Blogs vs. Content-Sites

Now, I build content-sites, and in my free time, I still build more and more. To my definition, a content-site is more or less like what James Martell does. I would research for keywords, define my topics, list the content that I want to have in my site, and then start writing (or get somebody else to write for me).

Done with that, then it's about building the site, putting web pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.

After that, you go around looking for link partners.

I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in case for some newbie readers, I'll try to explain what it is. A blog is a site that contains articles after articles written one after the other. The content is not being written all in one go upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.

A blog lists the articles in a chronology manner, being the latest, the first. MoneyClicking.net is a blog. A blog is normally supported by a system or a script. You can use Blogger.com (remote hosted), Wordpress (PHP script), Movable Type (Perl script), etc.

Anyway, back to the topic. I was on the phone with my friend, we concluded it's better to have a blog because it's easier to get traffic with it.

Why? Well, there are some mechanics of a blog and also the culture of blogging that makes it much easier.



For one thing - it's easier to get incoming links. Let me tell you how.

Reason #1: Blog Ping

First of all, there's this thing called - PING. With a blog ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just updated your blog. When you do that, you'll get a link back to your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and MoreOver, also have ping addresses.

Now, maybe you won't be listed very long on that page, because many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or less, it'll help. I've gone through my web statistics and traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.

Reason #2: Trackback

Secondly, there's also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I'll tell you. With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a unique URL for it. And for each article, there's also a unique trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person's blog, look for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.

Now here's how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at somebody else's blog. And he just wrote about something about cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to say about what he wrote - and you know, what you want to say will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the interface, you enter the other guy's trackback URL, and then you hit the Submit button.

Now, that new article will appear on your blog. And because you put in a trackback URL, a part of your article will also appear in the other guy's article as a comment. And that comment links directly back to your article. So that's how trackbacks work.

Reason #3: Blog Comments

Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site - Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even leave a link back to your site. But here's the thing, just make sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there are too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link back.

Reason #4: Bloggers' Linking Habit

OK, here's some more. This is more a blogging culture thing - bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is interesting, it's easy to get other bloggers to link back to you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they just simply give you a link back. I've got this many times, and most of the times, they link back write to a specific message. And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on their website.

Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing

This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it's easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I don't know why - perhaps it's because incoming links are more natural and you don't really go around asking for them. And when the incoming links are more natural, I think search engine will prefer it a lot more.

I myself have experienced where new content on my blog was indexed in under seven days.

Reason #6: Repeat Visitors

Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites, and other blogs, later you'll start to realize that 80-90% of your visitors are repeat visitors. It's common with a blog. So the point is with this one - it's easier to retain visitors with a blog.

You get huge traffic from multiple sources - and the ones you already have you get to keep. This is different from content-sites, where you really so much on search engine traffic.

Blogging Seems Much More Fun ...

In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing 100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog, it's not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day, provided you give good content.

But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable with.

Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future - but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it, blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like, and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less link building, etc ...

With building content-sites, you still have to build the website again, upload them up to your web hosting, build incoming links, etc ...

This is my opinion. And you may not think the same way I do, based on your personal experience and knowledge. I respect that.

READ MORE - Blogs vs. Content-Sites

How to Generate Quality One way links?

Jack had an amazing idea & started his online business with a vision of making it big someday. But few years down the line Jack is left wondering as to why his business isn't turning up the way he expected it to!

Mark thinks that he has a better service than his competitors, but still fails to understand why their Balance Sheet figures are running into millions, while his are still in few thousands!

All these puzzling facts make one doubt himself. But my friend, the problem is not with the idea or the service! The problem lies in the promotion strategies. No matter how good an idea or a service is, it won't be successful unless you put it to the right people in the right manner. Good Web Promotion can do wonders to an average idea; forget what it can do to a good one. Had Jack & Mark adopted the right kind of Internet Promotion strategy, they would have achieved what they wanted to.

Everyone will agree that today's Web Promotion is dominated by Search Engines, or to be precise, Google. If your site is in the top thirty, for the right "Keyword", you can be a winner. But how can one make it to the top & stay there for a long time? (Mind you, in this dynamic world called Internet, sticking to your position is as important as getting there!)

The best way to "optimize" your site is through a new "Organic Method of Search Engine Optimization" (SEO) that Google & other search engines just love, generating "Quality One Way Links". One can generate quality back links by way of "Directory Submission" & "Article Submission".

Online directories provide you with quality back links, which is precisely what you are looking for. Apart from this, you need to submit your site to the most appropriate category & with a brief description about your business. Thus, they also send targeted audience your way!


Another way of generating quality targeted audience & one way links is by writing quality articles & submitting them to Article Directories! By writing a quality article, you are not just informing your potential customers about your service, but are also sharing your knowledge with them. Again, Article Directories gives you an opportunity to inform people about yourself & also provide a link to your site. This way, people get to know about you & your site. And if your article provides a visitor what he came looking for, you have most definitely found yourself a new client!

Had Jack written an article about his idea & explained his service to his target audience and submitted his site to Hundreds of Search Engine Friendly Directories, he would have been on "Cloud 9" by now. Had Mark written an article informing his potential customers, how his service is better than his customers & also submitted his site to Online Directories, his Balance Sheet too might have run into Millions.
To summarize, when you submit your article or your site to various online directories, this is what you get -

1. You generate hundreds of quality back links to your site.

2. People who search these directories may find your article or your sites description interesting & visit your site. Thus you get large targeted audience.

The end result is that your site satisfies all the criterions set by various search engines to have a favorable Rank. You thus reach high positions in search engines & stay there for a long time!

READ MORE - How to Generate Quality One way links?

On-Page Factors Affecting Your Position On Google Searches

This article will focus on the factors that, we believe, affect your results on Google searches. But remember, Google does not publish its algorithms and is always changing and updating the way it views sites - so these are the guidelines for you to follow, rather than a definitive statement of the processes involved.

The major factors fall into two main types, namely, on-page and off-page factors. Basically, on-page factors are those things that you can do to improve your ranking by adapting the actual coding of your site. This article will focus on on-page factors, and a second article will cover off-page factors (those factors mainly relating to incoming links to your site).



In terms, of on-page factors the areas we will cover are:

Keywords - not just the meta tag, but throughout the site
Linking - where your site links to and who they are
Content - how big and new your content is and who is viewing it

Keywords

Funnily enough, probably the least important keywords are those that you put in the actual keyword meta-tag. This feature has become so abused that Google had almost disregarded it, whereas other search engines do pay attention to this tag.

Simple rules for the keyword meta-tag are to make sure its short (less than 10 words), make sure it is relevant (all keywords used appear on the page) and there are no duplicates. Remember search engines work on a page by page basis so always think about the specific page you are working on. We have a feeling that Google only uses this meta-tag negatively, which means that it will mark you down for breaking the rules, but not necessarily mark you up for doing a good job.

Other places where keywords are important are the actual text (see later), your domain name and the other meta tags. We have found that having your keywords in your domain name help, as long as they are not overdone. So www.seo-gurus.co.uk is good whereas www.good-search-engine-optimisation-for-google-that-works.com is bad. Again some other search engines weight the actual domain very highly, as can be seen when you do a search using their engine.

The jury seems to be out on the title tag since duplication of the same keywords here may be seen as spammy or overload by Google. Similarly the description tag should contain a meaningful sentence outlining the theme of the site without overdoing the keywords.

In the actual body of the text, keywords should be apparent without being duplicated so much that Google sees them as spam. Many people use one of the various keyword density analyses, such as the one on the Free SEO Tools site www.datacoms.co.uk, this gives you an idea of the relative density of your keywords compared with the rest of the page. Other good ideas are to have your keywords in H1 tags and also highlighted in bold, both of which Google seems to take into account.

Linking
We are not just referring here to external links, but also how you link between pages. In fact, a good internal linking strategy seems to be highly rated by Google. Whereas a complex internal linking hierarchy can mean that some of your pages just don't get found by Google. We try and keep the maximum number of clicks to reach a page down to three, and preferably two. It is worth considering using Google site maps, since Google seem to be doing a lot of work in this area which means they will probably become more prominent with time.

One last point on internal links, try to make the linking anchor text consistent, Google likes to see the same anchor text on different pages linking to a page.

External links should be used with caution. We saw a site with had an address book that a Russian porn site added its URL into. This led to Google banning the site because we it was deemed to be linking to a bad neighbourhood - sometimes you only learn from your mistakes. It is also worth checking periodically that all the links on your site still work. If you have broken links, Google is more likely to hold your site back in the search results. We also believe that Google rates link stability highly, so don't keep churning the links of sites that you link onto.

Content
Google likes big, old sites and that's a fact. A large site that has been around for 5 years is always going to out-gun a small, new site in the results page takes. So as a new site, you have to keep Google interested, and one way of doing this is new well-written content. Try and put up at least a few new pages a month, all nicely linked to the rest of the site. Avoid having no new pages for 3 months then 100 new ones on one day, we have a feeling Google prefers to see a gradual increase in content. Again suddenly increase of content or links may be seen as spammy by Google and your site devalue in its eyes. Google is trying to see if your site is genuine and growing organically.

We have seen sites with pages that run for miles. Short, well-themed pages are again a big attraction to Google, this also allow you to do more clever internal cross linking with consistent anchor text. It is also better for human readers who can be put off when they see how small the scroller button is on the scroll bar - keep pages short and focused.

In the second part of the article we will look at how off-page factors can affect your Google ranking.

READ MORE - On-Page Factors Affecting Your Position On Google Searches

Blog Waiter - How To Get Tips From Your Blogging That Pay Big Time!

Blogs and blogging are sweeping the internet. They are all the rage as a hobby, writing exercise, and even a career for some. In fact, it is even becoming more common that bloggers are seeking a way to make money. Be it via advertising or affiliations, they each have their own way of pursuing that writing career by way of the blog. There is another way, though. There is an alternate way to make a little extra money by blogging. That way is not unlike the way waiters, cab drivers, and even bellhops add to their income: the tip. Wait a minute! How do you get tips from your blogging? There are ways, and if you read on you will see that they aren't as difficult as you might think.



First of all, if you want people to tip you for your blog, you have to give them a reason for doing it. You need to be providing very good information or highly entertaining copy that makes them feel like you earned it. In essence, you are the web equivalent to a street performer by working for tips. So, like that street performer, you owe your audience something that makes them feel like you are worth their money. So polish your writing, update it often, keep it fresh, and stay true to the topics your readers are used to. If you are all over the place, you won't be able to build the loyal audience necessary when you go to start asking for tips. Basically, the start of it all is your content. Just like with any other money making web venture, your content is going to go a long way. So to get started earning tips from your blogging, make sure you give the audience a reason.

Once you have your content set up, you need to promote it. Asking for tips won't do you a bit of good if you don't have an audience to ask. Market your blog, market your topics, and target those search engines. Don't do any of it at the expense of the quality of your content, but make sure you are getting something going in the way of marketing. Register with blog directories, post to other people's blogs, and generally get your name and blog site out there so that you will drive an audience into what is hopefully quality, informative, and or entertaining content. Again, if there is nobody at the site then asking for a tip is not going to do you a lot of good.

Next, since you have set up your content to be useful and entertaining to a particular audience and you have begun to get your blog marketed, you are almost ready for those tips. However, there needs to be some sort of vehicle available to your readers to get the tips to you. I mean if they have to do a lot of work to get money to you then you probably shouldn't count on the money rolling in. There are a number of online methods available for receiving payments via email or the web. It would be wise to have one located prominently on your blog so that if a reader is stuck with the desire to tip you, he or she can do so with ease and without a lot of time that may result in rethinking the tip. Remember, this is something you want to happen when your quality and entertainment is fresh in their minds.

Finally, if you really want to earn tips from blogging, then you should probably ask for them in some way. You can do so in the blog posts or even with some sort of message on the main page of your blog that states that tips are appreciated and are the way you fund the blog. Either way, you need to make it clear to the readers that you are reliant on their generosity without sounding like you are hard selling, or worse, begging.

Blogging can be a lot of fun, and can actually make you a little money if you are willing to work hard at it. One way of making that money is by earning tips from your readers. There are some things that you need to get in place though to make that work. Make sure you have quality content, market your site, set up a method for receiving the tips, and be sure to ask for them. If you do those things, then you can be earning tips from your blog before you know it.

READ MORE - Blog Waiter - How To Get Tips From Your Blogging That Pay Big Time!

Increase Web Site Traffic And Your Search Engine Rankings

In this article You'll Learn How you can Increase web site traffic at your site. This article will assume you understand Search Engine optimization terms (SEO). Over the last few years, search engine optimization (SEO) has been needed and used more and more, although it has been around for much longer than most people think.

We'll be discussing SEO techniques and other Free/Paid methods to generate Traffic.



Search Engine Optimization Techniques

1. On Page Optimization:

Though these days, on page optimization will not help you much, But still it is important for any website to rank high.

Meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. They're all important elements, even if they're not what will make or break your site – they're just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. It's best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

The basics are Optimizing Title, Meta tags, H1 tags and optimizing Paragraphs with 3-5% of keyword density. You should also include outgoing links with proper keyword anchors.

Another thing most people forget is updating site content regularly. Search Engine loves Fresh and related content. You should be updating your site at least 2 times a week.

2. Off Page optimization:

There are many ways you can optimize your site with off page optimization methods. We'll be discussing Press Release and Linking techniques

2a. Press Release:

Press release is one of the effective way to get noticed by media, plus an effective way to get noticed by Search Engines fast. You need to write an effective press release and distribute using any of the Press release Services like www.prweb.com or www.prleap.com.

Write a press release that can be termed as a news for press reporters. Ask Yourself before submitting your Release. Is your news "newsworthy?" The purpose of a press release is to inform the world of your news item. Do not use your press release to try and make a sale. If your press release reads like an advertisement, rewrite it.

Best way to issue an effective press release is to Time it according to current affairs. Pick an angle to make your release more attractive.

Simple tips for an Effective press release.

Strong Headline : If your headline doesn't entice news reporters then your efforts are going to waste. Your headline and first paragraph should tell the story.

Write for Media : Write in third person. Avoid Jargon, clichés and hype. If a reporter wants to add your release to the site or newspaper, he should be able to do it without minimal editing. Avoid clichés such as "customers save money" or "great customer service."

Another tip which I'd like to share with you is paying press release services to distribute your release to sites like Google news, Yahoo news. You can do it with minimum of 50$ expenditure. Another resource which I prefer to distribute my releases with is http://www.lifestyledecision.com/press

With this you'll be able to write an effective release and bring loads of free traffic to your site.

2b. Linking Techniques:

One Way Links:

Submitting Press releases is first step towards building long term plan for One way links. For one Way links I prefer to Buy a link on PR 6 website for one year or so. If you can find a site in your own niche, then you can bring traffic as well as get noticed by Search engines too.

Links Exchange:

Though You must have heard recently about Google ignoring sites who are exchanging links. This is far from truth. Remember, A link is a Link. If you are building links from related niche sites, Your position will increase. Every Link count, doesn't matter if you have some unrelated sites linking to you.

2c. Submitting Articles:

Submitting articles is just like a press release. If your article is not strong there is chance that it won't help you as you expect. Write down an article which people want to read, another "10 tips for weight loss" won't do you any good. Make sure you have at least 500 words article and submit it to sites like www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com .

Let us Summarize everything again in step by step of What procedures You should Do.

1. Build a Site with properly Optimized keywords and content.
2. Find One way Link Exchange as partners.
3. Issue a Press release to bring attention to your Site.
4. Submit articles to articles directories.
5. Work on Link exchange with related niche sites.
6. Update Your Site every week with new content.

READ MORE - Increase Web Site Traffic And Your Search Engine Rankings

Is Your Domain Name SEO Friendly?

When you first start an Internet business one of the first items on the list, after you've written your business model, is getting a domain name. In years past it wasn't as difficult to find a decent name for your site. Today however, it's not as easy to get your dot com name. The process of registering a name has improved substantially but the availability for descriptive names is far more difficult. Why is this a problem you may ask? It's more of a problem for small and home business sites than it is for larger companies. The reason is simple and I can sum it up in one word: money.



Larger companies, especially public companies have the funding to advertise their new sites, therefore they don't really need to have names that reflect the type of business they are in. I can site a perfect example, Go Daddy.com, has absolutely nothing to do with the type of business Go Daddy is in. But being the largest register of domain names, GoDaddy can advertise on all media levels to get business including buying advertising time on the Super Bowl! If you are starting a home based business on the Internet, I'll bet that you won't be buying time on television not to mention next year's Super Bowl.

Okay, where am I going with all of this? You are on a limited budget when you start your business and you must rely on free traffic to your site, because without traffic you have no business. This is what I described in my article on organic traffic a few weeks ago. In order to get substantial traffic to your site you'll need to have an optimized site. This all has to do with keywords and something called keyword density. You achieve this by having your most important keywords dispersed throughout your website and your domain name. (See I did come to the point of this article.)

Most SEO, search engine optimization, programs first look at the domain name and your major keywords. They look to see if your domain name and site title have any commonality. If they do your site receives extra points in the SEO algorithm, (a logical step-by-step procedure for solving a mathematical problem in a finite number of steps, often involving repetition of the same basic operation.) I hope that I haven't lost you here because all of this is very important, especially to home based Internet business owners.

Most SEO programs will constantly refer back to the domain name and those words which match the dominate keyword phrases that you have chosen. When your site is optimized, search engines will pick up your scent, so to speak, and you will have great placement and positioning on searches that have your keywords. All of this amounts to substantial traffic.

I'm not an expert on SEO and I don't pretend to be but I've spent my share of time in attempting to understand it and how it effects my site. I can recommend two areas of my site that I think are beneficial to you: Web Site Design and Search Engine Optimization at http://www.homebusinessresearch.com There are a lot of submission services as well. Some of them are good and some of them are not so good. Try to optimize first.

READ MORE - Is Your Domain Name SEO Friendly?

Make a Press Release Work on You

Business environment has always been competitive, but nowadays it is perhaps more competitive than in any previous era. Whatever industry you operate in, one has to work very hard to stay out from your competitors. With the development and huge progress in IT technology new ways to promote products have been devised. A press release is a regular thing in major corporations and companies. This is the most powerful form of marketing and advertising available. A product or service needs attention of mass media to be advertised, it has to be seen in the public. It is a big mistake to underestimate the power of mass media over people's minds. Press release writing will get you the press and media coverage you need to advertise a product. A press release is a powerful marketing tool if a salesman knows how to use it. There are a lot of things to consider before forwarding a press release to necessary establishments. Media centers want to hear news about new products and services. This is your decision and responsibility: to make a press release interesting for journalists and other media workers.

There are some things one should remember abut journalists. Their mail-boxes are staffed with similar press releases that do not tell anything interesting, so the possibility for your press release to succeed is very low, unless your suggestions and information in a press release is unique and interesting for the public. Take this into consideration writing press release for a big media center. Journalists do not experience lack of information and therefore they do not care about your company, your web site or your products unless you make their jobs easier and provide them with everything necessary to prepare a good newsworthy material. Make your press release literate, well-structured, nicely composed in strict adherence to the format yet with a fresh outline.

Do not overload your press release with facts and information. Leave something for media investigation. There should be an intrigue, yet providing full information on how to find your office and talk to representatives and find information. It is vitally important that your press release should include keywords to make your press release containing more information on the product than in the text itself. If you have doubts in your talents and talents of your co-workers, use a company providing press release services and distributing your submitted press releases. There are not may qualified companies with a good press release service so it is quite time to be picky. If you trust your case to professionals, their help will turn a standard company into a million-dollar business at the blink of an eye.

READ MORE - Make a Press Release Work on You

Top Five Tips for Successful Link Building

Good search engine optimizers (SEO´s) understand the importance of building a network of incoming links to their page in order to improve ranking results in the major search engines, but in their scuffle to push their web pages to the top, some of them are forgetting the old adage "work smarter, not harder" and they end up wasting countless hours getting links that do little - if anything at all – to help.



Here are five shortcuts that will help anyone engaged in a link building campaign to get better results, faster.


1) Remember The "Link Building Exponential"

Google has many ways of telling when a webmaster is creating an artificial network of links to a page, but savvy SEO´s will avoid trouble by considering the "link building exponential". This is a measurement based on the premise that incoming links to a page should increase more or less at the same rate as the popularity of the page. In other words, adding too many links too fast to a page that does not seem to merit them blow-up in your face. Avoid this setback by taking your time and get quality links.

2) Get Links From Pages That Are Closely Related To Your Own

My experience has shown me that some of the most valuable links you can possibly get are from web pages that use not only the same key words that you do, but which have links from the same pages that link to you. Get links from these "perfectly related" pages and the effect on your rankings will seem almost magical.

3) Identify Directories That Are Relevant To The Content Of Your Page

There must be tens of thousands of directories on the web and that number will only continue to grow. Some SEO´s waste their time by registering their web page in any directory that will accept the listing, but I have found that it is worth spending the extra time to register the directories that have a direct relationship to the web page I am trying to place. I do not get as many links, but the links I do get have a much stronger effect on my rankings.

Finding the directories that are a good fit for the page you want to place is easy if you use two of Google´s operators: INURL and INTITLE.

Say, for example, that you are trying to position a web site dedicated to graphic design, logically you would want to find all the directories that have a "Graphic Design" category and see them ordered by relevancy:

INURL: "phrase" – returns all of the pages that contain "phrase" within its URL.

The search in Google would be:

INURL: "web design" + "add url", or, INURL: "web design" "add url", or, INURL: "web design" + "add your site"

Another option to find directories relevant to your web page is to use the operator "INTITLE" which shows all the pages that have the keywords in the title.

In this case the search would be:
INTITLE. "phrase" , which returns all the pages that contain "phrase" in its title.

The search in Google would be:
INTITLE: "directory" + web design

These simple steps can save countless hours in finding the right directories, and the links you can build from these focused sources will give your page more weight.

4) Position For Certain Regions Or Countries

Google determines the location of a page by the extension of its domain (ex. .uk, .es, .com.ar, etc). In the case that the domain has a generic suffix, (such as .com, .biz, .net, .org, etc.), Google will assume that the country of origin is the same as the country where the page is being hosted.

Depending on the content of the page I am working on, I will sometimes want to position the page in international AND country specific search engines. If this sounds like a strategy that would help you, simply concentrate your efforts on obtaining links from pages and directories which, in the eyes of Google, "reside" in the country you want to target.

5) Vary Your Anchor Text

Too many SEO´s use only their main keywords in the anchor text that links to their page. I have found this to be bad practice, since search engines interpret these links to be "unnatural" when they find too many of them.

Get around this by switching the order of the key words in your anchor text to create new variations. For example, say you want to build links to a web page that specializes in link building, your anchor texts could read: "link building service"; "cheap link building"; "effective link building", or "link building company". Get 500 links using these four different descriptors, and you will get more than twice the effect as 1000 links using only "link building". This strategy has worked for me, and it should work for you, too.

READ MORE - Top Five Tips for Successful Link Building

Google And Your Domain Name

Google, being the largest and most used search engine and is extremely important to optimize your website for. As a matter of fact, if you optimize your website just for Google you'd find your rankings in Yahoo! and MSN will jump up higher than your ranking in Google. I've optimized many websites that show up in at least the top 20 listings in Google and found that in each case they ranked higher in Yahoo! and MSN usually in the top 3 positions with most in the number one spots.

Most everyone agrees that with Google content is king. So writing good copy with just the right amount of keyword phrases, for keyword density is important. And natural anchor text links is second to the throne, which takes lots of work and proper timing to do properly.

Third in line are keyword phrases (notice I said phrase because single keywords are almost impossible to optimize for), which need to be researched to find the right phrase for you and not used to often in the content/text to get the right density. Used to often and you'll hurt your ranking.

Fourth in line are the Meta Description Tag which when used properly can actually bring visitors to your website who wouldn't normally come there. Of course there are several other factors involved with getting that elusive number one spot.

But what most everyone often overlooks is what I call the fifth element which Google uses to determine their ranking of a website and that's the domain name.

People, even SEO companies, don't either know the importance of the domain name to Google or take the time to chose the proper name for the website. Most just use their company name or what they conceder a "Cool" name for their websites. Now, unless your company is well known or at least well known in its field, using a basically unknown company name is pointless. Even more pointless is the "Cool" name.

The entire reason you optimize your website is to get visitors from search engines, so why not use all the tools available to get the best ranking possible for your website.

Use your domain name as one of those tools. Instead of your company name or the "Cool" one, use a keyword phrase, one that describes your product or service. Take your time in choosing the proper name. Make sure that it will work best for your website. If you not sure ask your friends and relatives what keywords they would use to find your product or services on the Internet. You might be surprised at what they would use.

You have the keyword phrase that you know will work. But before you jump online and get that domain name there are a couple of things you may still need to do.

Let's say you're the owner of Mike's Bikes and you specialize in Colorado Mountain Bikes so you figure to kill two birds with one stone and use the domain name mikescoloradomountainbikes.com to keep your name in it along with using the keyword phrase. Now this might make sense to you but you're not Google. You're not going to like it but you need to drop the mikes out of the name because it's dead weight.

So now you've got coloradomountainbikes.com but wait before you burn up the keyboard use Colorado-mountain-bikes.com instead. Why? Because Google sees this as three different words and would see coloradomountainbikes.com as a single word. When people are doing a search they will not be using coloradomountainbikes, they are going to use Colorado mountain bikes. The bonus is that your domain name now becomes a keyword phrase used by Google when it performs a search.

READ MORE - Google And Your Domain Name

So You Want To Setup A Blog!!

So, you have been out on the Internet and hear people talking about blogs. Weblogs (Blogs for short) are web-based publications consisting of information of all sorts. Some people have personal blogs. Others are using blogs to market a product or service. I use one of my blog as a complimentary informational site to my home based business. It allows me to easily and quickly publish information about my home-based business. It is also a portal for my team to keep abreast of business related information.

The first thing you need to decide what type of blog you want. Having decided, go to www.blogger.com (there are other, but for the purpose of this article, I will discuss www.blogger.com.) to setup an account.





Once your account is setup, you will want to login into the dashboard. At this point, I would send some time reading the tutorials and looking at some of the other blogs. By looking at other"s blogs, you can get an idea of how you want your to look and function. Blogger provides a help group (forum) where you can communicate with other members.

First, you will want to create your blog. You do this by using the "Create A Blog" button. This will bring you to page asking you a few questions. At this point, you have two options: simple setup or advanced setup. If you are new and have no knowledge of setting up a website and ftping, stay with the simple setup. But if you are familiar with setting up website and ftping, I suggest the advance setup. The advance setup would allow you more flexibility, but requires more of a learning curve. For our discussion, we will stick with the simple setup.

For the simple setup, chose a title and address (URL) for your blog. Select a title that reflection your intention for the site. Selecting a good title is an important consideration, especially if you are using it to market a product or providing information to your audience. Put in the word verification number and hit "Continue".

Secondly, you will want to select a template from the ones provided on this page. Make your selection based on how it will coordinate with product or service. Also, the template should have an aesthetic affect on your targeted traffic. In other words, if you are using this to promote a home-based business, use a color scheme that is not loud and boisterous.

Lastly, hit the "Continue" button. Your blog has been setup. You will now want to start publishing to your blog. You are back at the dashboard, so select your blog link.

Under the "Publish" tab, select the "Create" tab. You will have a blank editor box to enter your new information to be published. If you are familiar with HTML tags, you can add it into your text. (i.e.: This is my new text will produce This is my new text.). There are some edit buttons within the editor that you can use also. Once finished entering your new information, hit the "Publish Post" button.

As a side note, once you have published to your site, you will want to draw traffic to your new blog. You can use two sites that will send out your post so others can see them. They are www.pingoat.com and www.pingomatic.com. Every time you make a new post, use these two sites.

Whether you are just wanting expound your personal views, market a product or service, or provide a portal for additional information about your home based business, blogs are great. They can be setup easily and quickly be published. You do not have to worry about web hosting and programming if you are a newbie. Just start typing in your thoughts on a daily basis to keep your content fresh.

READ MORE - So You Want To Setup A Blog!!

Making your blog work for you.

A blog can best be describes as a way of penning down your thoughts, opinions or ideas on any subject and putting it up on the web. The whole process of writing blogs is known as blogging. You can decide to have your blog on your own website or else you could take the help of any free blog service providers in which case your blog will be put up on their server. Once the first step of creating a blog and the regular work of updating it is on track then comes the most important stage of getting traffic to your blog.

Talk to others about your blog and soon you would have a huge traffic at your blog. Loads of money can be generated by adopting the right strategy for getting a large traffic to your blog. One has to market his/her site well as without enough traffic to the site it is not possible. You can join certain affiliate blog marketing programs wherein you can market your blog and increase traffic towards them. The right keywords are to be used so that the search engine easily takes the person looking out for some information to your blog.




There are many means of proper and effective affiliate blog marketing. First and foremost is to find blogs that are related to your blog/website. When you come across the right one, post your comments on the blog. Your comments should be just and fair. Once that is done link this blog to yours and soon you would see a lot of traffic heading your way.

There are various ways in which these affiliate blog marketing can help in monetizing your blog. Today there are many ways in which people make money through their blogs. There are various programs through which you get paid for clicking affiliate programs. You can also monetize your blog by offering paid newsletters. Selling space for advertisement is another way to monetize your blog. If your blog is one which attracts lot of traffic then selling space on it should not be a problem.

A few things should be kept in mind while trying to monetize your blog. One should understand that the secret of getting more traffic to your blogs. First of all what comes into the picture is the search engine. The search engine would bring about most traffic to your blogs. Secondly one must understand what it is that brings the traffic to your blog through the search engines and that is the keywords. You must be very careful while choosing the right keywords. There are many sites that help you in finding these keywords for you. They would even give you the ratio of number of sites to keywords. If the ratio is low the chances are better. To get on to the first page of the result of the search engine would better your chances to monetize your blog.

There are also various sites of which if you become an affiliate and refer visitors to them then you can earn a commission on these. These are just some of the ways in which by using affiliate blog marketing you can easily make your blogs work for you and can generate income through them.

READ MORE - Making your blog work for you.

Making Your Affiliate Marketing Website Payoff!

When creating an affiliate marketing website, here are some valuable tips you should know. The key to great performance is of course having the right product-and the right marketing niche. Make sure that the content and links are easy to follow, user friendly, and that there is key contact information for your customers to reach you with follow up questions.

The headline of an affiliate website, or any website in general, should have a strong headline that grabs the attention of the reader. This should be immediate. Studies rule that the attention span of people surfing the net is far shorter than if reading a book or newspaper. Make sure the content is such that a reader will want to read more.

Plan for solid endorsement content on your web page. As a rule people like to know what others who have tried the product or service really feel about it. This is where having a hybrid sales letter/article, will be the best way to quickly inform the reader of the benefits of making a purchase. However, at this stage, the goal of an affiliate website and its content should be working to build trust. What you'll be offering is content, reviews, and articles that will help the buyer make a decision to purchase. This necessary material will also provide search engines with the material that your prospects are looking to find. In short, this means more traffic to the web site-and the results are increased sales.



A good piece of advice is to also build in an informative FAQ section. A customer should always have every available piece of information possible at their fingertips. A FAQ section entails facts about the product and services and how they impact the customer's level of satisfaction. This will keep them at the website.

Consider scripting support and e-commerce services as part of your affiliate marketing website development plan. The scripting option will allow you to gather information on the customers shopping habits. This can proves useful down the line when developing or offering new products. Make sure you don't overdue it with the scripts though. Your customers should not be caught in a snag if they want to depart.

There are even web page analyzer tools that can gauge how fast your page is downloading. This information will reveal if the website is too busy. Customers will tend to shy away from websites that take too long to download. Remember, you want the customer to have easy and speedy access to the products or services. All of these things are important because they allow you to know your business up close and personal. And don't feel lacking if you're unfamiliar with some of these elements right now. Knowledge comes with time, often by trial and error. The goal is to reduce the error rate and maximize your time and money.




Don't be shy either in utilizing the links on your page to their maximum advantage. A common mistake is to make the links too small or obscure at first. Try for a workable balance of size and quantity that is proportional to other word content on the site. The goal is to direct the reader to more information that can help them make a well-informed decision. A well-informed decision results in a sale-that leads into repeat buys.

If you're serious about growing your affiliate marketing business, it'll help to have some type of answering service also that can screen and direct inquiries if you're unavailable to be on the other end. The most successful web sites understand this and provide immediate access for the reader. This gives the impression that the website is run by a professional. Once again, you'll be building the trust that allows the reader to ultimately make a purchase.

What would turn people off from a potentially dynamic affiliate website, and from signing on to an affiliate marketing program is too much initial hype. People can sense if the message is all about signing up new prospects. There has to be sincerity about fulfilling a need in the initial message conveyed. The goal is find buying customers-and to retain them possibly as affiliates who will be as loyal and charged about the service as you are. Another major turnoff is a pushy response to buy now. The buy now concept may work on merchant web sites, but an affiliate marketing approach has to be far more subtle. Remember, the primary goal of the affiliate marketing program is to win friends-and influence people.

READ MORE - Making Your Affiliate Marketing Website Payoff!

What Does A Blogging Consultant Look Like?

You know, normally you can find a definition of a word or phrase by typing "define: your phrase here" into google and come up with a lot of results. Currently there are millions of blogs and there are hundreds of people who call themselves "Blog or Blogging Consultants", yet when you type "define: Blogging Consultant or Blogging Consultant" into google you get no definition.

That is probably a good thing for most blogging consultants because without a definition, there is no standard to hold them to. I'm not claiming to be the blogging guru of all time or anything of the sort. So before you "blogging consultants" out there start getting defensive about this, think before you write. If you get too nasty about the post I may ask you to define "blogging consultant" and without google many of you couldn't do it.




Now that is out of the way, lets talk business. Every business should have a blog. There are so many reasons for your business to have a blog it would be hard to write them all in one blog post, so lets assume you know your company needs a blog.

So do you hire a blogging consultant? What qualifications do you look for in a blogging consultant? What does a blogging consultant look like? How much should I pay a blogging consultant?

Lets start with "Should you hire a blogging consultant?"

The quick answer is yes, but lets go into why first. There are a lot of things that go into making a blog popular. Technorati tags, submissions and pings to bloglists and blogsearch websites, learning how to get on the right blogrolls, etc.

If you are new to blogging it takes awhile to catch on to most of these things and most blogging consultants say that all of the above is necessary if you are going to have a successful blog.

There are more things to add to the list but this article isn't about how to run a successful blog, it's about blogging consultants. Hiring a blogging consultant can save you from making a lot of early mistakes and get your blog found a lot quicker than trying to do it on your own.

Now all the blogging consultants are liking me again. I can tell. But will it last?

What qualifications do you look for in a blogging consultant?

Here is where things get ugly between me and the blogging consultants. Most blogging consultants are . . . well . . . bloggers. Many of them have what they think is a successful blog although many bloggers have different ideas for what success is.

Some think it's defined as how much they made on google adnonsense last month. Others count success by number of visitors to their website or the number of comments that appear on their blog. Still others measure their success by what the other bloggers think about them.

What do all of those bloggers who are blogging consultants have in common? They all think that having a successful blog automatically makes you a qualified blogging consultant. I told you it was going to get nasty. After this article if I measured my success by what the other bloggers think of me then I'm doomed!

Fortunately I don't measure my success in terms of what the other bloggers and blogging consultants think. Lets get back to those qualifications for a blogging consultant.


First of all a blog is a website. It is a website that is updated often in most cases, but it is still a website. Each blogpost becomes a page of that website. So with a blog you are creating more webpages to your website as often as you post to your blog.

Now I have a question for you. Would you first look to hire a blogger to do search engine optimization for your website? Would you first look to hire a blogger to handle your AdWords campaign? Would you first look for a blogger to build your website for you?

The answer to all of the above is probably no, unless the blogger also has experience in those fields and not just for their blog. Actual websites they have built, optimized, and marketed for themselves and for clients.

A blogging consultant should not just be a blogger. They should also have all of the skills necessary to run a website. Now the blogging consultants are all mad at me again. But think about it. Many bloggers know how to write. They know how to get into the right circle of blogger friends who will link to them. They know about blogging.

So if all you need to know is how to write a blog, then hiring a blogger who knows how to write is the answer, but if you need someone who is going to manage your blog for you including posting to the blog, search engine optimization, link popularity, (and not just from blogrolls), and marketing, then you need to hire a webmaster who also blogs.

Okay, How much should I pay a blogging consultant?

How much do you have? Just kidding. A lot depends on the type of blog you want or have. A corporation blog has to pay more, not because they have more, but because there are all kinds of legal and policy matters that have to be considered with every single blog post and every single link to or from another blog or website. A small business blog doesn't have many of the same issues as the corporate blog, but still has certain standards that need to be met.

If you have ever hired a webmaster, not a web designer, a webmaster, (Thats another article), or a Search Engine Optimization Company, or a Search Engine Marketer, or even just a Marketing Consultant, (The just was in there just so I could make consultants mad again.), then you have an idea of what a blogging consultant should cost.

Now keep in mind, if you are hiring a blogging consultant to strictly teach you how to blog, then it's not worth as much money as when you hire a blogging consultant who is also going to perform all of the services a Webmaster and Internet Marketer would provide plus search engine optimization.

Ha ha! I still didn't say how much it costs. It's coming. Read on.

What does a Blogging Consultant look like?

He or she looks like someone who has more than just a blog or blogs. Someone who also owns and manages several websites for themselves and for clients. As I said before a blog is still a website.

READ MORE - What Does A Blogging Consultant Look Like?

An Easy Guide to Building Links to your Website

Link Building is vital for a good placement in any search engine and most website owners are unaware of this or don't really understand how it actually works.

Apart from good Keyword research and the right meta tags, linking building is an absolutely must for the success of any website and is an on going process, so make sure your put some time aside for this on a weekly basis or pay some one with experience to do it for you.

Without it your website will certainly get no traffic.

There are 4 different types of Linking involved and each one is as important as the other.

If they are done correctly, they most certainly will give you a good ranking in the search engines.

They are :

Reciprocal Links
Oneway Links
MultiSite Links
Directory Listings
Reciprocal Linking

Quite simply - this is a link from your site to another and they link back to you. A bit of advise here is to only link to sites that are relevant to yours. i.e - If you are selling Cars - only link to Car websites, a link to a Health website will really do you no justice, and trust me I have seen hundreds of website owners make this mistake.

What's important here is not number of the links you have, but the quality and relevancy of the site your are linking back to. Be Selective and also take a good look at the sites linking to the site you want to link. It's really no good if this Car Site you want to link to has 40 reciprocal Links from Online Pharmacies.

How to Do this :

1. Pay a SEO Company to do it for you. ( recommended - but can be quite expensive )

2. Buy Them

3. Link Exchange Sites.

4. Search for them on your own


Important : Do not add to many reciprocal links to quickly, build it up gradually otherwise you will be penalised by the search engines, as it will be seen as un-natural. A good way to start is not more than 10 to 20 in one month. As your site gets older you can start adding more.<


One Way Links

This is what the search engines call a natural link, and these links are given a far better ranking than a reciprocal link. The easiest way to do this is to write articles on what you are selling and then submit them to article directories with a link back to your website.

Website owners are always looking for content for their sites, and Article Directories are the easiest way for them to get content, with out them having to write them on their own. There are hundreds of these directories around and the more you submit to the quicker you will build up your one way links. It also is less time consuming than reciprocal linking and you will get far better results.

MultiSite Links

For this to be effective you need at least 3 to 4 websites to be involved in this. It is also seen as a natural link by the search engines and can be quite difficult to do if you only have one website. Although it can be done. You will just need to find 3 other websites that are interested.

How it works is this :

You link to site B, Site B links to site C, Site C links to site D and site D links back to you. This way all the sites get a link with out any of them creating a reciprocal link.

Directory Listings

This is also seen as a natural link as most directories don't require a link back. It's very simple and all you need to do is submit your site to as many directories as possible. There are thousand's of them on the Internet, so all it requires is a little bit of time and hard work. If you make it your goal to submit to one a day, the process won't become a tiresome.

Good Luck.

READ MORE - An Easy Guide to Building Links to your Website

Effective Blogging - How to Get Wealthy Blogging

"THERE are two kinds of knowledge. One is general, the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use in the accumulation of money."

Web Blogs are online diaries made up of short frequently updated posts. In addition, they are inexplicably popular.

Steve Pavlina's Blog, dedicated to helping you make conscious decisions in your personal development and courageously follow through on them is a good example of a very popular Blog. In February 2005, this site received about 86,000 visitors, in January 2006 about 715,000, and today Steve's Blog receives over 1 million page views each month and is ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 500 Blogs in the world.

It is listed in nearly every search engine because of spider food. New content is added almost every single day. We will discuss that later.




One key advantage of Blogs is that they are easy to update. The other side is that surfers will expect you to update your site very frequently. If you do not they will go somewhere else.

When you sign up for a Blog or create one on your own site use part of the name or a similar name to the name of the sponsor program you are promoting unless it is against the sponsors T.O.S.

This blog, Marketing-Tipps.blogspot.com, showed up in the Search Engines in 3 days. It is not even in the top 10 for most search engine terms yet it consistently produces income, mostly AdSense.

But when you create your Blog or Blogs it is really important that you pick a niche that you know and understand. Ask yourself: Would and does my Blog appeal to me? Is there something about it that excites me?
If not, you need to go back to the drawing board.

When you create your Blog, let us say about "mp3 players", and its posts use the galleries and Urls from your sponsors. If they come with a description, use them. If you have a choice between short or long descriptions use the long ones. This is your spider food.

However, do not add them all to the Blog at one time. Add them 7 to 10 at a time. Set you up a schedule. Every second or third day add more. If your sponsor does not have a lot of galleries to use you're going to have to use several sponsors for each of your Blogs to keep them updated on a regular basis. After 10-15 days when the first posts are buried well out of site repeat them. You are after surfers coming from Search Engines and you are laying down spider food. It is a lot like fishing. You are putting out bait both for the surfer and for the spiders or bots from the Search Engines

Moreover, it is very important that you think about Spider Food. Use descriptions for each of your content with your Blogs name in them. If for example you are promoting Asian content, use many related names in the entries you make on your Blog. This is very important.
Go to Google and type in for example "mp3 players"

Write down all the related key words you find on your notepad and as you make entries in your Blog weave these words into your entries. Over the next few weeks, when you do entries work these keywords into your posts. Repeat them. Yes, repeat them. Repeat them and often. When the search engine surfer comes to your Blog looking for an mp3 player he is not going to set there for the most part and read your posts. He is going to go for the links that lead to mp3 player. Therefore, what you really need to keep in your mind is getting him there.

The quality of Search Engine Traffic is high. Although at first you will not get a large quantity of traffic from Search Engines the traffic the quality of the traffic you do get is very high.

When you get your Blog up on the web, there are three places you need to submit it to. The two major search engines Google, Yahoo, and BLOGGERNITY.COM, which is a Blog Directory. Hand Submit your Blog to these three places. Once BLOGGERNITY listed your Blog, go there and vote for yourself. Sign up there for a free account and write a review of your Blog. It does not have to be anything fancy. Just write how you want the surfer to feel about and see your Blog.


Networking!

Make a list of the other Blogs at BLOGGERNITY and contact the owners of those sites (as many as you can). Write them a short email and ask them to do a link exchange with you. Most of them will.

It is very important that you use careful strategy and monitoring in promoting your blog. Use the referrers' script so that you will know what is going on. Keep a paper record of what you are doing.

By now if you have followed the examples I have given, you know how to set up your Blog and how to get traffic to it. If you follow it, you can make money.
Again Steve Pavlina: His Blog, http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/, is making $4,700/month with AdSense solely based on the following ten principles:

1. Create valuable content.
2. Create original content.
3. Create timeless content.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

This business model is fascinating. I obviously did not invent it, but I am certainly enjoying the ride. It is incredibly simple, much simpler than running any other business is. The risk is virtually zilch, and there is no overhead aside from web hosting (assuming you already own a computer and have internet access). There is no selling, no products, no customers, no order processing, no fraud, no inventory, no shipping, and no deadlines. And yet you earn income 24/7.

READ MORE - Effective Blogging - How to Get Wealthy Blogging

Blogs What Good Are They?

Blogs; what good are they anyway? Well, actually blogs are both fantastic whether you are running a business website or you are simply using blogs for fun. In terms of business, blogs can prove to be a supplemental form of advertisement and you will find them to be a unique device that you can use to keep in contact with your clients. Further, in terms of personal use, blogs are definitely an excellent way to stay in touch with your family and friends, even if they are across the globe. Best of all, blogs can often be established for free and can easily stand on their own, without an existing website to support them.

Blogs have become quite popular and more and more blogs are appearing all over the Internet. In fact, the more people realize the great benefits that they can get from using blogs, the more people will be using them. Blogs, not only serve as personal journals, they also serve as business supplements and people love communicating with others by using blogs and allowing others to comment on their postings.




Blogs are regularly updated which means that they have fresh content on them all the time. This makes them appealing to visitors and search engines alike. Every new posting means new content on your blog and if you update your blogs daily or weekly you will see them grow rather quickly. With fresh content, you can improve your search engine ranking. Whether you use the blog alone, or you used it to accompany an already existing website, your fresh content can be used to draw more and more traffic to either your blog or your website, or both.

Additionally, you can add links to your blogs and start a link exchange campaign. In doing so, you will see your page ranking increase in search engines because SE algorithms frequently focus on the number of links that are pointing to your website. The more external links that recommend your site or blogs, the easier your site or blogs are to find in the big search engines like Google.

Blogs can be used to freely advertise your products or services. That's right, blogs can serve as free web space for you to use to advertisement of your business. Also, blogs are great from providing existing clients with updated information about new products and services you may be offering. Want your clients to share there feelings about your products and services? You can use blogs to receive and share client testimonials. There really is no end to the benefits one can derive from using blogs.

What is equally fantastic about blogs is that there are ways that you can create blogs for free. Sites like Blogger, recently purchased by Google, allow you to establish a blog free of charge. Moreover, there are a variety of layouts, fonts, and templates to choose from and Blogger even allows you to post images. Finally, sites like Blogger give you the opportunity to archive your postings so that visits can return to them again and again.

Finally, creating blogs can be simple fun for everyone. No matter what one's age is, Blogging is the new wave in Internet entertainment. Friends can create clubs and use blogs to establish them, friends and family can share photographs and sentiments, and finally, personal expression can be satisfied when creating blogs. In fact, if you have a particular passion, why not share that passion with the world by starting one or more blogs? Communicate with people from all over the world that share the same passions that you do!

READ MORE - Blogs What Good Are They?

Copywriting For Search Engines & Directories

To get optimal listings in search engine and directory queries, keywords and key concepts must be placed strategically throughout your web pages. To summaries, you need these words and phrases in:

1. Title tags

2. Meta-tags (keywords and descriptions)

3. Headings (if used)

4. Body text, and

Alt-attribute in the image source tags
When online marketing professionals optimize a web site for search engine and directory queries, they should not spend most of their time redesigning the layout (in HTML) or submitting the site to the search engines. Most of their time should be spent on researching, writing good copy that will index well in search engines, and writing thorough, accurate descriptions for directory submissions. Good web copy must contain well-researched and varied keywords and key concepts based on a web page's topic; accurately reflect the web pages' content; and be strategically placed throughout a web page as mentioned above.

Most sales and advertising "fluff" should be eliminated.

Here's an example (and one of our pet peeves). How many of you have seen this scam, "Put your printed brochure on the web!" Print advertising copy contains a lot of "fluff" phrases such as "service that is second to none." Search engine analysis? "Service" is a stop word in some search engines and will be ignored in a search query. "Second to none?" How many people do you know really search using that phrase? When we are looking for something on the web, we are going to type in exactly the type of product or service we are looking for, not sales and advertising "fluff."

Web copywriting should contain keywords and key concepts without all the "fluff." Web copy has to flow and be strategically placed to get your web pages ranked well in search engine and directory queries. Your potential customers will also appreciate being able to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. That's just good customer service.

The one time that web copywriting is extremely important is your site submission to Yahoo. Although Yahoo reserves the right to change or modify the site description you send them, if you can submit a well-written description containing your most important keywords and key concepts without word stacking, Yahoo will likely keep most of your description intact.

Good copywriting is a necessary element of both online and offline marketing. If you do not have experience in writing good copy for the web, we recommend that you hire an online marketing consultant to initially write the copy for you. Then you can learn from the copy you paid for. The more practice you get at web copywriting, the better you will get at it.

READ MORE - Copywriting For Search Engines & Directories

Smart Blogging - See How A Blog Can Promote Your Home Business

There are a small number of retailers who truly understand that when you create a blog to promote your home business, it can be an extremely effective way to increase traffic to your business. Proven time and again is the fact that traffic to your site results in more sales for your business.

As a website owner who has their own home business, you will discover that when you create a blog as one of your marketing tools, it is a great way to increase traffic to your website. You can also use blogging to make money as another form of revenue for your business, through adding affiliate links and displaying Adsense ads on your blog.

Have you ever noticed the affiliate links and Adsense ads that are displaying on blogs? This is a great way to gain another revenue stream for your business, not to mention the increase traffic you get back to your site which is another bonus.

Through creating a blog, it gives you the opportunity that will improve the level of customer service you give, by allowing your customers an access to useful information. When your customers can get a better perspective of how you operate your business, they are more likely to buy from you.




Let me put it this way, when I am out looking for a product that I need and a salesperson cannot give me the information that I am looking for on that particular product, I just politely walk away. On the other hand, when I do find a salesperson who can give me all the information that I am looking for on that particular product, I end up purchasing it even if it costs a few dollars more.

Internet marketing works the same way. When you create a blog it will give your customers a better understanding of your service and will strengthen your relationship with your customer (and that should be your goal). Remember, a strong relationship will lead to a successful business.

If your home business is a product sales site, you do not have to blog about your product itself. You need to Blog about the things that are related to your product. For instance, my site is a Christian site on how to get Gods word out to the public, taking different roads and using the internet as a tool. When I start a blog, it is a subject related to getting Gods word out and giving them valuable understanding information according to Gods word.

(Example) If you sell golf clubs, you want to talk about the experience you may have had on the golf course. You can make your customers feel empowered if you inform them to make their own decisions, as opposed to saying, "This is a great product! You should buy it!" The goal here is to smoothly introduce them to your product.

Blogging is a great way to promote your home business, not only does it give you the opportunity to increase traffic, it is also one of the benefits that give you the opportunity to educate your viewers. In turn, you will gain more sales because you are now recognized as an expert who knows what you are doing. Here are four tips to keep in mind when you create a blog.

1. By sharing important information with your viewers, you are gaining customers and giving them a reason to stay on your site longer. It is a proven fact that the more time your customer and potential customer stay on your site, your chances are a lot better they will make a purchase from you. The more your customers return for your valuable knowledge, the possibility is great to make a lot more sales.

2. Your familiar tone of blogging will create a window of opportunity for your customers to see that there is a real person behind your business. The internet is the means of mass communication for conveying ideas or information , by creating a blog you will be adding your own personal nature by what you put into it. This will create that open window of customer trust and loyalty.

3. Get feedback on your site, or your service. Allow your customers to leave comments and find out what changes your customers would like to see on your site and what they would like you to carry. Blogging is a valuable tool, not only do you increase traffic but it lets you communicate with your customers in a friendly way.

4. Why would you create a blog to promote your home business and make it one of your marketing tools? One reason...the links back to your site. These are high-quality targeted hits from the links in your blog. Blogs link to each other as the topics of interest make their way from one blog to the next. Each topic will then point back to the starting place, related topics make comments on each other. As a result, they gain more groups of people that all have something in common and shared interests.

READ MORE - Smart Blogging - See How A Blog Can Promote Your Home Business

How Can You Make Money With An Affiliate Income?

You can make a lot of money with an affiliate income, but it is something that you have to work at and it doesn't happen overnight. First you have to check out the many different types of affiliate programs available and choose the one that pays the most money. You don't necessarily need to have an intimate knowledge of the program, product or service when you start, but you do need to do your research.



Basically an affiliate income comes from a program that you can join for free. There are many companies with websites selling products or services and will pay you a percentage when you refer a customer that makes a purchase. This is a percentage of the amount of money that the customer spends. Some affiliate programs have a set amount for each purchase. The company gets free advertising from you and this is the way they pay for it.

To get started in affiliate marketing you have to set up a website related to the product that the company sells. You need to have well-written articles about the product that will lead customers to click on the words or phrase that will lead them to the site where they can find out more information and hopefully buy. Once you have the website set up, then you can apply to the affiliate program and give the address of your site. In most cases, you will be accepted without questions, but there are some programs that have strict rules about what the referring sites should be like

Do a search for the most common phrases that people search for when they want information about this product. Overture is one of these programs that will tell you how many people searched for a specific phrase in the previous month. The higher the number, the more likelihood there is that when you write an article based on this phrase, visitors will come to your site.

An affiliate income is something that builds over time. You have to keep adding to the site and keep enticing customers to buy. In this case it is the words rather than the graphics that do the selling for you. You will not receive a check from the marketer until your account reaches $100. This is to save money by sending out small checks each month. Depending on the affiliate marketing program and the product, you could be well on your way to having a good second income and you may even be able to quit your regular job.

READ MORE - How Can You Make Money With An Affiliate Income?

Blogging and SEO - A perfect Small Business Internet Marketer Match

Blogging and SEO - A perfect Small Business Internet Marketer Match

It has become pretty obvious that blogs have been become an important part of marketing for almost any type of online business. They are unmatched resources when it comes to connecting with customers and potential customers.

But, there is an additional benefit that shouldn't be over-looked: there impact on your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Blogging can greatly enhance any websites natural search results through regular postings, and natural keyword placement. There in fact is no stronger way to market ones website for free than by blogging with natural keywords.

Similar to article marketing, posting daily blogs with the keywords of your business included can have remarkable effects on the ranking of your site in any given search engine, and thus net you more traffic. One key to gaining more traffic from keywords is to use 'niche' keywords. These are keywords or keyword phrases that may be searched for less often, but that have less competition. This means you may be able to rank much higher for these keyword. An example: The keyword term "baseball" is certainly searched for often, but there are millions of websites optimized around this keyword. However a keyword phrase like "Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz news" would have fewer competitors. The longer keyword also increases the likelihood that your blog contains exactly what the visitor is looking for.




Getting picked up in search engines can lead to increase volumes of traffic heading to your site every day. There are top keyword placers that use blogs to retain huge amounts of daily traffic to their sites just by integrating a variety of niche keywords into their posts. The amazing thing about blogs is they are often picked up by the search engines almost as quickly as one posts to it, which makes it an even more powerful tool for SEO purposes. Our experience has been that blogs that take advantage of Google's Blogger or Wordpress are quickly indexed.

Another way blogging can help your site's search engine ranking is by the quality score. Most search engines, including Google rank sites with a quality score, the more unique, user provided content, the higher it appears the quality score becomes. If a website is just a sales page, and a few pictures, the quality score will most likely be low. But if a site has a blog on it, with fresh, daily posts, the quality score becomes much better, and thus the site gets ranked much higher when people are searching for your niche, or keyword terms.

If you haven't considered a blog for the pure marketing aspect of it, it's probably time you considered it from the SEO perspective. You've got nothing to loss but website visitors.

READ MORE - Blogging and SEO - A perfect Small Business Internet Marketer Match

7 Tips to Building Your Blog's Readership

Attracting traffic to a blog or a web site is challenging enough. So from the very beginning, when you start to see visitors coming to read your blog, be sure that they feel comfortable to stick around. And there are a number of ways you can help them to do just that.

Here are seven vital ingredients for building a successful blog with a loyal following.

1. Publish Regularly.

As your readers become familiar with the frequency of your posts, it will influence their visiting behavior. If your readers know that you post fresh content every day, they will probably come every day to read it. If they know you post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, that's when they will come.

2. Stay on Topic.

Stick to your niche. If your blog doesn't have a niche, give it one. Readers like blog's that are focused on a particular theme or topic. If you have no theme and just post about anything, then readers are less likely to become passionate about your blog and will probably move on to somewhere else.

3. Use Meaningful Titles in Posts.

This not only announces clearly what the post is about, but it will help people navigate your blog and also influence your ranking with search engines.

4. Interact With Your Readers.

Think of your blog like a conversation. You post. Readers comment. Be active and be positive as you interact and converse with your readers.

5. Highlight Your Best Posts.

Don't let your best posts get lost in your archives. It's always a good idea to link to your best posts from a 'best posts' category on the main page.

6. Provide Good Navigation to Popular Pages

If you help people find the key pages within your blog, their visit will be a much more enjoyable experience.

7. Avoid Not Posting for Extended Periods.

If someone visits your blog and discovers that the last post was three weeks ago, they will probably be disappointed. If you don't post, people may give you the benefit of the doubt and come back on a few days to check, but you better believe they will lose interest quickly if you fall out of your regular schedule and stop posting.




There you have it. Seven little tips that will make a big difference to your blog's readership. It's not rocket science. It's just using some common sense when posting and interacting with your readers.

READ MORE - 7 Tips to Building Your Blog's Readership