Guide to make money online!

Link by Link
Ranking of websites can only be achieved by the analysis of how popular your links are on your site, and is an integral part of a successful SEO Campaign

The more popular your links are, they higher your ranks will be. The higher your ranking is on a search engine, the more traffic your site will attract, and that should have a direct correlation to the success of your business.

Where should you start with our Link Building?
Firstly, there is no point in having creating a website to promote your product if nobody on this earth can find it. The leading search engines today are reputed to be Google, MSN Search and Yahoo and are most commonly used for searches, world wide. But before your website can even start to feature you have to have a good position in their result pages.

For your links on your website to be thought of a popular, you need to have a number of them pointing to your website, from other sites. The more links to your site, the higher your rankings should be and it is then that your site is considered important in the world of search engines

Link Building and Page Rank are considered to be ‘off page’ factors which comprise part of your SEO marketing campaign and should be not ignored or taken too lightly. Building ‘link popularity’ is critical if you want to optimise your SEO campaign to the fullest extent. Link building improves your Page Rank. The higher your Page Rank the higher up you will appear on the search results pages. Search Engines also look at Page Rank of the pages that link into your website, especially the relevancy of them compared to your own product. If your have links coming in from sites which have a higher Page Rank than yours, and they are relevant, your site will gain a higher value.

Link Building is a process, the advantages
The process of link building involves creating incoming links to your website; there are a number of ways you can do this. Some of the ways are to establish reciprocal links or you can establish a link in an e-zine or a newsletter and even a directory. If you decide to link into a directory you will receive three types of traffic. The first is ‘click through’ traffic who will see your link when they land on the directory page. The second is that directories start to index your pages once they find links to it, bringing traffic with them as they do. The third way directories help is by increasing your rankings and you can also create and establish links on a search engine.

Link building helps you attract high quality traffic to your site from other relevant sites; therefore it is a valuable source of potential business. It creates awareness and visibility of your site, as well as helping your create and maintain credibility. Link building will help your site gain more exposure in a wider search engine audience.

Link building will go a long way to helping you get your website indexed and are worth money today, you can sell and buy links. Link building is possibly one of the most important steps to achieve for all website competing in the SEO arena.

There are some really great Search Engine Optimisation Tools available that make doing SEO easier and can actually be fun. Some of these tools are available for free, while others come at a price. You can have fun experimenting and testing them until you settle with those you feel most comfortable with and those that benefit you the most. Tools can be a real fun experiment and you learn a lot as you go along.

There are many interesting Search Engine Optimisation Tools available on the Internet and new tools are constantly being developed. Search engine optimisation is an integral part of any website and these tools give a welcome helping hand.

Paid submitters
The digiXMAS article submitter tool software comes free and you will be charged for the submission per article, but it is worthwhile as your articles will be submitted to roughly 1000 article directories and you will be registered to the directories.

This program is semi-automatic and works fast and accurately. DigiXMAS directory submitter, which is a link submitter, has two modes to choose from. The free mode is not completely automatic, works slower and you have to manually check each directory, do a check and then submit. On the other hand, the paid mode will cost you per website and do all the work for you. This is a valuable tool for creating back links for your website.

Checkers, analyzers and suggestions
You can learn some interesting things about your web traffic and ways to improve your optimisation with tools such as a back link analyzer, a Keyword Suggestion Tool and a page rank checker. Two good keyword tools are Hit-tail that will report on what keywords browsers use that lead them to your website and give tips on improving your website.

The other keyword suggestion tool will point you to links on a monthly basis that report on most popularly used search words and search volumes. DnScoop is a statistical tool that reports to you about the SEO status of your website as to inbound links, Google page rank, stats about your domain name and age as well as a report on your domain IP. Page Rank Predictor is a fun program to use and you might learn interesting things about your website. This tool gives you a prediction of what kind of PR your website has.

Browsers, Plug ins, social networks and blogs
Firefox offers two plug-ins; when you do a search, SEO for Firefox will display information under each search result such as links and page ranking. With Firefox Live page rank you will have the Google Page Rank of that page displayed in the right hand bottom corner of your screen. The Blogosphere carries weight online and tools from Feedshark, Ping o Matic and Pingoat will get you listed in the biggest online blogging directories.

There are social bookmarking tools such as Social Marker and OnlyWire that submit your link to many other websites taken from the URL and title information of your web pages.

Did you know that online spending is predicted to increase by 14% this year? Therefore, it's a good time to grow your affiliate business despite the current economy is entering into a downward trend. Online business still predicted to continue growing this year as more people are turning to purchase online. If you are earning online through affiliate marketing, you can make 2009 your richest year ever. Here are some tips of doing it:

1. Selecting The Right Affiliate Products Are Crucial

What are the hot sell products in year 2009? This year has been a bad year for many people as the world is stepping into a recession and most countries are facing negative economy growth. In addition, the stock trading market is fluctuating & currencies for many countries are at the unstable stage.

People are looking for solutions on issues such as how to outlast the recession with alternative income sources, how to trade the stock in profitable level at the unstable trading market, or how to profit from Forex exchange market when the world's economy is at Yoyo situation. These are the areas where you find hot sell products for your affiliate marketing. There are high market demands surrounding the niches such as make money from internet, stock market investment & Forex exchange trading.

There are so many affiliate products available for you to sell, but not all products are profitable, you need to spend some time to find the right affiliate products that are wanted on internet. Selecting the right affiliate products is crucial because it will determine the success or failure of your online business.

2. Web Contents That Are Monetized Make The Different

During the old days when less competition in the online market, if you have a website with averagely good contents, it will sell. But, in today's highly competitive online market, web contents that are not able to attract the attention of the visitors will fail to monetize and lead the visitors to a cash generating page. Therefore, you should also focus heavily on your web contents. Creating a web contents that are monetized and trigger the "Want to Buy" impulse behaviour of the website visitors will make the different on whether you will good money or make zero penny from the affiliate marketing efforts.

3. Implementing Effective Marketing Campaigns Are Key To Success

The demand for online purchase has increased lead to more online business opportunities. It also means more people will try to make their fortune from internet. The internet business will become more competitive, only those who successfully implement effective marketing campaigns will lead the market and share most of online market's pie. How you drive the internet surfers to your targeted selling page and convert them to become the paid customers is the key to success to your affiliate business.

Summary

Online business is predicted to continue growing this year as more people are turning to purchase online. So, for those who are making money through affiliate marketing, year 2009 could be your richest year ever if you put some efforts and commitments to grow your online business.

The Internet has opened up vast avenues for business that did not exist prior to the creation of the Internet. This has mushroomed into a global giant where there are millions upon millions of web pages where people advertise their products and services. So what exactly are your expectations of what a search engine can do for you? Most people answer straight away that they want the search engines to rank their business in the top 10 on their search results pages.

Since up to 60% of your online business could be generated through search engines, this is not a realistic wish; the problems come about if you do not understand how search engines work and what your responsibilities are with your search engine optimisation marketing.

A tool to be used

Search engines can be used as an extremely powerful tool, depending on where you lay in the search results ranking. If you are too low down, searchers will not even bother to scroll down far enough to see your URL. To be able to utilise search engines fully, you must understand how they actually work for until you do you will not be able to make full use of this tool to bring you traffic from your targeted audience.

They work in three major ways; by indexing the webpage, but not the entire website, by indexing everything on every page of a website and by continuously crawling through external links. This last way literally means the crawlers never stop crawling; they visit these external links until they have gone through every single website on the Internet, and then they start all over again.

Different ways of working

Search engines do not all work with the same criteria when someone does a search, so the search results will vary what different search engines show in their search results pages. This means you have to use search engine optimisation in different ways to appeal to the different search engines. It is important to understand that search engines regularly change their algorithms and this will influence your search ranking listing.

Besides the giant search engines such as Google, there are also META search engines. The way they work when they search is by doing simultaneous searches through multiple search engines. Your ranking by a META search engine follows the calculation by combining your ranking by the multiple search engines used for that search and your ranking is thus the average of that. With META search engines there is no need for submission of your website as they use the results from other major search engines.

Go with a professional

To many an entrepreneur this can be a headache and most people do not have the time to learn all of this in detail. That is why it is so much easier to make use of the services of a professional SEO consultant. It is his job to understand how search engines work and what keywords appeal to the search engines and how to optimise your entire marketing campaign to bring you that much needed web traffic through being highly visible in the search page ranking listings.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a highly valuable tool to any online business. It’s a relatively process improve your search engine position and grow your business. Yet optimising your website to improve its ranking in search engine result lists is not a quick fool-proof task. You’ll need to understand search engine guidelines and how to optimise your website so it falls within these regulations. Apart from working within ethical SEO guidelines, it helps to know the most common SEO mistakes made, and how to avoid them.

Spelling mistakes

Sometimes unethical SEO methods include purposely misspelling words, like for example ‘airfairs’ instead of ‘air fares’. Search engines discourage this in SEO strategy. Poor grammar and spelling mistakes give an impression that your website’s not trustworthy.

URLs without keywords

Have an accurate description of the page content within your URL, these are picked up by search engines and also give online users a more specific description of the webpage.

Non-standard title format

Include a couple of your website’s keywords within the title, try to avoid using your business name as search engines pick up the titles but gives little consideration to business names. Avoid adding too many keywords into your title as this will be recognised by search engines.

Keyword stuffing

The use of keywords is vital in SEO, but you shouldn’t have more than five to eight sets of keywords that are relevant to your business. Thread these keywords around 15 to 20 times in the content of each webpage. Avoid placing a keyword on every link in every webpage; it won’t produce the results you’re aiming to achieve.

Inaccurate image descriptions

Overloading your images descriptions with keywords may harm your rankings. Try to avoid this and provide a relevant image description.

Irrelevant keywords

What phrases or keywords can you think of that are specific to your website? Try to vary keywords on each of your pages, and drill down to the essence of what each page offers. The more specific your keywords are, the easier it will be for an online user to find you. Regularly check your keywords and update them to reflect your products, services or information.

Static content

Regular content updates are important to main high ranks in search engine results. Instead of making vast changes to your website, gradually update areas of content to maintain the website’s appeal and relevance to users. Consider refreshing content at least once a week (or month at a stretch), by adding further engaging nuggets of information.

Using only Google

While Google’s the lead player in search engines, it’s not the only route for attracting online traffic. Don’t forget MSN, Yahoo and other search engines can also drive significant traffic to your website.

Forgetting about internal links

Creating a list of incoming links to your website is highly valuable for SEO, but don’t forget to include internal links within your website. Internal links can improve your page ranking, and they don’t have to be outweighed by incoming links (your links placed on external websites).

Website optimization can have a significant impact on your search engine rankings. However, there are common pitfalls of poor search engine optimization which can cause the very opposite to occur. Check out our top 5 tips on how NOT to approach website optimization.

Don't just use the first keywords that spring to mind without checking their usefulness to Search Engine Optimization first.
Although you may think that "Mike's bikes" is the phrase you would like to see most often in your website because that is the name of your shop, the chances of anyone actually typing "mike's bikes" into a search engine are low. However if your keywords include "bmx bikes Glasgow" there is much more chance a search engine will find your optimized webpage. There are several keyword tools online to aid website optimization.

Don't try cramming hundreds of keywords into your website's written content.
Rather than achieving good search engine optimization because you have many repetitions of the same word or phrase, this can very quickly result in the polar opposite of website optimization. The major search engines will recognise it as spam and drop you to the bottom of their list or ban you altogether. Your website will also be virtually unreadable to your customers so your attempts at website optimization will have been a waste of time.

Don't hide repetitions of your keywords behind pictures, off-screen or by making the text the same colour as your background.
This will have the opposite effect of the website optimization you are trying to achieve. Search engine spiders will read your website as spam rather than as optimized and possibly blacklist you from their results. This is not an accepted method of ethical search engine optimization.

Don't use large amounts of Flash or Javascript in your site.
Search engines prefer to read text and will look for that first. Employing good website optimization doesn't mean you can't have Flash or Javascript all, just that they are best limited to a small amount compared to text content to achieve maximum search engine optimization.

Don't think that once you have given your site a search engine optimization overhaul, that's all you will ever have to do.
Website optimization is an ongoing process. Although major search engine optimization can be carried out over a short period of time, without regular updates and changes, your website will slip down the results pages again as search engines are drawn back to new content.

Newsletters and articles. A powerful Website Optimisation technique that assists Search Engine Optimisation is to offer articles and informative writing to e-zine publishers. Links often stay live in archives for years, maintaining your website optimisation for searches.

Multiple Domains. Search Engine Optimisation can be enhanced by having multiple domains if you have a range of topics that could justify their own website. Search Engine Optimisation can result in the listing of only one page per domain for any given search. A good website optimisation tip is that you can get more directory listings by having more domains which improves your overall website optimisation.

Article Exchanges. Article exchanges are similar to link exchanges, only much more powerful, so great for Search Engine Optimisation. Giving and receiving high quality links can really help with your Search Engine Optimisation.

Titles For Links. A top Search Engine Optimisation tip is to title links using keywords and phrases as some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page. This will help to maximize your website optimisation.

Site map. Large sites need a site map to maximise Website Optimisation, linked to and from every page on the site. A site map is an excellent Search Engine Optimisation tool. It enables search engine robots to locate every page in just two clicks. The navigation bar can also act as a site map proving a useful Search Engine Optimisation technique on small sites.

Be bold. Using tags around some keywords on each page can improve website optimization. Don’t use them everywhere - this might undermine your Search Engine Optimization efforts.

Deep Linking. Ensuring as many quality inbound links as possible is a powerful Search Engine Optimization technique. This indicates to the search engine that your content is worthwhile, helping with overall Website Optimization. Having links directed just to the home page suggests the value of the site content is largely superficial, or your links were generated automatically, which is not a sign of good website optimization.

Emigrate. Look at Search Engine Optimization internationally. There are many directories for websites of companies based in other English language countries, America, Australia, Canada, South Africa for example. Could you use a business address in any of those countries to help with your website optimization?

Get Text in there First. Another Search Engine Optimization tip is to make sure text links show up before image links in the source code. Search engine robots follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page so it would be wasted website optimization effort.

Not anchor text. A Search Engine Optimization tip is to not too heavily on the anchor text. It can look like automation which isn't helpful with website optimization. Search engines don’t like all your inbound links to look the same. Use your URL sometimes and your company name other times. "Seoconsult Search Engine Optimization", occasionally, "Search Engine Optimization by Seoconsult" as well, "Seoconsult Web Design and Search Engine Optimization" some other times, etc.

Over the years I've learned so much about how to do an effective article marketing campaign, so I thought it might be helpful to gather some of my best tips and just list them all in one spot.

Since you wouldn't get very far in the tips without first knowing the basics, I'll give you some preliminary info on what article marketing is and how it works:

What is Article Marketing?

With Article Marketing you write and syndicate free reprint articles via article directories, ezine editors, and announcement groups. A key element of Article Marketing is the author resource box, which contains a short author bio and a link back to the author's website. Through submitting free reprint articles that are picked up by online publishers, a website owner can effectively build links, increase search engine ranking, drive traffic to his website, and establish himself as an expert in his niche.

How does it work?

Each time an author submits an article, he includes his resource box. A resource box is a short author bio, which also includes a link back to the author's website. Every time a website owner decides to publish a free reprint article, he also includes the author's resource box. So, every time the article is picked up for publication the author's name and a link back to the author's website are published also. In this way the author builds links and increases exposure for his website. The people clicking through to his website will be doing so because they found his article helpful, and since his article is on the same topic of his website the article generates targeted traffic.

And now, without further ado, here are your tips for executing a successful article marketing campaign:

1) Be consistent with your submissions. With a consistent article submission campaign:

*The more articles you write, the more web sites will choose to publish your article(s) online, the more inbound links your site will receive that will generate long-term traffic directly as well as boost your search engine rankings over the long-term, which in itself will of course generate traffic.

*The more articles you write, the more publishers will get used to your name, the quality of your articles, and the topics you cover, and the more likely it is that your article will be selected for publication.

*The more articles you write, the more your reputation and credibility is established, which in itself further encourages publishers to publish your articles, in order to benefit their readership with your expertise.

2) Use Google to see where your article is being published. If you're ever curious about where your articles are being published, just go to Google and type your article title in the search box (putting the title in quotes). Since articles are usually not immediately published by publishers, you might want to give it 2-3 days before doing a search like this. Also, know that as time goes on it's likely that the number of publishers who pick up your article will increase.

3) Give it a chance to work. Since search engines will usually take several months to adjust rankings based on incoming links, it may be 3-4 months before you notice the impact your article marketing campaign is having on your website. Patience has its rewards–when you're first starting out, implement ways to check your progress so you'll have an objective and well-balanced frame of reference.

4) It's not just about links. Remember that you're writing for real people. Spend the time and effort to write quality articles that are useful to your target market.

5) Edit each article carefully, avoiding typos and spelling mistakes like the plague.

6) Write articles on the topic of your website.

7) Submit completely original articles (rather than PLR articles). It might be tempting to take a short cut and just buy some duplicate articles that have been prepared for yourself and countless others over which you and others have been given rights to claim 'authorship', but that's not the road you want to take. Quality publishers and your potential readers are looking for unique and valuable content, so if you're serious about article marketing you need to either write the articles yourself from scratch or employ a ghost writer to write articles exclusively for you (articles for which you and you alone are the 'author').

8) Pay attention to your word count. Try to make your articles around 700-800 words long if you can, but at the very least between 450-1500 words.

9) 'How-to' and 'step-by-step' type articles are popular, along with articles that break down topics into 'tips', for example '5 Top Tips For…' Basically any type of list article is a good bet.

10) Make your articles short, snappy and to the point (but not too short–remember, 700-800 words is optimal).

11) Use title case for your titles - this means you should Cap First Letter Of Each Word In The Title for maximum chance of publication.

12) Re-read your article several times, especially 24 hours or more after initially 'completing' it, you'll be surprised how many improvements you can make after leaving it for a while. And the better it reads, the more chance it will have of being published.

13) Ask yourself - would you be happy to publish your article on your web site or in your ezine? Remember, in publishing your article, ezine editors and web site owners are effectively endorsing it - is your article of a suitable quality?

14) Space out your submissions during the month rather than submitting bunches all in one day.

15) Not all publishers will acknowledge use of or let you know their intention to publish your article - you should not consider such an acknowledgement to be a condition of their use of your article, but rather appreciate the effective publicity their use of your article can bring to you and your web site. Some publishers will let you know when they've picked your article up for publication, while many won't.

16) When you submit an article, don't expect it to show up immediately at the directory(ies). Most quality publishers review each and every article to be sure it adheres to their editorial guidelines. Depending on how many articles are being reviewed and how many editors are on staff, it may take anywhere from 2-3 days to a week or more for an article to be published on a website.

17) Spend time crafting a strong resource box. Really, the resource box is just as important as the article, so don't fall into the habit of just throwing one together at the last minute. Take your time, customize your resource box to suit your article, and you'll be rewarded.

18) Limit your links in your article body and in your resource box. If at all possible, it would be great if you could have a link free article. In your resource box, I advise using a single link, since you don't have space to convince a reader to go to multiple websites.

19) Make your articles educational rather than sales oriented. This means that your articles should be written to teach readers rather than inspire them to buy a particular product.

20) Titles are important–Spend time crafting an attention grabbing title that tells what your article is about.

21) Develop a way to brainstorm article topics–you will need a steady stream of them!

22) Use your keywords appropriately in your submissions.

23) Test out your links before submitting your article.

24) Experiment with ways to increase your speed–I suggest using an article outline.

25) Use an automatic article submission service. Many folks start out submitting manually , but then after they get their feet wet they decide that using a quality article submission service like SubmitYOURArticle.com is a worthwhile investment in their marketing efforts. While you can receive limited benefits by submitting manually (just going to an article directory and submitting an article), your efforts are magnified when you submit using an article distribution service because with each article you're reaching hundreds of targeted publishers. More publishers means more backlinks, greater exposure for you and your website, and in turn more traffic to your site.

If you're teetering on the edge not quite sure if you'd like to do article marketing or not, you might start out slow and just write an article and submit it manually to a few sites. If you think you'd like to go at it full throttle, then enlist the services of a trusted article submission service.

Question for you: These are some of my best tips and info–have you any more to add?

You've probably heard folks telling you to use your keywords in your articles and your article titles, but when you're writing articles over the long term simply putting keywords in your article titles can become repetitive very quickly.

I'd really like to encourage you to go a few steps beyond just inserting your keywords in your article titles–how about trying to lure readers to your specific article?

Most of the time your keywords will be on a more general topic (the topic of your website), and then when you're writing articles you'll delve into more detailed topics under that more general one.

For example, if my keyword phrase is 'article marketing' my articles will be on specific aspects under that overarching theme. Some articles may be about writing, others may be about using keywords in articles, others may be about submitting articles–the possibilities go on and on.

So, when I'm crafting my titles, instead of just focusing on the keyphrase of 'article marketing', I can create an article title (if and where possible) to match what people are searching for using this free WordTracker keyword tool.

As an example, if I'm just coming up with a title on my own, I may want to title an article 'How To Write Articles Lightning Fast with an Outline', but when I look up 'write lightning fast' on Wordtracker, I get no results (not a good thing!).

But if I tweak it a bit and looking up 'write quickly', I get:

• how to write an article quickly
• how to write content quickly
• how to write unique content quickly

With that information, I know the most common language folks use when they're trying to search for ways to write articles quickly.

Consequently, I can craft my article title to take advantage of these search queries, so my title becomes 'How To Write an Article Quickly with an Outline'.

It's not going to be possible every time to do something like this, but it's really something just to bear in mind to see if there are any opportunities like this to take advantage of. What you can do is just with each article key in a couple of the main words related to the article in Wordtracker and then play around with it a little and see if anything comes up.

So, that's just something to bear in mind to optimize your article titles as much as possible and help ensure that people out there searching for the type of information you're providing can easily be connected with your articles when doing a Google search.

For years, it has been well known that Google’s search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).

But in March of 2007, Google’s mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website’s ranking in Google were over.

The Shot Heard Around The World

With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that “They can’t do that!”

But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google’s intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms - no matter who those changes might hurt or help.

By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website’s rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always been and always will be.

The summer of 2007 was just such an oddity… For me, it has always been exciting to challenge the brains at Google to get my websites to rank well within Google’s search algorithms. But for some reason, at that moment in time, many of those who held the top rankings in Google felt as if it was their God-given right to be at the top of Google’s search results, and how dare Google oppose God’s decree in this matter.

Yep, I know I am going to catch flak for that statement - comparing a few webmasters to religious zealots - but that is how I roll sometimes.

For me, Matt Cutts was telling people to work harder to actually “earn” what they have been given. For me, it was a chance to rededicate myself to the goal of ranking well in Google for competitive keywords. For me, I did not have to change anything I was already doing, because I have never gained a single ranking in Google by paying for a link from any web page. (wink)

Google’s Search Engineers Are Not Foolish

Matt Cutts has said time and again that Google does not want to attack any problem in their search algorithms by manually deleting any participant in the Google search ranking game.

Instead, Google in every case wants to program a solution to address a particular bad practice.

I guess it might be easier for me to understand since I am also a computer programmer. It is a hobby I really enjoy, and I exercise my mind with computer programming anytime I want to improve my own websites or to build a new website. I keep my brain sharp by solving problems in computer code.

So, whenever I see Google making moves in one direction or another, I try to visualize how I would solve their algorithm problems in computer code.

In my mind, solving the paid links issue was a super-easy solution. Just look at the pages linking to a particular website, and then do a cross-comparison of the PageRank of all of those linking pages. If all of the pages linking to a particular URL have a PageRank of Four or higher, then chances are that those links were artificially created, through some kind of paid linking system.

Let me explain this in an example, where all of the sample web pages have 100 inbound links each:

• If Site A has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher, then that is unnatural and therefore suspect.
• If Site B has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 0, then those links offer no value to the Internet community as a whole, and therefore Site B should not measured as a quality search result.
• If Site C has a mix of PageRank 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 links, then that is more natural in its structure and it also shows that some of the links are considered to have value in the Internet community as a whole. Therefore, Site C has proven itself worthy above Site A and Site B in Google’s search results.

This example should show in no uncertain terms how easy it was for Google to properly address the issue of paid links and to put a stop to people using paid links to manipulate their websites’ ranking in Google’s search algorithms.

Publication Standards

A couple years back, I wrote another article discussing this concept in relationship to article marketing. You can read that article with third-party commentary from Chris McElroy, aka NameCritic, on the Article Content Provider Blog.

In a nutshell, I was discussing the role of article directories in the article marketing industry. Again, this solution came to me from my programming mind. The simple way for Google to have dealt with all of the junk articles that have been written for the purpose of building links to a website is to look at the article in the context of where that article is published.

The article marketing carpet bombers send their articles to hundreds of article directories to get hundreds of links pointing to their website. But the role of the article directory has always been to be a repository where newsletter publishers and webmasters could go to find articles that they would like to reprint in their own newsletters and on their own websites.

Some article directory managers bring a commitment to providing publishers with only quality articles. Other article directory managers approve anything and everything sent to them.

Through computer programming, it is relatively easy to identify which websites are article directories and which ones are not.

If an article is of good quality, then niche website publishers will find the article and put it on their own website. If the article is a crap article, then the only websites that will accept it are those article directories that publish anything and everything given to them.

As a result, it is easy for Google to look at the Linking Portfolio (list of publishing websites) of a single article and to see which articles were considered worthy of reprint by human reviewers. If the article only exists on article directory websites, then the article must not provide any real value to other people. But if the article is of good quality, the article will be able to be located on article directories AND on niche websites.

This concept very elegantly feeds into Google’s overall strategy of determining which web pages people recommend to others. After all, if you look at Google’s PageRank, it is very simply a system which measures how many people have voted on the quality or value of a particular web page.

Expanding On Google’s PageRank Formula

• Google loves any system that they can conceive to measure how much value the overall Internet community gives to a particular web page.
• Google naturally treats links found in the Yahoo! Business Directory and the Open Directory as higher value links, because the search engineers at Google understand that links in these directories are all approved by a human being.
• Google also gives extra value to social bookmarking websites, because the concept behind social bookmarking is that individuals “bookmark” a web page when they find that web page to offer good value to its readers.
• Google openly dislikes paid links and can easily identify those paid links, without having to jump through too many hoops. (This should not be confused with paying for a service that will help you increase your rankings in Google. Paying a service provider to provide services to you is very different than just paying for links on high PageRank web pages.)
• Google also appreciates reprint articles that have a Linking Portfolio beyond the article directories. Once again, Google appreciates reprint articles that are shown to provide real value to individuals in the greater Internet community.

When you take a close look at the original premise of Google’s PageRank, it has always been about creating systems that measure the value of a web pages to find which web pages will best answer a searcher’s question. Rightfully so, Google believes that the best way to ensure that they are able to give their users good quality search results is to look at what web pages others have already deemed useful.

Herein rests the secret to ranking well in Google’s search results. If you can create content that people will find useful, interesting, and valuable to others, then Google’s seach algorithms will look favorably upon your website.

"I want to be number one on Google for (insert hyper-competitive keyphrase here).”

It’s usually the first thing we hear in terms of search engine optimization - a company wants to be in that coveted top spot on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and MSN. No matter the industry or specialty, when companies approach us with their desired goals for an SEO campaign, it’s usually all about improving their rankings and positions…and often nothing else. Yes, achieving first page rankings or top spots on the search engines is an incredibly desirable accomplishment to many companies who want immediate and noticeable results. But with such a considerable investment in an SEO campaign, you’d think companies in need of search engine optimization services would also be concerned with their overall ROI, especially in light of the current economy.

Vastly improved (or even #1) rankings are rather easy to achieve in an SEO campaign, even by a novice search engine optimization company. I once wrote an article demonstrating that top rankings were simple - and proved it by optimizing the article for the phrase “Leprechaun Repellent.” To this day, that article, on various sites, takes up nine of the top ten spots on Google for the ridiculous phrase. The obvious question, then, is what those rankings ultimately accomplish. And so we peel back the layers of the onion until we get there.

The First Layer - Rankings

Rankings, rankings, rankings. This is by far the most popular metric for any SEO campaign. Occasionally, a search engine optimization company may not be concerned with your bottom line because it can offer guarantees and focus exclusively on achieving this goal (even though, as in the ‘Leprechaun’ example above, it’s really not getting you anywhere significant in the long run).

Rankings by themselves mean little, and the problem with companies obsessed over rankings is that it doesn’t demonstrate the usefulness of search engine optimization. For a company website, high rankings are great (and impressive for an SEO campaign), but they are just the first layer of the onion. As any good search engine optimization company will demonstrate, our goal is (and yours should be) to bring and/or improve the levels of high quality traffic to your website, meaning visitors who come to your website via a search are already reasonably interested in your products or services.

The Second Layer - Search-Engine Referred Traffic

Increasing search-referred traffic is not a perfect metric because, if visitors are not converting on your website, there’s not a big value proposition to be had. Alone, the metric relies heavily on the right keyphrase selection by your search engine optimization company during the beginning phases of your SEO campaign.

Say that a farming supply company who wanted to be number one on Google for “affordable farming equipment” decided to try a different tactic while attempting to improve its search-engine referred traffic. If the website had been optimized for ‘Britney Spears,’ for example, traffic levels would undoubtedly be high (if the site ranked well for the term - admittedly a huge challenge), but few visitors would be converting, and business, in turn, would be far from booming. Visitors will jump ship immediately and serve as an immediate reminder of the negative impact that poor phrase selection by your search engine optimization company can have on your long-term ROI.

The Third Layer - Take Rate

Essentially, the take rate refers to the number or percentage of search-referred visitors showing interest in your products or demos (your POA or Point-of-Action). The take rate merely signifies a visitor who demonstrates an interest in your POA, for example, by clicking on a “Contact Us” link. The data you’re gauging here is simply overall interest, since not all of the visitors will follow through and actually convert.

Fortunately, there are ways to improve your take rate during the SEO campaign - making the point-of-action blatant and clear on every page is usually the most effective (but overlooked) method. Collaborating with your search engine optimization company to make certain that the primary POA on your website is indeed the most desirable action that a visitor can take is of paramount importance.

The Fourth Layer - Conversion

Strictly speaking, “Conversion” is the percentage of visitors to your website that actually follow through with your POA. Once your search engine optimization company has helped you improve your take rate, you should work on getting more of those people to actually convert. Is your form too long? Do you show a prominent privacy policy promising not to use or sell personal data? Is it a quick, easy process or do people have to jump through hoops? A good search engine optimization company will be able to help you to identify the elements that are serving as barriers to conversion.

The Fifth Layer - Offsite Metrics

If a client allows it, we like to get involved in the nitty-gritty of offsite metrics as part of the SEO campaign. Though the usual search engine optimization company doesn’t go this far into the process, this area alone proves invaluable to demonstrating your ROI.

By analyzing offline metrics on a granular level, your search engine optimization company can examine and report on your average dollar sale for search-referred traffic, the average dollar value of each search-referred lead, the average lifetime value of each search-referred lead, and much, much more.

A software system is usually required to report the data acquired during your SEO campaign; we use Salesforce, a leading CRM (customer relationship management) solution that can be implemented to track these statistics for you. Though it requires diligence to analyze (as well as follow leads from cradle to grave), your company can analyze which engines attracted the most visitors, which keyphrases were the most profitable, the value of customers, and retention levels.

More than Rankings

All layers of the onion, so to speak, are important to an SEO campaign, but the closer you get to the actual dollar return, the more accurate your assessment of success or failure will be. Rankings alone are no indication of success. For that matter, neither is search-referred traffic if the visitors don’t take an action on the site that can lead to a sale. And when the lead finally comes in, there is no way to track the value unless you follow up with offline metrics to determine exactly how much leads from your website are worth.

These are all base metrics - many campaigns are much more involved and use thousands of different data points. But if you are new to the conversion/ROI game and are thinking about hiring a search engine optimization company, make sure that its goal is to be attuned to your bottom line.

When it comes to increasing your blog reader base and driving more traffic to your posts, there are few platforms more effective than Twitter. Twitter is an excellent tool for connecting with your readers and building a rapport. All businesses should use Twitter as a part of their marketing and branding strategy. For bloggers, knowing how to use Twitter effectively can lead to unbeatable exposure. Here are 5 steps any blogger can take to get his posts to go viral on Twitter.

1. Increase Your Followers

Obviously it’s going to be challenging to get your tweeted posts seen by a lot of people if there are only 20 people following you. Your first strategy should be to increase the number of people that are following you. The easiest way to do this is to follow lots of new people. Newbies tend to follow you right back. You can also look up the target keywords in your niche and follow the people who are talking about those keywords on Twitter. It’s particularly helpful to find the users who have a big following in your niche and then try to get them to follow you because they are the ones that will help your content go viral. Avoid following too many people who don’t follow you back because this can make your account look spammy and give you a bad image. Make sure the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow are about the same or at least not drastically different.

2. Become an Expert in Your Niche

Be consistent with your tweets. Regularly link to interesting articles that you think would be of interest to your followers and provide them with value every time. By regularly linking to informative articles in your niche, your followers will begin to look to you as a great source of information. This is an effective way to build your brand and it will pave the way for you to tweet your own posts. Your followers will be expecting valuable content since you have already positioned yourself as an expert in your niche.

3. Promote Your Blog

Don’t expect people to find your Twitter page and click on your link. Make the most of Twitter by tweeting your own posts! Treat your tweets as if they were your headline. Make them attention-grabbing and interesting so more people click through. Try posting the same tweet twice at different times of day to make sure you reach all your readers who didn’t see your first tweet. When you post a tweet multiple times, make sure to delete the first tweet so you don’t look like a spammer.

4. Write Interesting Articles for Your Blog

This might sound obvious but sometimes the more obsessed people get with promoting their blog and social networking, the less they pay attention to writing posts of good quality on a consistent basis. When you are just writing to fill up your blog, it shows. Make sure your posts are very informative, well-written, and that they provide unique information your readers won’t be able to find elsewhere.

5. Make It Easy for Your Followers to Re-Tweet Your Articles

After you’ve done all of the above, you have to leave it to your followers to do the rest. To make it easier for your followers to repost your tweets, add a “tweet this” link at the bottom of your tweets. How do you do it? Simply go to http://addthis.com/ and place the bookmarking plugin in your html.

If you aren’t already using Twitter, you’re missing an immense opportunity to give your website/blog good exposure. If you’re looking for a strategy to increase subscribers, traffic to your site, and a loyal reader base, Twitter is an indispensable tool that should play a prominent role in your master plan.

For those of us who are running an online business certainly know that it’s not easy to gain traffic to our websites. It requires plenty of tedious work, consistent action, and a desire to make our online business succeed.

There are many ways to get traffic to your website. Some people suggest using a plethora of traffic generating methods. I suggest to find just one way, become very good at mastering this one method and use it over and over again. Learning all the different ways is fine, but keep in mind that the learning process itself will take time in which you could be implementing a traffic generating method that you already know.

In this case it only makes sense to find one method that you think you can master and just stick with it. That way you will optimize the amount of time you have to spend on your online business towards gaining that much needed traffic. Trust me, you will not make any money if you can’t get traffic to your website.

If you want your online business to succeed long term and would like traffic to come as cheap as possible, you’ll want to utilize the power of back links. Back links are simply links on others websites that point back to your website. The more back links you have, the higher your website and websites pages will rank in the search engines.

This is a very important concept to know for any internet marketer. Your goal should be to use a method where you are constantly picking up back links on a daily basis. When you combine those back links with keyword research and search engine optimization, over time you will begin to see your traffic drastically improve. Here’s an example of how I get traffic two ways using one method…article marketing.

The first thing I do is my keyword research. Ill write down a list of about 10 or so keywords that get a decent amount of traffic and very little to moderate competition. Once I have compiled the list, Ill write an article using one of the keywords and post it on my blog. Then I will write another article and submit it Ezine Articles using the same keywords as a hyper link in the authors resource box.

Over time I’ll see that page slowly move up the rankings for those keywords. The more back links I have pointing at that page, the higher and faster it will move up the rankings. I will rinse and repeat this process for all of the selected keywords until I have reached page one for each. It may take a month or more to do. Then I will select another 10 keywords and repeat the process all over again.

You can see how powerful this method is over time. After a year of this process you can be ranked on page one for over a hundred keywords all of which will bring targeted traffic to your website.

SEM SEO Experts are finding ways of establishing higher ranking in search engine results by serving quality content to users. Over the past 10 years, SEO techniques have evolved with the demand of the search engines to serve quality search results to users requesting information. It all comes down to user experience and what online marketing professionals are doing to contribute to optimal search engine results. This evolution in demand for higher quality search results has forced SEO Consultants to develop new strategies for higher ranking. These online marketing professionals have learned from history and are achieving higher rankings for their clients by avoiding black hat marketing techniques. Whether you enjoyed history class or slept through it, you cannot afford to miss this lesson. Sleep too long and you may miss some important pointers from our marketing predecessors.

Ten years ago, the online marketing industry was comprised of traditional marketing professionals with a desire to bring their products to the online market. Most companies interested in marketing products online were marketing to consumers in ecommerce environments. A major consideration in any marketing plan included online traffic generated from search engines. In order to increase search engine traffic, black hat marketing techniques were used frequently to market products online. Keyword stuffing was a frequently used technique by SEO Consultants to achieve higher search engine ranking. Attempting to gain high rankings for a specifically targeted keyword or phrase, SEO Consultants would employ a keyword density of up to 50% to secure first page, first position listings in search engines. Needless to say, the results found by search engine users were less than optimal and the search engines were not serving the quality search engine results they were seeking for users on Yahoo, MSN, or Google.

Another tactic used by online marketers of the past was the establishment of link farms. That practice continues today. Over the past 10 years, SEO Consultants have used link farms to establish higher search engine rankings for their clients. Considered by most experts as black hat marketing techniques, link farms are a bank of links on a page which is established without a relevant theme or associated content to the link farm page. Since search engine optimization professionals realized a large factor in ranking depended upon the number of backlinks to their site, SEO Consulting firms of yesterday were allowing clients to establish links to any page online, regardless of the theme of the website. Today, search marketing experts are finding ways to establish backlinks from relevant theme associated content. By establishing relevant links within a theme or category, a website will be perceived at a higher value to the search engines for that particular category. SEO Consultants of today are finding that a higher perceived value within a category by Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, gives a website the ability to rank higher in search engine results.

Pop-up advertising and Spam are black hat marketing techniques once used by experts in online marketing to achieve higher search engine ranking. Today, search engines still use traffic as a factor in search engine ranking. However submission of identical content within comments on websites, creating identical pages linked to website content, or employing advertising companies to spam online users with pop up or pop under ads just to increase website traffic, will no longer assist websites in higher ranking. Quite the contrary, search engines are penalizing websites which employ black hat marketing. The penalty for using spam techniques can be as minor as a lower value to the search engines and associated search results ranking. The penalty of using black hat marketing techniques can be as severe as delisting with search engines for 6 months or longer.

Studying history gives us the opportunity to learn from our predecessors. The growth of the online marketing industry has established an incentivized environment for increased knowledge in the field of search engine optimization. These new consultants are including optimization of social media content, web 2.0 content and applications, article marketing, RSS feeds, podcasts, and video marketing to communicate directly with consumers at a level expected by the online market. The days of serving irrelevant content to online users and expecting to benefit from the dissemination of that content no longer exist. SEM SEO Experts of today have modified the practices of yesterday to offer techniques to their clients which are ranking higher with the search engines. These new techniques are more effective because they offer users the quality content for which they are requesting information. We are not only learning from the mistakes of our industry’s past, but the evolution of these new practices of online marketing professionals is providing a higher quality online experience.

I recently received this question from someone who had just started article marketing his brand new sites:

"If I know that a link exists to one of my sites via an article which has been published or indeed from another website, how come I don't see it when I do a backlinks check? For instance, at the moment, www.mysite.com definitely has a link from www.myothersite.com and also from articles that have been published. So how come a backward link check registers no links? Just hoping to find out how this works."

That is an excellent question–I think that's a common point of confusion, especially for people who are marketing brand new websites.

Let me help you understand how the the backlink registering works and give you some tips on building more traffic to your site with article marketing.

Here are 2 ways I would recommend doing a backlink check:

*Go to Google, and in the search box type in link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/

You would of course replace the 'yourwebsite.com' part with your real URL.

*And/or you can use Yahoo Site Explorer

Yahoo Site Explorer actually gives more detailed information, so you may enjoy using that tool.

Both of these link checking methods will tell you how many backlinks that Google or Yahoo has registered.

Now that is *not* telling you how many backlinks you actually have–it's telling you how many links are registered at Google/Yahoo.

Search engines typically take 3-4 plus months to register backlinks for a site, and it can be longer if the site is brand new.

This is just the way that search engines work–they do not reevaluate links on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis–usually it is more like every 3 or 4 months.

I remember when we were first starting our blog, it was only in the 5th month that the links started turning up in a backlink check. We had been building links for all that time, but it just took 3 months for the backlinks to be registered by Google. Then all of the sudden in the 3th month a whole bunch of links showed up.

For a brand new site, you need to give Google a chance to…

1) index your site, and

2) register your incoming links.

That can take anywhere from 3-5 months.

As the site gets more established, the backlinks tend to register sooner (like every 3 months or so), but especially for a new site it just takes Google a bit of time to recognize the site and count the new links.

So, stop looking at your watch, and start looking at the calendar

During that time, you should be busy–busy marketing your site and submitting articles.

I have a few resources that should really be helpful for you as you're starting to market your site:

5 Things To Do Before You Start Article Marketing… (this is a great resource that tells you how to gauge your progress and how soon you can expect to see results–please read it)

Use Yahoo Site Explorer

So, just to go back over things–there are 2 reasons why you might not see backlinks for your site yet:

1) Your site is brand new. Until your site is indexed by Google, no links will show up at all in a backlink check, even if you know for certain that you have links coming in. Once your site gets more established the backlinks will register more regularly, but at the beginning it takes longer.

2) Not enough time has elapsed since you have submitted your articles. After you start article marketing, it will take 3-4 months for the backlinks to register in Google and other search engines. This does not mean that the links are not there or that they are not accumulating with each article you submit–it just means that the Google spiders have not gotten around to visiting your site and checking you links. The links will show up in a few months.

Here's What To Do:

*Read over the resources I gave you above.

*Develop a submission schedule where you're submitting articles for your site(s) every single month.

*If you're very interested in keeping on top of your website's progress, follow the instructions in the post I referred you to above 5 Things To Do Before You Start Article Marketing. You can keep track of your stats every month, but know that it will likely take anywhere from 3-5 months for the backlinks to be registered. There are still other ways to measure progress even as you're waiting for the backlinks to show up. See that post for the other ways.

*Be patient, I know it's tempting to want to see results right away (we all want that immediate gratification!), but this is a marathon, rather than a sprint. The links created with Article Marketing have long lasting impact on a site's ranking and traffic, but it does take months before seeing the impact of your work. Even after you see the impact of your work you should continue to submit articles to build on the momentum, as it's just a natural part of marketing your websites and your business.

From time to time I'll get an email from a person saying, "I've submitted several articles and I'm still not seeing results."

My first questions to them are always–

• What type of results are you looking for?

• What is your means of measuring your results?

• How long have you been article marketing and how many articles a month have you been submitting?

Sometimes the person's answer is,

"I don't think I'm getting any results because I haven't had very much of an increase in sales on my website, which is why I'm doing article marketing. I submitted 5 articles the first month, then I got busy the second month and didn't submit any, and this month (my third month) I've submitted a couple."

At this point I'm wishing that I had the ability to turn back the hands of time so that I could tell this person some very helpful tips before she started that would have eased her mind, helped her measure her results more accurately, and increased her success rate.

For anyone who has just stared doing article marketing, or is on the verge of starting, or who is considering starting, I've got 5 tips for you that will make your life easier.

Oh, and even if you've been submitting articles for a while now and didn't have these tips when you started–it is never to late to do these!

1) Have a realistic time frame for results.

Although a article marketing can produce dramatic results right away for some folks (for example if your article gets picked up by a major ezine and sent out to tons of folks), it is generally a long term marketing strategy that usually does not show significant results for several months.

The reason for this is that Google and the other search enginess don't update your rankings on a daily or even a monthly basis–usually their cycles run every 3 or 4 months where they will re-establish the ranking of a website based on incoming links.

So, when you start article marketing, you may see a dramatic result right from the start if one of your articles gets picked up by a major ezine or something, but please do not expect to see immediate drastic results. Commit to doing your article marketing consistently over the long term, and know that it will likely take 4 months or so to see a noticeable impact.

2) Make a note of your traffic baseline.

Writing things down helps soooo much. It's easy to say after the fact, "Well, I think I remember my traffic being higher than this previously" but if you aren't conscientiously tracking things your memory may be a bit foggy.

There are stats programs out there to help us track traffic–use one of them! Then, create a spreadsheet where you insert your monthly traffic results. Or, if your traffic tracking program generates monthly reports, use those, but please don't look at your stats and try to go off of memory for a few months back. We want concrete data!

For the last completed month, jot down what your traffic was. This is your traffic baseline.

3) Check how many backlinks you have before you start your article marketing campaign.

Google has a cool way of checking your backlinks. Just type this into the search box: link:http://yourwebsite.com (you would substitute the URL of your website after the "link:" part).

Another great tool is Yahoo Site Explorer.

After pressing the "search" button, you should see a list of results that indicate the websites that are linking to your site. In the upper right area of the page, you can see the number of sites that are linking to your site.

In your notebook or spreadsheet, or whatever you're using to keep track of all this information, jot down the number of your website's backlinks. This is your baseline for your backlinks.

4) Check your ranking for your keywords.

This sounds like it might be technical, but it's not! It's soooo easy–just type your keyword or keyword phrase in the Google search box.

Where does your site come up in the results pages?

Are you at #5, #25, #357 or something else?

Whatever your ranking is, jot down that number. This is your keywords baseline. Repeat this process for all your keyword phrases and make a note of your rankings.

Oh, and what if you can't find your website in the results listings?

Don't fret!

Everyone has to start somewhere, and remember that even the #1 site on the search results pages at one time wasn't visible ranked at all! You are just starting out–you don't have ranking yet or perhaps you're so low on the ranking that you're not even listed.

This is fine–you're starting to market your website at least–just make a note saying that you're unranked. You're about to change that!

5) Check your PageRank (click that link if you're not sure what PageRank is).

It also isn't hard to check what your website's PageRank is–just install the free Google Tool Bar found at http://www.toolbar.google.com

When you install that tool bar, you'll be able to see what your web page's PageRank is by looking at the PageRank bar (it will turn green when your web page has PageRank). Hover your cursor over the PageRank bar and you'll see a message similar to this:

"PageRank is Google's view of the importance of this page (5/10)".

In this example, the web page has a PageRank of 5– when they say 5/10, they mean that it has a PageRank of 5 out of a possible 10. Zero is the lowest and 10 is the highest. (We are all aiming for a 10, but it will take a while to achieve that!)

So, look up your PageRank and jot that number down in your stats tracking journal. This is your PageRank baseline.

If your web page doesn't have PageRank yet the bar will be clear, and the message will say "No PageRank information available"

If that's the case, no worries. This probably means that your site is brand spankin' new, and you're doing a great thing by starting an article marketing campaign!

Diversifying Your Eggs

As you can see, there are several ways that you can measure results when you start your article marketing campaign–if you become super focused on any one aspect to the exclusion of the others you will end up with a distorted view of your results, and you'll get an "all eggs in one basket" effect.

When measuring our online marketing results we want to diversify our eggs–have several avenues for measuring results. Why?

Well, search engines are in a constant state of flux, so one area may be going great while another area is at a momentary stand still or has even taken a few steps back.

Just to give you an idea of what you can expect as you're trying to build traffic and links to your website (and this is true whether you're using article marketing or some other marketing tool):

A Day In The Life Of A Website Owner

You check your stats and notice that your PageRank has increased .

Then on the same day you notice that you've moved down a couple notches in the search results for one of your keyword terms .

But your traffic has increased.

Oh, but there is not a noticeable difference in the amount of sales you're making on your site

Now, you can see that if you were only looking at one of these stats that you wouldn't be getting the whole picture. This is why I measure several areas, because you won't necessarily be seeing results for each of these areas at the same time.

I always advise people that when you're starting your article marketing campaign to commit to it for at least 4 months. Submit your articles on a regular schedule, be consistent month after month after month.

Check your stats each month if you like, or just check them again at the end of 4 months. I do check my stats every month, but I don't expect to see results for several months when I'm starting a new article marketing campaign.

The Internet is no doubt a powerful tool to market all sorts of products and services. When you have something to market and sell, the Internet can directly put you in touch with your potential buyers. And one low cost and effective way to do this is by setting up an email marketing campaign.

With email being free and easy to setup, many companies are now using it to contact their customers directly to inform them about new products. An email marketing campaign is a great way to deliver a message directly to your consumers and not have it filtered through other mediums. This is one of the best ways to not only promote your products and services but also spread the word about your business.

Email marketing can take a great many forms as well. You will be able to send out company newsletters, invitations, and just informational emails to those that are on your email marketing list. Emails are fast and efficient for many companies to spread the word about their new products or services to those that are interested in them.

When you launch a product or a service, it is only natural for you to be greatly concerned about the way that your market is going to react. Your business’ success, after all, depends on your customers’ positive reactions to the new product that you are offering.

As you surely know, every business must allocate a significant portion of its budget for its marketing efforts. This is also a reason to cause you some worry as it may be difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your various marketing campaigns.

When you are very concerned about the marketing campaign that you are using, there are more than a few marketing services that will help to alleviate some of your concerns. The email marketing service that you use can give you a head start on the campaign to start your business off on the right track. If you wish to ease some of your worries, you should consider hiring a professional service that will handle your email marketing campaign.

When you avail of an email marketing company’s services, you can rest assured that they are developing a strong plan to promote your products. You are taking advantage of their experience and expertise. With a reputable email marketing company on your side, you can be free to focus your efforts on the other aspects of your business.

Using an email marketing company can be a great way to build up relationships with your customers as well. They can help keep you in touch with your valuable customers regularly. Constant interaction with your customers will engender loyalty and help to keep them from buying products from your competitors instead of from you. Your loyal customers are the backbone of your business and you must not neglect them. This is the way that you can keep your business going strong for many years down the road.

Very experienced web site owners know, without any doubt, you have to increase traffic to web site businesses. They also know it can take months to figure out exactly how to do this. If you are new to Internet business tactics then take note of what the experienced entrepreneurs are saying. These are the people who have learnt through trial and error what does and doesn’t work. Many have also ended up wasting time and money on methods that simply don’t get positive results. Those who have succeeded owe their success to their own good products and services. But they also owe their success to a particular strategy that has worked in drawing prospective customers to their web sites.

A big part of any Internet business is in the stats. Business owners want to see positive stats when it comes to how many people are visiting their sites. This is because a certain percentage of these stats will convert into paying customers. This is the reason you set up a business and if your stats aren’t positive then it’s time to take stock of the situation. No matter how bad your stats are you can turn this situation around. If you want to do it quickly then make use an experienced Internet marketer. Find a person who understands how to make contact with Internet users. You want a person who can use language to promote your business and also convince readers to visit your site. The way to go about this is by means of interesting and relevant articles about your products or service. This is how to increase traffic to web site businesses.

Apart from using excellent language skills to write articles your chosen person must have the ability to use specific words that relate to your business and attract both visitors and search engines. These are some of the skills used in a strategy to increase traffic to website offers.

If you are not experienced at attracting visitors to your site or blog you will find it hard to get guaranteed website traffic. If you can get this it the likelihood of your business doing well is very high. We would all prefer a sure thing. However, for many people this doesn’t happen because they get bogged down by trying to monitor their websites or blogs round the clock. Once again, if you don’t know what you’re doing you aren’t going to get the results you are looking for. It really does take a long time to find a method or strategy that works for you. It will save you a lot of effort and time if turn to an expert who already has the strategy in place.

You want somebody who will provide you with guaranteed website traffic. It makes good business sense to pay an expert who has proved she knows how to get results. It is very important the person you use provides you with a report at least every month. These are the stats that will show you exactly how your website is faring in attracting visitors. To be more accurate it’s not your website that does the attracting it’s what the expert does that makes all the difference. Good website promotion depends on good communication. The only means of communicating is via text. Text is what forms the content of your website. It is the text that tells your visitors what your site or blog is all about.

Your expert Internet marketer is not only going to use text to attract visitors but she is going to create the text. Good quality text must provide relevant and meaningful information to the reader. But to an expert marketer good text must also contain specific keywords that represent the product or service being offered by your site or blog. This kind of expertise is put into a strategy in order to provide guaranteed website traffic.

There are many different ways to make money on the internet, the most obvious being, of course, selling products. If you would like to make money on the internet by being a seller, you have a few choices. You can set up your own business and sell directly from your own website, you can sign up for an affiliate program and sell on behalf of other businesses, and you can sell on eBay.

If you have your own products or services, and you want to sell and run your own small business, then the first option would probably be your best bet. You'll need to select a catchy, easy-to-remember domain name for your website. Keep it short, simple, and to the point, but at the same time, make it interesting. The more simple yet interesting you make your URL, the more money you can make on the internet.

If you don't know how to make websites, then you can have a programmer do it for you. You can sell just about anything you want from your website, and you need to set up a payment system. PayPal is the most common choice, but some online business owners prefer more professional checkout systems.

You can also sell products to as many parts of the world as you wish; however, don't forget to configure shipping and handling prices. Some of your customers will also probably want insurance added to their order, so make sure you added that as an option for them when they check out. The easier you make everything on your customers, the more money you'll make on the internet.

You can also make money on the internet by selling products for other businesses. You can do this by joining an affiliate program. Your best bet will be to promote items that you yourself would gladly pay for. There are many products and services you can help promote, and you'll receive a commission for every sale that you help make, thus making affiliate programs a great way to make money on the internet.

Once again, it's important that you have a website. Even if you're selling someone else's products, having your own website will make you seem more professional. In the highly competitive world that is E-commerce, standards need to be maintained in order to truly make money on the internet. Stay a step ahead of other affiliates out there and you will succeed!

The third aforementioned way you can make money on the internet is by selling on eBay. In case you haven't noticed, almost everything is sold on eBay these days. You can either establish a good relationship with a wholesale and dropshipping service, or you can stock up on flea market and garage sale items. Some are even making tons of money on the internet by buying foreclosed homes at cheap prices and then reselling them for twice as much on eBay.

No matter how you choose to make your money on the internet, just remember to stay focused and calm, no matter what. Don't become frustrated if you start out slow; remember: even the top entrepreneurs go through slow periods at times. You'll succeed eventually, just as long as you stick with it!

Google improves its ranking algorithm on an ongoing basis. During the last weeks, Google changed three things on the result pages that are visible to all Google users.

The changes are an improvement for searchers but they might be bad for your website.

1. Google has increased the snippet length. Less visitors for you?

Google now shows an extended snippet for queries that consist of three or more keywords. The idea behind this change is that these multi-word queries are very targeted and complex. The usual short snippet might not contain enough information.

What does this change mean for your website?

The longer snippet contains much more information. As Google tries to provide the user with the most relevant information in the snippet, the snippet might already contain the answer to the user's query. The longer snippets might result in the following:

* Fewer users might click through to your website because they get the answer to their question in the search results.

* Users might begin to use more multiple-word queries to get more detailed search result snippets.

* As the longer snippets need more space, the longer snippets move another result page below the fold and web surfers will see fewer results at first glance. That increases the importance of very high rankings.

It seems that Google ignores the meta description tag for the snippets. That means that you must include a call to action in your web page titles.

2. Google now shows more related searches at the bottom of the results

When you search for a keyword, Google will display related searches at the bottom (and sometimes at the top) of the search results.

For example, if you search for the keyword "principles of physics", Google will suggest "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" as related terms that could help you find what you need.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's important that you optimize the different pages of your website for different keywords. Do not concentrate on a single keyword but cover a wide range of keywords so that Googly will classify your website as relevant to the complete topic.

The more related keywords and pages can be found on your website, the better.

3. Google now shows local results based on IP addresses

Search Google for the keyword "pizza" and you'll see local results in the middle of the search results. These local results are delivered based on the IP address of the searcher. That means that you will get different results than people in another city.

What does this change mean for your website?

It's now easier to rank for competitive keywords for some local searches. While it's very difficult to get a high ranking for a very competitive keyword such as "lawyer" in the regular results, it's much easier to be listed for that keyword in the local results if you're living in a small town.

You should submit your website to Google Maps so that web surfers can find you in these local searches. You can submit your website to Google Maps with IBP's semi-automatic directory submitter.

If you run a local business, you should include your business name, your category and the name of your city in the title tag of your homepage.

If you want to get on top of Google's search results then your website must have optimized content and good inbound links. If you give Google what it wants then your website will get the best possible rankings.