What You Can Learn From Top Marketers
By Michael Fleischner
I don’t know about you, but I feel like there is a scarcity of good marketing today. What do I mean “good marketing?” You know the kind of marketing that sticks with you and drives you to take action. The only marketing that has really moved me in the last couple of years has been from Apple. How do I know? I own 3 ipods.
You might be thinking to yourself that it’s more the product that drives behavior than the marketing, and when it comes to the ipod I don’t necessarily disagree. However, I would argue that in some ways, the marketing has to be even better than it does with your run of the mill product.
Apple has maintained a certain level of success with their marketing and now that marketing must not only tie together with previous marketing campaigns, but convince current customers that their current products are no longer sufficient.
It appears that this is done, not through slight of hand, but by showing you what you can’t do with your current device. By illustrating this in a manner that is contradictory to your current satisfaction, it does make you feel like your ipod – which was fine until a moment ago has suddenly become inadequate. To me, that’s really good marketing.
So what can be learned from the tens of millions that Apple spends on advertising every year? I think the answer to that question is to work in lock step with your product development team to showcase developments and tap the emotions of those using your products. When I use my iTouch, I feel empowered, cool, and complete. I wouldn’t have reached that conclusion without the help of marketing to get me there.
The lesson that I’ve learned is that marketing, if done correctly, helps us to define how we feel about a product. Once you have prospects and customers attaching emotions to your products, you develop loyal customers. The next time that you’re thinking about a marketing campaign, consider how you want your customers to feel about your product.
Manage the entire purchase decision process in order to consistently manage the experience to reinforce or produce these desired feelings. Once you’ve been able to do that successfully, your creative, marketing messages and promotions should be relatively easy to produce. Now that’s what I call good marketing.
About the Author
Michael Fleischner is an author and Founder of MarketingScoop.com. If you're looking for SEO training or wish to Learn SEO with the help of leading search engine optimization experts, then check out the leading SEO software with MarketingScoop's SEO Elite Software Review and turbo charge your search engine optimization.
Read More .....
Yahoo Search Marketing: Is An Effective Online Marketing Tool.
Yahoo! manages to utilize its huge network of websites and portals to provide Yahoo! Search Marketing services which provides you an opportunity to advertise your business in a number of methods. The methods are sub-divided in the following categories:
Sponsored Search: Display your ad prominently in leading search engines such as Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, CNN and Infospace
Product Submit: Get your product listed in Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Buyers Guide and be found by millions of users
Travel Submit: Get your travel product or service listed in Travel Deals marketplace or Travel Deals listings and allow easy access of information to potential travelers
Directory Submit: Powered by the powerful Yahoo! Search, submit your business information in Yahoo! Directory.
Each category is defined to meet the requirement of a certain type of advertiser and you would need to first decide your category before proceeding further. Once you have decided which category suits your requirements best, you can proceed to set up your marketing campaign at Yahoo!.
Other than the above categories of advertising Yahoo! also provides the option for providing Local Advertising and Search Submit. Local Advertising is again split into two sub-categories of Local Sponsored Search and Local Listings. This is very beneficial for businesses having local presence and they can catch users who are searching for a particular service or product in a locality and the costs of advertising in this section is probably one of the most affordable for an online campaign.
Search Submit on the other hand provides Search Submit Express and Search Submit Pro both of which are purely related to getting your site put on the search results of a group of top search engines.
If you are confused with the various types of products being offered with Yahoo! Search Marketing, you can use their online tool to help you determine which product suits you the best. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions and the wizard will recommend the products which suit your requirement best. All products of Yahoo! Search Marketing provide detailed analysis of traffic coming to your website which helps you make further decisions on your online marketing campaign.
Should you have a budget of over $10,000 per month for online advertising, you can contact Yahoo! sales team for a customized package that better suit your business.
Though Yahoo! Search Marketing programme sounds a bit complicated, it has some excellent Marketing Tools to help you go through the entire programme with ease. The two components are a Marketing Console which tracks how effective your various campaigns are and provides you with detailed information on them. This is definitely a time-saving application as you can see the end results of your campaigns in a jiffy. The other application is Search Optimizer which helps you get the maximum return of investment out of a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) campaign.
The sign up process requires you to create an account and deposit funds in the account via a credit card and choose one of the many marketing products described above. Read More .....
Sponsored Search: Display your ad prominently in leading search engines such as Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, CNN and Infospace
Product Submit: Get your product listed in Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Buyers Guide and be found by millions of users
Travel Submit: Get your travel product or service listed in Travel Deals marketplace or Travel Deals listings and allow easy access of information to potential travelers
Directory Submit: Powered by the powerful Yahoo! Search, submit your business information in Yahoo! Directory.
Each category is defined to meet the requirement of a certain type of advertiser and you would need to first decide your category before proceeding further. Once you have decided which category suits your requirements best, you can proceed to set up your marketing campaign at Yahoo!.
Other than the above categories of advertising Yahoo! also provides the option for providing Local Advertising and Search Submit. Local Advertising is again split into two sub-categories of Local Sponsored Search and Local Listings. This is very beneficial for businesses having local presence and they can catch users who are searching for a particular service or product in a locality and the costs of advertising in this section is probably one of the most affordable for an online campaign.
Search Submit on the other hand provides Search Submit Express and Search Submit Pro both of which are purely related to getting your site put on the search results of a group of top search engines.
If you are confused with the various types of products being offered with Yahoo! Search Marketing, you can use their online tool to help you determine which product suits you the best. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions and the wizard will recommend the products which suit your requirement best. All products of Yahoo! Search Marketing provide detailed analysis of traffic coming to your website which helps you make further decisions on your online marketing campaign.
Should you have a budget of over $10,000 per month for online advertising, you can contact Yahoo! sales team for a customized package that better suit your business.
Though Yahoo! Search Marketing programme sounds a bit complicated, it has some excellent Marketing Tools to help you go through the entire programme with ease. The two components are a Marketing Console which tracks how effective your various campaigns are and provides you with detailed information on them. This is definitely a time-saving application as you can see the end results of your campaigns in a jiffy. The other application is Search Optimizer which helps you get the maximum return of investment out of a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) campaign.
The sign up process requires you to create an account and deposit funds in the account via a credit card and choose one of the many marketing products described above. Read More .....
Making The Transition From Classic Marketing To Virtual Marketing For Artists.
So you have art you want to sell? Why not market it online? Here are a few tips on how you should proceed. You first step to creating a website should be to have the cleanest pictures you can of your art. Try using a high-resolution digital camera if possible, if not then you may want to shoot it on film, and scan it with a high-end scanner.
Classic film at this point still has a higher resolution than large format digital, but the digitization process could “cheapen” your end product. It’s your choice as a publisher. If you are looking into making film samples, or audio material as demos, then what you would want to do, is to render your files in the smallest format possible, for film I would recommend “multimedia-small 15 frames/second” as your render option, and for MP3’s I would use the lowest quality possible, as to take into consideration those with Low-end computers or slower internet connections. Make your product as accessible as possible. You never know who’s looking, and from where.
You should consult with your web-designer or your search engine optimization company so that your website can be search engine optimized. The reasoning behind this, is that once you put all this work into digitizing your media, you want your website to be seen.
If you aren’t familiar with web design, I would advise hiring an art friendly web designer to help you out with the creating the website. S/He can deal with the technical aspects of creation while you worry about the design. I cannot stress enough the necessity of using an HTML editor that is search optimization friendly. Not so much for the actual design of the website, but for everything that goes on behind the scenes.
When you’re creating a website, there are two aspects to take into consideration. What the viewer is seeing, and how the website relates to search engines. Although I believe what the viewer is seeing is entirely in the hands of the designer, and owner… how the website relates to search engines is where SEO comes in.
How does your website fare with Google, MSN, or Yahoo? This is the province of your SEO, and your web-designer.
This is where items like meta-tags, keyword density, and performance come into play. Your website should be optimized for your location, content, type of art/media. When a web search is run on a topic relevant to you, your website should come up in these searches. If you’re a political artist then you should be getting hits for “political art”, in my case “Toronto filmmakers” or anything specific to your art/media content.
How an SEO can work for you, is that with your search engine optimization company will be able to tailor make your keywords, and meta-tags; so that the closer the search terms are to what you do, the more likely you will get a visitor on your site.
The more visitors you get on your site, the more likely you are to sell your product. This brings you closer to becoming an independent artist who doesn’t need deal with large publishers that don’t have your best interests in mind.
Ultimately what an effective self-driven online marketing campaign will do for you is that it will allow you to sell your product at your price, and for minimal monthly fees you won’t have to sign over publishing rights or licensing, because all the fees, minus operating fees come directly to you.
SEO and online marketing campaigns are available at minimal investment, so if you’re serious about launching your art career, then an affordable advertising campaign may be what you’re looking for.
Simply by improving your site ranking, you attract more visitors. Every visitor is a potential buyer... If we want to use a retail analogy, the more people visit your store, the more stuff you’ll sell.
All it really takes is for someone to see your site when doing a web- search; this will bring you clients and contacts. A very small investment could bring you the artistic freedom you want and deserve. Read More .....
Classic film at this point still has a higher resolution than large format digital, but the digitization process could “cheapen” your end product. It’s your choice as a publisher. If you are looking into making film samples, or audio material as demos, then what you would want to do, is to render your files in the smallest format possible, for film I would recommend “multimedia-small 15 frames/second” as your render option, and for MP3’s I would use the lowest quality possible, as to take into consideration those with Low-end computers or slower internet connections. Make your product as accessible as possible. You never know who’s looking, and from where.
You should consult with your web-designer or your search engine optimization company so that your website can be search engine optimized. The reasoning behind this, is that once you put all this work into digitizing your media, you want your website to be seen.
If you aren’t familiar with web design, I would advise hiring an art friendly web designer to help you out with the creating the website. S/He can deal with the technical aspects of creation while you worry about the design. I cannot stress enough the necessity of using an HTML editor that is search optimization friendly. Not so much for the actual design of the website, but for everything that goes on behind the scenes.
When you’re creating a website, there are two aspects to take into consideration. What the viewer is seeing, and how the website relates to search engines. Although I believe what the viewer is seeing is entirely in the hands of the designer, and owner… how the website relates to search engines is where SEO comes in.
How does your website fare with Google, MSN, or Yahoo? This is the province of your SEO, and your web-designer.
This is where items like meta-tags, keyword density, and performance come into play. Your website should be optimized for your location, content, type of art/media. When a web search is run on a topic relevant to you, your website should come up in these searches. If you’re a political artist then you should be getting hits for “political art”, in my case “Toronto filmmakers” or anything specific to your art/media content.
How an SEO can work for you, is that with your search engine optimization company will be able to tailor make your keywords, and meta-tags; so that the closer the search terms are to what you do, the more likely you will get a visitor on your site.
The more visitors you get on your site, the more likely you are to sell your product. This brings you closer to becoming an independent artist who doesn’t need deal with large publishers that don’t have your best interests in mind.
Ultimately what an effective self-driven online marketing campaign will do for you is that it will allow you to sell your product at your price, and for minimal monthly fees you won’t have to sign over publishing rights or licensing, because all the fees, minus operating fees come directly to you.
SEO and online marketing campaigns are available at minimal investment, so if you’re serious about launching your art career, then an affordable advertising campaign may be what you’re looking for.
Simply by improving your site ranking, you attract more visitors. Every visitor is a potential buyer... If we want to use a retail analogy, the more people visit your store, the more stuff you’ll sell.
All it really takes is for someone to see your site when doing a web- search; this will bring you clients and contacts. A very small investment could bring you the artistic freedom you want and deserve. Read More .....
Multi-Level Marketing And Network Marketing: How To Identify Illegal Pyramid Or Ponzi Scheme
There are a tons of people that want to get rich fast, and they will do anything (and believe anything) to get rich. That is where the multi level marketing and networking schemes come into play. The two main types of schemes out here are the pyramid schemes and the Ponzi schemes. A Ponzi scheme is, of course, a fraudulent investment operation. Pretty much it involves paying very high prices to investors out of the money they get from other investors.
Of course, the Ponzi scheme is just another pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme is pretty much where you pay high dollar for the rights to sell a product that is not worth the money. Then you get people under you to sell that product as well. These schemes fall apart as people run out of people to market their fake product to.
So how do you avoid these scams? How do you know what is a real opportunity, and what is just an illegal scheme? A good way to be able to tell a pyramid scheme when you see one is to look at its business model. A lot of time these schemes have a non sustainable business model. That is because these models sometimes call for more people than there are in the world. So that would be impossible to have that many people selling the product. It's important to keep in mind that these schemes are illegal in most countries.
Another way that you know if it's a pyramid scheme is if you are not actually selling a product. A lot of times these schemes take either a very cheap made product or a product that does not even exist, and they market it to people. The only way that the scheme stays alive is if the people that they market to, markets the product to other people as well. The only people that really make any money off these schemes are the people at the very top of the pyramid. So if you never actually get to see the product you are marketing or trying to enroll people in, then it's more than likely a scam. Remember, these pyramid schemes only work, because you enroll other people that are willing to give you money to start selling what you are selling (which is really nothing).
There are some legit ways to make money out there, but these pyramid schemes are not one of them. So be sure to research anything you are thinking about joining first. Make sure that it's legit before you get involved. The last thing that you want to do is get involved with an illegal pyramid scheme.
I often do get asked how to start a profitable internet business. I would say that the best way to make money online if by finding a niche and develop a product or service around that niche. That way, at least, you are sure to have someone interested about whatever you are selling. Read More .....
Of course, the Ponzi scheme is just another pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme is pretty much where you pay high dollar for the rights to sell a product that is not worth the money. Then you get people under you to sell that product as well. These schemes fall apart as people run out of people to market their fake product to.
So how do you avoid these scams? How do you know what is a real opportunity, and what is just an illegal scheme? A good way to be able to tell a pyramid scheme when you see one is to look at its business model. A lot of time these schemes have a non sustainable business model. That is because these models sometimes call for more people than there are in the world. So that would be impossible to have that many people selling the product. It's important to keep in mind that these schemes are illegal in most countries.
Another way that you know if it's a pyramid scheme is if you are not actually selling a product. A lot of times these schemes take either a very cheap made product or a product that does not even exist, and they market it to people. The only way that the scheme stays alive is if the people that they market to, markets the product to other people as well. The only people that really make any money off these schemes are the people at the very top of the pyramid. So if you never actually get to see the product you are marketing or trying to enroll people in, then it's more than likely a scam. Remember, these pyramid schemes only work, because you enroll other people that are willing to give you money to start selling what you are selling (which is really nothing).
There are some legit ways to make money out there, but these pyramid schemes are not one of them. So be sure to research anything you are thinking about joining first. Make sure that it's legit before you get involved. The last thing that you want to do is get involved with an illegal pyramid scheme.
I often do get asked how to start a profitable internet business. I would say that the best way to make money online if by finding a niche and develop a product or service around that niche. That way, at least, you are sure to have someone interested about whatever you are selling. Read More .....
How The Viral Marketing Blackbook Stirs Up The Whole Internet Marketing Community
Stanley Tang's probably biggest coup is his recent e-book called The Viral Marketing Blackbook which causes a furor among all internet marketers, newbies and seasoned ones alike. When it comes to internet marketing and getting traffic to your websites and blogs the viral marketing aspect should never be left out as you're leaving serious money on the table or simply just could hand over your whole business to the competitors who are always one or two steps ahead.
Every online marketer knows that traffic is essential to success for every internet business. It doesn't matter at all how small or large a website or blog is, website owners need traffic in order to make sales, acquire leads, grow their business etc.
90% of all internet marketers don't know how viral marketing works and how to utilize it, let alone use it to its fullest potential. And that's what the Viral Marketing Blackbook is all about. It is about traffic and how to tap into its huge viral aspect, providing many different techniques and how to use them best.
One of the most common phrases (or rather mantras) among internet marketers is: The money is in the list.
Wrong.
Stanley Tang shows in his Viral Marketing Blackbook that building an opt-in list is just one way of generating and monetizing traffic. In fact, building your list is just a part of a much bigger picture. According to Stanley many so called "gurus" are quite hesitant to show that bigger picture to anyone and only give out some bits and pieces, giving the feeling of receiving a whole blueprint when in fact they only reveal a small piece of the puzzle.
The true "gurus" are those who created empires like Yahoo, eBay or Amazon. None of these made billions of dollars using an opt-in list. They made their billions by driving massive traffic to their websites and monetizing them. Read More .....
Every online marketer knows that traffic is essential to success for every internet business. It doesn't matter at all how small or large a website or blog is, website owners need traffic in order to make sales, acquire leads, grow their business etc.
90% of all internet marketers don't know how viral marketing works and how to utilize it, let alone use it to its fullest potential. And that's what the Viral Marketing Blackbook is all about. It is about traffic and how to tap into its huge viral aspect, providing many different techniques and how to use them best.
One of the most common phrases (or rather mantras) among internet marketers is: The money is in the list.
Wrong.
Stanley Tang shows in his Viral Marketing Blackbook that building an opt-in list is just one way of generating and monetizing traffic. In fact, building your list is just a part of a much bigger picture. According to Stanley many so called "gurus" are quite hesitant to show that bigger picture to anyone and only give out some bits and pieces, giving the feeling of receiving a whole blueprint when in fact they only reveal a small piece of the puzzle.
The true "gurus" are those who created empires like Yahoo, eBay or Amazon. None of these made billions of dollars using an opt-in list. They made their billions by driving massive traffic to their websites and monetizing them. Read More .....
Affiliate Marketing Training: Membership Club Tutorial on Marketing Affiliate Products
Marketing affiliate products online can lead to a most prosperous career, but not without it’s bumps and bruises. The path to beginning a successful affiliate marketing has a learning curve that without the proper training will leave you like 97% of most marketers. The fact is, finding reputable affiliate program networks on the web is rather simple. Choosing the right niche products and learning how to market will be your toughest task.
The road to finding a solid marketing plan can be time consuming without the proper direction. When I first started online, I was swayed by several free programs that promised unlimited amounts of traffic to my affiliate websites. These free programs are good for the new marketer that is starting out and wants to learn how to start marketing on the internet, but if you are looking for real results, they are for the most part ineffective.
If you are trying to gain success using free resources like traffic exchanges your would have to spend about 6 to 12 hours marketing everyday to receive minimal results at best. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place in your marketing for free sources like exchanges, but it cannot be your main form of advertising. Free traffic resources however are great for running your squeeze page in order to build your affiliate marketing leads for your future advertising.
The truth is if you are trying make money fast on the internet marketing affiliate products, you will need to invest in PPC advertising or some other form of paid advertising at one point or another. Affiliate PPC advertising gives you the best chance at succeeding online. With Pay Per Click advertising you will be able to direct large amounts of targeted traffic to your website through targeted keywords related to your topic.
The warning with PPC advertising is that it is an advance technique that should can be costly without the proper training. A proper PPC campaign will have to include a good keyword tool to target your products and separate yourself from the competition. SEO Elite will give a selection of hundreds of keyword suggestions to use in your affiliate PPC marketing campaigns. In the beginning all of this information may be to much to consume without any help, that is why I recommend anyone considering running a PPC campaign get some proper training.
Taking the time to educate yourself on the 3 online principles of where to market, when to market and what to market will help eleviate a lot of costly mistakes. There are several tutorials that can provide you with the proper training on PPC advertising and other affiliate marketing strategies.
If you are not sure of where to search for an good affiliate course online, I suggest you get a membership with Maverick Money Makers Online Club. The membership club provides its members with search engine optimization tutorials in addition to affiliate PPC training. With this particular program, you will have continuous affiliate management training that you can access at anytime with support. There is a fee to join the Maverick Money Makers Online Club, but It will save you a lot of frustration and take the guesswork out of marketing affiliate products online. Read More .....
The road to finding a solid marketing plan can be time consuming without the proper direction. When I first started online, I was swayed by several free programs that promised unlimited amounts of traffic to my affiliate websites. These free programs are good for the new marketer that is starting out and wants to learn how to start marketing on the internet, but if you are looking for real results, they are for the most part ineffective.
If you are trying to gain success using free resources like traffic exchanges your would have to spend about 6 to 12 hours marketing everyday to receive minimal results at best. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place in your marketing for free sources like exchanges, but it cannot be your main form of advertising. Free traffic resources however are great for running your squeeze page in order to build your affiliate marketing leads for your future advertising.
The truth is if you are trying make money fast on the internet marketing affiliate products, you will need to invest in PPC advertising or some other form of paid advertising at one point or another. Affiliate PPC advertising gives you the best chance at succeeding online. With Pay Per Click advertising you will be able to direct large amounts of targeted traffic to your website through targeted keywords related to your topic.
The warning with PPC advertising is that it is an advance technique that should can be costly without the proper training. A proper PPC campaign will have to include a good keyword tool to target your products and separate yourself from the competition. SEO Elite will give a selection of hundreds of keyword suggestions to use in your affiliate PPC marketing campaigns. In the beginning all of this information may be to much to consume without any help, that is why I recommend anyone considering running a PPC campaign get some proper training.
Taking the time to educate yourself on the 3 online principles of where to market, when to market and what to market will help eleviate a lot of costly mistakes. There are several tutorials that can provide you with the proper training on PPC advertising and other affiliate marketing strategies.
If you are not sure of where to search for an good affiliate course online, I suggest you get a membership with Maverick Money Makers Online Club. The membership club provides its members with search engine optimization tutorials in addition to affiliate PPC training. With this particular program, you will have continuous affiliate management training that you can access at anytime with support. There is a fee to join the Maverick Money Makers Online Club, but It will save you a lot of frustration and take the guesswork out of marketing affiliate products online. Read More .....
Online Internet Marketing – 3 Top Tools And Services For An Effective Internet Marketing Solution
Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 75% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.
In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords should be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.
In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or “handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.
Link Exchanges
Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. Google uses an algorithm to determine a page’s rank, which is determined by the number of other sites linking to it; and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link from them will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.
There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange. If they agree, you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run; as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.
One back link from a PR8 site is worth hundreds of back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site. Each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.
A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites linking to THAT page. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!
Blogs
As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.
The major blogs are updated on a daily basis, which is very important to Google’s algorithm, which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as http://EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog in the resource section of the article.
As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number of sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site; generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.
In Summary
These are just a few of the more effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, EZine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.
Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a lifetime customer. Read More .....
SEO Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 75% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.
In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords should be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.
In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or “handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.
Link Exchanges
Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. Google uses an algorithm to determine a page’s rank, which is determined by the number of other sites linking to it; and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link from them will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.
There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange. If they agree, you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run; as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.
One back link from a PR8 site is worth hundreds of back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site. Each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.
A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites linking to THAT page. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMOZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!
Blogs
As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.
The major blogs are updated on a daily basis, which is very important to Google’s algorithm, which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as http://EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog in the resource section of the article.
As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number of sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site; generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.
In Summary
These are just a few of the more effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, EZine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.
Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a lifetime customer. Read More .....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
