Email open rates have traditionally been closely monitored and avidly debated by experts as one of the metrics that measure email marketing efficacy. But will email open rates still remain a relevant measure in 2012 and beyond?

Does It Pass The Relevancy Test?

In a bygone era of rather primitive email marketing, email open rates and clicks were the only measures that indicated how well you were doing. But as technology evolved, and other indices of email efficiency are gaining ground, we need to ask ourselves if email opens are really what we want to measure and analyze.

Let's say you send out email messages to your prospects and want to study how well you did. Even assuming that you get accurate measurements of open rates, what exactly does that tell you? Frankly, not much.

Merely knowing how many subscribers open your email is a poor proxy for the more meaningful information about how your readers respond to your email message and how they engage with you and your business as a result.

So by tracking numbers like clicks on links in your email, downloads of reports or ebooks you offer, orders for products or services you promote, registrations, response to surveys and similar data that reflect how well your marketing message engages your audience carry more weight.

But this doesn't mean email open rate has no value.

Ways To Use Email Open Rates

Once you understand how email open rates are measured and exactly what value their measurement conveys, you can analyze your data more intelligently - and derive useful conclusions.

First, think about trends rather than a single count taken in isolation. A 45% open rate doesn't tell you much - but when it has dropped from 65% last month, you know something is wrong. Either your email isn't making its way into your subscriber's inbox, or is not grabbing your reader's attention in the same way it once used to.

You can look critically at what you've done over this period that may result in the change. Did you change email services? If so, maybe they aren't as good at ensuring deliverability. Are you trying a different style of writing? Maybe that doesn't resonate with your audience. Have you changed the subject matter of your newsletter? If yes, your folks don't like it quite as much.

All these are valid conclusions based on the trend data - and can help you make meaningful changes that enhance your email marketing in the future.

Client Side Problems

When you analyze email open rate data in a more granular fashion, you might uncover problems that can be solved, and which could explode the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

For example, if you study your email open rates segmented by recipients with a gmail.com address and find that it is far below the average for the rest of your list, you know there's a problem with your service or content that's stopping messages from getting through to your Gmail users.

Knowing this, you can work on finding solutions and improving deliverability.

If Gmail users are a large share of your subscriber base, then this single change may totally revolutionize your results from email marketing!

Use Email Open Rates For Split Testing

If you're a passionate tester (and any information marketer using email should be), then you're surely split testing different headlines (or email SUBJECT lines) already.

By tracking email open rates for messages with different subject lines, you'll be able to find a 'winner'. If 50% of your list gets an email with subject line A and the other 50% gets subject line B, and the first has an open rate of 45% while the second only gets 15%, then you can be reasonably certain that the difference is accounted for by A being a more appealing headline.

Since all other elements of the email are identical, this is a very specific split test - and the results are quite reliable, provided your sample size reaches statistical significance.

Open Rates Indicate Reader Fatigue

It is no surprise that email open rates will drop as time passes by. Subscribers are most excited about being on your list soon after they sign up. But in the moving parade of life, their interests may shift, making your email less relevant to them, or becoming a lower priority.

Email open rates monitored over time are a good indicator of this shift.

Once you uncover this trend, you can attempt to reverse it by doing some eye-catching stuff, trying something unique and different from the norm, or even attempting a bolder or unconventional attitude to jolt your apathetic reader out of the rut of familiarity and boredom.

How Good Is Your Source?

Open rates can also indicate how targeted your list building efforts are. If you measure email open rates of subscribers added to your list from different sources, you may find that referrals from a particular marketing method or source of leads is significantly different in behavior from your other opt-ins.

This may permit you to more effectively deploy your advertising budget and marketing muscle to attract the highest impact readers onto your list.

It's true that email open rates are no longer very relevant or useful numbers to track and monitor. But there are specific ways to use this ubiquitous information that almost every email service provides you with. And when you understand email open rates, and know how they are measured and what they can indicate, your analysis will help make your email marketing more targeted, effective and ultimately profitable.

About the Author:

Dr. Mani is a heart surgeon, Internet infopreneur and social entrepreneur. This article is one of his 4-part series on email marketing.
You can read the others that explore email open rates in greater detail on his infopreneur blog.

Internet marketing is certainly a skill and includes a set of techniques that must be learned and mastered. There is a lot involved with Internet marketing and that is why getting the proper training from an Internet marketing course is essential for success. Honestly, there is a lot of free information about Internet marketing on the web, much of which you can find here, but learning Internet marketing that way versus taking a structured Internet marketing course will take a lot longer because you will have to decipher through a lot of information and learn with a lot of trial and error.

Using an Internet marketing course can provide a structured layout and lessons that are presented in a step by step manner which is really invaluable in saving time, frustration and possibilities of giving up down the road because of confusion and failures and a good Internet marketing course can facilitate taking action at a quicker pace and get on with making money online that much quicker. So, if you have the money to spend on an Internet marketing course that is the best option, especially if you are really serious about making money online.

There are plenty of Internet marketing courses available online, many of which are total crap and a complete waste of money. Here are two Internet marketing courses that I personally recommend and have used myself in the past and they have a lot to offer in learning the skills of Internet marketing and making money online.

The Keyword Academy - This is My #1 Pick

Effective - Comprehensive - Budget Friendly - Newbie Friendly - Step by Step Training

Court Tuttle and Mark Butler, who are seasoned and very successful Internet marketers are teaching the specific skills needed to create, market and promote websites to make money online in their Internet marketing course called the Keyword Academy. I can assure you that if you are new to this business, this is a comprehensive and complete course in teaching all the various facets of Internet marketing.

There is some free information about Internet marketing, a Basic and a Premium membership for this course. There is also a trial membership as well.

• You will get immediate access to all courses and several training videos.
• New training courses are added regularly.
• The video’s will take you step by step and show you how to pick profitable keywords for your niche site.
• How-to set up the free WordPress software to build money sites.
• How and where to get backlinks.
• Backlink resources inside the member area itself.
• How to get content for your niche sites.
• How to monetize the niche sites.
• All videos are step-by step and geared for the beginners to making money online. There are also audio versions as well as written transcripts.

Learn More At The Keyword Academy

Affilorama
This is another premier Internet marketing course that offers endless tutorials and guides for affiliate marketing, PPC, beginner and advanced SEO, website building and all types of guides for Internet marketing. What I like about this site is that it offers a lot of free lessons, as well as the option to sign up for the Affilo BluePrint and a Premium membership option and get access to advanced training, support and a plethora of website tools.

What I really like about this make money online for beginners program is that there are several guides, both free and in the paid membership from experts in various fields, who actually offer valuable and hands-on advice for SEO, blogging income, website promotion and more. Having read through a lot of this stuff I can tell you there is no fluff, only real and usable information in their Internet marketing course.

We have talked previously in other posts about there being a lack of a really useful and easy to use content spinner. Well those days are gone because John Leger, has created the ultimate and best content spinner ever made.

I am not going to go into the particulars of having this kind of tool in your Internet marketing arsenal, as those of us who have been around know quite well how useful and how much of a time saver this can be to properly utilize PLR articles and for other various uses, such as article marketing. In the big picture, this certainly will have multiple benefits.

For best results, always be thorough in the spin and make sure you don't start with crap, because no matter how good the spinner, you will end up with crap. Remember that traffic and users of your sites matter, and not just the Search Engines, so you have to provide content for both.

You can always check out the results in Copyscape to be sure that the content is fresh and unique.

The Best Content Spinner, really is the best! All the other crap spinners that are out there and cost a lot more cannot compare to this useful, easy to use and fast tool!

All I can say is finally, this is the Spinner all us marketer have been waiting!!!!!!!!!

For those who are going to scream at me about their flagship blogs and main sites, this content spinning tool is not meant to spin content on those types of sites.

The Best Spinner Features

1. No need to think up synonyms, it offers a drop down menu with tons of choices to replace words and phrases.

2. No need to insert coding and spin syntax, it does it automatically.

3. There is a replace feature, so you can replace words and phrases when you only need one rewrite of content.

4. The syntax coded version offers unlimited inserts of synonym words and phrases. You can choose one word, or a whole phrase or even a sentence to spin.

5. Produces all spun variations as well as spin syntaxed (coded) copies.

6. One click quick selection of synonyms

7. Unlimited nested spinning

8. You can edit and make changes manually within the spinning console

9. Easy save and exporting to clipboard

10. Word count and uniqueness percentages

11. Support for Spanish, German and other languages

12. A newly added article directory where you can submit articles that other members can post to their sites for backlinks!

AND

13. You can now post articles directly to your WordPress blogs from the spinner, and unique versions of it to several blogs

plus a members forum where the developer is active and offers on going support

and tons more features...

Truly this is the best content spinner I have ever seen and what all marketers have been waiting for and I urge you guys to try it out.

The regular price is $87 per year, but right now you can still try it for $7 for 7 days and take it for a full test run.

Check out the Video of the Spinner in Action, and try it before the price goes back up. Believe me you guys will be just as amazed as I was.

Video has become an essential part of the Internet. Many bloggers use video instead of written posts, videos are used as instructional aids, on sales pages and of course, since YouTube became so huge, using video as a promotional and link building tool for websites is one of the fundamental aspects of SEO. Millions of people visit YouTube everyday, as well as other video submission sites, the video's are included in most every SERP result in Google and once again if you make sure to properly SEO optimize each video submission with keywords, tags and a savvy researched keyword title, you will be amazed at the places it will show up over a short period of time making video just one more point of entry to your websites.

Free Video Creation/Screen Capture Software
I think many people are squeamish about using video because they think it's a complicated proposition, and they need a web cam, or some high tech equipment to create videos, well this is not true. Below is a list of the top free video creation tools that actually record what is on your  computer screen and your voice in the background and that provides a lot of options to make videos for any type of niche.

Cam Studio - The cream of the crop for open source video creation and screen capture and completely free! Add music, voice overs and more.

Jaycut - Create marketing videos or slideshows quickly with this online video editor, which is browser-based, can run on mobile  devices and free. Ability to remix and trim videos; add music, transitions, effects, captions and subtitles, automated transcoding and 1 click export to YouTube and Facebook.

Adobe Premier Express - Made for newbies, easy to use and all you need is a web browser and Adobe Flash® Player, which most of us have on our PC's. This is an online based video creation editor that can reorder, split, and trim your video clips; add music, transitions, and titles; add your favorite photos, graphics, and animation.

JING - Make short videos, capture screenshots and add your own labels and writing to them. There is a free version and a pro version for a few bucks per year.

GFX Video Writer - GFX Video Writer is not free, but it is cheap and very useful as it converts written articles into videos. Import an existing article to create a series of slides, then format each slide with fonts, colors, etc... add images if desired and background music from the software or do slide-by-slide voice overs and much more.

Top Video Submission Sites
Here are some of the top video submission sites where you can submit your videos, get backlinks and free website promotion.

www.youtube.com - PR9 - You do get a dofollow link back to your site in your channel profile.

http://vimeo.com - PR9
www.flickr.com - PR9
www.video.google.com - PR9
www.video.yahoo.com - PR9
www.photobucket.com - PR8
www.dailymotion.com - PR8
www.scribd.com - PR8
wordpress.tv - PR8
photobucket.com - PR7
www.blip.tv - PR7
www.metacafe.com - PR7
qik.com - PR7
www.viddler.com - PR7
MySpace - PR9
Facebook - PR10
www.stupidvideos.com - PR6
www.buzznet.com - PR6
www.stickam.com - PR6
www.gofish.com - PR6
www.revver.com - PR6
www.livevideo.com - PR6
www.flixya.com - PR5
castpost.com - PR5
www.videowebtown.com/community/index.php - PR5
vidmax.com - PR5
www.thatshow.com - PR4 - How-to video guides
www.clipchef.com - PR4 Cooking/recipe videos

Automatic Video Submission Software

TubeMogul Free - This is a very interesting site that offers a variety of video submission, distribution and tracking capabilities, I think it will be very effective for video marketing.

TubeMogul OneLoad is a free service that provides a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites. Users can also leverage our Destinations  functionality to easily distribute to custom sites as well as encode and create RSS feeds to syndicate your video anywhere. OneLoad distribution is accompanied by our powerful analytics showing you who, what and where videos are being viewed. In addition, TubeMogul's InPlay® analytics (for supported sites), provide the most advanced suite of video analytics on the market. See real-time viewership, audience engagement, geographic tracking, stream quality and much more for your videos.

VideoBot - $24.95 This is an automatic video submission software from Incansoft, a company that makes several great tools for marketers. I have not used this particular tool, but I do use SocialBot from Incansoft and I like it alot.

Video Submission Assistant Pro - Free! Haven't tried this myself, but it's free and submits video to several sites.

Video Post Robot - This is one of the most popular video submission software tools, but they are not taking new sign ups now, you can still go over and get on the alert list.

Info for Video Publishing on Your Own Sites

Google Crawling and Indexing Video - Best Practices

Video Sitemaps 101 - Making Your Videos Searchable from Google - If you are putting videos on your own sites or blogs then you should read this.

What kind of experiences have you had with video marketing? Any video submission sites or tools I missed please leave in comments.

Before implementing effective link building strategies it's important to make sure that your sites are optimized for the keywords you are targeting and the on-site SEO is properly implemented.  There should be a lot of keyword relevant content on your site and the home page should provide a lot of relevance for the keywords you are targeting. In reality, ranking is not just about effective link building strategies, it's also about the relevance of your site to its keywords. Remember that you are dealing with an algorithm in Google, a bot that automatically crawls sites and then decides if the site should rank for the keywords its targeting, it's never enough to just build links with proper anchor text or to have your keywords in the title tag of the page, the on site content must match as well.

The goal of any link building strategy is to become an authority in your niche, that is how Google views the quality links going to your sites, votes for your authority.
But you cannot be an authority if your websites are not loaded with authoritative content and so those high quality links will never come.

Junk Links = Junk Content.... that is how Google sees it!
and in reality that is a fact, high quality sites will not link to junk. So when your content is not top notch you will only be able to get crappy links.

Effective link building strategies in 2011 and beyond are all about Quality over Quantity. For example, while webmasters used to be able to use mass directory links to rank various keywords, those days are gone, and directory links are pretty much useless. Google has gotten really good at detecting and disqualifying links that are manually built, and even penalizing sites that go too far in their link building, so be careful  especially with new sites. Premium link building involves more consideration and a more careful process. What worked last year or two years is no longer viable because Google has gotten smarter and is in essence waging a war on crappy links!

Effective Link Building Strategies For Premium Link Building

1. The most effective link building strategy in premium link building is to make sure your link profiles look natural! All webmasters and bloggers with do manual link building, this is just a fact, but there is link building that is efficient and then there is the kind that's reckless and consequently can be destructive, ie: doing 3 guests posts on relevant blogs vs. 5000 profile links via automated software like Sick Submitter.

2. Don't be greedy in link building and don't rush to rank, long term ranking takes time, patience and quality links, NOT 10,000 profile links. The Google algorithm has gotten smarter, build links slowly and look to quality and not quantity.

3. One of the best link building strategies that I can offer you is that it's better to get 2 premium links than 500 crappy links.

4. Write high quality content and promote it to get natural links as much as possible, this is the best of premium link building that has longevity and guarantees long term success. Commenting on related Comment Luv Blogs is a safe and easy way to give your content exposure, which brings traffic, which brings links when other bloggers like what they read.

5. Google has confirmed that they will be using their own social site ratings, Google +1, as part of the ranking algorithm for SERP rankings, so make sure your content lives up to getting a +1 rating. The best WordPress Google +1 plugin is here.

6. Get links for ALL the pages on your site, NOT just the home page. Many people get all their links to the home page only, another red flag. In reality, you can rank the home page without a bunch of links because as you get links to your inner pages it naturally helps with the ranking of all the pages on your site, including the home page.

7. Build links slowly for new sites. Start with just a few and then let it age for a month or so before getting more and keep adding quality content.

8. Avoid crappy low quality links and especially when your site is new. Try to build a solid link profile with strong links, like contextual links from related sites as much as possible before getting crappy links, like a lot of articles, blog comments, irrelevant site links...etc. New sites do not have any trustworthy quality signals, such as quality links  and that is that's when low quality links can hurt the most.

9. Do reciprocal links correctly. Reciprocal links happen online and in in of themselves they are not bad, I have many here, posts I have written and linked within my posts to a blogger's content that I loved and then they linked to something I wrote, that's fine and happens naturally online all the time, but having pages of reciprocal links is a link scheme and totally useless and dangerous in 2011 link building.

10. The same as above goes for placing hundreds of reciprocal links on blogrolls, another big red flag that screams low quality, spammy link schemes or paid links for both the linker and the linkee!

11. Some of the most premium links and especially for new sites are Press Releases and since those spread around the Internet, that could bring traffic that will love your content and link to you, check out List of 41 Press Releases and How To Write Press Releases.

12. NEVER EVER use link pages, those are those web pages usually named something really stupidly obvious, like domain.com/links or worse yet domain.com/link-partners and the page is full of nothing but reciprocal links to other sites that have your site on their "links page". This is not only no where near premium link building, it's an obvious link scheme only meant to manipulate search engines into rankings. They are worthless, completely outdated and dangerous because it screams link scheme and can you sent to the Google black hole! If you have a links page, DELETE IT NOW!!!

13. Effective link building strategies include links from a diverse set of IP's.

14. Low quality directories are bad news, and especially those that advertise "Improve Your Rankings" "SEO Friendly", "Paid Link Gets DoFollow and Higher Placement", all bad news, useless links that carry no weight or any valuable link juice and can be especially negative for new sites with no trust rank.

15. Vary your anchor texts, vary, vary vary and vary again. Natural link profiles do not have the same exact keyword phrases for their anchors that site owners are targeting for each link, people do not link out that perfectly naturally. Basically each page, especially home page, should have no more than a 25% occurrence of the same anchor.  If every link in your profile has the exact same anchor for each page, then you can be sure to raise red flags and get a quick penalty from Google, like the -50, which lands every singe page of your site on Page 5 or lower, and there they will stay for months and years. Use the URL as the anchor, use click here, this site, add other words to the anchor to go along with the main keywords.

16. Don't do link bombs (yes, 1000 links in one day is a bomb, even 500, even 300).

17. Build links slowly - Quality over Quantity (did I say that all ready?)

18. Make friends with bloggers in your niche and network.

19. One of the best link building strategies is to link out to others. Create "Best Of" "Top 100" type posts referencing other's people work and sites in your niche, when you give other people links you get links back. Linking out is good, contrary to some myths out there, you don't have to hoard your link juice, and worry about losing traffic (if you're worried you probably don't have much anyway), and no linking out to good sites and content won't hurt your rankings, it actually helps, learn more at Linking Out From Your Website.

20. Track rankings to see the effectiveness of your link building strategies. Depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, you can sometimes rank with very few links.

21. Track your link building and anchors over time, Majestic SEO is free and works great.

22. Get both nofollow and dofollow links. Learn more at NoFollow vs Dofollow Links - Why You Need Both.

23. Checking out and duplicating competitor's links is a great link building strategy. Use Open Site Explorer and then try to get the same.

24. Contextual links are best - These are links that are within a related piece of text. Even better when the entire site is in a related niche.

25. Don't waste time on useless links that link directly to your money sites (Forum profile links, ie: Angela's links, directories, crappy article sites, ie: content farms)

26. Use social media. Make friends, connections, reach out to other bloggers and network, this often creates community which results in premium link building opportunities that come naturally. Learn more with Best Social Media Apps To Boost Your Brand.

27. Don't get stuck on getting links only from blogs, try to get links from static sites and various platforms. Learn more at Links From Static Website.

28. Write content that is link worthy, this is the absolute best way to get a natural link profile. Make sure to get that content noticed by using various social sites, Facebook, Twitter, and social sites specific to your niche. Here are 22 Social Sites To Promote Internet Marketing, Blogging, Make Money Online, SEO Related Content.

29. Guest posting is premium link building at its best. You would be surprised how many authority, "high end" blogs and sites accept guest posts, Mashable does, and many others as well. Usually you can find the link in their footer. Check out My Blog Guest, a community for guest blogging. Also, search in Google:

• Your Niche Guest Post
• Your Niche Write For Us
• Your Niche Submit Content
• Your Niche Submit Article
• Your Niche Submit Blog Post

30. STAY AWAY from Themes sponsorships. This is a link scheme where you pay to get links to your sites placed in WordPress theme footers, and users of those themes cannot remove the links, which can result in thousands of useless and harmful toge links and  Google has penalized sites time and time again for doing this, it's an obvious link scheme, useless and harmful to your sites.

31. Getting footer links in general is NOT premium link building. They are old news and scream PAID links!

32. Do not solicit hundreds of blogroll links (unless they are freely given of course).

33. Avoid home page, footer, blogroll, contextual or any kind of links on irrelevant sites. When Google sees a link to Weight Loss on a Laptop site that's a red flag for paid link.

34. Another solid link building strategy is to run a good contest with great prizes. Most readers will link to spread the word.

35. Be careful using link wheels. Link wheel link building strategies can be effective when done properly, which most people don't know how, and so then they become dangerous because they can be easily detected and viewed as link farms, which is against Google TOS.

36. Internal link building within your own site is an essential link building strategy. Placing links to your own content on relevant posts and with relevant anchor text goes a long way for SEO. Learn more at Internal Link Building for On Site SEO.

37. Build Links To Your Links - 2nd and 3rd tier links are very effective for getting a powerful flow of juice to your money or primary sites. Build links to your articles, and social media links, get links for the content that links to you. Example: You get a link on a blog in a post + Write an article on GoArticles and Ezine Articles linking to that post + Submit that article to social media links.  This is where many find profile links to be effective, they use them to boost links to their sites, instead of linking directly to their money or primary sites.

38. Retweet other bloggers work, they notice that you notice and that creates networking that can go beyond Twitter.

39. Ask for links! This is not something I spend a lot of time doing, but probably should, it's tedious work, but many top SEO's spend their days doing this type of premium link building. Most emails I get for this, and I get many each day are useless, because theses people send generic crap reciprocal link page requests, but sometimes some good ones come through and usually these emails contain some good content the webmaster has written and feels the a link on my site to that content is useful and relevant to my readers, so if you have linkable content that's one approach. Learn more about using this link building strategy at: Best Ways To Outreach Link Building.

40. Get an interview from someone important in your niche. This will usually earn you a backlink to that interview on their sites and others.

41. If you are going to comment on dofollow blogs make sure and check out the comment section for blogger moderation of comments. If you see a bunch of casino, sex or viagra author comment links that are being followed, don't leave your link there, that's a bad neighborhood!

42. Link baits are still great link building strategies, learn more here.

43. YouTube is a great source of traffic (and the link in the profile is dofollow), but more important than that link is the fact that YouTube and other video submissions sites are loaded with viewers. You can get a lot of exposure, traffic back to your sites and if your content is top notch - backlinks!!!!!!

44. AVOID 3 way link exchanges, and especially with low quality sites. This is another old school link scheme that can cause issues with Google because if you do a lot of these then a link farm schema can be easily detected. I get lots of email requests for these and it's always shady because the webmaster offers some crappy sites for exchange. Usually these are sites created just for this purpose, they have no real value, they are not updated or promoted correctly so the link itself  is pretty useless, the last email listed a site that had 215 blogroll links all ready, all irrelevant by the way. What a scam, you give them a link on your high end site and they give you a link on crap?!??!

45.  Be careful if you're buying links. It's not worth the penalty, especially avoid buying links at Digital Point Forums, many sites there are so obviously selling links and Google will detect them sooner than later.

46. Convert your best articles to PDF format and submit to the bestPDF directories like Scribd and Docstoc. This let's you show off your work, and can get traffic which can lead to more links.

47. The final link building strategy for premium link building is that link relevance is more important than link quantity! Yes, it's better to get 5 links on relevant sites than 50 links from irrelevant sites.

More Link Building Strategies and Premium Link Building Guides of Interest

• Link Building In A Google Panda World
• Effective Link Builders
• Link Building Q & A With Experts
• 4 Types of Authority Links And How To Get Them
• SEO Checklist for New Websites
• Getting Links From Broken Links
• Understanding Link Based Spam Analysis Techniques (really technical)

Please comment and share with us the link building strategies you use and those that I have missed...

Keyword research is one of the, if not THE central aspects of making money online, blogging and e-commerce. Without proper keywords targeted traffic will not find your site in any of the search engines and you will lose out on subscribers, buyers and any other type of traffic you may be targeting. It's a fact that proper niche research and niche research, keyword research and then keyword analysis are the essential steps in having a successful online venture. Good keywords bring traffic and traffic brings money.

There are two parts to keyword research for any one website
1. The main niche research for the main keywords of the site that is done only once when initially creating and launching a new website.
2. Ongoing research for keywords that is conducted on an ongoing basis for internal pages for content that is constantly added to a site. This guide will focus on the main niche niche research and site wide keywords.

The purpose of this guide is to look at the search for keyword phrases as it pertains to making money online, and the best way to make money online is with affiliate marketing, where some commission is made by promoting particular products. Often times people can also launch review type blogs, where they just post about various products and make money with Adsense ads or other type of advertising that is peppered around their content.

Whether you want to build affiliate marketing sites or blogs, and make money with eBay products by using the very easy PHPBay wordpress plugin, or make money with Amazon with the excellent EasyAzon WordPress Plugin, or maybe you want to build a product comparison website with the CompariPress plugin, it starts with proper keyword and niche research.

3 Steps to Keyword Research, Niche Research and Keyword Analysis
There are 3 steps to finding the best keywords, niche research, locating the optimal keywords within the main niche and keyword analysis, here is a detailed look at these 3 steps.

1. Niche Research - Finding Main Niche Ideas and Markets

Overall, to start with you are looking for main niche ideas, for example, laptops, computers, televisions, kitchen appliances, weight loss, credit, mortgage...etc... words that are very general. There are millions of possibilities of things people are searching for. Below are some resources to find niche ideas.

Niche Research Resources

• My Simon - Top Searches
• Amazon Best Sellers
• Best Buy Top Rated Products
• Overstock Departments
• Ebay Pulse
• Bizrate Top Products
• Shopzilla Top Searches
• Yahoo Shopping Brands List
• Google Product Search
• Home Shopping Network Top Searches
• The Find
• Yearly Shopping Trends Report
• Clickbank Marketplace
• AOL Hot Searches

2. Keyword Research - Locating Optimal Keywords within the Main Niche

Most of the time the main niche keywords, such as those listed above, are way too competitive to even try to rank for. For example, the keyword laptop is really impossible to rank for, so we need to find more detailed phrases that people are searching for related to those products, such as cheap laptop computers, still competitive but much less so. So once you find those niches that are of interest to you it's time to use some keyword research tools to find the related longer phrases and keywords for those main niches. Basically you are looking for keywords that have high amounts of monthly or daily searches with the lowest amount of competition possible.

Good Free Keyword Tools for Keyword Research

Remember these tools are just estimates, but it's as good as it gets for getting an idea of the search volumes for various keywords.

• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Google Keyword Tool

If you have the money to spend I highly recommend you check out Micro Niche Finder, this is a premier keyword software suite that delivers a variety of useful features and comprehensive niche and keyword research.

3. Keyword Analysis - Crunch the Numbers

We want those phrases that have a good amount of search volume per month and also those that are low enough in competition to rank for.  There are 3 things that you are looking for when it comes to keyword analysis:

I follow these guidelines when doing keyword research

• At least 10,000 + searches for all keywords per month
• No more than 100,000 competing sites in SERPS when searching allintitle:"keywords"
• No more than 1 or 2 PR 3+ sites in first page of SERPS for particular keywords. A lot of high PR sites is an indicator that the keyword is very competitive and it will be very difficult if not impossible to rank.

Press releases are a great way to promote websites, blogs, spread the word about an e-commerce site or any web business. Writing press releases that are effective and DO NOT sound like advertising or a sales page is key when it comes to those press releases being spread throughout the web on legitimate and credible sites. A press release is a really viral method of website promotion, where various sources, like press sites, news sites, bloggers, journalists, web announcement sources, search engines and others can pick up the releases and therefore spread the word about your web space all over the net, giving you a lot of buzz, links back to your sites and mass promotion.

The leader in press release distribution is PRWeb, they accept  releases and provide mass web distribution to news sites, search engines, various press sites, bloggers, PR bloggers and other places, their packages start at $80, if you can afford it, it's really worthwhile and right now they are offering $50 Off First Purchase for the SEO Package and also a general 10% off your first news release. If you really cannot swing the money you should not spend it because you can still submit your press releases manually to various free press release sites listed below.

Writing Press Releases

The key to success with press releases is how they are written. Since most good press release sites are very picky about the format of and how a release is written it's crucial to understand how to properly construct them. The worst thing you can do is make the copy sound like a sales page or an advertising piece for your website, that IS NOT the purpose of this, the release needs to be newsworthy, that is really the key. A well-written piece, like this one on Isaac Dabah, will have a fairly neutral, unbiased tone and present a number of detailed facts about the news item. PR Web has the best guide on how to write press releases, (click the whitepaper icon to download) along with a long list of how-to's and tips for press releases and news releases.

I also found another gem, Press Release O-Matic, this awesome free tool takes you through all the required sections of the press release with a wizard like interface section by section, you fill in the info asked for and then generate a full release in HTML and plain format, check it out at  Press Release O-Matic.

If you do not want to mess around with the writing and the learning you can have the press releases written for you, 99 Cent Articles - Modern Products writes really professional press releases and they are very well written. They also have write/distribute packages as well.

Just remember that the better and more correctly the press release is written the more other sites and people are are likely to pick them up and reprint them for mass promotion.

Submitting Press Releases

There are two options for submitting releases, manual site by site submission that is free or paying a service where you submit the release once and they submit it to various sources on their list. Each paid service will have a list of their own places and people where they will submit your release to, some of the paid services have thousands of destinations on their list. Below is a list of free sites to which you can submit your release manually, and then a list of the paid sites that will distribute your release to various places for a fee, like PRWeb mentioned above.

41 Free Press Release Submission Sites
Below is a list of 41 free press release sites sorted by page rank where you can submit your releases. This is the manual method, more time consuming, but it's free, so if you cannot afford to pay a service like PRWeb or the other paid services I listed below then you can do it yourself for free.

Press Release Sites That Charge A Fee

Remember that you do not need to submit to every one of these, with PRWeb for example, you submit one release and they distribute for you to many different places, like news sites, bloggers, journalists and various other relevant web services.

If you guys have any tips for writing or submitting press releases please share in the comments!

The product I reviewed recently, Jiffy Articles to create unique content is now live and the official launch discount of 40% off is good from now to midnight Friday, November 25th! Also, there is an option to pay quarterly, instead of the year in advance so you can pay less upfront.

What Is Jiffy Articles And How It Creates Unique Website Content And Articles

Jiffy Articles is a great tool to create unique content fast, I can write 600 word articles in 5 minutes with it.

Basically it gives you an article template based on the category you select and keywords you may enter, that is filled with snippets that you can then rewrite and add more info to. This is much easier than writing content from scratch because Jiffy Article writers have done a lot of the research and all you have to do is build on it, so easy and much more fun than writing from scratch.

Check out the video of Jiffy Articles in action, it really is amazing and very unique from any other content software on the web

There are thousands of templates in the software so you can create unique content for these niches:
Business

• Affiliate Marketing/Article Marketing/Home Business/Internet Marketing/Blogging/Forex
• Network Marketing/Search Engine Optimization/Social Media Marketing
• Web Hosting/Website Design

Computers And Electronics

• Computer Security

Finance

• Credit Repair/Insurance/Personal Finance/Real Estate - Buying

Health

• Acne/Aging/Beauty/Depression/Diabetes
• Fitness/Weight Loss/Nutrition
• Panic Attacks/Personal Development/Skin Care
• Stop Smoking/Stress/Teeth Whitening/Tinnitus

Home And Family

• Cooking/Dog Training/Gardening/Home Improvement/Parenting/Pregnancy/Solar Energy

Recreation

• Camping/Golf/Photography/Travel

Shopping

Weddings

Electronics

• Appliances/Camera, Photo & Video/Car Electronics & GPS/Cell Phones & Accessories/Desktops & Servers
• Home Audio & Theater/Laptops, Tablets & Netbooks/MP3 Players & Accessories/Musical Instruments
• Printers & Ink/TV & Video

Create Unique Content For...

Jiffy Articles can be used to create unique content for websites, blogs, promotions, article marketing, blog networks, and all the various places where we need to have unique and original content and articles in Internet Marketing.

Have Articles Written For You

Another cool feature of Jiffy Articles is when you are short on time you can order an article to be written for you.

Just select from one of the thousands of templates (keywords and topic based) and order at 1 cent a word, that means $3 or 300 words, $5 for 500 words..etc. The turn around time is amazing, I ordered a 500 word article and got it back in 3 hours, the quality was excellent, well researched and well written.

CHECK OUT JIFFY ARTICLES AND SAVE 40% NOW!

There have been several SERP and Google algorithm updates in the last few months. Panda wiped out some heavy hitters earlier this year, specifically the so called "content farms", like Ezine Articles, and many small websites, including small e commerce sites. Learn more at SEOMoz - How Panda Changed SEO.

Then last month Panda 2 hit, and many have been complaining of lost rankings, huge losses in traffic and especially for long tail searches and brand related content. You can see some threads of many discussing these SERP changes, Google algorithm tweaks and lost rankings and traffic at these forum posts: Webmaster World Google SEO and SERP Updates, Google Fresh Algo Update and Warrior Panda Update 2.

And this month there is another update, being termed Google Fresh. The  Google Fresh algorithm update hit the SERPS, where Google is now saying they will favor fresh content over more dated stuff. Learn more about this at: SEOMoz - Google Fresh and  7 Marketing Tactics To Rank Better With Fresh.

Another must read is the Google Search Blog Post On 10 Recent Algorithm Changes.

Aaron Wall, of SEOBook, has posted the illustration shown below about the last few of years of changes and evolution of Google SERPS and how relevancy has slowly evolved into what we see today, brands being favored in the SERPS.  This is an interesting analysis of the SERPS and the various algorithm changes in Google.

This is definitely something we should consider in the future of SEO, and when choosing niches, especially in affiliate marketing. If the search engine trend described below continues, it can greatly affect us, the small marketers, that are swimming among the sharks in search.

The information below is being freely shared by Aaron Wall, and you can get the embed code to post on your sites from SEOBook.

What Do You Guys Think? Anyone Lost Rankings? Affected by Panda Or Fresh? Do You See Brands Being Favored For Your Keywords?

Infographic by SEO Book

Looks like Google just completed another page rank update around November 6-9, 2011. It seems that they are doing page rank updates consistently every three months again since the last one was in August. Several of my sites went up and two went down. This is usually the case when you do not get fresh links for some time.

As always, I do not put much emphasis on page rank because it is just one metric of a websites quality and usually does not have much effect on rankings, but it is still an important aspect of our sites especially for those that sell advertising.

You can check page rank online using tools like Page Rank Checker or use the SEOQuake Firefox Add On that adds a useful toolbar on your browser and provides tons of information about your site and other sites you visit, like age, indexed pages, cache, link data and more.

How did everyone do? Anyone see any increases in PR? Decreases?

Google AdWords has been the dominant source of Internet advertising placement for several years, yet its crown may be beginning to fall from its digital head. YouTube’s launch of True View is making AdWords far more powerful, and receiving a higher viewership and interaction as a result. Internet marketers and online users alike are beginning to ask themselves, which is the best route to take for advertising through an AdWords marketing campaign? Is it True View or Google? Well let’s find out once and for all.

True View

True View works as an AdWords campaign, but for Internet video, or more specifically YouTube.  True View is quite unique in that it offers users the opportunity to skip advertisements on display. Now you may be thinking that’s a bit unfair on those advertisers who have paid for that ad placement, but advertisers only pay for their ad if it doesn’t get skipped, which is great.

This goes along the same lines as Google AdWords, where advertisers only pay if their link gets a click, but True View has one exceptional advantage – a 5 second intro.

You might not think 5 seconds is an awful lot to convince an audience not to skip your advertisement. Yet a staggering 70% of YouTube users don’t actually skip these adverts, showing that this 5 second introduction is clearly a powerful influential advertising tool.

A viewer who chooses to skip an advert, obviously does not want to watch an advert, and similarly a user who chooses to let an advert play, surely does want to watch an advert. You’d have to be pretty strange to choose not to skip an advert if you didn’t want to watch it.

What this means is that a user who chooses to freely watch an advertisement must in some way, shape or form be interested to see more about the product, brand or service. This interest shows that the viewer is engaged with the content and as a result of this engagement is far more likely to remember the brand being advertised, take in its message, and take physical or digital action towards the brand or business after the ad has finished. This is the kind of viewership advertisers really want to receive, so this True View approach is beneficial to both viewer and advertiser.

So, what can you really achieve in a 5 second intro? After all it is only 5 seconds. Well here’s a screenshot storyboard of the latest Wii advert on YouTube that uses the True View feature.

During the 5 second True View advert introduction we see the following:

During this first 5 seconds there has been exciting graphic animations, a clear shot of the brand, a shot of a related Bespoke organization, and two Wii users talking to camera (the viewer) in a very excitable fashion. These quick edits grab the audiences’ attention and bring them into the interaction with the two girls on camera. The communication between the two girls towards the viewer engages the audience and encourages them to continue viewing.

So what happens after the 5 second mark?

After the 5 second mark the ad gets even more exciting:

True View is great at allowing users the constant option to skip the advertisement rather than taking the privilege away from them during the ad. This particular Wii advert is very aware the “Skip ad now” feature will begin to appear after the 5 second mark, and as a result of this awareness the creators make the remainder of their advertising content vibrant, fast and exciting. By keeping the audience entertained throughout its duration, the ad can wind down its short 18 second length, spread its brand awareness and gain the favour of the viewer by providing quality ad content, without the viewer being overly aware that they’re watching an everyday advertisement.

Google AdWords
As mentioned above Google AdWords works a lot like True View in that advertisers only have to pay if their ad gets clicked. AdWords is perhaps the Grandfather of such advertising approaches, and annoyingly it looks like it’s a Grandfather too.

Unlike True View, an AdWord placement on Google provides very little personalization. You can have your website name, website header, URL and a small one line text description. Take a look for yourself at this particular example for the term “acting”:

The top 3 listings enclosed in the pale yellow box are AdWord placements. Being at the top of Google is certainly a good position to be in, but the yellow box takes the shine off such a placement. In your eyes do you see “en.wikipedia.org/wikki/Acting” as the more prominent listing or do you see “www.nyfa.edu” as the dominant listing? This is an ongoing debate amongst advertisers and Internet users alike.

Personally the pale box detaches the 3 listings from the rest of the search results, and if anything makes them look more like spammy advertisements, and less like helpful organizations to check out in relation to your search query.

It’s hard to get interested in a dreary looking Google listing, and a text based ad is certainly far less engaging than a 5 second video clip. It’s very surprising Google isn’t doing more to make these ads more engaging, especially considering its unprecedented popularity as a search engine and marketers constant goal to be at the top of Google.

If you had the choice between Google AdWords and True View in terms of advertising placement, it’s a no brainer really. Yes you do indeed have to have a video before you can have a video ad, but the interaction and engagement it provides is far more powerful than a bland, slightly yellow Google listing.

Although Google won’t mind too much if True View begins to take over as the number one AdWord advertising source, after all it does own YouTube...

About The Author

Andy Havard is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions,
a UK based Internet video production company. 

For those who are interested in hiring link building services, let me just say BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE!  Many SEO firms and link building services are at the very least shady, and at the very most down right crooks! One of the dangers with link building services is that you never know what their going to do until it's too late. Many webmasters have found out the hard way when their sites go to the Google black hole and they figure out it's because there are thousands of bad links, built too fast by unethical link building services that are suspect and unnatural. And, removing links is a very difficult and often impossible task.

Not all link building strategies are legitimate, not all links are good for sites and not all companies know how to build proper link building strategies and get premium links in the proper time frame to get long term website rankings and avoid various manual and algorithmic penalties that Google is famous for. The truly effective and legitimate link building services and SEO firms costs thousands of dollars, which most people who are trying to make money online can never afford, nor is it really necessary. Learning how to build links properly is an important skill that all webmasters and Internet marketers need to attain and there are plenty of link building services online that are cost effective, legitimate and really work as told by previous users to leave testimonials which allows for a lot more transparency.

That being said there is a proper way to hire link building services without risking your money sites.

Tips For Choosing Link Building Services

• #1 is legitimate user feedback, this is usually found on various webmaster forums, such as, Warrior Forum and Digital Point with reviews being left by real users who have used the link building service. Do not trust reviews that you find on the link building site, Google the services name and find impartial reviews instead.
• Another essential aspect of good link building services is complete and total transparency. It should be evident where the links will be built, what kind of links they are, how many links will be created and in what time frame.
• If the link building service does not rank for its own search terms that is a good sign they do not know what their doing. Just check their site title and see if they rank.
• Link building services that guarantee you #1 Google positions are BAD NEWS! No one can make those guarantees, there are too many variables and many of those depend on your particular keywords, competition, age of your site, and so many other elements that no one can really guarantee that and if they make that claim they are not being honest!
• Before you use any link building service you should have an understanding of SEO, link building and the current landscape of the search engines. This way you will understand how to best spend your money and not waste it on useless services.

Warriors For Hire

If you are looking to build links to your sites some of the most premium link building services can be found on Warrior Forum at the Warriors For Hire Section. The feedback and reviews from previous users is priceless, and there are a lot of various link building options constantly being updated. There are tons of premium link building offers at Warrior that are transparent and you will know exactly what is being done to your site because you can pick and choose those services that you want to use, instead of handing over your site to some link building service where you have no control over what types of links they will build for you. Once again, as I mentioned before, beware of the link building services that offer 10,000 forum profile links in one day, these are real popular now, but they are a useless waste of time and money and can really get you a Google penalty real quick. Many of these offers do not vary anchors and you never want to get thousands of manual links all at once anyway ( unless they are natural of course ). Profile links are so obviously manually built, who else but the webmaster would post a link to his site on a 1,000 different forum  profiles?

Don't rush to build links too fast, long term ranking takes time and sites need to age, many webmasters get ranking penalties because they build too many crappy links too fast. Remember that while there are a lot of great link building service offers on Warriors For Hire you always want Quality over Quantity.