Monday, July 12, 2010

Article Writing and Article Spinning for Backlinks

Article writing to get the word out is made easier if you use a service to spin your articles into variations.  I don't recommend putting these articles on your regular or main blog; but they are useful for getting backlinks on secondary blogs that are part of your network of links.  So look into article spinning to help you with that task.  One article can be spun into 50 different articles by the use of synonyms and alternate sentence beginnings and endings.  Don't do this for your primary high-quality sites like Ezine or other sites that may have a higher page rank because of the visibility and the potential for someone to click and visit your site.  So be aware of this when you are placing the articles on different sites on the internet.

Also when you are writing your article, keep your keywords in it.  Focus on 2-3 keywords and don't repeat them more than 3 times in the text, otherwise it gets spammy and may create a red flag.  Also, you should be aware of synonyms that are within the topic that you are writing about.  This creates an article that has more breadth and will be viewed more favorably by Google in your rankings.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Web Site Promotion Tips

This is a summary of the 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing Video used in class. The presenter first mentions that good website coding and design, increasing visitors and maximizing conversion rates are needed. (A conversion is getting a visitor to buy or sign up to be on your marketing list.)

1. Website Design. Best website design practice needs to follow simple coding that is efficient without duplicates. For instance, programs like Adobe DreamWeaver can make too much duplicate code, which can slows page opening on different web browsers.

For on-site optimization of the website, there are six things to consider:

(a) page title, it should correspond to the key word around which you are searching for traffic.

(b) a proper meta description, if you get onto the page and right click on the mouse button and click view source to see if your main keyword is within the meta description for the search engines to find your site easily and rank the site higher for relevance.

(c) heading tags - right click on source again to find the first heading, subtopic 1 and 2.  They should all be related.

(d) 'alt' and 'title' tags - alternative tags that appear associated with images and links on the website. These tags should tell the search engine what the page is about.

(e) keyword rich navigation - if there are links to other pages, they should be related to your page.

(f) there should be an efficient URL format for your URL, it should not be complicated and should directly reflect the content of the page.

(g) precise relevance in the page, with one topic covered (don't cover a lot of different topics, confuses search engines), logical progression with 200-800 words, less is more, one call to action.

(h) conversion rates - goals per visitor, how to measure goals, capture contact details, test different page copy.


The Big Keyword Phrase Myth: For ranking high in Google, the best scheme is to use an extremely popular word that relates to your topic. What people really do when they are drilling down in their research, is to add more words that help them find their specific topic on interest. So these are the phrases that you should concentrate on to increase your potential for conversions.
You can wrongly rely on a keyword phrase, resulting in your focusing on your competitors vs. your own marketing ideas.

Longer phrases are easier to rank higher and convert much better because that phrase is specific enough to meet the need of the client doing the research. These are called long tail keywords. Phrases that are at least 3 words long are needed.

What you need to do first for keywords is to brainstorm categories of keywords that pertain to different aspects of what you want to work on within this market. Enter these categories into a website called Wordtracker, which is a free version.

3. Blog technology

Blog is short for “web log.” Results are given in a reverse chronological order. It is useful because it creates new information for your site. Sites rank higher with fresh information that is relevant. Two platforms that are popular are Blogger and Wordpress. With Wordpress, you can install the software on your own site, or you can use their server. Wordpress is probably the best open source blogging technology available. You can download it and modify the code to your needs. There are many types of themes that you can use on Blogger, over and above the default themes that are available when you open up a site. Many people have designed themes that you can use.

A blog is a great tool for content management. Wordpress has a great content management system. You can update your pages without needing to know the coding.

You can get Wordpress plugins, which are small, free software programs that add functional features to personalize the blog, including for monetization.

Blog pinging – an automated process that notifies other websites when a blog has a new posting. In the Wordpress blog, there is a series of update services in which you can enter websites that you want to notify when you have new content. So your new post will then be found on a hundred different websites.

It is also important to include RSS feeds. RSS = Really Simple Syndication. RSS makes it possible to see when new posts have been added to a blog. This can be done without visiting the blog site. This creates a link that lists a summary of the latest web page entries. When submitted to any site that supports RSS standard, the most recent posts are shown. People can subscribe to your RSS feed by using a reader such as Google Reader. Good way to provide updates to people who are interested in your products or writing, without having them give you their email address.

4. Autoresponders

Autoresponders are not automatic replies that are set up when you can't read your email. They are actually anything that can be delivered by email automatically on a planned schedule that you decide on. Content can include news items, email courses, free products for developing opt-in lists, which is a necessary marketing strategy.

Design templates can be used for these emails so that now HTML knowledge is needed. Newsletters can be “pre-loaded into an autoresponder.

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Overview of topics:
1. Blogs and why they matter, how to set up blogs, and why blogs are much better than a web site.

2. Mailing lists, including the need for double opt-in emailing list for your marketing strategy, and how to improve the percentage of enquiries to sales figures.

3. Paid advertising - whether it is worth it to your campaign and why you shouldn't use certain types.

4. Online press releases - formats for best publicity and where to publish.

5. Link building - where to build links to your site; why continuous, relevant link building is necessary; and how to get others to link to your site without you linking to them.

6. Article promotion tips - How to publish on top sites for free; how to quickly become a well-respected expert, and the two sites that are essential fo publishing your articles for efficiency sake.

7. Industry forums - how to find the forums for your industry, how to establish yourself as a figure of authority, how to establish thousands of links from industry forums to your website.

8. Viral marketing - what it is and how it works, examples of highly effective viral marketing campaigns, thinking up 10 ways to achieve viral marketing.

9. Adding regular new content - search engines love pages that have new updates, how and where to outsource the writing of you new web content.

10. Analyzing visitor trends - why you need to know these measures, where to go to find them, how to change your marketing strategy in light of your site's statistics.

11. Future trends - current hot topics and how that will impact your marketing strategy.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Publicizing New Blog Posts with Twitterfeed.com

Blogspot has an Atom feed that you can use for making others aware of your new posts.   These posts can be fed to RSS feeds on news services such as Feedzilla or you can use the URL for the Atom feed on Twitter Feed to make your followers aware of new posts on Twitter and several other services.  All you have to do is to add /atom.xml to the end of your Blogspot URL.  An example:  if your blog is http://naturalremediesforhealthyliving.blogspot.com/, then your URL for the RSS or Atom feed would be http://naturalremediesforhealthyliving.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Generating Ideas for Making Money on the Internet

Here are the four parts to a successful strategy in Internet marketing:

1.) First thing to determine:
            a.) is there a market where you have an idea
            b.) is anyone buying anything?

2.) Generating traffic - You need people to visit your web site.  There are two ways to generate traffic that are free, and there is one way to pay, which is done after the other methods are employed.

3.) Conversion - getting people to buy.  Involves copy writing and sales letters.  Video and audio as well.

4.) Making a product available that people want.  You can use the market to determine that.

Generating an idea is a creative process.  Look in areas that you are passionate about and perhaps have a hobby.  During the challenge period, carry around a notebook with you and jot down ideas as they come to you, because you may forget them when you get back to the computer.  Good resources are magazines in different specialty areas, where you can find advertisements for things that people are selling. 

There are niches and microniches.  It is best to start in a microniche first so you can go through an entire process of marketing and will not be overwhelmed by things to do.  The skills that you learn in working on a microniche can be applied to working more within the larger niche later.  Example:  If your passion is sell something on the Internet, "Internet marketing" would be classified as a market since there are millions of pages in that field on the web. There are many niches within this, including "web design" and "Internet marketing tips." Microniches that have good potential keyword phrases include "web promotion services" and "free web site promotion." These are all terms that can be found using the program Market Samurai. 

So, start your research in an area where you have an interest or a passion.  Look for things that are already being sold and then drill down and find marketable microniche keywords.

Video Series for Selecting Keywords

Here are the YouTube video addresses for selecting a microniche within a market:

To find a theme keyword:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa1rwcKfFH4

To find category keywords:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRtl4JlB1xA


Here are some of the terms explained:

SEO = search engine optimization, means optimizing a given site for better ranking on search engines such as Google

SEO traffic = daily traffic on the web for a given keyword or keyword phrase

PBR = phrase to broad match ratio, term used with versus without quotes as shown below for the term phrase

Phrase = the keyword phrase for your given niche or microniche, searched for on the web using the phrase surrounded by quotes as shown here for the Sony alpha 200 Camera Lenses microniche:

"Sony alpha 200 Camera Lenses"

So, the goal in looking for keywords is to find a microniche in which to start that has at least 80 page visits per day, and where there are less than 30,000 pages on the web. The number of page visits is important because it will help you make money through clicks on advertisements or through affiliate marketing efforts, if you choose that method of marketing. Have a microniche with less than 30,000 pages increases your chances of success because there is less competition from professionals in the market.