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February 26, 2009

You Are NOT George Clooney – So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear!

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:59 am

You Are NOT George Clooney – So Get Your Social Networking Act In Gear!
By Adam Urbanski (c) 2009
When George Clooney was recently asked about his take on Facebook at the Toronto Film Festival, his response was short: “I’d rather have a prostate exam than a Facebook page.“

Now, that’s probably understandable when movie studios (his potential clients) have his number on a speed dial, and pesky paparazzi (freebie seekers and unqualified prospects) chase after his every move.

But unless you already have more prospects and high quality clients than you and your business can handle, your approach to Social Networking should be drastically different.

Frankly, a little over a year ago I considered online networking a total waste of time. Fortunately, I was able to recognize how wrong I was. And I wasn’t the only one that had a change of heart on this.

After Dell revealed they generated a cool million dollars in extra sales in 2008, (ahm, make it a cool $3 million by June’09!), many other companies large and small started paying attention to this social networking “fad”!

Just consider a few of these facts:

• Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks initially considered online hang-out places for kids and teenagers are now attracting a much more demographically diverse crowd.

• Big brand names, like Ford, WholeFoods, Comcast, IBM, Dell, Southwest Airlines, and many, many more are establishing a strong presence on social networking hubs like Twitter and Facebook.

• Facebook membership has just passed the 300 million mark (that’s nearly the population of USA!) and Twitter is marching towards 18 million users by year’s end! That’s a lot of potential customers!

• Although, started with college kids in mind, over 50% of Facebook’s members now are over 25 years old, over 55% are women (the new buying power), 51% have an annual income of $75K, with 33% claiming to bring home $100K or more.

• Finally, Facebook has become one of the most trusted companies in America, and people spend three times more time there than on Google!

Got your attention now?

Good, let me give you just five basic tips on putting this massive connection power to your advantage.

1. Get Started! Open an account on every social media and social networking platform you come across. Even if you are not actively using all of them, (which you won’t) you should reserve your name, the name of your company, your brand, or your key products, because those are like real estate locations – once the prime spots are gone, they are gone! For example, I have the vanity url facebook.com/adamurbanski – but there are at least six other Adam Urbanskis who won’t ever be able to grab that link! I also have twitter.com/adamurbanski, youtube.com/adamurbanski and many more like this – are you getting the point?

2. Get Involved! Just opening the accounts won’t do anything for you. You must be actively involved. Choose the best three platforms for you – where you can find the largest population of your ideal clients and it’s the easiest to connect with them. Each platform provides search tools that enable you to find people you already know, current customers, as well as hubs where most of your ideal potential clients already hang out, so you can become visible to a lot of them very quickly. And start connecting and talking! But first…

3. Listen, Listen, Listen More The most important thing you must remember is that social networking is NOT ABOUT YOU! It’s ABOUT THEM! So don’t listen twice as much as you talk (I mean “post”), listen 10 times as much! Find out what the current topics are. What people are concerned about, what information and solutions they are looking for. Then make your posts relevant to other people’s needs! Here is a hint – nearly all of the social networking services and tools, at least the basic version of them, is free! So don’t go out there pitching your high-priced wares. Give, give, and give some more first! If your focus is on getting and taking, you will get a big fat NADA from your networking efforts. But if you focus on giving, you’ll be abundantly rewarded in return.

4. Get Attention! Following all the rules is for sissies! So don’t be a social networking pansy – have an opinion (in fact, have lots of opinions on everything!) and voice it loud and often! People admire people with opinions – even if they don’t agree with you, they will stick around to watch what will happen next. Social networking experts are quick to dispense all their “must not break” rules (heck, I’m doing it right now!), but the fact is, this is such a new media that most of the effective approaches are still to be discovered. And the only way to do so is by stepping on some toes and breaking some norms.

If you want a “safe” way to practice this, follow my PET formula: polarize, entertain, teach!

- POLARIZE. Whether you piss people off or make them love you, they will pay attention. If they are indifferent, they will leave!

- ENTERTAIN. People will always choose fun over education. If people laugh w/ you, they like you… Plus, when they laugh – they learn!

- TEACH. Gary Veynerchuk says “give good s#!%.” And he gets how PET works, because that phrase rubs some people the wrong way, it entertains, and it teaches! Peeps love good tips they can use right away – so share some!

5. Automate! The purpose of social networking is to CONNECT WITH PEOPLE on a very personal level. Still there are some tools that can help you impress your fans with your “omnipotent online presence” and get more networking done in less time.

RSS blog feeds, FriendFeed.com, Ping.fm, TwitterFeed.com, SocialOomph.com, TweetBeep.com, and TubeMogul.com are just a few of a plethora of tools and services – most of them free – that will kick your online socializing into high gear!

Here is my final take on it. And I really want you to get it! In April of 2008, from a stage at one of my boot camps, I called people who use Twitter “lazy idiots with no life” (yeah, how is that for polarizing, huh?) But at the same boot camp earlier this year I had my Twitter networking activities to thank for clients from Australia, Singapore, Netherlands, Spain, England, Hungary, and a few other countries. Needless to say, I changed my tune. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what I now call professionals and entrepreneurs who refuse to recognize the client attracting power of social networking. Better yet – stop wondering, and if you aren’t involved yet – get started now!

About The Author
(c) 2009 Marketing Mentors. All Rights Reserved.
The author, Adam Urbanski, teaches service professionals and business owners how to develop better marketing strategies to improve sales and revenues. His website offers more how-to articles and free tips to create a successful marketing action plan at TheMarketingMentors.com

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February 24, 2009

7 Social Media Tactics for Explosive Results in Your Business

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 7:03 am

7 Social Media Tactics for Explosive Results in Your Business
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2009

First, let’s define the term Explosive Results for our usage.

A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well.

An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting.

When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you’re on the right track, but at the same time, you’re limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn’t have to be the case.

If you’re a business owner, you know that working harder doesn’t necessarily mean better results – what if you’re working hard on the wrong thing?

Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 – Hot Content

The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. If you get this component wrong, it doesn’t matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what’s going hot in your targeted topic and find a unique angle to tailor your content into what people already like, without stealing their ideas.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 – Niched Network Nuances

The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or yours. Here’s the logic.

People follow other people with similar interests. They’re on sites like Google, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you have a whirlwind of clicks happening. The only question is, will it be your link that gets clicked or passed over?

Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don’t want your broadcasts, and you’re just as useless to them if you don’t want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you’re trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. If I’m not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored, or worse yet, blocked completely.

It’s about the perfect balance of quality AND quantity.

And if I’m not paying attention to you, I can’t and won’t spread your message. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can’t seem to find the right company? That’s a perfect match, and can dramatically cut down your search for the right partners and prospects.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #3 – Simplify Sharing

It amazes me how many people miss this one.

You’ve got great content. You’ve got a massive, niched network.

Why feed them content that’s hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-ín wall if you’re spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-ín list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don’t need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don’t want it to spread, well, that’s something different. But if you’re sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.

Send your su.pr link so all they have to do is click the Thumbs-Up button.

Put a few sharing links on your page.

Make it easy for them to Retweet.

The easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #4 – Consistency

And now we come to the area I fail at the most. It’s one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistently, and still give the best possible service and support to my customers and clients. I always err on serving people who have bought from me, figuring that next blog post can wait until tomorrow.

Then at some point, I noticed a decline in return traffic – people weren’t coming back because they’d already heard everything I had to say. The solution? I got help for my content creation process. The ideas are still mine, but I was able to barter help for research, transcribing, and editing. I am also able to get audio and video polished much less expensively than I thought, though I don’t always use this option due to time constraints.

The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.

You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you’d probably switch channels. If you’re inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #5 – Think Engagement

Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.

Nowadays this isn’t the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren’t leaving your site because they’re ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren’t paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.

This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?

About The Author
Can you really get up to 27,000 visitors in a week from social media? I did and I can show you how to do the same without cheating the system, or spending 20 hours a week on social media sites. Find out how in this free video at http://www.freetraffictip.com/27kvisitors and see the proof for yourself, today.

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February 16, 2009

Twitter Under Assault

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:55 am

Twitter Under Assault
By John Sylvester (c) 2009
A new micro-blogging website, Yahoo Meme, similar in style and functionality to Twitter, was soft-launched in Portuguese in May. They have now launched a Spanish version. But what is unusual is that the word “meme” was first introduced by controversial British ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene to discuss “elements of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that are transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena…” That doesn’t sound a bit like Yahoo.

Just as in the 19th century, when Thomas Huxley was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his tenacious defence of Darwinism, Richard Dawkins has played a similar, modern-day role when talking about evolutionary principles and explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena.

Analogous with the above, you may have noticed that Yahoo’s Meme closely follows the etymology of the Greek word “mimema” for “something imitated” and that instead of a sweet little bird tweeting, it has a dog – admittedly not quite the image of Huxley the bulldog, but a dog nevertheless – barking “wow” in Spanish. A dog? Don’t you think it would have been more appropriate to have used a cat that could have ruffled Twitter’s feathers a little, like Yahoo Sucatash?

According to Wiki, examples of memes are tunes, ideas and catch-phrases. But now, microblogging? Yes, Yahoo has introduced its own version in Spanish and Portuguese offering similar features to Twitter. At first glance it seems like another clone where users can populate with text posts, music, videos, photos and links to MP3 files, and with a repost rather than retweet button, but is it really an exact clone?

According to readwriteweb.com, “After using Meme [see http://meme.yahoo.com] for a while, it doesn’t quite seem right to call it a Twitter clone. Instead, Yahoo Meme is really more of a back-to-basics microblogging service that feels a lot more like Posterous or Tumblr than Twitter.”

It must be said that releasing the beta in Spanish was a bit odd. However, according to The Summer Institute for Linguistics Ethnologue Survey (1999), the following are the top languages by population: Chinese, Spanish, then English, so to opt for Spanish would appear quite justified. But why was it cloaked in such secrecy? Do they think they are closing in on rival Twitter? Unlikely as yet, as Yahoo’s Meme does not have an API, so third-party developers are unable to write any web tools for it.

Perhaps my adherence to the Messrs Dawkins and Huxley analogy was too abstract as Yahoo’s description of its new “meme” insists: “Today, a ‘meme’ on the internet is popularly understood as a fever and became content that is played by everyone.”

Not quite what Richard Dawkins had in mind, as in explanations about his original “memes”, were that they “propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist heard, or read about, a good idea, he passed it on to his colleagues and students. He mentioned it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea caught on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.” Does this mean that Yahoo’s “content that is played by everyone” is the same thing as an imitation of Twitter? One wonders.

As things go, not everything is well at Twitter. Not only has Yahoo started to imitate its service but there has been yet another DDoS attack and they are said to be in litigation for patent infringement from TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company.

Not that this should be taken as a legal precedent, but it does raise some eyebrows as to how far users can legally tweet. According to TechRadium on the National Law Journal’s website: “Alerting the public about a fire, hurricane or traffic accident on Twitter is an unlawful tweet.”

So does that mean that the use of Twitter to post hurricane updates will affect Chevron and Shell or that the Los Angeles Fire Department is in trouble for posting alerts about fires and road closures?

George Borkowski, chairman of the intellectual property practice in Los Angeles, said Twitter “is likely to challenge the validity of the patents, claiming that the technology is too generic or too obvious to warrant a patent.” Borkowski also claimed that as the technology “was already out there, so there’s nothing truly novel about the patent.”

These three major assaults on Twitter must have its board a little nervous as, yet again, and for the third day running, the formatting of Twitter was all over the place on all browsers on my Mac. During my various research forays, however, I did stumble upon Yahoo_Meme on Twitter, which is a little cheeky to say the least. It only has one tweet pointing to the Portuguese beta.

However, add to that the already competing services such as Friendfeed, a real-time feed aggregator which consolidates posts from social media/networking websites and RSS/Atom feeds; One Riot, a real-time web search engine used for locating news, videos and blogs; Tumblr, a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, etc, where users are able to “follow” other users; and SPNbabble, which supports the OpenID standard for a single sign-on between many different websites using a common password for each.

Besides the problems with Twitter internally, it seems by coincidence that it is being “hunted by the pack” from all these possible angles. But is it the legal connotations that have confused us in the TechRadium case about what our understanding is regarding the law and what is permissible to microblog? That question seems to be in the lap of the courts (certainly not the gods if Richard Dawkins has anything to do with it) – and alongside it, a process that could potentially take years to settle.

About The Author
John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build, a company specialising in web design in Bangkok, and who is an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

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Twitter Demystified for Business Users

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:32 am

Twitter Demystified for Business Users
By Nancy McCord (c) 2009

Twitter is the current top “hot property” on the Web, but its popularity and how to use it has mystified many business owners. Many people think that they want to, or should be using Twitter, but simply do not understand the platform, its use, or its place in building web exposure. This article will demystify Twitter and help you to learn how to use it in the workplace and to promote your business.

First, I have to say that I had been confused on how to use Twitter to benefit my own business until I downloaded TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a desktop application that allows you to review and post status updates on Twitter and Facebook simultaneously. I consider it a “must have” application for anyone who wants to make sense of Twitter. TweetDeck allows you to sort the people you follow on Twitter into groups, allows you to limit the number of Tweets (Twitter micro posts) to be shown at any time, and also allows you to discard all Tweets you have seen with one click. Additionally, using TweetDeck, finally a Twitter search on a topic makes sense.

Since using TweetDeck, I have had a much better Twitter experience. As a Twitter newbie, visiting your Twitter home page is intimidating; it consists of post after post from people who you are following, who you may not know much about, and it just seems like a huge volume of content. To get started effectively first group the people who actually have something interesting to say on TweetDeck and voila, you have a powerful tool that keeps you at the forefront of what is happening in your industry and on the Web.

So how do you get started with Twitter? Well the first thing is to start on Twitter yourself to understand what you like to read, who you like to follow, and to clearly identify what you like about Twitter. For me, it boils down to this: I like to follow people in my industry who say something of value, who provide a link to a new application or point me to an interesting new article, video, or blog site that I should review but may have not found myself. Based on what I like, and the people who I find interesting to read, I now write my Twitter posts using this same formula to grow my own Twitter audience.

What I also like about Twitter is that the people who I follow also know how to show their true personality in their Tweets. Yes, I do like to know what Danny Sullivan (famous search engine marketing guru) ate for lunch, but better yet is the link to the video he thought was funny. I love following Ashton Kutcher (movie star married to Demi Moore who just hit 1 million Twitter followers in April). Man, that guy is really funny and is having a ball with Twitter. His posts are great and he has just earned the status of the user with the most followers. This is why you can’t hire someone to “Ghost Twitter” for you. It’s about showing the real you – you can’t fake that!

So how can you use Twitter for business? Twitter is an excellent tool for linking and this is the real value for businesses. By using Twitter to point people to content on your website, articles you have written either on or off your website, or by linking to a service you want to highlight, you drive traffic. On top of that, Google actually indexes Twitter and so your Twitter page can appear in the organic search results so make sure your bio is well thought out. Don’t waste time using Twitter to point to blog posts, use TwitterFeed to post your blog posts directly onto Twitter. If you have a blog or website, you’ll get new Twitter followers by posting your TwitterFeed right onto your web pages. People who may not have known your Twitter ID can simply click the bottom “follow me link” and start following you on Twitter.

What’s important to be successful in using Twitter is to identify what you personally like about this new media and then deliver the same type of things that you like back to your followers – work to provide value not drivel! So you’ve got to play with Twitter and learn how to use it first before you can really become successful with it for your business.

So how do you get followers? Well, I started by following everyone (who I found by doing a Twitter search) who had the last name McCord. Then I searched for web design, search engine optimization, and pay per click. Any site profile that looked good, I clicked to follow the writer. It was that easy. Many times people who you follow will choose to follow you. That’s how you initially build up your Twitter base. Over time you will start to identify your “Twitter voice” and refine the type of Twitter presence you want to have by changing your content style and the things that you Tweet about. As you refine your presence, you will build a following.

Another cool Twitter use is that you can reply to any of your followers by simply putting an @ in front of their Twitter ID. For example to send something to my attention use @mccordweb at the very front of your Twitter posting and click enter. Just remember that this post is seen by all followers on my site and on your Twitter site. If you need a more private exchange, go to the direct message link on the Twitter.com site and select a follower by Twitter ID name and send your message from there. This note will be private. If you are using TweetDeck, you can click on a follower’s Twitter ID icon and then select to send a direct message or @reply to them. TweetDeck will automatically insert the correct syntax for you in the Tweet.

For many businesses the ability for users to communicate with top management using Twitter is an invaluable resource. This one-to-one exchange allows a company principal to keep tabs on customer viewpoints, concerns, and interests. As a Twitter reply or direct maíl does not use email and does not require a response, this is a great way to tap into social networking to test new ideas and to ask for user feedback. For example, if you have a new software product, ask your Twitter followers for feedback on a specific feature, or provide a link to your beta version for their testing.

How you use Twitter is all about your personal business needs. The best advice that I can provide you is that you need to use Twitter a bit yourself first to understand the medium and to find out what you like to read best using Twitter. Then, create your Twitter network sharing information that you find interesting and have some fun.

Currently I am following 204 people and 183 people are following me on Twitter. Personally I find Twitter great fun and a very cool way to find out first what’s happening in the world before you see it on TV, read it on the Web, or see it in the newspaper. That’s the real power of Twitter; you share, you find out, and you know, all by a person-to-person exchange of information.

For those of you clicking in from my e-newsletter the rest of the content on Twitter applications and uses follows.

Below are some of the Twitter applications that I like and use regularly for my business.

Twuffer – I love this one, it is a Twitter post scheduler. Some people feel that Twuffer defeats the immediacy of Twitter posts or Tweets, but I like it as I will schedule Tweets on days that I am not blogging to keep my followers advised of things I find important. It is easy to use, allows you to Tweet ahead, and lets you select a posting schedule by day and time. If you are pushing content on a service or product, this is an excellent tool to use. Set your Tweets up one week or one month at a time and feed your content to readers in addition to your regular Tweets. Make sure to use www.TinyUrl.com to change any long URLs you point to in the Tweet to a Twitter-friendly short version to save space.

Twitter Feed – This is another one of my top favorites. TwitterFeed allows me to show my blog posts from “The Web Authority” directly onto Twitter. It also allows me to post my Tweets back on my blog (by installing a widget) in my blog template – very cool cross interaction! I pick up many Twitter followers with this technique. Readers come to visit my blog and then choose to follow me on Twitter.

Twitter Grader – This one is a vanity application that allows you to see where you stack up against other Twitter users. Twitter Grader measures the power of a Twitter user based on followers, number of updates, and posting frequency.

TweetBeep – With this application, you can manage your online Twitter reputation. Alerts will be emailed to you whenever a Twitter user Tweets about your business, name, or domain. You select the alert criteria and what to watch for using TweetBeep. This is great for a business that is concerned about branding and online identity. PR professionals should make sure to use this tool to watch for comments about their clients.

About The Author
Nancy McCord is the founder and President of McCord Web Services LLC which provides search engine marketing, web design, blog writing, and webmaster services globally. You can visit Nancy and her firm at www.McCordWeb.com .

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7 Basics of Good Web Design

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 3:59 am

7 Basics of Good Web Design
By George Peirson (c) 2009

Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design.

These basics are aimed at new visitors/customers; your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the “look” of your web site so that you make a good first impression.

1. Fast Loading Web Site – Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can’t have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question – have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn’t open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the page? My favorite sites open almost immediately.

So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don’t use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, provide links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control.

2. No Meaningless Splash Page – Do you appreciate a fancy animation page that doesn’t tell you anything and you have to wait for before the web site will open? Neither do I. The last thing I want once I find an interesting site is to wait through some animation before getting to the first page. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want multimedia on a site, I do. I just don’t want an animation before the first page that forces me to wait for it to finish before getting onto the site. It’s like having to wait for a salesperson to finish their memorized speech before you can ask them a question. No thanks! I like animation, just in the right place and at the right time. Plus, if I am a returning customer, I will have already seen that animation and don’t need to see it again.

My suggestion is to use a smaller animation contained in your main landing page which also includes your main message and links to the rest of your site. It will make for a faster loading page (smaller file) and your visitors can go ahead with accessing your site without having to wait for the animation to finish.

One final note, don’t ever put your logo as the only content on your landing page with a link that says “Enter Site”. This just screams Unprofessional and will drive away potential visitors in droves. The last thing I want to do is to click on another link just to get into the site. This is a total waste of my time. I usually will skip a site if I see this.

3. No Annoying Web Gimmicks – Now that you have your visitor on your site quickly the one thing you don’t want to do is to drive them away just as quickly. So, don’t put anything annoying on that first page. No loud background music that makes them quickly hit the volume control or the back button on their browser. No flashing animations while they are trying to read your content. No popup, flyout, expanding ads that cover your home page. Basically, leave the gimmicks alone until you are sure that your visitor will stay on your site. Most casual visitors will leave your site in just a few seconds, no sense on driving them away more quickly.

Multimedia is great on a web site, just don’t bombard your visitor with it first thing. If you want audio, then put in a nice picture with a link, like a picture of yourself with text saying something like “Let me tell you how to make fifty thousand this month!” If they are interested, they will click on the link and listen to your message; if they are not interested in audio, then you should be using a different pitch anyway.

Also, monitor what advertisers are putting on your site if you sell ad space. I am sure you have seen those ads with the animated dancing figure, cute the first time you see it. But after seeing it 10,000 times with every imaginable character I have added the company to a líst I keep of companies I won’t do business with. So their animation has gone from “look at me” to “you annoy me” in my mind. Ads like these will impact your visitor’s experience. So even if your site is perfectly designed, one misplaced ad can ruin all of your hard work.

4. Have a Clear Message – Too many web sites are a mish-mash of content. This is especially true of blog pages. Certain types of sites lend themselves to stream of consciousness content, but most don’t. Make it easy for your viewer to understand what your web site is about, don’t make them guess. Have a clear topic headline, followed by clear and concise text. This is also where a picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture directly pertains to your message.

You want your visitor to quickly understand what your message is. If they like your message, they will take the time to read the rest of your page and look around your web site. If they don’t like your page, then it won’t do you any good having them stay on your site anyway. So, don’t make your visitors guess, let them know what you are about quickly and cleanly and you will have happy visitors. And when thinking about a sales page, a happy customer is a buying customer.

5. Coordinated Design – This one should be self evident, but it is surprising how many sites change their design for every page. You want your visitor to be comfortable in your site and one way to achieve that is by having a coordinated web design. Having a consistent logo, using a consistent color scheme, keeping your navigation in the same place. All of these help to create a coordinated design. This does not mean that you can’t change colors or the “Look” on different segments of your site, but if you do, the changes should not be so drastic that it feels like you have moved on to a different site.

If you select one place for your logo, one place for your navigation, one look for your buttons or other common graphic elements and stick with those then you will be well on your way to a coordinated design. If you change colors for a different section, but keep the same logo location, the same navigation location, the same button shape, then your visitors will not become lost as they move from page to page.

6. Easy Navigation – Once you have grabbed your visitors attention you want them to be able to easily move around the different areas of your web site. This is done with easy to use navigation. There are three standard, accepted locations for navigation elements on a web page: along the top, on the left side, and at the bottom. I will usually put my main navigation either along the top or along the left side. I will then put text based navigation at the bottom of the page, this text based navigation is more for the search engines than anything else, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to move to the next page when they have reached the bottom of the current page.

Most people start reading a page from the top left and then read towards the bottom right. So navigation at the left or top will be seen as soon as someone enters your page. Also navigation at the left or top will not move or change position if the browser window is adjusted in size. The worst thing you can do is to put your main navigation on the right side of the page and have your page set for a large screen size. Let’s say that your page is set for 1024 across with the navigation on the right, and someone views your page at 800 across, they will not see your navigation at all. The left side of your page will show perfectly, but the right side will be hidden outside of their viewing area. Of course by using floating or popup menus you can overcome some of these design limitations and keep your navigation visible at all times.

Unless you know that your audience will enjoy it, don’t use Mystery Navigation. This is where your navigation is hidden within images, or spaced around the web page in some mysterious random order. This can be fun on gaming sites, or social networking sites, but in most cases the navigation should be easy to see and easy to use. If you do want to use Mystery Navigation, I would recommend keeping the text based navigation at the bottom of the page, just in case.

7. Have a “Complete” web site – And finally, no one wants to go to a web site only to find that the site is “Under Construction” and the content they are looking for is not there. These are words that you shouldn’t ever use. If a section of your web site is not ready for prime time yet, then simply don’t show it yet. It is better to have your site look complete and professional, then to have it look like a work in progress that should not be up on the web yet.

You can easily tell your visitors that you will be having more content in the future without having your site look like it is unfinished. Just use phrases like “Content Updated Weekly” or “New Products Added Monthly”. Both of these will tell your visitors that it would be worth their time to come back and visit later, but neither one will make your site look unfinished. So no matter how small your web site is, give the impression that you have taken the time to complete the site before putting it up on the internet, this makes for a more professional presentation and a better visitor experience.

In Closing – By following these simple 7 Basics of Good Web Design you will be well on your way to having an easy to use and successful web presence. Just keep in mind what you look for when you first land on a web page after doing a web search in Google or Yahoo, or other search engine. If you want fast loading pages, make sure your pages load fast. If you want to be able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily, then make sure you have easy navigation. Just keep your first time visitor in mind, put yourself in their web shoes and make your web site an enjoyable place to visit and success should follow.
About The Author
George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 40 multimedia based tutorial training titles covering such topics as Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. To see his training sets visit www.howtogurus.com . Article copyright 2009 George Peirson

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February 14, 2009

Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:29 am

Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation
By Kurt D. Lynn (c) 2009 KLynn Inc
So much SEO.
You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization – SEO – that it offers a cure for all the world’s business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google’s own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.

So Why All The Hubbub?

The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means “free advertising”, that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO “experts” that, variously, all claim to … (pick one):

Have SEO secrets that will help you get an unfair advantage over the next guy;

Guarantee you a first-page listing for an incredibly low monthly rate;

Provide hundreds of high page rank sites that will link to your site;

Give you 5/10/20 quick tips to immediately improve your rankings;

Tell you what Google/MSN/Yahoo doesn’t want you to know about SEO;

Tell you that whatever SEO you’re doing is all wrong; or

Some other variant of the above.

To some extent, this notion of “free advertising” is not altogether inaccurate. SEO can result in your site being found – free of charge – and it can result in traffic to your site that may, in fact, result in new business. But the reality of SEO is not quite that simple.

SEO Is Far From “FREE”

SEO takes work… often, hard work. For those that aren’t familiar with what’s involved in SEO, below is a líst of some of the typical activities that (as the CREST commercials used to say) “when applied in a conscientious program of regular professional care” will result in higher search engine rankings.

Researching and selecting keywords that are truly relevant to your desired audience;

Researching competition for desired keywords;

Researching and analyzing competitive websites;

Re-writing and restructuring your website to address desired keywords, to be more accessible by search engine “crawlers”, to have appropriate label meta tags, headings, and inter-page links;

Create a program to build links to your site from other sites (directories, exchanged links,article marketing, etc.)

Create a program to keep content on your site regularly refreshed and synchronized with all the above.

Regularly (daily or weekly) monitor all the search engines and your competitors positions

SEO Is Not Easy

Doesn’t quite sound as easy as some people suggest does it? That’s because it’s not. And it’s all the more complicated when you realize that every site on that first page, and on the second and third, is trying to do the same thing – but against you! You boost your rank above them. They go to work and boost their site back above yours. And so on and so on… It’s a war and the SEO “experts” are the arms dealers.

Your Goals And Those Of The Search Engine May Be Different

If you’re going to pay good money for SEO, it may also be worthwhile to keep in mind that search engines don’t necessarily have a goal of making you the most findable site on the web. The bottom line for them is making sure that their users find what they are looking for. Satisfying that requirement may mean that you don’t and should not come up first. Google is the number one search engine for a reason: Google users get results they want. Those may not be the results you want.

Short Term and Long Term

In the short run, there may be some serious benefits from investing in SEO to boost your search engine rankings. In the long run, however, there’s probably not much you can do beyond a certain point. Frankly, if you have a finite budget, altering the basic nature of your site and trying to boost how valuable your site is to others (as represented by links to your site) can only be taken so far. After a point, the perfect market characteristics of the search engine will prevail.

Balance SEO With Other Forms Of Traffic Generation

What this means is: yes, do make sure you do the essential SEO necessary to optimize your rankings in search engines. But do it in the context of an overall marketing program. Definitely use SEO to ensure that you get a fair and accurate appraisal by search engines. But also invest in other non-SEO lead-generation methods to bring traffic to your site and business to your table.

Above all, measure the results of your SEO and non-SEO activities carefully and frequently. When SEO reaches the point of diminishing returns, cut the rate in which you invest in it and boost your reliance on non-SEO marketing to reach your goals. In the long run, traditional non-SEO marketing may just be the most reliable and consistent way to boost traffíc to your site.

About The Author
Kurt D. Lynn has been a founder, cofounder, or senior executive of half a dozen enterprises in both the U.S. and Canada. Currently Kurt provides consulting and communication services focused on the needs of emerging and growing businesses. His consulting firm, KLynn Inc, offers an assortment of proven services for the development of sound marketing strategies, tactics, and project execution. His communication services, while more diverse, are focused on optimizing sales and marketing effectiveness: http://www.klynn.ca

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February 13, 2009

Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:29 am

Top 5 Signs That Your Website Sucks
By John Metzler (c) 2009

Small business owners may not have the resources to invest heavily in their web presence and finding solutions to problems can be like finding a needle in a haystack. You know something’s wrong but don’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Is it a technical issue? Are your ads not performing well? Don’t know what kind of traffic you’re getting? Website problems can fall into a myriad of categories. So if you think your website sucks, a) it probably does, and b) you should read on.

1. You Aren’t Getting Traffic

You’re excited about the big, expensive job the design team just finished on your site. It looks like a million bucks! Well it’s a shame it isn’t making you a darn cent. Just because it exists doesn’t mean people know about it. Announce it to the world by submittíng it to reputable directories and sharing your useful content with others on social bookmarking sites (you do have useful content, don’t you? If not, I’ll cover this later). You can even do some link exchanges — provided the sites you exchange with are reputable — just to get your site crawled early on. Further optimize it for search engines by following good SEO practices, building quality content and generating inbound links from other sites. Once you do that, you’ll need to monitor progress with web analytics software. Google Analytics is free and it has a slick interface. And we know you like pretty things seeing as how you broke the bank on your web site design.

If you’re looking for high ROI, invest your time in learning search engine marketing. Better yet hire a qualified SEO firm if you have the budget for it. Don’t settle for quick-fix promotional ideas. Build long-term exposure and a solid reputation by attaining high rankings, keeping email/newsletter lists, targeted ad placement and social media participation.

2. You Have Worthless Content

What defines worthless content? Without knowing what topic your web site covers it’s tough to say, but if you have nothing that sets you apart from your top competitors then I’d say you aren’t in good shape. If you don’t know what kind of content people are looking for on the Internet today, take a peek at what’s popular on social bookmarking sites. Observe some of the story titles on the front page of Digg.com:

“Guinness Stout Beef Stew Recipe for St. Patrick’s Day”
“In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air”
“Kim Jong-Il Interprets Sunrise As Act Of War”
“Automatic bacon dispenser?”
“The 5 Best Obama Photomosaics on Flickr”

Words I would use to describe these topics, in order, are: seasonal, informative, satirical, comical, and trendy. This information is popular because it’s appealing in its uniqueness and is relevant to today’s market. To set yourself apart from your competition, you need to get creative. If you’re the kind of person who had trouble painting by numbers, then hire someone creative. Professional copy writers can be well worth the investment. Create free tools your customers will want to use; write funny or interesting commentary in a blog about your industry; put a new spin on a traditional product or service or provide seasonal discounts. Create a comprehensive F.A.Q. on your site that covers topics your competitors don’t.

Take the time to beef up your content. Be innovative – don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Use the top competitor in your field as a measuring stick.

3. You Have No Call-to-Action

Poor promotional language can have a sabotaging effect if visitors aren’t drawn to your conversion pages. A conversion page is any page that acts as the final step in a visitor submitting a form, making direct contact or purchasing a product online. Obscuring those pages or confusing the visitor on where to go next can make them leave your site. Internet users have a short attention span – give them a clear direction when navigating your web site.

Use your web analytics software again to find out what pages visitors are landing on first. If your home page gets the most traffic, make sure there are clear links to your sub-topics. If inner pages are your most popular landing pages, find out if the traffic is targeted. Once you know the type of visitor and the specific page they land on, then you can start marketing your content more accurately.

The bottom line is to always make clear why, and how, visitors can buy your product. Don’t get too cute with multiple steps, options or convoluted language.

4. You’re Getting Traffic But No Sales

Are you sure the traffic is relevant? If you’re running a pay-per-click campaign, ensure your ads are geo-targeted properly and your ad text or landing pages appeal to your customers. For organic search engine placement, have you done keyword research and analysis before optimizing your content? Look at your web stats and see where your visitors are coming from. What keywords were they searching for when they landed on your site? Are the referring sites relevant to your industry or topic? How much time does the visitor spend on each page? Sales won’t come if your visitors aren’t interested in what you’re selling. This is why preliminary keyword analysis is so important to search engine marketing.

If you’re running ads, it’s always good practice to experiment with different ad campaigns. If you put all your eggs in one basket you run the risk of losing out on potential revenue. Elements of your ads that you can change are:

• ad text
• landing page
• specific network your ads are shown across
• topics on which you focus the campaign
• geo-locations targeted

Remember, it doesn’t pay to skimp on initial product/market research and analysis.

5. You’re Getting Relevant Traffic But No Sales

This problem could signal a technical error or navigation problem with your site. Make sure you thoroughly test all functionalities on various web browsers and systems. Submit test forms. Do a link check to spot possible broken links. Is your web hosting service reliable?

If you’ve ruled out technical issues as the cause then turn your attention to the content and customer base. Has your market taken a downturn? Can the lack of sales be attributed to the poor economy? Have you fallen behind your competition in product quality, selection or pricing? Does your web site’s navigation system confuse users? Your web site is the first line of contact between the business and potential customer, but it’s not the only step you need to worry about. Telephone operators or online payment systems can present their own issues.

This is moving away from web site problems but if any part of the sales process takes place away from the site, investigate those areas of your business as well.

If you’re pulling out your hair over a problem with your site and these tips still haven’t helped, feel free to post a comment and I’ll personally have a peek at your site.

About The Author
With eight years in the search engine marketing industry, John Metzler of FreshPromo knows what works and what doesn’t regarding website success. His strong grasp on visitor usability and analysis, along with a highly-skilled SEO perspective, can be seen through his professional SEO services . Read the FreshPromo blog for more free tips and commentary.

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February 9, 2009

How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:36 am

How To Find The Right Keywords To Optimize Search Engine Results
By Nelson Tan (c) 2009
Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination – your website – you need to provide them with effective signs that direct them right to your site by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the “Open Sesame!” of the Internet. Find the exactly right words, and presto! Hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or overused, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site – or of seeing any real income from the visitors that do arrive – decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may not get the chance to find out about it. So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven’t followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It’s hard to be objective when you are right in the center of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers’ understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably wouldn’t have ever considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered words and phrases from outside resources should you add your keywords to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By “quality visitors” I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably not scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn’t enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword “automobile companies.” However, your company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword “automobile body shops” would rank lower on the popularity scale than “automobile companies,” but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the specificity of your keyword, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase.

Let’s look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between “Seattle job listings” and “Seattle IT recruiters” which do you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career, have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties.

You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until you find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to your site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profíts per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better revenues.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work – and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business’ rewards.

About The Author
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of Free Internet Marketing gifts at www.internetmasterycenter.com.

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February 6, 2009

Black Hat, White Hat and Big G

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:57 am

Black Hat, White Hat and Big G
By Peter Adamson (c) 2009
I read a lot of articles and postings regarding Internet marketing, SEO and the like. One frequently recurring theme is the distinction between black hat, grey hat and white hat methods. Interlaced with the use and abuse of these terms is the notion of what is “ethical” and what is not. It seems to be generally assumed that anything black hat is somehow unethical. More disconcerting yet, anything that Google frowns upon is often deemed unethical as well. I would like to clear the air about these terms which seem to mean all things to all men.

First of all, let’s put to one side for a moment the recently coined terms which euphemistically refer to SEO techniques under hats of various colors. These are not dictionary terms, and anyone can make them mean whatever they want. However, the words “ethical” and “unethical” have very strict meanings, have had for generations and their misuse can call into question the personal integrity of individuals. So what does ethical mean anyway? According to

dictionary.com:

1. pertaining to or dealing with morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.

2. being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, esp. the standards of a profession: It was not considered ethical for physicians to advertise.

So doing something unethical is first and foremost immoral and wrong. Additionally, it may be implicitly wrong because it violates an accepted code of conduct adopted by a recognized professional body, whose moral judgement is above reproach. Given these definitions, when would Internet marketing cross the line into the realm of the unethical? Well, let’s try to ring fence the concept and limit it to what we think may be just plain wrong by any reasonable standard of measure:

• lying to people to get them to buy your product

• offering a product that does not meet the expectations created by your marketing material (variation on lying)

• deliberately abusing a resource to the detriment of its owners or of the other users

• deliberately devising strategies to deprive affiliates of their fair share of profíts after they have expended money and effort to sell your product

• fraudulently generating affiliate or other revenues

I am not suggesting that this list is exhaustive. The point I am trying to make is that something is truly unethical if it promotes falsehood, if it is to the detriment of someone or if it involves fraud. So the sixty-four dollar question is: when is SEO unethical, when is it black hat, and are the two the same thing?

The term black hat usually refers to SEO tactics that are designed to trick the search engines into ranking a page that they wouldn’t otherwise rank. Let’s apply this to the present question.

Suppose by some top secret powerful method you could trick Google into ranking your adult site for the term “clip art”. I think we would all agree that this would be unethical. Your content is potentially damaging to people, especially minors. It has absolutely nothing to do with what people are looking for when it comes up in the SERPs. It further harms Google’s reputation for providing relevant results, so it would be detrimental to the owners of an online resource.

Now, suppose that by some top secret powerful method you could trick Google into ranking your clip art site for the term “clip art”. The method is definitely black hat, because it attempts to circumvent the search engine’s algorithm. If Google really knew what was up, it would not rank the site. But you did not abuse Google’s resources, or overload their servers. You are not acting to the detriment of people searching your term because you have what they want. Quite to the contrary, the SERPs for the term “clip art” are polluted with absolutely valueless sites. You would in fact be doing every one a big favor, Google included. But, you have done something that Google said not to do. You did “black hat” SEO.

Now it is increasingly clear that Google is beginning to believe its destiny on earth is to police the Internet and tell us all what we should and should not do. It is not the first nor will it be the last corporation to have delusions of moral superiority. But when I read articles that imply, if they do not state outright, that an SEO technique is unethical because Google said not to do it, I become concerned. This is what totalitarianism is made of: the masses cowing to bullies who invoke some self-serving principle to justify their moral high ground. It may be in order to ask whether Google itself would stoop to unethical or black hat practices. Consider just two examples of Google’s questionable behavior:

• Anyone who has had their AdSense terminated with no explanation whatever knows that Google keeps the unpaid balance of funds in the AdSense account. They claim they keep it to refund the money to the advertisers, but do they? Just try to find an advertiser who has been victim of click fraud, and has collected a refund from Google. You may be looking a long time…

• Google uses a black hat technique known as cross-domain cookies. First let me say that cross-domain cookies are legit when needed to run a tightly integrated set of domains. For example, if your secure online store is on a domain owned by your hosting provider, you would be justified in using cross-domain cookies to carry user preferences from one domain to the other during checkout. But this is not the case when you visit any Google owned site (Blogger, YouTube…) and Google tracks you. If you log into your blogger.com (http://blogger.com/) account, then your AdSense account, Google’s all-watching eye knows you are one and the same person. Yet the two sites are entirely unrelated. This is violation of privacy.

The point I am making is that of all the companies out there, Google is not particularly qualified to lecture on right and wrong. Just how badly we have run amok on this point can be seen in this extract from an article posted on about.com:

“Black Hat search engine optimization is customarily defined as techniques that are used to get higher search rankings in an unethical manner. These black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• breaks search engine rules and regulations
• creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site
• unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.”

If you do not find this appalling, then we need to have a talk. According to this piece, it is unethical (morally wrong) to break search engine rules and regulations! Since when does any search engine have any right whatsoever over what I do with my web site, my shoes, my car, whatever? Creating a poor user experience is unethical? Hello??? As for their third point, we have already dealt with it. Cloaking is not unethical in itself. It is what you do with it that may be unethical. You may have to cloak because some crawler is so clueless that cloaking is the only way you can get people to find your site when they are looking for what you’ve got.

Here is another of my favorites, taken from Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

“If you believe that another site is abusing Google’s quality guidelines, please report that site…”

About The Author
Peter Adamson is a marketing geek, and creator of The Link Juicer, an online tool that is used to get backlinks and designed to produce long-term results through natural organic search traffic.

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February 5, 2009

Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful & Useful Keyword Marketing Tools

Filed under: Internet - Websites - SEO — admin @ 6:51 am

Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful & Useful Keyword Marketing Tools
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009
After years of running websites and earning a full-time online income, I am constantly reminded that it all comes down to keywords. Actually, it all comes down to obtaining top rankings for your profitable keywords in the search engines, mainly Google.

And that statement has to be refined even further, it’s all about obtaining top keyword rankings and keeping them at the top. You must consistently keep your keywords in the top spots on that all important first page of SERPs since your keyword rankings can make or break your online marketing.

If you’re targeting extremely competitive and profitable keywords you will have your work cut out for you; unless you have tons of money to buy your way (links) into the top spots, expect to spend months if not years, getting to those top listings. Google has frowned upon link buying and has taken steps to fight it, but this practice is still widespread throughout the web.

Most beginning and honest webmasters want to take the proper route and earn those top rankings by providing good quality content that web users will actually find helpful and useful. They build those links the natural way by offering viral link bait in the form of videos, ebooks, articles, reports… all branded with backlinks to their sites.

Gradually over time, these links will build up and your keyword rankings will go up in the search engines. People will find your content and bookmark it in all the social bookmark sites like Digg, Facebook, MySpace… and your rankings will climb even faster.

However, since keyword marketing has become extremely competitive, you do need a little help with achieving those top rankings. Over the years I have tested and used many keyword tools and I have listed some of the best ones below. (Just Google to find links to these tools and programs.)

Internet Success Spider

One of the first keyword tools I ever used was The Internet Success Spider by Neil Shearing which is now free. The Spider is a very simple, yet powerful keyword tool because it shows you the major players in your keyword niche. It slowly works in the background to give you valuable information on your keywords. I realized very quickly, with marketing (like most things in life) that information is what separates the losers from the winners.

Keyword Elite

Later, I tried and am still using Keyword Elite by Brad Callen, it remains one of the best keyword research tools on the market. I can directly link many of my keyword successes to my early use of this tool.

Brad Callen simply creates some of the best marketing tools for online webmasters and marketers. KE is no exception. It will do some very comprehensive keyword research for you and let you easily arrange that information. Keyword Elite has earned a well deserved reputation as a very useful marketing tool.

Brainstorm It – Site Build It

Another, perhaps even more powerful keyword tool is Brainstorm It! which is offered through the Site Build It marketing/hosting system run by Ken Evoy. This is a powerful keyword analyzer and finder, which is now in its third version.

SBI run by Ken Evoy creates many tools for webmasters and Brainstorm It, Version 3 is simply one of the best. This keyword tool will do both Vertical and Lateral keyword research to give the most comprehensive array of information for your marketing online. Only negative, you only get so many Wordtracker credits and you have to pay extra when those run out. Actually, Wordtracker should be at the top of any keyword tool list, but I have mainly used it in conjunction with other programs like Brainstorm It.

Google Keyword Tool

Then again, there is Google’s own keyword system run through its Adwords program. Like everything Google does, this keyword tool can be very helpful especially for the novice online marketer.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

MSN Commercial Intention Of Keywords

Not to be outdone, another helpful tool is Microsoft’s Online Commercial Intention tool, which tells the probability your chosen keyword has a commercial value to it:

http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/Default.aspx

SEOBook Online Keyword Tool

For very quick keyword references, I like using Aaron Wall’s keyword tool on his SEOBook site. It’s quick and gives very good stats for your chosen keywords.

SEOQuake

Still yet another SEO (sort of related to keywords) is the SeoQuake Toolbar which you can run on Firefox. It will slow down your browser but it will cough up valuable information about your site and more importantly, it will give you valuable information on your competitors’ sites. One feature that I find very helpful is the SEM Rank and SEM Price, which tells you how much your Search Engine keyword traffic is worth.

Plus, you must not ignore your website stats and traffic logs for they can supply you with your most valuable keyword information regarding your site. Closely examine which keyword phrases are bringing in the traffic and/or sales. Develop these keywords with your marketing, especially any “long tail” keyword phrases visitors are using to find your site or products. These longer keyword phrases have proven to be the most profitable because many times consumers using these phrases already have their minds made up on what they’re going to buy.

Why Am I Using All These Keyword Tools?

Simply because obtaining and keeping top rankings for my chosen keywords is my livelihood. Unless I can keep that focused traffic coming from these keywords via the search engines; it’s game over. Therefore, I use all the tools and information I can gather in order to keep those keywords at the top.

Google is always changing, you really have to stay on your game if you want to keep your keywords at the top. It all boils down to producing quality content web surfers need and want. The SEO pretty much takes care of itself as long as you keep promoting your keywords with good viral branded content like videos, articles, ebooks, PDF reports… and you must mix up your online link building to include links from such places as Facebook, Digg, Google Bookmarks, MySpace… I have always used the free “AddThis” button to all my important content and this has resulted in 100′s of free links that your visitors will build for you!

I also believe you have to be careful when using viral articles to vary your anchor text (clickable part of a link) so that you don’t have the same keyword phrase repeated 100′s of times across the web. Just use different versions of your keyword phrase and if you can, get those keyword links in the body of the article, as near to the top of the page as you can. This will make your link building look much more natural in the eyes of the search engines, especially Google.

Overall, you must have hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you’re targeting with your marketing. You must constantly keep building links for those keywords from related sites on the web. Sometimes it is helpful to truly view your keywords as organic, something that keeps growing naturally on its own. But you must first build a solid foundation with good quality content and then keep nurturing those keywords with good quality link bait so that others will bookmark, recommend and link to your keyword content.

Over the years, if there is anything I have learned about keywords which always holds true, it is this: you must be persistent. You must keep at it: building links, building content… it will usually take months, if not years, to get those top rankings for very competitive keywords and it will take some further work to consistently keep those keywords in the top positions. But you will quickly learn keywords are well worth it since they can easily make or break your marketing.

About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: BizwareMagic.com . If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: http://www.marketingtoolguide.com . Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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