Category: Marketing

3 Ways Article Marketing Can Work for You

If you’re a veteran to internet marketing, you know how many people are offering instruction courses on how to get more traffic. So much money is spent on these courses and ebooks, yet it’s rare for people to see results, but the issue may not have to do with the courses. Instead of just focusing on one aspect of driving traffic, these programs try to teach too much at once, and thus people aren’t able to learn effectively. In order to drive traffic, you must develop the skill, and it’s best to start with no-cost methods before you go on to the ones that cost money. Article marketing happens to be one such method that can help you get started without any major hurdles. Next is what you can expect if you do article marketing correctly. There are even topic specific article directories available online; so let’s say you’re writing articles about 35mm slide scanner, you can choose to submit them to these targeted article directory and get relevant traffic to your site.

Article marketing is a great way to educate your prospects about your products before trying to sell anything to them outright. People on the internet are tired of being sold things, but they are open to recommendations. This is why you should use articles to give them the information the readers’ need that will help them make a buying decision. When you write an article, you can put in some useful information about the topic in general, discuss your own product in particular and conclude by mentioning that they can learn more by visiting your site. You can spark your readers’ interest this way, and they won’t feel you are trying too hard to sell something to them. This pre-selling stage is very important because it reduces your visitors’ resistance to buying something.

Every online business should aim at building a strong goodwill with their prospects, as it will help on the long run. That’s exactly what you’re attempting to do when you go about article marketing. When you create quality articles and give prospects the information they want, there will be a higher chance of them buying from you when they are in need for your service/product. Not only will you build a great relationship with your potential clients, but you will stand out among those competing against you. Now, if you get all that for nothing, can you imagine what you’d get if you paid? For example, if the keyword you’re aiming for is negative and slide scanner; you simply need to write articles on it and submit it to popular directories to get targeted traffic.

Articles can also be used in things like ebooks and reports that help drive more traffic. Another good way to go about it is to re-pack the articles into one book to give to subscribers or just people who visit your site in general. It’s always a good practice to give people the rights to reprint the materials so that you can get an even greater amount of traffic. If your reports are good enough, you could get traffic for months or even years to come.

Effectively, article marketing can allow you to increase profits even while you’re taking advantage of a truly free marketing medium. Your articles can be used to promote products directly or to generate a mailing list filled with prospective customers. No matter what method you choose, it’s vital that you keep working consistently at it to see results. When you begin to see the results of your efforts, you might consider outsourcing your writing to another person. Outsourcing the writing and submission could mean you’ve built a hands-free marketing machine that could mean big profits for your internet business.  Make sure your research is not limited; for instance if your chosen topic for article writing is negative and slide scanner, you should try and go beyond it to find similar topics to expand your scope and write more articles.

How to Be a Better E-mail Marketer

Marketing with email is one of the indisputed champions when it comes to earning an online income.

Simple idea… you email people who have raised their hand and said they want to get email from you. Your email contains marketing message that refers to some product, then you show them how they can get it. As you may imagine, there’s a lot more that goes on with this type of marketing than most people realize. It really does take time, effort, and work to compel people to give you their money. Here’s what happens – once you work hard to put everything into place, you’ll discover things change and what is possible will be a true eye-opener.

We’ll now go into what this amazing marketing method can do for you – today.

Listing too many sales offers in one e-mail will cripple your sales instead of increasing them. Too many sales pitches will leave your subscribers with a very long and non-targeted message that they won’t be able to act upon because their attention will be divided between the different sales messages. Sticking to one product or offer per e-mail message will save you time and allow you to more effectively sell things. Your sales message is what gets people to buy so don’t disrupt the process by introducing an entirely different product into the mix. As said earlier, stick to one solution per e-mail. You will probably hear that you need to disguise some words in your subject line by using numbers or misspellings to keep the spam catchers from trashing your messages. Almost all of the time this only becomes an issue for those people who promote shady products or are involved in unethical practices. Ultimately, the only thing that you are going to do by trying to sneak your massages into an in-box is portray yourself as one of the scammers. Save the e-mails with the spammy subject lines for your friends; you are running a business.

You also shouldn’t send messages too often. Some people believe you need to send emails daily, or even every other day to be effective. This is just too much. You’ll be spending time and effort trying to think up original things to write about in your emails each day. Besides, if your mailing list get used to receiving emails from you daily that always try to sell them seomthing, they’re more likely to delete them unread. It is possible to turn your buyers off if you bother them too much. Think of over-emailing as the internet marketing equivalent to a pushy salesperson hassling you endlessly to buy something to the point that you eventually get completely turned off and walk away.

There are artistic elements to email marketing. It’s not hard to notice a lot of badly written emails, and it’s a result of failing to recognize list marketing for what it is. So many get tripped up because they don’t understand relationship marketing, and they’re too eager to make the sale. You need to become knowledgable and take the time to create good messages that are effective. Persist, and you’ll get better.

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Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

Designing enterprise Web sites for search engine visibility has been a major thread of this column since I started writing for MediaPost several years ago (side note: I will hit my 100th column in a few months).  URL structures, redirection plans, dealing with process obstacles, and putting research up front have all been topics I’ve previously covered.  Today I am going to build on a column that I wrote almost a year ago, entitled “How Search Fits Into The Redesign Process.” To start, a list of major considerations for designing an enterprise Web site for greater search visibility is provided below. (Please read that column for more info on each of the following points):

I was recently going through a discovery process with a Fortune 500 executive who was guiding his company’s Web site redesign, and I inquired directly about the search aspects of the project. His response: “Search is not relevant to this process.” Contrary to what he was saying, search was in fact critical to the overall process; he was just clearly unaware of his company’s campaign history and investment in the search channel. In light of this response, seemingly old and worn advice is worth another spin or two around the block, especially if it will help convey the natural search value of a legacy Web presence.

In enterprise marketing, it is not a question of whether your company’s site is going to be redesigned or not, it is simply a question of when. Most companies do some kind of major redesign or tweak every two years, and if they haven’t just relaunched, they are planning for the next one. So the “when” is most often “now,” no matter where you are in the process. The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment.

So how do you fit natural search into the process? Here are a few ideas to start:

Use site language and messaging that is consistent with the user’s perception of your product or service.
For the most part, search engines are still very literal, and truly effective semantic intelligence still lies far ahead. Position content and language that reflects the way users search, in order to rank for those terms. The path to understanding this language is through linguistic and keyword research, and also by studying and knowing your target. Language and keywords impact and guide information architecture and content strategies, among other aspects.

Read your log files (and/or review analytics reports).
If you want to know what you stand to lose in a site redesign, take a look at what you are currently gaining in terms of traffic, visibility, revenue, and conversions. Are there any particular Holy Grail terms like “travel,” “shopping,” or “banking” that may be giving you a lot of traffic? See a section of a site that is referring a ton of long-tail terms? You will likely find some areas that are worth preserving.

Ensure that RIAs are both crawlable and indexable by search engines.
Rich Internet technologies that are implemented without search engines in mind can instantly render a once-thriving natural search program into total obscurity. Flash and Ajax are key tools in the design and development toolbox, but considerations must be made for search upfront.

Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues.
When you change phone numbers, the phone company will leave a recorded message telling the new number to the person who called your old number. This is the effect a 301 permanent redirect has on a search engine — it applies the old URL and backlinks to the new URL; the search engine is happy, and your site is happy. A canonicalization problem occurs when 302 redirects are pointed to permanently moved pages. I have seen instances where clients have gone through four or five redesigns using 302s, and a string of six-to-eight redirects points to a single page, each with its own set of inbound links. This basically makes it difficult for engines to determine the “real URL” to show in results and apply backlinks to. How do you fix it? See the next point.

Set up a redirection plan.
In just about every redesign project, at least some content is removed, and URLs go away. Help the engines and your users by using a 301 redirect to point them to the most similar page on your site, or the site map, home page, or custom 404 page. Spend the time to map out which URLs are going away, and where they should be pointed. And don’t sit on the plan —do it on the day or evening that a site is pushed out of production.

Don’t remove content that supports coveted rankings without assessing risks first.
One mistake I see frequently is when content is removed from a site, with no replacement content to support the valuable rankings and visibility it has previously created. Before axing existing site content, determine how difficult it would be to re-attain the ranking, the ranking’s importance in terms of traffic and revenue, or if it is your CEO’s favorite pet ranking. Then create a plan for bridging new content, or leaving it alone.

Include search as both a business and technical requirement before planning has even started.
If search is not a consideration and priority early on, then it will be 10 times harder and more expensive to try to re-engineer at the end of or after the project.

Ensure that there is a voice for search within the Web site team structure.
Having a search specialist as part of the Web design team (and implementing their recommendations) will do a lot to ensure a healthy transition in the redesign and relaunch process, in addition to the potential for growth. The list above is useless without some subjective strategy behind it. Get experienced search optimization help that is fit to your company’s unique situation, needs and goals, and make it an integral part of the redesign process.

These are just a few considerations to get you started. Feel free to add your own thoughts and considerations for redesign at the Search Insider blog.


Rob Garner is strategy director for digital marketing company iCrossing and writes for Great Finds, the iCrossing blog. Contact him via email at rob.garner@icrossing.com,and follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robgarner.

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Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

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Article Marketing: 3 Simple Steps for Getting Started

writingEvery business owner has this thought, “I know I need to be marketing my website–but how?” And then you keep hearing about article marketing, how it’s a great and simple (and cost effective!) way to bring exposure to your website, build links, increase traffic and bolster search engine ranking.

After hearing the dozenth colleague recommend it, you decide to take the plunge yourself.

Now what? What do you do, where do you start, what should you write? How do you really ‘get into’ article marketing?

A legion of questions jumps into your brain stopping you dead in your tracks.

Whenever we start a new endeavour, there’s a bit of trepidation, but if you can take a few practical steps going in the right direction that feeling of nervousness and confusion will start to fade away.

Whenever a newbie article marketer asks me how to get started, I give them these 3 simple steps:

1) Write an article.

Duh, right? You probably already figured that part out, but before you start writing keep these guidelines in mind:

*Write on your area of expertise. If you happen to sell products at your site, please don’t write specifically about the product you sell. To do that would make the article appear sales oriented, and with article marketing the articles are always educational. Write as if you were a teacher trying to help a newcomer understand your niche.

*Do you have already content that you can re-purpose into an article?

If you have a blog or helpful articles on your website, you may be able to save a little time by using the original content as a launching pad for a new article.

The idea is to *teach* your reader something, so you can look through your previous blog posts, find some that are of the “how to” variety (posts that teach folks how to do things) and then use that post as an outline for an article.

Please note: it isn’t advisable to use content from you blog or website verbatim in an article–re-work the content so that the post or articles on your website remain unique.

*Keep your articles between 450–1500 words, but ideally try to shoot for 700-800 word articles. The first parameter are word limits that most publishers will accept. The 700-800 word articles are ones that are most attractive to ezine editors because they fit nicely in most newsletters.

*After you’ve written your article, be sure to proofread it thoroughly–remember that once you submit this article it will be published on websites over which you have no control, so you want to be sure your article is free of typos and grammatical errors.

2) Find a publisher.

There are 3 main publishing avenues for article marketers–article directories, ezine editors, and announcement lists.

For your first article you may just want to do a Google search for “article directories” and choose one to submit to. You will need to register at the directory, filling out a “new author” form, and then do the various steps to activate your account.

3) Submit your article.

*Be sure that your article is in text format only before trying to copy and paste it into the online form. By having your article in text only format, it helps your article appear with the correct line spacing and formatting. If you do paste your article directly from Word (which is not text only), you may need to fiddle with the article for a while until the formatting is correct.

*Choose the appropriate category for your article. The category is determined by the topic of your article–this is one reason why it’s extremely important to write articles on the topic of your website.

*Spend time crafting a strong resource box. Wtih article marketing the resource box is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The author bio that includes a link to your website makes it possible for traffic to flow from your article to your site. That’s what you’re going for, isn’t it? More traffic!

For the most effective resource box, be sure to include these 4 items:

Your full name. A little bio info and a few of your credentials. A reason to click through to your website. A link to your website.

That wasn’t hard, was it?

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step–this is your single step.

As you get used to submitting articles, you’ll be ready to learn more advanced techniques, but for now these basics will serve you nicely. As a beginner, the idea is simply to get comfortable with the writing and submitting process–do these 3 simple steps and you’re on your way to becoming an expert!


A trick that many expert article marketers use is to submit article automatically, saving time and increasing their article exposure. Steve Shaw created the web’s first ever 100% automated article distribution service, SubmitYOURArticle.com, which distributes your articles to hundreds of targeted online publishers with the click of a button! For more information, go to =>
http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

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Article Marketing: 3 Simple Steps for Getting Started

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