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Linking Strategies: “To Buy or not to Buy, That is the Question”

By Merle in Featured

Buying text links for your website is a highly controversial subject online. Like it or not, approve of the practice or disapprove, it does exist and there are many website owners who are doing it. I’m not going to debate the issue one way or the other; just shed some light on what some consider a “gray subject.”

So why would you want or need to buy a text link on another website? It all goes back to “link popularity.” Search engines look at how many other sites are linking to yours when deciding on your ranking. Granted, this is just one criterion, but nevertheless an important one to pay attention to.

If you don’t know how many other sites are linking to yours, go to any search engine and type this in: link:http://www.yourdomain.com … you should get a pretty good idea of your “popularity.” Keep in mind that Google never shows all sites linking to yours, so what you see in the results will not be an accurate presentation of those linking to you. Why they do this is not clear (it’s one of those “Google Secrets”), but a possible explanation is that it’s one of the methods they use to keep their ranking algorithms private.

When considering a link purchase, only buy from sites that are related to your theme and use the Google Toolbar to check their page rank. You can download it here:
http://toolbar.google.com/

A page rank of 4 or above is pretty good but a 7 or 8 is excellent. Never buy a link based on page rank alone. If the site doesn’t relate to your site’s content, don’t do it.

Here are some things to keep in mind before making any purchases:

There are two types of links: one-way and reciprocal. A reciprocal link is when two sites agree to link to each other, a one-way link is just one site linking to another without linking back. Purchasing a text link is an example of a one-way link. One-way links are counted higher by most search engines and therefore are more valuable then reciprocal.

When supplying your text link to other sites, make sure to include your keywords in your anchor text. The anchor text is the part of the link that is clickable. Use a variety of key phrases so as not to raise any red flags with the search engines.

You also want to be consistent with your url. Use the “www.” part in all incoming links, as links to “yourdomain.com” and “www.yourdomain.com” could be treated as two different websites by the search engines.

Another tip when buying links is to do it slowly. Don’t buy too many at one time. You want it to look natural to the search engines. Hundreds of sites deciding to link to yours in a week is not “natural” and may catch unwanted attention from the powers that be.

Stay away from link farms when choosing link partners. Just associating with “bad sites” can be enough to get you banned by the search engines. You’ll also want to make sure you’re getting links from different IP addresses. Search engines will give the links more weight if they don’t all come from the same IP.

So now that you have the basics, where do you buy the text links? I thought you’d never ask.

1) LinkHaul: http://www.LinkHaul.com

Purchase static links to PR 4, 5,6, 7 or 8 websites. Pricing starts at 3.00 per month.

2) Text Link Brokers: http://TextLinkBrokers.com

Offering a variety of link building programs to increase your link popularity.

3) LinkAdage: http://www.LinkAdage.com

Buy or sell text links within an auction format or buy direct thru a broker.

4) Text-Link-Ads: http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com

Offering $100.00 in free text link ads when you spend $125.00. So you only have to spend an initial investment of $25.00

5) BackLinks: http://www.BackLinks.com

A service that allows webmasters to trade, sell or buy text links.

When you buy a link, it’s usually billed on a monthly basis and you’ll always pay more for a site with a higher page rank, and also for having them put your link on their main page compared to a page deeper down within the site. Once you purchase a link let it run for a few months at a time, search engines will need it in order to find and spider them.

Right or wrong, purchasing links is one way to improve your link popularity quickly and move your site up the ranks in the search engines. Remember, there are many ways to increase your website traffic, and buying text links is just another means to an end.

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Merle – “Blah…Blah…Blog..Rantings by Merle”- The Blog that’s loaded with online marketing techniques and strategies that will help you increase your website traffic and make more money online. Tips and tricks for online entrepreneurs, and marketers to grow your net biz. Visit today – http://mcpromotions.blogspot.com/

Online Branding – the Basics

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

online marketing, internet marketing, branding, online branding, brand, brand name, defining your market, defining your brand, online resources, online business, The term “brand” has been around for many years and can be used to refer to a company name, a product name, an advertising campaign or a logo. Branding is used to create an emotional attachment to a product or company. It can also create a sense of perceived higher quality or value.

In internet marketing, branding is more than logos and theme songs. Branding lets customers know who you are, what you do and how you do it. It’s your promise of value. Effective branding will increase your potential customer base and more potential customers will always equal more sales opportunities.

In recent years, consumers have been spending more time and money on the internet. In addition to communicating with friends, they’re comparison shopping and making more and more purchases online. It’s imperative for a business to use the internet to make an impact.

Here are a few ways to define your online identity:

Describe Your Brand First – Start With What You Do

When they land on your website, your visitors should know immediately what your company does and how it can help them. Don’t be ambiguous and don’t try to be too cute. Build a unique shopping experience that a visitor will remember. With regard to graphics on your website, remember that images can convey more than words, and good ones can play a major part in online branding.

Find Your Target Market

The focus of a marketing campaign is people. Your goal is to reach a subset of the population who might be interested in your particular product – your target market.

The more you know about your target market, the more precisely you can develop a marketing strategy. Your branding efforts should focus on that target market. Your message should be clear and should appeal to your visitor and make them realize the benefits of visiting your website, your store and ultimately buying your products or services.

Humanize Your Website

What is your company’s personality? The online world can be a cold and daunting place. Your branding efforts can be much more effective when you add a human element to your website. Brands are like people in that a strong one has personality, expresses opinions and elicits feelings. Your website and brand could and should do the same thing.

If you are the sole owner, put your name and photo on your site to take away the mystery and distrust of a cold, impersonal website. Take a good look at your site. Does your design scheme complement your identity? You should be working toward your site having its own identity, unique language and clear personality.

Take a look at some of the sites you enjoy visiting and see what makes them special and satisfying to you. Branding is not about making your site more corporate – it’s about making it personal so that visitors want to come back.

Be Consistent

For effective branding on the web, you should be consistent in terms of your approach, your message and your language throughout your visitors’ experience. Any gateway to your customers – website, blog, newsletter, emails – should have your consistent, unique personality.

Content, Content, Content

Just as location, location, location is crucial in real estate, having great content on your site is a major factor in getting customers to return. Useful, brand-related information coupled with your unique voice will help you gain fans and ultimately loyal customers.

With good content, your website becomes “sticky”, that is, it’s able to keep visitors on the site browsing and reading longer. When the content is what people are looking for, they are not only more likely to stay longer, they’ll bookmark your site and maybe recommend it to others. They will learn that you are a reputable source of information and eventually go to your site for purchases.

Your branding goal should be to provide rich information on your site to build an expert reputation that will be recognized by both customers and search engines.

Have an Online Presence Outside of Your Site

Post regularly to online forums where people who might be interested in your brand are gathering. Use your expertise in your field to offer intelligent and useful information and include a link to your website in your signature.

With good online content, you can satisfy people’s craving for suitable information and increase your linking strategy at the same time. For example, if you have a site that sells art and painting supplies, you could write a history article on Rembrandt to be published online. This page for history or art buffs will now link potential customers from your target market to your site, and will become part of your linking strategy.

On your website, offer a free newsletter or rss feed. This will allow you to build a database of potential customers who have gone out of their way to express interest in your brand. Your newsletter will then allow you to deliver your message to an interested audience with a controlled frequency that will further build your brand.

Customers are becoming savvy and more discriminating when it comes to online interactions, and retailers need to provide a consistent, positive marketing experience. Great websites put substance before flash and that’s what branding is all about – your promise of value.

About The Author:

Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

Six Sure-Fire Ways to Make Video Work For Your Business to Generate Buzz, Traffic and Sales

By Mark Spivey in Featured

Video streamed on the web is a powerful medium to reach your online customers, and contrary to popular belief it is now no longer beyond the budget of small businesses.

Below are six ways to use video to build your business. Many of them do not require large funds to implement – just a little time and creativity.

Turing 2.0: I Am Not A Robot

By Kaila Colbin in Featured

Last week, Saya the robot made her teaching debut in Tokyo. She is “multilingual, can organise set tasks for pupils, call the roll and get angry when the kids misbehave.”

I’m sure Saya would fail it, but it seems pretty clear that the Turing test is either obsolete or near enough to it not to matter. These days, nobody cares whether a machine can pass for a human. Instead, Turing’s been superseded by the far more pressing Turing 2.0: can a human pass for a human?

Consider the last time you sent an email to someone you didn’t know. How did you introduce yourself? What did you say to prove that you were you — and, therefore, worth listening to? Consider the last time you met someone new online — maybe someone who sold you that used exercycle on Craigslist. How could you tell it was a person? More important, how could you tell it was a trustworthy person?

As we shift more and more of our activity online, this new Turing becomes more and more important. Turing 2.0 is at the heart of modern reputation management, at the heart of our ability to make online connections that develop into genuine relationships. In this era of data transparency, the data has to stack up in our favor.

Our efforts to prove that we are real people are both helped and hampered by technology. Our Digg reputations and eBay reputations help us, assuming we’ve been good little Diggers and eBayers. Mail merges hurt us, not because mass personalization is inherently evil, but because they raise the standard of proof.

Our online activities — our blogs, our Facebook profiles, our Twitterfeeds — all support our claim that we are real, that we are alive, that we matter. Sometimes I think that’s the source of our collective social media addiction (yes, my own as well): we are all screaming to prove we exist, and the louder we all scream, the louder we all have to scream in order to be heard.

Google’s new profiles play right into our fears about Turing 2.0. What if that person to whom I’m selling my exercycle Googles me, and nothing comes up? She’ll think I’m a scammer! She’ll think “Kaila Colbin” is just a made-up name! But I’m real… I’m real!

So we cast aside our privacy concerns and upload yet another profile pic and fill in yet another online form field with our blog’s URL. We do this because we hope that this time, our efforts will be enough to help us rise up out of the crowd, to prove that unlike the indistinguishable morass of spammy pseudo-identities, we are unique.

We want to be legitimate in the eyes of other people. But being legitimate in the eyes of the Internet offers benefits as well: link juice benefits. AdSense benefits. Ranking benefits.

Once again, just as they created machine-generated blogs and phony Facebook accounts and fake Twitterers, the people who inevitably seek to game the system rise up, generating algorithms to produce human-like Google profiles, looking to cash in on the benefits bestowed by the Internet on those it believes to be human.

We can all be spoofed and aliased. No one is immune. All we can do is try to stay one step ahead of the machines.

Writing program terminated.

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Kaila Colbin blogs for The Web Genome Project, a movement to create a virtual topography of the World Wide Web.
MediaPost

5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line.

If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don’t. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works.

To Sell Information Products Online, You Must Give Information Away

By Thomas Christopher in Featured

If you want to sell “info products” online and make a significant income, you need to give away free information. Don’t misunderstand “give away”. All human interactions are built on exchanges. “To give away information” means to exchange it for something other than money. You exchange the information for a relationship that allows you to keep in touch with your prospects and customers. It’s a common relationship marketing strategy.

The way it works is this: a large income comes from repeat sales. Repeat sales come from relationships. On the web, relationships come from email lists and positive interactions with the people on the lists. Email lists and positive interactions come from giving away information.

You need to have a relationship to somebody to sell to him or her. You have to establish a relationship of trust. Once you have enticed somebody to your web site, you can establish at least a brief relationship on your “pitch page” by telling your story, being honest about some shortcomings of your product, and including many endorsements from satisfied customers.

But consider: you gone through all the trouble to entice people to your page, and you gone through a lot of effort to make them feel confident in you. Suppose they don’t buy the product immediately, which is typically the case. You have expended all that effort for nothing. Remember, you need half a dozen or a dozen interactions with most people before they are willing to buy. And even suppose they buy your product. If they just go away, you have lost all the good work you put into establishing a relationship in the first place. You don’t have a chance to interest them in related products.

It’s always easiest to sell to people you’ve sold to before and who liked what they bought from you. It’s easy to sell to people who know you and are comfortable with you, even if they haven’t purchased anything yet.

Although you can make some money from selling single items to people, it is clearly advantageous to build relationships so people will keep coming back to buy more.

Since you must be in touch with your customers and prospective customers repeatedly, you need an email list.

You want to get prospective customers’ email addresses, but what possible reason do they have for giving them to you? To get prospective customers on your email list, you have to give them something that they want. You can entice them to your squeeze page — the page on which you ask for their email — by offering them information that would help them solve a problem or fulfill a desire. They give you their first name and email, and you email them the information that you promised.

You must keep emailing them to maintain the relationship, but you can’t email them hard core sales pitches. A sales pitch is not a relationship. Indeed, spam emails are sales pitches outside of relationships.

So if you must contact them repeatedly, what do you send them? The only way you’re going to sell any products is if those products solve problems or fulfill desires. The only reason they got on your mailing list in the first place is that you offered them something to help them with the problem or desire. That’s the only thing you know that they’re interested in. So obviously you should send them more suggestions on how to solve the problems and fulfill their desires. To be a commercial success, you must balance giving them useful information against not giving them all the benefits that they will gain from your products.

So both to get an email list and to maintain positive interactions with the people on the list, you must give away information. Giving away information leads to relationships, relationships lead to repeat sales, and repeat sales lead to significant income online.

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A growing collection of ecourses and ebooks showing speakers, writers, and self-employed professionals how to “monetize” the web is available at the Online Money-making Opportunity web site. The collection is being gathered, and partially written, by Dr. Christopher, a Colorado public speaker and seminar leader.

My 7 Secrets Will Teach You How To Sell On eBay For Maximum Profits

By Amanda OBrien in Featured

If you are looking to make money online to either supplement your current income or as a full time income, learning how to sell on eBay UK is by far the best place to start. This way, one of the hardest parts of running a successful online business has already been done for you. This is marketing. Driving potential customers to your products and making sales. Once you list your products ready to sell on eBay, you have the potential to attract millions of buyers from all over the world, not just from the UK. Worldwide, people spend more time on eBay than any other website!

Where else can you start an online business in just a few hours that allows you to attract immediate traffic to your products? Learn how to sell on eBay and you will find that this is a fantastic opportunity to make as much or as little money as you want. Whoever you are, you can learn how to sell on eBay and make money.

Here are 7 ‘How To Sell On eBay’ tips to help you:

How To Sell On eBay 1:

Your eBay listings must have a relevant title. This is extremely important when learning how to sell on eBay because if your title is not relevant and does not contain the right keywords relating to your product, then eBay buyers searching will not be able to find it. Include all the related keywords you can think of and don’t use up your limited title space with words that are not required.

How To Sell On eBay 2:

Write a detailed description. Make sure that your eBay listing includes all the important details about your product. This might include the size, colour, brand, model number, whether new or used, any special features etc. Highlight the good things about the product but don’t forget to mention if there are any flaws or faults with the item too, but make these less obvious. Learning how to sell on eBay includes being honest in your eBay listing description.

How To Sell On eBay 3:

Spell-check your listing. eBay buyers are put off by listings littered with spelling errors and it looks very unprofessional. When you are learning how to sell on eBay, thoroughly check before you submit your eBay listing and make sure that important points are bold.

How To Sell On eBay 4:

Use good quality photographs. People like to see before they buy. Use a good digital camera and take 2 or 3 photographs from different angles to use as your gallery picture and within your eBay listing. This will attract more bidders and buyers and will help you get more experience as you learn how to sell on eBay.

How To Sell On eBay 5:

Always answer questions from potential bidders. You will receive questions and queries from potential buyers. And you must remember that this is exactly what they are – POTENTIAL BUYERS. Always try and answer any questions that come through eBay messages, within 24 hours, sooner if you can, even if you feel that it’s a silly question. If you frequently receive the same question then post it to your eBay listing so that everyone can see it.

How To Sell On eBay 6:

Be polite and friendly. eBay buyers like friendliness and professionalism from eBay sellers. So, it’s best to be polite and enthusiastic when corresponding, but not too casual. Don’t use ‘text speak’ in your emails as this is very unprofessional, but show a good sense of humour, honesty and politeness.

How To Sell On eBay 7:

Dispatch goods promptly. eBay buyers do not like to be kept waiting! So, make it your business to dispatch all orders promptly, preferably within a couple of days maximum. This is good service and will ensure that you get positive feedback whilst you are still learning how to sell on eBay!

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Amanda O’Brien – Subscribe to Amanda’s Blog at any time for regularly updated eBay tips, techniques and secrets.

The real value of social media

By Scott Herbert in Featured

In his article for SitePro News Lauren Hobson, claimed that twitter “can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines.” Sadly this is not the case, there are two problems with this that Lauren has missed, one is unique to twitter, the other exists for all social media outlets.

Firstly the problem specific to Twitter is that all twitter messages are limited to 160 characters in length. The address of Lauren’s article (http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/05/13/using-social-media-to-boost-search-engine-results/ ) is its self 88 characters long, leaving just 72 characters for any other message. This has lead most twitter users to use URL shortening services such as TinyURL.com and bit.ly to reduce URL’s they post to a much more compact size, for example Lauren’s article reduces with bit.ly to just 19 characters ( http://bit.ly/EO8Yv ) a lot when your pitch has to be less than 160.

This not only hides your URL, all traffic that flows from such links gets there via a third party (tinyurl.com, bit.ly etc.) so any search engine ranking for inbound links will not head to your site but to that of the third party. Worse still, some of these shortening services add a bar to the top of your browser window, keeping the visitor not on your site but that of the shortening service.

This however just affects twitter; the more fundamental problem with Lauren’s article affects all social media sites. Even if you post the full address of your site to Twitter, Facebook, myspace, linkedin or any number of the other social network sites, Google won’t rank them any way. All social media sites, in an effort to prevent spam, add rel=”nofollow” to the outbound links they don’t control. When search engines come across such links they don’t follow them, meaning they don’t rank the sites any higher than if the link hadn’t been there in the first place.

Lauren claims that “The Proof is in the Rankings” because a survey conducted by Website Magazine shows that the twitter pages for it and its sister publications rank highly in Google. While it is true that twitter screen names do rank highly on Google searches, this has nothing to do with out-bound links, in fact if it did you would expect tinyURL.com to rank highly, since the Chicago Tribune’s twitter page makes heavy use of the address shortening service.

The Chicago Tribune’s twitter page is ranked so highly partly because of twitters SEO (for example it’s use of the twitter users name in the title tag) and partly, and for our understanding of how social media can help us, the fact that 11,380 twitter users follow the Chicago Tribune’s twitter timeline. You see the twitter profile (user timeline) page has a link to up to 36 people that person is following,  and throes links, being internal twitter links, do not have rel=”nofollow” on them. Of course the fact every other link on that page does have a nofollow tag connected to it prevents popular users from increasing the inbound links.
So is social media useless to website owners?

No, far from it, it may not improve your search engine ranking directly, but social media can be highly useful, while the Chicago Tribune’s twitter timeline may not improve its search engine ranking, it does have 11,000 followers, and that begs the question why are 11,000 following the Chicago Tribune’s twitter timeline?

The answer to that are content, and an effective social media strategy. The Chicago Tribune’s followers have actively chosen to receive updates; these aren’t 11,000 passive names on an e-mail list. They receive between about 3 and 6 re-tweets, their followers passing re-posting the Chicago tribune content to others. Because, the Chicago tribune produces content others want to be associated with. And that’s how social media can help direct traffic to your site which then becomes sales. Effectively produce great content build up a loyal following, and your followers will promote your content.

Lastly Lauren is right when she says “Social media is here to stay” and that it’s a great opportunity for businesses of all sizes if used effectively, however sadly inbound links are not one of throes ways.

Scott Herbert, has been involved in internet based products and services for over 10 years, he currently runs our-party.org.uk, a small design and development agency based in England. Follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/Scott_Herbert

Multiply Your Marketing Like a Virus

By Michel Fortin in Featured

In today’s Internet, conversations are cropping up all over the place. People are talking. They are talking about products. They are talking about businesses. And they are certainly talking about their experiences.

When you look at how blogs, forums and social networking sites have exploded in the last few years, you can see how powerful word-of-mouth is. But the question is, is it all really important? Can it really help your business?

Yes.

And I’m not talking about traffic. And you don’t need to be controversial, either. I’m talking creating systems to leverage, manage and profit from the “buzz.”

SEO for Local Businesses

By SEO Sapien in Featured

Want your local business to thrive online? There is an abundance of information about how to target local search terms and become an online leader in your local area and niche but it’s easy to experience information overload with all the advice that’s available out there. Here are the 5 essential components of local search that will help you rank and dominate in your local market.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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