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Podcasting can be time consuming and often frustrating, especially when you are under-prepared and ill-equipped for what you are setting out to achieve. In order to smooth out the bumps in the ride, it’s always a good idea to be as prepared as you possibly can before you sit down to create your podcast. If you’re too eager to get your voice recorded before you’ve laid the groundwork you can often get into a pickle and the show you had in mind just doesn’t come off as planned.

Get into the habit of following the 5 steps below so that there’ll be less time spent pulling your hair out and more time spent getting a great business podcast out into cyberspace.

Step 1 - Email participants and permission requests in advance.

You’ve had a great idea for a show where you’re going to interview some successful business owners and use a clip of one who podcasts himself. If you plan to record your show on Thursday afternoon, don’t expect you can get away with requesting interviews and permissions on Wednesday and still record your show, as planned, the next day.

People are busy and their time is precious. Always be one step ahead of yourself in thinking about who you’d like on your show and ask for permissions way in advance of recording. Always have back-up ideas too, just in case you just can’t get to people in time.

Step 2 - Choose clips and interviewees before writing the scripts/planning your links.

If you intend to take extracts from the interviews to add in between links or even extracts from other people’s shows, it’s a good idea to know which clips you’d like to use before you go ahead and write the script. This means you can then write the script in a way that introduces what participants are going to say or you could comment on what they’ve said at the end of the clip.

Step 3 - Have a script.

Lots of would-be podcasters feel 100% confident that they know what they’re going to say and intend to have a slick, fluff-free delivery. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? It’s a really good idea to have a script of some description so that your points follow a rational and well thought out process and your listeners get maximum value out of your podcast. You don’t have to write a detailed script and then reel it off word for word if you think this will make you sound wooden (most non-professional broadcasters would have difficulty making it sound otherwise), it’s more about knowing what you’re going to say, knowing how your points are going to pan out and, if you have guests, having a few notes about them and the kind of questions you could ask them.

Imagine introducing your guest and their name goes completely out of your head. A set of notes or a script will stop this from happening and make you feel more comfortable, much in the way crib notes help you stay relaxed when giving a presentation.

Step 4 - Prepare yourself.

This may sound like an obvious preparation step but it’s one that many neglect. Imagine getting up in the morning and everyone is out of the house; there’s nobody to talk to. You go into your office or studio and switch your mic on, ready to record your podcast. You clear your throat a little and then start. How do you sound ? A bit like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead? So, what to do instead? Talk out loud or sing to loosen up the vocal chords, do some stretches and breathing to loosen up the body. Have a warm drink (but avoid milk as it clogs up the sinuses) and, last but not least, put a dab of lip balm on your lips (yes, it’s so that they move smoothly over one another when you speak, reducing any unwanted noises).

Step 4 - Prepare your environment.

An essential element in making sure your podcast runs smoothly is to prepare your environment as well as you can. Turn off any phones that might disturb you, ‘dampen’ your room as much as you can (I know of someone who records under the desk with a blanket draped over it), make sure you have everything you need.

If possible, try not to time your recording to coincide your with the time the cats need feeding or your spouse will be home. Take care to ensure you will have as much peace as possible.

Following these 5 steps will go a long way to ensuring you get your voice into the heads of your target audience as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

Author:  For help with creating podcasts and other audio resources go to http://www.AudioPodArtist.com Audio Pod Artist - get your voice into their heads.

It may not always seem like you against the world, when it comes to promoting your website, but on one level, it is simply a fact. So, how can you breathe new life into old pages and get the most wear from your content? The answer, aged pages and fresh links.

Aged pages have passed the most important factor for present-tense search engine optimization, they have earned a degree of trust and trust rank which can provide tremendous leverage in the SERPs.

What is the first sign? Usually a promotion from the gray bar to some page rank. Although page rank is not indicative of any inherent ranking factor alone, it is a popularity factor that indicates when your content been indexed, that it is connected to your main navigation or that it is in fact, getting a boost from links (either internally from your site or externally from other sites).

The next stage is, you start to see modest rankings as certain elements and keywords on that page acquire a relative position (nothing phenomenal, but in the 40-50’s in search engines), this is a tell tale sign that your page in question just needs a bit of a boost and is where the next portion of the equation comes into play.

The Value of Teamwork

Just like the buddy system, by teaming your older aged content with freshly created content (with purpose) your site has the ability to punch holes in the inertia and generate an upward velocity that can pull both pages into the top 10.

Fresh content has the ability to bypass many of the formalities and in a way has VIP access to the top 10 if your content is (a) honed & specific (b) has a great title that plays into the main keywords and (c) is interlinked to other pages with authority in the website (pages that rank for more competitive keywords).

Now just like the duo of the wonder twins, each page armed with what the other lacks and united by a common theme can leave your competition reeling as your pages fly by them like a bad episode of the road runner and coyote as you blaze a trail to the top 10.

The formula:

For seasoned types tools are not necessary, almost like being able to interpret code from the matrix, a good SEO can skim and consolidate key factors with ease. For those who may need a bit of guidance, you can use this free tool from Google Rankings to determine the keyword density.

Then after getting the highest ranking phrases sorted on the old / aged page, now is the time to make some last minute adjustments by weeding out any verbose language and adding another instance of the keyword in question. They say two heads are better than one, whereas in this instance two pages are better than one when a keyword conquest is underway.

Then write a new page of fresh content on the subject matter, drop a link to the old page to give it some link juice, do the same by reciprocating the linking between the old page to the new (using the new pages root keywords in the link). This creates a miniature dynamo between the pages that serves to propel both pages (the page with trust & the fresh page with fresh links) to the top of their respective category. The key here is to have a common denominator between the two with some portion of the title, this will create the double listing you see so often in search engines.

This method works particularly well for blogs that are hosted in a sub folder of the main domain name and the other pages are static and aged. There are advantages to being able to mold the flow of authority in your pages using static pages which are off the grid from internal / dynamically linked pages from a content management system like a blog for example.

The combination is a fantastic duo that you can invoke frequently to catapult content that is deserving of praise into the mainstream. In this instance you can give an entire segment of a site a boost by consolidating the two pages towards a less competitive keyword (like low hanging fruit) or team up to chip away at a more competitive keyword. The main asset to observe is that the first page has been indexed and pulling it’s own weight in the search index. Then it is merely a matter of leverage, some creative content and the use of an inherently aging page with trust.

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

As i mentioned in the last article, Word-of-Mouth Success, you don’t have to just sit around and pray for good word of mouth or great buzz — you can actively work to promote it. Check out my suggestions on generating buzz for you, your product, or your service, in the following sections.

Coining a great new phrase

One way to get people talking is to come up with a new expression associated with your business. People love to be in the know and ahead of the curve, and many people love things just because they’re new — and that includes language. In fact, many great ad campaigns were successful because they (often unwittingly) created a new expression that people started using in everyday life and conversation. Think of the saying “Where’s the beef?” This expression was first used in a Wendy’s commercial, where a gruff little old lady was literally looking for the meat in her hamburger, but the expression came to be used in any situation where the substance of something was missing.

Tip: One way to coin a new phrase is to turn your business’s or product’s name into a verb. For example, think of the example of Google.com, an Internet search engine you’re probably familiar with. People now talk about “I Googled it to find out more about it. . . .” So now, when someone needs to look something up on the Internet, Google.com is probably one of the first search engines to come to mind.

Companies used to hate this appropriation of their names. For example, Kleenex and Xerox fought to prevent their brand names from becoming synonymous with the product itself (in this case, face tissue and photocopying). Now, however, many companies are delighted to have that “problem,” because it means that consumers view their names as the brand readers. If your company or brand name becomes part of the popular lexicon, that’s a great way to advertise your business!

Hiring beautiful people to promote your product

Another way to get people talking is to give them something interesting to talk about. If your product or business isn’t already fabulous, try to attach it to something that is. And if your business is already exciting, associate it with something even more intriguing!

For example, Vespas are little known in the United States, though these little scooters are everywhere in Italy. Vespa helped make inroads (pun intended) into the U.S. market by hiring gorgeous models to ride around Los Angeles, stop in at various cafes and have a coffee while chatting with other customers about their cool mini-motorbikes. The models weren’t famous, but they were beautiful, and they attracted attention to themselves first but then to the product they were promoting, and the whole stunt generated buzz — in a city where that’s tough to do!

Taking advantage of celebrity endorsements

If you can get the attention of a celebrity — either purposely or serendipitously, you should leverage that attention as much as possible.

Okay, you can’t solicit spontaneous celebrity mentions, but you can leverage them if they happen on their own. For example, Sandra Bullock became a one-woman marketing machine for Listerine PocketPaks (those little tab-sized breath strips that were introduced in 2005) when she talked about them nonstop at the Oscars in 2002.

Similarly, Rush Limbaugh created buzz for The Millionaire Next Door, a very interesting book that was little known until Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio show, which has an enormous listening audience. The book has since sold more than 2 million copies, and it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 3 years.

If I were working to promote either of the above products, you can bet your last dollar I would do everything possible to maximize that exposure. For example, I would have copies of the Oscar footage where Sandra Bullock talked about the Listerine PocketPaks, and I’d send that video and quote her in all future marketing for that product. And I’d get in touch with her to find out whether she’d be willing to go further and become a spokeswoman for the brand or whether I could use her endorsement in future ad campaigns. Regarding Mr. Limbaugh, if I had been the publisher of that book, I’d have immediately contacted him to get a written endorsement of the book, which I would then feature on every future copy and edition of the book and all subsequent marketing, advertising, and sales materials. You should look for the same opportunities.

So how do you maximize on celebrity exposure? Here are a few things that I would do:

• Get a copy of what the celebrity said about your product or business, or request a written endorsement.
• Obtain permission from that celebrity (in writing, of course) to use his comments in your future ad campaigns.
• Consider asking that celebrity to be your spokesperson.

Throwing a party

Generating buzz by throwing a big bash is considered a publicity party, and publicity isn’t advertising, of course, but parties can generate word of mouth as well as publicity in newspapers, magazines, and other media. The party itself probably won’t be free (unless you can get friends and fans to provide the space and the food and drink, and send out the invitations, which you quite possibly can!). But even if you do have to incur some costs to throw a party, it can be money very well spent because of the word of mouth it can generate.

You can throw a party to announce a grand opening of your store, to introduce a new product or invention, or to celebrate an anniversary, such as the tenth anniversary of your being in business — or anything else that’s new with your business. Of course, you should invite news people, from all the local newspapers (your major city paper as well as smaller neighborhood papers, and freebies around town), local magazines, and local TV and radio personalities, but you also want to invite everyone you know who you think can talk about your product or business in an interesting, exciting way. If they have a great time at your party, they’re more likely to tell all their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and acquaintances about it — especially if you’ve done something unique at the party or given away something fabulous.

For example, one publicity party I attended for a book about a very successful black entrepreneur generated lots of word of mouth. Why? Because the hostess invited Coretta Scott King — and she came, with one of her sons! That was exciting: She and her late husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King, are legends in the world of civil rights, and many people at the party welcomed this unique opportunity to meet her. Mrs. King’s presence at the party got people talking, and it helped the book become a business bestseller and sell more than 100,000 copies, which is terrific for a business book.

Tune in next time, when we look at how you generate buzz by taking your product or service to the streets, blogs have become one of the key media for word of mouth - find out how to utilize them to best effect, and figuring out where to find your big mouths! (see the last article)

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

If the buzz is to be believed, Sam’s Club is now a search engine optimization company that is targeting the local search market aggressively. The fact is, this isn’t something new; it’s just recently come to the forefront. Sam’s Club has partnered with a company called Innuity to offer a program that is primarily targeted at small businesses looking to get noticed in the local search results.

Many people are screaming that this is a “worthless” service – but I disagree. It’s not worthless, but it also isn’t close to the service a comprehensive search engine optimization company can offer. Let’s take a closer look – with the caveat that I am assuming that the service listed on the Innuity page for LeadConnect (http://leadconnect.innuity.com/) is the same service being offered through Sam’s Club (also called LeadConnect).

What They’re Offering

For $25 a month for Sam’s Club members (and $39.95 a month for non-members), you can sign up for the LeadConnect service from Innuity. You’ll get access to a dashboard that you can update with all of the necessary details about your business – name, address, phone number, types of products you offer, and so on. Once you’ve completed your dashboard, Innuity will submit your site to various local search engines such as Yahoo! Local, YellowPages, Pricegrabber, Google Local, and more. Then, if you update your dashboard at any time, Innuity will update your information at all of those local search sites, just like any search engine optimization company being paid a retainer fee might.

Innuity also claims on its website that this program includes having them submit your website to the major search engines (not to be confused with the local ones). This part is largely window dressing, as any good search engine optimization company knows. The major engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) all find sites on their own, and “submitting” sites won’t do anything to influence rankings.

My Opinion

If you don’t have the time to do it manually and you don’t have the budget to hire a search engine optimization company, paying $25 a month for a company to handle the submission to the local search sites isn’t a terrible deal. The ongoing fee also makes sense if your business changes frequently, as again it will save you time from needing to update your listing on each local search engine each time you make a change.

The big question is what happens when you disengage from the service. Will your results remain on the local sites after you stop paying the monthly fee? Or will they be dropped the day you stop paying? In my opinion, it would be somewhat unethical for them to actively remove you from local search sites if you disengage, and I’m betting that they don’t. I tried to reach them directly to ask but was unsuccessful (well, I called twice and was put on hold for an inordinate time in each instance without ever reaching a human being - you can draw your own conclusions from that).

Why This Is Good for the SEO Industry

Having a large, recognizable chain like Sam’s Club acting as a “search engine optimization company” and offering this type of service has several benefits for the SEO industry. People in the SEO industry often forget that most people do not even know what SEO is, so this initiative is bringing awareness of the industry as a whole, even if it is focused on local search.

Additionally, the Sam’s Club name gives SEO a bit of respectability. Search engine optimization has long been considered some voodoo science or, at best, a fringe discipline – but with this offering by a household name, it’s now something that the average person might want to investigate. This may help the mainstream accept the idea of hiring a search engine optimization company in general.

Why This Could Be Problematic for the SEO Industry

The problem with this offering is that it is rather limited in scope, focused only on local search initiatives for local businesses. Because it is more common for people to use the general search engines over the local search engines, this may not bring in a large volume of new business. Yet at the same time, it is advertised in such a way as to seem to the average person as full-service search engine optimization. Nothing in the description online or in any of the literature I’ve gotten my hands on indicates that Innuity is letting people know that local search is just a part of a larger, more disciplined approach that another search engine optimization company might provide.

As a result, businesses that use LeadConnect rather than a search engine optimization company may find the results are not what they were hoping for. And they then may dismiss SEO in general because they don’t understand that the LeadConnect service is limited. Local search is important, but there are many other ways to target a local market online that this service is not tapping into.

In addition, to see really great results from a local search initiative, your business must appear in the top few results in the local search engine – because those are the ones that will also appear on the main search results page. Any result beyond the top several will be more difficult for the average searcher to come by, whereas a first or second-page result on a main engine, which a full-service search engine optimization company might be able to garner, can be of great benefit to increasing exposure.

Conclusion

What Sam’s Club is offering cannot directly compete with the services provided by a search engine optimization company – and it’s not supposed to. This program is reasonable for a company with a small budget looking to boost its local exposure. Plus, it can bring the SEO concept to the masses. Unfortunately, it could also give people a false sense of what SEO is and what it can do for them.  And it remains to be seen if people really want to buy an SEO package from the same vendor that sells them giant jars of mayo and bulk toilet paper.

Author:  Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld.  Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide.  Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

I’ve heard time and time again that Meta Tags are Dead� While this may ring true when it comes to gaining a good rank in the SERPs there are always two sides to every story. While it is accepted that this tag certainly isn�t going to aid your rankings, it could make a massive difference when it comes to searchers clicking through to your website.

<meta name=”description” content=”your descriptive description here” />

The description meta tag is possibly the most overlooked marketing tool available to all webmasters and online marketers.  Behind the title tag, which is displayed as your listing title in the search engine results page, the description is the first real taste of your website.  Does this snippet best describe your flavour?

While many search engines can and do pull snippets from a variety of sources to describe your website/webpage they often fail to present a compelling reason to visit that page.  These snippets often come from other directories that your website may be listed on, such as the Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) or Yahoo!

In order to get the search engines to ignore the snippets from those directories, you will need to add the following line of code to your webpage, between the <head> and </head> tags:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp,noydir” />

The “noodp” command will stop the engine from returning the snippet from the Open Directory Project and the “noydir” command will stop the engine from returning the Yahoo! snippet.

Now the search engines should ignore these snippets and return the title and description as described on your webpage.  Many overlook the true value of this.  As many of our websites are real estate based, I’ll show you how this tag has been used to our benefit:

Previously:
<meta name=”description” content=”Exceptional Experienced Realtors with the Best Listings in the County” />

Updated:
<meta name=”description” content=”Townhouse For Sale in Suburb, City | USD 11 000 000 | as listed by Our Realtors” />

As you can see this will make a considerable difference to someone who is searching for “townhouse for sale in suburb” or even “house for sale in city.”  This will assure the searcher that this page is indeed what they are looking for.  In this case we’ve included the price but other information can be added such as the number of rooms or bathrooms.  But I think you get the idea here.

Things to remember when writing a description:

1. Keep the tag short, the engines will cut it off if it’s too long;
2. Make sure the description actually matches the page content;
3. Make sure that each page has a unique description;
4. Try to include your keywords in the snippet. (This will increase the likeliness of Google returning your description as the snippet.)

A useful tip to remember is that the description doesn’t have to be a perfectly formatted sentence.  As you can see from the example given I included the pipe break to break the description into different segments of information.  This is where the savvy online marketers can really go to town.  Include information relating to a special deal or any other compelling call to action.  Often you can instill trust and even conclude a sale purely based on the value of that snippet.  This is especially the case when the snippet is on a product page.  By simply scanning the snippet, the visitor knows exactly what is listed, the price as well as any shipping conditions which may arise.

There are times when using a description is not advised.  Such a case would be on large blogs, or any other page that contains long lists of unrelated topics.  In this case it would be better to ignore the description tag.  The reasoning behind this is that when returning the search results, the search engine will return a snippet from somewhere on the page that best relates to the search query.  The drawback for this kind of search result however is that while the description may meet the query it may be difficult for the visitor to locate this snippet on the actual page.  This may lead the visitor to conclude that the page is not relevant to their search.

Looking back on the subject topic, you may be surprised or even confused at my statement “Meta Tags Reach Zombie Mode.”  While the description tag (or any other meta tag for that matter) might be dead when it comes to search engine rankings it can still be of great value when converting those rankings into a visit or sale.  This may very well prove to be the next stage in the life cycle of meta tags – Zombie.

Author: Robert Cerff is a search engine analyst and marketing consultant for Prop Data Internet Solutions. He has ten years experience in e-commerce, online marketing and web development. http://www.propdata.co.za

If you want your business to thrive online, then using search engines for advertising and marketing is mandatory for optimal visibility. The real question is how much can you afford to spend? and how cost-effective is the medium for producing traffic and conversion?

Let Search Engines Work “For You” Not “Against You”

Looking at the function of search engines, they serve to scout the web and retrieve and index relevant pages for visitors based on related semantic or topical queries (a.k.a keywords). Understanding this, we know that words, (your content) plays a major role in this process and is one of the key metrics that determines where your pages rank as a result.

Focus on producing causes and effects follow naturally.

By addressing the root cause (the content) rather than being preoccupied by surface level effects (the rankings), you can groom your pages for success based on the intrinsic topics of your web page content. Relevance is one of the main factors that determines which sites “stand out” and get promoted to the top 10 positions in search engines. Regardless of the industry, one thing is certain among online industry leaders, “great content” is the foundation.

Whether you meet the criteria deliberately (as a result of SEO) or accidentally, at the end of the day the results are algorithmic. Instead of dueling with a competitor one keyword at a time which only encompasses short-term positioning, think about optimizing the entire niche as a whole instead. Then by developing a solid content development strategy, you can systematically research potential keywords or traffic patterns and tailor web page content and links to acquire a dominant position of authority for those phrases.

There is something to be said about patience, planning and strategic execution. Instead of taking the dog chasing their tail approach to SEO and acquisition of keywords and losing focus (and market share) chasing a narrow range of phrases. On the contrary, if you scale all of your efforts to accommodate the rites of passage and focus on quality themed topics, it’s only a matter of time “before search engines cannot help but promote your site” in multiple top 10 results due to the relevancy and stature of your pages (like a mini Wiki, if created properly).

When Keywords Stem Your Content Wins

The premise behind one of the most prominent search engine ranking phenomenon is called (keyword stemming). This occurs when semantic relationships between the keywords spill over and instead of ranking for 10 phrases, now you rank for 20, 30, 40 keywords and so on. This is a boon, since increased traffic an visibility are the result. Not to mention this is naturally occurring phenomenon.

This aspect of the search algorithm dictates that once a website (as a correlation of having themed content) manages to make an impact and garner a degree of traffic & links (which can be hastened by a Stumble, a Digg or a link from an authority site, etc.) it essentially can be fast-tracked into authority status and get the rest of the pages in that site on the map (into the search index with recommendations). What used to take years, can be done in a mere fraction of the time (I have seen instances in as short as 3-4 months) and the site in question virtually ranks for keywords that only appear sparsely on the related content (and higher for a range of keywords that appear more frequently).

Traffic is a metric that equals popularity and this when combined with other known factors for elevating site authority in a niche are ultimately what can escalate your pages from not in the top 1000 search results, to the top 20 or top 10 pages respectively for specific “exact match phrases” as well as their distant “long-tail” cousins.

If cost is a factor and long-term results are important to your search engine positioning strategy, then note that one of the most effective and ethical ways to rank for a competitive or moderately competitive phrases is to incorporate them into your website infrastructure (in a way that search engines understand) through strong internal links and external links from high places for starters.

Once the elements are in place, you must promote that content (so each page can act as it’s own mini-site in essence) and nurture and develop the relationships between those pages into a cohesive knowledge base so that your site is tagged as an authority. For those of you who don’t enjoy composing content, there is a solution, hire a copywriter to do it for you, preferably one who is knowledgeable about keyword density, the appropriate use of tags, relative positioning of grouping keywords and overall delivery (since it has to be encouraging for human visitors to promote conversion).

Why Pay Per Click and Put your Eggs in One basket?

Say for example you were involved in an industry and you opted to use the search engine marketing approach and invest a portion of your sales proceeds every month into PPC (pay per click advertising). Once those clicks are reached, they just dip into your account to refresh the funds and as long as you keep paying, they keep sending traffic your way (at a price per click). So essentially your business model is dependent on that marketing method alone for sustenance. This is definitely not in your best interests for diversifying your link portfolio and only increases your dependence and increases your risk in the advent that something undermines that method such as price.

Yet on the other hand, through performing a function as simple as creating a blog, writing a post or series of posts on topics that relate to your industry (which should roll off the tip of your tongue) this provide an anchor point (for your site) so you can build links back to to elevate those articles and posts organically in search engines.

Renting or Owning? You Decide

You can use the analogy of renting vs. owning from the perspective of real estate. Why invest money in PPC solely, when you could be gaining a return on your short term investments in the long run from utilizing organic optimization coupled with content to systematically increase traffic. The only requirement is patience, quality link development and link building services and promotion if you apply savvy marketing fundamentals known for rousing visitors to act.

Trust is the deciding factor for many to take action (make a phone call, IMS or fill out a contact form), and what better way to gain trust and leads than by housing a formidable range of content that essentially would provide answers to those seeking your expertise in the first place (within your own site).

To say that this is a much stronger selling point than just seeing an advertisement floating around the “hey I am paying for this” Sponsored section, it may as well be a press release. Not to say that using press releases are not part of a larger strategy, but people rarely use a blurb alone to make an informed decision. Once something grabs your attention, the tendency is to dig deeper into the offer by visiting the site, looking at the company profile, other supporting pages, etc. to assure them that they are making an informed decision. This is where your fresh new custom content comes into play.

Which is more Cost-Effective? SEO Copywriting or PPC?

By writing a plethora of topically themed series of articles and posts (then promoting them accordingly, through RSS, social media and building links) you are essentially insuring your future search engine visibility as a result (because search engines love valuable content) in fact they can’t get enough of it. So before you go out and drop a few hundred, a few thousand or few hundred thousand dollars a year on pay per click (you know who you are), consider a tried and true route for building equity in your brand, one page at a time through investing in quality content which can sell on your behalf as a result of the merit and degree of expertise it shares with all who read it.

Once you realize that you can scale and multiply this effect and put your link building, your public relations, your niche authority position and your promotion on the same page, like a symphony if you will. Then you have just graduated from the logic of PPC dependency to using a formulae for developing an authority website which is the forerunner to successful online marketing campaign.

It isn’t about how many top 10 rankings you have, but how many hundreds or thousands you can create as a result of your content development strategy and subsequent relationship with search engines who are insatiably hungry for quality coupled with relevant traffic and promotion to seal the deal (which is your endorsement).

Author: Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Yesterday i started off this series of articles with getting the terminology of Buzz & Word-of-Mouth Marketing Correct, and seeing what the power of Buzz marketing can do for your business. Today we are going to look at some word-of-mouth success stories, and how you can put them to use for your own business. You also need to watch out for negative buzz, and how to avoid it. So without further a due. Let’s get started.

Examining word-of-mouth marketing success stories

You can find plenty of real-world examples showing how successful word-of-mouth promotion can be. You probably have even experienced it as a consumer. In order to launch your own word-of-mouth campaign, you can glean some valuable tips by first looking at the success stories of others.

Emanuel Rosen describes a broad spectrum of these successes in his book The Anatomy of Buzz. Rosen describes how buzz was completely and absolutely responsible for consumer awareness of a software product he was involved with (called Endnote, a program to help academics footnote their sources more easily, to meet different guidelines without having to re-type each source). He was able to track consumer awareness to buzz (something he considers synonymous with word of mouth) because the company hadn’t done any marketing or advertising or publicity when people started to call and ask about it. In fact, the product wasn’t even available when the company received its first order! But the company had done a sneak preview locally, and word spread about it nationally. That first order came in from 3,000 miles away.

Word of mouth has been responsible for the success of other high-tech products as well. But it’s not only the geeks in the world of computer technology who buzz about a product; it happens in the larger world, too. When was the first time you considered getting an MP3 player or a PDA? For most people, these gadgets became enticing only after hearing a friend or coworker rave about his new toy.

How many people make travel and vacation plans based on what people they know recommend or buy cars because of buzz about a particular style? How many times have you gone to the movies based on what your friends are talking about or recommend — often, even when you had no interest in a particular movie until people we know start buzzing about it? For example, remember The Crying Game? The Sixth Sense? And The Blair Witch Project? All of those movies benefited from buzz and word-of-mouth marketing.

Books are another typical product that benefit from great word of mouth. In fact, book publicists typically send a copy of a new book to a targeted list of “big mouths” whom they know will talk up a book that they enjoyed. To book publishers, being a big mouth isn’t a bad thing at all. Those people know a lot of people, they talk to many people regularly, they’re free with their opinions, and people listen to what they say and what they recommend. Big mouths spread the word about a new book, and they can help it get noticed and sell — which is increasingly tough to do given the enormous number of new books that are published every year.

You may be surprised at the success stories of many titles you’re familiar with. I remember how buzz contributed to the success of one such book: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. And Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, writes about another book that caused a sensation: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. Interestingly, word of mouth was responsible for the enormous success of each book, but the buzz on the two books happened in very different ways: One was top-down, and the other was bottom-up.

In the case of Cold Mountain, the buzz was driven from the top-down. The book started to sell as soon as it was published, but it became a bestseller because the publisher wrote personal letters to key booksellers and sent copies to people he thought would be key readers (and therefore had big mouths).

In the case of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the book didn’t sell particularly well at first. It got a few good reviews and sold a modestly successful number of copies in the original hardcover edition. When the book came out in paperback, though, the author noticed that groups of women would come to bookstores to have her sign their copies, and they were buying several copies of the book for their friends. What had happened was that readers had identified with the theme of the book and were reading it in bookclubs and other communities, and those communities started to buzz. That word-of-mouth groundswell caused the book to sell 2.5 million copies.

Beware of negative buzz!

Warning: A product can also be affected adversely by negative buzz. Remember the problem with Intel’s Pentium chip, back in the early 1990s? Someone found a small error in the chip, and news about it spread furiously fast on the Internet — so fast that Intel couldn’t contain it and didn’t remedy it fast enough. That negative buzz cost the company $475 million in write-offs — but it offered a great lesson in what to do and what not to do when someone discovers a weakness in your product or service.

Tip: Keep in mind the old adage that a happy customer may recommend your product or service or store to someone else, but an unhappy customer will definitely complain about you to at least three people. The power and speed of the Internet have increased that nightmare scenario exponentially. Do your best to keep your customers happy — no matter what.

In tomorrows post, i will throwing some ideas around on how to generate buzz for your business or website, hiring the right people to promote your product or service, and taking advantage of celebrity endorsements.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

So you would like your site to rank higher in the search engines. Below are some tips to help you achieve your goal.

1. Before building your website decide on which keywords you want the site to rank high for. Keywords are words or phrases that people type into search engines to find websites. Your keywords need to be related to your product or service so that you get targeted traffic ( There is no point in having “buy flowers online” as a keyword if you sell “houses”) Your keywords should also have as many people searching for the keyword and as fewer websites competing for the high rankings. I would not get overly worried about this. There are several tools out there to help (Just google “Keyword Effectiveness”) but I would concentrate more on the relevance of your keywords.

2. Once you have decided on your keywords you can start to build your site. The look of the site needs to be good to convert visitors into customers but will not help with getting a higher ranking. I would concentrate on getting a high-ranking site and then worry about the look and feel of the site later. (There is no point in having a site that looks wonderful if nobody can find it and it therefore has no visitors). Remember when you start to build your site that what the search engines are looking for is content. The content you have also needs to be rich with your keywords.

3. A very common mistake people make is the links between pages on their own site. The links need to be “spider friendly” i.e. a spider needs to be able to follow them easily. A graphic button with a rollover effect using an active X control might make the site look wonderful but a spider will be able to follow a text link far easier. This is important, as unless the spider can follow the links only your Index page is likely to be included in the search engine.

4. There are certain important elements of your site that can be added after the site is built. Title Tag - H1 Header Tag - Keywords - Meta Description. All of these should include your most important keywords and phrases. Your Meta Description should be a short paragraph about your site including your keywords and phrases in the text. It should also encourage people to take a look at your site.

5. Alt Image Tags - These are tags that you attach to an image so that when the mouse hovers over an image the text is displayed. So any images on your site should have Alt Image Tags that are rich with your keywords and phrases.

6. Links - One of the ways that a search engine decides which pages are to be located at the top of the rankings or be a higher ranking page is that it looks at the links that are pointing towards the site. It is not just the number of links but also the relevancy of the links and the type of links that point to the site. Also the type of site that is linking to your site is important. In other words a text link from a high-ranking site that uses your keywords in the link is a far more important link that a picture link without keywords from a low ranking site. - So you want to have as many relevant links from high-ranking sites as you can. There are several ways to achieve this and the more links that you have the more important the search engines will believe your site to be and therefore the higher your site will be ranked in the search engines. The search engines are working on the presumption that if you have lots of high ranking sites that want to have a link to your site then your site must have some valuable content otherwise they would not want to link to it and potentially send their visitors onto another site.

7. You can also help to keep your site high in the rankings by adding new content to your site and updating the pages as the search engines are looking for current content. Not a site that has been built and just left.

Once you have built your site and got some links to it you will need to tell the search engines about it (This is called submitting your site). You can manually submit your site to the search engines but there are several good programmes you can buy to do this for you. Just do your homework before you decide which one to use. ( I use addwebb but its quite expensive)

If this all seems a lot of hard work to get your site ranked - It is! - But if you use the tips above then you will be on the right track. Remember if it were easy everybody would be doing it!

Author:  The easy way to make money online with this incredible online business opportunity make $5000 per WEEK with no Meetings or Cold Calling prospects, all you have to do is get some traffic to your site. The system does the rest! - For every sale you make $1000.

If you want your business to thrive online, then using search engines for advertising and marketing is mandatory for optimal visibility. The real question is how much can you afford to spend? and how cost-effective is the medium for producing traffic and conversion?

Let Search Engines Work “For You” Not “Against You”

Looking at the function of search engines, they serve to scout the web and retrieve and index relevant pages for visitors based on related semantic or topical queries (a.k.a keywords). Understanding this, we know that words, (your content) plays a major role in this process and is one of the key metrics that determines where your pages rank as a result.

Focus on producing causes and effects follow naturally.

By addressing the root cause (the content) rather than being preoccupied by surface level effects (the rankings), you can groom your pages for success based on the intrinsic topics of your web page content. Relevance is one of the main factors that determines which sites “stand out” and get promoted to the top 10 positions in search engines. Regardless of the industry, one thing is certain among online industry leaders, “great content” is the foundation.

Whether you meet the criteria deliberately (as a result of SEO) or accidentally, at the end of the day the results are algorithmic. Instead of dueling with a competitor one keyword at a time which only encompasses short-term positioning, think about optimizing the entire niche as a whole instead. Then by developing a solid content development strategy, you can systematically research potential keywords or traffic patterns and tailor web page content and links to acquire a dominant position of authority for those phrases.

There is something to be said about patience, planning and strategic execution. Instead of taking the dog chasing their tail approach to SEO and acquisition of keywords and losing focus (and market share) chasing a narrow range of phrases. On the contrary, if you scale all of your efforts to accommodate the rites of passage and focus on quality themed topics, it’s only a matter of time “before search engines cannot help but promote your site” in multiple top 10 results due to the relevancy and stature of your pages (like a mini Wiki, if created properly).

When Keywords Stem Your Content Wins

The premise behind one of the most prominent search engine ranking phenomenon is called (keyword stemming). This occurs when semantic relationships between the keywords spill over and instead of ranking for 10 phrases, now you rank for 20, 30, 40 keywords and so on. This is a boon, since increased traffic an visibility are the result. Not to mention this is naturally occurring phenomenon.

This aspect of the search algorithm dictates that once a website (as a correlation of having themed content) manages to make an impact and garner a degree of traffic & links (which can be hastened by a Stumble, a Digg or a link from an authority site, etc.) it essentially can be fast-tracked into authority status and get the rest of the pages in that site on the map (into the search index with recommendations). What used to take years, can be done in a mere fraction of the time (I have seen instances in as short as 3-4 months) and the site in question virtually ranks for keywords that only appear sparsely on the related content (and higher for a range of keywords that appear more frequently).

Traffic is a metric that equals popularity and this when combined with other known factors for elevating site authority in a niche are ultimately what can escalate your pages from not in the top 1000 search results, to the top 20 or top 10 pages respectively for specific “exact match phrases” as well as their distant “long-tail” cousins.

If cost is a factor and long-term results are important to your search engine positioning strategy, then note that one of the most effective and ethical ways to rank for a competitive or moderately competitive phrases is to incorporate them into your website infrastructure (in a way that search engines understand) through strong internal links and external links from high places for starters.

Once the elements are in place, you must promote that content (so each page can act as it’s own mini-site in essence) and nurture and develop the relationships between those pages into a cohesive knowledge base so that your site is tagged as an authority. For those of you who don’t enjoy composing content, there is a solution, hire a copywriter to do it for you, preferably one who is knowledgeable about keyword density, the appropriate use of tags, relative positioning of grouping keywords and overall delivery (since it has to be encouraging for human visitors to promote conversion).

Why Pay Per Click and Put your Eggs in One basket?

Say for example you were involved in an industry and you opted to use the search engine marketing approach and invest a portion of your sales proceeds every month into PPC (pay per click advertising). Once those clicks are reached, they just dip into your account to refresh the funds and as long as you keep paying, they keep sending traffic your way (at a price per click). So essentially your business model is dependent on that marketing method alone for sustenance. This is definitely not in your best interests for diversifying your link portfolio and only increases your dependence and increases your risk in the advent that something undermines that method such as price.

Yet on the other hand, through performing a function as simple as creating a blog, writing a post or series of posts on topics that relate to your industry (which should roll off the tip of your tongue) this provide an anchor point (for your site) so you can build links back to to elevate those articles and posts organically in search engines.

Renting or Owning? You Decide

You can use the analogy of renting vs. owning from the perspective of real estate. Why invest money in PPC solely, when you could be gaining a return on your short term investments in the long run from utilizing organic optimization coupled with content to systematically increase traffic. The only requirement is patience, quality link development and link building services and promotion if you apply savvy marketing fundamentals known for rousing visitors to act.

Trust is the deciding factor for many to take action (make a phone call, IMS or fill out a contact form), and what better way to gain trust and leads than by housing a formidable range of content that essentially would provide answers to those seeking your expertise in the first place (within your own site).

To say that this is a much stronger selling point than just seeing an advertisement floating around the “hey I am paying for this” Sponsored section, it may as well be a press release. Not to say that using press releases are not part of a larger strategy, but people rarely use a blurb alone to make an informed decision. Once something grabs your attention, the tendency is to dig deeper into the offer by visiting the site, looking at the company profile, other supporting pages, etc. to assure them that they are making an informed decision. This is where your fresh new custom content comes into play.

Which is more Cost-Effective? SEO Copywriting or PPC?

By writing a plethora of topically themed series of articles and posts (then promoting them accordingly, through RSS, social media and building links) you are essentially insuring your future search engine visibility as a result (because search engines love valuable content) in fact they can’t get enough of it. So before you go out and drop a few hundred, a few thousand or few hundred thousand dollars a year on pay per click (you know who you are), consider a tried and true route for building equity in your brand, one page at a time through investing in quality content which can sell on your behalf as a result of the merit and degree of expertise it shares with all who read it.

Once you realize that you can scale and multiply this effect and put your link building, your public relations, your niche authority position and your promotion on the same page, like a symphony if you will. Then you have just graduated from the logic of PPC dependency to using a formulae for developing an authority website which is the forerunner to successful online marketing campaign.

It isn’t about how many top 10 rankings you have, but how many hundreds or thousands you can create as a result of your content development strategy and subsequent relationship with search engines who are insatiably hungry for quality coupled with relevant traffic and promotion to seal the deal (which is your endorsement).

Author:  Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Hello. My name is Mike Small and I have been an SEO consultant for about ten years. In October of 2007 I published an article about “AdSense Farming.” Since writing that article I have received over 100 emails from readers asking for a bit more on the subject. I just got one last night in fact, so I figured I’d add a little more search engine optimization flavor to the concept of making money with AdSense. But before I begin I would like to stress that this is not a method to get rich quick. I make anywhere from $50 to $150 per month/per site that I have built using this information. Of course it only costs about $1 and a half hour (one time) to build each one, so the profits are quite nice. So, here we go…

Over the past couple years I’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of stories about people who got rich from Google AdSense. It seems strange that I’ve never actually met one. It feels almost like an urban legend in the making; “I know a guy who knows a guy who made a killing on AdSense.” Kind of strange, don’t you think?

Do you ever feel like the reality of big profit is close but just beyond your grasp? Yeah; so did I. The good news is; it’s not your fault. We are simply trying to attain the dream that some “friends of friends” have already attained. We’ve bought the so called “wealth building” products that promised us an overnight fortune, but for some reason we never made the big bucks. To be honest this really made me question myself. If they can do it, why can’t I? Then I realized that making money from AdSense is a lot like farming. Some crops (or keywords) yield a higher price than others and the more fields you have planted, the better your chances of making good money.

Of course, in this case your “field” is just a website, which can be had at a cost of next to nothing. So, all-in-all, even small profits are pret