Tweeter button
Facebook button
Technorati button
Reddit button
Myspace button
Linkedin button
Webonews button
Delicious button
Digg button
Flickr button
Stumbleupon button
Newsvine button
Youtube button

February 7, 2012

Posts Comments

Tips for building trust and influence of your website

September 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

There are several aspects to Google’s Panda update, but one thing is certain:
Google is concerned with signals of trust, influence/authority, as well as real branding.
If you own a website or business, what steps can you take to send Google these signals?

Here are a couple of ideas that work.

Indulge in Public Speaking

When you are a public speaker, Google will see it as a signal that your source is trusted as well as
authoritative – having nothing to conceal. Your business name and domain on the web are signals
to Google that you are speaking. It doesn’t matter where you are speaking – industry conference,
community college seminars etc, there will always be a page that lists who is speaking. Usually,
such pages will provide you with a link. The citation of your domain counts anyway, whether or
not you get the link from the platform you are speaking from. So, you are not wasting time researching
and preparing for those quality talks you deliver, it pays off well.

Blogger Linkup
This is a daily email newsletter. Each day, there is email going out of blogs seeking to get guest posts,
as well as bloggers searching for sites that would accept them. Well, the entire truth is that this doesn’t
generate desirable response at times, since a good number of the sites seem to be somewhat dodgy – so
consider it critically before showing your commitment. One of the mighty errors with a good number of
guest articles is the repeated use of same bio box. This results in unnatural focus on inbound anchor text.
Ensure that you do not form part of this mistake.

HARO – Help A Reporter Out
Have you heard about Help a Reporter Out? This is a daily email list of reporters searching for experts in |
different industries that would interview or quote for stories project. Obviously, you may not stumble on
a request from big name magazines and dailies such as the New York Times; however, there is still high
value placed on up-coming dailies and magazines, or industry-specific journals and magazines.

Press Releases
If you are regularly doing things that are press-worthy, it is likely you are sending out press releases about
such things. An example of press-worthy event is creating science project PDFs for an institution. If you
happen to get a guest blog post related to the project, don’t forget to link to it or mention it there. This way,
you can maximize content that you spent a lot of resources on (money, time). Now, you do not need to bother
about link equity passing of the press release – just see the links as directions or pointers. Once people stumble
on your press release and click on your link, search engine will definitely index them. Thus, it is recommended
that you place up to two deep links on your press release.

Consider Educational Links
Speaking generally, educational links known as .edu sites are seen as having more trust and are more authoritative
compared to any other site. One of the best ways to generate links from educational sites is to create valuable and
relevant content or project to .edu websites. If you are not skillful enough, pay a high profile writer to create a
valuable content that would attract the attention of professors, teachers and top professionals. Place the content
on a special template and do not include any ad or commercial links – if possible, turn the content into an encyclopedia.
Make the content downloadable by putting it in PDF format.

 

Filed Under: Internet Marketing, Website Promotion Tagged With: , ,

Internet marketing trends in 2011: What to expect

September 7, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

The past year was really a thrilling one for internet activities. In 2010, it appeared as though
Facebook was a big threat to the mighty search engine – Google. In the same year, there was
steady and continuous growth of social networking. Also, mobile web has became more
popular than conventional browsing using PCs – the iPad and iPhone played a major role in
increased mobile browsing rates.

2011 Internet Marketing Trends

Social Networking is here to Stay
Social networking will increasingly grow in leaps and bounds. Facebook and Twitter will continually
take a leap forward in taking share of Google’s huge market share and a lot of businesses are likely to
divert their attention from the ‘conventional’ to a social presence.

Obviously, the social network is here to stay, everyone is clamoring about it and lots of businesses are
benefiting massively from having a social presence. It is the best way to reach out to vast demographics
and place your business offerings before them. Your job is to learn the tips for getting followers in
these social networks.

There May be a New Face to Search Engine this Year
2011 may usher in a little change in search engine optimization; however, it will not stop being the major
marketing strategy for several online businesses. Just as it has been in the past years, focus will shift to
“long tail” niche markets – as competition for broad search terms become dense with big names
(renowned brands). Sensitive marketers would research long tail keywords in their niche, so that
they can crack up low traffic with ease.

Increase Rise in the Use of Mobile Devices to Access the Internet
Also, the use of mobile devices to surf the web will rise greatly in 2011. Businesses are increasingly taking
advantage of apps as they begin to realize how powerful these tools are for marketing. It is envisaged that
more people are likely to access the internet using mobile devices. than they would do with personal
computers. So, it’s time to join the mobile browsing bandwagon. Also, ensure that your website features
mobile-friendly tools.

The Use of Blogging as a Marketing Tool will Increase Greatly
More than ever before, a good number of mainstream businesses will join the bandwagon of those who are
already using blogging as an online business marketing tool. Don’t focus much on traditional news sections
feature on websites – more people are getting increasingly aware of the need for fresh information. So
web 2.0 will increasingly rise as Search engines are making concerted efforts to bring fresh and highly
relevant information to those surfing the web through them. Therefore, businesses that would embark on
regular update of their contents will be rewarded significantly. Also, Augmented Reality is likely to break
through into the mainstream market this year.

2011 is really loaded with changes in online marketing! Don’t be left out.

 

Filed Under: Featured Articles, Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Affiliate marketing – tips for selling more

May 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

When it comes to affiliate marketing and how you can sell more via the internet, here are basic questions you need to ask yourself.

  • Do you have the ability to achieve more sales online – if yes, what techniques would you use?
  • To what extent do your ads excite your prospects and make they want to click more?
  • How firm are your sales letter; are they capable of converting more prospects to actual customers?
  • How effective are your articles; are they effective enough to attract visitors to your website?

If all you are getting is the traffic and little or no conversions, then there is need to restructure your strategy in order to start achieving conversions.

Here are effective strategies to take advantage of:

First Strategy: Perhaps you’ve detailed all the benefits and features of your product or service in your blog or site, yet people appear not to be attracted. You must have also researched extensively for the keywords you used and had also employed solo ads, banners, email list and classified ads to promote your offering, yet all you get is massive visitors but no conversion.  Selling is a simple but tactful process – what exactly did you do to satisfy their want? Most times people are emotional buyers, so you need to look for a way to fuel that emotion. Some marketers would place candy and magazines in their checkout lanes as a technique to arouse people’s emotion.

What You Should Do: The initial thing to do is to define the benefit of your product or service – let your customers understand what they stand to gain from your offering. You have to be practical by pointing out ways the product has helped someone you know, or even yourself, which is the reason you are not letting go until others also benefit from it. Don’t forget that, a product’s feature explains what it does, and its advantage would say how the product performs better compared to a similar product, while its benefit spells out clearly what it would do for the customer.

This is the strategy you need to solve your dilemma of not achieving conversion; go back and implement this strategy and see the difference it would make.

Second Strategy

Also, if you are not able to convert traffic with your marketing strategy, you may need to revisit the copy in your ads, articles, as well as email responses. Keywords are not all there to making a visitor find your site – in fact, if you use them indiscreetly, they would hurt instead.

What You Should Do

You should focus mainly on imparting valuable knowledge, practical tips and effective ideas that would be beneficial and usable by your visitors. Don’t waste your time creating valueless ad copy, articles or content that is keyword-stuffed – which in its own is anti to effective and successful campaign.

You also need to lay emphasis on the benefit factor outlined in the First Strategy – this is where your selling power also is. You should use keywords strategically and not stuff the content with them.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Top 5 mistakes online network marketers make when starting out new

April 27, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

If you have been intending on venturing out into the online MLM business, there are mistakes, pitfalls and snares you must be aware of and hence avoid – in order to be successful in this business niche.

  1. Concentrating on Multiple Internet Marketing Techniques Simultaneously and Having No Definite Direction
    No doubts, there are several strategies that can help you market your business online, all of which have the potential to provide you with the desired outcome. However, it is better to pick one strategy at a time, sharpen your skills on that strategy until you master how it works and start generating result from it. Then, follow up that strategy for some time (especially if you are getting good results from it) before taking up another marketing strategy. In all, ensure that you continue with the strategy that is providing you excellent result.
  2. Ignoring the Need for a Mentor or Mastermind Group
    Having a mentor or mastermind group is very crucial in your learning curve as an MLM marketer. You will save yourself time, money and a lot of frustration by having a mentor to look up to. Having someone that would give you direction on what works and what does not is a great way to move forward in online network marketing. Someone who is established in the niche and is achieving result should be chosen as a mentor. But, bear in mind that you are the one who takes responsibility of your success or failure – not your sponsor, mentor, upline or team.
  3. Being Subscribed to the List of Too Many People
    When you do this, it becomes very difficult to concentrate on laying hold of a particular project or strategy; this is because you are being overloaded with the latest, internet secrets (as they are so called). Perhaps you go through this up to five times a day since you are signed up with several lists. It will be difficult to maintain concentration and pursue a given pattern or technique if you get yourself hooked in several people’s lists. Choosing just about 3 highly successful people to network with, is a more sensible thing to do.
  4. Getting Carried Away by the Earning and Losing Focus on What to Do at the Moment
    It is quite easy to become a victim of this snare. When you do this, frustration sets in before you know it, and you may eventually quit too soon! Therefore, take it one step at a time, concentrate on the little things you need to do at the moment, on a daily or weekly basis. Don’t be carried away by the imagination of making big money, and lose focus of the little things that would gradually take you to that height.
  5. Trying to Pose As a ‘Guru’
    Don’t pretend to be what you are not yet. The little but consistent things you do will gradually walk you to the top, then you can speak on it with boldness. People will naturally respect and seek for your guidance if you earn the ‘Guru’ status, and not when you fake it.

When you avoid these pitfalls, you will walk yourself quickly to the top of MLM business marketing.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: ,

Internet marketing trends for 2011

April 22, 2011 By admin 1 Comment

The year 2010 was a huge one for the entire internet world. This was the year that the internet big super power (Google) was challenged by the emergence and super-activities of Facebook. The growth of social networking continued to soar, and mobile internet surfing experienced a massive leap in taking the place of conventional PC in relation to surfing the internet – the iPad and iPhone made it possible.

Internet marketing trend for 2011- what will be the search subject?

Social networking has come to stay and will continue to grow more than it is now! Facebook and Twitter will continue to compete closely with Google in terms of the market share. This is particularly true if Facebook search engine rumor eventually comes true. More businesses will keep on breaking lose from the traditional online marketing techniques and shift massive attention to social presence. At the moment, social network is the topic everywhere. In essence, you are able to get across to a larger range of demographics in the course of promoting your business. Acquire skills on how to accomplish people following on Twitter.

2011 is likely to witness a little change with regards to search engine optimization; however, it will never cease to be the main aspect of online marketing strategy for most businesses. There would be concentration on ‘long tail’ niche markets, just the same way it has existed for some years, since the big brands are causing oversaturation on the broad keywords (the competition for these keywords is fierce). Marketers that are smart will search out long tail keywords in their business niche and embark on a quick and easy snap up on low competition keywords as well as low traffics. This gives them an edge over their competitors in their niche market.

Also, in 2011, we will continue to witness a massive increase in the use of mobile devices to surf the web. A lot of businesses are awakening to the reality that apps can be valuable tools for marketing. Estimation has it that more people are likely to access the internet with mobile browsers than they would with the conventional PC. So, begin to think mobile, and ensure that you have mobile-friendly websites.

A good number of mainstream businesses will lunch deep into blogging in 2011 than they have ever done. Don’t get carried away by the conventional news sections on the websites of a good number of people; as more people begin to place value on fresh info, web 2.0 will continue to soar. Search engines work tirelessly to ensure that they bring the most relevant information to their users, the information ofcourse is the most updated. Thus, businesses that can take time to do regular update on their info will experience massive turnaround in their rankings.

Also, it is possible that in this year of 2011, we are likely to see Augmented Reality gain eventual entrance into the mainstream market.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Top tips for growing and keeping your Online Business alive

April 4, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

No doubts, if you have an online business, you want to see it successful. The same rules for conventional business work; you must know what to do to make your online business succeed – don’t just jump in like that, else you will jump out soon!

Here are some very useful tips to guide you.

  • Link Your Site to Your Blog
    This is the best way to make updates on your content accessible to visitors easily. They must not be the ones to hunt for your content updates.
  • Establish social bookmarking
    You must have a means of enabling people to share your content. WordPress offers tons of social bookmarking plugins. If your site is the regular type, tools like ‘ShareThis’ would be sufficient.
  • Build social networks
    When you set up social networks, ensure that they are easy to see and follow. The buttons should be visible. Your blog as well as contact page are excellent pages to place your buttons.
  • Make provision for profound articles or white papers on your website
    Engage your main website as one of your article submission areas if article marketing is your promotional tool. Use creative names for it – e.g. “White Papers” or “In-depth Articles Home”.  This is a great way to convert a section of your site to your own article directory.
  • A site map is necessary
    Garnish your site map adequately, so that it would be conducive for visitors to explore. You may also keep it plain. The most important thing is that you should remember to build your sitemap and link it, since it facilitates the crawling of your site by search engines.
  • Track your usage with your keyword analysis
    A spreadsheet such as excel is excellent for this purpose – you can also use word document as well. Record the terms used, meta description as well as your title for each main site page. If you make changes, put such changes in record as well. This is an excellent way to have a stable record of changes, and you can easily monitor the changes that influenced the traffic and ranking of your site.
  • Content audits are important
    Do periodical content audit – it could be six-month interval. This is an excellent way to ‘fish out’ your webpages that are not performing optimally, spot the topics that captured the attention of your readers and mark the pages that are not necessary (so that you can take them off).
  • Come up with a strategy for your content
    This is a more result-oriented approach than doing ‘trial and error’. The strategy would comprise of the following; the type of content you would send out (is it in the form of videos, images, blogs or white papers?), the destination for your content (is it your blog, main site, YouTube, guest post), technique for tracking your progress, major and sub goals of your content strategy.

These top valuable techniques will help you grow your online business successfully. However, there are other things you need to know in addition.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

3 More Additional Ways To Grow Your Email Marketing List

February 28, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Majority of companies would give you the same answer when you ask them as to how they grow their email marketing list. Here’s their regular answer: creating newsletter signup on their sites, exchanging business cards at trade shows and purchasing lists.

There is a need for companies to get active subscribers regularly, this is the way to ensure that email marketing becomes effective and generates regular income. Read on to find the three additional techniques that would help you grow your email list :

  1. Use a Facebook pay-per-click campaign to advertise your offering. Facebook is an excellent platform to generate subscribers for your newsletter. Using Facebook pay-per-click campaigns, you have the opportunity to advertise your newsletter to its specific demographic; this would achieve excellent results for you.
  2. Run a test on your sign-up form. Here’s the way to go when you want to generate the maximum number of those subscribing newly to your email list;
    • Placement of your form should be above the fold. You can double the number of your new subscribers by placing your form above the fold.
    • Every webpage should contain your form; this way, visitors would be able to sign-up from any page they land on.
    • Let your subscribers know what they are signing up for. Ensure that you tell them what they will gain by signing up for your newsletter. Also, set expectations from the onset (it is the best way to get quality subscribers) – do you send your newsletter weekly, daily or monthly?
  3. Give a free item for signing up. This is an excellent way to attract people to sign up. The freebie could be a sample packet or white paper. Freebie also has the additional benefit of showcasing your value.

Swing into action, start building a larger and more improved email marketing list right away.

Filed Under: Email Marketing Solutions, Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Get your Basics Right for Customer Growth on Local Search Shortlists

February 11, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Whether you own a large retail chain or just a small business, you can take advantage of Local (which is the new and rapid local search innovation) to stay on top. The trend of events recently is indeed excellent for the small businesses and the overall internet marketing industry.

Right now, being the first leg of the new year, everything seems to be calm; there hasn’t been a key change yet, especially such that makes internet marketers to be on the run to leverage search marketing. So, what would you do at this moment when silence is momentarily on the cyberspace? Use this opportunity to update your local presence.

As we swing fully into 2011, the following are the tasks that should feature on your short list for local search.

  • Have Your Google Place Page Verified

Doing this does not necessarily improve your chances for higher ranking. However, it is an essential step towards taking advantage of other services provided by Google. Also, a business can answer reviews directly regarding their business performed on Google Maps – but this would be after the webpage has been verified.

  • Be in Charge of Your Online Data

Majority of businesses are oblivious of the number of places on the web that their business data are listed.  You can use services like Localeze and Universal Business Listing to find your business information online (your business address, phone number etc.

  • Focus on Basic Search Optimization

This is very essential for your website. You can achieve basic search optimization for your site by focusing on specific keywords, writing fresh content, integrating your keywords with H1 tags and also using unique title tags along with your keywords.

  • Take Advantage of Google Tags

This is a new way to pop your Place Page listing. You can promote and generate attention at very affordable monthly rates.

  • Local Internet Marketing Blogs Work

Follow local online marketing blogs and this would help you stay on top. The ones to follow include Google Mobile blog, Google LatLong blog and others.  The earlier you take action, the better it is for you, else you may be left behind.

In 2011, do not take Local Internet marketing for granted. Ensure that your business takes every opportunity to increase its exposure and to acquire massive customer-base.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Good Conversion Rate – Top SEO Marketing Tips

October 14, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Most online business owners and online marketers are baffled by the question, “What is a good conversion rate?” A good conversion rate is determined or defined by six major factors.

  1. Traffic Source
    There are various traffic sources and each one produces its own result; a particular source may offer better quality traffic than another. A higher traffic quality attracts higher conversion rate.
    For instance, a pay per click campaign on Google Adwords is one of the top sources for higher conversion rate since you can opt to display your ad only when a web visitor is actively looking for your offering (product or service). On the other hand, banner advertising produces lower conversion rate since it is not targeted.
  2. Conversion Type Being Measured
    Also, you will get different conversion rates with different offers. For instance, a higher conversion rate is obtainable with a free report than a form submission, intended for free consultation.
    If you make action-taking easier for your visitors, your conversion rate will soar.
  3. Traffic Cost
    Cost structure of each traffic source will differ from another. The higher conversion rate source mentioned earlier (Google Adwords) is obtainable at a high cost per click, for any keyword that results to conversions. On the other hand, a lower converting rate advertising channel costs less – e.g. banner advertising. Any form of pay per click advertising you choose would cost more if it has a higher quality of traffic.
  4. Your Highest Cost Budget for a Conversion
    Your CPA (cost per action) is what you spend towards your website conversion. For instance, if the ad that brought 50 people to your website cost $50, and 5 out of the 100 visitors downloaded your free offer (free report); your cost per action for download of the free offer will amount to $10 ($50/5). How much you are willing to spend for your website conversion would be determined by the number of conversions required for you to achieve actual sale.
  5. Sales Conversion Rate
    This point is critical for those who are not operating an ecommerce store; if you operate an ecommerce store, don’t bother about this factor since it doesn’t apply to you. The rate at which your website leads convert into sales is known as your sales conversion rate – this is the point at which profit is generated. If you are good at transforming website leads to actual sales, your willingness to invest more into your website conversion will increase.
  6. The Amount of Sales You Desire
    Of course, the entire essence of marketing our online business is to generate more sales, isn’t it? Thus, the topmost objective of an online marketing campaign is to generate the highest amount of possible sales within the present marketing budget. Your marketing budget will grow as your online business grows; and bigger marketing budget would necessitate additional traffic channels in order to maximize the sales.

Initially, your target may be on traffic sources that convert higher e.g. PPC and SEO. However, with the growth of your business, there is need to add other traffic sources to the one you already have.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Tips on selecting suitable Domain Names for international business

August 27, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

There are some very important and essential factors that need be considered when choosing a domain name for an international business.

First of all, it is amazing how some brand consultancies make scary errors of recommending names that are intended for international business without first checking the availability of the domain names being recommended.
Again, when trying to decide on branding, do not forget to bring the domain into view –  given the fact that the two in recent time are too closely linked to be separated and especially so, when it comes to the international scenario.

Marketers tend to follow the single global identity
Single identity has a wide appeal to marketers. The evidence is clear with the popularity of dotcom built sites among global marketers. But the simple truth is that single identity may be ideal for some, but not to all. Above all, the global inference of going for a single identity, rather than going for something that catches the attention of the CEO is also there to consider.

English or Keyword – Which One Suites, A Single Name?
For a potential global player, it is sensible to avoid the first snappy English name that comes to heart, which perfectly seems to give the description of your service. Here’s an example, if you are a globally known localization consultancy, it will be a shabby idea to choose your domain name as ‘Localization.com’, especially if you have intentions of running the same domain name across the entire world. Here’s the reasoning: it is possible and easy for most of the English-speaking population to assume that you only miss-spelt the word ‘localisation’.

On the other hand, if you intend using a keyword domain name, here are essential things to do:

  • Verify the meaning of such a keyword in the different languages; don’t commit some blunders that were previously committed by many when they choose a brand name which simply meant genitals in certain languages!
  • You may save yourself needless heartache in the future by checking the global trademark registrations.
  • Verify the registrations in a vast domain names set, it is not sufficient to check only the dot com, you may be surprised to discover that another person is using that name actively in different markets.

A good number of trademark registrars are equipped with online systems to help you verify if the registration trademarks you intend to use are already existing or not. A simple means to checking the word-meaning of your intended name in other languages is to reset the Google Keyword Tool to show ‘all languages’ and ‘all countries’. If you eventually come across huge amount of search results for a keyword you supposed to be flawless, take a closer look and you may be amazed to discover certain unanticipated and funny meanings that you would not want to associate your business with.

Abstract Names – Secure Abstracts
Generally, it is quite difficult to come across a reasonable domain name that causes no problem either in English or other languages. The option that most people prefer is an abstract name. Such abstracts may entirely have no meaning; example is concise acronym which may stand for anything. Alternatively, it could be a coined or invented name usually based on combining various Latin words into an entirely new name.

Filed Under: Google, Internet Marketing Courses Tagged With: , ,