Article Marketing Strategies Revealed

Article Marketing has emerged very fast as one of the best methods to design a successful business online, especially when your resources are limited.

Take care to maintain the quality of your write-ups. If you need to successfully come up with a sound article, you must write only good quality articles that readers will be eager to check out all through.

One of the major features of your article should be the title. Think carefully about a title that will grab the attention of your readers immediately. Your title is the marketing tool for your article. More often than not, your article will be indexed together with a bunch of other articles. Generally people skim through the titles only of the articles and decide by that which one to read up. If your article begins with an interesting title then more and more readers will get hooked to it. If your title is boring and uneventful, few people will stop by read your write-up.

A good introduction to your article shows the quality of the rest of the article. Inform the reader what is in your article for them and how they will benefit from reading it.

When the introduction is over, come to a new paragraph and then start the main body of your article. Divide it into separate paragraphs from every point you want to talk about. Having paragraphed points makes it comfortable to the eyes and mind to grasp the meaning of them and makes for an attractive presentation. The main gist of this paragraph should contain between three and ten points that you wish to cover. It is not necessary to cover all the points that you are aware of on the subject.

End the article with as good a conclusion as the introduction. Review the points you discussed in the foregoing paragraphs and the benefits they will receive if they follow your suggestions.

When the article is all done and ready, scan it through a spelling and grammar checker so that before submitting your article you are sure that your article is perfect which will save you the time to laboriously go through each and every word for manual confirmation.

Not much is needed to get started with article writing and probably by now you already possess the fundamental tools that are needed. This can result in a profitable online business when approached in the correct fashion. Many easy steps are out there to open the avenues for striking business opportunities through excellent articles.

You can begin by offering your articles for sale. Several blogs, websites, and news sites regularly need new articles for content. You can consider writing articles on subjects you are competent in and sell them to blog owners and web masters. However, it is obvious that the articles you write should confirm to certain quality standards if you wish to sell them at the price your article deserves. If you are the owner of your own website or blog you can show your articles there also. There is no alternative to latest and fresh content and hence new material will always keep your website or blog relevant.

If you have some knowledge about Search Engine Optimization or SEO then it will be an added advantage for you because the more traffic your website or blog attracts through your articles the better for you. You should learn the fundamentals of search engine optimization in terms of keywords and keyword density.

Truly speaking, it is very much possible to succeed in online writing and marketing articles. Your effective online business is only a stone's throw away. Start writing quality articles now and you are on your way to a successful internet business.

For more information on article marketing and other internet marketing strategies visit http://TheInternetBusinessAuthority.com

Article Marketing and Social Bookmarking

The reason why some webmasters use articles from free content directories is to drive targeted traffic to their website and to increase their income. More and more site owners have seen the effects articles have done for the traffic of their sites.

Article marketing is a very good method, especially for those new entrepreneurs who have just begun to work as an affiliate for several different companies and are in need of funding, yet at the same time they need to build a small niche website to steer visitors towards their site so they are able to begin earning income.

Writing and submitting new articles is a crucial part of any website promotion strategy. A well written, informative article helps to build your credibility in your subject area. The links in the article resource box provide targeted traffic and effectively help to optimize your site for the search engines.

Writing and submitting new articles to article directories is an continuously task that should be performed at least on a weekly basis. Each article that is approved and published by an article directory is "hot" only for a day or two. This is because it will be displayed on the "latest articles" pages which receive more traffic than the category pages. A new article will typically remain in Google primary search results for only a week or two before it will be sent to the supplementary index. You should keep in mind though that most articles submitted in bulk to many directories will be interpreted as duplicate content and will end up in the supplemental index.

This is the reason why it is so important to submit your articles on a regular, frequent basis. If you submit at least one article a week, then you will always have a few articles that are in the primary index and getting more readers.

Submitting new articles to article directories might not be enough though. Promoting your articles while they are still "hot" is also very important. One of the most powerful promotional methods is to take advantage of the explosive growth of social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit, Digg and Technorati allow users to bookmark and share their favorite web pages (blogs, dynamic or static web pages, articles and so on). If you bookmark your articles in various directories, you can increase the number of people that are exposed to your article. As they click through on your headline and they read your article, they may choose to click your active hyperlink to visit your website, bringing you indirect, but targeted traffic.

The more links an article has pointing to it, the better it will rank in the search results, so these links have a very important SEO value as well. Social bookmarking sites are a very powerful tool to get more links pointing to your articles, providing a higher ranking in the search results.

By its own, article marketing is an extremely effective method to promote your site and improve your search engine optimization, but by taking advantage of the viral nature of social bookmarking, you can dramatically increase the range of your audience and ultimately, bring more visitors to your site.

The author is webmaster at Articleated.com a free article directory.

How to Strategize Your Link Popularity Campaign

Link popularity is the number of links pointing to a website. It is an important factor that major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN use to rank web pages.

Webmasters figure out that in order for their web pages to rank well at the search engines for certain keywords, they need a lot of incoming links with these targeted key words. Linking schemes of all kinds were hatched...mini-sites, site networks, link farms and reciprocal linking, just to mention a few. Some schemes like link farms were clear indication of manipulating the search engines.

Google has clamped down on such practices and further fine-tuned its SERP algorithm to stop manipulation by anyone as evidenced by 'Jagger'.

Focus on the long term. Build a site that is credible to the search engines and your website visitors.

Here are 7 ethical link-building strategies for you work with...

1. Internal linking. Having a well organized internal linking structure insures that your website gets 'spidered' and that all pages of your website gets indexed by the search engines. This in turn increases the chances of the number of phrases that your website has the potential to rank for. And I have had website traffic from key phrases that I never thought of.

2. One-way links. Human edited directories look like a thing of the past. With Google being more efficient and accurate as ever there's no need to turn to human edited directories. A directory may get you a few click-throughs in a month or none at all. However, to be listed in a high quality directory like DMOZ and Yahoo can increase your PageRank.

The way to get inbound links is distribute content. There are many article directories on the Internet. Just include a link in your article. With article distribution you can choose the exact anchor text for the link.

3. Reciprocal links. What is reciprocal linking? It is simply trading links with other sites. You add their links to your site and vice versa. In times past website owners have sizeable directories with multiple links that are not relevant to theirs. Now, search engines have become wiser and look for link relevance. A word of advice here, know whom you are trading link with. Don't just choose any Tom, Dick, Harry or toothless Jane to be your link partners.

People have asked whether they would be penalized by the search engines for reciprocal links. Well, at least for now, they are still acceptable.

4. Varied the Text of your inbound links. It will not appear natural to the search engines for every site that links to you to have the same link description. So vary the text of your inbound links using a few key phrases.

5. Grow your links at a steady rate. Google penalizes new sites with low-traffic that grow their links too quickly, whereas a well-established high traffic site that increases by a few thousand links a month will viewed as normal. The rate at which links are created without being penalized by Google, is directly proportional to the age of the website. For owners of new sites, bear this in mind, if you are thinking about buying inbound links.

6. Have inbound links from different ranking sites.If all your inbound links are Pr6 and Pr7 sites, then you will send a strong indication that you have purchased those links. Your inbound links will not appear natural to the search engines. It is more natural for you to have a large number of Pr1 and Pr2 inbound links with decreasing number of inbound links as you move higher up the PageRank scale.

7. Actively participate in forums or blogs. Don't just post threads indiscriminately on forums. Search engines view this as spamming. Participate in forums to learn and to contribute to the communities and at the same time gather inbound links. You will also build credibility for yourself and your business if you are a solution to people's problems.

Blogging is an effective way of gathering inbound links. If you have a personal blog, it is easier to post comments at other sites. But do spam blast your comments with advertisements. Just provide a link to your site with your comments. Your goals are to gather inbound links and to gain a good reputation online. Comment intelligently on the specific subject. A well thought out comment will not only attract the search engines, but also more readers of the blog to your website. They will naturally link to you if they find articles of good quality at your website.

To achieve good rankings at the Search Engine through link popularity requires time and patience. Stick to the sound practices of link building. Impatience could cause you to incur penalties. It was once rumored, but now quite evident that Google uses a 'sandbox' to keep questionable sites in the hold until they have aged to a point. Then they are released at the sole discretion of Google. Other search engines also have their own safeguards to keep their SERPs from being cluttered with questionable sites.

The underlying principle is to grow your links 'organically' whilst adding content of value to your website. Ethical SEO is not a black art. It is a matter of adhering to the guidelines, terms and conditions stipulated by the search engines.

Gerrick W
mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Information and software tools you need to effectively market your online business.

Visit:http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

How To Succeed In Internet Marketing

There are three main difficulties facing anyone who is aiming to earn a living from internet marketing: isolation and lack of support, constant bombardment with new products and opportunities and the temptation to hitch their wagon to every new star on the internet. How then, is it even possible to become successful with internet marketing?

Self-Discipline

Online or offline, if you want to be successful in your own business, you must be self disciplined. You have to create your own workable routine because there are no strong external influences telling you when to start work and evaluating your productivity. It's easy to procrastinate when you are working at home. Talking on the phone, coffee with a friend or even a favorite television show can all keep you from getting down to the business of making money.

You need to be proactive, organized and determined to succeed. How you spend your time is entirely up to you. Do you have the self discipline to give your business the time and energy it requires if you are to succeed?

Emails can also be significant time wasters. Do you have the self discipline to organize your email reading and responses to a specific time frame? Do you need to opt out of mailing lists that are causing your inbox to fill with unnecessary emails?

This is not to say you can't sign up for emails, but limit your subscriptions to only a few sources that provide information that can genuinely help you. Easier still, you can subscribe to their RSS feeds.

You don't just need self discipline to regularly do the things necessary for success, you also need self discipline to refrain from doing things. In particular, it may be very tempting to buy products that promise great profits or ways to make your life easier. It is easy for money to go out than is coming in. If the product will not directly benefit an aspect of your business that you have decided to improve or build, then (at least for now) don't spend the money.

However, products that reduce the amount of work you would normally do, streamline your operation and perhaps even assist with outsourcing or delegating of work so you can spend more time earning income, may well be worth considering.

A training product that focuses on an area that you do not currently need, should be ignored. There may be a time for it in the future, but not at the moment.

Stay on Focus

To be successful in internet marketing, you need to stay focused. The internet provides a volatile online work environment that makes it easy to get distracted and caught up in each new opportunity that comes your way. To avoid this mistake, you need to have a business plan and stick to it.

However, you need to be flexible. If your plan is not working the way you thought it would be willing to make necessary adjustments to get the results you actually want. Don't change your plan just because you feel like a change, though.

You certainly need to be passionate about your vision and goals, however times of boredom should not be mistaken for signs you need to change a business plan. Persistence pays off and sometimes you have to persist through boredom. If you need to, take some time off and rekindle your passion and excitement for your business. Only change a business plan if it is not working.

Long term success comes from focusing on a single business plan, adjusting when necessary but overall moving forward and achieving established goals. Chopping and changing leads to a pattern of failure.

By taking a self disciplined and focused approach to your internet marketing business, you will give yourself the best opportunity of achieving long term success.

Discover Kevin Sinclair's system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

List-Building: Stick to Your Niches

If you're new to online marketing, realize that you really can have one squeeze page and one sales letter. That's it! Your job is to drive traffic there. That's all. Just drive tons and tons of traffic there and be list building.

It's really not smart to go into several different niches at once. Decide how you can drive as much traffic as you can a single system, so that it totally excites you. You want to be completely passionate about that system and test it like crazy to rev up the conversion. At the same time, you're list building around your niche and creating a business.

If you find that you've been cranking on that niche for 45 days and you haven't made a dime, it might be a good idea to research at least one other niche--maybe. But I dont think that a niche exists where you can't make money. If you're list building easily, it just may be that you haven't given yourself enough time to succeed.

Some niches just take a bit more work than others do. But I won't work on a project that doesnt interest me. It has to appeal to my passions, the things that I really care about. Some people may be able to do that, but I'm not one of them.

My best advice is to focus on one niche and devote your time and passion to it. Build a great list in that niche and monetize it well. Then, you can build a business around it. Make it something that you can be really proud of and that produces income for long time to come. Only after you're really good at that ONE niche should you go out and try another.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and a master of list building. Build a massive responsive list at MyFirstList.com.

Getting Relevant, Effective Links!

Once upon a time a website owner looked for and secured links from other sites simply to get traffic from that site and send some traffic back for the privilege.

There was no Google, Yahoo, or MSN setting rules about reciprocal links which have now somehow become "the law."

Links were for traffic...targeted traffic.

Since, to this day, nothing does your site more good than a good, visible, relevant link from a site which caters to your perfect market base, I propose a test you can run in your marketing for a couple of months.

Get links from sites based upon factors that matter most:

1. Good content
2. Strong reader base
3. Willingness to link from a prominent place

Let the engines worry about their silly algorithms for a couple months. Pretend they are not there. I think you will be surprised when you come back and see that they actually like you more than before!

Google "banned" reciprocal linking because it was being abused and they set about to detect the abuse and rectify their rankings by giving you no love (PR) for the links you got (if you used automation and got a lot of senseless links).

The solution for you? Don't go grabbing links from link directories and non relevant sites, no matter how high their rankings or PR.

The rule is: less links, higher value, less time spent getting them.

Choosing the right sites...

Good Content

A site that does a great job on real content (not just sales material and pitches) is a great link partner.

People flock to content and appreciate it. Get your links in front of people who appreciate the content they are reading. They will be in a good mood when they hit your link.

Strong Reader Base

Does the site have an obvious following? If it's a blog, are there a lot of comments and conversations going on? Are they from today or last year?

Willingness to Link from an Obvious Place

Links need to come from pages on other sites that actually see human visitors in as high number as possible. And the owner must be willing. It shouldn't be hard to convince someone or you should move on.

Easy Ways to Get Links (Reciprocal and Non Reciprocal)

*Be a part of something. If you are in a halfway decent niche, there is a wider discussion going on around you. Are you listening, commenting on blogs, doing trackbacks, and participating in forums?

*Do content exchange rather than link exchange. Write original content for someone in your niche and host their content on your site.

*Write exclusive content for another site in your niche just for the link. If someone wrote killer content for my blog that was perfect for my visitors I'd have a hard time turning it down!

There's no better place to be than in the posts of another popular blog!

Links make the web work. Now that there is a difference between good and bad links, just focus on what would be best for your site and your readers when acquiring links. That's all Google wants after all.

Jack Humphrey is the editor of The Friday Traffic Report. For more linking and website promotion tips, head over to the Friday Traffic Report and get some free targeted traffic.

Amazing List Building - Discover 5 Key Ways to Jumpstart Your List Building

Looking for ways on how you can explode your subscribe base? Take these 5 key ways that can help you jumpstart your list building efforts:

1. Create a sense of urgency. Some people who visit your website might not register right away thinking that they can do it on a later date. This can make you lose potential clients as there is a great chance that your target market will forget about your website and your opt-in list. Don't make that happen by getting them to act the moment they accessed your website. Create a sense of urgency by offering your subscription (and valuable giveaways) for a limited time only. This will make your potential clients act right away without thinking twice.

2. Keep your opt-in page simple. Avoid filling it with too much graphics, animations, images, streaming video, audio files, and blinking texts. This will not only annoy your potential subscribers but it will also affect your downloading time.

3. Use a powerful call to action. You want your potential clients to subscribe, right? Then, be direct about it. Tell them to register and give them reasons why they should entrust their email addresses with you.

4. Offer incentives. People just love getting something for free. That is why, giving away freebies is still one of the most effective ways in exploding your subscriber base. To make your offer even more appealing, use images of your freebies to give your potential clients an idea on what they are getting in exchange of their subscription.

5. Create killer squeeze pages. The best squeeze pages are those that are short and direct to the point. These days, you can't expect people to spend more than 3 minutes reading your offer or they will definitely get bored. Make your squeeze pages concise, brief, but powerful.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Powerful Article Marketing - 7 Most Inventive Techniques to Earn More Money With Article Marketing

In the very competitive world of marketing, it is important to be pioneering in every aspect of your marketing strategies. By being a pioneer, you get to be privileged to test and experiment on your strategies and own the results (positive or the otherwise). This is the reason why a lot of marketers are continuously developing inventive techniques to facilitate article marketing. Below are some of these techniques:

1. Come up with a strongly catching headline. The title or the headline of the article gets the popularity for a mere number of seconds. With this given time, you have to ensure that you are able to catch the attention and interest of your potential clients.

2. Follow this up with a powerful introduction of what your whole article is conveying. This may be in a form of a declaration of a promise or good things that you can offer. Make sure though that you keep up to this promise when you reach the end of the whole article.

3. Keep your articles short and compacted but very meaningful and essential. The time that net users utilize on the net should be deemed very important and you can show your understanding by giving them short time read your article but more essential information to obtain after.

4. Make an easy to read article. Usually, enlisted and bulleted items are more preferred to be scanned and read rather than the lengthy and wordy paragraphs.

5. Avoid highly technical terms. People who may be reading your articles may not have the same skill set. Instead of wondering what terms to use, make use of the more conversational ones.

6. Always check your articles for any errors. These errors may have been committed on grammar or sentence patterns. Make sure that you make the necessary editing prior to the actual publication of the article material.

7. Create a resource box that will be enough to let the readers know who the writer is representing.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

List Building How To Convert Visitors Into Paid Subscribers Into Loyal Customers

I know this topic has been hammered to death. List building is important for you, if you are trying to create a business out of internet. So today I am only going to give you few techniques that can help you build a paid subscriber list.

Am I suggesting to build a list of paid subscribers not free subscriber?

No, I am suggesting you to build a list of paid subscribers, but never asked you to not build a list of free subscribers. You see, If someone has paid for your product/services, he/she will be more inclined towards your products in future. All you need to do is create a great relationship with them. This is what Internet marketer calls marketing 101. Don't forget people who are buying are interested in buying more products from you, you only have to give them a chance.

Here is one of my results that might help you start thinking differently.

I was selling a very low cost product (less than $5) and in a week I was able to sell 70 of those products. Now I am sharing good content with these people along with ideas on how to use the product. After a week I send another email with a product price of $97 to these people. What kind of results do you expect?

Well I sold 3 products at that price. I sold those products because I showed the value of this product and value of improving relationship with me. I made $660 in a week with this trick.

Now the question is how you can apply this strategy to your business. I highly suggest you to try this kind of technique on some of your high traffic websites. Find Couple of pages which get most traffic and sell this mini product there (Remember it should be related to the page).

Discover my secret of list building and relationship building. Know more about Create Mini products in 30 minutes techniques and get access to my blog.

Profitable Article Marketing - Announcing 4 Challenging Secrets to Grow Your Article Marketing

Article marketing is perhaps the easiest yet most powerful traffic-generating and marketing tool in this day and age. Millions of marketers and bloggers are using this technique not only to drive quality traffic to their websites but also to establish their knowledge and expertise on their chosen niche.

Here are the 4 challenging secrets to grow your article marketing:

1. Get the attention of online users - at all cost. By this, I mean be desperate for attention. You need to get more people to read your articles to increase their chances of being read and republished to effectively augment your quality inbound links. You can easily do this by using powerful and attention-grabbing titles that are direct to the point, keyword-rich, short, and communicate the benefits that your articles can offer.

2. Deliver new information. Steer clear from re-writing existing articles online and research for new topics that will interest your potential audience. Strive to give them something fresh or information that are seldom discussed on the web. This will add more value to your content that will boost your expert status online.

3. Write simply. If you want to easily create a name online, you need to make sure that you write to inform your readers and not to impress them. Forget your love for big words and strive to make it simple and easier for your readers to get the points you are trying to get across. Stick with simple terms and easy to understand writing format.

4. Take advantage of major article submission sites. Your goal in publishing your articles online is to give them enough exposure to effectively reach your target market. That is why, it is important that you carefully choose the publishing sites where you will post your articles. Stick with those which have great page ranking and steady traffic and don't waste your time on sites that are not even indexed by Google.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

High Search Engine Rankings - What It Can Mean To Your Website

In recent years, traffic has been increasing to the Internet - with people visiting and creating websites every day. In 2005, statistics showed that over 1 billion people used the World Wide Web. Internet users also reported spending twice as much time on the Internet as they did watching TV. As people are spending more and more time on the Internet, they are also spending more money. Consumers spent $143.2 billion on online purchases in 2005.

Increased online spending means that businesses have the opportunity for increased profit. This means that it is essential for online businesses to market their websites. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important marketing techniques to understand when running a website, and advertising is obliviously one of the most important aspects in running a business. Marketing is essential to extending your business, products, or services to new customers. It may seem as if advertising can get very expensive, but when running an online business, it is important to understand the amount of free advertising that is available on the web. Search Engine Optimization is a form of free online advertising.

Online search engines, such as Google or AOL, are programmed to rank websites according to a complex formula that determines which websites are most relevant to the search. What Search Engine Optimization does is take the time to organize your website so it will rank among the top sites for certain relevant searches. It is easy to see how important optimal search engine rankings are for your site once you realize how much Internet users actually rely on search engines.

A recent study concluded that 80 percent of Internet users use search engines to find new web sites. This translates to approximately 650 people regularly using search engines. Often search engine users do not bother to read beyond the first few results and they almost defiantly do not read past the first page. Having great search engine rankings opens up your website to an entire group of Internet traffic that otherwise might not ever see it.

The best way to ensure that your website gets excellent search engine rankings is to hire a company who specializes in it. SEO is complicated and it is always changing. This makes it very difficult for online business owners to try to maintain their results on their own. Business owners who chose to do their own Search Engine Optimization will likely have trouble competing with the websites that use an experienced company. Spending a lot of time on your SEO instead of your online business can be distracting. You can do it, but your rankings will not grow as fast.

Using a Search Engine Optimization company will help to drastically increase the traffic to your website. Search engine users are some of the most motivated users that will ever visit your site, so you want to make sure that they can easily find it. SEO will do just that for your website! Take some time to find an SEO firm and watch the hits on your site begin to increase!

NewSunSEO : Search Engine Optimization Experts
http://www.NewSunSEO.com

NewSunSEO develops and utilizes search engine optimization strategies (SEO) that result in top placements. With extensive knowledge about the underlying structure of search engines, we help your website gain exposure, added traffic and more business. NSS uses the top current technologies with highly effective, ethical methods that are proven to work continually.

Visit our Blog to read more, comment, and/or ask questions about SE Optimization at (http://newsungraphics.wordpress.com/)

One Way Links - The Best Way To Get A Bunch Of Them

Everyone who has been a webmaster for some time or has read about it probably already knows that getting one way links to your web site is the single most important step in boosting your site up in search engines results pages (SERPs). Search engines just love these type of links, as they see them as votes to your page. If many people are voting to you by adding links to your site, than you must be some kind of an expert in your niche, and that is why Google and other search engines rank you higher in SERPs. They love experts, they love to give knowledge to people who are searching for information.

That said, you must ask yourself what is the best way to get bunch of one way links? Well the answer is writing articles. That is right, write articles about whatever you are expert on. And you do not need to be an expert to write articles, you just have to put some value in your article, to interest the readers, and there you have it, you have their attention, they believe you, and they will trust you when you tell them how to fix their problem, or give them great advice.

So, first, you have to find some niche that suits you best, something that you are good at, something that you like, maybe a hobby, or maybe something that you are familiar with. It is not difficult, just ask yourself what can you offer to help others. Be sure to include a link somewhere in a body of an article, and the anchor text (link text) should be main keyword phrase of your page.

Next thing you need to do is find article directories and lots of them. Just Google it. I am not going to tell you what are the best article directories, as you probably know, since you are reading this article. Create accounts and submit your articles. And thats it. Now you need to wait and see the results. And the results are great, I can tell you. For submitting your articles in article directories, you will get links from directories, and that is already very good for SEO. But the real power is in article distribution, and the variety of websites that are linking to you. So, for doing a fifteen minutes writing, you can get thousands of one way links, the best kind. It just can't get better than that!

For more link building strategies, visit my link building tips blog.

Stamler Sikorsky is an expert in link building tips and tricks, link building strategies and techniques. He is running a link building tips blog, where you can find some great info and resources for making your online business better.

Google's Good-Writing Filter

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really rank web pages based primarily on arcane technical criteria such as keyword density, link text, or even PageRank?

Apparently not.

Most Common Website Content Success Factors

I took a close look at the top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2005. Here's what I found.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

• Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.
• Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Google almost certainly has better access to new words than the dictionary, with its database of billions of web pages. Supposed grammatical errors that did not in fact violate style rules were also ignored. Google would certainly be less conservative than a grammar checker in evaluating popular stylistic devices such as sentence fragments.
• Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.
• Lists: both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.
• Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.
• Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO "Do's" and "Don'ts" that Don't Really Matter

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.

PageRank. The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. (Note that the low PageRank would seem to discount the idea that these pages owe their ranking completely to numerous incoming links.)

Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames.

JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links.

Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all.

Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text.

Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones.

Text content: a significant number of pages contained little or no text. These pages were almost all image galleries (there was one Flash movie), with the images being photographs of the subject covered by the keyword.

Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.

Recommendations

• Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffic is just wasted bandwidth.
• If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.
• Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.
• Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.
• In short, make sure the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.

Joel Walsh is the owner, founder and head-writer of UpMarket Content. To read more about website content best practices, get a consultation with Mr. Walsh, or get a sample page for your site at no charge, check out this web site content specialist information: http://www.upmarketcontent.com/web-site-content/#seo.

Article Marketing - The Value Of Article Marketing

The value of article marketing is several fold in that it performs several different functions for the marketer simultaneously that all work together to achieve the common purposes of positioning and profitability.

The positioning is two-fold in that search engine listing positions can be influential in determining the amount of traffic received to the article and the corresponding sales page located on the other side of the link in the resource box just below the conclusion of the article and also the positioning as how the marketing article effectively pre-sells and qualifies the visitor to the website by placing content that is niche related to the website with the product and/or service directly in front of the viewer so that the viewer then may decide to become a targeted website visitor or simply leave the article with the new content retained.

Both of these positioning abilities of articles in marketing make article marketing a very viable strategy in extending market reach, web presence and even sales conversions in the long run.

A well written article such as this one or one that might be created by the world's best article marketing service, ArticlesInMyInbox, will be effective in search engine rankings as well as delivering fresh, original, unique and interesting content that keeps the reader captivated and longing to see just what awaits them at the web site prepared expressly and exclusively for their enjoyment and service to them.

Sometimes the most helpful advice can be found in that very resource box where an ebook containing steps on how to build a list or write an article would be. Yes, sometimes, it's just simple to see the straightforward effectiveness of caring for your customer.

After all, you are always going to be number one to me. Thank you.

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Developing A List Of Keywords For Marketing

Keywords aren't just some words that allow search engines, like Google, to find your web site. They are also key elements for creating attractive language to use in your marketing or advertising material. For instance places such as: brochures, business cards, flyers, and ads. Keywords can also fit well into speaking engagements scripts or audiotapes scripts as well as audience handouts.

It is important to create a keyword list for each product or service you have. The keyword list might even change slightly if there are various groups or audiences for that product or service.

For simplicity, I have omitted the word service and for the word product to reflect both.

Creating your keyword list can begin after you have clearly identified the buyer or audience for a particular product or service. You will need to know as much about the buyer's demographic and charactertics as possible. I also recommend including their descriptive qualities and personalities. Here is a list to kick start your brainstorming process:

Communicative
Competent
Dedicated
Enthusiastic
Expert
Hardworking
Improved
Positive
Negative
Professional
Relationship-driven
Self-confident
Successful
Tranquil
Spiritual
Understanding
Socially conscious
Early adaptor
Later buyer
Has to see it to believe it
Guarantee a must.

The list of keywords will describe the product and target the specific quality you have isolated as most important to those buyers. No grabbing out of midair. Take the time and research, this will help you save money and reduce costly marketing experiences.

You can complete your research with any combination of methods. Here are eight methods to help you build from:

Brainstorming
Yellow Pages or other indexes for services or products.
Reviewing your company literature already created
Checking out the competitors literature
Surveying key customers
Searching through trade publications (articles and ads), and contacting them or visiting their web site looking for their buyer statistics/demographics.
Use a general dictionary and thesaurus
Use a specialized dictionary like the, Flip Dictionary.

You can use resources like the yellow pages or other catalogue-type indexes listing grouping to discover keywords your product or service would be listed under.

Lets move through an example. If you were selling a professional development product you could be in any one of the following professions: professional speaker, life, business, or executive coach, consultant or trainer. Your buyer or audience is somewhat successful you're your product will help them add additional success. Here is a list of keywords that could describe their characteristics or qualities:

Able to motivate others
Clearheaded
Clear-sighted
Committed to achieving excellence
Demands excellence
Full of character
Has good judgment
Has a wonderful stress-free life already
Highly perceptive
Lives up to her or her potential
Life-long learner
Sts high standards for themselves
Stays on track
Strives for perfection
Strives to excel
Takes the initiative
Motivated to achieve

Okay, good start. Now, lets begin to put all this together. Lets zoom in on one of these: strives to excel. Lets narrow down further to one word: excel.

Look up the word excel in a synonym finder, thesaurus or my preference, the Flip Dictionary and you find the following keywords that you can add to your keyword list: best, better, exceed, outclass, outdo, out rival, outstrip, shine, star, superior, surpass, take the cake, transcend, dominate, tower above, be head and shoulders above, stand out in the crowd, hold sway, lead, take the lead, lead the pack.

The list can go on, however, will stop here because the point is made.

After this, you could let your fingers travel through the thesaurus and then add those words.

Alternatively, you could continue your list by visiting a few of your competitors web sites and see what keywords they use. You do this by visiting their home page, right clicking the mouse on the page, and select "view source." In the HTML code look for "keywords." These are the keywords they use for the search engines to find them.

You will want to specifically focus on the competitor web sites that appear in first ten spots on one or two major search engines, like Google.

Next, select another method from your list of resources and continue until you feel you have enough right words.

After completing your list, you will want to review and place the keywords in priority order as best possible and eliminate any words that might be misleading. If you market globally, make sure none of the keywords mean something offensive in their language.

Catherine Franz, a Certified Professional Marketing & Writing Coach, specializes in product development, Internet writing and marketing, nonfiction, training. Newsletters and articles available at: http://www.abundancecenter.com

blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

Free Marketing Strategies for your Online Business

Many of us have created an online business after seeing the results that others have had. Tons of internet business owners have built passive income streams that provide $10,000 in monthly income.

However, after creating our businesses, we find out that these successful people are spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars online every month to market their business. Is there anything you can do to market your business in a cost efficient manner? The answer is yes, and this article will explain the four best ways to market your business for free.

1. Press Releases

2. Articles

3. Classified Ads

4. Forums

1. Press Releases

Press Releases are probably the fastest way to expose your website and drive traffic to it as quickly as possible. This is because instead of having to be approved for seven days to a month as with articles, press releases get your address out to the search engines immediately.

Your press release should have a title that is full of keywords that you have researched and that will attract the most visitors. You can research keywords at www.goodkeywords.com, or many other great sites. Your next step is a subhead, which gives a brief overview of the story while using good keywords. Your body should not be a sales pitch, it should be an interesting story that keeps the reader interested. Again, you DO NOT try to sell your business here, just write an interesting and honest story that will inspire respect in the reader for you and your business. In the keywords section, use solid keywords that you have researched on a keyword site. The final part is your contact info, which is where you give the reader a call for action by leaving your website or email address. This, and only this, is where you explicitly sell your business.

2. Articles

Articles are a great way to build respect and prove your knowledge in the industry, which evokes trust in potential sign ups. As with press releases, articles should have sound keywords that have been researched extensively. Keywords are the keys (no pun intended) to driving the most readers to your article. The article body should have good organization, with an introduction, a few key points, and then a conclusion. The body should have information that you think a reader would find valuable so that they will consider you a credible source. The resource box is where you call the reader to action, and is the ONLY place you should sell your business.

3. Classified Ads

Classifieds are yet another great free way to market your business. The nice thing about classifieds is that they target the market you are looking for: people in search of a home business opportunity. There are plenty of free classified sites you can post on to attract sign ups. Try to keep your classified short and sweet, and give just enough information to intrigue them and drive them to your website, but not enough to bore them. Remember to research the keywords and title you include, as this is an important step in any free marketing opportunity.

4. Forums

This is yet another great opportunity to gain respect and credibility, and consequently drive more traffic to your site. Find a few forums you like and that are active, and then spend half an hour every day posting. Medium to long posts have the most search engine power. Research before you post, and never personally attack anyone in a forum. The most important part of posting in a forum is to utilize your signature, where you put your url and a call for action. If forum members read your posts and find you a credible resource, they will be motivated to read your signature and follow it to your site.

Conclusion

There are plenty of other ways to market our online business for free and drive traffic to your website, but these are the strategies I have found most effective. The main theme of marketing is to build respect, credibility, and trust, and this will translate into a successful business.

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Keywords - Key For All Doors

Keyword research is certainly the most important phase in Search Engine Optimization process. Whether you hire a SEO company to do the job or you are doing the SEO process in-house, take your time during this process. You should not be a spectator, but you should be an active part of the decision making process.

Try to think as a customer

Before to start the keywords analysis & research process, be sure that you know how you should perform this process. Try to think about your keywords as a customer. How would you search for your product or service? Which keyword or key phrase would you use? Think about which words or phrases describe best your product or service.

Generic keywords vs. highly targeted key phrases

Surprisingly many companies still believe that increased traffic will necessary lead to increased sales. Unfortunately this is very far from the truth. If traffic is not well targeted, visitors will not found what they are looking for, and they wont order anything.

Many companies still make the mistake to attempt to get ranked for generic keywords. This is often costly mistake. You will simply loose your time, money and resources to get ranked for generic keyword. Chances are that if you are in competitive industry you wont succeed to achieve top ranking. In many cases, even if you succeed to get high ranking for generic keyword you wont benefit much from that. Lets elaborate this with an example.

Key phrase shoes manufacturers will return worldwide results, and your competition will be very strong. Even if you manage to rank high, conversion to sales rate will be fairly low. Some of the people would actually search for shoes manufacturers which are located in Asia. They might enter on your site, and they will leave without to order anything. You will get more traffic, and you want increase your sales or establish new business contacts. None of your goals will be achieved.

That is because your product or service is not exactly what the people are searching for. Key phrases like UK shoes manufacturers or EU shoes manufacturers will have better conversion and you will get high ranking faster. Why? Its easier to get ranked for these key phrases because of smaller number of competitors. From the other side, because of better targeting your conversion rate would be higher, because your traffic is better targeted.

Best approach to do find right keywords and key phrases is to get your generic keyword, and add a specific word to it. Using this approach you will be able to find yours most important key phrases, and target your traffic much better. Key phrases are usually two to five words long.

Think global

In different countries people use different terminology for same product or service. Be sure that you check your terminology for your main keywords. Different terminology for your keyword might be used in Canada, or in Australia. Follow your site statistic, and if some country is missing, something might be wrong with your terminology.

How many keywords do you need

Number of the key phrases for which you will optimize your pages will depend from your budget of course. But be sure to create long list to select from. Initial keyword research should end with at least 70 -100 keywords or key phrases.

Your first thought here might be how you will find so many keywords. Creativity and well knowing your industry will do half of the work. The tools will do the other half. Wordtracker has free trial which will tell you how many times the key phrase was searched for last month. Full version (you can pay for one day only if you want to use this tool once) is much more powerful tool of course. Overture has also free tool for keyword research which will give you useful suggestions. These tools will give you suggestions which you might not come to your mind, and tell you how many competitors you have for every keyword.

Next phase should be customizing some of these suggestions and make the re-check after that. After establishing the main list, start the elimination. Have in mind that your chances are bigger if you select bigger number of keywords. It is always best strategy to optimize each page for one primary and one secondary keyword. Optimize your main page for your most important key phrase.

Final selection will depend from your budget. You can always optimize more pages later, so keep the initial keyword list. Best option is to start to optimize your pages for less competitive key phrases first. When you achieve high ranking for these key phrases, then go after more competitive key phrases.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski

Search Engine Positioning Firm

SEO.Goto.gr

Is Bum Marketing and Article Marketing One in the Same?

To begin, Bum Marketing is a new phrase used to explain an old technique. The reason this phrase has become so popular is because Travis Sago put together a nice, free training course outlining this old, effective technique and named it Bum Marketing.

Since the use of Article Marketing is the main promotion technique of Bum Marketing, many people get the two confused and believe that they are one in the same.

So what is Bum Marketing? To sum it all up into one sentence, it is the technique of using all of the known promotion methods i.e. Article Marketing, Classified Ads etc., to promote affiliate links from ClickBank, CommissionJunction and any other affiliate program you are a member of.

What is Article Marketing? This is the absolute best form of free, effective promotion. You write informational articles and submit them to article directories. The article directories now get your free content so in turn, they allow you to add a signature block that contains a little information about you and your product/service along with a few links to your site or blog.

Why is Article Marketing so effective? This could be thoroughly explained in about 30 pages but I will give you a quick explanation.

The number one reason why article marketing is so effective is because every article you write is a never-ending promotion for your site. Every article will continue to be on the Internet for life with your links active within.

Also, when you publish your articles to article directories, you agree to allow others to publish that article to their Website, Blog or Ezine. Ezines provide the opportunity to get your article seen by thousands of people in literally seconds. If a big Ezine owner is interested enough in your article to publish it to his or her Ezine, that could result in thousands of site views, which means a bunch of money for you.

The problem with the Bum Marketing Method is that although it is a great guide on an effective technique, it does not go into detail how to effectively run an article marketing campaign. There are several things you must know about article marketing in order to achieve top results. Find these techniques and you will find loads of money online.

Joshua Spaulding is the Creator of the #1 Ebook on Article Marketing, "Article Marketing Domination". This Ebook has received raving reviews from some of the top Internet Marketers. Joshua invites you to his site at http://www.articlemarketingdomination.com/ where you can learn the techniques that one must know in order to carry out an effective Article Marketing campaign.