unleashed has already come and gone, but not before our reporter Abby Prince (reporting for our sister site WebProNews) was able to attend and share some highlights with the rest of us. Share your thoughts on Small Business Marketing Unleashed

Abby caught up with Marchex SEO Manager and SBM Unleashed speaker Matt McGee for an interview, in which he shares with us the details of his "SEO Pyramid" which is an interesting concept and discusses some key things that people are missing when it comes to optimizing their sites for local search. As he points out, most people don't go to Google Maps to find local businesses. Check out what Matt had to say on the subject.

Abby also had an opportunity to speak with Pole Position Marketing CEO Stoney deGeyter, one of the brains behind Small Business Marketing Unleashed.

In this video, Stoney discusses the reasons that website architecture is important, including how it helps search engines better find your site. He also talks a little about his "destination search marketing" concept.

Website Architecture

Stoney also spoke on website architecture as part of the actual conference, calling it "a powerful tool in the website marketing arsenal" and an "absolute priority".

Poor site architecture hinders site performance by creating roadblocks for search spiders, decreasing rankings, not to mention confusing visitors and reducing sales.

"With site architecture, you're trying to get them to think less," says deGeyter.

Stoney touched upon domain names advocating short memorable ones containing keywords if possible, as well as having alternate domain names including misspellings, abbreviations, etc, to "avoid giving your traffic to someone else".

Check out the WebProNews write-up on this session for a few more tidbits on what Stoney had to say on site architecture

Local Search Workshop

Matt McGee of course took on the Local Search Workshop highlighting some things in more detail that he discussed briefly in the video interview.

"The main search engines dominate local search," he says, and Google is winning. No surprise there, but what is a little more surprising to me is that according to Matt, "Google Maps gets 1 visit for every 45 visits to Google.com".

One thing Matt said that I particularly like is that both SEO and PPC require hope, but "Hope isn't a marketing strategy". You have to "get involved and meet people".

This is where social media marketing comes in, and Matt points out some good places to meet people on a local level including: Flickr, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Answers, local blogs, Outside.in, Placeblogger, newspaper web sites, Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Freecycle.org, etc.

I think what Matt is getting at, is that there is a lot more to cover with local online marketing than just ranking in search engines, and while participating in these other venues, you might end up getting ranked regardless.

I called this article "the tip of the iceberg, because there are a lot more takeaways from this conference, and I will have to follow up in separate articles to avoid making this one a book. So stay tuned to SmallBusinessNewz for more on Small Business Marketing Unleashed!

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Six Quick and Simple Ways to Dominate Google Rankings!

By Mike Small

The reason Google is the most successful search engine in the world is because they provide the best search results; pages ranked by tangible value. That tangible value is a combination of content and links, with links being the more important factor (they assume any pages linking in will only link to good content or risk their own ranking.)

Here are a few tips that will help you take full advantage of Google's love of linking...

1.) Link Deep and with Relevance

So why is deeper better and what's this about relevance? Google figured out that a link to a homepage is only good if that homepage has the information the visitor needs. If a person clicks a link for "amazíng chocolate chip cookie recipe" and ends up on the home page, which has nothing of the sort, Google discounts it as a wasted link. On the other hand, if the link leads to the page containing info on the "Amazíng Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe," even five levels deep, the link has huge value to the visitor and to Google.

Want some proof? You already have it if you've ever used Google's AdWords pay per clíck service. They will not even accept PAID links to pages that are not the most relevant for their visitors, regardless of what you are willing to pay per clíck. Now that's saying something!

2.) Use Absolute Links Internally

It sounds complicated but it's not. Absolute links are those with a fixed full URL. There's another kind, called "relative" links that skip the first part of the domain and remain "relative" to the file structure. Let's take a look at the difference...

Here's the absolute link to the Google Ads page from Google's homepage: "http://www.google.com/intl/en/ads/"

Here's what it might look like as a relative link: "./intl/en/ads/"

Long story short; absolute links help your SEO efforts and relative links don't.

3.) Use Keywords in Anchor Text

Use relevant keywords in your link anchor text (that is the text within the hyperlink.) Forget about "Clíck Here" like you see on so many sites. Not only does that not help your ranking, it actually lowers the relevancy of your real keywords because Google believes that if a word is important enough it will likely be used as part of a link to get the visitor where they want to go.

4.) Follow the 1% Solution

Make no more than 1% of your page text into links (both outbound and internal.) That is, if you have 500 words on the page there should be no more than 5 text links total. And don't overuse the same keyword text for the links. So if you have three mentions each of three different keywords, try to use each just once in a link. Then use similar text for any remaining links.

Example: If "chocolate chip cookies" is your main keyword phrase you might use "chocolate chip cookies" as the anchor text for one link and then "my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe" for another link.

It's also a good idea to use 10 Links Max per page whether you have 1,000 words or 10,000 words on that page.

5.) Add a Link Failsafe

This is really simple and almost nobody does it. Links get broken more often than we like. Sometimes it's because we moved a page and sometimes it has nothing to do with anything we consciously did (especially with blogs.) The solution is to create a custom 404 page (Page Not Found) that looks just like any other page on your site and has a simple note like "We're sorry we cannot find the page you are looking for. However, if you love cookies of all kinds we think you'll find exactly what you want by clicking on one of the following links..." Then of course you have a navigation system for them to follow.

6.) Get the Best Links Possible

This is extremely important yet often overlooked because it can be such a difficult and time consuming job. If you take nothing else away from this article, please take this... Finding the best possible inbound links is the single most important thing you can do to make the number one spot on Google.

Here are three tips to help minimize your time and effort while giving you results SEO experts charge an arm and a leg for.

A.) Get listed in directories.

Submít your site to the top directories like Jayde.com and DMOZ.org. Once they link to your site you will have great relevant inbound links and some instant credibility with Google.

Here are some great free directories in order of value, starting with the best... dmoz.org, jayde.com, webworldindex.com, turnpike.net, and directoryvault.com. Yahoo is important but charges $299 for commercial site inclusion.

B.) Use "Special Commands" to do the legwork for you.

The best linked sites can easily be found with a simple search command called "allinanchor:" Here's how to use it. Go to Google and type in "allinanchor:keyword goes here" (no quotes and no space after the colon.) Now hit Enter and you'll see the sites that have the highest relevancy for keywords used in anchor text. Look for any that you know are competitors and outrank your site.

Now take the URL for any of these and use this command "link:www.theirdomain.extension" (again with no quotes and no space after the colon.) This will show you all the sites linking in as well as internal pages linking back in.

In short, these two special commands give you an inside look at exactly how the competition does what it does with the results they get. This is huge!

C.) Use good SEO software whenever possible.

If you can afford to spend one or two hundred dollars to save huge amounts of time and get professional results, it's well worth it. Like many SEO professionals whose livelihood depends on results, I've been using SEO software to get top search engine placement for years. The best ones not only help you identify great link partners but will even help you contact them and make sure they don't cheat you in any way. I use SEO Elite and am still amazed by all it can do.

If possible, get a tool that also does rank checking and reporting. Once you begin you'll want to check rankings every so often and an automated tool will save you a ton of time. Oddly enough I bought SEO Elite primarily for rank checking then discovered it was worth its weight in gold as linking tool as well. So whatever tool you use, get as much out of it as you can. You might be pleasantly surprised.

About The Author
Mike Small is the founder of the free SEO (search engine optimization) site SEOpartner.com and author of numerous search engine optimization books and whitepapers including the SEO Notebook.

Stronger Words, Louder Mouths

At his blog Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That!, Andy Sernovitz discusses something unusual he noticed on the refrigerator at his office. A colleague had gone to the trouble of posting a commercial-services flyer from Lowe's with a coupon promising "$10 off your next $25 purchase." Says Sernovitz, "I immediately started asking myself about the motivation and process of that recommendation."



Sernovitz then brainstormed three ways to improve the word-of-mouth opportunity. All are worth considering in your own campaigns.

Make it easier. A clip with a magnet held the Lowe's flyer aloft, and Sernovitz wonders if distributing flyers that were actually magnets or Post-its might encourage others to do the same thing at their offices.

Encourage people to spread the word. Even including "Share with your office!" in the copy would invite recipients to do something they might not consider without the suggestion.

Increase the quantity of sharing. The Lowe's flyer had only a single coupon; if there were more discount cards or tear-off sections, multiple people could follow up.

The Po!nt: "Pay attention to those moments when someone is making a recommendation," says Sernovitz, and "[l]ook for ways it could have been more effective."

Source: Damn! I Wish I'd Thought of That! Click here for the post.

The SEO Rapper

When we heard a YouTube channel about online marketing was getting tens of thousands of hits, we had to take a look. And so should you. Its host Charles Lewis is an online marketer for Pop Labs whose alter ego—the Poetic Prophet—likes to rap about his subject of expertise. It sounds weird, but the videos are not only entertaining, they're remarkably informative.



His Design Coding video, for instance, succinctly explains how to design a Web site for prime SEO. Here's an example of his content-packed wordplay:

You have animation
Please use in moderation
'Cause search engines can't
Index the information


Also check out Paid Search 101, which offers a thorough primer in only two minutes. Sample lyrics include:

Research all your key words
And your phrases
They all sound good
But they may not be effective
There's several ways to check
I prefer WordTracker


No, the Poetic Prophet's videos aren't a comprehensive course in online marketing. But they give non-experts just enough information to be dangerous—and they're fun. Marketing Inspiration doesn't get any better.

Don't Just Write Articles. Write Them Right!‏

by Chris Crum

You may have a writer inside you even if you didn't know it. If you own your own business, you have to be savvy in some areas, so why not share things you have learned along the way with others?

The best reason to do this is to help you brand yourself as an expert in your field. Share your thoughts on article writing.

Syndication and Your Agenda

When you write articles to have syndicated at other web sites, what you don't want to do is write ones that are too self-serving, promoting your products heavily.

This may be fine for your own business blog, but that's what press releases are for. If you want people to take you seriously, it's better to produce good quality articles that could actually help people rather than just some filler sales pitch content disguised as an article.

Promotion from a Bio

The beauty of the author bio is that it allows you to promote your business and/or product without being so tacky about it. You have it there on every article you write, yet you don't come off as just another pitch. Basically, you're giving them the content they want and providing them with an opportunity to look into your business if you offer something that they are interested in, which if you are writing relevant content to what you do, there is a good chance that they will be.

Pictures and Humanization

Whenever possible, try to include a photo of yourself with your articles. You may be self-conscious about posting images of yourself, but it is a lot easier for someone to trust what they are reading if they can put a face to it.

There's just something humanizing about being able to see whose words you are reading, and it makes the content seem more credible, even if only on a subconscious level.

Unique Content

I know. Creating unique content is easier said than done (believe me, I struggle with it everyday). There are so many good and bad articles posted on the Internet that most likely whatever you have to say has been said before.

Still, that doesn't mean that you can't put a fresh perspective to any given subject. Even if it's been said before, it hasn't been said by your voice. And maybe it hasn't even been said to your audience.

Readability

When you've dealt with as many articles as I have, it becomes apparent that not everyone should be writing. I'm not saying that I'm Mark Twain, but I've seen so many articles that are just borderline unintelligible that it makes me question what inspired the authors to ever put their fingers on the keyboard. The point I'm trying to make here is that if you're going to take the plunge into the writing pool, make sure your articles are readable. Let someone else read over them before you post them online if you are not sure about them.

Posting a bunch of articles full of unreadable malarkey is a good way to get your online reputation to sink. Typos happen, but there is a difference between typos and nonsense.

If you can pull off all of the above, you should be on the right track to promoting your business through articles the right way. How has promotion through articles worked for you? Share your story in the comments.

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network. Subscribe to SmallBusinessNewz RSS Feeds.

Make Them Happy They Chose You‏

Customers who opt in to your email campaigns can just as easily opt out or ignore your messages. It's up to you to keep them interested—and committed. Century21's Evan Blittner says this takes a few key steps:



Let your customers choose content. An option-heavy preference center means they'll only receive content they want to see. He says companies like Adidas, Discover Card, Nike and Tide lead the way in this tailored approach.

Get your creative right. According to Blittner, the optimal text-to-image ratio is 40-60, and it's imperative to include text in the preview pane. That way, "consumers will easily recognize the emails you send."

Don't explain the obvious. If you use a message to educate, be wary of the Duh! factor: skip the introductory course and go straight to an intermediate level.

Actively ensure your message reaches the inbox. Avoid deliverability problems by using domain name keys; learning which "spammy" words raise red flags; and building a good reputation with clean lists.

Monitor those analytics. Blittner recommends using Forrester's benchmark reports to compare your results with those of the competition.

The Po!nt: A little vigilance will keep them loyal. Says Blittner, "If you follow these practices … you will maximize your ROI while providing an engaging experience for consumers that truly distinguishes your brand from its competitors."

Source: MarketingProfs. Click to read the article.

I Trust You Because Your Floor Looks Clean and Shiny

How do customers evaluate quality? It can be simple when judging a product, where it's easy to see the workmanship. But what about the more intangible things—like the customer experience? Recent research says: Get out your mop and pail.



A study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that when consumers are uncertain how to evaluate the efficacy of a service provided, they use external cues to make inferences about the trustworthiness of the service provider. For instance, to evaluate a doctor, they might consider how welcoming the waiting room is, the friendliness of the receptionist, or even if the room is clean and tidy.

The fact that these cues may have nothing to do with the quality of the service provided does not appear to be important. A customer service desk may have caring reps in spite of its messy countertop. But first impressions count big with customers. And yes, that goes all the way down to the shiny clean floor.

External cues can impact just about any aspect of the retail process. For instance, if a product delivery is delayed, customers may be less irritated if they are advised of the delay, and the person doing so is friendly and courteous.

The Po!nt: Little things mean a lot. Keep up appearances, and stay courteous, since these seemingly little things actually have a big impact on customers' judgments of quality.

Source: "When Does the Service Process Matter? A Test of Two Competing Theories," by Michael K. Hui, Xiande Zhao, Xiucheng Fan, and Kevin Au. Journal of Consumer Research, 2004.

Do You Really Need To Come In First Place?

By Erin Ferree

When I was in 6th grade, track and field was all the rage. I've never been particularly athletic. But it was 1984 and everyone in my class was pretty fascinated with the Olympics that year. As you can imagine the school's annual track meet turned into a mini-Olympics.

So I surveyed the events and the sign-ups for each one. I decided that the long-distance running events held the most promise for glory. The 2 mile, in particular, only had 2 other girls signed up - so I was pretty much assured a "medal". That sounded pretty exciting. Maybe I could go for the gold!

However, watching the other events leading up to the 2-mile, I soon learned that one of the other girls was a seasoned runner. She knew all about pacing, how many minutes she should be able to run a mile in, and all that fancy stuff. At that point, I knew that first place was pretty much done for. I barely knew how many laps around the track I had to run. I ran the race anyway and wound up coming in second - which was just fine by me.

It's not all about winníng - a place or a show can be just fine.

Whenever I talk to a client about search engine placement, this track meet comes into mind. The client comes to me wanting to be Number 1 for their chosen search term. But for many small businesses, being ranked first is not truly that important - and depending on the search term, being Number 1 may hurt their business.

How can being Number 1 possibly hurt?

I know, saying that being on top can hurt your business sounds pretty unbelievable. But, being in first place has several disadvantages:

1. Getting to first place for desirable keywords takes a lot of work. The world of search engine placement is highly competitive. Most people with a website are trying to get placed in the Search Engines.

With all of this competition, you'll have to do a lot of work on your site to get the search engines' attention. This could include keyword research, changing your headlines, editing your text, submitting your site, getting links coming into your site, and making sure that your site is content-rich. It takes a fair bit of work just to get listed, and then even more work to get to the top. Aiming for third or fourth place can be easier to achieve, and cuts down the amount of work required to get there.

2. The climb to the top is often slow. Raising your ranking on the search engines isn't an instantaneous process. After you've made your changes, you have to wait for the search engines to stop by and re-rank you.

You probably won't get to the top spot on the first try - so you'll have to go through this process a few times to make headway. The quest to get to the top can take quite a while, and having to work repeatedly on optimizing your site for search engines can take your focus and attention away from your business.

3. Being Number 1 can bring you more "browsers" instead of qualified prospects. Holding the top spot means that you're most likely to be a visitor's first stop on their search. Instead of having a focused idea of what they're looking for, the people who are coming to your site may only have a vague idea - which means more hand-holding and question-answering for you.

This can become a real problem if you work to be ranked first for a more general search term like "marketing consultant". You'll have lots of visitors, sure, but are they really the best visitors for you?

The sheer number of visitors is much less important than the quality of visitors that arrive at your site. Are they looking for what you're selling? Do they have the right sort of budget to work with you? Are they in an industry that you like working with? Are they going to connect with your personality?

If you get them to your site, but they then answer "no" to any of the above questions, they won't buy from you - which can be more frustrating than having them not come by at all.

4. Sometimes the top spot gets skipped! Some searchers automatically clíck lower in the líst instead of clicking on Number 1. This may be because they assume that the person in the Number 1 spot would be too busy to help them, or would have higher rates. Or they may just skip over the top slot visually because it's close to paid ads at the top of the page.

Being a few listings down actually reduces this skip-over factor, and makes it more likely that a rushed visitor will notice your listing.

5. People often aren't ready to buy the first thing they see. Your customers will want to do their due diligence research before making a purchase. If you're number one on the search results líst and they start researching from the top, you may find that by listing 4 or 5 they feel informed enough to purchase. And you will have been long forgotten just because they clicked on it first.

If a visitor comes to your site after having seen other options, they may be more prepared to make a purchase immediately. This could help you close more sales.

6. Staying on top is challenging. Imagine a pyramid of cheerleaders competing for the "longest time in a human pyramid" World Record. They're up there, trying to keep the girl on top stable for hours at a time. Sounds exhausting, right?

It's equally tiring to try to stay in the top spot on the search engine rankings. Because, while you're sitting smugly on top, other companies are working on their sites, trying to climb over you. Unless you keep checking and keep working at it, that Number 1 slot may not be yours for long. This vicious circle takes your attention away from your business as you have to work on your website endlessly.

Does that mean that if you do reach Number 1 you should take steps to lower your ranking?

If you're already in the top spot for a search term, don't panic - you've already conquered Number 1 and 2 on this líst by being patient and working through the process.

But if you find that you're suffering from any of the other problems on the líst - too many browsers, not enough visitors because you're being skipped, or lots of visitors and not enough purchasers, you may consider experimenting with letting other companies take over the top spot for a while to see if your site will benefit.

Being in first place isn't everything in the search engine race. But if you can get into the top 10 results, you'll improve your traffic, get more interested prospects to your site, and probably close more sales. And there should be a medal for that!

About The Author
Erin Ferree is a brand identity designer who creates big visibility for small businesses. As the owner of Elf Design, Erin is passionate about helping her clients stand out in front of their competition and attract more clients. One of the best ways to do that is with Search Engine Optimization, which you can learn about in her eLearning product, Raise Your Ranking, which is available at HowToRaiseYourRanking.com .

What, You're Not Paying Attention to Your Site's Stats?‏

by Chris Crum

Let's assume you are running one of the businesses that actually has a website (a less common phenomenon than one might think). It's great that you've gone that far, but are you keeping track of your stats? If not you may be missing out on more sales.

Evaluating Your Best Traffic Sources

When you keep track of your web statistics, you can analyze where most of your traffic is coming from, whether it be from search engines, forums, social networks, other sites linking to you, or people coming directly to your site.

As far as traffic from search engines, you can find out what keywords people are searching for to find your site. From there you can evaluate if these are the keywords you want to be found for. Analyzing this is an important step when optimizing your site. You may be getting traffic for keywords that hadn't even occurred to you.

Figuring Out Potential Sources to Improve Upon

Looking at where your traffic is coming from can be a much needed wake up call that you are not putting enough effort into other potential traffic sources. Does the majority of your traffic come from search engines? It's great that you're getting found there, but maybe you're not getting enough local traffic. Maybe you're getting a lot of traffic from forum posts, but no one is searching for what you're selling and finding you. Perhaps it's time to step up your search engine optimization efforts.

Analyzing where your traffic is coming from can help bring some clarity to what you need to do to get more business from the web. Once that clarity is realized, you can spend time trying to achieve some kind of balance among your online marketing efforts.

Web Analytics Resources

If your knowledge is limited in the area of analytics, this article from SEO expert Dave Davies is a great crash course on the subject.

I'm not going to get into all of the available web analytics tools out there. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of finding them on your own (Dave discusses a few in his article anyhow).

I couldn't even begin to scratch the surface of all of the available web analytics discussion out there, but I know one good blog to keep up with industry news is the Web Analytics World blog by Manoj Jasra. You could no doubt find other good blogs on the subject via Technorati.

I do not consider myself an expert on web analytics by any means, but I recognize the importance of them, and it is apparent that many business owners don't (including many that have websites), and it is my intention to spread awareness to "in the dark" business owners who may be missing out on business that they didn't know was there. So if you're not paying attention to your site's stats, START!

A Case of Genius

"Case Studies are the marketing version of Aesop's Fables," says Drew McLellan. "Stories told to make a point or teach a lesson that demonstrates the value of your product or service." Here are his tips for writing winning case studies:

Structure your case study like a story. Create an engaging narrative by identifying the villain (a challenge or problem), the hero (your product or service) and a blow-by-blow analysis of the hero's battle to conquer the villain.

Build credibility with specific details. Focus on clients who agree to be identified by name. And don't be coy about citing numbers. For instance, vague language about losing customers won't have the same impact as the blunt revelation that sales plunged by 42 percent.

Use direct quotes. In the same way that journalists use quotations to support their conclusions, you can establish your bona fides with actual statements from a project's participants. But, advises McLellan, "Be careful not to dumb them down so they sound generic."

Get everyone's blessing. Make sure your clients are comfortable with your case before going public.

The Po!nt: "Case studies are incredibly compelling when done right," says McLellan. "If you're lucky, you'll tell a story that people will tell over and over."

Source: Drew's Marketing Minute. Click here for the post.

The Brave New World of Blog Ads

"With the right creative, no medium comes close to blog advertising in efficiency, effectiveness, focus or influence," says B.L. Ochman in a post at her What's Next Blog.

But she warns that you'll probably see lousy clickthru rates if you approach social media campaigns with traditional metrics, content and methods. Here's a sampling of her in-the-trenches advice:

Don't assume big blogs are your best investment. Says Ochman, "Having run many high-yield blog advertising campaigns for clients, I can prove that some blogs with just a few thousand readers can provide higher clickthru than better-known blogs." The reason, she explains, is twofold:

-Advertising at a niche blog gives you access to a niche audience.
-Blogs with a smaller readership tend to have fewer ads, so yours has a better chance of standing out.

Never advertise at every blog in an ad network. It wouldn't make sense to place print ads in every magazine owned by Condé Nast; if you advertise in The New Yorker or Golf Digest, for instance, it isn't likely you're also in, say, Modern Bride. Blog networks can be just as diverse. "A savvy blog media buyer will buy within and across networks," notes Ochman, "and will pick blogs based on their content, reach, and branding within the social media community."

The Po!nt: Blog ads can play an outstanding role in your marketing mix—but remember it's an entirely new playing field where the old rules don't apply.

Source: What's Next Blog. Click here for the post.

How Are You Promoting Your RSS Feeds?

By Chris Crum

Get your subscriber count up...


I have written in the past about different ways that RSS feeds can benefit your business.

The Benefits of RSS

One way was from the perspective of the subscriber. You can boost your productivity by having all of your favorite blogs and news sources coming right to you in one place. This can be a tremendous time saver, particularly for those who do a lot of reading and research.

Another business benefit I talked about was from the perspective of the publisher. I wrote:

By not offering feeds, you are missing out on an opportunity to keep customers informed of what your business is up to. You're missing out on a fantastic promotional tool. When you get subscribers, you don't have to worry so much about them coming to you, because you'll be going to them.

It Helps If People Subscribe

This only works, however if people subscribe to your feeds, and chances are you won't gain a very large subscriber base without promoting them.

SmallBusinessNewz has a fair number of feed subscribers, but it's nothing compared to the number of our newsletter subscribers. Of course our newsletter has been around much longer, but we would like to see the number of feed subscribers climb as well.

You may have noticed a little more emphasis on feeds from us lately, and that is precisely why. I'll admit that this article itself was inspired by the need to promote our feeds. Self serving? Perhaps, but I think it's an issue that applies to any business web site or blog that has feeds as well. So I don't feel too guilty about it.

Feed Promotion Methods

There are a number of RSS Directories that will list your feed for free such as 2RSS.com, RSSMad.com, and RSSbuffet.com.

You could offer a contest that requires a reader to subscribe to your feed to enter, and then promote that contest.

Market your feeds like they are a product, because in a way they are. Your marketing options will increase of course if you are willing to put money into them.

A few other things I have done is add a link to our feeds page in my author bio, wrote this article, and included a call to action in some of our more popular articles and in our newsletter in the form of this:


Keeping Track

Setting your feeds up through FeedBurner is a good way to keep up with the number of subscribers you have. This is especially true if you have more than one feed like us. There is an interesting article at Search Engine Land by Barry Schwartz that looks at how subscribers are counted by different readers that may also be of interest.

What methods have you utilized to gain more RSS subscribers? Were those methods successful?

By the way, subscribe to one of our feeds!

Often Overlooked Places To Leave Your Stamp Online

by Chris Crum

There are places online beyond your site/blog where you should be representing your brand and featuring links. Share some with us.

This is another one of those common sense articles, but sometimes these things just get overlooked or put off when they could in fact be bringing business your way had you just took a few minutes to add some text, a graphic, and/or a link or two.

Bios in Articles

I've been dealing with content coordination across a large range of web sites and email newsletters for years, and I am still surprised when I see articles submitted by authors who don't link to their site in their bios.

Typically, the main reason an author wants to submit an article to a site run by other people is to gain some exposure for their own site, yet often times a link isn't included in their bio. This is a huge mistake in my opinion, because if a particular article becomes popular, the author may be missing out on a large amount of traffic from curious readers who were impressed by said article and want to learn more about the person who wrote it.

Forum Signatures

If you participate in a lot of online forum discussions, you would be a fool not to brand your site in your signature.

The same principle as the article bios applies here. Perhaps even more so, because if you are on the helping end of a conversation in a forum, you are proving to a audience that you are knowledgeable in your niche.

Email Signatures

The email signature is a good place for a branding graphic like a logo. A link to your site is also encouraged. While you will probably not see large spikes of traffic from email signature links, you never know when someone you're corresponding with will be interested in visiting your site. You might as well give them the opportunity to do so, because sometimes it can lead to a new business opportunity.

Social Media Pages

If you have taken the initiative to start a social media marketing campaign for your business, you've most likely already thought to link to your web site and brand your company. Just remember not to make these pages seem too self-serving.

If your pages are clearly there just to make a sale and get people to your web site, I don't think you'll have a very successful campaign. I've talked about this before, but you really need to be engaging in social conversations and branding yourself as a real person, not just a business out to make a buck. When handled properly though, you can get some good traffic from these pages.

Blog Comments

You don't want to go overboard in the linking and branding in blog comments, because the line between promotion and spam is very fine in a venue like this. People reading blog comments want to see insightful conversation and points regarding the article expanded upon and discussed. They don't want to see you advertising your business.

The best way to get traffic from blog comments is to link your name to your site. This will give them the opportunity to see what your business is all about if they like what you have to say. They are not going to click on your link if you just comment to say that you sell jewelry for example.

Some branding and linking techniques require more subtlety than others, and you don't want to create a negative reputation for yourself by not displaying the correct amount. That said, there are plenty of opportunities to brand your business and acquire more traffic across the web. I have listed a few, but they are not limited to the above. What other everyday places do you use to place links or other forms of your brand?

Get Your Blog Google-Ranked In 30 Days or Less, Part 2

By Frederick Townes

If you haven't read Get Your Blog Google-Ranked in 30 Days Or Less, Part 1, you aren't going to want to miss it. But, here are even more useful suggestions to put your blog on steroids without any blog-roid rage. Please read on.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site's content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there's always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets – from green rookie to wizened old vet.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody's got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn't do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they'd like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn't matter if you're blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There's lots of open source software (OSS), mortgäge calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it's fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don't take up a lot of room. If you aren't an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Don't use clip art.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You're the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there's plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like www.helium.com, www.ezine.com and www.goarticles.com are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don't direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site's archives. Point them to the new news.

9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it's of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.

7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There's a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives: (1) it shows that there's a human behind the blog; (2) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and (3) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it's also the polite thing to do, as well.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you're optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include www.linkedin.com, www.meetup.com and www.mybloglog.com. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They're also useful in building beneficial online relationships - not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time.

Once you've got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

So, blog.

About The Author
Frederick Townes in the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE is a Boston web design company that specializes in search engine friendly design, Internet marketing and conversion optimization. Contact them today for a free quotatíon and more information on how to make the most of your online presence.

Get Your Blog Google-Ranked In 30 Days or Less, Part 1

By Frederick Townes

Blogs have been around long enough to become standard elements of the web landscape. They're easy to construct and manage, they create fresh, user-generated content and, if well-executed, blogs draw crowds and the attention of search engines.

Whether starting out with a new domain name, or a domain that's been around for a decade, you can rank your blog on Google if you just do what Google wants you to do. So here are 25/50 tips to get your blog ranked by the world's biggest SE.

50. Build your own or move to Wordpress. Wordpress is a blog platform that's open source (free), robust, extensible and easy to use. Add Feedburner, which equips site owners to broadcast RSS feeds and develop user metrics. Next, synch up Google Analytics and a sitemap plug-in to simplify populating the blog and developing useful, actionable metrics. Also, make sure your blog is pinging www.technoratti.com and other social-ranking sites like www.digg.com.

49. Don't worry about page rank. PR is highly over-rated as a yardstick of online success. Connectivity within a web community and expansion through content syndication and guest blogging are more critical to building site credibility than page rank. PR will take care of itself over time if you do it right.

48. Make a difference, or at least have a clear purpose. Differentiate your content on every post. Cover lots of editorial ground.

47. Use a conversational tone. Dry, starchy academic writing is strictly for the textbooks. Write words that people "hear" instead of read.

46. Provide a "Tell Your Friends" link on your blog. Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together. So, if one of your regulars shares an interest in philately, chances are s/he has other friends with an interest in stamp collecting.

45. Study the competition. They're studying you. Check out spyfu.com to do a little undercover work on search analytics employed by competitor sites and their visitors. You can't touch the content but you can't copyright an idea, either, so pick up some new paths of thought from others in your site's arena.

44. Remember SEO basics. Use provocative, keyword-rich title tags, meta keywords and descriptions, and only link to high-quality sites. Never over do it. Keep your posts relevant, natural, accurate and, above all, current.

43. Don't stuff blog post titles with keywords. It's a form of keyword stuffing and spiders hate keyword stuffing. The ratio in headlines should be 40% keywords, 60% non-keywords.

42. Submit your URL to blog directories. There are "best of the web," and paid directories, like Yahoo, and free directories like the Open Directory project at www.dmoz.org. Every directory listing is another link to your site and another way visitors can find you. Just google them to find more.

41. Create blog categories that contain keywords, i.e., Ecommerce, SEO, Affiliates, etc. for use with a "site hosting" or "site design" blog.

40. Content quality counts. Research topics about which target readers want to learn. Write something new, useful and relevant. And don't forget to regularly update older posts. Things change fast on the web so last year's "next big thing" is this year's hackneyed clich�.

39. Vary topics, content length, relevancy and posting times. However, be consistent, as well. Keep blogging. It can take time for a blog to catch the notice of a search engine spider.

38. Get guest bloggers. Add links from their blogs and establish your site's link community. There are people within your web neighborhood with opinions and good information. Contact them to invite submissions to your blog and your site in general.

37. Don't use duplicate content. The only duplicate content that appears in your blog posts are quotes, and they should be identified with quotation marks.

36. Call posters by name. If Bob M. from Athens, Georgia, posts to your blog, recognize his contribution with a "Thanks, Bob" at the end of your response.

35. Make friends with other bloggers in your commercial, business or NFP space. Ask to become a guest blogger, or seek endorsements from the "names" within your site sphere.

34. Send a personal note to posters. Not all bloggers have the time to do this but if you can send a personal email thank-you note to a poster, you've increased the chances of that poster becoming a member of your site community.

33. Encourage viral link building. Take a stand. Introduce the coming paradigm shift in web commerce, provoke controversy. It sells. Just ask Ann Coulter.

32. Ensure the blog is optimized for Technoratti. Claim your blog, set an avatar and pings, use tags where appropriate and be sure to ping various blog tracking sites.

31. Don't place ads on your blog, yet. If you feel you must (you're seeing nice PPC revenues), determine that your site's HTML is optimized to position those ads at the bottom of each blog page.

30. If your blog isn't pulling, have the code reproduced so it's as semantic, accessible and code-to-content optimized as possible. Also, hire a code expert to position content above ads or any other content in the site markup.

29. Ignore Alexa. A lot of new site owners rely on Alexa for site metrics but remember, Alexa is a popularity metric since only Alexa toolbar users contribute data � and that's a less-than-universal test population.

28. Build credibility. Publishing authorities on your site's topicality usually does the trick. Once blog credibility is established, identify trends, solve new problems and gradually expand the topic range of your blog.

27. Buy or build a screamin' hot blog design and submit it to design galleries. Hire a site/blog designer, or bring your vision to fruition. This enables your blog to appear five or six demographic iterations from your home site, expanding the site's reach outside the immediate site community. This creates new marketing channels fast.

26. Develop some friendly contacts on social media sites and participate in the community. Ask contacts to promote your blog content. Also ask for contributors. People love to express their opinions.

To learn even more about making the most of your site blog, check out Get Your Blog Google-Ranked In 30 Days Or Less, Part 2. You're going to love it.

About The Author
Frederick Townes in the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design. W3 EDGE is a Boston web design company that specializes in search engine friendly design, Internet marketing and conversion optimization. Contact them today for a free quote and more information on how to make the most of your online presence.

On Sale Now, But Time's a' Wastin'!

"Regular Price: $599; Now: $399." We've all seen ad lines like this one that quote the original price of an item and then show a discounted price right next to it. They're designed to influence consumers to take advantage of the reduced price—or to at least head into a sale.



But, hold on just a minute! Some research is showing that putting your product on sale for cheap can actually make consumers perceive your product as, well, cheap. What to do?

Research from Southern Methodist University suggests that whether or not you lessen a consumer's perception of your product's image may depend on one key factor: whether you include a time-limiting component to the promotion: "Sale! Three Days Only."

Consumers in the market for a product had more favorable perceptions about brands that were on sale and had a time-limited offer ($75 regular price; $50 sale price for 5 days only!) than they did to the same brand at the regular price or the sale price. Sales announcements coupled with time-limited offers also created more favorable perceptions for people who were not in the market for the product.

In short, a regular price might make your product look expensive; a sales price might make it look cheap. But including both with a time-limited offer makes it look downright precious.

The Po!nt: If you want to offer your product on sale, include the base price, the sales price and a time-limited offer to entice the broadest spectrum of customers.

Source: "Broadening the Scope of Reference Price Advertising Research: A Field Study of Consumer Shopping Involvement" by Daniel J. Howard and Roger A. Kerin. Journal of Marketing, 2006. Read the article here.

Be a Super Delegator

There are plenty of reasons not to delegate. Maybe you can complete a project more quickly than those working beneath you, or you're convinced you'll achieve better results than your subordinates.

But do you take work home on a regular basis? Or are deadlines an issue? Jane Schulte, author of Work Smart, Not Hard!, says these are sure signs it's time to delegate, whether you like it or not.

Here are some of her pointers for successful delegation:

-Start small, then increase delegation as skills develop.
-Define clear goals, deadlines and criteria for success.
-Provide all the needed resources and information.
-Give your subordinate full authority over the project.
-Offer guidance and advice without interfering.
-Focus on results, not the process.

If the project is successful, credit the person who got the job done; if there are problems, Schulte advises shielding the responsible subordinate from blame. "Learn from the experience so you can delegate more effectively, provide more training or delegate the next project to a different person," she says.

The Po!nt: "Work should always be done by the lowest competent level," says Schulte. Go down the chain of command, find the right person for the job, give them the tools they need to succeed and refocus on the high-level issues that demand your expertise.

Source: An unpublished article by Jane Schulte.

Utilizing The Original Social Networks‏

Web forums can offer many of the same benefits to your business as social networks. In fact, I kind of tend to think about forums as the original social networks.

They've been around and have been helping people much longer than MySpace and Facebook. How have forums helped your business?

You've got profile pages, private messages, and public conversation. Perhaps they don't typically have all the frills of a MySpace or a Facebook, but the general concept is there.

Like social networks, there are a variety of ways your business can benefit from forum participation.

Help with Specific Problems

Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the ability to get a specific question answered. If you need help or advice with a certain aspect of your business, chances are that it is a problem others have encountered in the past, and will be able to help you out. This can be tremendously helpful in many cases, especially if it is something that is really holding your business back.

Networking

Like social networks, if you regularly participate in forums, you will be networking with other people and sometimes experts. This comes back to the "it's who you know" philosophy, and you never know how knowing the right people will benefit you further down the road.

Branding

A natural product of networking is branding. When you participate regularly, people will begin to remember and recognize you, and this together with an appropriate signature will brand your business and potentially even drive traffic to your site.

Being in the Loop

Forum participation (or even just reading them) is also a good way to stay up on current events in your industry. You get a sense of conversation that you don't always get with news articles (unless the article gets a big comment spike). For online businesses, forums like WebProWorld, WebmasterWorld, and Digital Point are good places to monitor.

For the Inexperienced

This is especially true if you are one of the many businesses that has not yet created an online presence. You can learn a lot from forums. You should always check multiple sources before following any advice on an important topic, because not all of it you will find is going to be the best. Forums are a good way to get a feeling for how others view any particular opinions anyway. If someone posts some controversial advice, someone will almost certainly be there to contradict it. Either way, it can open up options for you to think about and open your mind to different ideas.

Forums help people in business every day. Can you pinpoint a time where forum participation has had a large impact on your business?

About the Author:
Chris is a content coordinator and staff writer for SmallBusinessNewz and the iEntry Network.

How to Stand Out When Your Product Doesn't

When your product or service is loaded with proprietary extras, it isn't difficult to differentiate yourself from the company down the street. But how do you stand out if your product shares many features and benefits with competing products? Jonathan Krantz has a three-step solution:

Personalize: Says Krantz, "Direct quotes, testimonials, day-in-the-life narratives, and even brief biographies can introduce the sympathetic element that allows prospects to project themselves into the experience you provide." Blending various elements can also be highly effective. Consider customer profiles, for instance, that mix laudatory third-person biographies with direct quotes.

Illustrate: Bullet points won't do the job if they're the same bullet points your competitor uses. Instead, use evocative terms. As an example, Krantz cites Harry & David pears that are "so big and juicy, you need to eat them with a spoon."

Demonstrate: Rather than focusing on the specifics of your product or service, show how your company delivers on its promises. This is where your Web site becomes a critical tool: Offer anything from white papers and streaming videos to employee profiles and helpful tips. In other words, sell clients on the solidity of your company.

The Po!nt: "When ordinary features-and-benefits-based communications fail to distinguish your business from the pack," says Krantz, "it may be time to take your messages somewhere else—into the heart of the customer experience."

Source: MarketingProfs. Premium members can access the article here. Not a Premium member? Maybe this is a good day to become one.

Managing Your Time Wisely

By Abby Prince

How to properly manage your time…


What’s the first thing you think of when you think of time? If your answer is that you never have enough time, then you need to continue reading and tune in to the SmallBusinessNewz video. Even if that wasn’t the first thing that popped into your head, there’s still a lot of time management knowledge that may be useful to you.

One reason small business owners start their own business is for the benefit of creating their own hours. Unfortunately, that plan doesn’t usually play out to its original intention since sometimes the employer also becomes the employee. How do you learn everything you want to learn when all your time is spent working?

First of all, you need to achieve a balance between your work and your personal time. It’s difficult especially in the beginning, but it should be a priority.

As for the learning, Leisa Watkins, a Small Business Developer and Coach, suggests setting allotted time slots. The Internet with its vast storage of information is especially hard to limit, but it’s needed. Watkins recommends either restricting the number of articles or blogs you read, or setting a specific time limit for your learning experience online.

Be selective with your time and realize there are only 24 hours in each day. Don’t try to do more than what is rationally possible. Time is essentially money if it is spent wisely.

Since all small business owners want to be successful, they try different tactics that fall short and then think they must learn more to “fix” the problem. Watkins says success comes from within.

“It’s our actions that determine our success, not the information itself that determines our success. Success doesn’t come from a vast amount of information. Success comes from gaining some knowledge, comparing it to our experiences, and taking action.”

To find out more on time management, watch the SmallBusinessNewz video.

5 Great Ways To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

By Bill Luszey

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box.The ones who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so.

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Move the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the best tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already.

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

Others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

Bill Luszey

Google Everflux: Just What We Needed, Google on Speed

By Titus Hoskins

Is it just me or has Google gone into overdrive? As a professional full-time online marketer I have to keep my mind firmly placed on what Google is doing. As much as I try not to because Google has probably driven more people around the bend than Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz put together.

Like any professional marketer, I monitor my numerous keywords on a daily basis - especially my major targeted keyword phrases that bring in the most sales and subscribers. For years now, I have had top rankings in Google for my chosen phrases; they move up and down, but mostly they don't leave the first page.

However, lately I have been noticing a lot of jumping in the top listings. Links out of nowhere are appearing, links being dropped and my own links moving up and down much too quickly for my comfort. Even six months ago the Google main index seemed to be a whole lot more stable than it is now.

Within the past months, rankings within Google have become more dynamic, more fluid. They can change from day to day, what some people are calling Google Everflux. This is very similar to the old Google Dance we used to have a few years ago...when Google would update or refresh its index about once a month. Now Google is stepping out on that dance floor every day.

Once upon a time, your keyword rankings in Google didn't change that much. Every four or five months Google would do major updates where your keywords and your site's PageRank could have a major jump or fall in Google's index. But have things changed? Has the whole ranking process now been speeded up? Has the Google Index now become more fluid, more dynamic, changeable daily? Updating, fluctuating on the fly?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Keep in mind, Google Everflux is not a new term. As far back as July 2002 there are references in Webmasterworld to the Google Freshbot and Google Everflux. This term referred to the re-freshing of the Google Index.

Unlike many SEO theories and assumptions, the Google Everflux is the Real McCoy. That is if you can believe the Google Guy, and there's no reason not to take Matt Cutts at his word.

In his site or blog - www.mattcutts.com - he describes what is happening here. In a response to a comment on his blog on January 1, 2007, he gives this answer:

Quoting Matt Cutts: "...I'm not trying to side-step the issue. I believe that a data refresh, which used to be every 3-4 weeks, is now happening more like every day. So the changes in ranking that some people were seeing on the 17th or 27th during the summer months can now happen every day."

Even more telling was Matt's response to another person's summary of these changes within Google.

Senaia said: "So the Index Update is what people use to call Google Dance, when it was on monthly basis. Now it's on daily basis and they call it Everflux.

Backlinks update and Pagerank update are also types of data refresh.

So, the big scary updates like Florida... are Algorithm updates?"

Matt Cutts said: "Senaia, that's not a bad summary. Florida and Jagger were changes in our algorithms to score documents, for example."

However, is the current Google Everflux a more souped-up version of this re-freshing process? Google in fast-forward? On speed-dial?

Regardless of the rate of change, Google Everflux is important simply because Google is so important to any webmaster or site. There's no denying that, whether you love it or hate it, Google will deliver the most search engine traffic to any webmaster who gets top rankings for his/her keywords. The other search engines shouldn't be ignored, but most of your search traffic will come from Google. According to Nielsen Stats in February (2008), Google had around 60 percent (58.7 - 4.5 billion Google search queries) of the traffic on the web.

But 60 percent is not the true percentage; from close examination of my different sites' traffic logs I know Google gives me around 90 percent of my search traffic. Maybe I am over optimized for Google, but even when I manage on rare occasions to get number one rankings in all three search engines for a minor keyword, Google is still the one sending the most traffic.

Since this search traffic is extremely important to my livelihood, I keep a close watch on my major keywords in Google. Movement up or down just a few places means an íncrease or decrease in my traffic. Google has changed. It is not the same search engine it was 6 months ago. Not by a long shot.

What does this mean to your site or keywords?

It probably means you have to put your link building efforts into overdrive if you want to get a top listing in Google and keep it there. It will probably mean that you have to be constantly creating valuable content and quality-relevant links related to your site's topic in order to remain competitive.

This is what you should be doing in the first place, but now you will have to work harder to keep your links in those top positions in Google. At least this has been my experience lately.

One thing I have noticed with my keyword rankings, links from the so-called Social Bookmark sites (Digg, Reddit, Squidoo...) have become very important to Google. Real people reading and ranking real content. This is what these social media sites are all about, and it seems Google is placing more emphasis on these sites.

I say "seems" because with Google, nobody knows for sure. However, I can see in my daily monitoring of my own keywords - Google Everflux is real and is probably here to stay.

Over time old links you had are being dropped, as Google re-ranks their links and index. The whole fall-out from Google's paid link crackdown is still being played out as webmasters scramble to devise new ways to juice-up their links. Google is firing back with new ways to keep its index supposedly honest, an ongoing, turbulent battle that will probably get more turbulent. As new sites and links become important there will be a constant change in the rankings within Google.

Google also seems to be favoring big, resourceful authority sites for the top positions in their SERPs, giving these sites 6 or 7 sub-headings and links - all in the top spot.

Which means it will be much harder for the smaller marketer to compete. Of course, it is only a matter of time before big, large corporations completely dominate all the major profitable keywords on the web, in Google and elsewhere. Once big business figures out what's going on and realizes just what keyword control in their industry will give them.

That may be a little extreme, but like any valuable resource, it won't be long before multi-national corporate giants eat up the little guys/sites via keyword branding and dominance. It will take some time, and since there are millions of small niches there is still some marketing room for small sites to cash in. But our days of glory are numbered...

For now, if you count on Google for your search traffic, keep building quality links/content daily and don't forget the all important social bookmark sites... make sure you're building some good links from them. One simple solution that has given me hundreds of social bookmark links in the past year is simply adding the free AddThis.com button on my sites. Just let your visitors bookmark and build links for you in these social media sites.

Keep a blog or blogs and tie in your site with links and trackbacks. And make sure you tie/connect your site to the whole blogosphere. Don't forget to add video/audio to your site, as those formats will play an ever-increasing role on the web.

No matter what warp-speed Google finally decides upon, valuable content is still the key to getting top rankings in any search engine. Adding fresh, valuable relevant content to your sites each day will keep them in the picture.

If that doesn't work, you can always take up speed car racing - I heard it is supposed to be very calming on the nerves. And I bet you one backrub none of them will have ever heard of Google Everflux.

About The Author
The author is now a full-time web marketer who regularly sells 1000's of dollars worth of affiliate products/ services each day. He owns and runs numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: BizwareMagic.com or MarketingToolGuide.com .
2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

How Well Does Your Copy Flow?

When writing copy for a brochure, press release or advertisement, you spend lots of time choosing the right words to convey your message. But Kelly Robbins of The Copywriting Institute says it's just as important to focus on how well you put those words together.



"If you've worked on a project for several days and rewritten pages countless times," she notes, "it's easy to overlook something as intangible as the smoothness of the copy."

To ensure your final product flows smoothly, Robbins recommends setting up a proofreading system that includes steps like these:

Print a draft of your copy and read it out loud. It might feel silly, but you're more likely to catch awkward phrasing or clunky transitions than if you read silently from a computer screen.

Ask someone to read your copy while you listen. "If there are areas where the reader unnaturally pauses or gets stuck and backs up to reread a section," says Robbins, "you need to go back to work on it."

Take a break. Put your draft on the shelf for a few days and focus on something else. And don't do mental rewrites. Stepping back will give you a fresh, more objective perspective.

The Po!nt: Says Robbins, "It is your job to create automatic systems to ensure your copy is easy to read and understand."

Source: An unpublished article by Kelly Robbins.

Social Networking - A Fad! Would It Survive?

By Smita Sharma

Social networks, online communities, web 2.0, 3.0, social applications, walls, web applications, online games, video sharing portals, rich media, digital lifestyles et cetra have one common cord that gets them humming, when plucked slightly. Call it the power to Communicate or the freedom of Expression, or more precisely, Personal expression and better management but this is the essence of their origin and ultimately, this is what keeps them abuzz and going strong.

For the last couple of years, social networks and online communities have been mushrooming, in every piece of the globe. The advent of Internet 1.0 combined with web 2.0 and 3.0 though, has made communications quicker, better and more manageable across personal tastes & disliking, age and lifestyles, regions, languages, cultures, sub-continents and geographies. With so many social networks cropping in, it is getting harder for users to tell where they fit the best, or restricting choices to the Best Catch, Best Hit or an Intelligent Miss. What needs to be answered is how often these users switch or consider moving to the newbie's. What mix could help them best consolidate, their online social portfolio? Just when you think, the search for the perfect online space has ended; a new network comes into picture with tools and applications, you never thought of and appear too cool, to indulge in. That's their catch, on social trends!

In spite of so many utilities, networking spaces and social platforms invading the web, some thought leaders see Social Networking as a fading phenomenon and predict, It's not forever. It has reached its tipping point and as the time progresses, it would eventually die out. And may be a new & even bigger web phenomenon would emerge and take over.

Commenting on if this could happen is not at all relevant, if we go by the definition of product life cycle and related theories, by management gurus. The pertinent question is no longer would it or would it not? Rather, how soon could it happen and if it would ever replace social networking completely or just branch as an offshoot, or parallel web utility? To seek answers to such questions, a quick and random research on some social networking sites could help.

A closer look at websites that have recently come into existence offers a few pointers on what could be the fate on Social Networking over the next 4-5 years?

Wine.com: As the name suggests, this website is dedicated to wine lovers. The site does not require you to be a sommelier to join its wine community. And you have a multitude of activities to choose from what you wish to do here. As a member, you can add 'wine reviews', answer questions on wine (from fellow community members), write and share a blog entry, make posts on forums, ask questions if you need a review or seek suggestions while making a purchase. Members can even create and organize their wine lists and publish and share their wine lists with other members. Additionally, using their shopping carts orders can be placed online and users are free to share their experiences through related images or videos of a recent winery tour. Does it sound interesting to you? Well, it definitely does to me, for I love tasting wine, from different vineyards.

City Centre Community: Now, what do you have to say to this? This electronic retail giant has its own reasons for plunging into community building. Of course, they see it a great way to connect with their shoppers and consumers and look for real-time feedback. The forums are quite active and their customer service experts don't leave space for a speck, with timely responses and very low turnaround times. Moreover, regular community features like videos, tags and photo galleries jazz up the community interface, while felicitating direct communication with consumers.

Sonico: A Spanish language, social networking site that recently launched its Portuguese version, is another social network that has nothing remarkable yet 8 million registered users and within a span of only 7 months. You have something to say on that? There are just those usual message boards, user profiles and school and workplace based networks. However, it's interesting to note how they have merged different online portfolios into one central online social networking site.

Virb: Yet another social network that targets people who have vested interests in art, music, fashion and likes. Beautifully designed with well integrated iTunes and a little bit of everything, they say 'Do good to look good'. Ain't that catchy?

FatDoor: FatDoor is also there to help you know your neighbors on a very local level. It displays information over a Microsoft Virtual Earth map that can switch between 2D and 3D views. Another cool idea, you won't like to miss on!

If these still don't answer the question on sustenance & future of social networks, take a look at still other ideas like Enemybook and Snubster. They offer a new angle to social networks that talk about 'anti-social elements' like hatred, betrayals, enemies and more. There has to be no question on the concept of social networks and their future. What could differ and evolve overtime might be their convergence with the social set up or their divergence into personal life-style spaces. Or even, micro, niche networks gaining on popularity as opposed to the macro and dispersed global networks, of today. Would they lead to segregation, better organization and effective management of personal expressions or else dilute to bare backbones of simply aggregating social connections? The questions should no longer be confined to longevity. The social networks would need to look for differentiation through innovative ideas, which could add value and boost dependence on them, with specific focus on the ways to communicate on page and off page.

"And, with intensifying market competition, the survival of the fittest would hold true, as it always does".

Smita S. is a web 2.0 enthusiast and a social networking fan, with obvious presence on social networking sites like Infodoro.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Orkut, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and many more. If you think, social networks are cool and a great place to be, check out 'Infodoro' and enjoy the buzz around its active forums flooding with recent and diverse topics, issues, cool images, a blend of video sharing sites, and a great hint of free and social web applications that let you manage your time, daily chores and even personal thoughts and expressions, more efficiently.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Smita_Sharma

SEO And SEM For Niche Markets On No Budget

By Ty Fawcett

I work in Search Engine Marketing, so I am used to working for clients in very competitive markets after "high dollar" terms. One term has over 2,910,000 results when searched in Google, so as you can imagine it takes a lot of work and effort on every ones part (including the site owner) to help achieve that goal.

How-ever I recently decided "I should do this for my airsoft club", and in my head I had a fairly good plan worked out on how to go about this. I have very little money for the project, and no money for marketing other then what-ever I could do in my free time. When it came time to do this I found there was very little in the way of resources for that market to get the word out about my website. I just entered a market, with no-were to market. So how do you get the word out?

At this point four months ago most marketing comes across a web forum we have setup for quite a few years, it does it's job, but is not very search engine friendly. Google cannot index pages due to its dynamic URL's, and no matter how many links I seem to point to it I just couldn't get it to work without decent forum software and admin access. For the cost/effort put into it, it works fairly well at attracting people who already essentially "know" about your market, how-ever it just was not getting the job done as far as potential new players (customers for you business owners) finding us.

The next step was building a website, that was a major task in itself. The programming and designing should be left up to the professionals, as anything I mocked up myself always seemed to be "sub-par" at best. Your website should be search engine friendly, with static pages organized in a sensible clean manner. Obviously not too much flash (just pictures), no javascript or frames or anything else shady. Don't go heavy with the pictures, keep your home pages load time fast as web users are very impatient!

People must be able to use it in order for your site to be successful, and with Google analytics and webmaster tools over time you can track exactly what needs to be tweaked for better results. These tools will not pay off at first, but in the long run it will give you the best understanding of your sites strengths and weakness's and were you can improve. With the new bench marking tools in beta, it will be extremely helpful being able to compare your site to competitors sites!

Blog if there is any in your niche market, even better would be adding one to your site and participating in others blogs constructively to build a good reputation among others in your niche market. Basically do not be spammy, and most of all be respectful. Do not forget to do some social networking, and never just promote yourself either!

The content writing is hard, but can always be tweaked over time or added to. I am not a good writer, and I found this part to be quite hard at first and definitely the most intimidating. This took me a lot longer then I thought, with quite a few revisions to the content. The best content is written for humans, so do not be afraid to inter-link to yourself under the appropriate titles for the pages you want to promote or that is relevant to that topic page (especially on the home page). Keep adding to your content, with new pages to keep enticing visitors (and search engine spiders) to visit your site, and most importantly build links to any new content you write.

One of the most important tools I have used in my marketing has been photos and videos. With sites like youtube, its easy to upload a video to promote your products on in my case my club. In niche markets you can use these to fill the search engines with videos with tags of your relevant keywords, and you can easily load them onto the website for extra content for users who have found your site. They do not take up bandwidth, and load fairly quickly. I also use imageshack.us for my photo hosting, making high resolution thumb nail pictures, this is great for on the forums and on the website. Also social networking on these sites and others like my space or facebook can be well worth the effort.

It should be noted that you do not get any SEO value really from Youtube or imageshack.us, you just generate traffic and interest in something that the people are already searching for. If they can find a video on Youtube about it, they maybe more interested in buying your product (or in my case joining the club), because if its tagged right and is relevant they will find it in the search engines!

Over-all in one day of my site being live I was cached, within 2 I was in the #2 spot for my main keywords. Hard work plus time and effort and a little common sense with the search engines can go a long way in helping raise your profile in your niche market.

Ty Fawcett, the webmaster for Vancouver Island Airsoft and Central Island Airsoft, between the two he has little time to do anything else!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ty_Fawcett

Six Ways to Make Your Website a Resource

By Jennifer Williamson

Search engines try to feature websites that are good resources for their users. For each search phrase a user types in, Google looks for sites that contain lots of content related to that phrase. It also looks for sites that are linked to on other sites, using that phrase or related phrases as anchor text. The more helpful and relevant your site is, the more likely Google is to put you at the top of its list. And the better the content on your site, the more likely other sites will link to yours as a resource.

Here are six ways to take a tired old online brochure and turn it into a hot online destination.

Write a blog. Blogs are great for online traffic. With a blog, you'll update your site with new content regularly--and search engines like that. You'll also naturally include important keywords when you write each post, as long as you keep your posts relevant to your industry. A blog positions you as an expert in your field and raises your profile online.

Start a newsletter. Give people a reason to keep coming back to your site. If you don't have time to write a daily blog, start a weekly or monthly newsletter. Offer good-quality commentary and information that will help your customers solve their problems.

Deliver an e-course. Even better, write an online course that your prospects can sign up for on your site. Depending on how long and involved your course is, you can write a class with dozens of segments--or just a few. Most e-courses feature written instructions to perform a specific task; some include graphics. You can sell your e-course or offer it free to attract visitors and linkbait.

Start an informative autoresponder series. You can use an autoresponder script to deliver regular, automatic emails to people who sign up. This can be a great boost to your business. With an autoresponder series that offers information of value, you can stay in front of your prospects, assemble a pre-screened marketing list, offer incentives to buy along with valuable info, and educate your prospects. There's no question that an autoresponder series can bring traffic and money to your business.

Host a forum. One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is user particpation. Web users today love to add their two cents in interactive media environments. Why not host a forum to give customers and prospects a voice? Especially if there are few other forums that cater to your industry, this could definitely make your website a hot online destination.

Build an article directory. It's an old SEO tactic: write articles targeted to your keywords, and publish them on your site. This isn't a bad idea, but just because these are keyword articles doesn't mean they have to be uninformative or badly written. Put some time and thought into your articles. Offer information of value. The added content will help your rankings, but only good, valuable information will help your bottom line.

No matter your industry, your website has the potential to bring you wealth and success. By making your site into a helpful resource, you give people a reason to come back, to link to your site, and to buy from you.

Jennifer Williamson runs a successful seo content creation business as a freelance writer in southern Pennsylvania. Visit her website for flawless writing services at affordable prices, or her freelance writing blog to learn more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Williamson

Internet Marketing - Secret System To Generating $10000 Per Month!

By Fabian Tan

I told you about my system in another article about how to generate up to $200 per day online. Here's my goal for this year: I want to reach an average an average of $333 per day. That will generate $10000 per month. It's a big goal, and even if I don't reach it, there's no doubt that my income will improve and shoot past some barriers.

If you remember, the system looks like this:

1. Find A Profitable Niche

2. Create An Opt-In Page To Build Your List

3. Send Traffic To That Opt-In Page

What I didn't mention was that the '4th step' was promoting affiliate products to your list to earn affiliate commissions. This is a great way to make money but it's very hard to break past the 10k barrier. If your average affiliate commission was only $20, you'd need to make 500 affiliate sales to break past the 10k barrier!

But what if you sold your own $200 product, would that net you 10k faster and easier? It would. You'd only need 50 sales. You'd probably need lesser than that to reach 10k per month since you'd still be selling your lower-cost products. Let's put in an arbitrary number, let's say you only need 30 sales of a high-ticket product to push you to your goal of 10k per month. Is that doable? Can you find 30 people to send you $200 every month?

It certainly is possible. Let's say you make 100 sales of your own product and you build a customer list from those sales. So that's 100 new customers. Every month, you get about 100 new customers, so within 12 months, you'd have built a customer list of 1200 customers.

And this list is raging hot. This list is a list of buyers. They have shown you they are willing to spend money for your information. When they have a taste of your low-cost information, some would want MORE from you.

Do you think you can get 30 people out of these 1200 customers to pay you $200 per month? Do you think some people would want to get everything from you and literally perform a brain transplant so that they know everything you know?

For a $200 product, you'd literally throw in everything. You'd provide email coaching, homework assignments, a private forum, DVD's, audio recordings, physical books and literally provide everything to help your clients achieve their goals.

Some people would want to be taken by the hand, some people will want private coaching. And that's how you'll position your high-ticket product of $200 or even $500. Some people want the whole enchilada and will pay you.

So here's the modified system that I'm putting into action to generate $333 per day:

1. Find A Profitable Niche

2. Create An Opt-In Page To Build Your List

3. Send Traffic To That Opt-In Page

4. Sell Low-Cost Products To Your List

5. Build A Customer List

6. Sell High-Ticket Products To Customer List

Go see if it might work for you too!

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

"Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!"

Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it's gone!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Fabian_Tan

Top 2 Hottest Online Businesses

By Jon Elton

Freelance Writing: There's Money to be Made with Your Talent

Do you like to write? Have you dreamed of seeing your name in print? It is possible to make money as a freelance writer. The term freelance may be misinterpreted by aspiring writers. One may assume that work will be hard to come by. This is not true if you are willing to do research and can produce quality work. Thanks to the Internet, a myriad of possibilities exist. Finding writing "gigs," is not as difficult as it seems. There is a high demand for writers and freelancers in just about any area of expertise. Today, companies are interested in saving dollars and time by electing to freelance work; instead, of the hassle of overhead and overhead expenses. Online magazines are a good place to start. It seems that most are looking for writers. However, you may have to start off writing for free. Yet, you are still making your name known to viewers and building respect with the magazine. It also, looks great in your portfolio. Some websites may also list companies looking for freelance writers.

The research for finding writing opportunities is time consuming, but rewarding when you find yourself writing, getting published, and getting paid.

Websites to Consider

1. www.writersdigest.com -This is a very helpful website, besides having writing job listings.
2. www.writersweekly.com
3. www.sunoasis.com

You can sign up for their weekly email newsletter, which is loaded with tips for writers, and possible markets.

As a freelance writer, you will find that most potential clients expect to be able to view your portfolio . This allows them to gain perspective of your writing style and ability. If you don't have a portfolio they may ask you to provide a sample writing on a topic the employer suggest. Do not be intimidated. This is common procedure.

Ebay/Online Auctions

Ebay is the most popular online auction community. It is also a lucrative source of income for sellers. Selling is easy and fun with Ebay tools and its large community. If you have a solid product, a well written sales letter, and patience, online auctions can be a lucrative and successful online business. You do not have to be an expert to sell on Ebay or any other online auction site. I most cases, the tools are already in place. The buyers are ready to bid. The key to success is the product. It has to be a product that buyers want. It does not have to be expensive or unique just easy to sell. As an auctioneer research is required an necessary to discover what items are hot and which ones are not. Take the time to do a little research and business will be running itself in no time.

Jon Elton owns and operates a Best Penny Stocks Picks website to help other investors with their stock decisions. He also operates a Home Based Business earn money online site to help entrepreneurs gain experience and wealth."

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jon_Elton

Top 4 Recommended Video-Sharing Networks You Should Join

By Tinh Tran

Some of have might know these video sharing networks and used them as tools to store their personal videos and sharing with friends worldwide for free. But, not many of you thought that these networks have been competing with each other to keep their users through a lot of new features added and incentives offered. Some are paying its members through Google AdSense, the rest are paying up to 5-10$ per 10,000 impressions that your videos are viewed.

1. Flixya - Share Everything

Started as a video sharing site in July of 2006, Flixya has grown from a dedicated and loyal member base (all through word of mouth) and has quickly evolved into a thriving social media community.

Flixya makes it fun and easy to share videos, photos and blogs. We thought, why stop there? So, we set out to offer a platform that changes the way people think about social networking and goes beyond video sharing.

Flixya.com - A Social Networking Platform that Pays Members 100% Ad Revenue

By offering similar elements of popular social networking sites and combining a monetization method for content producers in one solution, Flixya.com enables any individual who qualifies for Google AdSense a rapid and powerful method to publish and monetize their online content and keep all the revenue.

What makes Flixya different from current social media community?

Flixya is the place to:

-Earn 100% ad revenue
-Network and make friends
-Share or upload videos
-Organize a photo gallery
-Upload images for free image hosting
-Create and write a blog and more

I have joined this network for about one year and earned 5-10$ maximum per day by uploading videos, images and posting my articles and get clicks and impressions from people watching them. I hope to increase that milestone in the coming time.

Flixya has just initiated a new program called UCASH that help you turn links into cash easily. When your Ucash links are clicked on, you make revenue from a redirect that can be an interstitial or top frame type advertisement. The current Revenue Sharing Rate (RSR) is $1 US for every 4000 top banner ad impressions, and $1 US for every 2000 intermission ad impressions. I think it is only suitable for a big site, not my small blog :-)


2. Revver - Video Sharing Network

Revver is the first viral video network that pays. It will connect makers, sharers, and sponsors of internet video in a free and open marketplace that rewards them for doing what they do best. You must be creators or producers of the uploaded videos or at least you have to demonstrate that you are holding the copyright of your uploaded ones, otherwise, your videos will be rejected by review team and never online.

The Revver revenue share percentage is calculated as 40-20-40. That means 40% of video revenue will be yours, 20% is for viewers of your videos and the rest of 40% is for Revver. It is very clear and you need a PayPal account to receive your payment.

When you upload your video to Revver, advertisement and unique tracking technology to it will be attached. It is called "Revverizing." There are two ways that your video and the associated ad can generate revenue: from impressions/views of the ad (CPM ads), and from clicks on the ad (CPC ads). When a viewer sees a CPM ad associated with your video, you get paid, no click required. When a viewer clicks on a CPC ad associated with your video, you get paid. In both cases, Revver splits the revenue with you 50/50. Please note that not every impression or click will result in revenue, as some advertisers only buy traffic from the US and Canada, and also multiple repeated impressions or clicks from a single user on a single video are scrubbed as duplicates.

If you are using WordPress, there is a plugin available for download that you can install in your blog. This plugin will connect your posts to all videos that you have uploaded to Revver and you will receive more impressions and click, of course more money too.

3. YouTube - Broadcast Yourself!

YouTube is the most popular video sharing network on the internet now as it has a huge amount of members and videos stored. It has been acquired by Google for about $1 billion dollars in the hope that adsense ads will be distributed through videos in the near future.

As announced last money, Videos ads has been piloted through Youtube videos but still limited to US-based publishers who owned a big video sharing network like Revver, it is now available to all publishers.

Have YouTube paid its publishers? Not really, YouTube only rewarded a few publishers who are creators of some videos that are most favorite for the whole year. Last year, lonelygirl15 and ninja and most of its members are still waiting for Adsense videos open to public soon.

If you are planning to make big cash with YouTube, you can still do that by uploading your videos, get them viewed by as many people as possible and submit them to YouTube Award Channel 2008.

4. MetaCafe - Video Entertainment Powered by You!

Metacafe is one of the world's largest video sites, attracting more than 25 million unique viewers each month (comScore Media Metrix). We specialize in short-form original content - from new, emerging talents and established Hollywood heavyweights alike. We're committed to delivering an exceptional entertainment experience, and we do so by engaging and empowering our audience every step of the way. Since 2003 Metacafe has been one of the top independent online video sites, and we're a leader in the evolution of digital entertainment. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Metacafe is privately held and investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

MetaCafe will pay you once your videos reached 10,000 views and you will receive 5-10$ and 5$ for each next 1,000 views. But, your videos must be family-safe and you mus hold the copyright of those videos too.

This is my own collected list of video sharing network, hope you can make extra cash with them and share your ideas soon.

http://vietblogviet.blogspot.com

http://vietblogviet.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tinh_Tran

Viral Video Email Marketing

By Alan Woods

Video Email is viral and markets itself because of user trust, ease of use and more importantly it is just plain cool. To send one to a friend or to your data base you click on record, state your message and hit send. When you receive Video mail or Vmail, there are several pictures of you as film strip in the body of the vmail. Naturally when the receiver sees your picture they are not only curious but know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this video email is a personal message from you. All they must do is click on the film strip and no matter where they are or what the connection speed the message can be viewed.

Want to increase sales 30 to 50% on the products or service you are now selling? I hear from authors, entrepreneurs, entertainers and retailers all the time who have seen spikes in their sales from using video. They send out video email to their data base and sales start climbing. I just received an inspirational testimonial video from an affiliate who shared with us that she marketed with video email to her client contact data base, to quote her, made an additional $450,000 to $500,000 An investment group watched her video, loved the marketing and purchased 40 condos from her. Needless to say she was on fire and incredibly excited about using vmail in her business. As always there are no promises or guarantees but on the other hand for ten bucks a month who in their right mind would not give it a shot?

Here is a really great video email reverse marketing tip that you should know about. For those of you that multitask you will really appreciate the beauty of this secret time saving tool. As you receive vmail and are sitting in front of your computer and well, lets say, writing your next ezine article or doing a report its great to be able to listen to your vmail messages. Businesses and friends are getting their messages through to me even when I do not have time to read the messages. I am listening to their video as I work.

Video continues to spread exponentially but it is not just for jokes and junk anymore. Investors, entrepreneurs and small businesses are starting to utilize a marketing tool that up until recently was reserved for the big boys with deep pockets that have been capitalizing on sight, sound and motion for decades. So what are you waiting for? Get hooked up, have fun and increase your income.

Alan L Woods is a successful investor, entrepreneur and prosperous affiliate. Check out http://www.YouCanToo.tv to see video examples and testimonials or to get started using video.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_Woods

RSS - Super Charge Your Blog Traffic

By Ryan Matthews

A great tactic to employ resulting in more traffic to your blog is to make use of the RSS feed that accompanies your blog.

If you have a wordpress blog, all you need to do is add "feed" to the back of your url. If it's a blogger blog you'll need to use atom.xml

Wordpress example: myblog.com/feed

Blogger example: myblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

RSS feeds has proven extremely useful for top bloggers in many cases.

The typical person does not have the time to keep his eye on a certain blog. Thats where RSS comes in hand, someone can subscribe to your blog and place your RSS feed in a feedreader which will enable them to always stay updated with what is going on with your blog. Everytime you make a post to your blog, they'll know.

Your feed can also be placed on other websites. A webmaster just adds your rss feed to a rss aggregator and voila, your rss feed will show on their website.

This feed can be placed at an unlimited amount of websites. People visiting those sites can receive all the information on whats going on at your blog. By incorporating RSS feeds and the relevant placement of it you will soon realize an influx of visitors on the scout for that product which you offer and they seek, making you grow and boost your traffic with every single post you make.

RSS can also be used in your blog to provide visitors with updated feeds of upcoming events and important information on certain products or services that you are or will be offering.

RSS is also a valuable tool to get your blog or website indexed faster when other webmaster place that feed on their site, resulting in faster indexed pages, backlinks and more traffic coming your blogs way.

So make sure to use the extensive power of an RSS feed to super size your blog traffic...

For more in depth tips and techniques on optimizing your RSS feed visit AffiliateTeachings - the ultimate affiliate training website, where normal affiliates gets turned into Power Affiliates.


Best regards,


Ryan


P.S - At AffiliateTeachings they teach you how to build a manual feed to get normal websites indexed SUPER fast.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ryan_Matthews

Should Your Business Go Online?

By Louis Chia Hau Lim

In the past, people always do business in the physical world. However, now times are beginning to change. As technology progress businesses now have the ability to move into the virtual realm. The virtual realm I am talking about is not something that exist only in games what I mean here is the world of computer, the place where people can communicate with each other within matter of second , that is the world of the internet. Doing business online is now a very popular. However is it right for you to move your business to the internet? Is it ok to start and online business? All of these questions will be further discussed in this article.

First let us, let us begin by looking at the cons of bringing your business onto the internet.

By bringing your business onto the internet, if you are not good with technology you will face many problems. One of the problems that you may face is web design. Web designing even with tools such as frontpage and dreamweaver which makes web design a piece of cake, you will find it quite difficult to create your own ecommerce website. Another problem you will need to face if you are not very good with technology is that you may find it very hard to maintain your website. You may find it hard to maintain your website because you need to find the correct hosting service and you will need to make sure that your website is working properly at all times. Thus so far we can see that it is a bad idea to go online with your business.

Another problem that you may face is because of the amount of money that you need to use to bring your business online. If you have problem with technology it is highly possible that you would need to hire other people to handle all the technological aspects of your website for you. When you hire more people you end up with more cost. Since you are into business I believe that you are looking forward to more profit so it would be appropriate to say that more cost of hiring people is a rather obvious disadvantage of bringing your business online.

Having talked about the cons of bringing your business onto the internet let us now look at the pros of bringing your business online.

As I have said before in earlier paragraphs the first problem you will face when bringing you business online is technology. This problem that you will face due to technology can be taken care of very easily. The solution to your technological dilemma is outsourcing. Outsourcing basically means to let other people handle certain aspects of your business for you. Since you are unable to handle the technological aspect it is reasonable to outsource the technological aspects of you website to people who know what they are doing.

What about the cost of hiring you ask? The cost of hiring people to help you with technological aspects of your website if I will say is not a lot. That is if you know where to look. If you look in the proper places you can get a programmer to design an entire website for you for just a couple hundred dollars. To me a couple hundred dollars is not much especially if it enables you to move your business online. But at the end of the day it is up to you. If you have a few hundred bucks to spare why not spend it to move your business online but if investing a few hundred dollars onto your internet business will cause you to starve than it would be best for you to not invest on bringing your business online.

When you bring your business online, another good thing about it is that by bringing your business online you will gain access to a larger market. The market you will gain access to when you bring your business online is the whole world. To me that is a lot of people, or in other words that is basically all the people you could hope to do business with. Just imagine, would your business benefit if you have 100 times more visitors than you already have now. Would you have a better chance of gain more profit?

One last benefit of bringing your business online is that your website never sleeps. Your website works for you 24hours a day, 31days a month, and 12 month a year. It never sleeps, it never eats, it never get sick, and it never complains complain. That is like the worlds best sales person, it is at a level where no human could ever hope to achieve. Just imagine, the worlds best sales person working for you. Would that benefit your business?

In conclusion, I would like to conclude that the benefits of bringing your business online, far outweighs the disadvantages of bringing your business online. So whenever you have the chance to bring your business online, just take a leap of faith and go for it.

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LouisHost.com is a provider a business class hosting.
If you are interested you can visit us at:
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Louis_Chia_Hau_Lim

Is Your Newsletter a Must-Read?

In a Web 2.0 world of blogs, podcasts and social networks, the humble newsletter might lack sex appeal. And while the notion of a newsletter might not be overtly enticing, it can still prove an effective channel for communicating with your customers. Trick is: make it a must-read publication. According to Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner of Editorial Emergency, the best have four common traits:

-A distinctive voice that cements the brand
-Pithy, interesting information
-A lively layout
-Interactivity

Editorial Emergency gives a gold star to The Colorado Wine Company's weekly newsletter. Here's what they get right:

-A playfully irreverent tone accurately reflects a shop where themed evenings include "The White Trash Wine Tasting," with pairings like Pinot Gris and "Le Pig in Blanket."

-There's some rich content here. "Owners John and Jennifer Nugent tell their tales of the grape with self-deprecating humor and genuine passion," say Glickman and Rubiner.

-Their interactive polls are great. Editorial Emergency asks if wine-expert critiques of the Cabernet Franc were "total b.s." or only "partly b.s."

The Po!nt: The Colorado Wine Company's newsletter is both entertaining and worthwhile; do the same with yours to reinforce your brand.

Source: Editorial Emergency.

Why All Keyword Phrases Weren't Created Equal!

By Richard Taylor

When you’re hunting for keyword phrases to use for your web pages or PPC campaigns, how do you actually know which phrases are likely to make you a profit?

And even more importantly, how do you actually find them?

First, lets review what might determine the profitability of a keyword phrase, and then I’ll tell you where you can go to find them quickly…

So what factors should you consider when trying to determine the profitability of a particular keyword phrase?

- the frequency of which your keyword phrase is searched on - the number of other web pages competing for your keyword phrase - how your keyword phrase is written - how much Pay Per Click advertisers are willing to bid for your keyword phrase - how closely matched your product is to your keyword phrase - does your keyword phrase include a product or brand name within the phrase

These six criteria above will go along way to determining how profitable a phrase will be for you.

Lets go through each of the criteria in more detail now and explore further how each actually influences the potential profitability of your keyword phrase…

1. Keyword Phrase Search Frequency

The higher the frequency that a keyword phrase is searched on, the higher the probability that it will be profitable as it will drivee you more traffic.

If your keyword phrase is never typed into a search engine, it definitely won’t bring you any traffic so you won’t make any profit from it!

2. Competition For Your Keyword Phrase Just because a keyword phrase is heavily searched on doesn’t mean it’s going to be profitable for YOU!

There is no point in optimising for traffic from highly searched on keyword phrases IF there are already thousands of other sites doing the same … because you’ll struggle to compete and have little chance of getting to the top of the rankings.

Therefore, for a keyword to be profitable, it needs to attract “reasonable” volumes of searches whilst not having too many web pages to compete with for the top spots … otherwise any chance of profitibility will be lost!

3. How The Keyword Phrase Is Structured This is a key point.

When you discover a keyword phrase that gets a lot of searches and is structured in the format of a “question”, you’ve potentially found a highly profitable keyword to exploit.

What do I mean by “structured as a question”?

Well, if you discover a highly searched on keyword phrase that starts with “why”, “how”, “where” or “which”, you’ve discovered an opportunity to provide the searcher with a “really targeted benefit”.

When you see the same question being repeated, you can be sure there’ a lot of people in that niche wanting to know the same information … so if you create a product that provides the answer and market around that keyword phrase you should see some great results … keyword phrases that are centered around a question are your opportunity to give them something valuable that they want … it’s your foot in the door!

In particular, I find using keyword phrases that are “questions” to generate information products to give away as part of my list building process to be highly effective. Simply find the answers to the question and put together a short report to give away is a great list building tool.

4. How Much Google Adwords Advertisers Are Paying For The Keyword Phrase

If advertisers are prepared to pay a lot to dispaly their advert against a keyword phrase, it must follow that its a valuable keyword phrase, and therefore should be profitable … makes sense does it not? Life really does not need to be complicated …

All you need to know is how much advertisers are bidding for a keyword phrase … if its a lot and it gets traffic but isn’t too competitive, it should be profitable … if your product is closely targeted to it of course.

Knowing how much a keyword phrase is worth in Adwords is really valuable, it really indicates whether or not there is likely to be money in the niche or not … particularly if you’re going to try and make money from Google Adsense

I’ll show you a great tool in a moment for finding information on Adwords bid amounts for keyword phrases.

5. How Well Matched Your Product Is To Your Keyword Phrase

There’s no point in identifying a potentially profitable keyword phrase and then using it to sell a product that isn’t closely matched to it.

It’s really important that your product is closely aligned to the keyword phrase if you’re to make money from that phrase and achieve good conversion rates.

6. Include A Product Name In Your Keyword Phrase

Keyword Phrases that include a specific product name or brand name are likely to be high converting keywords if you’re going to use them for affiliate marketing, because people already have been pre-sold on the product as they know of its existence before they search on it.

For this reason, if you’re affiliate marketing, include some keyword phrases that centre around the product or brand name.

So there you have it, you now know how to identify profitable keyword phrases using the six criteria above to analyse their potentially profitability.

I promised to tell you where you could find all of the information you need to analyse your keywords in one single place … well if you click on the link below I will!

Richard Taylor, the author, has made thousands of dollars in the last year as an online marketer. He uses one powerful tool in particular for all of his keyword research, research that has been at the heart of his earnings. Visit his site to discover which incredible keyword tool he uses.
http://www.essentialseotools.com

How to turn your Blog into a Blog Strategy

By Jennifer Osborne

What differentiates a tactic from a strategy?

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

1.Setting Goals and Objective(s)
2.Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
3.Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives

There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.

Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.

It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan

Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram

Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.

Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.

By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.

Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics

It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.

Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.

It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.

—————————————————————————————

Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective

Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.


Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)

In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.

Here is the plan one level deep:

SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media

Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO

Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.

Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.

Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.

If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

3) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.

RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.

Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.

Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas.

Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

4) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.

Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics

Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.

i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).

Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.

Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.

By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Website Content -It's All About The Why?

By Jerry Bader

Every week I get asked to look at business websites and tell the owners why they're not getting the results they want. Some of these sites are straightforward brochures, others are e-commerce catalogs, and some are those direct-mail-style pitches reminiscent of old mail-order magazine subscription schemes ported-over to the Web. Some have incorporated do-it-yourself audio and video and some even had this media professionally produced; still the results stink. Why?

'The Close' Is Always Found In 'The Why'

Certainly part of the problem stems from a very narrow definition of what a website is: by casting your site in terms of a brochure, catalog, e-commerce-site, blog, or portal, you are falling into the trap of concentrating on 'The What' rather than on 'The Why'.

This focus on 'The What' is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic, not to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Don't get me wrong, traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver traffic not orders - closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automatic never-touched-by-human-hands method is just plain nuts.

What you want to be careful of is search engine tactics and second rate media that actually gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message, of telling your business story, of creating a memorable brand image, and above all of generating profitable business clients.

Web-Video is a Presentation Marketing Strategy

If you pay any attention to what's going on, you must be aware of the shift in Web-thinking and the acceptance of Web-video as a fundamental Web-marketing tool. But like most things, there is a right way and a whole bunch of wrong ways to do it.

Web-video is a presentation marketing strategy thats strength and power comes from its ability to overcome the Web's natural sterile, isolationist environment, by incorporating verbal and non-verbal human elements that effectively deliver bold, well-crafted memorable messages. Can a Web-video campaign cure everything that's wrong with your company, or even your sales departments deficiencies? Of course not, but the right message based on 'The Why' using appropriate cost effective presentation techniques can position your business, brand your product, and generate sales leads.

Don't fool yourself: you and your sales staff have to close the sale. Do not expect to sit back and count your profíts while your website runs your business by default. Automatic pilot may work for sites that sell commodity items and nationally branded merchandise backed by millions of dollars of advertising, but unless you fall into that category, it's time to get real.

A New Web Paradigm

Here's a new way of looking at your website and if you 'get it' you will be able to refashion your site and reinvent your business in a way that gets you remembered and initiates action by your target market:

Start thinking of your website as a stage and all the content on it as players you direct in order to deliver your message and tell your story in a memorable manner to a relevant audience. So let's breakdown this Web-presentation model and analyze how it meets your marketing needs.

Your Website Is a Stage

Businesses who want to use their websites as a marketing vehicle have to get past thinking of them in terms of merely digital print media.

Just as damaging is the over-reliance on search optimization or IT technical solutions that have little or no relationship to marketing's primary goal of delivering a memorable message that initiates action on the part of the audience.

Knowing the age, sex and hat size of the last ten thousand visitors to your site may impress some, but reams of statistical information on your visitors doesn't necessarily mean you know what that data means or how to use it effectively. In the same vein, tons of traffic generated by the latest SEO manipulation doesn't necessarily translate into business.

Start thinking of your website as a stage, a presentation and performance platform that allows your company to present your message to your audience in an entertaining, informative, and memorable manner.

Tell Your Story In A Memorable Manner

There are many ways to present what you do and why your audience should care, but the most effective way is to deliver that information in a story format. When people come to your website they are putting you on trial, judging everything thing you present to see if it is relevant, convincing, and if it resonates with their needs.

The article, "Evidence Evaluation in complex decision making," in the 'Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,' by Pennington and Hastie explains when prosecutors tell their version of events to a jury in story-format they are able to achieve a 78% conviction rate, whereas lawyers who do not use a story-format to communicate to juries only get a 31% guilty rate. When visitors come to your website they are putting you on trial for your Web-business life.

Memorable Communication is All About the Performance

Effective communication begins with the campaign concept. If you don't have a well-defined, focused concept that deals with 'the why anybody should care factor', your communication will be muddy and irrelevant. Far too many marketing campaigns try to do too much, and in an effort to get your money's worth say everything and anything that comes to mind. Unfortunately, all you're really doing is confusing people and your core message never gets heard, let alone understood or remembered.

You need professional presenters who know how to use both verbal and non-verbal performance to get your message across, and of course you've got to give the presenters a script that is well written, entertaining, and informative.

Professional actors and voice-over talent bring infinite subtlety, nuance, and meaning to cleverly written scripts. Add sound effects, custom signature music and a few post-production enhancements and you have a memorable presentation.

What you don't need is complicated sets, props, and locations that íncrease the cost of production. The Web is not television, and there is no need to absorb inflated expenses based on ad agency cost-plus-pricing fees that bare little relation to effectiveness.

Expensive movie-style productions are just not necessary and lose their impact when delivered in relatively small Web-friendly formats that need to be easily integrated with additional collateral material used to present more details and to answer frequently asked questions.

Last But Not Least

We can learn a lot from children, not the least of which is their relentless quest for the answer to 'The Why' of things. We often forget that this is the central issue in our lives, and it is only after we've been told by parents, teachers, bosses and numerous other authority figures to shut-up and do what we're told, that we sublimate this need and replace it with the far less meaningful and convincing 'What.'

But if we as marketers can put our faith in delivering 'The Why' using the most people-friendly techniques of verbal and non-verbal digital communication, then we will have learned how to present a convincing memorable Web-marketing presentation.

About The Author
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246

MRPwebmedia delivers clients' marketing messages in memorable ways using video, audio, webmedia campaigns and websites; all created in-house from concept to implementation, from graphic and motion design to Web-design, from script writing to post-production, from music composition to signature sound design.

The Wisdom of the In Crowd

Every high school has at least a few popular girls. Though they're rarely the prettiest or the most charming, they rule their social scene with a cynicism that would make Machiavelli shudder. Even their friends fear them, and pop culture is rife with fantasies of popular girls who get their comeuppance—cult classics like Heathers and Mean Girls come to mind.

Nevertheless, Rachel Happe says they know something from which social media practitioners could learn. Impossible, you say? Consider her list of a popular girl's skill set:

-She knows the importance of being a hub, and controls information for her own benefit.

-She knows the right way to spread information, whether her purpose is organizing a party or harassing another girl.

-She knows how to exclude others from the group, and can deftly exploit a weak link.
She understands her brand and exactly how to go about developing pent-up demand.

-Happe adds that a lack of maturity means these girls often use their powers for evil, not for good, and that we don't want to replicate a vicious high school experience in social media.

"However," she notes, "why are we as adults relearning things that these girls know better than most of us do?" Asking that question—and, better yet, finding the answer—is Marketing Inspiration.

Everything in Moderation

In a classic post at his How to Change the World blog, Guy Kawasaki offers a succinct primer on how to be a great moderator. So should you find yourself hosting a discussion panel at your next industry conference, you'll be grateful for tips like these:

Don't over-prepare your panelists. It's fine to distribute the first few questions you plan to ask. But, says Kawasaki, "If you provide all the questions in advance, many panelists will prepare carefully-crafted, devoid-of-content responses—in the worst case, even tapping PR people for help." In other words, your panel will wind up on the express train to Dullsville.

Do over-prepare yourself. You're leading a discussion with subject-matter experts, so you have to be completely up to speed on the latest developments and controversies—particularly the hot topics that will enable you to, in Kawasaki's words, "stir the pot."

Ban "brief" PowerPoint and DVD presentations. If you let one panelist make a multimedia presentation, they're all going to expect the same opportunity. "Then the session will encounter the technical difficulty of making multiple laptops work with the projector or the challenge of integrating presentations into one," he says. "Forget it."

Remember that you're a moderator. While you want to make everyone look smart—say with a few softball questions—you must also be ready to call panelists on overt sales pitches or outright lies.

The Po!nt: "Moderating a panel is deceptively hard," says Kawasaki, "harder, in fact, than keynoting because the quality of the panelists is usually beyond your control." But with the right approach, you can make a panel as entertaining and content-rich as possible.

Source: How to Change the World.

Help Your Customer Live the Fantasy

Maki, the blogger behind Dosh Dosh, begins a post on selling dreams to your target audience with this quote from William Feather: "The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men—the man he is and the man he wants to be."

The duality can be observed in the cars we drive. Take the Prius, which isn't simply an economy car; it's also an eco-friendly symbol of social consciousness. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a Hummer is more than a utilitarian SUV; it's for those who dream of weekends spent on rugged off-road trails. Each vehicle not only addresses a customer need—transportation—but reinforces that need by selling an ideal.

"Your aim is to associate your brand with a vision, one that integrates with and enhances each customer's individual life goals," says Maki. "Buyer desires are transient and they can change but ideals do not shift as easily." And he lists five action points for appealing to a customer's aspirations:

-Emphasize your ideals and promises.
-Fulfill them in your actual site, service or product.
-Brand yourself through the right networks and connections.
-Tie your brand to the right images, personalities and events.
-Learn what your audience thinks about you.

"Product or service value is a relative perception,"

writes Maki. "It can be manipulated and infinitely enhanced by emphasizing the right ideals and promises." And that reminder is a swell bit of Marketing Inspiration.

Snagging Inbound Links

By Andy MacDonald

Inbound links are now so important in the constant battle to achieve top search engine rankings, that tons of people are using every tactic under the sun to gain that one additional link. You must be careful when it comes to linking though. You could jeopardize your whole linking plan by getting links in a shady manner which could have an adverse affect on your search rankings. These inbound links are seen by search engines as votes for your site within a particular community of sites.

Anytime you're being voted for, you want to have as many votes as possible. However you want to be using tactics which are going to pay dividends in your linking strategy, not do more harm then good. Below I líst some of the best and safest methods around for generating inbound links for your website. Some can be more effective than others:

Requesting Links: The oldest method of gaining inbound links is to request them. This requires that you study your market to find out who the players involved in the market are. Then, you contact each one of the sites and ask them to link to your site. In most cases, the person you contact receives your request, but providing links to other sites is the least of their worries, so you may never hear from them. If you do, it can sometimes be months later. So, you put a lot of time into requesting links from other sites for a relatively small return on your efforts. For more on requesting links, I recommend you checkout The Do's & Dont's of Requesting Links.

Writing Articles: One of the most effective methods of gaining inbound links is to provide an article for other companies to use as long as they include a paragraph at the bottom that includes credits for you as well as a link back to your site. This method of gaining inbound links works well, because web sites are always looking for good content to include on their pages. The catch here is that the article you write should be well written, accurate, and useful to other sites in your industry. Once you've produced an article that meets these requirements, you can begin to let others know you have content available for them to use for free; you can do this by having a 'free articles' page on your site or submit the content to article directories. For more on article marketing, view Bill Platt's in-depth article, Article Marketing for Links .

Blogs: Another way to get links back to your site is from bloggers. What started as a strange phenomenon that was mostly personal has now become a powerful business tool; many businesses rely on links back to their sites from the various industry bloggers out there. In most cases, though, bloggers aren't just going to stumble onto your web site. It's far better for you to contact the blogger with information about your organization, some product that you provide, or with news that would interest them. This information then gives the blogger something to use in his or her regular posts. Keep in mind, however, that you can't control what a blogger might say, so it's possible that the review you get won't be favorable. Its possible to get reviews from small to mid-sized blogs without too much of a problem, but when it comes to getting reviews from the most popular blogger in your niche, it may cost you a few hundred $$$. For example, John Chow charges a whopping $500 for a review, which he doesn't even write himself.

Press Releases: Press releases are one of the mainstays of any marketing program. It can be so effective that many organizations hire companies to do nothing but distribute their press releases. What's so powerful about a press release? It's just the facts, including benefits, sent out to publications and organizations that might publish all or part of the press release. Use press release marketing to send out new items of all types, and send them as widely as you can. New organizations, publications, newsletters, even some forums will post press releases. When you write it, make sure a link back to your site is included.

Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs are a type of paid advertising. You provide a link to people who want to link back to your web site. They place the link on their site and when someone clicks through that link and makes a purchase (or converts any other goal you have arranged), the affiliate - the person who placed your link on their site - gets paid a small percentage. Usually the payment for affiliate programs is very low ($.01 to $.05 per click or a small percentage of the sale). But some people make a good living being affiliates, and many organizations receive additional traffic because of their affiliate programs. The trick with affiliate programs is to not allow them to be your sole source of incoming links.

PPC and Paid Links: Pay-per-click advertisements are an acceptable business practice. There is no problem with using PPC advertisements to achieve inbound links to your site. Remember that, like affiliate links, PPC links are not direct links to your site. Paid links, on the other hand, are different from affiliate links - you pay to have a direct, or flat link, placed on a page. Some search engines frown on the practice of using these types of links. Using paid links (especially those that land on link farms) is a practice that carries some business risk.

Link to Yourself: Linking to yourself is a technique that sits right on the line between ethical and unethical. Linking to yourself from other sites that you might own is an acceptable practice. But if you set up other sites simply to be able to link back to your own site and create the illusion of popularity, you're going to do more damage than it's probably worth to you. If you are linking to yourself and you suspect that you might be doing something that would adversely affect your search engine ranking, then you shouldn't do it. There are plenty of links to be had without linking back to your web sites; you just have to work a little harder for the higher quality links.

Inbound links are such an important part of any marketing online strategies that some organizations find themselves caught up in the process of learning who is linking back to them. It's not a bad thing to want to know where your links are coming from. And one of the places you can gather that information is from your web-analytics application. A great and free analytics program available is Google Analytics. Check it out.

So there are my top link snagging tips which I actively employ for most of my online businesses. Which tactics do you use for your website, and have I missed out any good link-snagging techniques? Have your say by leaving me a comment.

About The Author
Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, & SEO, checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS .