|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Archive for October, 2010
Oct. 29th 2010
What is the hot word of the day in Internet marketing? If you’re an online business owner you are very familiar with the term “link building”. What you may not know is that one of the best ways to build quality links is by directory submission.
As an Internet marketer you know that your main goal in order to bring in quality traffic is to win a high position in the search engines. The problem is that the algorithm used by search engines is an unknown. We all guess at it, but it still remains a mystery.
There is one aspect that we all agree on, and that’s the importance of link building. That is, bringing in high-ranking inbound links.
It makes sense. The Internet is built on links. One site links to another for information that is valuable to their visitors – and search engines view these links as important. In fact they look at one-way links as a vote for the website that is links to. Obviously if another site is linking to yours, you must have relevant information.
By looking at the links as votes, it’s easy to see why search engines give sites with many links from other high-ranking websites preference (better PR) than those with fewer inbound links.
Knowing this we are all striving to get as many votes as we can. We engage in article marketing and other strategies to grasp those all-important votes – we’re sort of like politicians trying to get a seat in Congress. And yes, there are those that use black-hat methods online as well!
I’m going to explain to you how directory submission can give you a jump-start in gaining those votes. (You may want to keep this really easy tactic to yourself!)
When you submit to web directories, there are no secret algorithms involved, just simple categorization. In other words, your site is listed by topic or keywords. Your site is also reviewed by human editors. By getting inclusion into these directories, much of the search engine’s work is already done and your site is indexed much quicker.
But then comes the exciting part. You get a “vote” from an authority site, many of which have a high PR themselves. All right! Search engines place a lot of importance to back links from directories so your search engine ranking will be higher than those who don’t have these links.
Directory submission is easy to do, just follow the guidelines and you’re off to getting that all allusive vote, by using a simple link building tactic, that will shoot your website to the top of the search engines. So go for it – “it’s so easy even a caveman can do it!” (Sorry Geico!)
Oct. 28th 2010
Once you have written your properly formatted press release, you have to get it to the news wires. Distributing press releases can be done in two ways, free or paid. This article will show how to handle the free distribution.
It’s not that difficult to distribute your press release on your own I’m going to show you 6 easy steps you can follow:
1. Choose two or three free services based on which ones will get your release added to the news engines. This makes your press release available via search. The free option at PR.com is one where your release will get picked up by Google News. Be sure they allow anchor text links and keyword optimization.
2. Send your news release to your local newspaper or other local media. Send it to the most relevant editor. Usually smaller papers are more than happy to announce something newsworthy by a local resident. You might want to build a relationship with the editor as well.
3. Send to niche or directory outlets, top blogs, magazines or websites in your niche. Work on the larger ones first and submit to as many as you can. Generally if you get bigger pickups it will trickle down to the smaller niche blogs. Build relationships as you go.
4. Add to your own website or blog. So many forget this wonderful place to share their news releases. If you want exposure, expose your own visitors and customers! Not only that but it allows you to archive your releases for journalists who visit your site.
If you don’t have a pressroom, add one! You can add social media tools, add commenting (especially if it’s on a blog), add RSS or do whatever you want to do. It’s a wonderful idea to keep visitors in touch.
5. Send it to the Associated Press. It certainly can’t hurt to try, and if they pick it up, you might get some really good media coverage out of it. Simply email or fax to the appropriate editor depending on your location and news.
6. Plan the timing of your release. Usually the best time is early in the day in the middle of the week. However, if there has been a national disaster, or some other major news story, wait a day before sending your press release.
Once you have sent out your press releases be prepared to answer media questions should they arise.
Oct. 27th 2010
Video blogs, or vlogs, have become very popular since the video revolution of the past couple of years. Video blog creation isn’t all that different than creating a blog with content.
Vlogs contain videos along with content – both formats enhance and interact with each other. In other words, instead of simply posting an article, the article or content would be embedded with videos, or a video might be enhanced with a few lines of text.
Video blogs work the same as any blog. Video blog creation can be easy, fun, and free. You’ll need a camcorder, editing software and a high-speed Internet connection. An alternative to creating your own video is to use video clips from YouTube or similar sites.
1. As with any blog, your blog needs a theme such as affiliate marketing, pet care or weddings and can be created for personal or professional use.
2. Find a web host. If you have a website you can host your blog there as long as your vlogging on the same theme as your site. There are also many free services that you can choose from.
3. Choose a name for your new blog creation that relates to your theme or niche. When choosing a name, try to come up with something catchy or memorable that readers will remember. If you’re starting your own site specifically for your vlog you’ll also need to purchase a domain name.
4. Prepare your content. For the most professional results set up a plan or script.
* Record your video clip.
* Upload to YouTube or Google to store online and copy the embedding code
* Alternately, if your blogging platform includes an icon to upload a video directly into your post, follow the directions and upload directly into your blog post.
5. Create your new blog post. Using the embedding code for your uploaded clip and paste that information into the code of your new post or follow the instructions in your blogging platform if you have uploaded directly to your blog.
6. Select the publish button in your blogging application – and your live online.
Now that your video blog creation is complete, keep these few things in mind. To build a following and keep them interested, update your vlog at least once a week. Make your vlogs unique and interesting to set them apart. Use content to place relative keywords into your posts, and encourage comments and feedback from your readers. Happy vlogging!
Incoming search terms:
Oct. 26th 2010
Have you decided on banner advertising but need a few banner creation tips to make your ads as profitable as possible?
Good! Because I have a few tips that I would like to share with you.
First and foremost, always create your banner from the prospective of the viewer. To do that you must know who your viewer is – so do your research! That said, following are the creation tips I promised you…
1. Small Graphics File – Keeping the graphics file small is one of the most important things to keep in mind when designing your banner. Try to keep the file below 10-15k so that it loads quickly. It may not be easy to do, but imagine a customer scrolling down the page without ever seeing your ad because it hasn’t downloaded yet!
2. Create an Awesome Headline – A good looking graphic is great, but the key to having an effective banner ad is in the headline. An effective technique is to use the same headline that is on your sales page, building continuity between your ad and your product.
3. Good Copy – This seems like a given, but it is so important. It’s not the picture that makes people click through. The graphic makes people take notice, the headline grabs their attention and the copy makes them click through.
4. Call to Action – It seems obvious that you should click on an ad if you are interested, but don’t leave a doubt. Tell the viewers exactly what you want them to do. Unequivocally state, “Click Here” – after all, that is the purpose of banner advertising – to get viewers to click through to your site.
5. Blue Borders – A blue border garners a better response rate than any other border color. By using a blue border you’ll easily influence more viewers to click on your banner.
6. Animation – Animation increases banner effectiveness by 30-40% so think seriously about this. The key to using animation is to keep your banner small so that it doesn’t overwhelm – but does grab attention.
One other thing I’d like you to keep in mind is to make sure you place your banner on sites that cater to your targeted audience. In other words if your audience is Internet marketing you wouldn’t want your banners placed on a website that sells children’s toys. The example may sound simplistic, but if your banners are not placed correctly, you are simply wasting your money.
There you have it, my top banner creation tips! Using these tips will enable you to get higher click-through rates for your banner ads.
Incoming search terms:
Oct. 25th 2010
Article marketing is one of the most cost efficient and powerful online marketing strategies. It’s a combination of direct interaction with your market and search engine optimization techniques for maximum impact. It is one of the early online marketing techniques and has repeatedly proven its effectiveness. Whether you do it yourself or use an article marketing service, you can expect to:
* Drive targeted traffic to your website
* Increase your marketing ROI
* Gain link popularity and boost search engine rankings
* Boost your reputation, name recognition and credibility
Since the beginning of online business, article marketing is looked upon as one of the most authentic, effective and natural ways to draw targeted traffic and quality backlinks to your website. A well written, focused article provides information about the services and products your promoting and also convinces them to take a look.
Article marketing is a fundamental aspect of most marketing strategies because it is so effective. It does have a downside, however, and that is that it is very time consuming to write and submit your articles to get the coverage that you might need for your campaign. That’s where an article marketing service can help.
Most article marketing services will both write and distribute articles for you. Here is a general listing of what many services offer.
* Original, unique, keyword optimized articles
* Links to your website or product
* Submission to at least 10 directories. There are a lot of variables on the submission end according to the service and the package you purchase
* Report on the package you purchased
Most article marketing services offer a structured program to alleviate you of the daily, time consuming tasks of writing and submitting articles. Good services will research your topic so that articles are informative and useful to your readers. They will also use keywords you provide for SEO optimization.
Some companies provide submission only packages, giving you the option to use your own articles and having them do the submitting. This is great for anyone who wants to keep a certain tone in his or her articles, or who just prefers a more hands on effort.
Others offer all types of variables, from packages and pricing to very unique services. The best thing you can do is Google article marketing service and do your research to find the service that provides just what you need for your marketing campaigns.
Oct. 15th 2010
While millions of us around the world use search engines such as Google to get to the information we are seeking, we invariably do not pay much heed or even give a thought to the process by which Google is able to successfully index the billions of sites that exist all over the world, throwing up just the right results for the information you are seeking. Agreed that much of the process is automated, using a complex mix of algorithms and other search engine tools, search engine submission, viz. sites submitted manually to engines such as Google, definitely plays a major role in the indexing done by the latter.
In this regard, a lot of businesses are often left wondering as to whether they should develop and upload their sites for Google and its ilk to index them automatically or should they submit their sites manually to these engines.
We will try to clear the air in this regard by affirming that while you do have the choice to leave it to the search engines to stumble upon your website and then index it; it is always advisable to submit the same manually so that you are assured that the site is actually indexed.
In this regard, you have the option to follow two approaches; either you go through the submission process yourself, or you hire an external agency to do the same for you. Either way, as long as the submission is done correctly, you should not witness a major difference in the indexing itself.
An important aspect to keep in mind while doing the submission is the verification of your website. This step is often mandated by search engines in order to avoid automated submissions as well as to have a track record of the websites submitted to them, which will eventually get indexed in the future. References also become much easier when the verification is duly undertaken. The verification process is not a complicated one at all. Invariably, it will involve the provision of an HTML code to you, which you need to in turn add to the HTML of your website, at a suitable location. At the time of indexing your website, the search engine in question will refer to the code you have added to your website and thus will be assured that the same has been duly verified.
In summation, it is amply clear that search engine submission definitely makes a lot of sense, versus simply leaving it to the engines themselves, to discover and index your website.
Incoming search terms:
Oct. 14th 2010
While press release writing has been an endeavor long mastered by its champions, their distribution has been a reasonable challenge for a very long time, especially till the advent of the Internet. Businesses would run from pillar to post to get the right media vehicles to actually have access to the press release they so desperately want to get published. Further, even after the press releases actually found their way to the publications, they would not reach the concerned person and so would either not get published at all or get published very late, by when the entire purpose of the release would get defeated. That is the reason; businesses have constantly been on the lookout for an effective way of distributing press releases, which they finally seem to have found in the form of Internet websites that specialize in the distribution and dissemination of press releases, on a very large scale.
The key advantage with distributing press releases this way is the complete negation of geographic distances, which otherwise used to be a significant impediment to the effective distribution of press releases. Businesses would invariably be located in specific parts of the country while the targeted media would be situated in another; ultimately, getting releases to them in a timely manner would be nothing short of a nightmare!
The advent of platforms like the facsimile did improve things considerably, but still there were limitations; sometimes the fax machine would not work or the media would have just one or two fax machines with a significant volume of faxes coming in, with the result that a lot of them would simply end up getting lost!
The Internet changed all that, for the better. For starters, email allowed press releases to be sent out to target media in seconds. Not only that, the releases reached exactly the person or department that they were intended for. That in turn helped the target media in planning the publication of these releases much more appropriately.
The best though, was actually yet to come. And when it did, it changed the rules of the game of distributing press releases completely. Oh, so are you curious to know what this panacea that we are talking about is? Well, we are referring to online press release distribution websites. By charging a reasonably small fee, these sites ensure that the press releases you submit to them, reach all the target media you have planned them for. Further, your releases also remain on the Internet for perpetuity, for your readers and you to admire now and forever! What else could you possibly ask for?
Oct. 13th 2010
While it may be truly commendable to have your own blog, whether for your business or for your own self, it would be of little significance, if no one came across the blog or read what it had to say. It is for this reason that subsequent to the act of creating your own blog, you must market it as well. Marketing blogs ensures that a wider selection of the target audience actually comes across the blog and also reads all that it has to say. Remember that the ultimate aim of your blog is to draw traffic towards itself which in turn is in fact aimed at driving up traffic to the actual website which the blog is representative of (remember though that today, this is no longer true under all circumstances; in a lot of cases, the blog itself is the only destination, in the sense, businesses have ONLY the blog and no other website separately).
So whatever be the case a blog that exists standalone or is representative of another website, you do need to market it. Among the various tools for marketing blogs, do consider social networking platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Status updates on Facebook and Twitter which are themselves representative of updates made on your blog, truly work wonders when it comes to marketing blogs. With a lot of people spending an awful amount of time on these platforms, it is but natural that the word quickly spreads to a large audience, within a relatively short time frame.
Besides social networking platforms, do consider article marketing directories such as Ezine Articles, for marketing blogs. These sites tend to draw a lot of traffic to themselves, which also happens to be rather sticky. So it makes absolute sense for you to put up your own articles on these directories, with back links to your blog. In turn, this will not only result in additional traffic to your blog, it will also improve its overall page ranking.
Did the thought of marketing blogs through online video sharing platforms such as YouTube, ever cross your mind? If not, perhaps its time that it did! Improved Internet connectivity and ever increasing broadband penetration have made video sharing a distinct possibility on the World Wide Web; this phenomenon has in turn resulted in sites such as YouTube being consistently ranked amongst the Top 3 websites of the world, as confirmed by statistics from the web information company, Alexa. So with ever increasing numbers of people on these video sharing sites, it makes ample sense for you to have your own videos on them, which also happen to talk about your blog as well as redirect viewers to it, using embedded annotations on these videos.
So, as you can clearly see, marketing blogs is by no means a very tough ask; relatively small steps, using the platforms as listed above, can also lead to significant traffic being generated on to blogs.
Incoming search terms:
Oct. 12th 2010
When it comes to the aspect of banner design, viz. the design of banner advertisements meant to be run on the Internet, a difficult decision in front of advertisers is the choice between text and graphics, at least in terms of which one to focus MORE on.
Undoubtedly, it is a difficult choice in front of advertisers; while focusing too much on text might take away the visual appeal of the ad, paying heed only to the graphical elements of the ad might simply not convey the desired message to viewers.
And perhaps there you have your answer the ideal approach is a good blend of both text and graphics.
That said, if you insist and persist on informing you about a particular approach that works better, our experience in this domain clearly tells us that if the desired message to viewers is not conveyed and the Call to Action simply does not happen, then visual appeal may very well be damned!
So, there you go you again have your answer it is text that clearly rules the roost, at least over graphics, in this context.
And such a happenstance is not really difficult to fathom; the text is what tells your viewer about the product or service that you are offering. In the absence of suitable text, the pictorial elements alone are quite unlikely to get the message across.
Did someone say, A picture is worth a thousand words? Alright, agreed that it may be true in some circumstances, but in this case, you really do need to be explicit; you cannot expect the viewer to take desired action, based on the graphical elements of your banner ad alone.
Let us explain that with an example. Say you are running a promotional fare campaign for your airline. You run a banner ad for the campaign, which not only has a picture of an airplane in it, it is clearly visible that the plane in the ad is that of your airline, perhaps your logo is also distinctly visible. Now, if your banner ad were to be just that, the reaction of your viewers would be so what???
Instead, if you had text on the ad, on the lines of:
Promotional fares to
.HURRY!
Chances would be good that the click through rate of your ad would be stupendous.
As an Internet advertiser responsible for effective banner design, which of the two situations described above, would you like to find yourself in??
Oct. 11th 2010
Internet marketing experts today are dime a dozen. And so is the expertise that is thrown around, whether in the form of article marketing tips or some other. Try to look up any Internet marketing topic on search engines such as Google and chances would be good that you would come across only a handful of treasures among heaps of trash.
Herein, we pride ourselves on being one of the handfuls that you would ever come by (Ahem, Ahem
modesty thou hath no place in todays world!) as far as pursuits such as the above-mentioned are concerned. And since we truly believe in backing our claims with solid evidence that amply ratifies our capabilities, here we go with some really red hot, surefire, time tested and proven article marketing tips you probably wouldnt have known or even heard about before
Brief and Concise Simple Articles they work best!
While everyone will tell you to maintain exacting standards and very high quality in all your articles, few will actually dare to tell you to keep them simple ones which laypersons can easily understand. We vehemently recommend that you keep your articles short, sweet and simple readership will be enhanced significantly, which will in turn ensure that your overall purpose is served very well.
Dont hesitate to duplicate your content!
Whoever told you that your content had to be original, each time and every time?? That is absolute BS. What is important though is that you ensure the sequence of content posting is correct, else you will only face rejection on those very platforms which you have been targeting most emphatically. To elaborate, sites such as EzineArticles.com definitively require ORIGINAL content. But once the same is published on it, you can undoubtedly go ahead and publish the same content on various other locations, including other article directories as well. In case you are wondering what will be the benefit of duplicating the same content all over the place, just do it and witness the benefit(S) with a capital S, for yourself!
Gather your articles together youre sitting on a treasure trove!
Collecting all the numerous articles you have written and compiling them together into an EBook works wonders in terms of being a virtual anthology on the authority that you (seemingly!) are on the given subject matter. Even if you give this EBook out, completely FREE of cost to readers, it would contribute immensely towards your overall brand value, in the long run.
Dont hesitate to make tall claims, especially in your headlines
Youve read this far, until here
need we say more!
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
