How-To Squidoo – Steps to Building the Best Lens for Website Promotion

Posted by JR in Article Marketing, Best Website Builders, Bum Marketing, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Web Site Traffic, Website Promotion

What is Squidoo?

An effective Internet Marketing strategy, Squidoo is a website which allows you to build your own webpages, called “lenses” wth your own custom URL, personally designed and with a ton of features and components.

What are the Benefits of Building a Squidoo Lens

Website Promotion – To promote your sites and blogs and get exposure to large amounts of traffic from other Squidoo members as well as the Search Engines. When optimized with hand picked keywords, and customized and promoted correctly (as described below) Squidoo lenses will rank high and quickly in SERPS, and you will get some great website promotion opportunities for all your campaigns.

Backlink – Get a backlink to your websites/blogs.

Steps to Building an Effective Squidoo Lens

1. Choose your Keywords

Make sure, as always, to research the keywords you want the lens to rank for. These are not necessarily the same keywords as the website your promoting, they could be other good keywords for your niche that you did not use on your website, this way access to your website is all over the search engine results. Read this guide to get tips for keyword research: Step-by-Step Niche and Keyword Research.

Creating a Squidoo Lens Step-by-Step:

Pre-Design Squidoo Lens Wizard

1. You will be asked “What your Lens is About, just put in the general subject (we will change it later)

2. What’s Your Goal of your Page?: Just choose option 1 (I want to get the word out about..your subject)

3. This step is crucial: Title and URL

Title: Must have your main Keyword that you want the lens to rank for. It can have other words to make it interesting, but title must have your keywords in order to rank in SERPS in Google. The title is coded within Squidoo as the h1 title tag of an SEO Meta tag.

URL: Also must have your keywords, preferably the URL should be the same as the title. If the URL you want is unavailable (because someone else is using it) then just add some other words to it, like your name. For example, if I want Internet Marketing as my URL and it is all ready taken, I may add, Internet Marketing Secrets, or Easy Internet Marketing, etc.

Category: Make sure to pick the best possible category for your lens and rate the lens as appropriate.

4. Another crucial step – TAGS

Add Tags: tags are basically keywords or categories that are appropriate to your lens, all possible good KW that apply to your lens should be added here. The more the better. Tags will allow your lens to show up in Google for those keywords and help people to find your lens. Tip: you can add all the tags you want once you are in the “workshop” window of your Squid lens and are actually designing your lens.

Lensmaster Workshop

Now that you have set-up your lens with the wizard you will be in the Lensmaster Workshop where you can add content and design the lens.

Squidoo Lens Workshop

BIO:

Fill in the bio section with a photo (yourself or something related to your niche, you can use your website logo) and then add some content about yourself or your website, or a catchy slogan, this makes your lens personalized and gives you authority.

If you don’t do this your lens will literally say “This is my Bio, I will fit in later”…looks really lame!

Modules:

In Squidoo “modules” are sections within your lens. There are many types of modules available, including text, photo, rss feeds, comments, links..etc. (More on modules below).

Unmax your Lens:

Make sure to UNMAX your lens from the box at the bottom portion of the sidebar. This will make your lens less busy and look more attractive.

OPT Out:

Lenses can earn you a little money from ads that are automatically generated by Squidoo if you select that option within your profile settings. But, if you want a cleaner lens, you can forego the few dollars you may earn, if you select “donate all my money to charity” from your profile settings, then the “WHOOPS” box will be available to you and you can select it to OPT OUT OF DISPLAY ADS, and have less clutter on your lenses.

Here is a screenshot of Max and Whoops!

Squidoo lens workshop screenshot

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the Lens:

For search engines to find and correctly rank your websites, you need to optimize certain attributes of the Meta Tags, Title <h1>, Description and Keywords, as well as the second in importance, the <h2> and <h3> tags.

In Squidoo, there is no “Meta Tags” section, but Squidoo lenses are automatically coded with Search Engine Optimization tags and so it is important to enter the relevant information correctly.

Squidoo coding for SEO:

Lens Title <h1> = Meta Tag Title

Lens Introduction Module = Meta Description

Lens Tags = Meta Keywords

Module Headers = <h2> tagged

Module Subheaders = <h3> tagged

So in order to have your lens rank in Google and stay there, make sure to fill in all of the above properly with your keywords and main subjects/points so that Google knows what your lens is about and what keywords you want to rank for.

Content/Modules for a Great Lens:

Table of Contents. Important! Select yes under table of contents from the tab under Introduction module. This will display an organized list at the top of your Squidoo lens with the titles of all your modules. Adding a table of content increases the click-through rate and navigation for visitors easier.

Create several text modules. Most Important! This is where you will add content that promotes your website. Break up your content and create several text modules, at least 5, but, the more modules, with relevant optimal headers and subheaders, the better. Make sure to use your main keywords, and a 3-5% keyword density throughout the content of the lens.

Create polaroid (picture) modules. Most Important! Add screenshots or photos that support your content at least 2 or 3.

Links module. Most Important! Linkback to your website and other helpful links and resources that related to your lens subject or website.

Comments Module. Most Important! Make sure to add a comment module, and edit the header with your own blurb, as discussed above. This way people will the opportunity to comment on your lens.

Add Del.ic.ious Bookmark Module – Make sure to select “show popular bookmarks within the module settings.

Add other Modules. Check the entire module selection, there are lots of options, and pick whatever suits your fancy. Just be sure to choose the modules that support your goal, of website promotion, don’t go overboard and choose so many that it will take focus away from your lens subject.

Once again, make sure to change the headers and subheaders, with your keywords/subjects for each of the modules (as discussed above under SEO).

Lens Design:

HTML
Squid lenses do not come with a wysiwyg builder, you have to add some html:

Basic HTML tags:
Bold- <b> </b>
Italic – <i> </i>
Hyperlink – <a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>Anchor Text</a>

For a complete guide to all HTML tags, including color please visit: Basic HTML for Squidoo

Lenses on their own are very basic, which is really okay if you don’t want to take more time on design. However, they can be tricked out with different module placement, colors, highlighted boxes, borders for content…etc. Here are some excellent and simple guides to trick out your lenses:

CSS Tricks for Squidoo Lenses | Basic HTML for Squidoo
Advanced HTML for Squidoo – My favorite! Get code for background color and borders.
Bulleted and Ordered List in Squidoo – My favorite!

Remember: Make your lens yours, add lots of modules, information and design tweaks to create a user-friendly information filled lens page.

Promoting Squidoo Lenses for Maximum Exposure:

These steps are crucial in getting the maximum exposure and visitors for your lenses, and these will also help your lens get ranked in Google.

1. Add your lens to as many Squidoo groups as possible (based on subject), there are tons of them for all subjects, and there are also groups that take any lens.

2. Do lens link exchanges (lensrolls) with other relevant lenses. Just select lensroll icon on the sidebar of the other lens and then select which of your lenses you want to lensroll with from a dropdown box, the link exchange is then added automatically by Squidoo.

3. Lensroll all your lenses with each other. In Squidoo this is easily done by selecting lensroll from your admin area and then selecting the lenses you want to roll with from a drop down menu.

4. Add your lenses to these Squidoo Directories and Search Engines:

5. Write some articles and point them to your lenses.

6. Social bookmark your lenses, especially the do-follow social sites (see list) all over the place.

Other Excellent Squidoo Resources:

Squidoo FAQ
SquidUtils -Lensmaster Tools

I know this may sound overwhelming, but once you build a couple of lenses it really becomes a piece of cake.

Now, go and Squidoo

36 Comments

Step-by-Step Niche and Keywords Research

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Keywords and Niches

When you are building an Affiliate Marketing Website or any type of Online Business site comprehensive niche research is required to make sure that the niche you focus on is profitable, popular and can make you money.

WHAT IS A NICHE?

Basically a niche is a certain segment of the population where you intend to concentrate your Affiliate and Internet Marketing efforts and is the theme/subject of a website or blog.

Some examples of niches include:
Relationships, Skiing, Health, Video Games, Real Estate, Stock Market, Insurance, Stamp Collecting etc… as well as the sub categories or Micro Niches within the major categories.

For example, within the macro niche oh health there are several micro niches which include, weight loss, acne, balding, vitamins, staying young, aging well, conditions/diseases…etc.

Because of the high competition factor on the Internet, it is a good idea that you stick with micro niches, and especially when first beginning your Internet Marketing campaigns.

You can also go deeper into the micro niche with a double micro niche. For example, within the micro niche of weight loss you can go deeper like fat burning foods, low carb diets, natural weight loss supplements..etc.

Finding a micro niches will further cut through the competition factor and yield better results. There are lots of good micro niche markets and the opportunities are endless. And there are affiliate programs for every possible niche.

Deciding on a Niche

There are 3 main factors that should influence what niche you select.

1. Consider your interest and expertise.
This is important. It is a well known fact that in today’s Internet environment the content of a website can make it or break it. Considering the amount of work involved with marketing and creating a successful Internet business, if you can avoid adding research of an unknown niche in order to create good content on your website then it is best to do so.

When I first started in this business my first site was about computers, a subject that I knew a little about but not nearly enough to create content with ease. I spent a lot of time on researching material in order to write content for my site, all though this has turned out to be a profitable site and is a very profitable niche, it made my job more difficult.

All I am saying is that if you pick a niche you know and even better have a lot of interest in then that takes a lot of burden off the process.

2. Check out the competition for a niche
This is crucial to your success. As I mentioned earlier there are macro and micro niches. In today’s highly competitive Internet stage it is often best to go into the micro niches that yield enough user demand and searches and at the same time do not yield millions of search results (competing websites) in Google (see steps to this below).

3. Is your niche profitable and is there a demand?
Obviously you do not want to build a niche site if there is nobody searching for it or the products that you may promote within it. You need visitors and sales in order to make commissions, and evaluating the demand is the way to determine, or predict how many you might possibly have (steps to this below).

Niche Research Tools:

Micro Niche Finder Tool is a great tool that can help you find niches, it is not free but it can save time and provide comprehensive and excellent niche information.

Some great free tools to see what the hot searches on the web are:
Google Trends and My Simon Top Product/Service Searches.

Get a feel for the hot items within the niche and what people are talking about and buying by checking out these resources:

1. Read Industry Blogs – Search in Google by entering “blog + your niche” Check out the top blogs in your niche.

For example, If you are going for a gadget/tech niche you can visit Gizmodo.

2. Visit Niche Forums – Search for “forums + your niche”
See what people are talking about within your niche on the top forums. Find out who the customers are, what they want, what they need, what are they looking for, what are their biggest fears and difficulties etc…

Keywords and Niches

When people search for something online the words they input into the search engine are keywords, which then yield relevant website results for those keywords in the search results. So I want to use the most searched for keywords for my website so that I expose my niche website to as many search engine searchers and therefore as many visitors as possible.

Niches and Keywords are Synonymous.

This part is very confusing in the beginning, but a niche is mainly the theme/subject of your website and keywords are just how the niches are searched for by Internet users.

Gaging the Number of Internet Searches (demand) of a Niche with Keywords

For example, if my micro niche is weight loss then my keywords will revolve around weight loss, and I will do my keyword research by entering the main keyword weight loss and then seeing what keywords people are searching for within that main keyword/niche.

Niche Research screenshot

The screenshot, shows some of the keywords that come up when entering the main keyword “weight loss” in SEOBook Free Keyword Tool (partial screenshot of keyword results).

So my niche is “weight loss” and all the words circled in green are the keywords that people are searching for in that niche and that I can use on my website to allow people to find my site from search engine results.

Another example is to look at it backwords: Let’s say my niche is weight loss and I use a keyword that does NOT show up in the tool, then my website will sit in search engine results for that keyword, BUT no one will search for it and therefore no one will ever find my website. Make sense?

Here is the Niche Nutshell:

Niche = Keywords = Website shows up Search Engine Results = Website Visitors

Optimal Niches Should Have:

At least 10,000 searches per month combined for all keywords you may use within the niche. So, according to the above keyword research results, I know that the niche of “weight loss” is a good niche, because all the available keywords add up to at least 10,000 searches (note: the screenshot only shows a few keywords, the list runs long beyond what is showed).

I use and highly recommend Keyword Elite and SEOBook Free Keyword Research Tool and Wordtracker Keywords (free trial). Wordtracker also has a free keyword tool that is less comprehensive but is a good product at: Free Keywords at Wordtracker.

Gaging the Competition of Keywords within your Niche

Competition from other websites is another crucial factor of your niche/keyword research.

The best way to gage the competition is by doing a simple search in Google like this: allintitle:”keyword” (the allintitle and quotes narrows the results to true competition of websites that actually have that keyword as the title of their site as opposed to just a mention somewhere within their content). and then seeing how many websites return in the results.

Niche research - keyword search results

So I picked the keyword “weight loss pills” from the keyword tool results up above and plugged that into Google and what I get back is 35,300 competing sites, for that keyword.

Recap:

The SEOBook keyword tool showed a total of 1266 daily searches for “weight loss pills” and the competition is 35,300 sites.

What does this tell you?

That “weight loss pills” is a great keyword within the weight loss niche, because the searches are high and the competition is relatively low. And, actually “weight loss pills” could be a double micro niche and you can build a whole website just around “weight loss pills.”

Analyzing Competing Websites:

It is also important to look at page 1 results in Google SERPS for competing sites.

Some things to look at:
Page Rank – If page 1 of SERPS is full of high PR sites and big guns within the niche then it will be way too difficult to get to page 1 which is ultimately the goal.

Conversely if there is nothing but PRO-PR2 then it will be fairly easy. Make sure that you only consider those sites that are direct niche sites, as opposed to say article sites and indirect sites that happen to have some content related to the niche.

Age of Sites – Age of the sites is important in that Google will favor older more established sites.

Overall, you want to stay away from keywords that generate lots of results on page one of big gun sites, like PR4+ or more than 3 PR3 sites. In this case, look for the micro niche keywords within that niche.

Keyword Research Numbers:

You want to have at least 10,000 searches combined for all keywords you want to rank for within the niche.

If you are new to this business, I would suggest less than 25,000 “allintitle” in competition results so you can learn how to rank and get your feet wet anything over that will be more difficult and something to tackle once you have experience

Good Luck!

47 Comments

Simple Guide to Meta Tags Optimization

Posted by JR in Keywords and Niches, Search Engine Optimization

What are Meta Tags?

Meta Tags are HTML codes that are inserted into the header on a web page. Meta Tags basically describe the website and give search engines a glimpse as to what your website is about. Fortunately, most good website builders, allow you to fill in the Meta information in English and the Meta tag is created automatically in HTML.

Here is how the code looks in your HTML header.

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title</TITLE>
<META name=”DESCRIPTION” content=”The text you want goes here.”>
<META name=”KEYWORDS” content=”KW 1, KW 2, KW 3, KW 4,”>
</HEAD>

There are some who say Google pays no attention to Meta Tags for Search Engine Optimization value, I say YES THEY DO! Meta Tags are an important facet of your SEO efforts and Meta Tags optimization should be a concern for every webmaster. In fact, Google Webmaster Tools suggest that you customize your Meta Tags and they actually analyze them for you within the Tools Dashboard.

Now, I am not saying that by filling in a few lines of Meta Tags you will instantly go to page one in Google, what I am saying is that Meta Tag optimization is an important part of SEO and they should be customized.

A huge and necessary benefit of Meta Tags is in allowing you control of how your website presents in search results for the attributes within Meta Tags of Title and Description. This way you have every opportunity to create interesting, relevant and clickable titles and descriptions that can greatly help your Internet Marketing efforts. DO NOT leave this to chance.

Again, some may say that Google generates their own descriptions and ignores the Meta, I SAY NOT!! Every single one of my sites, shows my title and my description from my Meta Tags, and not just for the home page BUT for every page of my site. And, I would NEVER leave this to search engines to generate on their own.

Meta Tags Optimization for every page of your website:

Your meta tags on every page of your website should be different. First of all, for every page of content, you should be doing keyword research and picking optimal keywords anyway, remember that you are striving for search engine exposure for EVERY page of your site as per what people are searching for and not just the home page. The more pages that are properly indexed in serps for your keywords the more exposure your website gets. And the Meta Tags should be optimized with this same concept in mind.

For example, my sitewide keyword is laptop computers, and that is one of the keywords that I want my site to show up in search results for. So, I will use that keyword for main site Meta Tag.

Then I write a page of content on “How-To Buy a Laptop”, so I will research that longtail keywords and find the best ones for that content page and use them in that content page Meta Tag. This process will repeat for every page of my website.

Meta Tag Optimization Attributes:

Title – Most Important! By far the most important tag is the title and it must have your keywords in it so that it shows up in those search results.

Also the title should be interesting because this is what searchers will see in the results and so you want the titles to be eye-catching, clickable and most important to the point! Be direct, searchers are looking for something specific, so give it to them.

For example, if my keyword is Buy Cheap Laptops, then my title should simply state, “Buy Cheap Laptops Here” or “Browse and Buy all Models of Cheap Laptops”, “Save Money and Buy Cheap Laptops at our e-store” and NOT “You can Buy Cheap Laptops” that is vague, and they may click on the next site on the list that tells them in the title that it has what their looking for.

Description - Most Important! Description should be no more than 200-250 characters. The description should include your keywords and elaborate on what you offer. Once again, this is your chance to hook a click-through, be precise and get to the point of what you are offering as related to your title keywords. Make it eye-catching and interesting.

Keywords – Least Important. This attribute is least important because whatever keyword you want to rank for and have Google relate your site to is best achieved through keyword density within content and backlink anchor text. However, there are some search engines that do crawl and utilize your KW in Meta Tags and you should still add your keywords as suggestions for Google, it can’t hurt.

Here are a couple of examples of good Meta Tags:

HOME PAGE:
Title: Buy Cheap Laptop Computers. Many Used Cheap Laptops Available.
Description: Browse and buy all brands and models of cheap laptop computers, including new and used cheap laptops.
KW: Cheap Laptop Computers, Used Cheap Laptops, Laptops,

CONTENT PAGE:
Title: Simple Laptop Buying Guide. How-to Buy a Laptop Made Easy.
Description: Not sure how-to buy a laptop? Please read this simple laptop buying guide that details all the features that are important in choosing the right laptop.
KW: laptop buying guide, how-to buy a laptop,

Happy Meta Tagging!

17 Comments

Social Marketing – 65 + Social Bookmark and News Sites

Posted by JR in Essential Marketing Lists, Link Building, Social/Web 2.0 Marketing, Web Site Traffic, Website Promotion

Here is a list of 70 + Social News and Bookmark Websites. The Social revolution is hot on the net and these sites are great for Internet Marketing and some low level SEO, and can be beneficial in promoting your websites and content. They are not the best links in the world, but they are an important part of an overall link building profile.

Submit your website content and get backlinks, both dofollow and nofollow, promote your websites and expose your stuff to high traffic platforms.

The News sites, like Digg, basically allow you to submit news type stories and articles from your website to theirs and the members vote for them, the more votes the more exposure your submitted content gets.

The Bookmark sites are where you submit content/websites as a bookmark and the bookmark can be marked public so that other site members have access to your profile, bookmarks and a link to your sites.

You should also add these site’s “add” buttons in your own sites so your visitors are given the opportunity to vote from within your own sites. You can get the buttons individually by visiting the respective sites one by one, or you can add an all in one bookmark that you can get the code for at AddThis. You can see this button at the bottom of each of my posts.

If you have lots of websites, or you want to save time, then use the service that I use to submit to many social sites for me, for as low as 19 cents per bookmark, check them out at, Social Maximizer.

If you Internet Marketing and Online Business specific social submit sites, please visit: 22 Social Sites To Promote Internet Marketing, Blogging and Make Money Online Content. Looking for More Do-Follow Resources, please see: 144 Do-Follow Forums By Niche and PR

DO-FOLLOW BACKLINK SOCIAL WEBSITES

Post On Fire – PR 4, Blog posts only, various topics.

Spotback – PR5 – Spotback has cool widgets to add to your blogs and websites for rating your content, simple little star boxes (see mine at the end of the post). Readers do not have to leave your blog, once they rate it, it automatically goes to Spotback! Also mouse over it and checkout how you can add tags without leaving the blog. Spotback has several options for widgets, as well as a WordPress plug-in.

Stumpedia - Best! PR5
Very easy submit, picks up Meta Tags and has a bookmarklet for browsers. A human powered social search engine with 100% do-follow links, add your home pages and all sub-pages, choose categories and tag with relevant keywords.

Squidoo – Best! PR8

Build some keyword rich content pages called lenses related to your sites topics and put 100% do-follow backlinks on them to your sites. Many of my lenses are PR3+ because they piggy back on Squidoo’s page rank and the backlinks are very valuable.

Make sure to follow the lens building instructions for optimal success at: How-To Squidoo – Steps to Building the Best Lens for Website Promotion.

Wikidot - PR7

Build wiki’s or mini sites on any topic and put in your do-follow backlinks.

Launch Feed – no anchor text, just URL. This one only allows you to submit your site once, so you can pick home page or a subpage.

Go Zoof - PR4 – Bookmark

Searchle It – Bookmark

Furl.net – Bookmark

Spurl.net – Bookmark

Folked – Bookmark

Diigo.com – Bookmark

Connectedy – Bookmark

A1 Webmarks – Bookmark

Blinklist.com – Best! Bookmark

Mister-wong.com – Bookmark

Backflip.com – Bookmark

MyLinkVault – Bookmark

Jumptags.com – Bookmark. Highly crawled site, submit an inner content page for a new site and Google will find it and crawl quickly, which usually results in fast indexing.

Megite - Bookmark

Buzz Tagz – Bookmark

Googletop – Bookmark

Oopza – Bookmark

Bibsonomy.org – Bookmark

Linkagogo.com – Bookmark

Buddy Marks – Bookmark

OYAX – Bookmark

Wirefan.com- Bookmark

Wagg It – Add your blog posts and site content

Get it Gadget – Fairly new social site with do-follow links.

Shoutwire – News Site

Listable – This one is a little different, no categories instead there are lists, find a relevant list and add your links OR if there is not relevant list you can create your own and add all related content to that.

Dzone – News Site - Web developer related content only. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Lipstick - Celebrity related content only (PR7)

Plime – News Site – Categories remind me of Digg, so be careful what you submit, you might get banned for spamming.

Humsurfer – News Site - Submit anything, no category limitations. Primarily this site is an Indian community news site, (that is the country) all though I did find many US stories.

Care2 – News Site - Categories include, tech, green/environment, wellness, animals, off beat. Link is do-follow on inner page, not front page.

Hugg – News Site - Green related content only.

DIZZED – Lots of categories, including Internet marketing, technology, entertainment and more.

WAGG IT – Some odd categories, and they are picky about choosing relevant ones for your content, but worth checking out.

Really Awesome People – PR2 @ $5 with your own custom personal page. This is Jim Kukral’s creation, not sure if it’s worth $5 but check it out and decide for yourselves.

StumbleUpon - Boookmark - All possible categories – Lots of Traffic

NO-FOLLOW BACKLINK SOCIAL WEBSITES

Sphinn.com – Internet Marketing categories only

Yahoo Buzz – Yahoo’s version of Digg without the attitude!

Plugim.com – Internet Marketing categories only

Del.ici.ous - Bookmark - Lots of Traffic

Reddit.com – News Site - Versatile with many categories

Propeller - News Site - Variety of categories

Digg - News Site - Several categories, but they will easily ban for spam so be careful what you submit.

Slashdot.org - News - Nerd and Geek categories

Technorati - Submit Blogs

Twitter – Set up your profile, add your site, follow people

Tagza.com - Categories: Science, Politics, Tech, Sports

Fark.com- News - Weird Stories and Articles Only

Newsvine.com – News - Categories: Science, Politics, Tech, Sports.

Swik.net - News - Theme: Open Source Software

Ximmy – News - Lots of categories

Health Ranker – News - Health categories only: Fitness, Nutrition, Diseases

Ka-Boom-It.com – News - Internet Marketing categories

Mixx.com – News - This one is great for fast indexing of your sites, just add an inner content page and Google will crawl your new site fast. Various categories.

IndianPad - News - Limited categories, Good for Tech type Sites

Fetch – News - Small business categories, including Internet Marketing

Danogo.com – News

Links Marker – News

Google Bookmarks – Bookmark

Faves.com – Bookmark

Netvouz.com – Bookmark

Music Movie News – For entertainment/music and movie related content only.

Blogengage – PR3 – Includes a 50/50 Adsense sharing. This one is easy submit with the browser bookmark button.

Wobblog – Lots of traffic there, can give good exposure for your websites and blogs.

Kaboodle – PR6. Shopping site links, lots of members, especially female, good traffic!

Earners Club – Internet marketing related content only.

32 Comments

Building an Affiliate Marketing Website Part 2 – Traffic and Website Promotion

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing

Now that you have built your Affiliate Marketing niche website, as discussed in Step-By-Step Guide to Building an Affiliate Marketing Website, comes the Internet Marketing portion and promoting your website to get traffic.

Steps to Website Promotion and Internet Marketing

1. Submit your Site to the major Search Engines and a few others:

Google

Yahoo

MSN

Scrub the Web

Gigablast

Add Your Site Free

My Design Award

Twitter – Create a profile for each of your websites and follow some people

LinkedIn – Create a profile and add your websites

MyBlogLog – Create a profile and add all your websites and blogs, join groups and add contacts!

Claim your Blogs @ Technorati - If you built a blog and not a website submit it to Technorati and set automatic pinging for whenever you update.

2. Start Promoting your site

US Free Ads Classifieds

Is a great resource for promoting you website and niche and getting traffic and sales. This site has lots of traffic on its own, and the visitors are looking to buy, also the individual ads rank high in Google because Google loves US Free Ads. As discussed previously, make sure to again use targeted keywords for your Ad titles and at least 3% keyword density throughout the Ad body.

Directories: Add your website to Internet Directories

Some of the more popular higher ranking directories, like the king of directories DMOZ, have a long wait so it is important to submit to the less ranking directories to get the backlinks quicker. Also directory listings are in in of themselves a good source of web site traffic since many people use these directories when searching the net.

Add Url has the longest list of directories on the planet 700 to date, ordered by Page Rank and presented with hyperlinks for easy submission.

I use Directory Submission Service, which saves loads of time because they submit for you. Cheap and effective.

Article Marketing

This is the cornerstone of your Internet Marketing Campaigns. Submitting articles to article sites gives you great exposure and massive backlinks (see my tutorial on backlinks for details: Link Building Basics)

You can submit articles manually, but I don’t, this takes way too long and is like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon, I use Unique Article Wizard and highly recommend this service to get massive exposure, promotion and backlinks for your websites. It’s a little pricey, but if you can afford it’s well worth it. If you can’t afford it now, then you can always reinvest any money you make into it at a later time. As any business, the affiliate marketing requires some investment of profits to keep growing and making more money.

See my tutorials on article writing for pertinent details: Article Marketing 101 & Are you Writing Garbage?- Keys to Writing Great Articles.

Relevant Link Exchange

One of a few link building techniques for a good linking strategy for your Search Engine Optimization efforts and crucial to climbing in SERPS and Page Rank. I have written 2 separate posts explaining link building and you can read it here: Link Building Basics and The Importance of Anchor Text in Link Building.

Other Promotion Methods

Follow all the ways in the following post to promote your website and content.

13 Ways to Build Backlinks that also Increase Website Traffic

If you are new to all of this, it may be very confusing and overwhelming. Just follow the steps, and I promise you the light bulbs will start going off and it will all make sense. This is a hands on business and you need to do it in order to truly understand it.

Good luck in all your Internet Marketing Ventures!

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Nothing Beats Experience With Internet Marketing So Just Do It!

Posted by JR in Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Motivation & Success

By, JR

In the business of Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing nothing beats experience. This includes all aspects of this business, like Search Engine Optimization, PPC, Article Marketing and pretty much everything else.

In this biz there is so much to learn, read and ask questions about and there is so much information out there, a lot of it on this great blog . It is easy to get caught up in the learning and not take the step of DOING. There is a lot of information out there but unless you actually put it to use the light bulb will not go off.

You can do all the research and learning in the world but unless you put it to use you will never really know HOW TO DO IT and fully understand it until you DO IT.

One crucial fact is that in actually applying what you’ve learned questions come up that otherwise wouldn’t and so you learn the necessary steps and are able to move forward.

I used to worry that if I didn’t grab every possible piece of info and aspect of AM I wouldn’t be able to do it. WRONG! Most of the stuff I learned did not really register when reading about them “in theory.” But they did register when putting them to use “in practice.” That’s when the light bulbs turn on.

This is the main reason that I try to provide step-by-step instructions as much as possible on this blog, because that is the best way to get started, even if you may not fully understand what is going on, believe me you will after you actually DO IT!

Also, Affiliate/Internet Marketing is a business of trial and error. Tweaking, analyzing and monitoring campaigns, seeing what works and what doesn’t is a big part of Internet Marketing. So just DO IT, then tweak it and DO IT again, and the experience of this will be the biggest catalyst to success.

Afraid of failure? Who isn’t? But, like many other things in life it’s from the failures that you learn the most in the business of Internet Marketing.

The beauty of this business is the risks are so minimal. You don’t need thousands of dollars in start up costs, you can start an affiliate niche site, with free software and a few dollars in hosting, so you have almost nothing to lose and only experience to gain!

So put to use something you’ve learned, like Building a niche website – Step-by-Step, you can follow my post which provides the step-by-step instructions, or any other tutorial you have read and feel comfortable with and just DO IT!

To success in all our ventures!

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13 Ways To Link Building That Also Increase Web Traffic

Posted by JR in Essential Marketing Lists, Internet Marketing, Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Traffic, Website Promotion

These link building techniques not only benefit the long term goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Page Rank but at the same can be great sources of direct traffic to your sites as a part of your Internet Marketing Strategies.

Website traffic promotion is a crucial element of marketing your websites and blogs. The notion of “if you build it, they will come” is total crap, this is a hands-on business and it’s never more true than in regards to website traffic.

You can read a comprehensive guide to link building basics at: Are You Pulling Enough Link Juice? Link Building Basics.

1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange

This is where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. Make sure they are relevant sites, links on a computer site to a weight loss site are a useless wastes of time!

You can do a search for “link exchange + your niche” to search for link partners.

Digital Point Forums is a great place to find link partners through the special forum section for link building.

WebConfs Backlink Builder is a great tool that searches for websites of the niche/theme you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add link”, “Add site”, “Add URL”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL”, “Add Article” etc. Then presents them in a list with hyperlinks, no easier way to build backlinks for you websites.

Also you can use a service to find link partners, such as Link Market, this is a site where you can network with other webmasters who have sites relevant to yours and then exchange links. The paid version has some extra features, but I use the free version which is limited 5 link requests per day, but it’s good enough for me.

2. Links from Directories: One-Ways & Reciprocal Links

Another way to get backlinks is by placing a listing of your sites in Internet Directories. These links vary depending on the directory. Sometimes directories require reciprocals, and sometimes they are one-ways. Of course, you want to get the one-ways as much as possible and the higher ranking directories are best as far as link juice goes. But overall when your site is new getting links in as many good directories is an important part of your Internet Marketing efforts even if they have a lower page rank.

Some of the more popular higher ranking directories, like the king of directories DMOZ, have a long wait so it is important to submit to the less ranking directories to get the links quicker. Also directory listings are in in of themselves a good source of web site traffic since many people use these directories when searching the net.

Add Url has the longest list of directories on the planet 700 to date, ordered by Page Rank and presented with hyperlinks for easy submission.

I use Directory Service which submits for me, their service starts at $10, saves loads of time and gives full reports.

3. Link Building with Forums – One-Way Links

A great way to get a backlink and also get relevant targeted traffic is joining forums that are relevant to your sites theme and those that allow a backlink in the signature. The key to this technique is having a genuine interest and knowledge within the theme.

But, don’t join a forum just to get sales, with this attitude your posts will quickly translate to SPAM and you will get booted faster than you can say boo. Instead add helpful and meaningful posts, answer other members questions in these forums, participate in a genuine manner and not only will you get a powerful backlink, it will also increase your web site traffic. Traffic that is relevant and will likely convert into sales since the visitors to those forums have a deep interest in the respective theme.

You can find relevant forums for your niche by searching “forums + niche” in Google or use my list 144 Do-Follow Forums by Niche.

4. Comments on Blogs – One-Way Links

A great way to build one way links to your sites is by leaving comments on blogs relevant to your sites theme.

Some blogs use a “no-follow” command for links which is a code attribute value used to instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. But, if you visit high traffic blogs that are of interest to you this often becomes a source of traffic to your site from the other readers of those blogs.

Also there are tons of blogs with many topics that offer Do-Follow Links in Comments, like this one, I am not stingy with the link juice.

Free Fast Blog Finder is a fantastic software that searches for Do-Follow Comment Links blogs for the keywords entered. Free version provides 50 results for each keyword.

Here is a great Do-Follow Diver Search Engine where you enter your relevant keywords and it generates a list (with hyperlinks-which is so convenient ) of do-follow blogs.

You can search the “Do-Follow” Blog Directory

I always read and comment on SEO Horror Blog, great information and a Do-Follow!

5. US Free Classified Ads

Get the backlink, it’s marked no-follow so does not count for Google, but Yahoo ignores the no-follow, so counts with them. Also, Google loves USFree Ads and so your ads will rank high for respective KW and they have a lot of traffic, people looking to buy! You can submit several adds for different products/niches within different categories.

6. Link Bait – One-Way Links

Another great way to build quality one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.

7. Unasked- One-Way Links

Wiki Answers – Answer questions from lots of categories, leave a backlink to your sites in the question, as well as in your profile. Lots of traffic and lots of profile views daily.

Unasked is a site where you answer people’s questions (like Yahoo Answers) on a variety of topics. When you answer a question with a link to your site, the link is “nofollow” so it doesn’t count as a backlink, but, every time you answer a question, it links to your profile, which contains the “dofollow” link to your website, with the anchor text of your choice. Good method for one-way link and getting traffic to your site for your respective niches.

8. Work.com – One-Way Links

If you have ever heard of Business.com, this is one of the top directories on the net with lots of link juice, like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ, and it also comes with a price tag of $299 per year. Yeah, like I’m going to pay that?!

The good news is that business.com has another site which is Work.com, a great site where you can post how-to guides related to your business/websites and get a powerful backlink free!

Also, this site ranks high with Google and if you use good keywords in the title of your guides they will rank high and you can get traffic to your sites. Plus, the site itself has lots of members and you could get your guide featured on business.com which exposes you to all of their high traffic.

9. Write a Press Release – One-Way Links

Make sure to educate yourself on how to write a press release, many confuse these with sales ads and that is not what they are. You can learn the steps to writing a press release at PRWeb – How to Write a Press Release

This method is not only great for link building but great for website promotion as well.

Here are some of the top Press Release Sites:
PR Free
Ezine Articles Press Releases
SB Wire
Press Exposure

10. Link Building with Social Sites – One-Way Links

The social revolution is hot on the web. Social News and Bookmark sites are growing in huge numbers and have tons of traffic and members. Join sites, like Facebook, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Furl It, just to name a few.

There are many of these sites and with specific categories where you can submit your site content and get a backlink. Plus, these sites can be a great source of traffic since several of them have high traffic.

Read this post to get a hyperlinked list of 45 Social Websites with ratings and category details: Social Marketing – 65+ Social Bookmark and News Sites

11. Create a Squidoo Lens – One-Way Links

A Squidoo lens about your site is a great way to advertise your website, get a backlink and traffic. The key to Squidoo is using certain techniques for content and design and they will rank and you will get lots of traffic. You can learn all about Squidoo on my post: How To Squidoo – Steps to Building the Best Lens for Website Promotion

12. Qassia - One-Way Links

Post some intel, you will get a powerful backlink. They are a PR5

13. Article Marketing – Best One-Way Links

Last but never least, Article Marketing is the BEST way to get quality one way backlinks and at the same time get direct targeted traffic to your sites. There are many benefits to this method, including getting relevant and targeted traffic which converts well into sales if you follow the method of “relevancy” with KW anchor text techniques. I use Unique Article Wizard a service to submit my articles with the click of one button to tons of places and I highly recommend that service.

You can learn more about Article Marketing at my posts: Are you Writing Garbage? – Keys to Writing Great Articles and Article Marketing 101and the Huge Internet Marketing Benefits.

47 Comments

Are You Pulling Enough Link Juice? – Link Building Basics

Posted by JR in Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, Webmaster/Website Optimization

Before I begin this post I just want to say that for those of you who are scared about losing traffic to the sites you are linking to, Get Over It!!

First of all, if you have any significant traffic to worry about this means that you must be building links. Second, if you provide valuable, quality, original content your visitors WILL not leave you, they may leave for a minute, but they will be back and they will appreciate you more for giving them valuable resources. Third, in reality you have to first have traffic in order to worry about losing any and you won’t have much traffic without an effective link building strategy.

Google Webmaster Tools says that in order to gain Page Rank (a way of gaging website authority, PR is gaged from 0-10, 10 being highest) you should have high quality sites linking to yours, which is termed a backlink. A backlink is simply a link to your website from another website.

There are several types of links and link building methods and all of them should be utilized to optimize your sites for SEO (search engine optimization) and increasing web site traffic especially when your site is new.

Just build links everyday! Link Building and Content are the two utmost priorities after launching your website.

1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange/Blogroll

This is where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. In the eyes of Google relevance = quality as far as a backlink is concerned.

There are webmasters who exchange links with whatever site comes along, but think about this. If you have a website about computers, how helpful is it for your visitors to see a link to a weight loss site? This is a useless waste of time and looks lame on your website! Use common sense and build links for your visitors and not for ranks and your site will be rewarded.

Two Most Important Factors in Reciprocal Links – Relevance is number one and then Page Rank. If you can get both relevance and a high page rank then you’re set!

Webconfs Backlink Builder is a fantastic tool that finds relevant sites you can link to and presents them as hyperlinks in a handy list.

Also see SEO- How to Find Link Partners

Digital Point Forums are a great place to find link partners as well, just go to the thread on link exchanges.

Reciprocal Link Placement on your Website:

Where you place links on your site is important and can be done in several ways.

The Stale Old Links Page:

This is where you have a special page just for links and where links are placed one after the other. But, this technique is not the best option. These days search engines place less value on links pages and when you think about it, how good is a links page for your site and its visitors?

A better option is to place your links and get the reciprocal site to place links as hyperlinks within the content on your site (with relevant keywords). This method looks better, provides a natural flow of links and gets more link juice with the all mighty Google.

Home Page Links/Footer Links/Sitewides:

Also much better options than link pages and this is something that can entice higher page rank sites to want to trade with you when you site rank is lower than theirs.

The other day I was listening to an Internet Marketing Seminar where Aaron Wall, one of the top gurus of SEO and owner of SEOBook was speaking he made a statement that is a rule to live by for link placement: “

“The key to link building on your sites is to make the link look like a side effect and not the end goal!”

2. One Way Links

A one-way link is where you get a backlink to your site from another site without having to place a link back. Of course, one-way links hold the most juice with search engines. (But once again, just build links, especially when your is new.)

Natural One-Way Link Building through Content

One way to get one-way links is the natural link method which is obtained by posting fresh original content on your sites that is so good that other websites will want to link to it. Good content, which should all ready be a first priority for your visitors and visitor retention, will facilitate natural one-way links, but this takes time and for new sites this method will be slow going.

One-Ways with Link Bait

A great way to build one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.

Best and Easiest One-Ways – Article Marketing and Directories

Article Marketing and submitting your sites to Internet Directories are crucial to your link building efforts and very effective ways to get one-way links. Read my post, Article Marketing 101 And The Huge Internet Marketing Benefits, for the how-to’s of article marketing.

13 Ways To Link Building That Also Increase Web Traffic provides a list of concrete resources for all types of links.

Building a Lens on Squidoo is another great way to get a backlink and also a big way to promote your websites, here is the full how-to on Squidoo: How-To Squidoo – Steps to Building the Best Lens for Website Promotion

Social Bookmarks/Forum Signatures/Commenting on Blogs

More good one-way links can be obtained from submitting your content to social bookmark sites, many of which are do-follow. Participating in Forums that allow a link to your sites in the signature and commenting on do-follow blogs (where the link to your sites in the comment counts for link juice, are also great ways to get one-way links, and are great sources of direct traffic to your sites as well.

Time Division Formula for Link Building:
40% – Article Marketing
25% - Reciprocal Link Exchange
25% - Social Bookmark Links/Forum Sig links/Blog comment links
10% - Directories

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3. 3-Way Links

3-ways: Site A points to Site B and Site B points to Site C and Site C points back to Site A. The point is to try to make reciprocals look like one-ways, this method really doesn’t have much value and I for one don’t use this method.

4. Outbound Links

Outbound links are the websites you link to or site as references within content, or recommend as a service etc. Whatever your niche there was a point where you were learning and used helpful resources along the way and those are the sites that you want to tell your readers about.

Some webmasters are so afraid of losing traffic or giving up their link juice that you hardly ever see outbound links on their sites, this is a big mistake.

Outbound links are a necessary part of establishing your authority within your niche and a vital part of your Internet Marketing efforts. They are a vital part of any website/blog and their existence or non-existence can determine whether high-authority, high page rank sites would ever link to you, mainly because if you are not consistently seeking out new information and intelligence within your niche and citing those sources they will view your website as stale and out of date.

If you have read at least a few of my posts you will see many outbound links. Can you imagine my blog without them?

Take a look at other good sites you have visited they all have outbound links and references. It is impossible to provide really useful information without offering other sites that can benefit your visitors.

5. Internal Link Building

Sometimes this method of On-site Search Engine Optimization is overlooked but it is so crucial and should be a big part of your link building strategy.

I have written a separate post on the how-to’s of Internal Link Methods at: Internal Link Building for On-Site Search Engine Optimization

In conclusion, it is crucial for any Internet Marketing Campaign to build links everyday. This is the main way that Google can establish authority, relevance and importance of your websites and is at the center of the Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization) strategy.

For more on how Google establishes relevance of your sites for your keywords through link building read my post at: The Importance of Anchor Text in Link Bulding

NOW, GO BUILD LINKS!!

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Article Marketing: Keys To Writing Great Articles on the Web

Posted by JR in Article Marketing, Internet Marketing, Web Site Traffic, Website Promotion

Article Marketing is an integral part of Internet Marketing and writing good articles is key to get the the clicks and traffic to your website.

Titles Get Clicks:

You can write brilliant articles but if no one clicks on them then it’s useless. The title of the article is the first hook and your only chance to capture a reader attention.

4 Types of Article Titles:

1. Questions: Questions drive people crazy and are very effective in titles to get clicks.

For example:
Are you Using the Right Internet Marketing Strategies?
Are you Able to Hold on to your Man?
Are you Writing Garbage?

2. Lists: People love lists and steps because they are simple and have the image of providing quick and easy solutions, ie: easy as 1,2,3.

For example:
5 Ways to Promote your Websites
7 Fat Burning Foods
10 Ways to Break Up with Someone
3 Ways you Can Make Money Today.

3. Creating Doubt: This is another great way to get the click and it’s a great hook because it makes the reader doubt what they know and makes them want to find out what their missing.

For example:
Internet Marketing Doesn’t Work
Causes of Acne Breakouts are Not What you Think!
Can you Really Choose the Right Gaming Laptop?
Diets Don’t Work!
Do you Know What’s on your Computer?

4. Sensational Statements: These work great because they capture the curiosity of a reader and create doubt and they just can’t help but click.

For example:
Working at Home is Stupid
Affiliate Marketing is a SCAM
If you don’t Read this Marketing Guide you Won’t Make Money
Everything you Know about Acne is Wrong

Content

1. The Internet audience has a short attention span. Remember that your audience are Internet users and the Internet is all about instant gratification, the quicker and simpler you get to the point the better a read you will provide. Grab a readers attention, make your points and close the deal. Most people do not want to read 5,000 words on “how-to buy a video camera.” 500-900 words make the best article.

2. Deliver what your promised in the title. It is important to stay on point in the content when writing effective articles. Don’t go off on tangents, stick to the subject.

I came across an article once about Cheap Cruiseship Vacations and the author began his article with 1 whole paragraph on how he took this great cheap cruise, but the only problem was he lost his luggage and then he found it, and how helpful the Cruise employees were…

I wondered: Who the f–k cares! AND What does this have to do with cheap cruiseship vacations?

3. Don’t be Verbose. Again, articles that are too long are not effective and you will lose your readers before they make it to your link. Make your points clearly and with as few words as possible. Most main ideas can be delivered in just a few of sentences. Condense! Condense! Condense!

4. Present the Problem/Need and Offer Solutions. Most people read articles online because they have a problem to solve, a need or a want. Give readers a solution, a call to action, provide clear and simple definitions, instructions, steps etc…

I have seen so many articles that do not do this. They give 800 words and not one single concrete way to resolve the original promise within the title. If you’re title is “Laptop Buying Guide”, then I better see a guide, with features and components important to buying a laptop.

Here are 2 examples of articles titled: Laptop Buying Guide. One bad and one good, I’ll let you decide which is which.

Laptop Buying Guide #1
Buying a laptop can be a scary experience. Some stores have great sales and you can save a lot of money. Also there is the Internet where discounted prices are everywhere.

Laptops come in all different models. There are laptops for gaming and laptops for business. The one you choose largely depends on your needs. Some laptops are heavy and some are light. Do you want a heavy laptop or a light laptop?

In general when buying a laptop it is a good idea to look at all the features and decide what you want. For instance, do you want to watch movies on it, if you do you will need to have the right video card and lots of memory. I recommend talking to the salesperson where you want to buy a laptop and making sure that your laptop is right for you. Also, you can talk to your friends that own laptops maybe you can try theirs out and see if you like it.

Laptops have much smaller keyboards than regular computers, this maybe a problem for you. Also the mouse is different on laptops than on PC’s and it may take some time to get used to it.

There are several authorities on laptops that could suggest the best brands and models, like Cnet and Laptop Magazine. These people are pros and they test lots of laptops.

In conclusion buying a laptop can be fun if you get all the information and get the right laptop for you. You can buy a cheap laptop at Joe’s Laptop Shop

______________________________________________________

Laptop Buying Guide #2
Processor: The processor of a laptop determines how fast a computer is and the speed is given in GHz. Today the best processor is the Intel Core 2 Duo.

1.73 GHz processor is more than sufficient for everyday work like word processing, spreadsheets, email and Internet surfing.

Memory (RAM): RAM refers to the amount of programs you can run on your notebooks without running into slow downs and causing your laptop to drag. 512MB RAM is the optimal amount of memory and the best option for gaming and 3-D graphics. Laptop Buying Tip: The RAM the laptop supports tells you the most memory you will be able to upgrade to.

Hard drive: When buying a laptop a 40-80 GB hard drive is more than sufficient unless you plan to generate mass amounts of music or data files or you want to install more than one suite like Microsoft Office.

All-in-one design Unless you really need to buy a lightweight laptop, this laptop buying guide recommends choosing one with an internal bay for the optical drive. Simply put this drive lets you to swap in other devices, such as an extra hard drive or a second battery.

Screen size: The screen size dimension of laptops is measured diagonally across the screen. When buying a laptop you don’t want to sacrifice viewing comfort in order to gain portability. A screen larger than 14 inches is best to avoid strain on the eyes. Larger screens or wide screens result in heavier laptops and are more bulky but do provide a more comfortable experience whether you’re surfing the net or watching movies.

Weight: When buying a laptop consider a weight of 5 pound or more. Ultra light laptops, below 4 pounds have cramped keyboards, less speed and memory, usually no CD or DVD drive and smaller screens. If you buy an ultra-light laptop, its performance may be so compromised that after all of the accessories you carry with it are added up (a CD drive, a larger battery, a better keyboard, etc…) it may weigh as much as a regular 5 or 6 lb laptop.

Keyboard: When buying a laptop the keyboard should be full size or it will take some time to adjust. Laptop Buying TIP: Look for the % of full size when looking at the keyboard features of a laptop.

Mouse Options:
Option 1: is a touch screen, which is controlled with finger movements on a pad. Option 2: is a knob feature that lets you control the mouse by moving the finger in only one spot. This feature is harder to adjust and unless you have a preference get the touch panel.Option 3: Best get both a touch screen and knob on your laptop.
Laptop Buying TIP: You can always hook up a standard mouse to your laptop.

Ports: Simply put a port is a specialized outlet on the back of a computer to which a plug or cable connects. (If you’d read the techie definition you would have passed out by now).
The more ports you have the more variety you will have.

This laptop buying guide outlines general features, the brand of laptop is important and should be considered in regard to personal use and budget.

To browse all brands and models of laptop at the lowest prices please visit: Cheap Laptop Computers

_________________________________________________________

5. Edit for Typos and Grammar. This is pretty self-explanatory. Everyone makes mistakes and typos can happen but, if you’re article is full of misspellings and grammatical errors you look like an illiterate and you will lose all authority.

Tease Them – Don’t Give it All Away:

You want people to get to the end where the author resource box is and where the link to your website will be and you want them to have a reason to click on your link and go to your website.

Make half the points in the article body and leave them at a cliffhanger, or present only a couple of solutions and then offer your link to learn all details. The author resource box will say something like, “Learn the all the steps at: yourdomain.com” or “Learn how to do “all this” with step-by-step instructions at: yourdomain.com.”

If you are writing a buying guide for products your author box can say something like, “You can save a lot of money by avoiding retailers and purchasing your video camera at a super low price at: yourdomain.com.”

Some writers use the method of presenting the steps to solve a problem in a very complicated manner and then in the resource box will say something like, “You must be overwhelmed? Please visit yourdomain.com for a simple solution” or “Is This too Much to Handle, we can do it for you at yourdomain.com.”

This method can work BUT, if you make it too complicated you run the risk of losing your reader before they even get to your link because they think your article is not user-friendly, overly complicated or there is no solution to their problem within it.

Article Submission – |A Better Way

Make sure to check out Unique Article Wizard, the all time best article marketing submission service, that eliminates manual submission and creates unique version of your article for better rankings and stronger backlinks!

Writing is not always an easy task. But, don’t worry all it really takes is some practice and the more you do it the better you will get.

Outsourcing your writing jobs to paid writers is a great option as long is it is cost effective and you can afford it. The fees vary drastically, and can range anywhere between $10 – $50, find out what the best outsource sites for article writing at 24 Best Writing Outsource Resources.

You can learn about the great benefits of article marketing at my post: Article Marketing 101 and the Huge Internet Marketing Benefits and learn more about writing great articles at: 4 Tips for Writing Better Articles on the Web

7 Comments

Article Marketing 101 And The Huge Internet Marketing Benefits

Posted by JR in Article Marketing, Internet Marketing, Web Site Traffic, Website Promotion

Article Marketing is a form of Internet Marketing where you write articles related to your website niche and submit them to article directories. Articles can include anything from how-to’s to product reviews.

I am an avid believer in Article Marketing as a way to increase website traffic as well as a great method of Internet Marketing to promote your websites, and it is also one of the best techniques to build one way backlinks to your sites for your link building campaigns, which is needed for SERPS (search engine pages results), Search Engine Optimization and Page Rank.

Take a look at the screenshot below which shows a page from Google Webmaster Tools on How can I improve my site’s ranking?

3 Huge Benefits of Article Marketing

SERPS & Page Rank, Direct Targeted Traffic & Website Promotion

1. SERPS & Page Rank

In order to increase your Page Rank and rise in SERPS of the major search engines, and especially Google, you must build lots of backlinks to your websites. And one-way backlinks, such as those that you get with Article Marketing, hold a lot of juice.

Here’s the Nut Shell:

Articles = Backlinks = Higher Search Engine Result Pages (serps) and Page Rank= Increase in Web Traffic.

The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in search engines, which gives you better exposure in search results which means an increase in web traffic, that is also targeted IF you make sure to use relevant targeted KW (more on this below)

Basically “backlinks” are links that guide readers back to your website. When other sites link their pages to yours then that’s a BACKLINK!

In the business of Internet Marketing it is a well known fact that a strong linking strategy is the basis of Search Engine Optimization and backlinks are the biggest thing since electricity or MTV (depends on who you ask ).

That’s because the major search engines bots use the presence of backlinks to give your site authority and therefore decide where your site ranks in the search engine results (SERPS). These backlinks establish authority for your site and relevancy for the keywords your are trying to rank for from the anchor text you use in the backlink.

You can learn the details of Anchor Text by reading my post: The Importance of Anchor Text in Backlinks

And the more articles you have out there the more backlinks you get. That ladies and gentlemen is Search Engine Optimization done right!

2. Direct Targeted Traffic

Article Marketing is also a very effective Internet Marketing method and a quick way to increase relevant targeted web site traffic to your site and get sales if you use relevant targeted KW, mainly due to the ability of article directories to rank high in search results and the fact that many article directories, such as Ezine Articles, have very high levels of direct traffic and members.

Relevant Keywords in Articles

Yes, keywords rear their ugly heads again. It is important, as always, to use relevant, sales targeted keywords in your articles. In Internet Marketing, as with any type of marketing it is important to target your audience and your audience are buyers.

Side Note: The KW of the article does NOT have to be the same as the anchor of your backlink, and most of the time won’t be. The Article KW is for targeting the readers of the articles and the anchor text KW within your backlink is for SERPS and Page Rank of your website.

For example, I have a website for which I want to rank for the KW “Cheap Laptop Computers.” I am going to write an article with a backlink to my website that is a guide to buying laptops.

So, I research the best keywords for my article on Guide to Buying Laptops and I find “Laptop Buying Guide.”

So the KW for my article will be “Laptop Buying Guide” AND the anchor text I will use in the backlink to my website within the article is “Cheap Laptop Computers.”

…Back to Relevant Keywords in Articles – Here’s the Nutshell:

Articles with relevant KW = Readers who are Presold for whatever you’re selling and THOSE READERS get a link to your site = Increase in relevant and targeted traffic to your site = Sales and Conversions

For example, let’s say I am writing an article about laptops. The KW “laptops” is NOT a highly targeted KW, it is too broad and could mean Joe Blow is just surfing for anything having to do with a laptop.

Conversely the narrow KW’s “How to Buy a Cheap Laptop” or “Laptop Buying Guide” are KW’s that target the audience looking to buy a laptop and that audience will get a link to my laptop store. Another good idea is to stay away from KW that have the word “free” in them, you will see this a lot in your KW research. The more targeted the KW the better the sale conversions will be.

How to Utilize KW in the Articles:

This will make sure your articles rank in SERPS for the article keywords you are using.

1. Make sure to use your article KW’s in the titles of articles. You can add other words to make the titles more interesting as long as the main KW’s are there.

You can learn 5 Tips for best Article Titles at: Are you Writing Garbage? Keys to Writing Great Articles.

2. 3-5% KW density throughout article body.

Don’t forget to use the keywords you want your website to rank for in the anchor text.

3. Website Promotion

Last but not least, Article Marketing is also a great way to promote your sites not only because of the high traffic that many high quality article directories get, but also because of the viral effect that articles can have.

If you write quality articles they can be picked up by other webmasters and publishers and become syndicated, and then they spread all over the net, and the link to your site will, of course, come along for the ride.

You can learn the how-to’s of writing quality articles at my post: Are you Writing Garbage? Keys to Writing Great Articles.

The Relevance of How Articles are Submitted

There are two ways to submit articles to article directories and the submission process is another important aspect in regards to your sanity, as well as, your campaign.

Manual Article Submission can be a tedious process where you add each article to each article site one by one. This means that you go to each site (and there are 1000′s of them) and manually submit each of your articles one at a time.

Remember that you are looking for maximum exposure and massive backlinks so about 40% of your Internet Marketing time should be spent on submitting articles. If you only submit to a couple of sites that only means a couple of backlinks and very little exposure.

Also, with manual submission you have to bookmark them on your computer, read each of their submission guidelines (they all have them), make sure you stick to those guidelines to get published and keep track of what you submitted to who in order to avoid duplicates.

Here is a small list of some of the top article directories that you can submit to:

Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
Go Articles
Article City
Article Alley
Amazines

Submit Articles Automatically – A Better Way To Do Article Marketing

A much better submission process is to submit articles automatically using either a service or software. Many softwares are expensive and really quite tedious to use, Magic Article Submitter is a great, inexpensive and highly effective and easy to use article submission software.

3 Big Reasons Why Magic Article Submitter Rocks

1. Over 800 article sites in the software, and you can add your own if you wish.

2. Magic Article Submitter allows you to submit unique versions of your article, with spin syntax, using a tool like the Best Content Spinner, which is truly the best spinner ever made. Submitting unique versions of articles is better for SEO, as the backlinks will have more weight with Google, than those coming from the exact same articles.

3. An amazingly easy automated process that creates your login for the over 800 article sites in the software AND even automatically confirms those accounts for those article directories that require it. This is SO great, takes about 20 minutes to set up a profile, sign up and get started submitting your articles. I highly recommend it and use it myself.

I also use Unique Article Wizard, though this service is pretty expensive and is more of a blog network than an article marketing tool, it is very effective, but generally meant for advanced users that understand its benefits. Basically it is used to submit unique versions of posts to various blogs in the system.

The greatest benefits of using UAW is that it allows lots of time to write instead of spending that valuable time on submission and it allows for mass website and marketing exposure in the quickest time.

Happy Writing!

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