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Archive for November, 2010
Nov. 30th 2010
Link building has emerged as an important step to online business success. Links ensure that your website is known to the world and add to the popularity of your website. Traffic is directly related to the revenue your website can earn. You can either earn advertisements for your website or can even flip the website for a profit.
There are many strategies that entrepreneurs use in order to build links to their websites. However, an entrepreneur needs to find the most suitable strategy from among millions of strategies. The underlying principles and objectives of any link building strategy are to ensure traffic by giving the Internet visitors more value for their time and efforts.
Let us discuss three top strategies that have always delivered on link building:
Article marketing: Article marketing is the process of writing quality articles on a specific topic and attracting people to your website. The first step to article marketing is to identify a niche area on which you want to develop content. Secondly, you need to develop content keeping in mind that the content is relevant and useful for the target audience. You must keep in mind that the basic purpose of an article is to make people interested in knowing more about specific content.
After the articles are done, they must be published in an article directory. The article directory, apart from publishing your articles, also enables you to give information about you and your website. This information enables the target audience to visit your website for more information on the niche area.
Follow the forums: There are a lot of forums on your selected niche area. You need to join as many forums as you can and exchange ideas with the other members. This is an excellent opportunity to know what people feel or need in terms of value and knowledge.
You can also take this opportunity to tell people about the website and its offerings in a specific area. The forums may have many website owners who might, in their own interest, be keen to have links to your website. You need to capitalize on such opportunities and present yourself as the knowledge provider.
List the website with a web directory: A web directory is a catalog of websites chosen by human beings, unlike in the case of a search engine, where websites are chosen by web crawlers. The websites listed in the web directories are thoroughly reviewed by the editors. This is the reason a website listed with the web directories are accorded a high degree of importance by search engines.
A big advantage with these web directories is that a link is directly established with your website and that can drive traffic to your website.
No matter what you do, expertise in a specific area can work wonders as far as web traffic goes. People are constantly on the lookout for high quality content, and you must be able to give them value in terms of knowledge and information.
Nov. 29th 2010
Three simple features of any promotional medium can deem it ‘hot’: high returns or high profits, long-term prospects, and cost effective delivery.
Email marketing has all of these features. Recession and the constant need to cut down costs have forced many businesses to cut down on their expansion plans while still trying to be profitable.
Businesses, especially small and medium sized ones, cannot afford to be highly capital intensive or employ a large pool of professionals. Email marketing has given these businesses the perfect fillip in the gloomy times, and not only have these businesses cut costs, but have also earned profits.
Let us take a look at some of the reasons why email marketing is so popular:
Cost effective method: This will probably count among the cheapest methods of promoting a business, as email marketing does not need too much investment. According to a survey, this technique has the second lowest cost per order (CPO) of all direct marketing techniques.
Impressive returns on investment: What else can an entrepreneur want? Returns on investment are music to the ears of any entrepreneur. A study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association reveled that email marketing generated an ROI of $43.62 for each dollar spent in the year 2009.
The projected figures for 2010 are $42.08 for each dollar invested. This technique has by far outperformed all other direct marketing channels like print catalogs.
High performer: Datran Media conducted a study and found that at least 39.4% of all advertisement executives believe that email marketing has been the biggest performer among all other direct marketing methods. According to Forbes Media, this technique is the second most effective technique and is preceded only by the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique.
Direct impact on customers: Email marketing uses a direct appeal method that is often found to be very effective in selling a product or a service to the customer. The emails directly reach the mailbox of the customer and are more likely to hard sell a product or a service.
However, all may not be rosy with email marketing. Experts point out that this technique can be profitable only if it is managed the right way. Email marketing also has the potential to annoy a lot of people if it happens to knock at the wrong doors at the wrong time.
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Nov. 26th 2010
One of the most important factors for any online business is search engine submission. It is the first step to getting noticed on the Internet. Here’s why…
When someone is looking for a particular topic online, they generally go to one of the major search engines and enter the topic they are looking for. When that happens, the search engine provides results for that particular keyword or phrase.
If your website is listed high enough in the search results, these information seekers may very well choose your site. But how do search engines know to list your site?
Actually they don’t. It’s up to you to introduce yourself by submitting your site. However, before you do, make sure your web pages are optimized and the best keywords and phrases are used strategically to describe your site.
To do that, research your keywords to find the words and phrases that describe your site. Try to find phrases that are not quite as popular as the general term yet still have a good amount of popularity.
For instance, instead of “marketing” you might choose “Internet Marketing” or even deeper, “Internet Marketing Tips”. The more you can define your site the better chance that you won’t get lost in a crowd of thousands or even millions of other sites.
When you’ve chosen your keywords use them strategically in your copy. Don’t stuff them in just for the sake of having them on your page. For one thing you’ll lose the context of your content and your readers will be confused, and secondly “keyword stuffing” may be penalized by the search engines. Generally speaking, keep your keyword density to 1-3%.
Before submitting your site, make sure your pages are complete, check for misspelled or misapplied (your, you’re) words, and bad links (internal and external). Also make sure that your pages load as fast as possible.
Write a short description of your site to use when submitting. The description should describe your site using two or three of your keyword terms.
Here are the search engines that are important to submit to: Google, Bing (MSN), Ask, HotBot, AltaVista, and Lycos. There are many others, of course, but this is the group that will boost your popularity the fastest. There are also search engine directories, like Yahoo and Open Directory that you will want to submit to as well.
When making your search engine submissions, be sure and follow the guidelines provided. Now go forth and prosper…
Nov. 25th 2010
Using press releases as part of your marketing strategy is an excellent move. The major problem comes in deciding how to distribute them. While there are a few free services you may have more success using a professional service, but how do you compare press release services to find the right one for you?
Whether you want to communicate your news with others in your community or professionals worldwide there are services to help you with your specific goals. Let’s take a look at what you need to look for in a distribution service:
Media Distribution Lists: Most companies claiming to provide press release distribution have relationships with media aggregators, syndicating or newswire services. Before you make any decision, ask to see a media distribution list to find out whom the company actually has relationships with. When you review the list, ask yourself if the list meets your target audience. If the company only relies on search engine indexing alone, you need to decide if that will be strong enough for your campaign. The absolute minimum a press release service should offer is search engine optimization
Pricing: If you have found a company with a good media distribution list and offers search engine optimization you’re on the right track. The next question is pricing. Pricing for a media campaign varies widely from free to thousands of dollars. Obviously, as the price goes higher, so should the services offered. The price you pay should depend on what you want your media campaign to do. Most companies provide different pricing plans, so it is up to you to know exactly what you need to accomplish with your campaign.
Customer Service: Customer service is a key consideration in comparing press release services. Will they respond to your emails, are they going to return your phone calls? A good newswire service should have a person available who will respond to their client’s questions. Look for testimonials and references on their website to see what other customers have to say. If you’re still not sure, give them a call or send an email to see how they respond.
Reports: Naturally if you pay for a service you want to know what has been done on your behalf. The company should provide a report so that you can see where and when your press releases were published for each campaign.
Comparing press release services is a necessary evil, but no matter what service you choose be realistic with your expectations. No service can guarantee results. Remember thousands of others are competing with your press release for publicity as well.
Nov. 24th 2010
Today, blog promotion is more important than ever. The competition is stiff in nearly every niche, so spreading the word should be an important part of your blog strategy.
You’ll find many blogs with first-rate content but a lack of followers and traffic. Too many bloggers seem to think that writing their content is all there is to do. They don’t know how to promote their content to get the readership their writing deserves.
The old cliche, “If I build it they will come” is a total fantasy. The only way they will come is if you take action and promote your blog.
Here are a few traffic tips to pump life into your blog and keep it on an upward spiral.
The number one way to bring in traffic and keep readers coming back is by providing good content. This may seem simplistic, but without informative and interesting content there really isn’t any reason for anyone to be there. Good content also brings in links, which has become a “must have” for blogs and websites.
Blogging regularly will keep the interest of your followers and alert the search engines each time you post your blog. Failing to blog on a regular basis will cause your readers to lose interest – and the search engines too.
And speaking of search engines, make sure that your blog is search engine friendly. Optimize with keywords, create a professional design, plan out your blog so that the content structure is easy for search engines to crawl, and use your main keyword as an anchor text. These are just a few of the ways to get search engines to notice you and bring traffic to your blog.
Encourage comments to gain feedback from your readers. Readers who make comments will often come back to read other comments and also your new blog post. Getting your readers to interact with you will build relationships. By all means if a reader asks a question, provide the answer. You can also leave a thank you on other comments, just to let your readers know you’re interested in their thoughts and comments.
Pinging is another effective tactic for blog promotion. Pinging notifies the blog services that you’ve updated your blog. Also, if you link to another blog you can send a pingback so the linked blogger knows you have a new post.
While this is only an introduction to blog promotion traffic tips, just using these few ideas will start the traffic rolling to your blog…
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Nov. 23rd 2010
There are so many different ways to advertise your business. Have you given any thought to banner advertising? You know those ads that you see on all the web pages around the Internet.
If not, you might want to take a look at the advantages that banner advertising provides. After all, it has been one of the top marketing strategies since 1994!
Maybe you think it’s old hat, it doesn’t work anymore, or that its effectiveness is over. All that has been said by many, but banner ads keep going up – and they keep making money for advertisers.
The new banner ads are more sophisticated, more appealing in shape, more cosmopolitan in color, more refined in tone – so let’s take a look at the advantages of banner advertising.
Cost Efficient: Banner ads provide a cost effective and efficient way to market your website. Typically ads are inexpensive to create and you can opt for a flat rate for a specific number of shows or pay a pay-per-click option.
Just a Click Away: As opposed to many other marketing strategies, once your ad is placed, your customer is just a click away from your site. No emails to write, no articles to distribute.
Brand Recognition: Getting your website or product name known is always a challenge, and banner ads can help you accomplish this. They are very productive in helping companies gain recognition by always being visible to your target audience. Even if customers do not immediately click on your ads, your name or logo sticks with them.
Targeted Traffic: With just the click of a mouse, banner ads bring in targeted visitors to learn about your products and services. Unlike many other forms of advertising, banners bring prospective customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.
Easy to Track: You’ll be able to track page views, click-through rates, number of clicks and cost-per-sale, to make it easy to determine your ad’s effectiveness as well as which web sites are producing the most visitors to your website.
SEO Advantage: In order to be found on the search engines a prospective customer has to know the name of your product or related keywords, but with banner advertising, all they have to do is click. Perhaps they were looking for a similar product, not yours, but here is your banner right in front of them – you win!
Banner advertising can be a highly effective way to market your business. Banners are eye-catching, appealing, affordable, and provide many opportunities to bring your message to prospective customers in record time.
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Nov. 22nd 2010
Article marketing is one of the most effective techniques for bringing targeted traffic to your website and converting them into buyers. In essence, it’s a very simple, yet powerful marketing tool.
Its simplicity is what makes it such a powerful tool. People love free things and articles are free. Articles also provide necessary information that prospective buyers are looking for. When you provide this information without compensation, prospective customers are already on your side.
Whether you’re promoting affiliate products or your own, writing promotional articles can bring in profits, brand yourself as an expert and gain backlinks to your website. What more could you ask!
When you’re writing your article don’t confuse why you’re writing the article with why you’re promoting the article. You’re writing to provide information not to create an advertisement.
Focus your articles on the subject at hand. Provide good information for your readers. Make sure it is interesting and truthful. Don’t slant your writing to fit a particular product. Yes, you want the article to support the product, but don’t use any untruthful statements to do so.
The time to concentrate on the reason for promoting the article is at the end of the article and in the resource box. In other words, your last paragraph should induce them to want to click on the resource box for more information on the subject.
Be sure to maximize all of the opportunities provided by article marketing. By that I mean, don’t forget you’re not just promoting a product, you’re promoting yourself and your website.
With this in mind, make sure your articles are well written, free of spelling and grammatical errors and are keyword optimized.
Whether your article is published in article directories or on your website (or both), getting them listed well in the search engines is a real advantage, so make sure you optimize with well placed keywords and anchor text.
Write good content. That may seem like a given, but if you read some of the articles across the Internet you’ll find many poorly written pieces. Some are just badly written, others are spun and make little or no sense and some are not factual. Don’t ever publish an article that you are not proud to call your own.
Placing your well written, keyword optimized articles in various article directories is a simple way to drive traffic and sales. Article marketing is a very powerful marketing strategy. It’s free and it’s easy. You really can’t go wrong.
Nov. 19th 2010
Search engine marketing has been one of the most popular marketing strategies for online businesses. Statistics show that advertisers in North America invested $13.5 billion in search engine marketing in the year 2008, and the forecasts are absolutely bullish.
However, these figures may not be a general recipe for success for every aspiring entrepreneur and obviously, each entrepreneur needs to find the most suitable online marketing strategies. Most important is the fact that every aspiring entrepreneur needs to know the advantages and disadvantages of this marketing model before taking a plunge.
Advantages:
Effective marketing technique: The foremost requirement of an online entrepreneur is to ensure the flow of traffic to the website. Traffic flow to a website is directly proportional to the revenue of the merchant. A website needs to be visible and popular first before it starts to generate revenue for the entrepreneur.
Search engine marketing (SEM) employs techniques that ensure that the merchant website ranks right at the top of the specific search results. Depending on the search engine, a website can get maximum attention from Internet users.
Targets the right audience: When you compare the online advertising techniques (optimized, of course) with conventional marketing techniques (for example, TV and newspaper advertisements), you can see that while the former is aimed at just about everybody, the latter has a specified target audience.
While traditional forms of advertising essentially try to convince people who may not be interested, search engine marketing (SEM) targets people who are interested in a specific product or service, and thus, it is easier to convince people to buy the product or service.
It is cost effective: Search engine marketing (SEM) is believed to be more cost effective than traditional forms of advertisement. The returns on investment (ROI) on the other hand, are relatively attractive. While a television advertisement can cost a lot to the advertiser depending on the duration of the advertisement, there are no such terms attached with a search engine marketing campaign.
In fact, search engine marketing is said to be 1, 153% more cost effective than other forms of advertising!
Disadvantages
Competition: As search engine marketing (SEM) is considered very effective, just about every business house claiming to be a search engine optimization (SEO) expert has jumped into the fray. Bidding has increased, and this has pushed the rates of search marketing up, thereby reducing the cost effectiveness of this model.
Gestation period is long: The time between the launching of the initiative and achievement of profits can often be very long. This is because it takes some time for traffic to actually pour into the website. It can take even longer for business houses to recognize the potential of the website and start calling you for placing their advertisements on the website.
However, search engine marketing is still considered one of the most effective methods of online marketing. As statistics have shown, despite the competition and the web space getting crowded, the worldwide web will still have place for new entrants.
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Nov. 18th 2010
Internet marketing has changed the way business is conducted all over the world. According to the United States secretary of commerce, e-commerce retail sales in 1999 were a whopping $5.3 billion in the United States alone, and the forecasts were absolutely bullish.
Around the world, a number of firms and entrepreneurs have been jumping onto the Internet marketing bandwagon. However, before you take the plunge, you need to first understand whether this is suitable for your kind of business. You need to know the advantages, and very importantly, the disadvantages so that you know the pitfalls beforehand:
Advantages
Global reach of the business: Internet advertising ensures that your business is marketed globally and is not confined to any specific region. Local reach of the business means lesser exposure, while global reach means global exposure. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, this is a golden opportunity to showcase his/her products and services to the world.
Internet marketing is great from the perspective of customers too, who can lay their hands on indigenous products from another continent, for example.
Cheaper investments: Internet marketing ventures are cheaper than conventional forms of business. This form of business is not really capital-intensive in nature and does not require huge investment as such. Thus, this provides just about every aspiring entrepreneur the opportunity to take a plunge without really worrying too much about losing capital. There are plenty of examples of entrepreneurs starting out humbly and making it big with Internet marketing.
Easy access to training: Aspiring entrepreneurs have an easy access to training on how to conduct business on Internet. The worldwide web is awash with training materials that are really helpful for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Disadvantages
Attracting customers may not be easy: Making it big on the Internet becomes a lot easier when an entrepreneur has an access to techniques like article directory subscription and pay per click inclusions. An access to these techniques requires financial investments in varying degrees, which not every entrepreneur may be able to make. Until then, the entrepreneur may have to rely solely on cheaper options like SEO marketing. Obviously, the results will pour in slowly.
Possibility of fraud: The Internet is a place where it may be difficult at times to ascertain the identity and credentials of a potential customer. This could prove to be a big problem if not handled well. There are multiple instances of financial fraud where the victim was really unable to take any step purely because the identity of the fraudster could not be ascertained. Obviously, the entrepreneur needs to take every step very carefully.
The disadvantages must not deter any aspiring entrepreneur from taking to Internet marketing. The disadvantages can be worked out, and the positives in fact outweigh the negatives. Long term vision and well thought out strategies and their execution will be a sure-shot recipe for success in Internet marketing.
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Nov. 17th 2010
The worldwide web is dynamic, and nothing is ever permanent on the Internet. Over the decades, Internet entrepreneurs have tried to attain profits by using a number of techniques, and many of these techniques have died a premature death.
The sole objective of these techniques is to woo customers. Pop under advertisements are an initiative to sell a product or a service and earn profits. The technique has its share of fans and critics, and feelers from its reviewers point to the fact that though not without its share of drawbacks, popunder advertising is a relatively low-cost but effective promotional tool.
Pop under marketing versus pop up marketing
A larger chunk of the visitors to a website have complained that pop up advertisements are an irritant and a distraction. These visitors complain that pop up advertisements divert their attention without consent since they are ‘in-your face’.
Pop under marketing is, according to experts, a gentler form of advertising. It would allow you to focus on what you want to do, and you can view the advertisement only after you have done what you want to. In other words- at least theoretically- the pop under marketing technique gets the full attention of the viewer only after he/she has finished viewing a site.
How does pop under marketing benefit an entrepreneur?
The pop under advertisements have come as a boon for entrepreneurs, given the recent recession and economic slowdown. These tools are a low cost option and do not require a great deal of investment. Pop under advertisements cost an average of $5 per thousand impressions.
These advertisements are launched on a pay-per-click or cost per acquisition basis. Thus, it is great for both the merchant and the associate website. Both models mean an advertisement for the product or service. The merchant pays the associate website only when a visitor signs up for a program or buys a product through the advertisements. Many firms have reported a growth in their profits since these marketing tools were introduced.
However, there are a group of visitors who point out that pop under advertisements are still distractive and annoying, thus placing it at par with pop up advertisements. Many people have employed tools to bypass pop under advertisements, and this establishes the fact that the fan following for this tool is not really universal.
What is essential is a sound marketing strategy combined with customer permission, both of which can serve as the base for these marketing tools.
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