Tweeting, as it is called, is all the rage amongst online businesses these days. Twitter consists of writing short text messages of less than 140 characters that can be viewed by all of your followers. Twitter is a great way to attract attention to your online business thus serves as a form of free online marketing. Companies can use Twitter to interact with both current and potential customers, building brand loyalty and image. Here are 10 ways in which Twitter can boost your online business.
1. Twitter generates traffic to your site because you can send messages that include links. The only problem with trying to increase clientele with Twitter is that it is difficult to target a certain group or demographic. There is a possibility to create viral content on Twitter however because you can ask your friends to include your links in their tweets.
2. Twitter greatly enhances your personal brand. By using Twitter, you and your company develop a casual, approachable personality that is in the loop. This helps you attract new potential customers. The better you get at tweeting, the more likely you are to expand your potential customer base because new Tweeters are attracted to well-established Twitter users.
3. If you need to hire a writer, graphic designer or anyone else for that matter, you can do so easily on Twitter by sending a tweet out to your friends to ask if they know of anyone. This eliminates the need of putting out classified ads and weeding through prospective employees.
4. If you work remotely with other people, you can use Twitter as a way to interact as a group. Twitter options include making messages visible only to certain people, which would obviously be useful if you want to use it as a tool to communicate with people in your business.
5. It is easy to find new, potential customers by using Twitter's search function. Search Twitter for your target keywords and you will find related tweets. Follow the Twitter users that are talking about relevant topics and you may be able to offer your product or services to them in the future.
6. Twitter can assist you in your social media efforts because anytime you submit an article to Digg or Stumble Upon for example you can include a link to your story and perhaps get others to vote for it.
7. Twitter allows you to stay in touch with your current customers. If you begin offering a new product or service, you can use Twitter to make an announcement.
8. With Twitter, you can connect with other people in your niche. This is helpful for building business relationships that will enhance your future networking efforts.
9. It's easy to get feedback on any of your current projects with Twitter. If your site has a new design or you just put up a new article, you can tweet about it and ask your followers for feedback. This valuable feedback can help you improve your business and even come up with some new ideas for future projects.
10. With a Twitter widget on your website, you can link up with potential customers who find your site through a search engine. This allows you to connect with people on a more personal level and increase your followers.
Twitter can be very beneficial for your online business if you know how to use it to your advantage. It's a free and easy way to network with both current customers and potential customers. Using Twitter allows you to connect with people on a personal level and is a powerful way to improve your online marketing and networking efforts.
While having a great sales page is very important in internet marketing, what is vital is getting traffic to that sales page. The best sales copy in the world is useless if no-one reads it.
There has been much written about SEO strategies and using Web 2.0 content sites to help build your traffic, so this article will focus on a more demographic-specific form of traffic building: forums.
Internet forums, and their newsgroup predecessors, developed to give like-minded people a place to discuss their favorite topics. These topics can be anything from cooking to skydiving; whatever you're looking for, there's a forum for it.
For the purposes of internet marketing, forums are an invaluable research because they are entirely populated with people who are already predisposed to buy your product.
For example, let's say you are working with a product that is all about teaching people to build websites. If you go to a forum filled with web design novices, then you have pinpointed potential customers, making it more likely to get sales.
When using forums at a marketing tool, you have to remember one key tenet: you must provide value in order for potential customers to buy your product. While this is true in all other stages of marketing, it is even more true for forums. Don't post a lot of links and then expect members to just click on them and buy your product. You must post useful information to the topic at hand.
As with the example of web design, should a member post a question on formatting images on a website, don't simply write a post saying, "Buy this product," write something along the lines of, "To format an image using HTML you do this, but if you would like to bypass the hassle of manually formatting images each time, you can try out some web design software like This Product.
It will cut your work time down on trivial things so that you can focus on more important site issues." This provides the value of knowledge to the members of the forum and also makes a soft pitch for your product.
As you build a presence in a forum community, you will have more people clicking your links because they will appreciate the knowledge you contribute.
One final word: make sure to check the forum's rules before posting too many links. Most will allow you to have a link in your profile that you can lead to your site, but make sure what the guidelines are before starting.
Too many Internet marketers look at website traffic as a matter of how many people are getting to their sites. Sure, the raw numbers are important, but only to the extent that the traffic actually has a snowball's chance in the you-know-where of converting. We really need to get past the "more is better" mindset and start thinking in terms of "better is more".
Let's put it this way. Would you rather have 100 highly-targeted visitors with a strong likelihood of purchasing something from you or 1,000 random "pulled off the street" visitors who may or may not even have a remote interest in anything you have to say. Obviously, you'd go with the 100.
Though it isn't always that black and white when it comes to your website traffic and your online business, the same principle does apply. You don't just want quantity, you want quality.
What does that mean in terms of your efforts to snag more traffic? Primarily, it means you need to concentrate your efforts on getting the kind of people to your site who are likely buyers. That's going to require you to really hone your keyword selection and targeting skills. That's true whether you're trying to get organic search traffic or if you're working with PPC ads. You need to discern "good" keywords based on what they mean, not just the search levels and competition.
It also creates an obligation to check your stats and analysis with a higher degree of care than most people do. You want to see where your traffic is coming from and whether, based on search queries and or referrers, they're likely to be real customers.
So, the next time you catch yourself talking about how you want more traffic, stop yourself. Start getting into the habit of talking about "more targeted traffic". That's where the money is and that's where you should be focused at all times.
This look at website traffic only skims the surface of a deep pool of valuable information. Take advantage of this opportunity to plunge even deeper into website traffic. You will love what you find there.
Today, a website will sink or swim depending on the strength of its SEO considerations. Most people, when searching for a product or service on the internet use search engines. Without SEO services, the search engines can’t find your site on the web and your ranking will be poor to nonexistent. The best website promoting the best product in the world will fail if SEO services have been done poorly or haven’t been considered at all. Proper SEO services will follow several steps to ensure a maximization of ranking and a guaranteed increase in traffic.
Where To Start
The first is that you have to analyze the functionality of a site from an SEO perspective or so called "on page optimization", by checking the keywords, it's density, the HTML code and the meta tags.
The second is analysis of the site through the user's eye in terms of functionality and the quality of the users experience when using the site.
Target Your Audience's Needs
Next, look to your competition. Analyze your competitor’s sites and rankings. What makes their sites work better than yours? What did they do to gain a higher ranking in the search engines than you?
Select Targeted Keywords
Once you have your selected keywords, you must rewrite your website content to reflect this. Aim for a 3-5% keyword density throughout the site. Be careful of saturating the site with keywords, however; going much higher than 5% makes it harder to work the keywords in an organic way, and the result can sound unnatural and ruin the flow of the content and could alienate your audience.
Optimize your site every way you can, do not just optimize the content. Look at your site's code and ensure that the basic HTML and meta codes also reflect your keywords as the search engines initially scan these when they spider your site and use it as part of their ranking.
Linking Strategy
To Conclude
These are some the basic things you need to do in terms of SEO optimization so that you site will rank higher in the search engines. Any less and you will fail. This does however bring you to a very important point, and that is how do you effectively manage your time to be able to do all these tasks efficiently and effectively? You will need a system of tools and services to assist you in this and one such system is Portal Feeder. If you are interested in knowing more about how you can effectively improve the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns then see what Portal Feeder has to offer.
Making money on the Internet with affiliate programs continues to be very profitable for thousands of people around the world. If you would like to make money as an affiliate marketer, here are three can't miss trends with Internet affiliate programs at this time.
1. Blogging with Google Adsense as an income stream. Search engines love blogs and Google even owns Blogger.com. What has become very easy to do is create a blog around something that you have an interest in, and then add Google Adsense ads to it.
You spend the majority of your time concentrating on adding valuable content to your blog on a regular basis. Over time you will develop a core group of readers who will follow your blog updates.
AS visitors to your webpage click on Google's ads, you generate an income for yourself and helps build your income seperately from your affiliate programs.
By working around your blog's content, you can really enjoy yourself, not having to concern yourself too much with actually selling anything. Google Adsense makes this possible to do.
2. Video marketing with affiliate links added to the video. Google owns You Tube, and they are putting a premium on websites and blogs that add video to them. This presents an opportunity to rank high with Google when you add videos to your site.
You have the chance to put your affiliate link or website into the video, letting you benefit from the power of the video to promote your business and affiliate programs. As people are watching the video, they will also see the URLs you have added, which can drive traffic to your site.
3. Selling digital information will continue to be a very profitable way to make money. This is especially true when you sell digital products that contain information that solve problems.
The number one reason people use the Internet today is to send email. The number two reason they use the Internet is to search for information.
Many people have problems and questions that they need answers to. This gives you an opportunity to sell your affiliate products, by selling information products that address these questions.
You can create your own products and sell them yourself. An alternative is to join Clickbank, which offers a nice affiliate program.com, and have access to thousands of digital products to sell.
So these are three can't miss trends in Internet affiliate programs at this time. Affiliate marketing will continue to pay out millions of dollars in commissions, and you may as well get your share.
Making your online business successful is not as hard as you think. Despite the numerous businesses that fail, there are few easy ways that will help you succeed. Among them involves reading widely on internet marketing and ensuring you have the products your online customers want. Customers can be purchasers of your products or services or mere visitors whom you can refer or convert to sales using my secret tips.
One step involves dedicating time to it and tracking the progress thereafter. The design, color themes, ease of use and navigation, optimization for search engines (SEO) etc are other too which can help you boost your online business. What's good is that all these e can be done too even when the system is running.
Most online businesses require the electronic transfer of money and therefore security of such information is vital. Using reputable back end solutions like pay pal, ensures that the customers are secure with the transactions.
Other Qualities for a successful online business include integrity. A high level of integrity in keeping customers orders, shipping, customer care, handling of sensitive information is also vital. Discounts and quality products will also help keep your image upright.
It's very important to plan, some online businesses are known to quickly take off and the high traffic and orders clog the owner. Be prepared to outsource some of your services like shipping to avoid being overwhelmed by the outcome. While others are slow in taking off, it's a good idea to invest in internet marketing so as to maximize your profits.
Being able to sell to a target group is also a good idea for a successful online business. This ensures you get the best and you can relate well with your customers. It's also easier to create a niche name for yourself by reaching out a particular niche market as compared to being a jack of all trades and no specialization. A niche online business is likely to get a Plus recognition compared to a general one.
This is the brightest idea if you wish to make an impact with your blog .It involves shouting your address to those who are ready to hear and those who don’t need to. This is easily done by using already established marketing options that will help you expose this wonderful link. It sounds simple but believe me, very few people have done it and you never know how it positively impacts until you do it.
Blog marketing ensures that your link is greatly distributed such that any one using a search engine is almost likely to see it on the first pages of the search engine result page. This is how you do it, sign up to any of the listed down directories and post your address, then regularly add your content and notify your friends. These systems allows many visitors to view which site talks about what and their link.
The beauty of spreading your links very much is that you arte exposed to the mighty search engines which use the power of links pointing to your site as one of requirements to determine you place in their system. Many mentions are better and you will be sure to have been exposed to the word that easily.
Making it a habit to use these blog marketing systems each time you have new content up will give desired results in long run among them a good ranking and a stream of visitors who you can easily convert to audience from where you can sell your products and services. Using multiple blog directories will be more effective in your initial stages and then focus on the most effective ones latter when you are established. Some of the free top blog directories include;
- http://www.technorati.com/
- http://www.blogcatalog.com/
- http://www.blogarama.com/
- http://www.blogflux.com/
- http://www.bloggernity.com/
- http://www.globeofblogs.com/
- http://www.blogexplosion.com/
- http://www.superblogdirectory.com/
- http://www.bloggeries.com
- http://www.spillbean.com/
There are many greater blog directories that will help you build your link by using them in your back link development program. Another related mode of link creation is using article marketing also available on my blog.
Viral marketing is an easy and powerful way to promote your business website, products and services among online users. It is an innovative, genuine, and practical advertising technique that is aimed to create awareness about a particular organization and its resources.
Competent Promotion Procedure for Your Business Website
To achieve success in your online business, it is important to generate brand awareness and targeted traffic. Consequently it is essential to make use of all available marketing methods which ensure positive results. Viral internet marketing is one such promotion technique which can be efficiently used to accomplish your online business objectives.
Viral advertising largely depends on word of mouth promotion. This promotion technique helps to market your products and services indirectly. So it is important to have a completely organized and properly designed website which can attract customers. Viral marketing strategies must be attractive, so that the visitors will be encouraged to convey a positive message regarding your products and services to their acquaintances.
Budget-friendly Promotion Technique to Enhance Brand Visibility
The promotion of your products and services is carried out through existing social networks and other resources. Viral marketing enhances your website traffic. With improved website traffic, an increase in conversion rates, sales leads and profit can be experienced.
At present viral advertising technique is gaining popularity and is frequently used by several online business establishments. Viral media such as emails, video clippings, images, online games, sharing of files, articles, blogs, forums, press releases and lot more are skillfully utilized for product promotion.
Benefit from Superior Marketing Solutions from the Experts
The internet business world is becoming more and more competitive. So it is essential to adopt proper marketing strategies according to the changing promotion trends and requirements for achieving superior results. It is here that the services of professional viral marketing firms become important. There are many competent companies in the industry, which have talented professionals to effect the promotion campaign. Take care to select the right firm which is able to provide reliable and economic solutions based on your business requirements.
When trying to make money online who does not want free advertising? Free advertising means that you get to reap all the benefits without really having to fear of the loss your investment. However to get free advertising, you still ahve to invest your time. You have to ensure that you’re using the best methods of free advertising available on the web to make the most use of your valuable time and help you grow your online business for effciently. So here are the top 7 free advertising methods you can use to get more traffic into your business and also help you make more money online.
1. Using Free classifieds
2. Using Forum postings
3. Using Article Submissions
4. Using Free Link Directories
5. Using Reciprocal links
6. Using Opt-in emails
7. Using A Properly SEO Optimized Site
These 7 ways of getting good targeted traffic are great for anyone that plans on making money online, and while they work really well it is only part of the equation. There are many other ways and methods you can generate traffic from and also many other ways that you can use these methods so that you make the most out of them and generate more money online. If you have a look a program called Portal Feeder you will know how you can do it consistenly and be able to build a fully sustainable online business.
How to make money with a website -it's not as hard as it sounds and its a great way to work from home to earn some extra income. So, if you're looking to turn your website into an internet money maker, you need to do some research, some work, and follow these simple steps to start making money online.
Finally, build your sites popularity and increase traffic to it. There are a number of sites edicated to SEO or search engine optimization that help you pull in more traffic to your website; more traffic usually means more money. Keep at it and you'll be making money with your website eventually; it does often take some time and hard work -but it can really pay off in the long run -so don't give up!
Good luck!
Do you need to increase web traffic to your website? Linking up to your site and helping people to click through and arrive at your website is essential to increasing web traffic and eventually making more money. Learn some simple and inexpensive ways to increase web traffic that hopefully will convert into sales.
One way to increase web traffic to write and post articles on industry websites, publications, and forums. Make sure they are well written and include an incentive to learn more about something on your website (so that they click). By creating backlinks on lots of industry websites you are likely to increase web traffic on your website from consumers interested in your product/service.
Think about launching an email newsletter to increase web traffic on your websites. Getting a newsletter every week/month will help remind your customers to return to your site thus increasing web traffic.
One way to increase web traffic is to write reviews for books that are relevant to your industry/content. Go to Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobles and write thoughtful reviews of industry books. Include a link to your site in the review and casually mention if you offer similar information for free. This is a great and overlooked way to increase web traffic.
Consider writing a blog either on your own site or even better on a popular industry site. Tell them you will write for free if they allow you to post. This can increase web traffic because an already popular site will promote you and link you to new potential customers. Many people only blog on their own sites and miss a great opportunity to increase web traffic by blogging on an already popular site.
Consider signing up for Google Adwords and starting a pay per click campaign to drive targeted traffic to your website thus increasing your web traffic. You can set a small budget to start an d increase as you see more web traffic.
From eHow!
'Get paid to Blog' websites offer many easy and fast money making opportunity for bloggers in all niches. Bloggers can earn money by writing posts about products, services and advertisers website with these networks on their blogs.
To start making money with any of paid blogging (Get paid to blog) networks, we need to create a publisher or blogger account. All paid networks have their own terms and conditions for accepting new publishers into their network. Some network goes for blog that have:
- Good page rank
- Good Alexa and Technorati rankings
- Some minimum blog age like 3 months
- Blog cached in major search engines
- Blogs in active state with some minimum posts in a week or month time
So go and create a publisher account on some of popular paid blogging networks like Payperpost, ReviewMe, SponSoredReviews, Smorty and Blogsvertise etc. And once you get your account approved on any of these networks, don’t forget to check your account several times a day. With this, you should check your e-mails on regular basis as some networks send notification about open or available opportunities in your e-mail account that you used while creating account on these networks. Here is a brief summary about top 3 paid blogging networks available today on internet:
Payperpost – is the biggest and most popular company in paid blogging niche. Best thing about this paid blogging network is the high amount of advertisers and thus lots of money making opportunities if you have a blog with some good page rank. The downside about this network is possibly the Google penalty your blog may have to face as you have to including some content like ‘Sponsored by Payperpost’ at the end of each post that you write for this network. They send your earnings on monthly basis in your paypl account.
SponsoredReviews – They have also large number of advertisers waiting for your bids to be placed. Login into your account and browse through the open opportunities and place your bids according to the amount of money you are willing to get paid for that task and according to the maximum budget specified by the advertiser.
ReviewMe – forget about this network if you don’t have a blog with good page rank, Alexa ranking and hundred of RSS subscribers. You can write up to 10 paid posts via this network in a month time. They send payments on the 1st of every month into your paypal account for the previous month earnings.
From Make Money Online
The benefits of finding the best free keyword research tools online today are plentiful for you. With so many popping up online you often ask yourself which one is worth using for my basic keyword research needs.
Well in this article I'm going to give you some great links to what I think are the best free keyword research tools on the web to help you with your keyword analysis. They'll give you some great stats to work with and hopefully do the job you were hoping for.
There's just one thing I want to mention about these free keyword research tools below and that is they only give you the amount of searches for that given keyword phrase. What they don't give you is your competition for those given keyword phrases.
But what we're really trying to do here is find out if there's a market for your interests and passions before you start building and marketing your website.
So with that said here are the free keyword research tools I think are the best for you to get started with and are very easy to use.
Lets start with the first one.
1) Wordtracker
With this free keyword research tool all you need to do is enter a starting keyword to generate up to 100 related keywords and an estimate of their daily search volume.
Go to: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
2) Google Adwords
This keyword research tool I think is by far the best because it allows you to enter keywords for analysis or a website URL(Hint: Great for analysising your competitors sites).
Go to: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
3) SEO Book
SEO Books keyword research tool is powered by Wordtracker's API, plus it cross references Google and Yahoo search results to give you a detailed view of your keyword analysis.
Go to: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
4) NicheBot Classic
With NicheBot Classic which also uses Wordtracker's API allows you to insert your keyword and will give you the TOP 50 keywords and there daily search count and competing pages in Google, MSN and Yahoo.
Go to: http://www.nichebotclassic.com
5) Good Keywords
Good Keywords is a free Windows software for finding the perfect set of keywords for your web pages. Good Keywords is completely free. No registration, no payments and no nag screens.
Go to: http://www.goodkeywords.com
So there you have it, 5 of the TOP free keyword research tools available to you on the web for free to get you started with your keyword research.
There are of course paid services and software that give you more detailed keyword analysis but if you don't have the money to spend these are a great starting point for you.
It all starts here with your keyword research because what's the point of starting a website or paid advertising campaign without this valuable information in your hands.
I hope this list of free keyword research tools helps you and the best of luck with your websites and advertising campaigns.From Articlesbase!
Many will tell you that affiliate marketing programs sold by Internet marketers are scams meant to make you part with your all-too-precious money in vain. In some instances, this can be true. However, there are affiliate marketing programs that are the real deal and make you earn money now.
You will know if this is so when the affiliate marketing program-cum-Internet marketing coach offers the following benefits.
Step-by-Step Tutorials
You will not be left to figure out the intricacies of affiliate marketing on your own. This is an important feature because doing it on your own can be the kiss of death for your fledging online business. After all, there are just too many information and knowledge to be digested that can take you away from the focus of your membership in the affiliate program in the first place - earn money now!
Full Access to Online Training
Again, it is important to have an Internet marketing coach to guide you through the maze of affiliate marketing. You will be able to avoid the common mistakes committed by new affiliate marketers such as cramming their websites with unrelated products.
With the online training, practical tips to help you make more and more money over the Internet will be presented to you. Contrast this with groping in the wide space of the World Wide Web and you are better off with an affiliate marketing program! In fact, you will even be able to earn extra money from a part-time job within two weeks, which will top the income you earned from your regular job.
And with a flexible training program, you can sleep in and forget about the alarm clocks that were the bane of your life before affiliate marketing came in. And you don't have any working obligations to follow either because the work hours are also flexible.
Full Online Support
Let's face it. There are many questions in your mind that needs to be answered. With an affiliate marketing program, your questions, concerns, and complaints can be easily and quickly answered by the support desk whenever and wherever you might be.
If you do affiliate marketing on your own, you are likely to remain confused and, hence, hindered from your final goal - earn money now and earn it for good.
Of course, there is also the added benefit of the online forums and community area offered by affiliate marketing programs. There, you can exchange ideas, learn new trends, and solicit opinions on your various concerns. You never know when you can earn money now from their ideas.
Customized Personal Account
In addition to the benefits of learning affiliate marketing from the experts, exchanging ideas with fellow Internet marketers and becoming skilled in your own time and pace, affiliate marketing programs provide personalized accounts. You can log in everyday and see how much you have earned.
Truly, when you want to earn money now, there is no better place to start than with an affiliate marketing program-cum-Internet marketing coach!From Articlesbase!
Organic Search results appear in the non-advertising areas of the search engine results page. This is the equivalent of FREE advertising, so search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important strategy for creating a successful web site. So, it is imperative that you create an effective SEO strategy to help your web site bring you new customers. Here are 10 ways to improve your search engine optimization strategy.
1. Keywords: Develop unique keywords and relevant titles for each of your web site pages and each article or blog you publish.
2. Content: The depth of research and development applied to your content strategy will be directly proportional to the quality and quantity of traffic you receive in organic search. “Content” includes the written word, applications, widgets, tools and other digital assets.
3. Copy writing: Adding one word or phrase in the right place can increase visibility for a particular keyword. Be careful in your approach, and consider the human element, no matter how tempting it is to over-tweak.
4. Permanent Links: Start the process of cataloging multiple redirects and campaign URL’s and set up permanent redirects to make it easier for the engines to find the “real” URL.
5. Interlinking: Link to others web sites, have others link to yours. Writing useful articles that link back to your web site and getting others to use the articles on their home pages is one of the best strategies for improving your rankings in the search engines.
6. Feed submission: Determine which feeds are most relevant to your business (products, maps, etc.) and take steps to provide data to the engines. With placements like Google Maps, a feed could be a quick ticket to a No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 natural ranking.
7. Title and Description: Create a succinct title and description, which along with your Keywords, is an important part of your meta strategy for SEO.
8. Linking Architecture: Search engines need a unique URL for each page to actually index each page separately. Using parameters like /ShowArticle.cfm?article_id=14 doesn’t work. You could have a million articles linked like this, but the search engines wouldn’t know it. But search engines do like /ShowArticle.cfm/14 - if your information architect designs your system in this way, you can be assured that every article or web page will be reviewed by the search engines - making sure each has a different title, keyword list and description will guarantee that the search engines actually index the articles and pages. This is the best strategy for getting search engines to crawl your site and index content.
9. Clean up broken links: Find and remove permanently broken internal links or set up properly configured 404 error page to improve crawling performance that lets engines know that the old link is history.
10. Make your pages smaller by removing common JavaScript and CSS code to external files. The files are then cached by the browser and your page loads quicker and the search engines can crawl your pages quicker and easier.
These are only a few of the many things you can do to help your SEO. They are free and if you can coordinate all of these things into your web site, they are also very effective.
Bonus Information!
For coders, these are some of the areas that must be taken into consideration:
*Meta Tags - though your title, keywords and description in your site’s meta-tags may have been effective when you launched your site, this can change. Your meta-tags must be tested regularly - it is important to test and re-test your meta data.
*Content - like meta tags, your site content must be updated regularly and must reflect the meta data you are using. When it comes to search engine indexing, the continuity of your meta data and content are checked. Event the order in which your keywords are set and HTML like bold text can make your information easier for the search engine spiders to crawl.
*Links - building links on your site allows you to become more friendly on-line. By making friends virtually, you are increasing your popularity and reputation on-line. This interlinking is an effective strategy to promote your site - the more relevant your links are, the more powerful your web site becomes.
For marketers, this is the most powerful way to build traffic.
*In-Bound Links - Article marketing is one of the key ways to build in-bound links. Every site that posts one of your articles becomes a billboard pointing back to your web site. Imagine having an article on 1,000 web sites - that’s 1,000 billboards pointing to your web site. Now imaging 100 articles on 1,000 web site pointing back to your web site - that is 100,000 billboards that make your site one of the highest ranked sites on the Internet.
When you implement these Strategies, you’ll find two long-term benefits for your website:
1) This will boost your web site search engine rankings. 2) This will attract quality traffic to your site.
Teo Graca works with Social Media, Social Networking, Podcasting, Blogging and other technologies, has an extensive background in video and music production, and has spent the last dozen years designing and implementing information systems.
After the first dot-com bust, "content is king" was the rallying cry of any competent Web worker. Back then this revelation was novel online. Soon after, this mantra became a cliché. As it often goes with clichés, they start out as something true and meaningful. Eventually, the words become common, outlive their value, and are so overused that they're easily ignored.
Saying content is king is the equivalent of saying money is valuable; it's true but obvious. Tell that to the even the most mentally challenged Web marketer today, and you'll likely get a, "Duh, where have you been?" in return.
Nobody needs to be told content is of value. But how valuable is it?
Because there isn't a $1, $5, or $10 denomination stamped on the front of Web content, it's often difficult to know exactly how valuable content is to your company. Also, knowing content's valueisn't the same as knowing how to create it, or even how to use it.
What Is Content?
This is a critical question that often goes underexplored. If you ask most marketers, they'll answer that it's the copy on a Web site. While this answer is certainly true, it's inadequate. Content is more than copy.
We can debate the nuance of the possible answers to this question. But a good starting place is to think of Web content as the public conversation that happens between you and the visitor, whether the conversation is one-way (from you to the visitor), two-way (between the visitor and you), or conversation among visitors.
Content includes but is not limited to:
- The copy on your Web site
- Blogs and reader comments
- Content widgets (check out recently released ContentWidgets.com
- Product/service reviews
- Forums
- Videos, demos, and animations
- Tweets
- Facebook/MySpace fan pages and groups
- E-mail newsletters
- Articles and other intellectual property or knowledge sharing
- Whitepapers, case studies, Webinars
The more this content causes, persuades, or woos visitors to take a profitable action on our behalf, the more valuable it is. If it doesn't do this, it's more like bad entertainment.
Content Now Worth More Than Ever
The economic forecast remains rough for at least the near future. It's easy to make a case for leveraging existing content for all it's worth. I would also encourage you to determine the costs of content creation strategies (if you have in the past, revisit them now). You'll likely find that content creation is becoming more affordable. Many of our clients are easily making room in their budgets to try at least a few content-centered marketing tactics.
Using content as a marketing tool is obvious for those with compelling intellectual property, but it isn't just for those types any more. Almost any company or service can find a content-marketing strategy that will work for it.
An employee of mine has been looking for a home in a new area, and was impressed to find a few Realtors tweeting. He followed them. He was able to meet with one, walk through a property, and find he was from the same area as the real estate agent. Since he didn't yet have a Realtor, whom do you think he is going to choose?
Getting Started With Content Marketing
- You don't have to start from scratch. If you have content already, look to your analytics to identify popular content and find other uses for it. Rewrite it, update it, and send it as a newsletter. Even tweet it as an oldie but a goodie. Or have it formatted for mobile browsers.
- Crowdsource. Sometimes your customers will create better content than you can buy from a content creation firm. Why not use specific reviews or forum posts as landing places for campaigns or even as ads?
- Find the passion. Somebody in the company interested or fluent in a particular social media, or has been itching to write a company blog? Now is the time to let him loose. Let his passion be a lighthouse for potential customers. While it may not be polished or on message, it is likely not going to be sterile and flat like most polished, on-message marketing efforts. To get a sense of what this evangelist might do for you, check out my interview with Betsy Weber, chief evangelist of TechSmith:part one and part two.
- Let content come from your company's strength. We have a client where almost everybody in the company participates in the forum. Every employee is knowledgeable about the service offered, and they all become part of the marketing vehicle, giving tips and comments and escalating customer issues. Not only is it transparent, it's content marketing at its most organic.
- Content marketing should ultimately be a two-way conversation between you and your customers. While an e-mail newsletter or a static Web page with persuasive copy is technically one-way, it shouldn't sound like it is. Talk more about them and what they get than talking about yourself. Those who do nothing but talk about themselves just end up "wewe-ing" all over themselves. Try our online calculator that tells businesses how much they talk about themselves in their copy; it is one of our oldest content marketing vehicles and has remained popular for years.
- Don't be pressured to reinvent the wheel. If you don't already have one, start a simple e-mail newsletter. Don't feel forced to pick something new and shiny like Twitter or the latest social media frenzy.
- Content that isn't relevant to at least one profitable segment of potential customers isn't content, it's spam. Spam is boring. Creating relevant content often requires planning.
Final Say
Ultimately, content marketing is about optimizing the dialogue between a company and it customers. The better, more interesting the conversation is, the more attention it attracts and the more your customers are compelled to talk and buy.
Yesterday, via a tweet by @craigmcginty I was directed to a blog post by @jedhallam recommending that public relations experts should start making use of SEO for their clients. My issue with the blog post was that Jed suggested that SEO is a "technique" to be applied to help public relations efforts, and that he didn't seem to have a full understanding of what search engine optimisation consultants really do for their clients.
The main issues on the table as I see them are:
- Are SEO agencies giving clients the right advice about marketing and PR and do they have the expertise to offer this advice?
- Should public relations agencies be creating an SEO offering and do they have the right expertise to offer this service?
A bit of discussion in the comments and an article by Stuart Bruce weighing in with his thoughts later and I wanted to properly express my sentiments on the subject.
SEO and Public Relations are 2 sides of the same coin
I understand that many offline marketers and PR experts are wary of SEO agencies like I-COM claiming to offer a full range of (internet) marketing services. Certainly, SEO in its original incarnation was less about marketing and more about simply tricking search engines into sending you whatever traffic you could get. It was often practiced by internet entrepreneurs selling porn, viagra and trying to get you to their arbitrage site so you would click on a few PPC ads on your way to your final destination. Those who did it well made a lot of money.
As search engines have gotten better, the internet has become a thriving marketplace and most businesses have gotten online, however, SEO too has matured and is no longer just about traffic, it is, much like Public Relations, about reputation - although in the case of straightforward SEO, it's mainly about delivering a good user experience to build reputation. SEO in 2009 is both a marketing and a PR role.
The thing is, SEO is hardly ever straightforward and any good SEO consultant needs to know more than just how to optimise a site. He needs to know about good copywriting (whether writing it himself or comissioning it from others), he needs to understand usability, web design and development and public relations. He needs to know how to deliver a marketing message, the importance of branding to a business and he needs to be able to understand every business with which he works well enough to understand what its customers want and need.
I understand thoroughly why traditional Public Relations firms are beginning to enter the online arena. In fact, it is vital that they make sure that their clients engage in online PR and marketing because even if they don't have a website, people are likely to be talking about them online or looking for them online.
I also understand why traditional public relations experts are wary of SEO firms claiming to offer PR services - SEO has a bad reputation as an industry and there's a lot of SEO agencies promising the moon when they can't even deliver a handful of earth.
I certainly understand @jedhallam's idea that SEO copywriting is about keyword stuffing because a lot of not-very-reputable SEO agencies (and even some decent ones) focus more on getting a page ranked than they do on converting the visitor into a customer when they land on the page (Jed, feel your pain - I have the same issue with a lot of SEO copywriters - these guys give me a bad reputation and my anger over it keeps me up at night!)
Traditional PR agencies will come to love SEO consultants if they just get to know us better!
For all these reasons, I believe that it is vital that traditional marketers and PR specialists get to understand the role of SEO and SEM in an overall business strategy for their clients and they need to understand not only what a good internet marketing agency, such as I-COM, will do for their clients and how much we can help them, but also why we believe that it's no easier for traditional PR and marketing agencies to jump into the online arena than they feel it is for us to offer advice about offline activities.
Simply put, what we do works on the same principles as what they do, but putting it into practice is very different. Designing a website to which people respond is very different from designing for print. Writing web copy which users find interesting and informative but which ranks well in search engines too is very different from writing advertising copy or media releases. And what a brand needs to do to manage its reputation online is very different from what businesses do offline - it's a lot harder to deliver a personal experience online than off, for one.
At I-COM we offer a full service online package, but we also work closely with the marketing, advertising and PR agencies employed by our clients. One of the first things we ask every client for is a copy of all their marketing materials, copies of their offline press releases and any guidelines about their brand and their marketing message because we understand how vital it is to integrate the offline message with the online campaign. We can even track what offline marketing and PR is doing for online businesses using analytics.
In fact, good offline marketing and PR (in answer to @timhoang) can help SEO a great deal because it can get people looking at websites, writing about businesses and linking to their websites - offering very targeted traffic.
We also understand that many agencies specialise in one thing for a reason - to be really great at your job you need to specialise in one thing. It's why we have teams of people here for our clients made up of a web designer, a web developer, an SEO consultant and a SEM/PPC expert and we can draw upon copywriters and social media marketing experts as well.
This is also why we have developed our i-Wise program. Through i-Wise we work with other agencies to help them offer a wider variety of services to their clients and it enables us to partner with other agencies when our clients are in need of offline marketing, advertising and PR services that we do not yet offer.
Ultimately, I don't disagree in principle with anything either Jed or Stuart have said in their blogs, but I do feel that perhaps they both need a clearer understanding of what good SEO consultants can do and how much expertise we bring to the table.
Unless they are prepared to expand their businesses and take on dedicated internet marketers, PPC specialists, SEO consultants and social media marketers, working with a dedicated internet marketing agency, far from damaging their efforts, could help them provide far more for their clients than if they were to learn a little about SEO in order to do a bit more online for their clients.
Internet marketing should be easy. You just cobble together a website and wait for the sales to roll in, right? Well, if it was that simple we’d all be internet millionaires by now, smugly sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere.
But unfortunately for us, there are a few barriers to remove before you can expect the enquiries to come flooding in. Firstly, people have to be able to find you. Otherwise your investment in a website is waste of pixels.
To get noticed, you have two main options: pay per click advertising or search engine optimisation.
Pay per click (PPC)
Launched in 2000, pay per click (PPC) is the system of sponsored ads that have amassed Google its fortune. PPC is a quick, easy method of generating traffic. You simply choose which keywords to target, work out a budget and wait for the visitors to arrive.
What makes PPC attractive is its measurability and ability to show its ROI in clear numerals. Campaigns are also simple to manage, with clear data on conversions and how your money has been spent.
What’s less appealing is the high cost of popular keywords (although a way around this is to target the less obvious but cheaper ‘long tail’ phrases).
Another problem is that PPC is only a short term solution. If you decide to cut spending then your website will simply disappear into the depths of the search listings, never to be seen again.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO, on the other hand, is the long term alternative to PPC for getting to the top of the natural listings (and attracts 72% of clicks).
Working how to optimise websites to appear in response to certain queries is a complex process, and has given birth to an entire industry. Legions of SEO bloggers and consultants diligently work away trying to guess what line of code will magically push their clients’ sites to the top of the rankings. The problem for them is that nobody really knows for sure (and Google isn’t telling).
What we do know is that SEO involves having the correct page structure, tags and back links that tell Google what your website is all about. But SEO isn’t just a job for the technically minded or IT department. It’s also the quality of your content that impacts your ranking, making SEO the responsibility of marketers as well.
Good quality content improves your ranking due to the nature of Google’s business. Their success relies on providing the most relevant results. Consequently, it’s the websites regularly updated, with articles, blog posts and other keyword rich content, that receive the thumbs up and get pulled to the front.
Useful, well written articles can also attract links from other relevant websites (aka blogs), which is another key figure in the mysterious equation for getting onto page one.
Content marketing
Being able to drive traffic to your website is one hurdle, working out how to convert that traffic into sales is another. Your website needs to be able to change how people think and feel about your company if it’s going to convert them into customers. You can achieve this through your content.
Well written articles that offer to solve a problem, provide useful info or valuable insight can build trust and confidence in your expertise. They can also make your website ‘sticky’, keeping visitors glued to your content and engaged with your website for longer. This gives you more time to encourage them to take action and leave their email address before they leave.
PPC or SEO?
Investing in a content driven SEO strategy offers long term benefits compared to PPC. Once your website starts ranking highly for your key terms it’s likely to stay there. The drawback is that reaching such lofty positions can take weeks, months or even a year for competitive search terms. This makes SEO difficult to justify if you want quick, quantifiable results.
Ultimately, deciding whether to rely on PPC or SEO to generate traffic depends on the nature of your business and structure of your website. A sensible approach is to treat PPC as a quick, easy way of attracting customers, and SEO your long term objective.
Either way, internet marketing is a complex, evolving puzzle. You can endlessly spend your time making tweaks and word changes to improve your website’s conversion rate. So any images of sipping cocktails on a beach will have to stay on your desktop’s background for now.
There’s been a fair amount of buzz going around today about the ‘2 New Improvements at Google’, one of which (as noted by the Author ‘Ori Allon’ and Search Engine Land), if not both, are related to the ‘Orion’ acquisition back in 2006. It seems an interesting implementation of the technology given the hub-bub at the time.
Essentially, the algorithm detects related concepts to a query and then it “returns a section of those pages, and lists other topics related to the key word so users can pick the most relevant.” – Which is interesting as ‘sections’ really does start ringing bells for page segmentation for me. Anyway, that’s for another day.
Part one, the search refinements, are more of a categorization and concept targeting system. Now, the refinements are fine really, something we can deal with… the second part, longer snippets, is slightly more concerning.
Longer Snippet? How much is too much?
The second improvement is longer snippets (text shown in the SERPs). Now, I do understand more complex queries can call for more complex snippets, but what happens if this grows deeper? Google starts actually answering queries with the text it retrieves? That is essentially answering the questions with your content. Thanks there Google gang, nothing I like better than paying the hosting for you to serve up (and monetize) my content.
In the post they mention,
“When you enter a longer query, with more than three words, regular-length snippets may not give you enough information and context. In these situations, we now increase the number of lines in the snippet to provide more information and show more of the words you typed in the context of the page.”
Essentially as query lengths are increasing, so thus are the snippets. This means that your targeting and meta data creation could be more defined in the long tail than the short. This means providing for such cases within the content becomes more important. What I advise is creating lists of not only target terms, but related concepts and phrasings to the core targets of a page.
What is more troubling are some of Ori’s comments in an interview back in 2005, where he described it as;
“The results to the query are displayed immediately in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the website – although you still have that option if you wish,”
I find it troubling that Google starts to actually serve up the sought after information, although NOT created by Google. Yes, it’s wonderful to help the end user, but this also keeps them on Google more, thus increasing monetization opportunities. Time to break out the tin foil hats kids.
How long does a 'snippet' become until it's serving sections of your page... containing the information?
And so the searcher never leaves Google and you are creating content for them ... at your own expense?
Creating concepts and themes
OK, so enough of the tin foil accessories, back to business. What does any of this mean to our data to day optimization? From an SEO standpoint, what is important is that this further highlights the need to create themes and concepts clearly (as mentioned in last week’s newsletter). I would also suggest revisiting the concepts relating to page segmentation as well.
Much like the phrase based IR, which a new patent was recently awarded to Google, themes and concepts are something to consider more and more of late.
We’re also keenly aware that they have 2 major areas of interest at Google (search wise) – behavioural targeting and context/concepts. This is in the paid search sector as well as the (cough cough) organic search. All of this means broader targeting processes which we’ll try and get into more soon.
Everybody thinks pagerank is important but almost no one admits how important it is. The importance of pagerank can be scored by the point that Google considers the pagerank as one of the main point while ranking a site in its search results. If you have a good pagerank then you have high chance to be ranked above any other lower ranked page.
Pagerank is the general algorithm of Google which ranks a site on the basis of its back links. In fact the main element of allocating a Pagerank to any webpage is the number of sites linking to the webpage and their own Pagerank value. This can also be taken as a popularly contest between high interest sites.
Pagerank is measure with a scale from 0 to 10.
Pagerank 0-2: Any websites between a Pagerank of 0 to 2 are considered as new websites just starting out in the industry. Any sites that is cached by Google in its initial days are given Pagerank of 0 and later in the first Pagerank update they can be qualified for the Pagerank 2. Most new sites which gain a sustainable amount of backlinks within its preliminary stage can also receive a higher pagerank from Google.
Pagerank 3-6: Any established sites which has proven its performance and already have some good back links falls into this category. Most websites that are about 10-12 months old and with back links can get a Pagerank of 3-6
Pagerank 7-10: Any websites that has a Pagerank 7 or above can be considered as the industry leader of that niche. You can find very few sites gaining a Pagerank of 7 and above as it takes good amount of time and some established technique to get a Pagerank above 7.
So, how to increase Pagerank?
Increase the site: If you increase the amount of pages in your websites and link it with each other then you have high chance to get a better Pagerank. A good amount of back link is very important to get a pagerank but in the process don’t get fooled by creating to many pages with useless content because Google’s spider crawls your website and may penalize you for wrong content.
Create a network: Pagerank comes from back links so its much better for webmaster to get engaged in networking to build relevant and high quality back links for their website. Sometimes simple exchange of back links can also work but it’s good to get one way link from high quality website which will then give better link juice for your future pagerank.
Why is it so important?
Pagerank can be vital for any website that depends on traffic from Search Engine. You will be ranked higher than another sites if you have a good pagerank. So, think today and start working on building pagerank to get better exposure on Search Engine rankings.
