December 1, 2008

Article Marketing Essentials- How to Optimize an Article for Maximum Effectiveness

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By Christine OKelly

There are several reasons for actively pursuing article marketing: to establish yourself as an industry expert, to increase awareness of your products and services, and to build backlinks to your website. In this article, we will focus on the third purpose, building backlinks to your website.

It is possible to engage in article marketing and yet achieve absolutely no linking benefit to your website or weak linking benefit to your website - and its amazing how many people are doing just that. In this article, I"ll show you how to optimize an article with the topic of "article marketing" for maximum SEO benefit.

Know Your Keywords

Keywords are essentially the search term that your readers and/or customers use to find your website. Knowing which keywords you wish to target is one of the most important components to your Internet marketing campaign. Proper keyword research should be able pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in your campaign, what keywords your competitors are targeting and which keywords are more easily mastered than others.

Choose one primary keyword to target in the article, as well as 2-4 related keywords to sprinkle throughout. Using related keywords helps search engines to get an even clearer idea about the topic of the article. Search technology has become highly advanced and continues to improve all the time. Search engines know the difference between a keyword that appears on a page of many unrelated terms and one that appears with terms that are related to the topic.

Using Keywords In The Title And Summary

Use the keyword in the title of the article whenever possible. If you can, try to position the keyword toward the first part of the title. For example, a title that reads:

Article Marketing: 3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility

Vs.

3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility with Article Marketing

Using keywords in the title is important because the title often becomes the title tag and/or the URL of the web page. The title tag and URL are two of the most important pieces of a webpage in terms of helping search engines to identify the topic of the content. Not only does the title tag give the search engines a critical tip as to the topic of the content, the title tag usually becomes the dark blue title that appears in the search engines results page. This is why it is essential to create article titles that not only include keywords, but that also captivate readers. A good, solid, intriguing title can make the difference between your article being seen and being overlooked.

The summary of your article often becomes the Meta description for the page on which it''s published. The Meta description is usually the short summary that appears in the search engine results page beneath the title. The same logic that applies to writing captivating, keyword-rich titles also applies to writing summaries.

Using Keywords In The Body And Author Bio

When writing articles for article marketing, a good target keyword density is between 1.0% and 1.3%. Trying to "over optimize" by using keywords at a higher percent density can cause the article to be rejected by many publishers.

It is also very important that you use your main keywords as anchor text whenever the online article distribution site will allow. Google uses anchor text to determine page ranking. When you use your keyword as an anchor text, you are essentially telling Google (and the reader) what your website is all about.

The author bio is the most important place to use keywords. Many article submission sites allow for anchor text in the "about the author" bio - and taking this opportunity critical. When creating a bio with anchor text, it is beneficial to include two links: one to the homepage in a main keyword, and one to an internal page using the keyword the internal page is targeting.

It is very important to build links to a site''s internal pages, however, many people only concentrate on building links to their homepage. In fact, I recommend that whenever a new page is added to a website, that an article should be written and distributed linking to that new page. The backlinks generated by that article will help establish the new page with the search engines.

By choosing to target the right keywords, using your main keyword in the titles and subheads of an article and of course linking to your website with anchor text keywords, you will effectively be using article marketing to build a backlink campaign for your website.

About The Author

Christine O"Kelly is co-owner of SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm. The company provides SEO press releases, articles, blog content and web content to resellers and end users alike.

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Is Your Expired Domain Really Worthy

By John Khu

Are my expired domains really worthy enough? Can I sell them at very good prices? These are some of the most commonly asked questions by an aspiring and budding trader. An inexperienced expired web domains trader will always be quite anxious to know if he or she has struck gold while buying domains expired. Here are some simple tips and suggestions to know and identify whether your stock of expired web domains are really worthy or not:

Tip: Your domain is worthy only when someone pays and buys it for a very good price. It is as simple as that! It is quite obvious too! You may also wish to know the exact objective of buying one.

Length of your domain: How lengthy is your web domain expired? The shorter the domain name, the better will be your chance to sell it for a decent price. Shorter names are sweet and premium. These domains are also very valuable. Just remember how people remember famous names like Google and Yahoo. These names are already branded, short and easy to remember. The utility value is also very important while buying it. Names like casino dotcom are more worthy than names like culture dotcom.

Four lettered or LLLL.com names: These are the short domain names that are not actually proper words and they exhibit a number of forms depending on the letters used in the URL. These are the intermediary type of domain names that experienced domain expired sellers would like to dispose off immediately. You will need to be very careful while buying these domains as they may even be trademarked by their previous owners.

The amount of traffic: The more numbers of visitors to a particular web domain expired, the more valuable will be that domain. But, traffic attached to a web domain could be deceptive and misleading. What you need here is the actual organic, type-in type of traffic that is considered as holy by the major search engines. The domain that you wish to sell should be an authentic one with original and true traffic.

Earning: Expired domains do not possess real commercial value unless they possess a large amount of traffic. You will need to build a small income around your domain before you wish to sell it for a big price. Domain parking is a nice way that will help you add some basic income. This will help you sell that domain for a decent price. People simply love to buy domains that have the ability to derive immediate income. Flipped domains developed over an affiliate program or product/service can fetch you decent income. Just remember that flipped domains require lot of time and money to develop a catchy web site and its content. Earning potential for a particular expired domain inflates with flipping, parking and click-through marketing based on PPC.

You should learn and understand how you can buy good names so as to create a formidable source of stable income.

About The Author

John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web site called
http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

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Search Engine Optimization Online Tips

By John Hubert

When we attempt to rank a website within a major search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other, there are a number of search engine optimization techniques that we can use in order to ensure that our website gets the best ranking it possibly can.

One of these techniques is known as increasing inbound links which works due to offpage optimization. Of course there are a variety of other techniques that are important as well, such as the age of a site, its page rank, and various other forms of optimization.

One of the greatest things that many search engine optimization sites won"t tell you is that the age of an external backlink is incredibly important. You see, a lot of sites out there may link to you for a short period of time, however if the link, for whatever reason, ends up being removed, then any benefit it passed to the target site will also be removed.

Now the longer a link stays linking to another site, the greater trust there will be between the other site and that link. Eventually the trust will get to a higher level until finally the full weight of the link is passed on to the other site. This is a valuable technique of passing page rank and keyword authority and is one of the best forms of search engine optimization.

A common misconception today is that an excessive amount of links is somehow a great thing. This may have once upon a time have been the case, however today Google views such an inordinate number of links as being more spammy than anything, and therefore will be less likely to give the same weight to these non related links as it used to. It is not uncommon to see the search engines such as Google place a site into what''s commonly referred to as the sandbox as a sort of "cooling off" phase that many new sites must go to, in order to determine their worth.

So at the end of the day, it is possible to have your site ranking highly within the SERPs through Search Engine Optimization techniques, however you must abide by Google''s policies, do as they say, and make a good quality site that will attract natural links to it in order to obtain any form of long term presence within the search engine results page.

About The Author

John Hubert maintains a page on some Search Engine Optimization tips. His site also teaches ways to Make Money Through Online Business.

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November 29, 2008

The 5 Tips to Online Success Through Ebook Creation

By Tom Williamsen

If you want to give up your day job and make a living online, your best bet would be to look at what others are doing effectively and model your business on what they are doing. Ebook marketing is a popular and extremely successful way to make money online.

There are countless niches and sub-niches that you could exploit to make profits. It''s not as simple as just slapping together some content though. You need to follow the tips I have mentioned below:

- Make sure that you understand your audience- You need to know the burning desires of your target audience. You need to provide an answer to the questions that they are asking. A good way to do this is through keyword research and through researching some web forums related to your chosen niche.

- Make sure that you position yourself as an expert- You need to position yourself as an expert- as someone that prospective customers will look to, to answer their burning questions. Provide your readers with valuable information and don"t fill your ebook with advertising and obvious affiliate links.

- Make sure you edit your ebook- Nothing turns people off more quickly than a badly written ebook full of spelling and grammatical errors. Make sure that you edit your ebook, get a professional to do it for you.

- Make sure that your ebook looks professional- You could have the greatest content in the world but this does not necessarily mean that you are going to make your fortune. You need to make sure that you spend some time and money designing your ebook covers to ensure that your ebook looks professional.

- Make sure that you market your ebook effectively- You are not going to make any money if you do not advertise your ebook effectively. There are a variety of marketing techniques out there and you need to work out which technique will work best for your business.

Creating and selling ebooks can be a great way to make money online. If you work effectively, you can set yourself up so that you can make a great living working minimal hours.

Writing an ebook will only get you halfway to success. In order to ensure that your ebook looks professional, and also your business looks professional, you need to ensure that you have a great graphics package. You need to have a professional looking ebook cover and mini-site graphics.

There is no need to be too concerned. You may be thinking that you are going to have to hire a graphic designer and this could cost you a fortune. It''s true- the best graphic designers are expensive! However, there are now ebook cover software programs out there that can solve all your graphic design problems. Below of I have listed some of the benefits of ebook cover software:

- You do not need to be a graphic design expert- Ebook cover software enables you to design countless logos for countless ebooks without the need to be an expert. It is all inbuilt to the software for you.

- It is a quick step-by-step process- Your graphic design can be as simple as clicking a template, setting your logo options and away you go.

- You can customize your logos- Another great thing about ebook cover software is the ability to customize your logos and have them appear as YOU want them. No longer will you be frustrated trying to explain to a designer how you want your logos to appear only to be frustrated by the results. You can actually see how your cover and logos will look instantaneously.

- Optimized for online and offline viewing- Another great benefit of ebook cover software is the ability to optimize your covers for online and offline viewing. Many people print out the ebooks they purchase because they do not want to read them online. You want your ebook cover to look as good online as you do offline.

If you are going to write an ebook, you really want to be making some money out of it. The best way to make yourself look professional and boost your sales is to ensure that you have a good cover. The best way to get your covers is to get some software that will help you design graphics in a few quick steps.

About The Author

Thomas is a Direct Response Graphic Designer. You can see his latest sites here: Online eCover Generator and eCover Action Scripts Package

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How To Improve Your Site Usability To Increase Your Conversion Rate

By Tom Williamsen

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally.

The first method is to make sure the typography of your content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn"t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the creme de la creme of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about that.

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you"re making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don"t know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won"t buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects" desired payment method. After all, it wouldn"t make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won"t be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects" confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!

About The Author

Thomas is a Direct Response Graphic Designer. You can see his latest sites here: Online eCover Generator and eCover Action Scripts Package

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The Important Keys To Successfull Website Design

By Tom Williamsen

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it is content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other peoples shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 ) Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home - about - products - product image - etc[a few more clicks] - product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, would not a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine a when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do, other than the material factor. But lets assume the all other factors are constant, would not the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

2 ) Design

Putting oneself in another individuals shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

Situation A : A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

Situation B : A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures would not exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, is not exactly welcoming, is it?

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Do not get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain an impressionable website.

About The Author

Thomas is a Direct Response Graphic Designer. You can see his latest sites here: Online eCover Generator and eCover Action Scripts Package

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November 26, 2008

How To Index Brand New Websites In 7 Days

By Karl Sultana

You can index a 7 or more websites websites in a week - brand new websites! Just use the same technique and apply to all websites.

7 websites in a week! So one website should be far easier to get indexed. Right?

So what you can do?

First and foremost the concept is to get spiders to visit these 7 websites or your one website as quickly as possible and several times a day!

To get spiders visit the sites very fast - you can simple use some article submission service or software and submit one article a day - some good service that submit your website to hundreds of directories. That''s why spiders find your new site quickly.

Put your link in the bio of the article. Use anchor text.

Second submit your website to high pagerank websites - like social sites, story sites which exist in the bulk.

Do article marketing submission daily and within 5 days your new site is indexed. Yes, that alone is enough.

The high pagerank websites sort of give your website a boost doing them is like a bonus. The bottom line is that indexing is part of the process of getting high rankings. Don"t think of it as something you have to do before something else.

Obviously search engines cannot rank your website before first indexing it. But that''s their problems not yours.

You do onpage and offpage optimization techniques, that''s your job.

Pretty easy but here are some tips to really get this right.

Use original article for submission - that way all article directories accept it - plus other webmasters who like it places them on their website, that''s a bonus. I would use articles that are not already on my website.

One submission everyday, just fill the form if it''s a service one time everyday with article title, description, etc. Brain-dead easy.

I would do that alone if it''s just one website you have, and after 5 days use the list of high pagerank websites - and submit the site there as well. That guarantees solid inclusion in Google and other search engine index.

So it''s all offpage - no really need to do anything in particular on your website. Spiders will find your website from article directories - and since you have a lot of backlinks they find your website often and quickly… that''s why they index it.

Test it out!

How to index 4000 pages of your website is not about indexing the website - the homepage… but in that case it''s a 4000 page website, a big site and owner wants to index all the 4000 pages.

It is not same thing and there are different techniques rather than the ones used to index a website with few pages (indexing homepage).

About The Author

Check out Karl Sultana''s search engine optimization program. He has plenty of free resources on his blog, including a free newsletter, Karl''s SEO Gossip.

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How To Get Internal Pages Cached Quickly

By Karl Sultana

So what''s cached?

If you visit Googl and find your website, you can click on cached link. That will open new window and at the top it will tell you last time spiders actually visited that page.

If they visited the page like a year ago - something is not very well with that page. They should come often, like every 1-2 weeks.

So how to index first of all internal pages and then get spiders to crawl them regularly?

First of all any page you have on your website should be linked at least one time from some other page.

The content of the page - if it''s a duplicate content of something already on your website or external website - make content unique and relevant to your site.

Meta tags, make them unique - unique meta title and description at least, descriptive to the page.

Create xml sitemap and submit it to Google. Create website sitemap and list all pages neatly and organized.

Remember here you are not trying to trick search engines, whatever you do you must input quality factors, your visitors in mind.

Those are the most common things why your pages are not indexed.

Let spiders move from page to page easily so they find all your pages. A website sitemap helps a lot.

You can also get backlinks to the pages that are not indexed. Probably the best way from articles so link to inner pages as well in bio section, sometimes.

Indexing internal pages is a matter of allowing spiders to reach them, showing spiders the content is worth indexing and valuable for users and telling spiders that other people or websites like the content (they are linking to it) by getting backlinks.

Adding fresh content on your website is the reason why your website cached copy is fresh. If it''s old, like a year ago that spiders last visited your website you have to add more fresh content.

Nothing special here, no hidden secrets, if your website is not having quality for your visitor why do spiders have to index or visit it regularly anyway?

Spiders come to see if you have anything new on your site.

Pinging blog is a way to call them if you add something new on your blog… always ping if you add new posts something spiders will see. Don"t call them if you just added a new picture.

I ping after posting always. There are many free pinging tools to use.

All blogs have an rss or atom feed too, which you can add to the pinging too. I also ping my content not just the blog. If I add really useful content that I think spiders should see quickly, I ping the page as well. Not just the blog.

That helps generate spider activity.

About The Author

Check out Karl Sultana''s search engine ranking tips. He has plenty of free resources on his blog, including a free newsletter, Karl''s SEO Gossip.

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SEO; The Past, Future And How To Choose A Service

By Thomas Pretty

The SEO process or search engine optimisation sets out with the objective of increasing traffic to a website and hence increasing profits for those who own the company. The process is typically carried out by selecting specific keywords and then optimising a website in order for it to rank highly in search engines whenever somebody enters one of these keywords.

This is performed through a number of SEO strategies including increasing the number of links to a website and creating relevant content for the web pages. Those embarking upon the SEO journey however should be careful; there are many unscrupulous operators out there who will be willing to take your money for ineffectual services. Some businesses enter into an SEO contract with the belief that within a week they will be on top of the search engine rankings.

This however is a common misconception that needs to be avoided, any company that claims this will be possible is lying; equally, if a company guarantees a first place listing they are also likely to be deviant; nobody can guarantee such a ranking. Additionally, for those companies who have only just created their website there will be a considerable period of time before the search engines recognise it as an authoritative information resource.

It is understandable then that this process takes a little time to reap rewards. Any SEO specialist that promises a rapid change of fortunes for a website should be avoided. While there are methods out there that will produce short term results in the majority of cases these methods are deemed as "black hat" by the search engines.

Black hat simply means that the methods that have been employed to optimise a website are bad practice, where it creates a problem is when the search engine authorities and competitors pick up on these unscrupulous methods and then penalise for their usage.

Penalties range in severity from ranking demotion to complete delisting from search engine directories. While the Meta information on a website is important in the SEO process it is not the most important aspect.

In the past SEO specialists simply had to fill their Meta tags with keywords and success would be eventually forthcoming. This however has changed, while Meta is still an important part of the entire process, search engines do not give as much credence to this information.

This change in focus represents a shift in emphasis more widely. The first search engine algorithms were relatively simple and people soon found ways to manipulate them; these methods can be considered spam and fundamentally involved filing websites with keywords so the search engines were hoodwinked into considering them relevant.

Today however search engine algorithms are far more advanced, to the extent that not many people truly understand the way they operate. The result is that to have a site that ranks highly a complex process of relevant information and linking must be undertaken.

Unfortunately the SEO industry is filled with immoral operators who are too willing to take money from people and then deliver an inadequate service. This is why businesses should be especially careful when hiring an SEO team; ideally it should be possible to view past examples of successful optimisation and even speak to current clients; by doing this it is possible to gain assurances of the service that will be delivered.

By taking a careful, considered and conscientious approach it is easy to find the perfect SEO company that will deliver success.

About The Author

Internet marketing expert Thomas Pretty looks at SEO strategies and how they have evolved over the years.

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November 24, 2008

What You Should Know About Web Hosting Services

By Scott Lindsay

About The Author

Now you can Make A Website or Make Your Own Website incredibly fast at HighPowerSites.com. Start a HOME BUSINESS and Resell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

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