4 Steps To Guarantee Internet Marketing Success

The internet has brought many new ways for the home business entrepreneur to make money. One very popular and prosperous path to making money online is through internet marketing. Wikipedia defines Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or Emarketing, as the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

When getting started in internet marketing, there are a lot of opinions and gurus out there telling you what method or strategy is the best for making money online. Many gurus go to great lengths to teach you the “why”, but conveniently leave out the “how” to get started.

Before getting started in any business, it’s important to have a step-by-step plan to follow, so that you will understand exactly how to determine the market to sell to, and the product to sell that market.

Here are 4 practical steps that, if followed, virtually guarantee success in starting any internet marketing venture.

#1. Research the best market. The most common mistake people make when getting started in internet marketing is to create a product first. While this may sound logical, you may just end up with a product no one wants. Many new internet marketers have started out with a product they were passionate about, spent tons of time and thousands of dollars to create, only to find out no one was really searching for or interested in buying it.

So the first, and most important, step is to do your research. Start with a list of markets you have some knowledge or expertise in. Then do some keyword research and find out if anyone is looking for information on that market. Two great places to start your keyword research are https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and www.inventory.overture.com. For example, if I had some knowledge of cats, parrots, gardening, natural living, red hand painted pots or rare Native American artifacts, I might use those to start my research and find out which one has the most searches per day/month. If no one is searching for a particular market you’re going into, then you are going to have a very hard time making any money online.

While research can get much more detailed, keyword research is a great place to start. And realize that you don’t have to just research things you are familiar with. You can always learn a new field or area of expertise, especially if it’s a market worth getting into.

#2. Decide on a small or big market. Based on your research and the competition (or lack of competition), you will need to decide on going into a big mass market or a smaller niche market. Sometimes you will see the word niche used in place of a market. A niche is a smaller refined area of a bigger market.

There are many pros and cons to consider in each type of market. In a large mass market, there are usually quite a few searches online for the different keywords in that market, but there is also more competition for advertising and online search engine rankings. In a smaller niche, there may be less competition and higher profits, but you will need to look at how many people are actually interested in that niche to determine if its viable.

#3. Survey your market. If you are not sure you market is going to be profitable, or even if you think it will be, you need to test it to find out. Wouldn’t it be worth knowing if a market was going to be worth going into, before you committed a lot of time and money?

There are many different programs and methods to setup a survey online.Look at the different survey software programs online and determine which you like best. They are rather inexpensive considering the information it will give you. Then you will need to display your survey on a website so that your market can find it and fill it out. This can be done by yourself, or maybe you will have to hire someone with more programming and coding savvy.

Be sure and ask your potential customer those questions which will most help you to decide if this market it worth getting into. For example, you might ask them why they are looking for this type of information, or what their age is, or if they are a cat owner, etc.

Once your survey site is up, all you need to do is drive some traffic to it. Driving internet traffic is a huge market in itself, and we don’t have the space to go into all the details here. Start with something easy like Google Adwords. Yes, it will cost you a little, but you will drive traffic to your survey very quickly.

These surveys will serve more than one purpose, as you will see next. But whatever you do, don’t skip this step and think it’s irrelevant. Market surveys have save, and make you, a lot of money.

#4. Create a product. Now you can create a product that fits your market’s needs. Most people will be surprised to see this at the bottom of the list, instead of the top. But as I mentioned above, researching your market is far more important.

When creating a product, use the survey you conducted to find out what your ideal customer would really want. If you did your survey properly, you will have a great outline or bullet points to creating a product. Focus on finding a solution to your market or niche’s problems. What is it they are drooling for or staying awake at night for?

Hopefully you didn’t pick something in the research step that is boring, because you do want to have some interest in your market. Creating a product usually takes time, so you will want to have enough interest to push you forward to your goal of creating the best product your market has ever seen.

Obviously, there are many more details to running an internet marketing business (marketing and copywriting for example). However, by starting with these 4 steps every time, you will make your chances of success very high. If followed properly, they will virtually guarantee you get the right start in any internet marketing business.

Source : http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/4-Steps-To-Guarantee-Internet-Marketing-Success/441639

10 Practical Internet Marketing Rules To Live By

Print these out and use them daily!
1. When Starting Anything New – Start With A Small Investment.

There’s always the risk of losing money. Even top level copywriters don’t have winning ads every time. Sometimes just a simple change, a word or two, makes all the difference to get the results you want. Your marketing audience is not perfect so there is no
such thing as a perfect ad. That’s why it’s prudent to limit your risk when starting any new marketing campaign.


2. Test, Test, Test!!
Stop blindly following gurus. You are the only expert in your test results. Try different headlines; shorter, longer, different content. Sometimes the length of your ad copy makes a big difference. Test short concise against longer more descriptive ads. Try something besides the written ad like audio or video or all three together. The more ways you can reach a persons mind the better. Test different squeeze pages. For every ad group always run 2 ads on Adwords. Test different offers, like “try before you buy”. You may also want to test telephone follow-up. Just test everything you do!

3. Do Something Different!
Look at everyone and everything in your marketplace. Don’t be a “business as usual” kind of person. Look for something that makes you unique from the rest. Compare the benefits and services of your product with theirs, cross off all that are the same and see what’s left. If there’s nothing left, then you may need to brainstorm with ideas to add to yours to make if better/different for your market.

4. Buyers Only Ads!
Write your ads to your niche audience and not to everyone who visits your site. A 100% buying rate is not achievable! Most of the time a 1% conversion rate is acceptable. Sometimes if you hit a really hot market it can be up to 10%, which is very good. So writing to the 90% who are just lookers is not what you want to do. Even if those 90% don’t like what you write, it doesn’t matter, as long as the 1%-10% DO like it and take action.

5. Start At The End!

Not really! But try to have your next offer – your backend offer – ready before your first one is ready. Are you starting with a CD or an ebook? Think about affiliate offers or joint ventures with others as a backend offer. Repeat business and backend sales is where the real money is. If you HAVE to make money from one product, it destroys your marketing ability. How can you compete with a competitor who is breaking even or losing money on his advertising and still make a living with the same offer?

6. Your Net Worth Is Determined By Your Network.

Credit Mark Victor Hansen with this phrase. Some of the keys to your online business are: viral marketing, referrals, social networking, strategic alliances, etc. Most of the time trying to “go it alone” won’t work. Affiliates make up 50% -75% of sales in most businesses. The keys to SEO are the links coming in from other sites. Form alliances with other top marketers, help them and they will help you. Brainstorm, network, whatever it takes to make contacts.

7. Your Business Is NOT Internet ONLY.

Your business is internet based, but not necessarily only on the internet. When developing your business model, do so for both internet and offline. Phone follow-up is a good idea. Some have increased their profits by 40% just by calling people who have just purchased to thank them and offer them something else at a discount price right away. You can generate leads by renting a targeted list and send postcards (direct mail) to get people to sign up to your list, and also offline publicity and networking works.

8. Educate your lists.
Educate your list members about your products/services and good content. Use direct mail as well as email as follow-up methods. Sending thank you cards to customers and JV partners is a good follow-up method. To meet with your customers/prospects try a teleconference. Try creating a blog. You need to let them get to know you as a person. Put a face with a name.

9. Focus On What YOU Are Good At.

Find what you’re best at and focus your time and attention on it. There are so many ways to market your site, so concentrate on the ones that fit what you’re good at. If you don’t like doing a certain skill, hire it out, it will save you time, money and frustration. You are good at something! You just need to focus on that.

10. Don’t Expect Overnight Riches.

Focus on your thing. Give it all your attention and watch it grow. If you jump on every “new thing”, you’re spreading yourself too thin. As with anything, just start! Everything is not going to work, so you’ve just found one way NOT to do it again. Modify yourself, your thinking, your work until it does work. Plan where you want to be in a year and work backwards from there; where you want to be in 6 month, 3 months, 1 month, 1 week and tomorrow. Do something every day to meet that goal. It’s hard at first, but it will get easier with each day/goal you attain.

Source : http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/10-Practical-Internet-Marketing-Rules-To-Live-By/440770

Search Engine Optimization Google Style

Incredibly just a decade ago, the big daddy of search called "Google" didn't even exist, let alone have a multitude of people scrambling to make their websites search engine optimization Google friendly in order to capture a potential avalanche of new online business.

Google now holds first place among all the major search engines, which means a lot to people who are making their livings online. Increasing numbers of marketers play by the rules of Google search engine optimization; those who do not are liable to loose significant business.

Google's success lies in how the founders created and refined the technology behind the Google search engine, because it understands what surfers are looking for and delivers better search results than competitors.

Their strategy worked and today Google alone accounts for 60 percent of all searches that are done online, leaving just 40 percent of the searches divided between all of the other major search engines. Those statistics essentially make Google the behemoth in the industry and that makes it clear why search engine optimization Google strategies are a closely guarded secret and are constantly being refined.

Google primarily uses "spiders" to catalog the web, and the results are shown to the surfer. Google spiders give positive attention to quality inbound linking and content.

Pertinent links that direct users from relevant webpages to your site are important to maximize Google search results of your site. The weight of the links will vary depending on quality of the sites you're linking to, the use of text links instead of banner ads, the quality of the text on the page where your link is, and the page rank of those sites.

Using an advanced algorithm, Google checks your web pages for good quality content and easy readability, as opposed to nonsense composed of nothing but keywords without complete sentences. Google's style is to have quality content, while delivering value to a customer using a search engine.

It is no longer true that your meta description, title, and keywords are the primary factors in your Google rankings. These things are helpful, but you should utilize your time by building up good content as well as quality links.

Google employs a technology called Page Rank which measures the overall importance of a site. This rank is a result of an very complex equation that draws in information for over 500 million variables. A portion of this analysis takes into consideration the quality of the links both to a page and from it and assigning it a value. Thus making the search engine optimization Google uses to rate your web site extremely complex and hard to fool. But as in most search optimization efforts, quality content and sound optimization techniques will make your site more relevant and ultimately achieve higher rankings

Source : http://www.articlealley.com/article_478617_4.html

Natural Search Engine Results and Website Consulting

You scroll down past the banner ads and enter your search term. You pass the "sponsored results" without a glance. You ignore the shaded results to the right, as well as the additional "sponsored results" at bottom. Hiding somewhere in the middle of it all, you finally find the results you came for.

Welcome to the world of natural search- a world where mom-and-pop shops compete with million dollar companies, where million dollar companies compete with billion dollar corporations. And, while many will argue to the contrary, the playing field is more or less level. Small companies can and do dominate their behemoth competitors in this world, for a variety of reasons.

What Is Natural Search?
For those who aren't quite clear what the term means, "natural" or "organic" search describes the "editorial" search results on any particular engine. These results are purported to be completely non-biased - meaning that the engine will not accept any amount of money to influence the rankings of any individual sites. This is quite different than the paid advertising that appears in "sponsored" or "featured" results, in which higher positions are rewarded to the companies willing to pay the most per visitor.

Why Is Natural Search Important?
Savvy searchers who understand the difference between paid and natural results are more likely to hold the natural results in a higher regard, much like a person reading a magazine would probably be more positively influenced by an article about a particular company than by a paid advertisement from the company.

It is also likely that natural search will become more important in the coming months. Yahoo's new Site Match program, which mixes some paid results with natural results, is certain to get some close scrutiny from the FTC (even though the fees paid are not supposed to influence rankings). This type of public attention will no doubt educate some oblivious users as to what "sponsored results" actually are. More importantly, other search engines are likely to use this as a means of differentiation from Yahoo. It is no coincidence that Ask Jeeves announced that it was getting rid of its similar program the day after Yahoo's new program was unveiled, claiming that it was impossible to produce unbiased results using this methodology. Microsoft also recently claimed that they were taking steps to further differentiate paid results from natural results. No matter what the end result, one probable outcome of this new attention to paid search engine advertising is that more average searchers will learn the differences between paid and natural search results, and many will instinctively favor the latter.

What Advantages Do Huge Corporations Have?
Certainly, large companies do have some specific advantages when it comes to natural search.

a. Links- the primary advantage that large corporations have is their ability to obtain large amounts of inbound links, which can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Often these links are given freely without the company asking (or being aware that it is happening). Many of the huge corporation's vendors, affiliates, partners, etc. are eager to show their association with the company and link to the corporate site readily and non-reciprocally. Large corporations can also facilitate huge increases in link popularity through a simple corporate policy requiring inbound links from any companies wishing to work with them. In addition, very large corporations may have several websites, which can sometimes be effectively linked together for additional link popularity.

b. Budget- although history shows that a large percentage of major corporations do not spend wisely in this arena, larger corporations typically have larger marketing budgets then their smaller competitors. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will readily allocate a portion of that budget for search engine optimization, as discussed below.

What Advantages Do Smaller Companies Have?
While the advantages of huge corporations, particularly in the area of link popularity, can be difficult to overcome, it is often unnecessary to try. A large percentage of such companies consistently seem to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to natural search engine optimization, a primary reason why small companies can often outperform them. Specific advantages include:

a. A willingness to pursue the channel- Smaller companies are typically more willing to devote resources to natural search than large corporations. Huge things have to happen for a major corporation to get involved in this "new" channel, a channel far removed from the traditional marketing methodologies used to build the giant. Few corporate underlings want to be the one to put their neck on the line and recommend something completely new and "unproven". Even when a large corporation looks into natural search engine optimization as a potential marketing tool, it can take many months, and sometimes years, for a final decision to be made.

b. A willingness to change the company website- Huge corporations face similar problems when it comes to changing to the corporate website. Within such entities, a person can often not get so much as a comma removed from the text of a secondary page without holding several upper-level management meetings and, ultimately, making a board presentation. Smaller, leaner companies are able to approve necessary website changes more quickly, and are almost always more willing to quickly adapt to the needs of both visitors and search engines.

c. The willingness to outsource- Larger companies have more internal resources at their disposal, and are less likely to outsource this specialized service to someone with proven experience. Often, search engine optimization is treated as an afterthought and dumped on an IT person, who typically has too much to do already and will approach the problem solely from a technical standpoint. Natural search engine optimization is by necessity a combination of marketing and technology. Newcomers to the field (especially those who treat the discipline as strictly a technical issue) often make fundamental mistakes that at best do not get results and at worst put sites at risk of penalization.

d. A lack of technical hurdles- Huge corporations are more likely to have technical issues on their website that can prevent search engines from indexing all of their pages. Often the pages of corporate websites are generated "on the fly" from large databases, and such pages (without modification to the URLs) are sometimes never indexed. In addition, (although usability studies are making this happen less often), some huge corporations have their sites built entirely in flash or use other technologies that are virtually invisible to search engines.
The Bottom Line

To most huge corporations, search engine optimization is often a very small piece of an enormous puzzle - and it is a piece they have been doing without for years. The necessary steps required to fully embrace the channel are often enough to stop any well-intentioned initiative in its tracks. As most search engine optimization experts will tell you, some of the most egregious search engine mistakes are consistently made by household name companies - leaving their smaller, leaner competitors the opportunity to take full advantage.

Help with website design and search engine marketing can be found at www.onlinewebconsultants.com. The specialist here are experienced and certified in search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

Source : http://www.articlealley.com/article_23142_6.html

6 Top Most Effective Link Building Tools

Almost every webmaster and Internet marketer who is serious about his online business cares of driving more traffic to his website. We all know that the closer to the top in search engine results the site is, the more it is visited by Internet users. But how to get that cherished place on the first page in the search engine? The answer is link building.

Link building is the process of getting links pointing to your site from other websites. The more incoming links your site has, the more value it represents for search engines. The quality of incoming links does matter too.

In this article I'd like to suggest the tools you can use to build quality links to your website:

1. Articles. Write the articles about the products or services you offer on your website and submit them to article directories. The idea is to include a link to your site into every article. Each article listed in many directories has the potential to build thousands of links for you.

2. Bookmarks. A great idea is to bookmark your articles. Every time you bookmark an article, you are linking back to your website. You can bookmark the web pages with your articles with popular bookmark sites, for example digg.com and del.icio.us, these sites are growing in popularity by the day. Also, adding social bookmark links to your articles makes it easy for readers to save and share your content. You can use this Social Bookmarking Tool to bookmark your articles with more than 50+ social bookmarking sites.

3. Forums. You can search for forums related to your business and leave the posts on them. Include the link to your site into your signature and every post you make will become an inbound link.

4. Blogs. An off site blog is a great means for building links and gaining traffic because every post you make is a separate web page. Link to your website and you'll have some good inbound links.

5. Social networking. With social networking link building comes in when you set up your profile. You'll make friends and drive traffic to your website.

6. Web directories. Directory submission is one of the best ways to get natural quality links for your website. The more directories you list your website with, the more inbound links you have. The easiest and quickest way to submit the site to web directories is to use a directory submitter tool. Directory submission software already has a large database of directories included within the program and automates the process of site submission. So, it is also the more time saving method of link building because you don't waste your time by searching the Internet for themed directories.

Source : http://www.expertarticles.com/article/Internet-Business/SEO/6-Top-Most-Effective-Link-Building-Tools.html

Get The Power With Social Media Optimization

Search engine optimization has been a well-known technique for getting an online web site known to the users of internet. In fact, things like internet marketing, email marketing and various other similar concepts have been regularly used for the promotion of an online site in the internet domain. However, technology is an ever-evolving thing and with the passage of time newer concepts have come out and these concepts has been well adopted for the promotion of online sites. One of the most recent and highly used newer techniques is social media optimization. Social media optimization is similar to all the other optimization techniques that are used for the promotion of online web sites. Nevertheless, like all the other techniques, social media optimization also has its individuality and there are certain unique principles that need to be followed while adopting to social media optimization for the optimization of a web site in World Wide Web.

There are various processes that need to be included when a web site has to be socially optimized. Basically, social media optimization helps to increase the linkabilty of the site. This is in fact, the main purpose for doing social media optimization for any online web site. Moreover, it should be made sure that the look and the feel of the web site for which social media optimization is being done, is constantly changed so that every time the site gives a fresh feeling to the visitors. This is also a necessity because nobody likes to see the same old graphics and read the same old content. Therefore, changes in the website help to get more visitors and at the same time help the business to earn revenue. Therefore, the content and the other materials used in the site should be highly attractive and attention grabbing.

The principle that works behind Social Media Optimization is to mainly draw traffic to the site. Drawing a good amount of traffic is in fact, one of the best ways to get the site popular among various social media platforms and search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. The thing that mainly needs to be done is to write good articles and then get them circulated in the various social media platforms so that people can read them and come to visit the site. This not only helps in getting good traffic for the website but also helps in getting popular among internet users and various social media platforms. Once the content in the form of articles are floated among the various social media platforms, social media optimizers get hold of them and use them to optimize the site, which further helps in the promotion of that particular website.

After search engine optimization, social media optimization has become one of the most used techniques for the online promotion of a website. Social media optimization is a relatively newer concept but it is gaining a lot of impetus in the market as more and more optimization firms are using this concept to optimize the website of their clients. In fact, social media optimization proves to be a good option for drawing good traffic to a site and at the same time popularizing it in the social media platform.

Source : http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

Social Media Marketing (SMM) For Your Business

What is Social Media? Often referred to as the 5th "P" in marketing Social Media is about "Participation"

Social media unlike traditional media such as newspapers, television, books, and radio is fundamentally different. It is not finite meaning there are no limits. Audience participation, adding comments or editing the stories is the social differentiator. Then the content itself by virtue of it's electronic format can also take the form of text, graphics, audio or video. These media can be combined and made available via feeds that can be downloaded by users with feed readers or pulled into other distribution sites featuring mash-ups of content from various sources.

The term Social Media has several different connotations, however in the context of internet marketing, it refers to a group or network of web properties primarily driven by the users. For example, blogs, forums, and video sharing sites. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get one's content more widely distributed across multiple networks.

There are two sides to Social Media, the first side is made up of on-page tactics that a webmaster can do to improve their website for inclusion in network services. This is known as SMO as stated above. Such optimization includes adding links to services such as Technorati, Digg, and Del.icio.us so that their pages can be easily "saved and submitted" to and for these services.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is the off-page tactics side of the equation. This includes writing content that is remarkable, and news-worthy. Marketing this content is done by promoting links on the services mentioned as well as more traditional SEO tactics or creating video that may become viral when posted on Youtube or other video sites. Social Media is all about being social so this off-page work includes getting involved in other blogs, forums and online communities.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Media-Marketing-(SMM)-For-Your-Business&id=934906

Best Social Media - 7 Key Steps to Make a Profit With Social Media

If you want to enjoy the best social media success, there are seven key steps to take to make a profit with social media. Through this article you are provided with an overview of the seven key steps to make a profit with social media. By following the steps you are be on your way to the best social media success.

1. The first step that you need to take when it comes to developing the best social media strategy is identifying those social media outlets that will be most beneficial to you or your business.

2. The next step that you need to take when it comes to developing the best social media strategy is to create a comprehensive social media plan. You do not want to embark on a social media endeavour without a road map.

3. When it comes to the best social media strategy, you will want to consult and visit with other people have been involved with social media in the past. You do not need to reinvent the wheel.

4. The fourth key step you need to understand when it comes to the best social media is the need to make sure you present yourself in the most positive light. Remember, when it comes to social media you are marketing yourself.

5. An when it comes to the best social media, you need to make sure that shore up to date on current trends that are associated with this line of communication. Keep in mind the Internet is always changing as is social media.

6. There are no social media consultants in business today. Depending on your own experience of the Internet and with social media you might want to call upon these experts to assist you in devising the best social media plan possible.

7. Finally, you will want to continually revise your social media strategies to make sure that their up to date and effective. Obviously, if you're going to be involved in social media you want to achieve your goals in the short rather than a long run.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Best-Social-Media---7-Key-Steps-to-Make-a-Profit-With-Social-Media&id=686372

Social Media - Why Go on Social Media Optimization

More often people are working for a web site to make it optimized for search engines. So many facts and tips have already been mentioned for search engine optimization. But due to the many things that are rapidly changing in the Internet world, businesses are also now heading toward social media optimization. The perception is quite simple that is making changes to optimize your website to make it more visible to social media searches.

Here are some tips for going in with social media optimization.

1. Have many links on your site. Whatever your strategy, do not overlook the power of links to your site. The more links you have to your site, the more you can get the search engines and social media find your web site.

2. You should also add one click buttons on your site that can easily bookmark your site. You can also use appropriate tags on your site so that people and search engines would find you easily by using these keywords.

3. You should also give rewards for inbound links. This will encourage search engines to get your site indexed easily. Also, this would help in increasing the visibility of your site aside from back links that you are getting.

4. You can also achieve social media optimization if you would disseminate your contents to other site. If you have tutors or manuals in PDF forms or audio files then submit these files to other sites. If you have scattered these contents surely you would be able to get back links to your site.

5. You can also encourage having mash up. That is having your contents syndicated via RSS. This will allow other people to create mash up that would draw traffic to your site.

Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Social-Media---Why-Go-on-Social-Media-Optimization&id=668901

How To Weather Google Algorithm Changes

If you spend much time reading the various webmaster forums, you're no doubt well aware of the grief that many webmasters experience after seeing a Google algorithm change send their web pages sinking like a stone in the search results. But there are always other webmasters who do well with the changes, and many whose rankings are pretty much unaffected.

What allows some websites to weather frequent algo changes and even prosper while others are banished to the nether regions of the SERPS or banned altogether? In a word, moderation.

Search Engine Optimization is a lucrative business, and many SEOs routinely "push the limits" of what's allowed by the search engines in an attempt to maximize a client site's rankings and draw more business. The problem with this approach is Google is constantly moving the goal post. If you play the game too aggressively you'll find your site being penalized when Google changes the algorithm.

So what can you do to safely optimize your site for the search engines? There are several things to remember:

1 - Make your SEO efforts an asset to Google, not a nemesis. Use ethical optimization practices that help ensure that your pages rank well and pass the "relevance" test. Google loathes spammers because they skew the search results making them less relevant for the searchers, and less relevant results drive searchers to other search engines. Understandably, Google doesn't like that a bit! Bottom line: Make your pages search engine friendly, but don't spam. That way when your page makes it into the top 10 it will really deserve to be there.

2 - Corollary to #1: Provide content that is truly relevant to the search queries that the page ranks well for. In fact, strive to make your page the most relevant (and most useful) page on the Internet for those search terms. Google loves lots of high quality content that is actually useful to your visitors, and their ranking algorithm will reward you handsomely for it, often with little or no SEO techniques in use at all. Lots of quality content draws lots of quality inbound links to your pages, which in turn helps boost their rankings even more!

3 - Use moderation in everything you do in regards to SEO. If you don't edge right up to the line, you'll be a lot less likely to cross it when Google moves it on you. This applies to linking, keyword density, header tags...all of the typical SEO techniques that are in use by webmasters today.

Conclusion

The webmasters who are happy after each and every Google update make their SEO efforts actually benefit the Google index. Their pages are full of relevant, useful content and they refrain from using "gray area" SEO techniques. Remember, today's "gray area" techniques are often tomorrow's "black hat" techniques.

Source : http://webhostinggeeks.com/articles/seo/33781.php

Google in need of SEO

I had one of the best laughs of my life recently while reading a page explaining what Google's homepage would look like if they had to SEO their site like everyone else.

It was beautiful, and I'm so jealous I didn't think of it first.

So with that funny story firmly planted in my mind, we got an enquiry at SearchMasters coming from the search term "search engine". Because we are optimised for "search engine optimisation", by default we are optimised for "search engine" as well.

As I normally do, I went out and scoped out the SERPS to see what was happening...

SERPS on Google for search engine

Above: SearchMasters outranks google.co.nz for the term "search engine"Outranked!
Funny how SearchMasters and others are beating Google for this phrase. Maybe if Google applied some of the SEO suggestions recommended in the above link, they could rank top for this term :)

Clearly there isn't any bias being applied here - Google's homepage isn't optimised for this term, and it's not ranking top as a result. Great to know we are (at least sometimes) operating on a level playing field.
Update
So after thinking it through, I thought it a little unfair to pick on Google over this one, so I decided to check out Yahoo and MSN as well.

SERPs on Yahoo for search engine

SERPs on MSN for search engine
Nuff said really. Out of the 3 major engines, Google is ranking itself best. Even Yahoo is listing Google as the first result, which says all kinds of things really. I kept these results to NZ only for consistency with the original Google result, but upon thinking about it, MSN probably doesn't have a NZ site and could well be filtering itself out of the results. Yahoo on the other hand is branded as Yahoo Xtra, so one would assume this is a New Zealand site, or at least it should be.

If you search the worldwide versions of these phrases, you get all kinds of funny results. MSN lists every major search engine you can think of, except itself, on the top 10 results.

Source : http://www.ragepank.com/articles/140/google-in-need-of-seo/

5 Easy Ways to Make Your Posts More Interesting

As we all know, there is a lot of competition in the field of blogging, especially in the so-called “make money online” niche. With everyone writing on similar topics, simply writing an article may not get you noticed and your posts may go unread. By tweaking your writing style a bit and by adding in a few elements to your posts, you can create more interesting posts.

1. Use Personal Examples – By using personal examples related to the concepts you’re explaining you can create a sense that you’ve been there and done that while also making the concepts easier to understand. I’ve done this before in my The Do-It-Yourself Sense of Accomplishment. Using personal examples makes your article unique and creates more of a connection with your readers.

2. Write Eye-Catching Titles – This tip has been explained over and over again so I’m not going to beat this one to death. Use words and phrases that are exciting and captures the reader right from the start. The title is the first thing they will read, so make it good. ContentBlog talks about this in detail with their article, check it out.

3. Ask Questions – Consider asking your readers questions, both at the beginning of the post and at the end. By stimulating your reader’s to think, you’re making your article more interesting. Plus, you are hopefully generating more comments at the same time. Just be sure to respond to your readers when they respond to your questions. Make sure they know you care.

4. Use Images – The stereotypical saying is “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words” and with good reason. By adding images to your post you make the post more visually interesting. Also related images can be extremely helpful in explaining the concepts and information you’re going over. Personally, I like to add a cartoon at the top of each of my posts that is semi-related in order to capture attention, toss in a bit of humor, and break up the monotony of all the text.

5. Quotes & Links – When applicable, quote other bloggers and respected sources while also linking to their blog. The quote not only breaks up your post nicely, but by linking to an additional source you are spreading the link love and adding value to your post.

Good Luck!

Source : http://www.erikkarey.com/5-easy-ways-to-make-your-posts-more-interesting.html

SEO tactics to rank favorably

Off-page SEO refers to all the optimization techniques on the site. This means that the search engines will rank your site on the basis of which is a link to your website. Gone are the days when all you had to do was exchange links with a few hundred sites and your website would sky rocket in the rankings. For a good optimization of the page, you must plan carefully. For starters, try to get a link to your site from sites or authority respected. These sites have a very good page rank factor with search engines. Page rank is awarded a grade compared to websites. A top rank or PR is very valuable and a way to obtain links from these sites may be the biggest boost to your efforts to optimize the page.

Try to find sites with the authority with a similar theme to your website and try to get a one-way link to your website. You may have to pay for this service, but it’s worth. Also, try to exchange links with a few carefully chosen sites that are related to your site in terms of content. It is also important to be linked with a number of sites more or less the ranking of the page. This proves to search engines that your link building purposes are based on ties of your website and are not determined by the ranking of the page only.

Whenever you exchange links with a website or attempt to obtain oneway links, be sure to vary your main text. If you use the same text, search engines leads to the conclusion that you paid for pages link to your website, or even worse, suppose your site is a site of spam. Take lots of content on your website is also a very good idea because it allows a deep link to your site. Deep linking is when a site not only of links to the index page of your site, but also several pages of your site.

You can significantly increase your page optimization off marketing efforts with the article. Well written articles can provide one-way links from sites the authority is a matter of days. If your articles provide links to the inside pages of your website with varying link text, you can also achieve the goal of connecting and depth varying link text. To get the best results by using article marketing, writing at least eight articles, each targeting another keyword and major variables, each containing a text link. Distribute these articles to a few major article directories over a period of three to four weeks. This will attract traffic to your site and increase your rank off the page, all at the same time.

Search engines also value the length of time necessary to establish links. If you get all your links in one day, it means a red flag with search engines. Take time to construction related to the quality of your site. Spread your article marketing over a period of a few weeks. Try to get free listed directory. These directories take several months to approve and publish your site, so that helps to slow link building.

Finally, using Web 2.0 technologies to get links to your site. There are several sites like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace and even Craigslist. These sites also provide a lot of man and the movement are great ways to get your website listed off the page as well as the optimization of traffic gain. Be careful and follow the rules when you use these sites to avoid your post being removed. It is well worth the effort.

Source : http://www.bloggeraz.com/seo-tactics-to-rank-favorably/

In House SEO

In House SEO Adoption

There's not much information available on the rate of adoption of in-house SEO, but driving some of the demand is poor experiences with SEO companies. Some of the results delivered may have been disappointing and other times it was believed the SEO provider could do magic, and make Google behave and accept a Web site and keyword positioning that was inappropriate. Other times, the SEO provider couldn't interface with competing in house stakeholders and get them to work together to appeal to Google's needs. The company then considered bringing it in-house so that magically, everyone would come onside and work together to achieve organic search visibility, and Google would step in line with the company's preferences.

In dealing with corporate clients, I do often act as intermediary between competing internal departments, holdouts, and others who don't understand or appreciate the business value of SEO. However, in the end, the company itself must see SEO as important and not something done by the "temp." It has to be organized by an executive who champions the cause of SEO - obviously the visionary who can see the huge potential. Bringing a newbie in and giving them a desk to sit at, will not do much to solve internal squabbles and create respect for SEO. In fact, it will often degrade the perception of SEO and what is really needed for your company to succeed.

An important truth about SEO projects is that once they're up and running, only ongoing maintenance and development are normally needed. With the bulk of the work correctly implemented, there's no need for an in-house specialist. So before you get saddled with a yearly salary for questionable performance and lost opportunity, consider the true value of an SEO consultant who is dedicated to top results. There's no reward for 5th place.

The SEO Talent Shortage

The increasing shortage of professional level, experienced search engine optimization experts is causing some companies to consider in house SEO, and to train marketing staff for SEO/SEM positions. The amazing thing about this, is that there are few requests for SEO training. It appears some are bringing SEO in-house, yet it's a mystery as to how they're developing high level capabilities in these recruits.

Bringing SEO in-house involves paying a full time salary for mediocre results.

Check out the SEO job boards for a view of a lot of companies trying to save a buck by hiring and supposedly training someone for this critical task. You'll also see ad agencies trying to cash in on the SEO boom by creating a so called "SEO Specialists" for their clients, who are unaware of how that is going to turn out for them. Look at the top business projects going on in the world and you'll see consultants hired for the key tasks. Saving a dollar costs ten dollars and could result in disaster. If your business is your lifeline, disaster is not an option.

Industry people are aware that top flight SEO is a serious yet creative business and given the impressive revenue results possible, should be given to a top flight specialist. Recent studies have revealed much better results achieved by experienced specialists. With Google fighting paid links, the market is heading back to organic optimization, and those stuck with unskilled SEO providers are going to suffer in the years ahead. An inability to understand the organic sphere, plan and design a successful organic campaign, and implement optimized content in a timely fashion will leave the company desperate for results. Combining paid links and in house SEO, mediocre results have been achievable, but the key issue is the lost opportunity to capture significant new business using a sophisticated and carefully planned strategy. With the diminishment of paid links, the SEO-as-common-advertising-buy attitude needs adjustment.

In house SEO is also driven by insecurity and the cost cutting mentality, along with the belief that if the ship is sailing fast, it will just stay on course. Nothing but profit, and a dumping of the task onto some college grad. The key profit generating activity for your company needs more respect. Perhaps respect is the key issue.

A report on Marketing Vox revealed the paradox that exists where although search engine marketing is generating most of their profits, some businesses still have no intention of improving that effort by outsourcing to experts. The study showed web site owners were dubbing in keywords as their SEO strategy, hardly a serious approach to a key revenue source.

I've seen first hand with several companies who have brought SEO and SEM in-house and have seen sales plummet. Their stats fell every month and they were forced to spend more on PPC and offline marketing campaigns. They cite issues with the level of compensation going out to professional SEOs. Without the skill, production quality, and connections of the SEO/SEM specialist however, their fortunes have flagged. They should be formally called sales cutting.

If you still haven't decided on how to implement SEO, consider for example, whether you would hire a branding specialist for your company or product brands, or whether you'd just hand it over to junior designer and think they'll eventually get the knack. An experienced specialist who has developed content for web sites over many, many years knows how to position that content to generate high rankings, lasting results and quality leads. Long term, lasting productivity is perhaps the top deliverable by a professional. With that in hand, there is no need for a full time staffer, or the high costs of training and attending big SEM conferences.

A business must be efficient and focus on core competencies that are critical to success. One of my clients is adamant about that. They have "no intention of becoming a search engine optimization company." We've generated unbelievable results for them so why would an intelligent enterprise risk that?

Quality search engine exposure generates excellent new sales leads, customer loyalty, and brand exposure, and it's something that needs to continue to allow full development of the SEO/SEM effort.

Rest assured that monumental business success is a very likely outcome if you are determined and you have the best people to make it happen. If you have weak contact with your SEO provider, then it's time to get reacquainted and ask yourself why you aren't more committed in getting them involved in your success. Your arms length dealings with them might indicate some integrity issues. If they are going to bring you huge profits, it just makes sense to give them the respect and support they need to do it.

Avoiding the Real Causes of Disappointment

When cost issues crop up, it usually signifies a lack of confidence in your core product/service and that something might be wrong with how your business is conducted. Downgrading your SEO/SEM effort won't repair problems with your business or marketing plan or your unique value proposition. If online generated sales conversions have fallen, don't blame it on the sales pipeline. If people aren't buying, it indicates a problem with your overall value proposition. Take another look at your web design too. It could be it isn't inspiring your visitors anymore.

Common arguments used by in-house SEO evangelists center around the idea that familiarity with the product/service, company culture, and having constant daily contact with staff members is required. They imply that SEO specialists lack the time or desire to get intimate with client's products and business. As part of our work with corporate clients, we get to know their products, services and organization very well. Our communications with staff are just as detailed. Very often, we can perform better because we're not tied up in office politics. Our objective views of the company's situation helps them avoid myopic decisions. Businesses need external input and we're often a key source of reference regarding everything from web site design to value proposition. All these things play into whether search engine optimization will be profitable.

In each argument, you can see that the real issue is that the company is not leveraging all the value an SEO company can deliver. Assess the full dollar value SEO and SEM can deliver to your organization and make a firm commitment to making them a key player in that success. They will produce 110% of expectations and give your business a powerful advantage.

Mysterious SEO

SEO is often a mysterious process and while an SEO specialist doesn't want to divulge how he or she creates outstanding results, having you think you can do it on your own at a top level is not doing you a favor. I have had so many marketing managers tell me that they know enough to be dangerous, and that's so true. These people have clear self-awareness and are competent managers.

SEO in particular, is one position you don't want to in-source. It requires a skill set, creativity, and experience that is unusual. It requires freedom and creativity. That doesn't mean we all dress weird and live Bohemian lifestyles. We are mental gymnasts and juggle a number of complex concepts and activities while meeting the needs of diverse corporate clients. SEO is all about modifying, converting, and playing with the meaning of words and how they're used on web sites and developing strategies for getting help from other web site owners. You need the best content developer/optimizer/strategist you can find. Google and Yahoo are showing a clear preference for unique content and when this is professionally optimized, it is very successful. The range of skills of a professional SEO is immense and the thought that this talent can be developed in few short years is unrealistic. It's taken me ten (10) years to develop all the technical and creative skills that I use daily.

Cheap Tricks

If you've heard that newbies can collect inbound links from Wikipedia or articles sites or you can outsource link building to India, don't fool yourself. Those days are long gone and you need specialists with the ingenuity to make your site(s) perform in a crowded, competitive market.

If you're thinking of bringing your SEO in-house, don't waste your time. There is little chance a single newbie or a web designer is going to pick up on search engine algorithms anytime soon, let alone a whole team of newbies. If you can find an SEO specialist with good all round content generation skills, ranking algorithm expertise, marketing knowledge, and the ability to get your links established on exactly the right sites, then you've got it all. You're at the top of the food chain with someone focused on your needs.

To find a good SEO provider, check out how many top rankings their clients have. If their clients are well ranked for all the relevant keywords for their business, then you're seeing outstanding SEO performance. That's the best visibility possible and it's generally only delivered by a top notch SEO specialist. Compare their abilities to an under motivated in-house person working on a couple of corporate or ecommerce sites, and you can clearly see the advantage SEO companies offer.

The success of search engines, particularly Google in expanding their overall share in the online marketing sphere, means SEM and SEO will continue providing more value to businesses. And the complexity of algorithms will increase too. In house people dedicated to one Web site in an organization don't have the market intelligence that an SEO Company possesses with its many diverse clients. Better methods and performance feedback provide an advantage you won't regret having.

If you need assistance finding the right SEO provider for your needs, contact me, and I may be able to help you with the decision making process.

Gord Collins is SEO Director at Bay Street SEO. Gord writes frequently in magazines, blogs, and forums on new trends in search engine optimization and search engine marketing. He provides SEO services to numerous major U.S. companies and other SEO companies.

Source : http://www.seoconsultants.com/seo/in-house/

Affordable Search Engine Marketing for your Online Business

Almost every business these days has an online presence. Having a web presence on the World Wide Web is one of the best ways through which you can attract lots of customers to buy goods from your business through your site. There is no dearth of competition in any field, and it is up to you to tackle this competition in the best possible way.

The idea is to present your products as unique, so that the customer is compelled to buy goods from you. Marketing on the web is very different from the marketing of goods that is done in the traditional way. Affordable search engine marketing is the best means for you to market your product and earn profit.

Well it will not work if you just place any search engine marketing strategy to make your product popular. There are two ways of going about doing anything. One is the correct and the lengthy way, while the other is the incorrect and the easy way. So it is up to you to choose the proper way out to do affordable search engine marketing. You must make sure that your search engine marketing is affordable in the real sense of the term.

Be very careful about the kind of marketing strategy that you use for the marketing of your product on the web. Make sure that the marketing strategy is completely in tune towards reaching out to your targeted audience. You will make the biggest blunder if your marketing strategy is not able to give you the desired business results. Always make use of those strategies that will help you in making your business all the more popular on the web.

The internet is the one source which people make use of, to find information about anything on the web. So if you want that more and more internet users have access to your site, you must put together all possible efforts to make your site easily available to online visitors. Search engine optimization is one search engine marketing technique that you can utilize for making your site easily accessible to visitors. Search engine optimization is nothing but the different methods that are used for making a site popular on the web.

Keyword research is the basis of a successful affordable search engine marketing for any product on the web. If you are actually able to identify the vital keywords of a product, the entire task will become very easy for you. Make sure to undertake meticulous keyword research for being successful with your online business. Keyword research is also very important for doing pay per click advertisement campaigns. This is an advertisement method that is done by using the proper keyword that best describes your goods and services.

It is important for you to adopt an affordable search engine marketing strategy, simply because the marketing strategy should not be a strain on your finances. You must be able to afford for this without any worrying even a little bit about your finances.

Source : www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

What is Marketing Optimization? Testing, Targeting, and Behavior

It is the Year of Optimization. The recent acquisition of TouchClarity by Omniture is yet another confirmation of an intense surge in interest in technologies that make computers sell better to people.

But what in the world *is* optimization?

As a matter of disclosure I am not a PhD. My ADD is a strong inoculation against advanced scholarly pursuits.

However, I have the unique viewpoint of experience. I co-ran a company, Fort Point Partners, that was responsible for deploying a dazzling range of technology for companies like Nike, Best Buy, and about 50 other firms. We launched rules-based systems (ATG Scenario Server, e.Piphany), search systems (EasyAsk and Endeca) and more advanced segmentation and modeling software (LikeMinds, Personify, netPerceptions to name a few). We also ran a lot of tests.

Our goal was simple - make the computer capable as a salesperson. For us, optimization is a fancy word for making a selling process more relevant and engaging for your customer so that they make you more money. And the best optimization tool was one where a marketer could adapt and learn, but the machine did the work.

I see four major approaches to optimization that each have critical value for the marketer (I will use this space over the next week or so to go into more detail on each approach):

1. Experimentation - testing approaches including A/B, multivariate, Taguchi, optimal design and others. Showing different experiences to different control groups to determine a "winner" or "best recipe" based on conversion rate, revenue, or other outcome. Read more here.
2. Targeting - also referred to as "rules-based optimization". Defining explicit segments and rules for delivering content experience. These can be simple definitions like "show the iPod when our customer searches for "iPod" on Yahoo or very sophisticated behavioral segments.
3. Behavioral - applying AI or linear regression to prior data to determine predictive factors from data to drive the display of content.
4. Social - offloading the work of relevance to the community through ratings, reviews, tagging, or other forms of participation.

Take Google, for example. They are algorithm guys, right? They use a predictive model that is finely tuned to determine the elusive grail of "relevance" and their results are unbelievable. Yet they also use targeting and testing. True, they outsource the work of specifying the rules to us through keyword selection, bidding, and match type, but this is targeting at its finest. And they test regularly - evaluating different treatments of the SERPs.

So what is the best optimization approach? Optimization is just marketing with math. If your user base ratings improve the relevance of your search results, then do it! If testing helps to eliminate your CEO's bias towards acres of copy, do it! The marketing "mix" for optimization is going to take time to get right, but will yield tasty morsels of revenue improvement every step of the way.

We started Offermatica not because we discovered the magic algorithm that turned a computer into a selling machine, but because we found out that the keys to selling online were speed and control. Speed - because marketers had no time, so the machine was going to have to do the work. And Control, because the marketer still needed to be "in the loop", either driving new ideas or removing crazy outcomes.

And remember this: Marketing is done by marketers. Machines just help us listen and aim better.

Source : http://www.landingpageoptimization.com

Test for Success

Unlike traditional Web site marketing tools that are time consuming, expensive and often inconclusive,So....

• A/B and Multivariate Testing
• Session Optimization, Not Just Landing
  Page Optimization
• On-site Behavioral Targeting
• Real-Time Reporting & Analytics

• Support Your Search Optimization Efforts
• Easy Integration
• Scalability

A/B and Multivariate Testing

A/B testing randomly divides your site traffic into groups and shows each group a different version of a page, or set of pages, to determine which experience has the greatest impact on your key success metrics whether conversion rate, time-on-site, page views per visit, downloads or any other indicator.

Allowing more combinations to be tested more quickly than A/B split tests, multivariate tests involve the analysis of many page or site variables at once. With multivariate testing, you can isolate the impact of each element individually. Most importantly, multivariate tests can predict the optimal combination of input variables even if you've never tested them allowing you to get real results more quickly.

Offermatica's testing capabilities are unique, enabling you to easily identify not only how each element on your site affects conversion but know why a change is better (or worse). This is accomplished with less traffic, time and effort than other testing solutions.

Our hosted solution can provide actionable business results in days, giving you the opportunity to leverage a newfound understanding of what is driving—or impeding—success on your site.

Session Optimization, Not Just Landing Page Optimization

While landing page optimization is important, Offermatica knows that each experience on your site involves more than a single page. Offermatica not only enables you to develop the best landing page for your visitor, but can optimize the entire user experience from click-to-close. You can easily test display ad creative, search and display ad landing pages, and other on-site elements together to understand and deliver the most engaging and relevant experience.

On-Site Behavioral Targeting

On-site behavioral targeting allows you to provide visitors with a more relevant experience—the key to your success online. Offermatica’s behavioral targeting enables you to create custom visitor groups based on behavior and then deliver targeted content to those groups. Easily segment your visitors based on their actions like selecting a product category, viewing an article or clicking through an email offer. Then test different content to see what is most effective at driving relevance for your visitor groups.

Real-Time Reporting & Analytics

Offermatica provides actionable information about your campaigns in easy to use, real-time reports that the entire marketing team can understand. In addition, Offermatica easily integrates with SiteCatalyst and other analytics platforms so that the results of your tests and targeted campaigns can be viewed alongside your other site performance.

Support Your Search Optimization Efforts

Offermatica will not damage your natural search rankings. Offermatica's architecture is friendly to your existing search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and allows you to test offers without affecting your search rankings. Offermatica does not change the content or URL structures that search engine spiders see. Spiders will record the same site they currently index. Most other testing solutions dramatically interfere with SEO efforts; Offermatica, because it was designed with SEO support in mind, does not.

Easy integration

Offermatica's Web-based application lies outside of your IT infrastructure, making it easy to get up and running on any existing Web site in a couple of hours—with little to no IT resources. You access Offermatica over the Internet to setup content options and rules for test campaigns. Offermatica then delivers that content to pre-defined regions on your site—mboxes—that are created by the insertion of a small amount of Javascript on your HTML page.

When a visitor requests an Offermatica-enabled page, their browser communicates with the Offermatica server to find out what content to display. If the visitor is determined to be a member of a targeted test group, they will get the content designated for that group for the duration of the test period.

Offermatica works seamlessly with:

• Dynamic and static web sites
• Content management systems

• Flash and other rich media
• Content delivery networks (such as Akamai)

Scalability

Thousands of online marketers at some of the biggest online publishers, retailers, and B2B companies in the world use Offermatica. Offermatica is unique in the testing and optimization world in its ability to handle large traffic volumes without impacting the performance or integrity of the visitor's experience.

Source : http://www.omniture.com