Article Marketing - What Is It? Part I

If you haven't heard of article marketing, welcome to the Internet. Not only will you be hearing more about it, you will probably be interested in developing this skill. Let's start by saying that the name, *information highway* is appropriately descriptive for the Internet. Information as we understand it is recorded in words. Certain groups of words are often used in correlation with each other representing the vernacular of a topic or subject.

Lucky for me, I figured this out in college. Being obsessed with getting A's and not having a lot of background in biology, I knew if I could master 1000 vocabulary words out of the text book, my chances of getting an A were greatly increased. This works by the way.

A few years later, the world is trying to learn a new way to research information on the Internet by guessing a word or two that might help them narrow down the amount of data one might have to go through to find information they are looking for. The hope was that you might be able to guess a word or two that was topic or subject specific enough that it would only retrieve data that you wanted to find.

Now if you are new to the Internet and article marketing you might feel a little confused about how all of this ties into article marketing. Actually, this information is the key to understanding SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and understanding SEO is the key to effective article marketing. More confused? Let me see if I can help clear this up.

Article marketing has two goals. One main goal and the other is a subset of that main goal. The main goal is to drive more targeted traffic to your site. In other words, you don't just want big bunches of people to come look at your site, you want people that have in some way prequalified themselves as interested visitors to come to your site in mass quantities. To be honest with you this probably doesn't sound easy, and before the internet it was even harder than it is now, getting targeted traffic that is.

By the way, those words that people are using to sort information or said another way, that are used to reduce the amount of information that a person should have to go through before finding relevant information to them, are called *Key words.* And when there are at least two or more words put together, they are called *Key Word Phrases.*

What if Dan Iverson could show you how to write about any topic on earth and make money? He'll teach you how to better understand human nature as it relates to e-commerce; how people, from their perspective, come to make a purchase on the Internet. I am talking about learning how you can pick a topic of interest, write about it, and with the right tools and a little research find connections between your readers and real products and services, of which you can become an affiliate and make money. Here is the best part. I will teach you all of this absolutely free. That's right, click on this link and you'll get the full Affiliate Masters Course Free. This is no joke, I promise once you start to read this course, you will see and learn the logical system of affiliate and information marketing. It will open your eyes to the greatest and most versatile opportunity in known history: the Internet. Even if you have a website, you can use these techniques. http://aggressiveinternetmarketing.net/free-tool.html

So What's Wrong With A Little Shameless Self-Promotion?

I was sitting at my laptop the other day just minding my own business, not bothering a living soul. I promise. I wasn't bothering anyone.

Well, as history would have it, my step-daughter walked in the door carrying a package addressed to me. I was astonished when she announced who it was from. Really astonished.

"EzineArticles," she said, handing me the package.

"You're kidding?" I turned. "EzineArticles? What are they sending me?"

I was surprised, you see, because, as we all know, EzineArticles is an Internet business. I get e-mails from them all the time. Why would I be getting a snail mail package from an online business, and an article directory, no less?

Well, I raced to open the package. I was curious. I was so curious, in fact, that all my other mail just fell to a stack of unopened envelopes of various sizes. But that package, the one from EzineArticles, attracted my attention the most. It couldn't wait.

I ripped, I tore, I swore, I sunk my teeth into the tape and incised the heck out of that package until it finally snapped and bore its contents right before my very eyes. Oh, and what a sweet surprise!

I gazed in awe at a brand new coffee mug, complete with the EzineArticles logo and web address on it. Magnificent! How did Chris Knight know I like coffee? I thought.

Well, it was the best Thanksgiving gift I've ever received. The letter accompanying it said so:

"Thanks for being an EzineArticles.com Platinum-level author! You're receiving this small token of our appreciation for sending in your best articles."

My goodness. It was signed by none other than Christopher Knight himself. What an honor!

Now, I was aware that Chris and EzineArticles.com was taking advantage of my addiction to coffee for the purpose of shamelessly promoting their article directory in the privacy of my home. But I didn't care! I love coffee. I drink it every day.

I've never given Chris any money. I've never spent one dime at EzineArticles.com. It's a totally free article directory and I use it for all it's worth. Sure, I have about 30 articles listed there, but is that anything to speak of? Is that any reason to appreciate me, little old me? I mean, I'm just some guy who uses them to shamelessly promote my business. I do it about once a week. Should I stop? I wondered.

Well, I've slept on it and I've decided I won't stop. I like coffee too much and I'm hoping next year Chris will send me another mug so I can give it to my wife. After all, she likes coffee too. And there's really nothing wrong with a little shameless self-promotion every now and then. Thank you, Chris! And may the universe bless you and your sweet little mug this year with lots of articles on coffee addiction.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. He is the operations manager for a full-service content provider at http://www.articlecontentprovider.com.

Building An Authority Resource

Content is king in Authority Sites, they have more pages of quality content and more links to reference information. Content should be topic relevant, original and definitely up-to-date. Your goal is to make the website such a high quality destination for the niche that other sites will refer to it vial links to the content pages.

Lets get right to it. If your intent is to build an Authority site it is vital that your knowledge of the niche you intend to cover is broad and well researched. You need to know the market conditions and the readers you are targeting so you can have a full understanding of the content you need to provide your visitors. You should be in contact with other quality sites within your niche for networking opportunities.

Here are the steps to making an Authority Resource.

Research your Niche or Product. You need to know everything about what you are selling or the topic your site will be addressing. So get all the data you can on it. This research will give you content for your website. Arrange the information in a concise and easy to follow format. The more you know about what you are providing will make it easier to write good content.

You know about your niche so now Research the Market. Most large corporations that conduct market research will hire researchers for the task. It takes a systematic approach to a large quantity of statistics and market knowledge. You need to identify and know your competition along with the current market situation within the industry. Use this information to customize the content of your website. Use your knowledge of the market to set goals for yourself and your research will give you valuable links to off site content you can link to as resources from yours.

Now get to Know your Visitors. Identify the readers within your market that you intend to target. Knowing your visitors will allow you to use your knowledge to shape the content to your targeted traffic. To attract and keep the audience you want trafficking your site, you will need to give them valuable content to keep them returning.

Next use your knowledge of the niche and the demographics of the targeted traffic to Plan your Authority Resource. This is absolutely the most vital of all steps. During planning keep your keyword and link strategies in mind. Consider adding link baiting ideas you may have from networking with other webmasters in the niche. Blogs are a nice addition since it makes the addition of fresh content easier. Visitors should feel at ease on your site and tempted to come back for more.

In the Design and Development phase is when your project starts to come together. This is where you find web hosting, register domain names and design the final product to be uploaded to the server. The look and design of your website should help to define who you are to the web community.

So you have the knowledge, your Authority Resource has been researched, planned, designed and uploaded. Now what? Now you need to let everyone know about it and that means a Marketing Plan.

A thorough online Marketing Plan will involve Search Engine Optimization with a comprehensive link building campaign, online marketing on websites within the same nice or via pay per click advertising. Keep your website current with content and software updates and track your traffic statistics to make marketing adjustments as needed.

Following these steps will get you on the path to making a real Authority Resource your visitors will value. Think about them as you are planning your website. Do you want your website to be just another of the millions out there or do you want to provide an Authority Resource that is truly unique?

Visit the Authority Web Directory to increase your websites online marketing presence.

Productive Article Marketing - Latest 4 Huge Methods to Explode Your Article Marketing

Looking for the best method that can easily convert your readers to potential clients? Try article marketing. It is proven to strengthen your online presence and your credibility that can easily persuade people to trust you and consider doing business with you.

1. Quality of your articles. This is the most crucial element in your article marketing campaign. When you are able to produce quality articles that are content-rich and well-written, they will be easily picked up and republished by other marketers that can boost your link popularity. These articles can also help you establish your knowledge on your chosen niche that would persuade people to trust you. As you know, when people trust you, they are more likely to do business with you. This can lead to increased online revenue.

2. Quantity of your articles. In article marketing, the more articles you write, the more inbound links you can obtain for your website. This can lead to improved traffic, higher page ranking, and great sales potential. So, strive to write and publish at least 7 articles per day to strengthen your online presence and increase your website exposure.

3. Powerful resource box. This is the part where you have to convince your readers to visit your website so you can convert them to potential clients. Make it powerful and enticing by communicating your expertise, the problems that you can solve, and your desire to help. To increase your conversation rate, include incentives like free ebook or free articles to your new subscribers.

4. Keywords. Don't forget the search engines when you write your content. You have to make sure that your articles are search-engine friendly by incorporating keywords that highly relevant to your chosen niche all throughout your content.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Lucrative Article Marketing - Announcing 4 Best Ways to Impact Your Article Marketing

Do you often wonder why you are not generating traffic when you are promoting your website? Do you wish you can uncover the secrets of successful webmasters? Oftentimes, the difference lies on the type of traffic-generating techniques that you are using. Most successful webmasters are utilizing article marketing as their main tool in generating traffic for their sites. If you are not using this yet, you better join the bandwagon to drive quality traffic to your site.

Here are the 4 best ways to succeed in article marketing:

1. Be familiar with article marketing. Know how it works and how you can use it to get ahead of the pack. Read tutorials, eBooks, and guides so you can get acquainted with various important elements that will make your articles shine and your strategies successful.

2. Be direct. Eliminate lengthy introductions and go straight to the point. Online users will appreciate if you can provide the information they need in as little time as possible. So, stop beating around the bush, strike out fillers and unnecessary words and get your message across as quick as possible.

3. Write quality articles. The quality of your articles can either make or break your marketing campaign. Thus, it would pay if you can exert extra effort to make sure that your articles read well, contains relevant information, easy to understand, and flows well.

4. Submit your articles to paid submission sites. There are publishing sites that charge $24-$50 for unlimited submission. These sites provides their members with jaw-dropping benefits like inserting URL on the body of the articles, 24-48 hours review and posting time, etc. If you would like to get these benefits, it wouldn't hurt to shell out small amount of money to get the traffic you need.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, 'Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide'

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Online Article Word Count - The Reader's Perception of Author's Authority on Topic

Articles which are very short often have very little substance. Now this is not universally true or an absolute by any means, but generally it is. If your online articles have very few words the chances of the reader perceiving you as an authority on the subject might be very low.

The reason you should you care or even consider this topic is because as an online article author you want your reader to see the wisdom or brilliance of your article so they know that you know what you are talking about. If the reader sees this while reading your article then the chances are much better that they will seek you out for more information or visit your website.

Informational selling requires that the information you give to the reader or prospective customer is relevant and reality based. In my humble opinion, I believe that not only should the reader perceive that you are the authority on the topic, but also that you should be an authority and expert on the topic you are writing on. Otherwise one might say you are using trickery to attract Internet Surfers.

So the question has been pondered at the top online article submission site: "How many words does it take in a given article to be perceived as an authority on a micro-topic?"

As the leading authority on online article writing, having written some 11,000 articles, it is my contention that your articles should deliver information to the public or your potential prospects that they cannot easily find elsewhere and that the articles you write give at least one new thought or piece of valuable and readily usable fact. So, the real question is how many words does it take to accomplish that?

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington

Jump-start Your Link Building (without Getting Sandboxed)

Link popularity has been written about ad nauseum, but most articles address the subject from a perspective circa 2001. The available information usually focuses on topics such as reciprocal linking or the current price of a PR6 link. But following outdated link building advice is more likely to get your Web site penalized than it is to help you gain top rankings.

Googles increasingly sophisticated algorithm has largely caught on to PageRank brokers and has successfully filtered out the benefits of many bought links, as well as those of reciprocal links. The risk of obtaining these types of links is even greater for a new site, as detection of an unnatural link structure has recently gotten many sites sandboxed to the bottom of the SERPs. For this reason, a link popularity campaign must be conducted carefully and yield relevant, natural links.

The methods described in this article will give your Web site backlinks that fit the following criteria, which are important for keeping a site out of the sandbox:

1. The link is on a Web page that is hosted on a unique IP address.

2. The link is on a Web page that itself has a unique, wholly independent set of backlinks.

3. The link is on a Web page that is at least loosely relevant to your Web sites topic.

4. The link is created within a week.

Numbers 1-3 are important so that your Web sites new backlinks are independent and natural, and do not trip a filter in the search engine algorithm; number 4 ensures that you can move on to more advanced link building tactics before your competition gets further ahead.

Directories

Directories have always been cited as a basic starting point for a link popularity campaign. Listings in the Open Directory Project and the Yahoo! Directory ensure that a site will be spidered and indexed quickly and also provide a reputable backlink. In the past few years however many general and niche directories have sprung up, most charging a yearly or one-time fee to be listed. Webmasters have questioned the ROI from being listed in these second-tier directories, as most provide little traffic and charge 10-50 USD per listing.

But listings in these directories provide important link popularity benefits for a Web site. A link from a directory fits the four criteria we laid out aboveeach of these directories has a unique set of backlinks and is hosted on a unique IP, the sites URL will be placed on a topical page, and all of the directories review and add new submissions within a week. With directory listings alone, a new Web site can gain a few dozen quality backlinks for under 1000 USD (not counting Yahoo!). Aaron Wall of SEO Book has provided a good list of directories at http://www.seobook.com/archives/000166.shtml.

Press Releases

Press Releases provide an opportunity to announce your Web site, and just as importantly, provide a backlink to your Web site from a relevant page (it had better be relevantafter all, its an article about your Web site!). A press release should be well-written and submitted to multiple newswires. In less than a week, it will be published on its own Web page by each newswire and possibly by the newswires syndication partners as well. The writer should be sure to include a link in the body of the press release in http://www.mysite.com format. Again, these backlinks meet the four criteria we laid out above. Newswires usually charge a fee to publish a press release, although a few offer this service for free. You can view the Open Directory Projects category of press release services at http://dmoz.org/Computers/!Internet/Web_Design_and_Development/Promotion/Press_Release_Services/.

Articles

Another great method for gaining quality backlinks, as well as publicity, is to write and publish a helpful article. The author can write a relevant, informative piece on your Web sites subject, which of course includes a link to your Web site in http://www.mysite.com format. General how-to sites (and often, news sites in your particular niche) accept article submissions and will often reprint a relevant, well-written piece. Its free content for them, and a backlink for youa win-win situation. The author of THIS article swears by this method, and once again notes that it fits all four of our criteria for a timely and quality backlink. Aaron Wall of SEO Book has provided a list of Web sites that accept article submissions at http://www.seobook.com/archives/000099.shtml.

Just Say No

Although it may be tempting, you should stay away from reciprocal linking, except in the rare case where the link is relevant and helpful to your visitors. Likewise, you should avoid renting links from link brokers or networks; the links they sell are usually filtered by Google. These two types of links will have a minimal impact on your search engine rankings anyway and may even get your Web site sandboxed.

Instead, seek quality one-way inbound links by the methods described in this article; if you have exhausted these tactics, or if you have run out of money, you can always beg for links from relevant Web sites. If your site contains quality, original content, you may not even need to beg!

Conclusion

The success of a search engine optimization campaign depends greatly upon link popularity. Getting a Web site listed in directories, distributing press releases and submitting articles for syndication are three ways to gain a slew of legitimate backlinks from unique IPs relatively quickly. This will keep the site out of the sandbox and give any SEO campaign a sound link structure to build upon.

About The Author

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com/ for more information.

Best Article Marketing - Revealed - 5 Powerful Secrets to Improve Your Article Marketing

Writing and publishing articles on various submission site proves to be the most cost-effective and efficient way not only in positioning yourself as a great source of information over the internet, but also in making your website highly visible on searches by obtaining numerous links.

Here are the 5 powerful secrets to improve your article marketing:

1. Promote specific product on your articles. If you are offering various product lines, you would want to concentrate on one product per article. This is to make sure that your content is specific and focused on one central topic. Doing so will greatly lessen the chances of you confusing your readers.

2. Give your articles no-nonsense titles. Your headlines are your sole keys in convincing your potential readers that you actually have valuable information to share. It greatly helps if you can write titles that are not only direct to the point but also highly descriptive on what kind of information your articles contain.

3. Distribute your articles on all possible avenues. Aside for article submission sites, you can also submit your articles to your own website, blog, forums, and wikis. This is the best way to widely distribute your articles so they can easily be picked up by interested publishers who are constantly looking for content-rich articles.

4. Keep your articles short. Based on researches, articles that run 300-500 words are preferred by most online users. So, it follows that if you would like to increase your clickthrough rates, make sure that your articles are within the mentioned word count.

5. Multiply the number of your articles. The more articles you write, the more quality inbound links you obtain for your website. Thus, it follows that if you would like to explode your article marketing effort, you must effectively devise a plan on how you can augment the number of your articles and submissions.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Link Building Through Web Directories - 5 Tips On Submitting To Directories For Maximum SEO Effect

When submitting to directories there are several things you need to consider to make sure that you maximize the link popularity you receive from each directory.

First when choosing directories to submit to, look for ones that have been indexed by Google and have at least a page rank of 0. If their page rank is showing no data or a gray bar, you may want to wait before submitting to that particular directory. (You can see page rank and find out if a site has been indexed by Google very quickly by downloading Google's tool bar).

Second, be sure to choose the most relevant category to submit your site to. Browse through the directory and find sites that are very similar to yours and submit to the same category that they have submitted to. This will put your link and description with other similar links and descriptions thus making the link more relevant to your site.

Third, when choosing titles make sure you choose terms you want to rank in the search engines for. This is going to be the anchor text of the link that you will get in the directory. Anchor text plays a huge role in where your website will rank. So many times I see people submit titles that no one would ever search and for the most part I would say it is a waste. Choose titles that you know will bring valuable traffic if you ever ranked for the term.

Fourth, mix up the descriptions. It is easy to keep using the same description for every submission that you do, but easy is not always better in link building. You must always keep in mind that search engines want to see links that appear to happen in the natural evolution of the internet. In other words they don't want to see purchased links or links that have the same description attached to it over and over. Chances are that if they see either of those two things, your link will be discounted. Try to write as many unique descriptions as you can. Yes it can be tedious and boring but if you are willing to put in the hard work, chances are your competitors are not and that gives you a decisive advantage over them.

Fifth, try to make your submissions as random as possible. If you do 100 directory submissions every day, that doesn't appear natural to a search engine because they could see you getting 100 new links each day. Make it as random as possible so that you avoid any red flags being put up. (This suggestion is not as critical as the others because search engines wont find every link at the same time but its always better to be safe than end up on page 53 of Google's results).

If you are doing a lot of directory submissions a good resource is found at OneWayTextLink.com. They have a list of about 2500 free web directories you can submit to and have a free tool that allows you to keep track of all of your submissions so you don't forget which directories you have already submitted to.

Adam White is the president of Website Breakthrough LLC (http://www.websitebreakthrough.com) an SEO consulting firm based out of Phoenix, Arizona and has done small business SEO for over 250 clients since 2002.

How To Do Keyword Research In 5 Easy Steps

I am a member of a very good private internet marketing forum and everyday I see members asking questions such as how do I do a keyword research? Where do I start?

Sometimes instead of making our life easier we make it more complicated by trying to make it more complicated than it is. I wrote you a very simple list as how to get yourself started. My aim is not to show you how data is analyzed but simply what to do once you want to do a keyword research but do not know where to start!

1. Choose a product you would like to promote. Let's say you would want to promote a antivirus software
2. Type in "Antivirus Software". As long as you are using a good ppc keyword research tool, it should generate related keywords to your main query, Antivirus Software.
3. Once you have all your queries, it is time to analyze your data and see which ones are profitable and which one has low competition. Ditch the rest. Again all this can be done with the use of a good keyword research tool.
4. Once you have all your data analyzed, now use YOUR brain to add more keywords and more twist to your list of keywords and repeat step 3
5. Now take your list with you and start your campaigns or start writing articles around these keywords.

Voila! It is as easy as this. And the more and more you do it, better you will become at it, and you will even be able to add it some complexity!

As I try to fully get the ins and outs with this method, I'm running a series of tests and experiments that will eventually lead me to fully understand proper keyword research. If you'd like to know more, or would like to see how I'm doing, please stop by my Ppc Keyword Research website and check out my results.

Fast Article Marketing - Announcing 7 Targeted Secrets to Improve Your Article Marketing

Everybody would like to explode their article marketing efforts these days to improve the benefits they get from this technique. If you are one of them, take these 7 targeted secrets so you can easily get ahead of the pack:

1. Keep yourself abreast with latest information about this method. Every so often, expert marketers discover new ideas that can make article marketing much easier and more effective. Don't be left behind by constantly reading articles or ebooks about this amazing marketing technique.

2. Utilize automatic submission software. Manually submitting your articles on various publishing sites can be tedious and time-consuming. Save valuable time by having them automatically distributed. You will have to spend at least $20 for this service but the time you can save can be used in increasing the number of your articles.

3. Improve your keyboarding skills. Learn how to type fast so you can finish your articles quicker. There are various online keyboarding sites that can help you improve your skills for free.

4. Learn how to do "batching". This is the process of writing articles in batches so you can effectively manage your time and still be more productive.

5. Hire some help. To get more things done, some marketers are hiring either ghostwriters or article posters. Though this technique can cost you some money, it can increase the number of your submissions in no time.

6. Pick easy to write articles. Based on studies and various researches, "How to" and "10 tips" articles are the easiest and quickest type of articles to write as they only require a brief introduction and numbered list of your ideas or tips.

7. Write more. If you wish to produce more output, I suggest you write additional 2-3 articles per day. This will give you at least 14 more articles per week.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Link Building - One Of The Essential Ingredients To Popularize Your Site

Life has gone online for most of us in todays world. Be it through online banking, online shopping, online news as well as online jobs or for that matter even online class, you could lead your entire life by surfing and finding things on the internet if you really had that determination. So it is no wonder that companies with products and services have ensured that online presence which implies presence in the World Wide Web is very much a part of their core business strategy. However it is not enough to just host a website and sit back while expecting the visitors to locate your website by themselves. A little prodding and directing the targeted traffic to your website forms a crucial part of business development and promotional strategy that converts into sales and profit for the company. A search engine optimization (SEO) firm is the expert that any business with online presence should hire to get this job of popularizing the website done competently. And link building is one such important ingredient that is added by the SEO firm to achieve this objective.

Link building involves the professional services of experts who work towards ensuring good inbound links for your website that will help the search engines judge the popularity of your website. The high level of popularity makes the search engines guide traffic to your website. A link building exercise involves a well planned popularity search for keywords that are to be used to promote your site. The professionals handling search engine optimization for your website then check out the resultant sites to see the facilities provided for link exchange which is a crucial aspect of link building. The webmaster could also be directly approached for implementing a link exchange program with your website. Only criteria for this link building exercise should be that the website you approach for link exchange must have a higher page rank than yours. The more link building your website does with other sites the higher will be the ranking and popularity.

The important aspect which needs to be kept in mind at all times is the guidelines which need to be followed for the link building exercises. The content of your website should be really up to mark to ensure that other popular sites would be interested in a link exchange program with your website. One-way links from authority websites are crucial for any link building strategy and this can only be ensured if your website fulfills all the criteria and is done according to the guidelines of link building exercise. Quality link from authority websites can be attracted to your site only if you have knowledge of the marketplace, understand your customers and their language really well, avoid automated inbound links and provide outbound links readily, ensure great content for your website and monitor your results effectively. An offline link building practice, quality maintenance, and preparedness for the unexpected gives you that extra mileage while undertaking a successful and effective link building exercise.

Steve Waganer has specialization in Web Marketing. He is expert in Search engine optimization, Search engine marketing, Social media optimization, Link building. To get the SEO tips from Search engine optimization specialist for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

List Building: Organizing to Take Care of Your List

So, you've bought hundreds of ebooks and other digital products over the years. Now, you've been list building and are starting to have a great list. You want to show them your appreciation. But you're having trouble finding ebooks, reports, and programs you want to send their way. How can you organize them for easy access?

Some of the products probably have reprint and master marketing rights. You may even want to sell those to your list, rather than offering them as bonuses, right? Or, you may want to use them as a bonus for another product you want to sell to your list. That's a great idea, too.

So, here's what you do:

First, go to Google, and find Google's Desktop Search and download it. It allows you to use Google to actually search whats on your hard drive. When you install it, it takes a while to index everything, but the cool part about it is that its much faster than doing a traditional search, just using your computer. Google Desktop Search doesnt have to research everything, every time because everything is already indexed.

To find your ebooks, search for all your ".pdf" documents. Then make a folder inside youre My Documents folder called ebooks. If you know that you own ebooks on affiliate marketing, list building, conversion, basic business or other categories, make those folders ahead of time. You can even make resale rights, re-brandable rights and public domain rights folders. Move everything to where it needs to go. Thats it. Its done. You can probably do it in an hour.

I have hundreds and hundreds of books and things on my computer. The truth is, I dont have them organized. My stuff is all over the place. When I need something for my lists or otherwise, I do a Google Desktop search and find what I need. Its okay to be disorganized. But, if you take faster action than everyone else, you win. Definitely dont worry about being disorganized. If youre not naturally very organized, I wouldnt fight it too hard.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and a master of list building. Learn the 9 Laws of List Building at MyFirstList.com

SEO - Get Your Site Noticed

I assume you have heard the term SEO before, but if you haven't, SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. SEO is essentially a collection of methods aimed at positioning your site among the top sites in today's popular search engines. The major benefits of SEO are increased site traffic, brand awareness, and sales. Other additional benefits of SEO are increased site usability and accessibility.

The enormous benefits of SEO services have made the art of optimizing websites increasingly competitive. This article will provide effective methods of increasing your websites visibility in today's popular search engines.

The Keys to the Kingdom
Determining what keyword sets to focus your SEO efforts on is of the up most importance. Poor keyword focus can make even the best SEO strategy perform disappointingly. There are several tools available on the internet that will allow you to conduct keyword set analysis and to determine what keywords will work best for your application.

Content is King
Search engines love content rich sites, because this allows them to easily categorize your web pages. Your content should focus on your designated keyword sets and be relative and informative. Avoid using excessive amounts of graphics and flash, because search engines are unable to index these types of content.

Keep it Fresh
New content is not only appealing to your audience, but will provide tremendous benefits for your sites overall visibility. A good way to include new and relevant content is by implementing a blog. A blog provides a great medium for introducing fresh content, and will increase your sites search engine rankings by creating quality back links. A blog is also a good way to position you or your company as an authority in a specific field or industry.

Landon Wisser is a content developer and web specialist at NLI Media Group.

NLI Media Group is an Austin based web development and media firm that uses cutting edge online marketing and traditional advertising and promotion to create premium brand experiences for clients.
http://www.nlimediagroup.com

Profitable Article Marketing - 5 Profitable Methods to Breakthrough With Article Marketing

Building traffic and obtaining quality inbound links for your website cannot get easier these days. You can simply write and submit articles to submission sites and viola! You instantly gain quality inbound links. This is how article marketing exactly work. It's hassle-free, delivers quick results, and it's cost-effective.

Here are the 5 profitable methods to breakthrough with article marketing:

1. Quality of your articles. You would like your articles to be read, picked up, and republished by online users. That can only happen if your articles are useful, well-written, and content-rich.

2. Quantity of your articles. In article marketing, each submission grants you one quality inbound link. The more articles you submit, the more links you obtain for your website. This could mean a lot of great things for your website such as increased traffic, improved page ranking, link popularity, increased sales potential, and positioning yourself as an expert on your specialized field.

3. Keywords. To give your articles an edge so they will be highly visible on online searches, you need to incorporate relevant keywords throughout your content. By doing so, your articles will be properly indexed by major search engines making them relatively easy to search online.

4. Article submission sites. There are over 200 article submission sites in the internet today but not all of them are created equal. Some, just like EzineArticles.com and goarticles.com, have impressive page views and steady traffic that can ultimately give your articles the exposure they need so they can be potentially distributed and republished.

5. Monitoring your articles progress. You can easily track down the number of times your articles were viewed. From this, you can gauge if your article marketing campaign is working for you or you need to make necessary revisions to improve your marketing effort to increase the clickthrough rates of your articles.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Linking - Quality vs. Quantity

When it comes to back links to your website there really are just two basic kinds. The first kind is links of quality and the second kind is those that are not. Quality links come from Authority sites that are relevant to your websites content.

As an example: If your website is real estate related, you preferably want links to come from real estate related websites. Links within related content or categories scores higher in relevancy to your sight and are weighted heavier in the search engines. Plus, relevant links from sites of Authority are weighted heavier in the search engines.

Back links to your website are really just like votes in an election. With just one little twist, high quality links count much more than poor quality links. As a reference point, one relevant link from an Authority site could easily be worth thousands of poor quality links.

So what is relevance? Relevance is how closely the content between the two linking websites relates to each other. You can get relevance in a couple different ways. You can go to the webmasters of those sites working in the same niche as you and request links. Just keep in mind that these are probably your online competitors. Another way to get relevant links is by submitting your site to directories.

Directories place links to websites within category structures that are highly relevant to the content of the listed websites. They do this by using keywords, category descriptions and meta tags within each category to match the content in each category.

There are directories that require a fee for reviewing your website prior to listing it and there are free directories. The difference between the two is the difference between quality and quantity. If you decide to go with free directory submissions, be prepared to submit to thousands of free directories before you get the return of one quality Authority directory.

There are some methods to getting back links that you should be careful to avoid. Those are purchasing text links from brokers and reciprocal links. Both of these methods are getting more scrutiny from the search engines and being devalued.

A good link building campaign does take time. Dont expect to put in a days work and be done. You should expect to allocate time every week to build links to your site for an indefinite time period. At least as long as you own and operate the website.

There are several additional on topic articles published at the Authority Web Directory. Visit today and while you are there you can submit your websites' listing at Authority Directory Submit page.

The Importance Of META Tags

Meta tags are used to add information to the HTTP header of a webpage. It also contains hidden information in the coding that the search engines will pick up on. Example: author's name, title of web site and "keywords" Meta tags can help improve your placement in search engines and can therefore help increase traffic to your Web site. Most likely, if your site does not have "keywords" in the head of your html code, the engines will not find your website.

Choosing your keywords carefully: Choosing the keywords used in your meta tags are very important. If you do not choose the proper keywords, submitting your site to the search engines will be useless, because those keywords are major factors in determining how a site visitor will locate your site in the engines. Lets take a look from the searcher's point a view...

A searcher goes to Google, Yahoo or Excite, looking for topics or products relating to what your company (or site) is offering. He comes up with 10 to 20 search results on the first page of the engine. Your company listing is no where to be found. After skipping to the next 3 page results . . . Your company is still no where to be found. Why? Most likely you have not inserted the most effective keywords relevant to your website. Example: You have decided to insert your companies name in your "keyword" meta tags, instead of listing your products or services in your keywords. Searchers do not look for company names, unless they are looking for a specific major company on the web.

Tips on choosing the most effective keywords or phrases for your webpage. Start with using General Keywords, then by adding specific keywords. Example: Your company is selling CD's. Take the general keyword of "CD's" and add a specific title or word to it, based on the CD's your are offering. So, your keyword phrases may be "CD's for Clay Aiken" or even the title of the CD "Measure Of A Man"

List your main products, services or purpose, that surfers will use in their keyword search.

If not selling products, then list a specific topic relating to your sites content in your keywords.

On your website index or home page, be sure to include specific phrases or topics, that a searcher may use to look for your site in the engines. (The engines may pickup on these words in your sites content).

Consider regional keywords- If your company or site only caters within specific locations, you may want to list this in your meta tags. Example: If you have a company only sells products within your state or city, be sure to list the city or state in your meta tags. If your site ships products anywhere in the world, state global distribution in your meta tags.

Choose the most effective title for your webpage. (keep in mind that visitors will be searching for specific topics in their search, not the name of your company). Exception: (If they are looking for a major company or name brand item, song, book, etc.). Meta Tags with Frame pages: Did you know that search engines often times do not pickup "keywords" used in frame sites? Most engines do not support frame sites. It is suggested that you have an "Introduction or home page" (for your index page), which does not use frames, before entering a site with frames. This way the search engines will pick up on your meta tags and you will have a higher chance of your "intro/index page" showing up in the search engines.

Written By Donna Snyder, CEO Of American Association Of Webmasters - http://www.aawebmasters.com

List Building: Tools to Make Your Online Life Simpler

As you probably already know, list building is the most important thing you need to do for your business, whether it's an online business or an offline business. Of course, when I write about list building, it's usually the online kind because that's the kind of business I'm very good at and know very well.

With that being said, what are some of the ways you enhance your list building efforts?

• Articles
• Blogging
• Ezine Advertising
• Direct Mail
• Press Releases
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay per Click

Now, these are only 7 of the 17 ways that I've identified that will drive traffic to your site, but they all have something in common--input. You have to type something into your computer in order to complete information. Right? So, what I'd like to do today is give you some tools that you can find online to help you.

First, with all of these methods, you'll need a way to write your articles, blog entries, etc. But let me warn you. Don't write your entries with Microsoft Word. Word puts in all kinds of symbols and stuff that don't work well in cyberworld, at least. If you're writing for print, as with direct mail, it really doesn't matter. Word does a great job, but if you're writing something to be published online, you need a program that writes plain text with no frills.

You're probably thinking WordPad or Notepad, both of which come with all PCs. Well, you can use those, too, but I have a product that I like a lot and would like to pass that information along. The program is called "TextPad," and it works much like MSWord, but it doesn't include the strange character translations. It's free to try and about $35 to buy, but it's well worth the price.

Another great tool, which you can get for free, is Roboform. You probably already know that Roboform will save passwords for you, right? Well, did you ever think of Roboform as a list building assistant?

Well it is. You see, Roboform also includes a feature called "Safenotes." It's great for saving your resource boxes. You can just click on Safenotes and choose whichever bio you want, copy it, and paste it into your article submission form. Works great! This feature of Roboform also works well when you're submitting to directories for SEO purposes. You can just put the description of your website into Safenotes and copy and paste wherever needed.

For determining keyword density for articles, you can find many free resources, if your page is already online, but what about if you haven't uploaded it yet, and it's still plain text? You can go to EasySEO's Live Keyword Analysis and paste in your article. Add up to three keywords and find the density of each on the spot. Articles are a great way to drive traffic to your list building page, and Live Keyword Analysis will assure the right density so that search engines will find them.

Those are only a few of the tools that come in handy when driving traffic to your list building page. They're easy to use and very helpful. Save time with mechanics and increase your list building efforts in other areas. One thing you can never recover is time, and these tools will help you to be more thrifty with it.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and a master of list building. Learn the 9 Laws of List Building at MyFirstList.com

Building Link Popularity Strategy Secrets

Building a link popularity strategy these days has become very difficult and time consuming. The search engines have evolved and it is much more difficult to cheat the system that prevents spam websites from appearing at the top of search engines. This has made a successful link popularity campaign a lot more tedious and more work than previously. However, you do not have to be a search engine optimization expert to get good good rankings. Follow these link popularity basics and you will get good search engine rankings over a long period of time.

Google mentions on their site that a link from Yahoo and Open Directory constitutes as a vote of quality as in the Google webmaster guidelines. Get listed in the two most important directories on the web. Google favours older websites and applies a sandbox filter for new sites making it difficult for webmasters to spam the search engine. It can take a new website up to 12 months to rank well in the organic listings. A link from these websites will definitely help new websites to break out of the Google sandbox.

List your website in second tier directories like Best Of The Web, Business.com, MSN BCentral and Gimpsy. You can also list your website in a few third tier directories like Joeant and UncoverTheNet.

Do a newsworthy press release to obtain free publicity and get good quality links pointing to your website. You can get good quality free links from PRLeap and I-Newswire. It costs $80 dollars to get a good quality link from PRWeb.

Google trusts Wikipedia even more than Open Directory. Getting a link here will definitely boost your rankings. However if you submit a link for your home page it will very likely be removed and considered as spam. The secret to getting listed in Wikipedia is to have a very professional and informative article on a niche topic. Then in the niche category on Wikipedia you can suggest your article as an external link and you will still find your link in a months time.

Search for popular forums related to your niche. Register for them and create a signature with anchor text based on your keywords. Submit regular informative posts and helpful. You will gain link popularity and people who read your posts will also click on to your website.

Do a search on Google for the top websites for your related niche and get those websites to link to you. On topic links will boost your search engine rankings, but avoid too much reciprocal linking as Google will penalize you.

You can write your way using articles to the top of search engines. Submit your polished article to the major article directories like Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Article Dashboard and Article Alley. You will good quality links pointing back to your website.

Once you put these basics into practice you need to focus for at least a period of 6 to 12 months and you will find that you will start getting top search engine rankings.

Would you like to know more about the techniques that have helped me to quit my day job? I have just completed my new guide.

Download it free here: Secrets Of Internet Marketing

Mark Abrahams is a full time internet marketer who has helped others to earn a living online. You can also visit his blog Home Based Internet Business

Email List Building Secrets -List Building Gold Part 3

I recommend using at least 17 pre-written messages to load into your autoresponder.

After driving the traffic to the opt-in page, they will receive something for free.

For instance, I have included with no strings attached a free ebook available for download that will help you effectively increase your subscribers and build your list of opt ins using professional tips that are only known to a few internet marketers simply because I don't want to do anything online, unless it adds value to those whose lives I enter into business relationship.

When, after downloading the ebook for free, because you are a reader of my articles, my chiefest joy will be to know that you are increasing your business by at least double after just implementing the strategies provided.

After all, as internet marketing guru Doug Barger once said in his "Resurrection of Internet Marketing," "Tracking and testing are paramount to increasing profitability."

You see, the surest way to know that the effectiveness of your email list building is improving is the same principle. After applying the techniques, if you realize that you are gaining an extra triple the number of subscribers that you were before applying the strategies and tips, then you know that the credibility of the person who recommended them is one to be trusted and that the value of the recommendations are directly measurable in terms of the results that they have provided.

Include a download link that will help some access of your subscriber's marketing endeavor and business model with every prewritten email sent to them and include a suggestion (call to action) for them to send it to someone that they know will benefit from it or ask them to mention it in a forum when the subject comes up and you will see more evidence of the value of the service you provide and its impact on the community.

For instance after downloading your free copy of this ebook to follow, please tell at least three friends about it and always post a link to it in any marketing forum you are a part of when someone requests help in the area of list building.

This will show you that you genuinely care about your networking contacts and that their success is important to you. Other than helping me help them, and to help me keep these free for you, you just might find that you have won a customer for life and that really is list building gold.

Download My Free Report: "How To Quickly And Easily Build An Opt In List Of Hyper Responsive Subscribers Who Are Willing To Spend Money With You Right Now!"

http://nocostlistbuilding.com/lbr-report.htm

Article Marketing - Write Your Way Into Search Results - Traffic And $$$

In my regular scouring of the internet marketing do's and don'ts, I come across an endless sea of opinions, many of them contradictory of other opinions by internet marketers and gurus. You may have seen something like what I'm referring to. Some internet marketers will tell you "Adsense is dead", while others assure you that "There's still life in Adsense and other Pay Per Click programs!" One of the topics that has come to my attention recently is regarding the use of articles to raise the search ranking of your website and do some honest to goodness SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

There are several aspects to SEO, of course. This article takes a look at articles and how their content can be used to your advantage to build your website popularity.

One opinion I've seen time and time again that has been trumpeted by scores of marketers, and that has never been contested, is "search engines love content." I'll go a step further and say, "Search engines love original content."

If you want to see what I'm referring to, do a search under "article sites" and see how many directories you pull up. Article directories are out there in droves, keeping a large supply of articles that can be (and usually are) used by people publishing ezines or adding content to their sites. I've submitted articles to several of these sites for free. Here's why submitting articles is a win-win situation:

Win for you: You get to include a "resource box" with your article, which can be a link back to your website (or the affiliate site you are promoting)

Win for them: ezine publishers need to come up with articles every day/week/month. Webmasters want their proverbial "regularly updated content." Article directories give them the ammo they need to keep their updates regular and their content fresh.

Of course, this does mean you will need to write. If you like to write already, great - get started! If writing is about as fun for you as pulling your teeth with rusty jumper cables, all is not lost. My suggestion is to look at sites like Elance (www.elance.com) and look for writers on the topic you want to cover. Elance has a bidding system, which allows you to post a project for bids and let prospective writers bid on it. Once you have your article written, you will need to submit it. There is an endless array of article sites on the web. You can also take a shortcut by trying an article submission tool.

Something else to remember - SEO will take awhile. Even if you have submitted articles, you must give them time to make their way into the hands of those people who will publish them on sites and on the web.

So there you have it - articles help you promote your web site the write way!

Paul Heingarten is an entrepreneur, author and consultant. He owns several websites and has assisted business owners with website design and marketing. Take a look at his site http://www.theebookstar.com to see a great collection of ebooks available on topics like website marketing.

Choosing a good domain name isn't always so simple.

So you need a domain name for your brand new internet business. You may even have some cool ideas for a new domain name combination that will really impress your friends. Question is, is your new domain name going to help your business or hurt it?

What could be simpler than choosing a domain name right? Wrong. There are a number of things you need to consider and research before you register your favorite domain name.

First off, what is a domain name and why would I want one?

A domain name makes our lives much easier when surfing the internet. You see, all computers on the internet are actually referenced with what is called IP addresses. On the internet, IP addresses are four sets of numbers that serve like street addresses allowing two computers to talk over a network. An example of an IP address is the one for Google.com. It is 216.239.39.99. If you enter this IP address into the address bar of your browser it will bring you to Googles home page in that very same way that typing www.google.com would get you there. Unfortunately, we humans have difficulty remembering our phone numbers let alone so many digits for all kinds of sites. Thats one of the main reasons domain names were invented.

Domain names make it easy for us humans to remember how to find a site. Most people know Google.com and anyone familiar with the internet knows that to reach Google, you simply type www.google.com in your address bar and you are transported to their website. The same goes for Disney.com, Microsoft.com, CNN.com, etc

Now you would think that choosing a domain name would simply be a matter of choosing something that is unique and that people would remember. The problem with that approach is that most of us dont have the money needed to turn our name into a brand name on the mass market. Most of us need to rely on our prospects reaching our website through other means. The best of these are search engines.

Choosing a good domain name for your site starts with the main keywords you have chosen to focus on for your website. Before you launch your business, you should conduct some preliminary research online to determine which keywords have the most traffic and the least number of other websites competing for that particular keyword. Some tools that help in this are the Overture keyword suggestion tool and Wordtracker.com. Both of these tools will give you a rough idea of how much traffic each of your chosen keywords will likely get each month. This helps to determine which keywords to focus on.

Should you choose a domain name that includes your main keywords?

In most cases, the answer is yes. Google and to some degree Yahoo both give you a small boost for your domain name. If your domain name happens to contain your targeted keywords, your domain name will help you in your quest for higher search engine rankings. Now if you do everything else wrong, having your main keywords in your domain name will not magically catapult you to the top of the listings. Many other parts of your site must be working for you as well. Other things you can do to improve rankings are beyond the scope of this article.

Choosing a keyword rich domain is a smart business move.

For some sites, it could be the edge they need to move up a few spots in the search engines. When choosing a keyword rich domain name, you may want to consider hyphens between your keywords. An example is cheap-airline-tickets.com. Current research trends for Google and Yahoo suggest that hyphens are the only way to separate keywords within a URL that will give you a rankings boost.

Why not simply choose your company name? Simple. Is your company a household name? Are you so dominant in a category that people have stopped referring to the generic name of your category and use your brand name like Kleenex has for tissue paper? If so, register your company name. If not, register a keyword rich domain wherever possible.

You may be thinking, But I already own a domain name that is my company name. Should I go and register a new domain and point it to the same site? The short answer is no. Years ago, you could improve your rankings on search engines simply by setting up lots of doorway pages and having them all link back to your home page with all kinds of domain names. That tactic nowadays can backfire. You are better off optimizing individual pages within your existing website than you are creating a whole bunch of fluff sites just to increase rankings.

The technique I suggest above is really best suited for brand new business ventures. If you still have not registered your domain name for that special online business you are about to start, then make it keyword rich wherever possible. If you have already launched your business, youll just have to take advantage of this information next time you start another online venture.

This article was written by Joe Duchesne, president of http://www.yowling.com/ , a budget web hosting company that specializes in helping online business owners increase their website traffic. Copyright 2004 Yowling. Reprint Freely.

Generate More Income & Traffic With Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs like 1shoppingcart and Amazon are great ways to promote your business and make extra money. Affiliates, also known as publishers, are rewarded for their efforts in gaining visitors, customers, contacts and subscribers. For example, when you put a tag on your website for Amazon, someone browsing through your site clicks on it. The tag redirects the surfer to Amazon and you receive a small commission for linking a potential client to an affiliate site. Its that easy.

The more people you can get to link to your site, the better chances youll have for making a commission. Commission levels vary depending on how motivated you are in gaining clicks to other sites or to your own. Internet affiliate marketing is great for all types of business professionals including web marketers, entrepreneurs, and mid- to large- size companies. It also will drive traffic to your site increasing your reach and leading to more potential customers.

Make sure you pick an affiliate that has a product or service that is high in demand or one that is related to your business or points of interest in your articles. It is also a good idea to start affiliates on your blog. Pick one that is connected to a search engine to boost traffic to your site as well as theirs Blogger is a good example, because it is linked with Google.

Place advertisements where people will see them, close to the top or within the content of your articles. But do not overdo your blog or site by putting advertisements all over or cluttered only on the top of your site. The best way to organize your ads is to keep it simple and classy so that they do not draw people away from your site.

TeamWork Builds Web Success

The Web Success Team specializes in building and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online tools and proven techniques to promote your products and services. And well show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site through the expanding social web and how to convert visitors into buyers at a high rate of return.

Your website can become an effective marketing hub for your business. To learn more about the power of Direct Response Web Marketing, log on to http://www.websuccessteam.com/whydirectresponse.htm

Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation at http://www.websuccessteam.com/contactus.htm or email Bob Speyer at bob@websuccessteam.com. To your web success!