Link Building Services? Top Five Most Important Secrets!
Link building services are vital for many businesses, which need good Google rankings but can’t spend the time on developing the expertise to get them on their own. You’ll find a lot of advice about DIY link building on the Internet, and it generally looks something like: * Submit your site to web directories * Write articles with good info and real value * Regularly create press releases * Comment on dofollow blogs * Start your own set of blogs and maintain them These are the core activities of link building services … but they also have a few tricks up their sleeve that aren’t widely known! Here we look at some of the secrets that link building services use to get top Google ranks for their clients. 1. Look for links with no mention Link building services can use special parameters within search engines to find websites that already mention one of your products, your website or your brand, but don’t actually include the link. Sometimes then a friendly email asking for a followed link is all that is needed! 2. Friends and family Do a customer’s friends and family have their own websites … and if not, do they have MySpace or Facebook pages, do they participate in forums or Yahoo Answers, or otherwise publish content on Web 2.0 sites? Simply collaborating to get the link out there via people who know the customer personally can get a great deal of links. 3. Profile sites Yes, many social bookmarking sites and networking sites don’t have followed links. But remember that it isn’t only search engine spiders that crawl the web, and what people see on the Internet isn’t always a direct result of a Google search. MySpace, Dig, Facebook, Delicious, Frappr, Newsvine, Yahoo 360 … real people read these sites and may follow the links from them. 4. Images used without credit Creative commons images are supposed to be used with a link and credit. Using image identification tools, link building services can discover where your sites images have been used without identification, and contact the website owner asking for the proper credit … and link! 5. Quotables Ask for a quote from somebody at a company in your niche to use in your site’s press release. Publish it on site, and then your link building service can contact the quoted person, offering the chance to republish whole on their website with a live link back to the customer’s site. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

Blast Off! With Email Blast Advertising
Email blast advertising campaigns can get great results for businesses, especially if you use them sparingly. Getting maximum coverage, that is aligned with the novelty value of seeing a different sender in their inbox, can tempt many people to click through to an offer. If you’ve set up something irresistible, you have a true business builder on your hands. Today we are looking at email blast advertising, and some guidelines for using it with your business. Spam laws Familiarize yourself with the CAN SPAM Act before you even start thinking about what offer you are going to send out … or make sure you hire someone that deals with it for his or her living. CAN SPAM legislation might consider your message to be in violation of the law if any of the following criteria apply: * It contains misleading or false header information, including a deceptive subject, to or from * The receiver is not able to opt out of future mailings from the sender * The sender’s physical email address must be included * It must be clear that the email is an advertisement - this usually means literally stating ‘This advertising messages was sent by…’ or something similar Timing for email blast marketing Research and statistics show that people are more likely to open unsolicited emails and click on the links contained in them on Sundays and Fridays - when work is least likely to be demanding their attention, and socialization is relatively low. Send an email blast marketing message on these days for best penetration. Mondays are the next day where your recipients are most likely to read the message. Share This buttons and options You’ve seen the ‘Share This’ buttons all around the web. You can make the most of your email blast marketing, and perhaps expand your subscription list, by including the buttons in your email messages as well. Research shows that around a quarter of people share content via email on most days, and close to another quarter share content several times a week. Tracking Internet marketing services can usually help you with implementing tracking on your email blast marketing messages. This allows you to see what percentage of messages were opened, read, clicked on, or just deleted, as well as other stats. You can even split test your messages suing tracking, to help with future campaigns. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

Top 50 Soldiers of the Search Engine Submission World
Search engine submission is a widely misunderstood topic in Internet marketing. Some people believe submission is necessary for your site to even be indexed by Google. Still others believe it is completely unnecessary. Both are right … if you just take the extremist edge off the opinions! The truth about search engine submission is: * Eventually, the ‘bots’ or ’spiders’ of major search engines will find your site on their own. This may take up to a month. * Not all search engines have the ability to automatically discover other websites. * If you have an ‘orphan’ page, which is linked to from no other place on the web and must be accessed by typing in the URL directly, it may never be indexed by the search engines. There are still benefits to search engine submission, and these are most apparent for businesses that are either just starting up, or have made major changes to their websites. If you don’t want to wait a possible thirty days for the search engines to find you (and being listed for longer does help bump up your rankings), manual submission is a good idea. Similarly, if your site is well established and you have made a major change, you should submit the updated version of the website to the search engines so they don’t show an out-of-date cached copy of your page to querents, and you don’t get a bunch of visitors searching for things on your site that aren’t there. Today we are looking at the top fifty search engines that a good search engine submission service will include your site on. If the ‘big four’ have automated link discovery, good for them … there are still more than fifty others that do not! 1. Google 2. Yahoo! Search 3. Bing 4. Open Directory 5. ScrubTheWeb 6. ExactSeek 7. EntireWeb 8. SearchSight 9. Cuil 10. Web World 11. Skoobe 12. A1 Web Directory 13. VieSearch 14. Link Centre 15. LinkSite 16. IllumiRate 17. Dramba 18. Directory Storm 19. Arakne Links 20. Info Listings 21. Amfibi 22. Info Tiger 23. AMRAY 24. Wikidweb 25. My Directory Live 26. IS 27. SurfSafely 28. What U Seek 29. BusinessSeek 30. Ablaze Directory 31. NewWebDirectory 32. Domaining 33. SonicRun 34. Pedsters Planet 35. ASR 36. Gimpsy 37. AbiLogic 38. CyberWebSearch 39. OneMillionDirectory 40. Amidalla 41. Triple W Directory 42. Finest 4 43. Submit 44. Wondex 45. NetInsert 46. The Living Link 47. 01WebDirectory 48. Clock Tower Studio 49. Search Web World 50. Cipinet Search engine submissions are one of the first steps that should be taken in an SEO campaign … don’t let misguided information stop your business thriving on the net! Bookmark to: Hide Sites

Top Seven Most Popular Topics According to Article Marketing Services
It can be hard to guess what will get people excited enough to send a link to their family and friends, to bookmark an article, or even to buy something based on information in an article. The best way to guess is retrospectively - looking back at what has made history for article marketing services in terms of numbers of views. Today, that’s what we are doing - looking at the articles and topics that have made history in 2009! 1. Swine Flu The epidemic had the potential to very personally affect every one of us, and any article marketing services that managed to get their clients on the information train for swine flu did very well this year. 2. Michael Jackson So many hits that even the Google servers couldn’t handle it! If you published something about Michael Jackson you were competing with some very big name sites, but if the content was worthwhile it did well. 3. Susan Boyle This contestant on UK Idol became the most watched video on YouTube for a brief time. There wasn’t much user-generated content about her (in comparison to broader topics), but what was available encouraged plenty of interaction 4. Charlie Bit my Finger The most popular YouTube video as of the end of 2009 was also the most popular of all time … a cute video of one brother biting the other’s finger. Even article marketing services wouldn’t have predicted this one! 5. Climate change The opinion experts and the scientific experts did the best on this topic, which Scientific American had great success with through their article ‘Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense’. The small businesses that took a green angle were also able to do very well with their article marketing by using these keywords along with their own. 6. What does my name mean? Along with the biggies that can be expected, like Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube, this search was one of the top ones on AOL at various points during the year. It lends itself well to DIY articles, but is labor intensive to produce original content. 7. Harry Potter movie There really is only so much that article marketing services can publish about the Harry Potter movie … people just have to watch it! But the topic generated a huge amount of user interaction when it was discussed on Twitter and blogs this year. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

Behind Enemy Lines - What Do Journalists Want From Press Releases?
One school of thought on the web says that press release writing is mainly good for the backlinks; the opposing side says that the links pale into insignificance beside the potential for free PR through an independent news article on your subject. The truth is that both matter; though it certainly makes sense to angle for the one which shows the best PR promise … the lure of a free write-up in a respected newspaper, glossy magazine, or their online equivalent. Today we are looking at tips straight from the journalist’s mouth, telling you what is important in a press release. Keep these front and center as you are writing! The magical ‘point’ You must get to the point, stick to the point, and continue to reference the point throughout your press release. It is less important how short or long your press release is, compared to whether the information is relevant to the actual ‘news’. Resist the temptation to give back stories and explanations in your press releases. They won’t be used in a real story, so journos aren’t really interested. On the same note, creativity with a press release often results in hurt feelings … because it fails to clearly illustrate the point. Be boring, and your press release will do better! No opinion, please People have their own opinions - journalists don’t want to publish yours unless you are a thought or industry leader, or already well-known in your own right. Opinion in the press release should always be in the form of a quote, or referenced by statistics. Check in with reporters It is common that you send out an email that is never answered. If the same was done with a phone call, there would be social hell to pay … and you can capitalize on this fact! Call up some reporters on the phone, and see whether they would be interested in your story. Be pleasant and factual, and you may even create some goodwill for your release in the process. Email direct Online press release distribution sites are great for getting backlinks - personal email is much better for getting coverage. It can be quite easy to find bloggers’ email addresses, and they are more likely to pay attention than actual reporters are. Ditch the jargon If your grandmother would have to pull out her Oxford English Dictionary to find out what your press release is talking about, journos will most likely ignore it. They are extremely busy and don’t have time for research that may or may not be frivolous. If you make it easy for them, they are much more likely to use your press release. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

How To Find Ideas for Marketing Your Blogs
When your company sells something like accounting software, golf holidays, SMS marketing messages or an ebook on safety, it can be a little hard to come up with blog posts sometimes. That is, if you think about your field in the narrow terms defined by your products. Marketing blogs is about knowing how your products relate to what will make people’s lives easier, and answering their questions. If you are having trouble defining how your product makes that leap from ‘thing’ to ’solution’ in your customer’s mind, read on for ideas for marketing your blogs with great content. 1. Question sites The purpose of marketing blogs is to get people to come to your site for the valuable content, and position yourself as an expert in your field. Answering their questions is a great way to do this. Yahoo Answers and Wikianswers sometimes have great ideas for posts - look to the quality of the answers given to get an idea whether there is a need for more content on the subject. 2. Similar blogs to yours You don’t have to copy their posts, or even copy their ideas with your own info. Just reading what they are writing about could spark something for you 3. Create a set of categories you with repeatable content For example, you might do a ‘Month in Review’ for your industry. You might check out what is happening in the news as it relates to your products. You might do a single, in-depth DIY post every month, and every month you might do a blog post where you personally answer a question that a reader has sent in. 4. Keyword searches Finding out what people are searching for within your niche is a good way to discover what you should write about. We have all seen the hilarious suggestions that Google autocomplete has for some search terms: “Why is” will offer you the option to arrow down to ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk’, ‘Why is the sky blue’ and ‘Why is Pluto not a planet’. You can use this hilarious information for real business purposes, if you actually answer these questions within your niche! 5. Look at your site Even if your site doesn’t seem to have much information on it, chances are that it has plenty that people want to know about! Tell them which products are the best value for money, who will want to buy what, how to use what you are selling to best effect, etc. This tactic for marketing blogs is one that is innately tied to your niche and great for SEO purposes. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

Dealing with the Frustration Factor in Banner Design
As a business owner, you might not know much about the profit potentials of online advertising or marketing. But as a web surfer, you probably know a lot about advertisements! The sales potential of the Internet is enormous … it really is big enough that there is enough to sustain almost every business in the world. And the reason that most of the awesome content on the Internet is available for free, is that the accompanying advertising ‘pays’ for you to view it. Many people have a knee-jerk reaction to advertising on the web; feeling mild frustration before ignoring it. However, there are plenty of ads that really work … otherwise the Internet as we know it wouldn’t exist! We look at how to get past the frustration factor with your banner design, and make yours one of the few ads that actually works. 1. Make sure consumers know it is an ad If you disguise your ad as a free sample or as valuable content, and viewers click on it only to find that they have to pay for something, you’ll be paying for a lot of advertising clicks that don’t return you any cash. And annoying people that might have been interested in your products! 2. Auto-launch of audio Advertisements that automatically start making noise when they load have been cited as the biggest irritant in banner creation. People feel that they are being intruded upon - and anything that you say in the ad is likely to be tinged with that internal annoyance! Let people choose to launch the audio; start the video playing, but muted, when the page loads. People will notice the movement and choose to load the ad or not, as they want to. Alternatively, audio that is intimately relevant to the page and easily closed gets a much better response. 3. Irrelevancy If your advertisement doesn’t make it clear what users will get when they click through, you’ll find the frustration factor rises - and customer goodwill goes down! Get feedback on your designs in the banner creation stage to ensure that it is obvious what will happen if a viewer clicks on an ad. 4. Ads that appear too early Sometimes you know that what you have matches what the customer wants. They’ve typed in ‘flashing widget product specifications’, and your top seller is a flashing widget. However, they want their content before they get a sales pitch! Make sure your banner creation isn’t de-valued by having it appear to early. Ensure the user is ready to see an advertisement, and then have it appear. This comes with personalizability within the content network you’re advertising on. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

4 Tactics that the Pros Use for Online Marketing with a Blog
Blogging is one of the more universal methods of online marketing - it has become essential for businesses to be taken seriously. There are many different styles that can get good results … some bloggers are fun, some are derisive, some are earnest and very personal, some are sarcastic, some are informative, and some are just amazing people! Today we are looking at several different strategies for online marketing with your blog that pro bloggers have been known to use. Note: not all are required at once! 1. Team blogging You can make your blog a team effort, utilizing people from all areas of your company, as well as outsourcing and inviting guest posters to contribute to your blog. A breadth of opinion can be a good thing, as long as each blogger respects the basic tone of the blog. 2. Little posts published very frequently There is a whole subculture of bloggers that do nothing other than blog … some of them post up to ten times a day! If you have ever written a blog, you might be able to relate that feeling to doing something else ten times a day, and quickly pinpoint borderline compulsive behavior. But for the readers who spend a lot of time on the net and take frequent brain-breaks, new and easily digested content can be a great reward for visiting. 3. Informative, middling sized posts published regularly This is the road that many bloggers have success with. Posting info-packed but not excessively long posts around 1-2 times per week works well for a huge number of bloggers. 4. Big, long and deep Some bloggers, including many that blog about online marketing, produce very detailed posts with highly original content … but only do so once every week or two. Tim Ferris is one that is notoriously irregular in his posting times, but the depth of content keeps people coming back. 5. Blogging every single day This is like keeping an online journal, and is almost a surefire way to build up your online marketing efforts. Write often enough and people are bound to stumble across it - and even find it useful. You will need to store up plenty of posts as a safety net, though. Expert online marketing help is essential for small businesses wanting to employ the tactic. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

3 Ultra-Condensed Internet Marketing Strategies
Do you want the short version of the Internet marketing strategies textbook? We’ve got it right here, in a few short paragraphs! For those who are new to the game of marketing on the Internet, the whole process can seem a bit confusing. Here we break it down into the three most important steps, and provide examples of some of the activities that you might use as part of your overall internet marketing strategy. 1. Product and website development While it is not technically a marketing activity, it is so vital to the success of your campaign that it simply cannot be ignored as part of an essentials guide. Your product should fill some sort of hole in the market - it should offer something that either nobody else is, or create some other unique value. When it comes to your website, the importance of having a webmaster-supervised platform with a professional and unique design cannot be overstated. Work from a template and you will be seen as an imitator; have a buggy site and people will leave with negative thoughts in their minds. 2. Short term Internet marketing This is not necessarily something that should be done before your long-term strategies, but rather concurrently with them. Short-term Internet marketing strategies include doing things like: * Putting up banner advertising around the web * Participating in forums - answering questions, offering opinions in your niche * Putting up paid advertisements on search engines These activities all need to be maintained to have any ongoing effect, apart from the background branding effect that any marketing activity naturally has. 3. Long term strategies As mentioned earlier, do this from the get-go. The sooner you start with these Internet marketing strategies, the better off your site and business will be. * Create profiles on social networking sites and start looking for people you know and promoting your page elsewhere. * Start a blog, or even more than one blog, and start writing about topics within your niche. * Give out samples of either your products or services to help build brand awareness and loyalty, both online and offline * Article marketing is an Internet marketing strategy that can take some time to show full effects, and needs to be maintained. Start it early. * Create a product or service or membership that requires visitors to your site to provide their contact details … and demographic details if possible. Use this to build an opt-in list for email marketing. Internet marketing strategies can seem like a huge subject - but if you break them down into manageable categories, you’ll soon understand why people rave about them. Bookmark to: Hide Sites

How the Experts Guarantee Targeted Traffic from Expired Domains
Targeted traffic from expired domains is one Internet advertising strategy that really does everyone involved a favor. There’s nothing more frustrating to searchers than getting either a 404 message or custom hosting site message indicating that the site is down because the domain name has expired. “Darn it, I was interested in you!!”, people think in frustration. Redirecting traffic to a related site is actually one of the more useful forms of advertising on the Internet - we explain how it works. Where does targeted traffic come from? If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it can be a little difficult to get your head around! Here is a step by step of what happens: * Someone who previously owned a domain allows the registration to expire, usually because they are no longer using the site as they once were. * Programmers find these expired domains, or they are submitted to lists by the domain registers to help keep their profits up - a domain with existing traffic is worth more to people than a completely new domain * A single company or an Internet marketing firm may purchase one or several of these * When you are looking for visitors to your website, a portion of this targeted traffic can be delivered (redirected) to your site. * Alternatively, some companies create duplicates of their site on the new domain. Why is targeted traffic from expired domains so valuable? If your site is closely related to the one with the expired domain, you are getting visitors who are intimately interested in exactly what you are selling (targeted traffic!). Yet, you put in none of the search engine marketing dollars to get them there. This benefits the visitor, also; as we mentioned, it alleviates the frustration of going to a site and finding nothing there. Checks to make when buying expired domain traffic Of course, if you have chosen to use a reputable Internet marketing firm to redirect traffic for you, you won’t have to worry about these niceties! Still, no matter who actually carries it out, vetting the sites that you purchase traffic from is essential. Firstly it should be verified that any claims the host or domain owner makes about traffic levels are true, preferably through screenshots or actual log in to a web analytics site. Secondly, it should be checked that any SEO tactics used by the previous domain were not black hat - if Google discovers these in the future, your site might incur the penalty, effectively cutting off your supply of targeted traffic. Bookmark to: Hide Sites