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How to Promote Your YouTube Videos with Article Marketing

By Eric Gruber in Featured

YouTube videos instantly turned William Sledd, a Gap store manager in Paducah, KY into the hottest style guru on the Internet. Now with almost 60,000 subscribers and millions of views this YouTube blogger turned Internet celebrity is the owner of the fourth most popular channel on YouTube. He has a growing coterie of famous friends and development deals in the works with mainstream media outlets like NBC. He has even come into the status of beginning his own website and t-shirt company.

Sledd is not a computer geek. He is not an Internet Marketing guru. He is just a normal, small-town person his audience can relate to. You too, can become an Internet Celebrity and sell more books, products and services using YouTube, when you follow my Internet promotion strategies below.

My Fool-Proof Plan to Generating Instant Buzz for Your YouTube Videos with Article Marketing

Step 1: Create an Article That Grabs Readers’ Interest

Once you have uploaded your videos to YouTube, you must heavily promote your videos if you want to sell more books, products and services online. One of the most effective ways to broadcast your message is by writing articles related to your videos and submitting them to the top article directories, websites and ezines that accept articles.

While writing your articles keep in mind that the best result-producing articles are the ones that provide unique, high quality content that solves at least one piece of a problem puzzle. However, to convert readers to buyers, you must not give the reader all of the answers to the “HOW” to solve a particular problem. Instead you want to tease them with some of the how and top it off with the why it’s important.

Step 2: Turn Readers into Prospects With a Strong Call for Action and an Offer They Can’t Refuse

At the end of your article, you can promote yourself and attract visitors to your YouTube video page with a bio box. This is where most article marketers make the fatal mistake of failing to encapsulate the essence of what makes you and your offering unique. For example, they may write something like:

Blah Blah, is a keynote speaker, seminar leader and author. She has spoken in 26 countries on four continents. She is president of Yada Dada, Las Vegas. Check out her YouTube video at (fill in the blank)

Technically there is nothing wrong — except it is BORING.

You need to stimulate people to visit your website immediately. Otherwise, they will forget you are alive five minutes later. Here’s an example bio box for you to model:

Fitness Expert, Craig Ballantyne helps millions of busy moms lose fat while gaining muscle with just 3 short workouts a week. Watch his new YouTube Video at (fill in the blank) and discover 3 new turbulence training excercises that will help you burn belly fat now! And as a special bonus, you’ll receive a FREE special offer to receive Craig’s Controversial Fat Loss Report revealing the most common exercise myths that are sabotaging your fat loss efforts.

Doesn’t this make you want to go visit Craig’s YouTube video right away?

Step 3: Submit your articles to the top article directories to build links and improve your search engine optimization.

Just like your website, to increase your YouTube Video page’s search ranking on Google, you must increase the number of inbound links to the page. The higher you climb in search results the more unique visitors you will get.

By submitting articles to the top article directories like EzineArticles.com, you will instantly receive a guaranteed link to your YouTube page as long as you follow each directory’s specific editorial guidelines.

Step 4: Submit your articles to the top, targeted websites and ezines that accept article submissions in your niche.

For best results and to climb higher in search engine rankings you can’t just have any link. You must have links on high-trafficked websites with high Google Page Rankings and high Alexa Traffic Rankings. Plus, by placing your articles on highly-competitive, targeted websites like About.com, instead of just second tier article directories that will publish anyone’s articles, you will win trust in the hearts and minds of your targeted audience before they even see your YouTube video.

Follow these tips, and you will drive traffic to your YouTube video pages and create an instant buzz so you can become an Internet celebrity and sell more books, products and services online.

Author:  With premium article placements on websites like About.com, Entrepreneur.com and Disney’s Family.com, Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber can help you generate a massive, targeted Internet publicity campaign resulting in an instant buzz for your YouTube videos. Before you submit your next article, make sure you download Eric’s FREE REPORT “How to Choose an Article Submission Service” at http://www.IWantMoreProspects.com/10questions

7 Secrets To a Profitable Website

By John Abbott in Featured

Are you finally ready to start your OWN internet business? Ready to make a second income without a second job? You really can make some serious money and save lots of time and effort by following these 7 secrets of wealthy marketers.

Keep it SIMPLE

Your website should be simple, informative, interesting and produce ACTION on the part of the visitor. There are only TWO things your website should do: produce a sale and/or capture an email address. Fancy graphics and different fonts and colors can be confusing and hard to read. Also, a lot of “bells and whistles” can slow down the loading of your webpage, causing your visitor to LEAVE. Keep it simple, make it fast loading and make the sale or get the email address.

Make use of auto responders

Studies show that MOST of the time, you will NOT make a sale on the first visit to your website. That is why you MUST capture the email address so you can follow-up. But NOT manually-use an auto-responder. An auto responder is a systematic way to send folow-up emails to those who did NOT buy on their first visit to your site. Once an auto-responder system is set-up, it can easily and effortlessly follow up for you. There are many good autoresponderers such as Aweber or Get response. You can Google “autorespnder” to find them. See what successful marketers are using and follow suit.

Use an easy to remember web address

URLs are a Uniform Resource Locator or the words you type in to find a website. Usually the shorter the better. If you are using an affilaite website, you may want to register a separte, simple domain name and then just use an URL redirect to forward visitors to your website.

Make it SIMPLE for your customers to pay

The days are long gone when a customer will get an envelope, address it, put a check in it and mail it to you. Over 90% of all online business is done with e-commerce, using credit cards. You can use Paypal, Google Checkout, Clickbank, etc

Add credibility with testiomonials

If you have satisfied customers, ASK them to send you a testimonial(with a pic if possible.) and then put those on your webpage. If you are NEW in business and do not yet have testiomonials, be creative to get some-GIVE your product or service to some friends or a fellow internet marketer to TEST for you. Ask for their HONEST feedback. If you have a good product or service, you should have no trouble getting 3-5 testiomonials very quickly.

Add a phone number

For many reasons, if you add a phone number to your website, it adds tremendous credibility. You have several choices here-YOU can answer the phone yourself(many times that is the BEST way-at least during business hours) or you can have a recorderd message, or you can HIRE a service to answer the phone for you. But by giving a phone number, you send the message that you are a REAL business and as such, you will be treated as one.

Make it PERSONAL

The internet can make business seem very COLD and impersonal. But YOU can change that by adding a bit of YOUR personality to your website. Add YOUR picture to your website. share some of YOUR passions, etc. People want to do business with a PERSON not a COMPANY. You are looking to create a relationship with your customers, so let them get to know YOU!

There you have it, By following these 7 secrets, you are on your way to becoming a wealthy marketer!

Author:  John Abbott - Starting a successful internet business is easy if you follow these secrets. For more info visit: Wealthy Marketer

How To Guarantee Your Product’s Success Before Your Even Start!

By Willie Crawford in Featured

Today, I’d like to teach you an easy method of researching a product or project idea BEFORE you invest a lot of time and other resources in it.

Over the past 11 years I’ve been shown over 100 products that “seemed like a great idea,” but when they were offered to the market, the customers weren’t interested. In a few cases the “marketing” was just bad, but in more cases, the product was simply something that the market didn’t want.

There are, of course, more research tools available than you could ever learn to use. So, today, I’m actually going to focus your attention on just two… and they’ll both be free.

First, I’d like to introduce you to Google Alerts! You’ll find this handy, free service offered by Google.com at: http://www.google.com/alerts

Note that Google does own the trademarks to all of the terms mentioned in this article that uses their name

Google Alerts allow you to subscribe to free notifications of when Google discovers new occurrences of a target phrase anywhere on the Internet. You can specify what types of databases Google provides you with updates from. As you’ll see when visiting the site, it’s fairly self-explanatory.

I have dozens of these set up. I have it set up so that… once a day, I get an email summary of new alerts for:

• Target keyword phrases
• Target URLs
• Target product titles
• Discussion forums on a topic
• My name and my company name
• My key competitors
• Unique phrases that I created for various purpose

You get the idea.

The second free tool that I use is online forums specific to my topic of interest. These are forums where people discuss your topic or niche. There are hundreds of thousands of them scattered across the Internet, and you CAN find one on almost any topic.

When that brilliant product idea comes to you, the first thing that you want to ask is, “Is this something that the market really wants?”

You also want to know, “Is this something that already exists, and if it does, can I still market something similar?”

The final question you want to answer if you’re contemplating getting rich with your idea is, “Is this something that the market is willing to pay for?”

The first objection many people will offer when reading this article is that they don’t know where to find discussion forums in their niche. To them, I say… “Google Alerts!”

Simply set up some alerts for phrases that include the terms:

• “online forums” + your keywords
• “discussion boards” + your keywords
• “forum” + your keywords
• “online community” + your keywords

In a day or two, Google will be so kind as to start EMAILING YOU links to some of these forums. What could be easier. Just go over, register for the forums if required, and then listen to the discussion.

You’re listening to see if your product idea will solve a problem that this group of people PAINFULLY want to solve.

You’re listening to see if there is a glaringly obvious problem, other than the one your were already thinking about, that you can offer the perfect solution to.

If you don’t see discussion that answers your question, then consider posting the question. Explain that you are doing research for a possible product. Perhaps even ask them to visit your site and take a survey.

A living example of how I recently did this AND the resulting product follows. Study my example, and you’ll see that you really can confirm that your product is badly wanted by the marketplace before you write the first word of an ebook, or the first line of code for a program.

I’ll give you an example from Internet marketing since that is the niche that many readers of this article will be from.

I began by visiting the very popular Internet Marketing Warriors discussion forum. I had an idea that the market was growing tired of products that promised a fortune overnight but that offered techniques many people found daunting.

I suspected that many people in the “Internet marketing niche” were having very little success, and would be completely ecstatic if they could earn even $100 per day.

So I posted the rhetorical question, “Would You Be ‘Happy’ With $100 Per Day?” That thread generate over 4700 views, and over 170 responses. The responses overwhelmingly confirmed my suspicions. It confirmed that most people would not only be thrilled with $100 per day ($3000 per month) but that they were anxious for instructions on HOW to accomplish this seemingly-daunting task.

You can read that thread, and feel the strong emotion here: http://warriorforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=184530

I mention the strong emotion because if you understand sales, you know that people buy on emotion, and then justify with logic. So, you do need to provide a solution to a problem that people really REALIZE that they have on a deep emotional level… if you want a best-seller.

After verifying that people wanted this product, and even letting them tell me what the product should feel like, I then felt confident in creating and marketing such a product. I knew beyond any doubt that if I offered this product in the right way, that it WOULD sell.

I have used the technique above in numerous niches. I’m currently working on a similar “exercise” in the very competitive cooking niche. I’m doing it by addressing one of the biggest challenges faced by marketers in that niche. More on that in another article though

After I had verified the demand for the product in my example above… the product on “How To Make $100 Per Day Online”… I then had to determine the best method for creating this product.

Realizing that there are literally dozens of easy, viable methods of earning that amount, working just one or two hour per day, I also realized that writing something based upon just my own experiences would be too limiting. I AM involved in a lot of online niches, and do far more things than I probably should be doing.

However, to get a wider variety of experiences, I turned to the best “brain-pool” that I could think of. I went to the members of my inner circle private memberships site at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

I posted the suggestion on our private forum that this was an idea with proven demand, and suggested that we write this ebook as a group.

Instantly, I had lots of people who were actually earning that much, or more, coming forward and offering to do a chapter. Others, who didn’t feel qualified to write a chapter, offered to do things such as proofreading, or helping with graphics or programming.

The community at The Internet Marketing Inner Circle WROTE the ebook, producing what many are already calling “The Internet Marketing Product Of The Year!” One even called it, “The Internet Marketing Product Of The Decade.” That may be a stretch, but it clearly filled a very real need. It solved a glaring problem.

You can see the result of my research and our teamwork at: http://TheInternetCouncil.org

I’ll close by revealing one other BIG secret. One of several reasons why I was willing to suggest my idea as a group project was that I knew that having more people involved would create a sense of ownership. I knew that getting more people involved in creating the product all but eliminated any risk in creating the product.

We could even say that the thread on the Warrior Forum reduced the risk by 95%. By saying on the forum that they would be happy with $100 per day, and that they were looking for a plan to accomplish this, created a deep psychological connection between those posters, and the success of the project. Since the product filled a need that they publicly stated that they wanted SOLVED, they would be inconsistent if they didn’t accept the solution when offered.

I don’t need to pack too many lessons into this article. I think that I have demonstrated, with a living example, that you can guarantee the success of your product before you even start! Now you just need to do it!

Author:  Willie Crawford has been teaching others uncomplicated methods of building successful online businesses since 1996. Today, he does most of his teaching inside an exclusive membership site filled with other experts dedicated to uncovering the truth about how to succeed online. Join Willie and dozens of other “old-timers” at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

Reaching The Top of Page One In Google In As Little As One Week

By Clinton Douglas in Featured

When you have the right information, climbing to the top of Google in a very short period of time is entirely within your reach. I am living proof. Two weeks ago, I launched my new website, and now I have multiple listings on page one of the Google search results.

An Empirical Truth

Scientists make their way in the world relying upon empirical truths. For those who are unaware, an empirical truth can be defined as, “verifiable or provable by means of repeatable observation or experiment.”

In essence, if you can observe it once, then it is interesting. But, when you can repeat the experiment and achieve the same observations multiple times, then you have evidence of an empirical truth.

From my own observations, what I am about to tell you is an empirical truth, because I have observed it happen again and again.

The Challenge In Exposing The Truth

Anytime someone writes about how to influence placement in the search engines, the writer faces a difficult choice.

In order to light the path of those who come after the writer, the writer must provide some kind of proof as to how the methods work and what kinds of results the writer was able to achieve using the methods.

Introducing the quandary.

In order to believe my story, many people want to see my keywords so they can personally verify my story by reviewing the Google search results. Although you may not be competing directly with my website and the keywords on which I rank, one can almost guarantee that my competitors may stumble over my tutorial at some point in the future.

In other words, if I told you that I was trying to rank for the keyword “cock-a-doodle-doo”, then you (the reader) could validate my results. At the same time, my competitor might discover this article and decide to use my methods and my keywords to outrank my own website in the search engines.

This actually happened to one of my mentors. In a public discussion of these same methods, he had given a bone to the readers of the forum where he was participating in a discussion. Within eight weeks, two of his top competitors held the top two spots for his keyword phrase, and after a five-year run at number one in Google, he suddenly found himself sitting in the number three spot.

So, the question is how I tell my story in a way that will help you to also see the light, without giving away the light bulb…

Have A Little Faith In Those Who Are Looking Out For You

Some of you may choose to have faith in the story that I tell. Others will choose to deny my methods, on the principle that they cannot see my results for themselves.

All I ask is that you have a little faith in my story. Then run your own test. Your test will not require a major investment, but when you see your website climbing from nowhere to somewhere in the Google results, you will be glad that you took my story on a little bit of faith.

Some Background

One of my mentors, Bill Platt, has been telling me about these methods for years. But to be honest, the picture just was not clear in my brain, for longer than I would care to admit.

Now and again, I would read something by one of the Internet gurus, and they would tell that they used these methods themselves. When the really rich people on the Internet tell you something about how to perform well on the Internet, it has always been my position that you should listen. I listened; well, I mostly listened anyway.

I hooked up with Bill shortly after having been told the importance of article marketing. Bill seemed to have the answers concerning the article-marketing model, having been in the business himself for a number of years, through his website (http://www.thephantomwriters.com).

Bill always told me that writing articles was about generating traffic and sales from the placement of my articles in ezines. He had also told me that if I played the game right, I could even benefit the rankings of my website in the search engines.

I started using Bill’s article distribution service to put my articles into circulation.

Bill had also advised that his client’s, who get the greatest benefit from article marketing, use multiple systems to distribute their articles. He advised that Willie Crawford (http://www.gitofftheporch.com) was one of the Internet guru’s who used more than one distribution service to put his articles into the wild.

Bill said that using more than one service was a good thing, because most article distribution services have their own unique reach, enabling the writer to get published in more ezines and on more websites. He emphasized that the goal should be to get as many people to your website as possible, using your articles as a method for introducing the reader to your website.

Beware Of Your Own Smartness

After using Bill’s article distribution services for a few months, I had the privilege of reading John Reese’s Traffic Secrets (http://www.trafficsecrets.com). John offered many useful tips for a successful online business, but one piece of advice he offered I implemented immediately.

John emphasized the importance of tracking our results. He said that in order to see what is successful, we must have a method in place to enable us to track where our traffic came from. Suddenly, I realized that although I knew that my website had been driving a lot of traffic, I had really no idea where that traffic was coming from or its cause.

Let me clarify that a bit. I knew that most of my traffic was coming from the large numbers of articles that I had distributed through Bill’s service and the service of one of his competitors (http://www.isnare.com). But, I did not know which articles were generating the bulk of my traffic.

So, I followed John’s advice and bought a software package designed to help me track my results (http://www.dynatracker.com). Then, I told Bill that from that day forward, we would need to use tracking URL’s with all of the articles I distributed through his service.

Bill agreed that tracking was important, but he suggested that there are better ways to track results than the one I was proposing. I listened to John, but I did not fully listen to Bill’s advice. Looking back, I kick myself daily for not listening to Bill in that one moment.

Tracking Your Article Results

Bill had always told me that using the Dyna Tracker was a good product for tracking my results, but it had an inherent problem. That problem is that I would be passing the search engine Link Value from my articles to my tracking software and not to the individual pages of my website.

If only I would have listened… I ran a full-year worth of articles with the Dyna Tracker links in my resource boxes. While Bill was telling me to dump the Dyna Tracker links, I was busy praising the value of the data I collected from the software.

One Test Blew My Mind

On one of my regular phone calls with Bill, I told him that I was launching a new website to complement what I was already doing. I asked Bill if he had any recommendations that he would give me on the new site.

Bill told me that I would not like his answer, but if I wanted to hear it, he would tell me.

I have to be honest, a knot formed in the pit of my stomach as I braced for his comments.

He told me that I should get back to basics. He told me that I already knew from experience that articles would help me to drive traffic to my website. I did know that. Bill recommended that I do two articles per week for twelve weeks. I have done that before, so I knew that I could get good results from that advice. He told me to use more than one article distribution service to put those articles in the wild. I followed that advice as well.

Then Bill got to the stomach punch. Bill told me to throw away my Dyna Tracker and provide direct URL links to my website. He also told me to keyword some of those links to my website, for the purpose of influencing my search placement for those keywords.

He told me to test the idea and to measure my results in just a few weeks. He told me if the methodology did not work for me, then I could start using my Dyna Tracker again.

He also suggested that I should use his Link Building system to develop 100 inbound links to my website, targeting the keywords that I felt would be important to my business. (http://www.linksandtraffic.com) I figured it was worth a try. Bill had never led me astray before, and I did not expect he was doing so then.

The Results

Within just a few weeks, I was getting a good amount of traffic to my new website. Strangely, I found that I was getting far more traffic from the search engines than I ever had before, yet the website was almost brand new! That just flew in the face of that sandbox theory we all hear about.

So, I started testing the keywords that Bill targeted in his linking job on my behalf. Wow. I found my brand new website sitting in the #12 spot in the Google search results on a two-word keyword that is actually pretty competitive. I also found the keywords we targeted in the campaign sitting in the #1, #1, and the #3 spot in the Google search results. I also found many page one results in the Yahoo search results as well.

Cock-a-doodle-doo! The light bulb went on, finally.

Then two weeks ago, I started another new campaign for my newest website. Within 24 hours of completing that website, I had distributed my first article promoting the website. Within 8 days of releasing that site to the public, I also had page one and page two listings for a wide range of keywords that I have so far targeted for my new website.

When In Rome, Do As The Romans Do

I mentioned three of my favorite teachers in this article: Bill Platt, Willy Crawford, and John Reese. I felt all three needed a mention, because all three have taught me things that have helped me to make money online. If you would like to learn from their expertise yourself, just Google their names.

The most important thing that I have learned since starting my website is that if I want to get rich online, I need to listen to those who are already making money online.

My hope is that you will listen to them too, so you can join us at the top.

Author:  Clinton Douglas IV, teaches people how to work from home. Learn how to make thousands of dollars while keeping your day time job! Visit his site now; Learn the insider secrets to Building an Online Empire ==> Learn How to Make Money Fast

How To Make Your Email Marketing Simple

By Chris Haycock in Featured

Email marketing is one of the most effective and least expensive methods of reaching large volumes of customers who are interested in your products or services. You will want your email marketing campaign to address each person by name to make it more personal. The customer will provide you with their name and email address but you will need to find the best way to store it and use it. Email marketing software is a great way to compile your data. It can also be used to store the purchasing history of a particular consumer. This is good for narrowing your target market on certain email marketing campaigns. What can email marketing software do for you?

It is a wonderful tool for editing text, creating promotions, and writing newsletters. It allows you to add pictures, attachments, backgrounds for colour and appeal, images, and sound. You will be able to use templates for features you intend to use regularly. This is definitely a time saver. Using email marketing software will make your materials appear professional which will make the email marketing campaign more successful.

There are many email marketing software packages available to choose from ranging in cost from $99 to $499. The one that works best for you will depend on what you are looking for as well as the objectives of your email marketing campaigns. Not all email marketing software offers the same features. However, there are some basic items you should look for. Choose email marketing software that offers 24/7 customer support. Conduct your own research to find out how effective that customer support has been for other consumers. The software will be useless if you aren’t able to use it properly. There are bound to be questions and concerns you have and maybe some technical issues. Customer support needs to be that bridge for you when such issues arise.

Every email marketing software will operate differently. The software has to be easy to install and set up or it will never help your business achieve its goals. It is important that it is simple to navigate yet allows you to be creative. You will want to choose email marketing software that offers you the choice of making a template or working from scratch. You also want simple to create email lists, based on various factors. Some software programs offer unlimited size when it comes to your mailing lists. Others set a limit from 2,000 up to 50,000. You will have an idea of the growth you want for your business and can use that to help your decision. Unless you have a great deal of experience with email marketing, choose a software program that comes with a wizard and a tutorial system. These will become your best friends while you are learning the ins and outs of the email marketing software. Bounce handling to resend undelivered emails is a wonderful feature to look for as well. It will prevent you from manually having to resend them. It is very important that your software has a quick and efficient way to remove the email address of those who choose to opt out. The law requires you to remove them from your emailing lists within 10 business days.

Email marketing is a very effective way to generate traffic to your website and more sales. Using email marketing software is a very inexpensive and effective way to create email marketing campaigns that are professional quality. Take the time to choose email marketing software that offers all of the features you will need to operate your campaigns properly. The internet is a great place to find out the pros and cons of the various email marketing software packages available. Keep in mind that you want to purchase software with excellent customer service.

Author:  Chris Haycock is an information publisher specialising in helping people start their own home internet based business. You can get an absolutely no cost two hour video on how to create your own information products in one day, without writing a single word, and start your own niche ebook business, by going to: http://www.easyebizz.com

Powerful Traffic Generation Strategy: SEO Sitemaps

By Jo Han Mok in Featured

A lot of web pages will find an SEO sitemap useful in improving their performance. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process that aims to create or revise Internet sites so that it can be better found by search engines. The objective of SEO campaigns is to have websites appear in the top listing or first results page of search engines.

Internet search engines, such as Google and A9, maintain a very large database of Web pages and available files. To do this, they devise a program called a web crawler, or spider. This software automatically and continuously surfs and hunts content in the Web. Pages that the spider finds are retrieved and indexed according to text content, giving more weight to titles and paragraph headers. Spiders never stop navigating the web from page to page, to index the relevant content of the Internet. Besides looking at the text of titles and headers, some programs are able to identify default tags and keep a library of these page keywords or key phrases in the index.

When a user connects to the Internet types a query, which is automatically interpreted as keywords, the search engine scans the saved index and creates a list of web pages that is most appropriate to what the user is searching for.

SEO will use all the combined techniques of keyword analysis, smart code, good content literature, link popularity study and website organization to place the subject web page as high as possible in the list of search results in search engines. Web pages displayed on the top of results pages are assumed to get the most attention, and therefore, opportunity for earnings for web businesses and pages with sponsor links.

Search engines usually return a list of results ranking pages according to the number of Internet sites linked to them. Results can be classified as organic, or sponsored links. Sponsored links are shown prominently because their creators or agents paid the search engine. Sponsored links are the main source of income of search engines. “Organic” search results are the lists of actual results from the engines index and are directly related to the keyword typed in the request.

One of the more effective techniques of SEO is the creation of a main page and other content are directly linked to a site map, spiders can more easily move through the website, identify the key words of the content, and index these for a search engine. This is where the SEO sitemap helps the website creator or administrator.

Site maps are usually pages filled with links. These are shown as tables or lists, although lists are generally more effective. Writing code for SEO sitemaps is very easy and simple to format and maintain. These are ideally basic HTML pages with default tags, logical titles and keywords scattered in the Meta description. Introduction areas can contain more of the keywords. The site should have a main heading for every directory.

A simple list layout helps reduce unnecessary tags that might “hide” your keywords. Some spiders give more weight to the following, than text in the normal body of the webpage: heading text, content within link elements, text nearer the top of the page and the text written for a link. Therefore, writing the keywords and links in these areas could somehow move up the web page’s ranking. This goes for SEO sitemaps as well.

Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.

In an SEO Sitemap, and most pages, the headings contain title attributes where more key phrases in the site map can be added. Keywords are generally well chosen and written in the body of a webpage. However, in an SEO site map with little text, key words should be added as much as possible. As much as possible, web links should follow web page titles, and must undergo SEO during coding. Care must be exercised not to cram the page with keywords and links, or the page will be interpreted as blatant spamming and not receive any traffic at all.

There is no way to guarantee that a website will be shown in the topmost ranking of “organic” search results for an extended period of time. However, smart and responsible SEO sitemap techniques can be used to place the website high up in the search position. Regular monitoring and adjustment of the SEO Sitemap and search results would ensure that a website is kept near the top ranking and receiving lots of web user traffic.

Author:  Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at: http://www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com

Building the Perfectly Optimized Site Using WordPress

By Adam McFarland in Featured

In the past few years WordPress (www.WordPress.org) has become the standard blog publishing platform because of its ease of use, rich feature set, available plugins, and standards compliance.  Of course, the fact that it’s free and open source hasn’t hurt either.

While developers have flocked to using WordPress as their blogging platform of choice, it’s often overlooked as a content management platform for non-blog sites.  WordPress allows you to create pages that are automatically are added to the sites’ navigation bar and can be customized by a PHP programmer to handle just about any task you’d want to accomplish with a site.  Free themes and plugins can help reduce programming and design costs immensely, and with a little work WordPress can be customized to automate many of the most arduous SEO tasks.  The result is a powerful and easy to use search engine friendly publishing platform that eliminates the majority of both upfront and ongoing SEO work.

Since WordPress is already very standards compliant, you and your programmer don’t need to worry about proper HTML formatting – that’s all taken care of for you.  There are, however, a few simple steps that should be taken to turn your WordPress site into the ultimate search-optimized site:

Create Unique Title Tags

Search Engine Optimization firm SEOmoz recently polled 37 of the best SEO’s about what factors influence Google’s algorithm. The NUMBER ONE factor influencing a high ranking was “Keyword Use in Title Tag”.  For that reason alone you want your Title Tag to include the most relevant keywords related to your post.  Unfortunately WordPress defaults to having your site title as the first thing in your Title Tag.  Ideally you’d have a customizable page title show up first. 

For example, if your company named Cool Designs is located in New York and has a Web Design page, the Title Tag “New York City Web Design – Cool Designs” is more likely to rank high for NYC-related web design queries than a page that has “Cool Designs – Web Design” as the Title Tag.  Fortunately WordPress has a SEO Title Tag plugin that allows you to customize each Title Tag.

Turn on Permalinks

The default WordPress post or page has a permanent link that looks like http://www.yoursite.com/?p=123. This is what’s called a dynamic URL - a URL that uses variables in the URL to determine the page content.  In this case the “p” variable determines what is shown when the page is loaded.  And while dynamic URLs are efficient for programming, they aren’t exactly search engine or user friendly.

Years ago search engines had trouble indexing dynamic URLs.  That’s not necessarily the case anymore (although you might as well remove all doubt), but static URLs like http://www.yoursite.com/keyword-filled-post-title/ still offer several advantages.  The primary advantage is the cleanliness of the URL, which really has nothing at all to do with search rankings.  A URL with real words in it (as opposed to numbers and question marks) is much more enticing for people to click on when search results are returned, and consequently is much easier for them to remember when re-visiting your site.  Having relevant keywords from your post in your URL can also have a slight impact in boosting your rankings for those key words.

This change can be done with URL rewriting.  Normally doing this requires quite a bit of programming effort.  Not with WordPress.  Just go to Options à Permalinks and change your default structure to the date and name based structure.

Create Sitemaps

Both HTML sitemaps (a page that lists links to every other page on your site) and XML sitemaps (a file that lists all of the pages on your site for search engine spiders) can aid immensely in getting every page on your site indexed by all of the search engines.  Automating each type of sitemap usually requires a few hours of programming for most sites.  Of course, WordPress has a HTML sitemap plugin and a XML sitemap plugin that does all of the work for you.  After creating the XML sitemap, be sure to submit it to Google and Yahoo to access extensive crawling information about your site.

Install Analytics

All of the traffic in the world isn’t worth very much if you aren’t converting any of it to sales, leads, newsletter signups, or whatever the goal of your site may be.  Google Analytics has become the premiere analytics software because of its simple and customizable interface, breadth of features, and price (free).  In addition to the normal important analytics metrics – visitors, unique visitors, page views, new/returning visitors, traffic sources, most viewed content, etc   – Google Analytics has goal tracking and e-commerce revenue tracking so you can see exactly where each conversion is coming from.  After signing up for an account, the Google Analytics plugin for WordPress will have you up and running in minutes.

If you also use WordPress for its blogging capabilities, you’ll want to install the Sociable plugin and sign up for a Feedburner account to make sure you get the most out of your blog.  Sociable allows people to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Furl, Technorati, reddit, and StumbleUpon, which can be VERY effective for promoting extremely viral sites and articles.  Feedburner offers a plethora of advancements to your RSS feed for your posts, but from a SEO standpoint the most important thing is to configure it to automatically ping search engines and blog directories.  This ensures that your posts always get indexed, and usually gets them indexed fast.

There you have it – a perfectly optimized site using WordPress and other free tools in about a hundredth of the time it would take you if you built it from scratch!

Author:  Adam McFarland is the co-founder of Faceup-Sites and the author of the Faceup Web Marketing Book: The Perfect Combination of SEO, SEM, and other tactics to maximize results without breaking the bank.  Faceup-Sites uses WordPress to create professional, highly customizable, and easily maintainable sites at a fraction of the cost of what most developers charge.

Why I’m NOT ‘The King Of Pay Per Clicks

By Willie Crawford in Featured

Back in the Spring of 2003, I was at Joel Christopher’s Master List Builder Workshop. Marlon Sanders was up speaking. We had never formally met, but Marlon had obviously read some of the things that I’d written on using pay per click advertising.

Back then, I was heavily into pay per click advertising, and had even done TWO teleseminars with my friend Marty Foley on the topic. We called the teleseminars “Master The Pay Per Clicks.” We recorded the teleseminars and sold those recordings for a long time. I still use the recordings from those teleseminars a few places because much of the information is timeless. Marty and I taught a lot of testing and tracking. What has changed most since then is primarily the rules and policies at the pay per clicks… and which search engines are the most important. We taught solid basics back then, and they still work.

Anyway, as Marlon was doing his presentation, he spotted me in the audience, and used what I did as a simple, proven model of generating a steady flow of traffic to your website and converting it to sales.

Back then, for every $1 that I invested in pay per click traffic, I generated $7 in profit. Not a bad return on investment!

Marlon referred to me as “The King Of Pay Per Clicks” and asked me a few basic questions. I answered them, and Marlon proved his points.

Actually, one of the points that I heard Marlon make that day was “Whatever they’re buying, I’m Selling!” The lesson that I learned from Marlon there was, sell the items that your customers are looking for rather than what you’d like to sell them.

In that same presentation, Marlon yelled, “Dead Ducks Don’t Quack!” I understood his message there to be, if people aren’t buying a product, then stop wasting your time and effort trying to sell it to them. People KNOW what they want.

Just those two statements made that entire weekend worth the 13-hour drive from Florida to San Antonio. I drove because I wanted to use the drive time as time to listen to a course that I had recently purchased. I did listen to the audio tapes in that course all the way to, and from, San Antonio… completely absorbing the course in the process.

I absorbed and later applied what Marlon taught during that fateful presentation. I applied what I learned during that time spent in “Automobile U” … the 26 hours driving back and forth between San Antonio. Both learning experiences shifted my think in major ways.

Later that year, Ramon Williamson coached me and provided me with a lot of much needed direction. When I mentioned to him that Marlon had dubbed me as “The King Of Pay Per Clicks,” he asked if I really wanted to be “pigeon holed” by that title.

Ramon asked me to clarify what “I” wanted to be known for on the Internet marketing landscape. Back then, I decided that I really wanted to be a coach and a mentor. That’s what I still get the greatest joy from doing online.

So, while I did leverage the fact that an “Internet marketing icon” had dubbed me “The King Of Pay Per Clicks,” I also took Ramon’s advice to heart and distanced myself from the label.

Today, as back then, I realize that without traffic to your website, your web business CANNOT be successful. You simply need visitors to a webpage who, upon arriving, take the desired action.

Since the need for website traffic is so CRITICAL, back in 2003 I purchased the domain name “Website Traffic PhD.” I had no idea what I was going to do with that domain, but I KNEW that not having enough website traffic was what “pained” most webmasters, and that if I could show them how to get an unlimited stream of website traffic, I had a product that they would trip over themselves to get.

Marty Foley and I did discuss creating a joint product that would be an “encyclopedia” of proven methods of generating website traffic. Perhaps because I still hadn’t learned enough back then, I didn’t tackle a job that I didn’t feel totally qualified for.

I did nothing with that domain, and even allowed the name to expire, but later re-registered it.

Back in December 2002, I first met John Reese at a seminar at Hawks Cay, down in The Florida Keys. That was at the same seminar where I first met Ramon Williamson and Marty Foley. Ramon, Marty and I all gave presentations.

As time progressed, I got to know John better, and he and Ramon attended the very first seminar that I hosted. Ramon spoke, and John totally riveted attendees during conversations held in the back of the room during breaks (and at meals).

John demonstrated his marketing savvy when in March of 2004, he conducted his sell-out, $4500 per seat, seminar on website traffic tactics. John leveraged that seminar into his Traffic Secrets Course, which made him $1 million in under a DAY! John validated for me that REALLY studying traffic generation, and then teaching others how to generate website traffics was an excellent use of my time.

Between 1996 and today (11 years) I have studied just about every website traffic generation tactic imaginable. Over time, I learned which ones worked consistently “for me” (long-term) and which ones required the least expense and effort.

Today, after sifting through what must be over 100 possible traffic generation tactics, I have just a few core tactics that I use and teach. I even have my “Top 10 Best Free Traffic Generation Techniques.” Those are THE techniques that worked for me yesterday, and will work for me tomorrow, without my having to struggle staying up with the latest search engine tricks.

I’d rather go fishing, or spend time playing with my grandchild, than spend countless hours chasing after the latest, usually very short-lived, search engine tricks.

This strategy is so powerful, that on one site that I recently setup and promoted using my “Top 10 Free Traffic Generation Techniques” I generated over 1 million visitors in under 60 days. Needless to say, the site is a success, and will earn me a nice income stream for a very long time. I like that model… build a website, plug in free traffic, make minor adjustments, and let the site make you money

In case you missed why I’m no longer “The King Of Pay Per Clicks,” it’s because it takes too much struggle! I prefer the long-term, very effective traffic generation tactics that I share with friends at: http://x-factortraffic.com/

When something works, why change it. When something isn’t working, it’s insane NOT to change it. Just that simple observation, properly responded to, will make you an online success. Now, it’s time for you to do it!

Author:  Willie Crawford has been teaching others uncomplicated methods of building successful online businesses since 1996. Today, he does most of his teaching inside an exclusive membership site filled with other experts dedicated to uncovering the truth about how to succeed online. Join Willie and dozens of other “old-timers” at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

What Is Seo: Myth Or Reality? Some Thoughts On Search Engine Optimization

By Peter Nisbet in Featured

What is SEO? Have you ever though about what you are trying to achieve with search engine optimization, and what you were doing with your website to achieve it? Have you never wondered if there were better ways to get to where you want to be as a result of SEO?

I have – frequently. And I have looked closely at what I am doing with my website and whether or not it improves it. In fact, it is not your website that your have to optimize, but each individual web page. I have come to the conclusion that as Google, in particular, make changes to their requirements in order that you get a high listing – or listed at all for that matter – the less I have to do to optimize my website.

In fact, when I look closely, what I do in SEO these days is simply common sense, and what I should be doing is to design my site to the advantage of my customers. I have had people write to me proclaiming to be SEO experts and criticizing my bad HTML. ‘Crap’ it was called by one, yet my website with ‘crap’ HTML is higher in the search engine listings that theirs. Perhaps they can’t find the right keywords, but they are the experts.

So HTML is not important. We are told that Meta tags are no longer important. So what is left? Ensuring that each page’s title is the same as the keyword it is written round – well, that is just common sense. That is what I would do anyway, so that my visitors would know what the page was about. I should also put these in H1 tags. Ok, that’s simple to do. Nothing mystical there.

What else? Oh, yes. The keyword density. Surprise, surprise, the ideal is to have your keyword once in the first 100 characters and again in the last paragraph of a page with 400 – 500 words. Any more words than that, then put it in once again. Don’t believe anybody that tells you that you must have 1% - 3% keyword density. That means 5 – 15 keywords in a 500 word page! That’s old hat and a fast way to search engine oblivion. These days are over.

There’s not much left of classical SEO to worry about. The two majors that I have left to consider are internal and external linking strategies. Let’s look at external links first. They are important, and Google have stated so, but for how long? There are rumors that back-links are going to become less important since content is now taking second place to artificially formed links.

At one time, Google looked upon links back to your site from another as a sign that your site was considered to be an authority on the subject. I will use the word ‘site’, but it should really be ‘page’ since the Google term is PageRank, and refers to individual web pages, not complete web sites. And rightly so, because if a website thought that your content would be useful to their readers then they would provide them with a link to your relevant web page.

Now, however, links are artificially generated, sometimes software generated, and are effectively useless since, although they appear on a website, they do so from a so-called ‘links’ page that is full of nothing but masses of links. Now, the very websites that links and good keyword density were meant to shove off the web are now appearing back at the top of the listings. No content but masses of links. Google know this, and will likely take some action against it.

Internal linking is a separate subject, and one on which I specialize. The arrangement of your web pages, and design of your internal linking, are critical to achieving good listings on search engines. Not only your internal linking strategy, but also the design of each individual page. There are certain sites that will not get into the top 10 without radical changes, and I have one or two of them due to the content that I want on each site and the function that I want them to serve. Eventually they will as I increase the number of pages, but for the meantime I am not too bothered. I get plenty of traffic anyway.

So that got me to thinking again. Why should I bother much with SEO if all I need do is to design my website logically and make sure that my internal links provide the best possible service to my visitors, without confusing them with dozens of options on each page?

Why should I bother with all these artificial links if I can get good links and lots of traffic through article marketing? And then I realized that I had no need of the links purely as an external SEO tool; i.e. to provide me with better Google PageRank, because I was getting plenty of traffic anyway through people clicking on my links in my articles, or resource boxes.

So I decided not to! I am now going to run a few campaigns with no SEO at all other than the obvious ways of providing my visitors with a good service when they visit my website. Then I will find the truth about the matter. What is SEO: myth or reality?

Author:  Peter Nisbet is not an SEO expert, but somebody that studies the subject. For more information visit Improved Search Engine Rank where he offers to dissect one of his websites that reached the top 5 in Google and Yahoo two weeks after submission. He writes from his website Article Services that is in the top 5 of all major search engines against 850 million others.

Driving Traffic To A New Website

By Cheryl Miller in Featured

You have just put up your new website and it looks great! It has good optimized content, projects your business image and above all has a killer sales page. Now comes the dilemma, you are just like an oasis in a huge desert (the Internet). How do you let people know you are here and ready to serve them? In short how do you drive traffic to your new website? Here are a few ways:

1. Article distribution
2. Search engines
3. Google Adwords
4. Blogging

Article distribution: Is the easiest and one of the most cost effective ways to drive good targeted traffic to your website. You can manually submit to the article directories, by looking them up on Google and then submitting individually, this is free, but takes time. The next way is to make a one-time purchase of an article submitter; this will save time but is limited. The next way is to use a service. This will cost a little more but will give you a wide range if distribution. Do your research and find one that does lists and article directories. This will give you traffic and valuable back links. It will take a little time but this method of promoting will snowball as more and more of your articles are distributed.

Search engines: These are mostly free to submit to, and will take about 4-12 weeks to get your site indexed, or listed in the search engines. This will eventually bring warm ready to buy visitors that will come automatically as they search your keywords. This promotion must be carefully thought out, as the right keywords and optimization of your website is critical to your success. You will need to monitor this carefully, and add new optimized content to your site every week or so. This can be in the form of informative articles about your products, services, or your industry.

Google Adwords: This is the quickest way to bring traffic to your website. You can have highly targeted visitors coming to your website within hours. However this will take a little work and research. Google has good tutorials and it is wise to read them carefully. Do your keyword research and choose those that are well searched by your particular market. You can check the overture search tool for this, http://goodkeywords .com will help you, as will Google itself. Remember to bid as low as you can and monitor this well. Decide if your cost per click is worth the amount of sales you are making and bid accordingly. It is very important to keep a close watch on this so that it does not spin out of control and cost you money.

Blogging: This is one of the simplest forms of promotion but needs to be done right. Keep your blog focused on your market, your products, and services. Do not stray away onto personal topics. The purpose of your blog is to intrigue your reader, give them a little teaser, and compel them go to your website. Blogging at word press will give you good tools for promotion and allow you to do some fancy stuff. However do place a blog at http://blogger. com first. This is Google’s blog page and will be crawled regularly by their little search engine bots. This means that your blog will be picked up quickly, and when the Google bots come by, they will follow your links and find the content you are pointing to. This in turn will get that content indexed within 48 hours in the Google search engine. Try to blog every 1-3 days. It does not take long just a short interesting paragraph will do.

Try to do all these things on a regular basis and you will see your website grow in popularity and you will also make sales from the good quality traffic you will drive to your website.

Author:  Cheryl Miller is an entrepreneur specializing in niche markets. For more information about magnetic badges and how they can help you promote your business, please visit http://www.badgemags.com Cheryl is also the publisher of the Magnetic Marketer Newsletter http://www.badgemags.com/magnetic_marketer_subscribe.htm