Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Is SEO the Powerhouse it Used to Be?

By Jan Shimano

There is no denying that it can be very beneficial to optimize our websites. This will bring us much appreciated targeted and free traffic. The alternative would be attract traffic using pay-per-click (PPC). If we were given the choice, I imagine that we would all choose the free traffic over the paid. The problem is that many become overly dependent on SEO and when the search engines make major changes with their algorithms, overnight we see our free traffic dry right up.

However, I believe that it is still necessary and beneficial to develop our SEO skills. Some think that it is very complicated and difficult to learn. In my experience, I have found it to be way easier than learning the ins and outs of PPC. Even when I first started my internet business, I found it took very little effort on my part to reach the first page of Google with my articles. Actually, the first time it happened I thought it was a fluke, but it continued to happen. It was then that I realized that the little I did know about SEO was sufficient to get me on page one of Google each and every time.

As a beginner, I was under the impression that there were well guarded secrets to ranking well with the search engines. I thought I would have to take a few courses to be effective at it. That was not the case. There is so much free information available on the Web, that a person can be educated and ready to take action in no time. I also searched on YouTube and found a number of instructional videos that helped me a lot. I now actually have people asking me what my 'secret' is.

I do, however, recommend that you always have a few back-up systems in place. After all, if you do get caught in a major algorithm change you could lose all your traffic overnight. As mentioned, pay-per-click would be one. Another alternative is to be an affiliate for other companies and products. It is free to register with Clickbank and you can be up and running with very little effort on your part.

You might also consider creating a product of your own....for instance, an E-Book or a monthly newsletter. You could list your e-book on Clickbank and have other affiliates sell your product for you. It is not as difficult as you might imagine.

So, you don't have to rely entirely on search engine optimization to get high rankings on Google or the other search engines. For me personally, it is still my favorite way to easily rank. However, I am aware that things could change very quickly, so I have involved myself in some alternatives.

So is SEO the powerhouse it used to be? I believe it is. Yes, there might be tweaks to it in the future, but if it's free traffic you are looking for then I highly recommend you learn everything you need to know about SEO.

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Monday, April 6, 2009

Adsense Click Fraud

By Steve Blalock

Many web site owners are getting their Google Adsense account terminated when they have done nothing wrong to deserve it. Considering the money that they are getting from Adsense, they would certainly want to get back into it.

It is that same consideration why the Google Adsense click fraud is thought of and why many people are getting into it.

Click fraud is the act of clicking on ads for the purpose of costing the advertiser money. It is simply the same as paying out cash for false leads. Most website owners are aware of this fraud and are sharing the same sentiment that this is the one big problem that Adsense is facing.

How do you prevent being involved in this fraud?

The majority of web hosts are offering access logs. Once this is offered to you, it is necessary that you hand it over to Google as well. This allows them to look for any suspicious activity on your site. Problems like this are very serious and giving it to them is saying that you will help them in any way you can.

It can also help if you have a click monitoring software. If you do not have one yet, you should try and get one. There is absolutely no major factor preventing you from having one because most of this software is free.

As usual, all the information you have received should be turned over to Google. This is showing Google that you too are fighting against click frauds and are no part of it.

Study your server logs and watch for any activity that seems suspicious. Report anything that you may find odd, whether it is a big or small issue.

You may want to consider disabling ads for your own IP address and local geographic area. This will certainly prevent accidents and will not make Google mistake another user as you. You can do through a htaccess file.

Keep your Adsense off of pages with pop ups and pop unders. Your ads should not be displayed on content sites that promote illegal activity or tampering of the legal rights of other people. Included in this are content that is considered adult in nature and gambling. If you think that you may be breaking this rule, immediately remove your content or Adsense from the web page.

Be truthful and confess to Google about times when you may have clicked on your own Adsense ad, whether accidentally or intentionally. Or the times when you have done something that is against the Terms of Service that they are implementing. Be honest about anything that you may have done that is wrong. Confessing is way better than Google learning about it eventually. It would mean eventual termination and not getting back what you have worked so hard for.

Do not tell your family or friends about Adsense on your website. Chances are they may start clicking on them to help you make money without you knowing it. They may be doing more harm to you than help.

If ever someone you know chanced upon your Adsense, make sure they understand that they cannot click on your ads under any circumstances. It would be wise to brief them on important things about Adsense and what not to do.

Most pay per click networks have different methods to protect website owners against click frauds. Other search engines can track more than 50 data points, IP address, browsers information, users session info and pattern recognition. They also have systems available that detect fraud. In addition to this, they also have specialized teams monitoring how things are going and helping advertisers stop click frauds.

Google offers ideas on how to avoid click fraud. Using negative keywords can be used to keep your Adsense from showing products and services that are in no way related to yours. Adding tracking URLs to your links allows you to track the traffic coming from Google.

Do not be caught in the Google click fraud. Be aware and be wary.

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How to Market Using PLR Videos

By James T Maxwell

One great way to increase the perceived value of your content is to use PLR video. You can drastically increase how much value your customers feel like they're getting, without putting in too much work simply by buying rights to videos other people have created. You can use this technique to market your website, to sell for money, or to give away to improve your relationship with your list.

Using Video as a Marketing Tool

With a good piece of video content you have an abundance of ways to use it to your benefit. The right keywords coupled with your video uploaded to YouTube give you a whole new marketing strategy.

You can put it online as a free video and do a bunch of JVs and get other people to your site. You can also use "Free Video" ads in AdWords to increase your Click Thru Rate. You can post the free video in forums. You can submit the page to social bookmarking websites and have a great chance of getting ranked highly. In short, there are many ways you can use PLR videos to market your website and bring you more traffic.

Sell the Videos for Money

Another great way to use PLR videos is to use it in your backend. Videos naturally have a very high perceived value and you can often sell these videos for a lot of money.

For example, let's say you run a website that teaches people how to make money online. You buy the rights to a PLR video that teaches people how to use Google AdWords. Let's say you paid only $47 for the videos. You could easily turn around and sell the video for $197 To hundreds of customers!

The simple purchase of PLR videos are a fantastic option for cutting down your workload. Find a great video, rebrand it and get to selling them.

Building Better Relationships with Your List

Finally, one more great way to use PLR videos is to give it to your list for free to build your relationship with your list. Imagine getting an email titled "12 AdWords Secrets - Yours Free (Video)". If you're in the internet marketing niche and the videos are good, chances are you'll start to pay more attention to that marketer.

Or, you just purchased the rights to a video on computer maintenance that lasts an hour. By breaking that up into multiple segments of 30 minutes each, you have grabbed people's attention long enough for them to get to know what you have to offer, instead of giving away everything in one shot.

By giving away those four 15 minute videos to the members of your list, the more chances you have for your list to respond more as you keep adding on more content. Then, when it comes to the point for you to finally send out an email with sales information, there are more aware of the quality of your product, and more likely to buy.

Use PLR Videos to Boost Your Business

As you can tell, there are many ways to use PLR videos to boost your business. You can use them to generate traffic, to sell, or to build your relationship with your list. Be creative. The possibilities are endless!

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Strategy for Email Marketing for All Businesses

By Fred Raley

EMail Marketing is a must for every business. Since starting to use email marketing, our profits have jumped and our subscriber list grows daily. EMail marketing is the perfect addition to every business since it gives an additional source of income to your business. Easy, powerful and fully legal, email marketing is a great addition to every business

Email marketing is simply another way to advertise your products, services and business to gain additional income. The basic idea is to get people to give you their email address and any other information you need (like their first name) for you to send your information to. This information can be a report about your business or product, a coupon to come into the store to use (and therefore spend more money) or a new service or event that you offer. The persons information goes into a system called an autoresponder which can be preprogrammed to send out emails at specific times on subjects of interest to your potential clients.

Email marketing is legal if you do when you follow simple rules. The key is to get a person to voluntarily release their contact information to you with the knowledge that they will be receiving information from you via email on subjects you describe. As long as you dont abuse that trust and privilege, you can continue to send emails to that person for as long as you like on the subject matter you have agreed to.

An email marketing strategy should be used by every business. If you have products or services to sell to people more than once, you should try to obtain their email address, name and permission to send your information to them. This way, you will be able to send out special offers, company information, product information, news, etc. as you had agreed to in the beginning and get more potential sales. You can put out fliers to hair salons, realtors, barbers, product stores such as Walmart and Target, restaurants and more. There is no business too small that cannot use email marketing successfully.

The benefits of your own email marketing campaign can be huge:

Communicate with your customer list instantly

Extra cash from special offers you make without added marketing expense

Earn extra cash from special offers you make without added marketing expense

Have "Special Sales" when you want to clear excess inventory

Remember birthdays and other holidays with special sales

Ease of use for you and your clients/prospects

Make sales without prospects coming to your store

Make sales without having prospects come into your store

Setting up an email marketing campaign is easy. First, get a reliable autoresponder. Second, write a series of emails to your prospects, thanking them for opting into your email program and giving them the benefits you promised (i.e. coupons, discounts, information reports and the like.) Third, continue to use various ways to get people to give you their email address to put into your marketing system. Fourth, continue to offer products and services to the prospects on your email list. Your email list becomes another set of customers for you. As your subscriber list grows, so will your sales!

If you want to obtain more information as to how to set up and run an automated email marketing strategy for your business, take a look at the website below.

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Monday, March 30, 2009

The Importance of High PR One Way Links

By Brent Sweet

Not long ago the internet was viewed mainly as a web where all content was found by static links from other websites. This is no longer true, the new internet paradigm is one where users get most of their information from websites found using search engines. Search engines has revolutionized the way people use the internet, giving them fast and easy access to the information they are looking for. As the web has grown to billions of pages, the odds of finding the site you are looking for by just following links is very low. This is why it is important for anyone who runs an online business, using their website for marketing and sales, to take steps to make sure that their website ranks high with the biggest search engines. In order to achieve high rankings, the most important thing is to generate as many one way links as possible.

A one way link is a link from a website that is not linked to from the other site. This is different from a two way link where both websites mutually link to each other. In the early days of search engine technology, the link value was the same regardless of whether it was a one or two way link. However since many people took advantage of this and started using link exchange program to gain alot of links, most search engines started to lower the value of two way links. This is why it is important to gain one way links in order to achieve good rankings.

There are many ways to generate those important links. The best way is to simply have good content on your site. This will generate links from other website owners who will link to your site as a service to their users. These kind of links will not only help you improve your search engine rankings, but can also generate alot of traffic from people following the link.

Another great way to generate backlinks is through web directory submissions. Web directories are big collections of categorized links that help web surfers find the kind of site they are interested in. Perhaps the most well know web directory is the one maintained by Yahoo. While inclusion into most directories is free, some of them have a fee for getting listed.

Writing articles for other websites is another good way to gain links by giving other website owners content in exchange for a link back to your site. If an article is particularly informative it may find it's way to many other sites and generate alot of one way links

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Thursday, March 19, 2009

6 Ideas for Viral Marketing

By Steve Blalock

Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

1. Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow everyone to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

3. Are you talented at web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.

4. Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.

5. Write articles that pertain to your niche. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

6. You can easily find Private Label Rights products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008

How Article Marketing Can Get You More Visitors To Your Website

By Robert Billings

Article Marketing is a great tool to use when it comes to adding traffic to your site. If you are not familiar with what it is, Article Marketing is simply writing articles and submitting them to article reprint directories on the web.

As you know, having fresh content on your website and blog is key when it comes to getting search engine traffic. Many website owners and bloggers visit article reprint directories on a daily basis, in search of articles to use on their sites.

When you submit an article to a directory, you are allowing other website owners and bloggers permission to add your article to their site - for free. However, they need to include an 'about the author' box at the end of the article.

This resource box is basically an "about the author" section where you can include information about your website, as well as links back to it.

When the website owner or blogger puts your article up on the web, all of their readers will see your biography information and the links to your website. Your article could end up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and quite possibly, millions of people could end up reading it! Who knows how many people could click on your link?

There are plenty of article directories to choose from on the web. All you need to do is search Google for 'free article directories' and you'll find a bunch. Some of them will be topic-specific (say, health or finance related articles for example) while other are more general. You can submit the same article to multiple directories to get the best exposure. In fact, you can even get software that will automate the process for you.

The topics you can choose to write about are limitless. What is the focus of your website? Be creative and think of why someone would want to visit your website and create an article about it. Someone who sells Tupperware for instance, could easily write about food related items or take it a step further an write an article about the fact that the plastic containers are great for organizing toys, bathroom items or even nuts and bolts in the garage.

If you do not like to write, don't worry. You can hire a ghostwriter to write your article for you. You can ask other Internet Marketers for referrals on reputable ghostwriters. The prices for an article will vary, but an average rate is about $10 to $12 for a 500 word article. Once you discuss with the ghostwriter what you are looking for, they will write the article and send it back to you. Some ghostwriters may also include submit the article to reprint directories for you.

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