


Archive for May, 2009
There is no doubt that search engine optimization (SEO) plays a very important role in the internet marketing field. If you are someone who is looking to take part in internet marketing, chances are that you may want to consider article submission as an organic SEO technique. Here, through this informative article, we will take a much closer look at how article submission works, as well as some of the ways that you can have the most success with this SEO technique.
Article submission is also referred to as article marketing. The way that this SEO technique works is when you decide to pay a company to have articles written for you, or if you decide that you have enough knowledge on the subject to write them yourself. Once you have the articles written that you are interested using for your company or whatever area you are interested in trying to promote, you will then submit your articles to directories. The entire concept of article submission is very easy to understand.
Keep in mind that there are a number of different things that you can do to improve the overall success that you have with article submission as the SEO technique that you are interested in using. The most important thing that you will want to take into consideration is that you will want to make sure that your articles have the right amount of keyword density. It is typically recommended for you to have articles which offer two to three percent keyword density. This will help improve the overall search engine, or directory, ranking that your submitted articles will have.
Another one of the most important things that you will want to take into consideration is the fact that your articles should be much more than just keyword dense. While this is very important to the amount of success that you have with article submission, it is also important to keep in mind that the content of your articles is very important as well. Not only should they be well written with perfect grammar, but your submitted articles should also be relevant to the subject which they are about. Although you may have thought about offering the information that you want included in your articles in a playful manner, chances are that you will find that you will have the most success when you decide to present your information more professionally. This will help you gain the credibility that you need to gain the most success for your company or product.
One of the main benefits that article submission has to offer you is the fact that it is known to be very successful. If you are interested in getting the internet marketing results through one of the best SEO techniques which is out there, then article submission can really do a lot for you. Another one of the main benefits of this marketing solution is the fact that it is known to be very cost effective, which is great for anyone who has a low marketing budget to begin with. Whether you have a large or small business, you very well may find article submission to be one of the best internet marketing solutions for you.
I stumbled across this quite by accident. I knew it was there because I’d seen it before but I forgot about it until today.
So I did some checking to see if it still does work and based on my limited test it appears that it does.
What I’m about to explain to you may not only help get sandboxed sites indexed and ranking quicker, it can even make the site owner a little money.
I’ve been blogging for a few years now. I started it as a hobby and the blog I had was actually a blog before there were blogs. In other words I was “blogging” with a regular website.
Then a friend turned me on to Movable Type. It is a software which allows me to automate the publishing of content on my website.
I was having problems getting my website/blog indexed by Google back then &ndash this was about 3 years ago.
It was also around this time that I heard of a new program called Google Adsense (https:.google.com/adsense) in which one could place code on their web pages that would display ads, and the website owner would earn money on every click.
I thought “what a cool idea” so I immediately applied for an account. 48 hours later I was placing ads on my blog.
Shortly after this while reviewing my server logs I noticed that I was getting Google referrals! That’s right, within days of placing the ads on my site, it had been fully indexed by Google and it was actually ranking quite highly for terms related to the content I was posting.
I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I thought all I was going to do was make a little money on the side yet I found that the Adsense may have actually helped get my site indexed.
Remember, this was before the Sandbox, but it was a time when link popularity ruled the web. But since it was only a hobby I wasn’t worried about building links. Because I already had a few loyal readers, I wasn’t trying to position this site.
Flash forward to December 2005 and a friend asks me to help him set up his own blog. Actually he wants two of them &ndash each with their own topics, and both very different in nature.
I consult with him and on February 1, 2006 we register two new domains for him.
He proceeds to build out his blogs and as he’s doing this I suggest placing ads on them. At the time I wasn’t thinking that it would help with indexing, just another way to increase exposure of the ads to generate more revenue for me and him.
We agree to split the money and he places the ads on the two new sites.
I didn’t think much of it until his visitor traffic started going up. He also placed Google Analytics code on the sites and gave me access to them so I could take a look to see where all this traffic is coming from.
Turns out, he’s getting a few Google organic referrals.
Imagine that &ndash two brand new sites, with no incoming links, but somehow they have managed to sneak out of the Google Sandbox in 3 weeks?
Imagine my surprise, considering I have another site that I started over a year ago, and have been dutifully building content and links, yet I can’t get it out of the sandbox. In fact, the current Google cache is of pages that no longer exist, and haven’t for months.
My explanation, however “out there” it seems to be is that somehow the Google Ads have allowed the site to bypass the sandbox and move into the index almost immediately.
The first Google organic referral came last week, just two short weeks after the site was tagged with the Google Adsense code. Since then, both sites have received a handful of Google organic referrals.
Based on this very small and somewhat limited test case, my gut is telling me that one way out of the sandbox and into the SERPs is to apply for and install Google AdSense onto your site.
At the very least you’ll make some money &ndash maybe not a lot, just a few dollars a month (Google only pays out in $100 increments mind you, so it may take a while to get that first Google check) and the best case is that you’ll bypass the sandbox, get indexed quickly and even start driving organic referrals to your site.
Like I said, this isn’t anything near a scientific study but it seems pretty clear to me that what has helped these two sites become indexed so quickly are the ads.
So if you’re stuck in the sandbox, perhaps applying for AdSense is a good idea.
I know I’m going to be placing ads on my other site to see what effect (if any it has). My guess is that within a few days it too will start ranking.
Blogging has become a very popular as more people turn to writing online journals to express their thoughts and interest. Most blog writers have some sort of following by readers, unless they choose to keep their blogs private. Even if the blog is designed just for your family or a group of friends, it is important to understand your readers and what they want.
A blog, or Weblog, is an online journal or diary where people of all ages and from all over the world can express their thoughts, opinions, interests and maybe just random thoughts. Businesses also use blogs to communicate with their customers and it is proving to be an effective form of communication. Whether you write a blog for your company or just for other readers, you readers rely on you for updating your blog on a regular basis.
When you get ready to keep a blog, think about what your readers want from a blog. One important part of keeping readers interested in blogs is to update frequently. If blogs are not updated on a regular basis, they will find another blog to read. It is important to keep your blog current and to provide the updates to your reader. You might even think about including a subscription or email option to your blog. When a reader subscribes to your blog, they will automatically receive updates when you add a new entry to your blog. This helps them know when you have new material on your blog.
Another way to keep your readers coming back to your blog is to target your audience. If you are a pet lover and write about your life with your five dogs, then you need to find others with similar interest. Some groups will not be interested in your story. Find your audience by visiting web groups or communities that have to do with your main subject. Tell everyone you know about what you blog about and provide a link to your writing. If a reader is interested in the subject you are writing about, it is more likely that they will come back and visit often. It is important to remember that there are literally thousands of blogs on the Internet on virtually any topic. You want to grab your reader and keep them coming back.
You are also enticing your readers by coming back for more if you use your blog wisely. If you want to write private thoughts, then do not share your writing with others. If you do want to share, be careful about what you write about. If you embarrass people you know through your writing, then you are not using your blog wisely. Protect the people around you and do not try to get even with people through your blog. Readers that do not know you are not interested in reading your nasty posts to your enemies. Keep your blogs fun and entertaining for anyone who wants to read them.
Also, when you blog, keep your readers interested by having an easy to use blog. Sometimes large pictures or downloads can take up a lot of time and your reader may not want to open large files. If you want to include pictures, links, or downloads make sure they work and will not slow a computer down. You can also make your blog easy to use by using a blog-hosting site that cuts down on advertising and pop-ups. Most of the time, those types of advertising will annoy your reader. When you choose a blog site, check into the types of features that the site can offer. Some of these sites that avoid ads and pop ups may cost, but are worth it if you want your readers to have a good blog experience on your site.
You can also ensure that your readers will come back to your blog if you treat your readers with respect. They may not like something you write about and if they leave a negative comment, do not flame your readers. Also, you readers will appreciate your writing more if you leave nice comments to them or even send them a quick email thanking them for visiting your blog. This is a great way to build communication with your readers and will keep them coming back for your blog.
I am not sure how many people have noticed or even care, but there seems to have been another page rank update from Google. This update is very strange however and things are happening that are a lot different from anything I have ever seen before.
I first noticed a difference when I went and looked at one of my websites which is only three weeks old. The site in question had previously had no page rank due to being a very new website and in those three weeks since its launch, I had probably obtained twenty or thirty one-way backward links pointing to it. To my amazement it was now showing as a page rank five.
I have a number of websites one of which is around five years old, it has over four thousand backward links and is a page rank four. After seeing my new site go straight in at page rank five, I quickly went to see how this older site had faired in this new update, it had not changed.
After checking all of my websites, I have realised that the sites which had a page rank have all stayed the same, however the ones which had previously a page rank of zero, now have a page rank and have seemingly been a part of the new update.
A few hours later I was looking at one of my other websites which has a homepage page rank of two. This is where things began to become a bit weird. I noticed that its external pages had now become a page rank four but the homepage was still only a PR2. What is all that about? The backward links are mainly pointing to the homepage so how can this page have a lower PR than the external pages?
I thought I knew a little bit about page rank but this has thrown me some what.
I then started to look at the various posts in different search engine forums and other people were writing that they have experienced the same as what I had with their websites.
It maybe of course that what we are seeing is just the start of a big page rank update, which is what I am hoping. What I also find quite strange is that there is normally quite a large break between updates. On average this can be anywhere between three and four months. If my memory serves me correct, I am virtually sure that we have only just seen a page rank update in the middle of February. Are we now going to see more regular updates?
I have heard as I am sure you have, that there have been a few changes at google in the last few weeks. They have been rolling out what they call bigdaddy and this could certainly have something to do with it.
I am going to keep an eye on further changes as some people that I read about in the forums, did state that they had seen updates to their older websites as well as their newer sites. I am still waiting and wondering if it will happen.
I have to say that so far this latest update has been a good one for me personally and I will continue in my quest to obtain as many quality one-way backward links pointing to my websites as possible.
This form of website promotion has worked for me in the past and in my opinion is far better than joining any link exchange scheme.
Steve Hill
The vast majority of web sites are destined to fail before they are even built. Why? Because people building sites almost always put the cart before the horse. Actually, most don’t even include the horse.
Evolution of Your Site
New sites follow a typical evolutionary process.
1. The first stage involves slaving over the design of the site to get just the right look;
2. The second stage is the publication of the site;
3. Third comes the first thought about how to get traffic to the site;
4. Fourth, the discovery of pay-per-click options;
5. Fifth, the pursuit of PPC campaigns and realization of sales!;
6. Sixth, the “misery stage”, occurs with the realization that sales are being made at a loss!;
7. Frustration, frustration, frustration;
8. The “extinction stage” - With profitability seeming impossible, the PPC campaigns are closed and the site just sits there.
Does any of this sound familiar? You need not suffer this evolutionary extinction! Taking one step before you build a site can save you a lot of wasted time and money.
If You Build It, Will They Come?
The first step to developing a successful web site is keyword analysis. Keywords are the anchors of each page of your site, a collective summary of your products and services.
The first step to developing an online business is to identify whether there is sufficient traffic for your business product or service. Let’s look at a very simple example.
If your are selling boating products, each page of your site should incorporate boating-related keyword phrases. You must analyze whether there is a sufficient number of searches each month to make your boating site a viable entity. A free method for doing this is to use the Overture inventory tool:
inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
In our example, we would do a search for “boating” to see how many searches there are for the keyword as well as other boating-related keyword phrases. A quick search shows there were over 100,000 searches for “boating” and over 4,000 searches for “boating supply” in March 2005. These numbers suggest that there clearly is enough traffic to build a site selling boating products.
Alternatively, assume that we want to build a site promoting our hiking guide service in Nevada. If we do a search for “Nevada hiking” using the Overture inventory tool, we find that there are only 100 or so searches a month. Should we go ahead and build the site? Probably not. There simply isn’t enough interest to justify spending the time and money.
Unfortunately, we often talk with site owners that have spent significant amounts of money building a site only to find that there is little interest in their product or service. By performing keyword analysis, you can determine whether a site should be built before you spend the time, energy and money on it. There is little reason to build a site that has no chance of success.
What is the key to Internet business success? It’s simple:
Targeted Traffic
Clever internet marketers have long used a variety of ways to herd targeted traffic to their web pages, such as: pay-per-click campaigns, email marketing, search engine optimization, and ezine advertising.
However, there is a simple, effective method that many marketers have missed — submitting brief, 400+ word articles, so that they appear all over the internet.
Linking Readers Back To Your Website
The time and effort you spend on these mini-articles is a shrewd investment. Here are a few of the ways widespread publication of your articles pays off:
Every article you submit contains a link back to your website. Every link helps your website gain link popularity, one of the factors in your search engine ranking.
If your article’s content matches the content of the web page you’ve linked it to, the search engines will regard this as a relevant link. Relevant links to your website are valued even higher by the search engines.
And ultimately, the higher your site is ranked, the more traffic you will get.
People Want Information
It helps to keep in mind that people who use the search engines are looking for information. If they happen upon one of your articles and find it interesting and useful, they will be likely to click on the link to your website to continue their research.
The more places your articles appears, the more people will find and read them, and the more traffic that will be funneled to your website.
What Makes An Effective Article?
How do you create one of these articles? Simple. Your article should be around 400-800 words long and contain just enough information to:
(a) offer the reader some useful facts,
(b) motivate the reader to click on the link to your website for more information, and
(c) attract the attention of an ezine editor who may republish your article.
A good article might contain 1 or 2 tips extracted from an information product you are selling on your website. You could also use paraphrased information from a web page you want the reader to visit. Also effective is a review of a product you would like the reader to purchase. The review would contain a link pointing to your affiliate page through a link tracker, or to a page on your own website where you offer more details.
Get A Ghostwriter
No time or inclination to write your own articles? Pay a ghostwriter to write them for you. Simply visit websites like Elance where you can post a description of the articles you want written, and writers will contact you.
When your article is done, you’ll want to submit it to as many places as possible, including:
Article Directories. They will run a quick content check, then publish your article. Once posted to one of these directories, it will likely be republished all over the internet. Many publishers are routinely on the lookout for quality articles. You simply allow them the rights to re-use your article and in exchange they leave intact the link back to your website contained in the bio at the bottom of your article. You just gained another link without lifting a finger.
Ezine Editors. You’ll get lots of well-targeted traffic by submitting your articles to popular ezines that are related to your niche website. Ezines are always in need of new, good quality content. Once your article is published in an ezine, you will get lots of publicity in return. Getting your articles in ezines read by hundreds, or even thousands of people is an excellent way to quickly increase traffic to your website.
Your Own Article Directory. Many ezine publishers and webmasters don’t realize that article directories even exist. Once they read one of your articles from a directory, they will visit your website, which could prominently display a link to your own article directory. The link should make clear the fact that your content is free for use in any website or ezine. “Free Content For Your Ezine” should appear in a link that is prominent on your directory website.
Keep in mind: this is a huge win-win-win process for all involved.
Authors get free publicity and links back to their website(s)
Publishers get free information for their website(s)
Readers get free quality information for their research and buying needs.
It goes without saying that maintaining a blog is a good idea for the health of your business. Have you ever asked yourself Why? Being familiar with how blogs work and how to effectively utilize them for the health and wealth of your business will pay you back substantially for your efforts. Ineffective Blogging will simply waste your time, efforts, and this tremendous marketing tool.
Why does your business need a Blog? Credibility would be a good answer. Posting about news in your industry, links you’d recommend to topics related to your industry or post valuable information from the inside or your personal experiences, your readers will see you not only as a valuable information source but as a community minded business.
Building traffic and list building are two more reasons why your business needs a blog. These tools are Solid, Effective, and Proven Tools for marketing your Goods and Services Online.
Blogs are great for your customers.They’re not seen the same as your basic website or sales page. Postings are usually informal. At times entertaining yet informative. Their accuracy and effectiveness will peak the interest of your readers, establish you as an Expert, and build trust between you and your readers.
Having the ability to offer subscriptions to your blog through sources loike bloglet.com, your readers can simply opt to recieve notices of your most recent postings, delivered directly to their inboxes. Provided your postings remain relevant to your readers wants and needs, they’ll continually come to you first.
If you set up your blog to accept comments, this will give your readers the ability to post feedback on your posts. This will give you valuable insight and ideas regarding your next product or project.
How to build traffic with your blog. Your blog provider may provide potential readers the option of a search box. This tool gives the reader the ability to search for a particular blog using a word or phrase. By using those particular words or phrases in your title you’ll boost your chances for acquiring some targeted traffic.
Don’t forget to submit your blog to the search engines. Also remember, this is “The Information Super Highway”. Blogging is information and the Search Engines Love them. After every post, Simply ‘ping’ your blog, (this announces
your update. I use .pingoat.com/) and the search engines will pick it up.
So jump on the blogging bandwagon take advantage of one of the cheapest and smartest marketing tools available. It’s easy and profitable - so build yours today!
These are a few new internet business ideas that I won’t be trying, but I hope that someone will. The first comes from people’s frustration with technologies like e-book formatters. They don’t want to spend hundreds for the software, and even when they do, they have trouble learning to use it.
The solution? A service business that compiles e-books for people. You could even have customers e-mail a photo and story about each family member or friend, and make a photo scrapbook for them. Whatever the purpose of the book, the idea is that the customer can easily download the book when done.
You would also host it on your site for a year or more, with the download link on a page that only the customer knows the address of. They can direct people to the page to give the book away, sell it, or otherwise distribute it to whomever they please. A larger contract might be doing the first high school yearbook in an e-book format (probably already done by the time you read this).
New Internet Search Engine Ideas
You may know that Google and other search engines give preference to sites that are older. It’s a part of their search algorithms, and probably a good idea. It does mean, though, that even the best site in the world on a given topic may be nearly impossible to find. This can also happen because the site has too few incoming links (another part of the algorithms).
A solution is a search engine that gives highest priority to new web sites. It might even drop sites from the results once they are six months old, or perhaps always display those older sites on the bottom half of the page. The top results would always be the most relevant sites that are also the newest. This isn’t meant to be better than existing search engines, but to serve a niche they don’t serve.
Why is this a workable internet business idea? Partly because it would be so different from other search engines would attract attention and usage. Perhaps more importantly, many people would love to check regularly to see what new sites are out there covering “dogs,” “backpacking,” money making,” “baby names,” or whatever. Also, new site owners, waiting to show up in Google, would be regular visitors, searching for their own sites.
Another search engine I would like to see is one just for shopping. Imagine searching for “leather coat,” and instead of getting sites that happen to use the words and others that know how to optimize, you got 80-word descriptions of various leather jackets, always with the price and other important information. If done well, only fishing poles would be in the results when you typed in “I want to buy a fishing pole.”
It could be a paid-inclusion search engine. The user just wants to buy something, without the usual information sites in the results or “Buy leather on Ebay!” advertisements. Results could be randomly presented to start, with the ones getting clicks rising to the top of the results. This would be a democratic placement similar to Google’s ads, but with enough information to make it more meaningful than five to ten-word sales pitches.
Can these new ideas work? Only time will tell, but I hope someone tries. In the meantime, I will continue writing articles like this to bring traffic to my sites. It has been the most profitable of the internet business ideas I have tried.
Because I’m a journalist and copywriter who also reads and writes blogs, people who don’t use the Internet as much as I do have started to ask me some searching questions of late. Some of them sound worried.
They have heard a lot about blogging and the impact it could have on traditional marketing.
One person even asked me (perhaps a little concerned) if PR teams will be replaced with bloggers. I don’t see it, I reassured them.
PR is also about managing people and that will always be important. The mainstream media isn’t about to disappear, and the majority of the population probably couldn’t care less about blogs. For all the hype, blogging should be seen as a potential addition to a marketing portfolio.
The place blogging may have its biggest impact is on areas of the trade press.
There is a revolution in publishing taking place, sparked by the new forms of advertising such as Google ad sense. This has made it possible for someone running a blog site, with a staff of one and overheads of almost nothing, to start earning a living from their publishing.
If the blogger can get readers, then Google places the ads (relevant to the content) &ndash and you have a publishing business. This gives a lot of people an incentive to provide great content &ndash so that they get more readers, and more money from ads.
It’s just like the traditional press, but without the need for offices, advertising sales teams, HR departments etc.
This works best in niche areas. Soon, there may not be much need for magazines about new gadgets, or mobile phones, or ride-on-lawn mowers or whatever. Because the blogs have it covered, providing more up-to-date information and readers who are ready to buy &ndash and can simply click on the advert.
The everyday bloggers have a new-found power and are not about to go away. Some blogs now get millions, even tens of millions of readers a day. They are rivalling the mainstream media &ndash and if the US government can’t control them, what chance does a small company or even a big enterprise have?
Companies and blogs
It’s still pretty early days for companies using blogs, and the whole thing is evolving. It will probably settle down into one more piece in the jigsaw, another communication channel that companies can use.
The style used in company blogs needs to be less “written by committee” and more personal and spontaneous.
Companies that try to use too much subterfuge in the blogging world are exposing themselves to a potential backlash. There’s a great emphasis on honesty in the blogging world &ndash for example bloggers will often end a post with a “disclosure” note which mentions any conflict of interest.
At a simple level, blogging can be seen as simply another way of publishing information on the Internet. It’s useful because it is so fast and it’s easy to get a range of people involved quite quickly.
However, there are real skills involved to good blogging. Not only does the writing have to be engaging, colourful, funny, informative etc, but the writer also needs to take account of search engine optimisation techniques &ndash which basically means using the right keywords to ensure the blog shows up in the search engines.
At it’s most sophisticated, blogging is being used to create “viral marketing” campaigns &ndash to create a “buzz” around a product as though this were coming from ordinary people. This is a whole new field of marketing / advertising…
