- Mark Williams ©

Have you ever been lost in the woods - wondering around aimlessly, not knowing where to go or what to do next?

Most online marketers are lost in the woods of the internet.

So if you want to get out of the woods and be an online marketer, you better start thinking strategically! That is, you need to practice strategic internet marketing techniques.

You’re probably asking, what are strategic internet marketing techniques?

Let me start by telling you what it is not!

Strategic internet marketing is not buying 100,000 guaranteed hits.

It is not aimlessly placing banner ads all over the internet. It is not about using free classified ads and it is certainly not about depending on surfing for traffic sites.

Strategic internet marketing is simply about having an advertising PLAN that utilizes proven marketing tactics to get high converting results. Every promotion must have a purpose and it is critical to track the results of each and every advertisement.

Tracking is vital to finding ads that are successful and more importantly finding those that are NOT. Ads that do not perform need to be thrown out and those that do convert need to be rolled out on a larger scale.

If you are going to be serious about marketing online then you have to get serious about tracking your marketing methods. I will only say this once, if you do not track the results of your advertising methods you might as well throw your money out the window of a moving vehicle.

Now, that you know the importance of tracking your ads, let’s talk about marketing techniques that work! To make a living marketing on the internet, you need to use these methods. If you don’t, you will join the long list of people that say you can’t make any money selling on the internet.

Below I have listed some of the marketing techniques I have used to build a profitable online business from the ground up:

Pay per Click Advertising - For the fastest and most predictable results Pay per Click can’t be beat. If done properly, you can get immediate traffic that is laser targeted and high converting.

Write and Submit Articles - This is one of my favorite marketing techniques because it does two things for you. The first is that it builds credibility for you and your web site. Second, it is a tremendous way to drive tons of targeted traffic to your site for free. You don’t have to be Hemingway, your articles just need to be informative and have very few grammatical errors.

Start Your Own Ezine - This is probably the most powerful marketing tactic on the web today. Having your own list of subscribers to send a newsletter to on a regular basis is powerful! I would much rather obtain a new subscriber over a single hit to my web site.

Banner Ads - Banner ads can be extremely successful and are a very cost effective way to drive traffic to your site. The most effective banner ads are text rather than graphics. Write a compelling ad that forces them to click, and this technique can provide you lots of sales.

Viral Marketing - Give something away that people can use and put links to your web site in it. Information is a powerful tool in marketing. Allow them to share it with their friends and family. Before you know, you will be getting a stampede of traffic to your site.

Linking - Reciprocal linking is critical to your online success. This is a time consuming tactic but it is well worth your time and effort. Search engines judge the importance of your web site by the number (and quality) of incoming links pointing to your site. By the way, writing articles is a great way to get high quality incoming links pointing to your site.

Ezine Ads - Purchasing ads in quality ezines is like doing joint ventures without sharing the profits. You need to identify ezines in your niche that you can run promotions in. This is an excellent way to get your ads in front of thousands of potential customers at an excellent value.

Search Engine Optimization - You need to make sure that your pages are fully optimized for the search engines. The cheapest and most targeted traffic you can receive still comes from high search engine rankings! Make sure your site is optimized and anchored to certain keywords that are relevant to your site.

If you will stick with these proven marketing strategies you will get more laser targeted traffic to your site than you know what to do with. You may even have to get more server space and buy a wheel barrow to get your deposits to the bank!

So forget about the gimmick marketing tactics that are all over the internet. Stick to what works! This list is not that long and online marketing is not that complicated. To be successful you need to implement proven marketing methods and have a strategic internet marketing plan. Make sure that every ad is tracked and that it has a definite purpose in your marketing plan.

So quit wondering around aimlessly in the woods and start thinking about marketing strategically!

About the author:

Subscribe to Mark Williams’ Cash Cow-Zine to learn more about Strategic Internet Marketing and Get his Free 5 Steps to Online Profits Report.

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There are many different ways to promote a product or service online, but the results from each method can vary greatly. Some may give you an instant rush of targeted traffic, while some will produce a small but steady stream of prospects. You will find that most online promotion tactics will result in a steady stream, while only a few methods will produce a large instant surge of web site visitors. But how can YOU become a web site promotion expert?

The most important thing to learn regarding web site promotion is that no one method will make your product launch or promotion successful. Promoting a product using 10, 15 or even 20 different tactics is the magic formula to turning your product into an online success. Most of these methods may be more time consuming to apply than buying advertising, but the investment of time will pay off greatly for you later on.

Understand that web site promotion is a step by step process. Each method, once set up, can continue to promote your web site 24/7 with only minimal maintenance. Learn one tactic and apply it, then learn another. The combination of many web site promotion methods working as one is a powerful and effective way to generate leads or make sales for any product or service online.

The best part about learning web site promotion is that you will be able to apply what you learn to virtually any product or service. Ever thought of doing online marketing consulting to offline businesses? Once you take the time to learn effective web site promotion, you will be able to engineer promotions for any business and get paid for doing so. You can copy your proven formula for any of your own products and make each one a success online, too.

Web site promotion tactics are generally not difficult to apply. The power lies in having many small promotion machines working for you all at the same time. This may sound very involved, but I’m sure you can handle it. It only takes a commitment of time and effort to make your online promotion machine a reality.

Can you become a web site promotion expert? It is totally up to you. You have to make the commitment. You have to invest the time. You have to put your plan into action and see it out to completion. Only then will you see the results you are looking for from your online efforts. Then you can take what you have learned and do it again and again for any product or service. At that point, it will be easy for you. With commitment and hard work, you CAN become a web site promotion expert.

About the author:

Ken Leonard Jr. publishes New Marketer Ezine,

the Home Business Coaching newsletter.

Serious about starting or building a

home business? See what others are saying

about the helpful ORIGINAL CONTENT here…

http://www.kenleonardjr.com

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The importance of writing and submitting articles is the fact that you

won’t get the word out about what you believe in strongly enough to put on

paper, unless someone is there to read it.

If you write salesletters but you don’t write and submit articles, there

is almost no point to it. Of course it’s always nice to read your own writing

after you write an article. But wouldn’t it feel better to know that you

have touched someone else’s life by writing and submitting articles for

other people to read? In all shapes sizes and fashions, people love to

read.

Take a look at every magazine, newspaper and website in production today.

Writer’s filled those pages with content. The importance of it is that you

would be looking at nothing if someone didn’t write and submit articles to

the publication. Every single writer contributes to this content or there

would be no books, papers, or billboards.

Most of the time, the content that fills these pages are very well written

pieces, things people saw potential in so they would write and submit the

articles. You can find potential in almost every aspect of genres, so to

write and submit articles on a subject you love would not be hard to do.

The importance of writing and submitting articles ultimately ends with you

and your beliefs. If you don’t believe your written article is good enough

for publication, you may find that you don’t feel it is important to write

and submit this article. You may feel that your work just isn’t that

great. You may not feel the need to re write it, but instead to destroy

it. It’s not uncommon that there are tons of articles on a daily basis

that are never going to be submitted let alone published.

If we took the time to write and submit at least one article per week, we

would be able to contribute our individual point of view to the world.

That is probably the most important reason to write and submit articles.

You can submit articles online, or you can submit articles on hard copy.

It’s up to the writer, and the importance each person puts on their own

work will determine it’s potential to be published.

You can write and submit an article to a website, or write an article to a

magazine. Whichever you prefer, you can’t give up writing articles. Even

when you don’t succeed at first, you can find a publication where you’re

article will fit.

Think about it. If you don’t credit your own work with any importance, how

do you expect anyone else to? It is important to hold yourself to your own

high standards, write an article, submit the article, and see what

happens. Before you know it you can contribute to the content you see

everyday, everywhere. Now that’s important.

About the author:

© 2005 Gunnar Berglund

Gunnar Berglund has been a “internet- hardworker” for the

last five years He publishes The meonit Gazette

http://gazette.meonit.comand run http://www.articleshelf.com

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I recently spoke to someone who operates a website that sells motorcycle parts and asked her how good her search engine ranking is. She told me that search engine ranking is not a concern for her because she operates a very niche market and that those who are actively seeking the parts that she sells “know where to look”. She seems quite content with the number of visitors that she is getting to her site and the amount of sales that she is making each month. I attempted to explain to her that she could dramatically improve her website ranking and thus her sales if she were to employ some keyword optimized articles, like those we create for our clients, to improve her search engine ranking results. She did not seem to care about this and did not want to spend any money on getting keyword articles to improve her search engine ranking because again, those that are seeking what she sells “know where to look.”

If the above true story sounds like a conversation that you might have with a person like myself, then there are a number of things that you need to reconsider. Let’s review my conversation mentioned above to show the importance of search engine rankings.

First of all, she is convinced that the people seeking her product can find her website. This may be true if the customer spends a great deal of time surfing through multiple sites and has a monumental amount of patience. It is true that word of mouth probably does send her the majority of her customer base and this is fine if she does not want any more customers. Her search engine ranking is so far down on the list that for all practical purposes, her website does not exist to those who type, “motorcycle parts” into google or yahoo. I encouraged her to think about the lack of patience that she has when searching for things on the Internet and how that transfers to those searching for her products. I am just as guilty as anyone in this, if I am searching for something on the Internet, I will likely stop reading the 400,000 results after about the first 20-30 websites. If the item I am looking for is not in those first 20-30 results, I will most often type in a different search phrase such as “motorcycle accessories” vs. “motorcycle parts”. This concept was lost on her as well.

This is another area where keyword articles come into play to improve search engine rankings. What EXACTLY does a person type into the search engines when looking for her motorcycle parts? One person will type in “motorcycle parts” while another types in “motorcycle accessories” and a third person may type in “motorbike parts” and a fourth types in “motorbike accessories”. A fifth person might even type in “motorcycle carburetors”, with or without the “s” on the end of “carburetor.” Basically, there needs to be an article for each of these five terms to help direct search engine traffic to her site so that no matter what the potential customer types into the search engine, they are directed to her website. This concept was lost on her too.

The third idea that she did not consider was the basic financial concept of return on investment (ROI). Return on investment simply means that if you spend $100 on marketing and as a result of this investment, you increase profits by $1,000 then you would have a 900% ROI. This percentage is calculated after subtracting the initial $100 spent on the marketing campaign, then dividing the remnant by the $100 invested, and finally multiplying your result by 100 to get your ROI value.

{ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100}

So, would you like to make $900 by spending $100? I would. The woman that I spoke to failed to realize the potential return on her investment, because she did not want to invest her cash on hand into the future of her business. Most successful website operators have realized the importance of marketing and search engine rankings. They know that they need to be listed in the top 20-30 results if they want to get the clicks, and they know that keyword optimized articles help them to achieve these high rankings.

Decide where you want your website to be located in the search engine rankings. Do you want to make “some” money like the woman in my true story? Or, do you want to dramatically exceed your current profit margins by increasing your website traffic? Just as it was with her, it is up to you to decide if you want to make ends meet with your online business or if you want to really make some money by investing in your marketing.

About the author:

Matthew Rotterman is a writer and editor at: KeywordText.com “Keyword Text” managed to bring together several writers and editors to provide a few low-cost writing services for those who are working hard to become more profitable. They offer Content Creation Services which include: Exclusive WebPage Content and Reprint Articles. Keyword Text also offers very attractive Volume discounts. Compare us to our competition, you will be surprised. http://keywordtext.com/dir.pl/ktc/index.html

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If you are looking for a cheap web hosting company you may wish to know where to look. Cheap web hosting is available to anyone. But the cost of it depends on several factors. For some people, it may be impossible to get cheap web hosting. You will have to see what is available based on you needs.

First, to see if you can use cheap web hosting you need to know how much disk space you will need. How large is your website? How many pages, video files, music files, etc. do you need? Second, a cheap web hosting company will need to know how busy your sight will be. If your site is going to have a lot of visitors, cheap web hosting may not be for you. Third, how many email accounts do you need? Cheap web hosting companies do not usually provide many. Lastly, how much are you willing to spend? Cheap web hosting is not as technical as the more expensive web hosting.

If you go online, you can find a list of the top 10 cheap web hosting companies. The top 10 cheap web hosting companies are rated by their price, quality, and service provided. The cheap web hosting companies are priced between $4.95 and $19.95 a month. The cheap web hosting company’s price varies on what kind of things you need. The disk space provided can be from 3000MB to 5000MB. The bandwidth varies from 40GB to 300GB. If this is not enough for you, then a cheap web hosting company is not an option for you. Most of these cheap web hosting companies offer free set up. This will make things much easier for you. Be aware of cheap web hosting that offers unlimited disk space. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

The top 10 web hosting companies reviewed are: Blue Host, Power Hosting, Pages Garden, Pro Logic Hosting, Easy CGI, Gigabyte Package, Yahoo! Hosting, iPower Web, Lunar pages, and Dot5 Web Hosting. All of these are very cheap web hosting companies. You will find them listed at top10webhosting.com. At this website you will also find customer testimonials and thorough listings about the cheap web hosting company’s services they offer to you.

For those of you who still think that this is not cheap web hosting, you can also find free web hosting. It still comes with a price, however. Comcast offers free web hosting to anyone who subscribes to their internet service. You still have to pay for the internet service, but the web hosting is free. That’s the best that can be done about cheap web hosting. Weigh the odds, and see which route is best for you.

About the author:

Jay Moncliff is the founder of http://www.cheaphosting-center.infoa blog focusing on the Web Hosting, resources and articles. This site provides detailed information on Web Hosting. For more info on Web Hosting visit: http://www.cheaphosting-center.info

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When, shopping for a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company/specialist you need to be aware of a few things.

If someone offers you fast results they may be pulling your leg. If you aren’t listed on search engines the average time to be index takes around 4 weeks. Someone offering submissions in less then that is coning you. Websites that are already listed and are just being updated will have a faster result.

A guarantee isn’t always reinsurance. Just because a site states they can get you in the 1 spot doesn’t mean they can deliver. Or, they may have you listed under an obscure keyword or phrase. Most legitimate SEO’s will tell you no one can guarantee a top spot on all keywords and phrases. Search Engine optimization is not an exact science. Trail and error along with constant tweaking will help bring your site closer to your goal.

Most SEO’s should give you some information on where your site stands currently. You links, keywords, where you rank on major search engines etc.. Or, do one yourself. My article “Google’s Helping hand” show you free tools that can help you evaluate where you are on search engines. Don’t go into any SEO work blindly. Know where you stand before and after.

Price is never an indication of how good a service is. More isn’t always better.

Shop around try to get the most for your money, but be realistic. If it seems too good to be true then it may just be. Be prepared to shell out some cash. SEO is not cheap. You should think of SEO as advertising. It should be contestant as should all of your advertising efforts.

Ask questions! Do not be afraid to ask what will be done to increase your ranking. Most SEO’s will have no problem telling you what they will do. They may not want to reveal their whole SEO operation. But, they will give you some insight to what they will do. Talk to more then one SEO company. Compare what each has to say. Do some research on your own. Find out if these companies have been reported to the Better Business Bureau. If the company or persons have had any articles or reviews written about them. Ask around. Try to have some idea of the company or persons creditability.

A few additional things to keep in mind are:

Is SEO there main business or is it a sideline to other businesses. SEO is a full time job. Especially, keeping up with the constant changes. Do they have a specialist? Do they outsource? How much do they really know?

What are there view points on link farms and doorway pages? Will they do anything to get you links and traffic? Even though search engines frown on those practices.

Can they explain to you clearly how their plan of action? Are they looking to take small steps with you? Or, are they trying to sell you the biggest SEO package possible?

Follow this outline when you are searching for someone to optimize your site. In the end it will be worth it.

Joe Balestrino’s site is www.mr-seo.com he offers affordable SEO, submissions and other articles on SEO and marketing. His other site www.jnb-design.com offers affordable web design and free lifetime hosting.

Ok, so over the past month or so I’ve been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I’m going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month.

You guessed it… What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you’ll be an expert on the good ‘ole Google Sandbox Theory and you’ll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.

Before I start explaining what the Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:

The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or the benefit of years of observation.

The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2005 , after a major Google index update (something known as the old Google dance).

Without being able to verify the existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.

Almost everything that you will read on the Internet on the Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a widescale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining the nature of the Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given the demand on resources).

Thus, as I’ll be discussing towards the end, it’s important that you focus on ·good’ search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick ·get-out-ofjail’ schemes which are, after all, only going to last until the next big Google update.

What is the Google Sandbox Theory?

There are several theories that attempt explain the Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, the problem is simple. Webmasters around the world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.

In fact, the most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from the index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.

This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and the website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from the Sandbox effect.

Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.

Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after the February 2005 update, codenamed ·Allegra’ (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near the top for their keywords.

This was a major update to Google’s search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was the apparent ·exodus’ of websites from the Google Sandbox. This event gave the strongest evidence yet of the existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what the Sandbox effect was about.

Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox Effect

A common explanation offered for the Google Sandbox effect is the ·Time Delay’ factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from the Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling the effects of the Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were ·released’ in the ·Allegra’ update, this ·website aging’ theory has gained a lot of ground.

However, I don’t find much truth in the ·Time Delay’ factor because by itself, it’s just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is the de facto leader of the search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.

Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from the Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape the Google Sandbox effect during the ·Allegra’ update. Along with shattering the ·Time Delay’ theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a ·link threshold’ theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from the Sandbox.

While this might be closer to the truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped the Google Sandbox effect without massive linkbuilding campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from the Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.

This concept is known as ·link-aging’. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from the Sandbox based on the ·age’ of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be the most likely explanation for the Google Sandbox effect.

The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is the website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as the website itself, yet if you have don’t have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from the Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don’t you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results · some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in the Sandbox even after the ·Allegra’ update.

How to find out if your website is sandboxed

Finding out if your website is ·Sandboxed’ is quite simple. If your website does not appear in any SERPS for your target list of keywords, or if your results are highly depressing (ranked somewhere on the 40 th page) even if you have lots of inbound links and almostperfect on-page optimization, then your website has been Sandboxed.

Issues such as the Google Sandbox theory tend to distract webmasters from the core ·good’ SEO practices and inadvertently push them towards black-hat or quick-fix techniques to exploit the search engine’s weaknesses. The problem with this approach is its short-sightedness. To explain what I’m talking about, let’s take a small detour and discuss search engine theory.

Understanding search engines

If you’re looking to do some SEO, it would help if you tried to understand what search engines are trying to do. Search engines want to present the most relevant information to their users. There are two problems in this · the inaccurate search terms that people use and the information glut that is the Internet. To counteract, search engines have developed increasingly complex algorithms to deduce relevancy of content for different search terms.

How does this help us?

Well, as long as you keep producing highly-targeted, quality content that is relevant to the subject of your website (and acquire natural inbound links from related websites), you will stand a good chance for ranking high in SERPS. It sounds ridiculously simple, and in this case, it is. As search engine algorithms evolve, they will continue to do their jobs better, thus becoming better at filtering out trash and presenting the most relevant content to their users.

While each search engine will have different methods of determining search engine placement (Google values inbound links quite a lot, while Yahoo has recently placed additional value on Title tags and domain names), in the end all search engines aim to achieve the same goal, and by aiming to fulfill that goal you will always be able to ensure that your website can achieve a good ranking.

Escaping the sandbox…

Now, from our discussion about the Sandbox theory above, you know that at best, the Google Sandbox is a filter on the search engine’s algorithm that has a dampening influence on websites. While most SEO experts will tell you that this effect decreases after a certain period of time, they mistakenly accord it to website aging, or basically, when the website is first spidered by Googlebot. Actually, the Sandbox does ·holds back’ new websites but more importantly, the effects reduce over time not on the basis of website aging, but on link aging.

This means that the time that you spend in the Google Sandbox is directly linked to when you start acquiring quality links for your website. Thus, if you do nothing, your website may not be released from the Google Sandbox.

However, if you keep your head down and keep up with a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and keep adding inbound links to your website, you will be released from the Google Sandbox after an indeterminate period of time (but within a year, probably six months). In other words, the filter will stop having such a massive effect on your website. As the ·Allegra’ update showed, websites that were constantly being optimized during the time that they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for targeted keywords after

the Sandbox effect ended.

This and other observations of the Sandbox phenomenon · combined with an understanding of search engine philosophy · have lead me to pinpoint the following strategies for minimizing your website’s ·Sandboxed’ time.

SEO strategies to minimize your website’s “sandboxed” time

Despite what some SEO experts might tell you, you don’t need do anything different to escape from the Google Sandbox. In fact, if you follow the ·white hat’ rules of search engine optimization and work on the principles I’ve mentioned many times in this course, you’ll not only minimize your website’s Sandboxed time but you will also ensure that your website ranks in the top 10 for your target keywords. Here’s a list of SEO strategies you should make sure you use when starting out a new website:

Start promoting your website the moment you create your website, not when your

website is ·ready’. Don’t make the mistake of waiting for your website to be ·perfect’.

The motto is to get your product out on the market, as quickly as possible, and then

worry about improving it. Otherwise, how will you ever start to make money?

Establish a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and follow it religiously. For

example, you can set yourself a target of acquiring 20 links per week, or maybe

even a target of contacting 10 link partners a day (of course, with SEO Elite, link

building is a snap). This will ensure that as you build your website, you also start

acquiring inbound links and those links will age properly · so that by the time your

website exits the Sandbox you would have both a high quantity of inbound links

and a thriving website.

Avoid black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or ·cloaking’. Google’s search

algorithm evolves almost daily, and penalties for breaking the rules may keep you

stuck in the Sandbox longer than usual.

Save your time by remembering the 20/80 rule: 80 percent of your optimization can

be accomplished by just 20 percent of effort. After that, any tweaking left to be done

is specific to current search engine tendencies and liable to become ineffective

once a search engine updates its algorithm. Therefore don’t waste your time in

optimizing for each and every search engine · just get the basics right and move on

to the next page.

Remember, you should always optimize with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.

Like I mentioned earlier, search engines are continuously optimizing their algorithms in order to improve on the key criteria: relevancy. By ensuring that your website content is targeted on a particular keyword, and is judged as ·good’ content based on both on-page optimization (keyword density) and off-page factors (lots of quality inbound links), you will also guarantee that your website will keep ranking highly for your search terms no matter what changes are brought into a search engine’s algorithm, whether it’s a dampening factor a la Sandbox or any other quirk the search engine industry throws up in the future.

Have you taken a look at SEO Elite yet? If not…

What’s stopping you?

Now, get out there and start smoking the search engines!

About the author:

If you liked the lesson above and want to learn more about SEO, visit http://www.seoelite.com/7DaysToMassiveWebsiteTraffic.htmand get your free copy of “7 Days To Massive Website Traffic!” right now! Brad Callen

SEO Elite

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Pay Per Call is the next wave of advertising on the Internet. Similar to a Pay – Per –Click advertising. Pay Per Call has a lot more to offer and a wider audience in mind. The Pay-Per Call (PP-Call) is geared towards small businesses that do not have a web presence on the internet. However, this form of advertising can be used by all types of business or services offered on the net.

Advertisers create an ad similar to a Pay-Per-Click (PP-Click) ad. Advertisers choose key terms in which they would like to appear under. They also choose their geographical location (local, regional or national) Pricing starts at $2 and can exceed $20. The ad itself consists of a headline and 2 additional lines of text, (including a URL if the company has one). Surfers then call the toll free number shown in the ad. After the surfer calls the number, the call is forwarded to the actual business phone. Seems pretty basic doesn’t it? But, I had a few questions I needed answered so I contacted Ingenio and spoke to them about their service.

My first question regarded calls placed after business hours. If my business phones are manned Monday – Friday, 9 to 5, will calls still come in after 5pm on Friday? The answer is that currently there is no automated scheduling that will turn your ads on or off at a specified time. However, you can go in manually and pause your account so that your ads are not shown during non-business hours. The automated scheduling is in the process of being implemented but there is currently no set date for this to take effect. Of course, you can place your business hours in the ad as well but this may take up valuable space that could be better utilized describing products or services. Businesses that have a call center for after hours calls are effectively 24 hour businesses, so this should not be an issue for them.

My next question concerned wrong numbers and short calls. We have all done it. We see one number and dial another. Or, we see something and on impulse we reach for the phone, and then change our mind ten seconds after dialing. So, does the advertiser pay for these types of calls? Is there a time limit a person needs to be on the phone for? There answer is yes. The calls need to last at least ten seconds. This should be more than enough time to establish that a wrong number as been dialed. I also wondered about people trying to beat the system. The trouble with PP-Click is that people may dial and occupy a salesperson with no intent other than to try and boost their revenue off the ads placed on their site. Ingenio has taken this into account. They can track calls that come in through their system. Any numbers seen abusing it can be blocked. Hopefully, this will discourage any type of scam to boost profits on sites that sponsors these ads.

I was also interested to know about ads that did provide a URL. Was there an additional charge levied when someone clicked on the ad? Fortunately, there is not. If a business sells over the net as well, they could certainly use this to their advantage. Of course, one of the main advantages to this type of advertising is that it caters to potential customers that do not, for whatever reason, like to make purchases online. Overall PP-Call may be worth its weight in gold. At least the potential is there. Will it surpass PP-Click as far as the preferred method of advertising? Probably, not. It does however give advertises who couldn’t advertise on the net before a reason to start. Maybe then they will see the importance of having a web presence on the Internet.

You may already know how effective writing articles for web promotion can be. If not, don’t dismiss it as trivial or overdone. The fact is, web site promotion using well written targeted articles WORKS! Educating your prospect to the benefits of using your product makes them an even better prospect.

This key to effective promotional articles focuses on educating the reader, not selling them a product. Give them useful advice that they can use, and tell them how their business would benefit from using your product or service.

Since you may not have prior experience writing promotional articles, here is a free 3-part report I put together to outline the process I use to produce effective articles for my web site promotion:

http://www.kenleonardjr.com/write

This tutorial also describes how to format your articles for publication online using my favorite text editor, UltraEdit. By the time you finish reading, you will know exactly how to write and format an effective article to use to promote your product on the web and via email.

If you can’t write to save your life, all is not lost. There are many ghostwriting services online that will write an article for you on any subject you want. The best part is that the article then belongs to you, your by-line and copyright, the whole enchilada. These services are relatively cheap, so don’t let your lack of writing skills stop you from promoting your website using articles. You can even submit your articles to print newsletters and publications for added exposure.

As you submit your articles to more and more web sites and announcement groups, the more the traffic created by your article will be multiplied by. If your article can produce 10 hits to your website per day, the same article published on 20 websites or in 20 newsletters can produce 200 hits a day to that site. And that’s just one article.

Read the report at the link above, it includes quality sites to submit your articles to for no cost web site promotion.

Writing articles requires an investment of time and effort on your part, but will produce results worth many times your investment. The trick to getting started writing articles is to do just that, get started.

Your first one may not be the greatest, but practice will make a writer out of you. So don’t think that you’ll just skip this method of web promotion, that would be a big mistake. Get started writing articles now, or find that ghost writer that will produce promotional articles for you at a good price.

Once you see the results, you’ll wish that you had started writing articles sooner. You’ll see.

To see for yourself the results I’ve had writing articles as part of my web site promotion plan, do a search for “Ken Leonard Jr.” in quotes on Google. At last check, your search would return around 10,000 results.

You can do the same with practice. But you have to start today.

About the author:

Ken Leonard Jr.

Home Business Coaching…

Are You A New Online Marketer?

http://www.kenleonardjr.com

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Hopefully you have followed all of the advice found online over the last couple of years about writing articles as part of your overall web site promotion plan. Since you have been spending valuable time writing articles, don’t let your hard work go to waste. Give your articles the exposure they deserve so you can get all of the rewards that you deserve.

Writing a useful, targeted promotional article is the important first step. But getting your articles published by as many webmasters and ezine/newsletter owners as you can is just as important to get good results from your efforts. The wider your exposure, the larger the amount of targeted traffic that will flow to your web site. It is your job to make sure that your articles are widely distributed on a regular basis, if you want the same results the experts get.

It is true that you can carry on a promotional article campaign with no out of pocket expense. But manually submitting your articles to individual announcement lists and dozens of free content web sites can get very time consuming. After you do this a few times, you will see how much time it really takes. And that’s after spending a substantial amount of time brainstorming, writing and editing your article first! If you are able to judge the value of your time, it will be obvious that it is costing you some serious cash doing all of your own article submissions.

Here are two inexpensive suggestions that you can use to give your articles a healthy boost of exposure, while giving you a lot more time to concentrate on activities that directly produce revenue for your home business.

First, consider hiring an article distribution service that will submit your articles to the major lists, groups and online directories for you. Adopting this practice will give you more extra time than you ever imagined. Just write your article, email it to your distributor and that’s it!

Do this on a regular basis and you will see a steady rise in your web site traffic. Your site’s listings in the major search engines will also improve in rank over time, if you are consistent with your web site promotion efforts.

Paying someone to distribute your promotional articles every month is a smart approach to using articles for web site promotion. I have used just such a service for close to two years now and suggest that you do the same, if you want big results from your article promotions. Bill Platt, owner of http://www.thePhantomWriters.com does a good job of distributing my articles. His rates are very reasonable and he’s a good guy, too. (I am not affiliated with Bill Platt in any way — I’m just a satisfied customer :-)

Another good way to spend a few dollars and get some big exposure is to open a free writer’s account at www.IdeaMarketers.com . After you submit an article to their free content directory (yes, you have to manually submit to this one site, but it’s worth it…), you can bid on your listing’s placement on the main page and subject specific index pages. For a $5-$15 bid, you can have an ad for your article (including a photo of YOU) listed prominently on this site for an entire week. Your writer’s account will even show you how many hits your article has received so you can compare how one of your articles does versus another. (BTW, I am not affiliated with http://www.IdeaMarketers.com, either :-)

You will often see articles that I’ve written listed at the top of the main IdeaMarketers.com home page, along with other notable online marketers and writers. You will enjoy the results you get from making a small bid on your article listing, as I do.

It is possible to write and submit articles for web site promotion and not spend any cash. Hopefully you now see that by spending a small amount each month to support your article promotion efforts, you can enjoy much better results than many other article writers are getting.

About the author:

Internet Home Business Coaching

Get advice YOU CAN USE to help

you make a living online from

home. Really serious? Then see

what others are saying here…

http://KenLeonardJr.com

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