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By Bill Platt in Featured

seo“Creating Resistance in Your Copy” is an idea that is alien to most online marketers. After all, online marketers want to believe that everyone should buy their products and services, because the more people buying what is being sold, the more money the marketer will inevitably earn.

Alien Marketing Concept

This concept is so alien that most Internet marketers who see this article will react as if they are “deer in the headlights”. If you are looking at this article with a blank stare – completely bewildered about my suggestion – then you are likely one of many, who are reacting the same way.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

This week, Google had a little fun with their site by launching a special flying saucer logo (pictured).

The “Unexplained Phenomenon” logo was spotted on Saturday and blogged about by Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz.

The logo itself shows a UFO abucting one of the “o’s” in Google and has a filename of http://www.google.com/logos/go_gle.gif, with a missing “o”. Clicking on the logo on Saturday brought up search results for the query “unexplained phenomenon”.

In addition to the logo, Google also tweeted a message in code that translated into:

“All Your O are belong to us”

What did it all mean? The mystery deepened at this point, with a number of different explanations offered and Google promising to provide clues at a later date (see Danny’s postscript 1).

The decoded message was obviously a reference to “All your base are belong to us” which is a quote from the popular Sega computer game Zero Wing. Some people noted that Sept 5 was the 20th anniversary of the game and assumed this was the reason behind the logo. Others thought it was something to do with Google’s 11th birthday celebrations.

But TechCrunch blogger Robin Wauters thinks he’s figured out the real reason.

Apparently Google is involved in somethng called the O Campaign, which is a non-profit campaign bring the public, academics and corporations together to help fund research into cancer prevention. The Co-Director of the campaign is Joseph James Jung – a philanthropist who regularly collaborates with Google’s Board of Directors.

Which just goes to prove that we don’t know what the real truth is.  But it’s out there – somewhere.

Got your own conspiracy theory about Google’s UFO logo? We’d love to hear it. Leave your comments below.

By admin in Featured

Email was a huge innovation when it became widely available more than 10 years ago. It changed the way people communicated in both business and personal settings. And of course it radically changed the way businesses communicated with customers and prospective customers.

But the platform itself has not changed much in that time. Most email inboxes today look more or less the same way they did 10 years ago. Specifically, they follow a “last in-on top” hierarchy (though users have long had the ability to sort in other ways) and they mix all the classes of email together. At any given moment you can look into your inbox and have a note from a friend next to a CNN news alert next to a free shipping offer from J. Crew. And that doesn’t even take into account the corporate stuff.

And while this design was not necessarily intentional, it had a huge benefit for marketers. A user going to the inbox to check for email from friends and family will stumble across some (hopefully) great offers from marketers.

But now we are starting to see shifts in the way large mailbox providers construct the inbox experience, mostly in response to the loss of eyeball share from social networking sites — where an increasingly large share of person-to-person messaging is occurring. Dubbed “the social inbox” by industry pundits, these innovations focus on including social networking features (like status updates) within the inbox and also make it easier to find and respond to messages from friends and family.

The most recent foray into the trend came from Yahoo, which unveiled changes to its mail interface. The new UI features a “What’s new” tab that is displayed by default when you log in. This tab shows unread email from contacts (meaning any email address in your Yahoo address book) and connections (meaning people you are connected to through Yahoo). And, as part of an earlier update, the inbox also gives users filtering options for viewing email. You can now view “all” email, email just from contacts, or email just from connections.

Meanwhile, the “What’s New” tab includes other social media features like status updates from connections and contacts (people in the address book) from Flicker, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and more. You can read more about these changes — and see screen shots — at the Yahoo mail blog.

What should email marketer do in the wake of these changes? I see three key takeaways:

Change is the new constant: Mailbox UIs are probably going to change more frequently. There will be more innovation as Yahoo continues to iterate, and other large mailbox providers try their version of the social inbox. You are going to have to learn to adapt — quickly.

Engagement has a whole new meaning: Being a “contact” is more important than it used to be at Yahoo. In the past, “add to address book” has largely been a deliverability tactic. It now becomes more important at Yahoo. Perhaps it will become more important at other mailbox providers. What are you going to do to make it worth the subscriber’s while to add you as a contact? What value are you creating?

Friends with benefits: In addition to being in the address book, it may be that certain types of “friending” or “following” or “connecting” will also be important. Again, the same question: What can you offer Yahoo subscribers and others to make it worth their while to friend you or make you a connection? This also creates interesting opportunities to cross social media marketing with email marketing. For example, Yahoo’s “What’s New” tab shows tweets from connections before the messages in the inbox.

George Bilbrey is president of Return Path and founder of the industryĀ’s first deliverability service provider, Assurance Systems, which merged with Return Path in 2003. A recognized expert on the subjects of email reputation and deliverability, he is active in many industry organizations, including the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and the Online Trust Alliance (OTA).

By Paul Marshall in Featured

google pagerankSome website owners are more frustrated about Google optimization than for other search engines. They feel it is harder to perform search engine optimization for Google.

Whether you are making direct sales from your website or sales lead generation (or both), optimizing for Google doesn’t need to be that hard.

In fact, in time you may find it easier to perform SEO for Google than for other search engines.

Remember That Google Is Much Smarter Than The Other Search Engines

Since Google is more intelligent, you have to treat them differently.

By admin in Featured

Posting and adding comments on blogs and forums really needs to be a fundamental part of your Internet marketing approach. Yet again, we can see the influence of networking at work in this field, and similar key points apply – be consistent, be interesting and always avoid the “hard sell”.

Whatever niche you’re in, there are forums galore out there. Here you can meet people who are actively and intently interested in your subject, and have taken the time to become a member of the particular forum because they value the information. Where could you find an audience with better potential? While there are numerous forums for each particular field, there are even more independent blogs, created by people who are also interested in your speciality. You may think of these individuals as rivals in many instances, but that shouldn’t mean that you can’t engage with them for general marketing reasons.

One thing to always remember when commenting on blogs or forums is that you should consider the power of the content that you post as opposed to any potential benefit that you could receive from links. This is very important. Some people undertake a commenting strategy with the sole purpose of getting back links. In some cases this can be technically flawed anyway, but you had better make sure that the content posted next to your individual or corporate name is good!

Blog and forum commenting is highly recommended as part of an overall strategy. As is the case with blog production in general, or with social media network interaction, the material that you publish will be read and its composition judged. You don’t want to be posting irrelevant comments, or comments that are designed just to get your name out there. It’s largely pointless just writing “great post”!

Blog owners will usually look at comments with great interest, and forums are almost always moderated by motivated individuals. In every case, whatever you write will have an impact. If you have something contrary to say, make sure that it’s constructive. It’s not necessarily wrong to be negative, as long as it can be seen as a positive addition to the discussion in view. Being negative just for the sake of it, or to create some kind of viral controversy isn’t really a good overall marketing technique for you.

You should note that some blogs have installed a “no follow” link policy, which means that if you have a link associated to your post, either in the signature or otherwise, the search engines are being told not to score the link. Most experts in this area recommend that you give more attention to the content of your posts and make sure that they are informative and contributory, rather than worrying about a potential back link to your site.

Start a strategy of posting on active blogs and prominent forums connected with your niche. Use your competitor’s sites in a creative way to build your credibility as well. Remember, as is the case with many Internet marketing strategies, a subtle yet consistent approach is key.

Michelle Dale is Chief Executive of Virtual Miss Friday, an adept and highly-proficient Virtual Assistant Service which works closely with enterprising people who really want to succeed in their chosen field. If you’d like to learn more about online business building success strategies that are tailored to your needs, check out the Campaign for FREE Virtual Assistance right away!

By Nelson Tan in Featured

seoSince search engines are the first stop for people on the Internet looking for goods or services, the position your website appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL shows up far down the results list, the chances of the consumer never finding you increase incrementally. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is essential that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked so hard to achieve.

This means you must come up with a strategy to monitor your search engines positions. This strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Think of your search engine positions as your online portfolio. Would you let your stock portfolio be ruled by chance and market fluctuations, or would you keep close tabs on your stocks so you could buy and sell when the time is right? This is the way you must consider your search engines positions.

By Andrew Plimmer in Featured

How Come everybody is nowadays an SEO Expert?

Let’s face it; not a day goes by where we don’t see someone offering their services as a Search Engine Optimization specialist. The strange thing is however, many of the people offering such services on the various forums tend to have no runs on the board themselves. Of course, I’m not saying there aren’t a great deal of reputable internet marketing services out there, but they are becoming increasingly outnumbered by those with little or no experience at all, and it is these people and their companies which are highly unlikely to ever produce satisfactory results for their clients.

Perhaps one should bear in mind that there is no difference between investing your money in internet marketing, and investing your money in a regular market. In both cases you need to measure your results just as you need to target the correct audience. For example, you wouldn’t even consider wasting your money by advertising your product or your service in a newspaper that is completely irrelevant to your target market. Advertising is done for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to bring in a return on your investment, irrespective of whether the advertising is done online or offline.

Why you Should Avoid the Amateurs

Essentially, you need to bear in mind that while any Tom, Dick, and Harry can learn about search engine optimization, it takes several years of dedication, practice, and careful analysis, in order to fully understand the different techniques, and how to apply different techniques to different types of business.

The bottom line is; a SEO campaign is in fact a highly intensive process that starts out with intense keyword research in order to establish which keywords are the most likely to produce maximum results for a website. Once the ideal keywords have been established, it can be incredibly tempting to simply spread them around on your website and hope for the best. However, in most cases you’ll find that the most popular keywords also have the most competition. As such, why bother targeting particular key words, irrespective of how popular they are, if there’s virtually no chance they are going to help in terms of ranking? In fact, you could end up waiting for several months before the major search engines start recognizing your website.

On the other hand, a specialist who is highly skilled in internet marketing will be aware of which relevant keywords and keyword phrases will help to improve a website’s ranking. Likewise, a true professional will also know where the keywords and keyword phrases should be placed on a website in order for them to have the maximum amount of impact, without being penalized for keyword stuffing.

Onsite optimization of keywords is notoriously time consuming if it’s being done properly. But if your goal is to give a website a boost in search engine ranking, then this optimization process needs to be continued off-site as well. Here again, a competent SEO professional will know exactly how to go about implementing a successful link building campaign, including article marketing, submitting articles to directories, taking advantage of several social networking sites, and also social book marking.

Furthermore, because a professional SEO specialist appreciates the importance of being able to get a good return on investment, they will also make use of Analytics tools in order to track conversions and monitor the success of an internet marketing campaign. Bear in mind, that these tools are essential in order to fine tune any good SEO campaign.

Steer Clear of Internet Marketing Fraudsters

Unfortunately, but also as is to be expected, the internet is full of undesirable people who focus entirely on targeting honorable businesses by means of providing them with false promises regarding guaranteed results. These people will more often than not guarantee that they will get your website to the top of the search rankings by using specific keywords. However, in most cases, they simply use keywords which are so rarely used, they show at the top of search rankings simply because they have no competition – nobody uses them. Obviously, if nobody is ever typing that keyword into the search box, then why waste money on it? One of the easiest ways to determine whether or not an internet marketing expert is in fact legitimate, is that the legitimate ones never offer any guarantees with regards to getting you in the top spot on search results. This is because they know that nobody can guarantee such results due to a number of reasons, such as algorithms which change continuously.

How to Avoid the Wrong Internet Marketing Service

First and foremost, you need to ask the right questions:

  1. You need to determine how long the company has been involved with Internet marketing.
  2. You should ask to see testimonials from past clients.
  3. You should search online for their services. In fact, you should attempt to find their website by using keywords and keyword phrases which are relevant to the services they offer. Obviously, if you fail to find them on the first page of Google search results, then your alarm bells should start ringing. For example, if you were considering using the services of Sunshine Coast Internet Marketing Company, you could do a search for Sunshine Coast Internet marketing, internet marketing Sunshine Coast, and etc.

The most important thing of all is that you acknowledge the fact that going with the wrong internet marketing company can end up costing you a considerable amount of money for nothing. On the other hand, if you choose to use the services of a reputable company, you can almost be certain that your website will end up ranking much higher than it did before.

Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast internet marketing, web development and search engine optimisation specialists. For a free SEO report of your website from Suncoast Internet go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

By Julie Ann Ross in Featured

Social media optimization is a way for organizations and individuals to generate publicity through social networking tools like Twitter and LinkedIn, online communities like Facebook, and automated tools like TwitterFeed and Ping.fm. The term “social media optimization” was originally coined by SEO consultant extraordinaire, Rohit Bhargava, the senior vice president of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and author of the Influential Marketing Blog. (Bhargava’s work was so groundbreaking, Jeremiah Owyang, another social media optimization expert, even dovetailed a few of his own rules to the original work.)

Social media optimization is basically a way to promote your blog, website, or even your company’s brand, through social media, without being obnoxious or overtly commercial. Sure, you can blanket sites like Twitter with “Want to lose weight? Download my free report, ’19 Ways to Lose Weight Fast’” repeatedly, or brag about your latest affiliate paycheck, but that’s not going to get you any followers. At least none worth talking to.

Bhargava terms these people”Twankers” (people who use Twitter for one-way broadcasts about their own greatness) and “Twidiots” (people who only tweet insignificant things like their latest press release or what they had for breakfast). If you’re just having one-way conversations and telling people about the minor, mundane details of your company, you’re not providing any value, and your SMO efforts will be wasted.

Whether you are an SEO consultant or you are new to social media marketing, there are a few rules you need to follow in order to be effective. Bhargava’s five rules of social media optimization included important things like increasing your linkability, helping your content travel, and encouraging the mash up. To that, we would add our own four rules.

  • Focus on a few networks, not many. Many social media optimization beginners make the mistake of joining as many social networks as they can, and getting a few followers in each. The problem is you’re getting 10 or 20 followers in 10 networks, rather than 400 or 500 in 2 networks. If you take this narrow route, chances are you will attract the same followers in each one.
  • Find people in allied fields, not just your own, to improve your social media optimization. Think referrals, not customers. If you’re in the financial services industry, don’t just focus on finding people who need to invest. Connect with people who can refer those same people to you, like lawyers, real estate agents, bankers, and anyone else who has clients who will need the financial services you offer.
  • Provide real value to others. Telling people how they can earn money while they sleep, or “Lose Weight Fast!!!” is not valuable. Steering people to a site that features recipes for people who are trying a low-carb diet, or writing a blog post about the top three fat-burning foods is valuable social media optimization. Refer people to helpful websites, even if they’re not your own. And don’t be nervous about asking questions of your own. It makes you look like a real person, and not just a know-it-all.
  • Commit to a social media optimization program for the long haul. It’s not enough to just use it a few times and be done with it. This is an ongoing process. You wouldn’t take the time to cultivate a new friend and then never hang out with them, would you? Some of these contacts will become your friends online. Ignore them, and you’ll waste all the effort you put into your social media optimization and developing those relationships. Remember, social media marketing is actually about building real relationships, not just broadcasting one-way information. That’s what a TV is for.

By starting a social media optimization program, you’ll accomplish two things: 1) You’ll become a thought leader in your chosen field, and 2) your expertise will lead to more and bigger clients or job opportunities.

Rostin Reagor Smith, RRS, is on the cutting edge. With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, they have combinined Social Media Optimization with more traditional SEO and SEM methods. RRS is a consulting firm specializing in enhancing clients’ online presence and managing their public relations online. SEO, SEM and Online Reputation Management are combined in this successful formula. – Julie Ann Ross

By admin in Featured

In this article I wanted to share with you what I have found from consulting with dozens of small business owners on Google Adwords.

During the last 6 years, we have consulted with small businesses routinely who have set up an Adwords campaign and have just about given up on this medium. Usually the complaints include things like:

  • I receive lots of clicks (which costs tons of cash), with very little to show for it.
  • I really have no clue what I am doing on Adwords – it is too complicated.
  • I do not understand how to set up Analytics or conversion
  • I have a good set of keywords in my campaigns, but I seem to get too many clicks, for no leads.
  • I have set everything up, but I don’t see my ads anywhere.

7 Biggest Google Adwords Mistakes

Once we get to take a look at the settings in these campaigns it is usually pretty obvious why the company is not achieving the results it expected:

  1. The website is not designed to be compelling, nor capture leads or sales.
  2. The keywords are too broad in nature – e.g. ‘carpet’ and ‘cleaning’, instead of ‘carpet cleaning Houston’
  3. The keywords are lumped into single adgroups with no attempt at putting them into themed groups: e.g. ‘carpet cleaning’, ‘tile cleaning’, ‘upholstery cleaning’ are all in a single adgroup.
  4. Conversions are not set up, so there is no method to track leads and what keyword, ad etc. generated the lead.
  5. Ads do not match the keywords, or do not point to the relevant page in the website.
  6. Ads are poorly constructed and do not entice visitors.
  7. Bid costs are too low relative to daily budgets or vice versa.

It is perfectly possible to stick a bunch of seemingly relevant keywords into a campaign, slap together an ad and let it rip!!!

However, doing this will almost certainly not bring you the results you would like.

Does Google Want You to Fail?

Of course the answer is no, but you have to understand that Google has built its dominant market share by realizing that people using a search engine want ‘relevance‘ – they want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. This means that if an advertiser is bidding on the keyword “dogs”, but they sell “custom dog collars”, they will get a ton of searches for anything containing the word “dog”, 99.9% of which will not be relevant for “custom dog collars”, so the click through rate (CTR) will be very low for this advertiser. (CTR is the percentage of clicks relative to the number of times that an ad was shown in a search).

Google will penalize this advertiser by showing their ads lower down the page (or more likely on page 24!!!) because they are not relevant to most people searching for dog related keywords. This gives a better experience to the search engine user, which is the goal.

How to construct a well put-together Adwords campaign is not rocket-science, but it does take a degree of understanding of the mechanics of the system to ensure the type of results that are desired.

Matthew Whitworth – MW Strategic Marketing offers a FREE Google Adwords Healthcheck, where we take a look at your settings, keywords, ads and even your website/landing page. We then schedule a 1 hour phone call to go over the specific changes we would recommend you make to your campaigns. You can find out more about this service here: Google Adwords Manager

By Steve Shaw in Featured

There is a right way and a wrong way to use keywords in your submissions: Use them correctly, and you can help your site rank highly for your keyword terms. Use them incorrectly, and you could hurt your cause.

But don’t be afraid–You do not have to have to be a SEO guru to use keywords successfully in your articles.

Here are 10 essential tips for using keywords correctly in your article submissions:

#1 Variety is key–don’t use the same keyword all the time.

#2 Develop a list of 20 or more keyword phrases to work from.

#3 Don’t go overboard on the keywords–a good percentage to stick to is 3%, but keep in mind that individual publishers will have their own limits.

#4 You can use semantically related versions of your keywords–it does not have to be the exact keyword repeated over and over again. For example: race cars, racing cars, race car gear, how to race a car, etc.

#5 Update your keyword list regularly. Every few months conduct your keyword research again, and be sure that your keywords are still current.

#6 Long tail keywords are great as article topics.

Long tail keywords are 3-5 words long and are very specific, while your core keywords are 1-2 words long and are more general. Long tail keywords tend to be less competitive, so it can be easier to rank highly for them. Research your best long tail keywords and try to write articles around those very specific topics.

For example, if your long tail phrase is ‘long distance running shoes’, you could write an article about how to shop for long distance running shoes. Do this for all of your long tail keywords to create blanket coverage for all aspects of your niche.

#7 Use keywords in your title, when appropriate.

Your title needs to describe what your article is about, so you can only use your keywords in your title when the article is also about the keywords. For example, if your keywords were “chocolate recipes”, and your article was a review of various baking pans, it would not be appropriate to include those keywords in your title, because that’s not what the article is about. In order to include the keywords “chocolate recipes” in your title, your article would need to be about chocolate recipes.

#8 Your resource box is a prime spot for using your keywords, but you need to be careful. In an HTML resource box do not hyperlink the same keywords every time–switch things up!

#9 If you will simply write on the topic of your website, then your keywords will likely naturally pop up in the article.

#10 Don’t forget about your article summary (aka, the short description). Article summaries will often appear in search engine results, so that’s a great spot to use your keywords.

A keyword rich article does not have to sound awkward–if you use your keywords correctly, no one will be able to tell that you’re targeting certain keywords. They’ll just think that you’ve written a helpful article.

Using keywords in your articles is not hard, but you do have to be careful to focus on quality and readability, and exercise some restraint. If you follow these 10 tips, you will create keyword rich articles that are a pleasure to read and are easy to write.

Steve Shaw is an article marketing expert, and founder of the popular article distribution service, http://www.submityourarticle.com, used by thousands of business owners. Discover how to use the power of article marketing to reach tens of thousands of potential prospects for your website – download a powerful free report on successful article marketing from http://www.submityourarticle.com/report

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