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DIY SEO with a Foolproof Twist

By Scott Jason in Featured

As the founder of an independent SEO firm I am asked almost daily “What is the easiest way to optimize a web site?” It is harder to answer than you might think. It depends on who is asking and what their knowledge or experience level is. But last week I read an article written by the person who taught me search engine optimization ten years ago, and I now have an answer… Learn the secret recipe, then use it.

There is no magic bullet that works on every web page like so many SEO ‘miracle’ books and programs would have us believe. Each page has its own unique ‘secret recipe’ that has to be discovered and then applied because every single page it is trying to outrank, is unique. If this seems confusing, just remember my new favorite quote that I borrowed from that author’s website: “Think about it. Anyone could bake Mrs. Fields famous cookies – possibly better than Mrs. Fields herself – with the secret recipe. And that’s all SEO is; knowing the secret recipe for any given web page.”

And it really is that simple. We will look at how to discover the secret recipe in a moment, but first there is one crucial thing to understand about search engine optimization before you go any further:

The Golden Secrets to Ebooks With Resell Rights

By Simon Lovell in Featured

One of the biggest “get rich” systems involves buying and redistributing (selling) PLR eBooks. This can be something that is a good supplement to what you are already doing, but can you make your first million off this prospect? Let’s have a look at some of the methods and applications from PLR eBooks and let you decide.

There are basically two types of PLR eBooks; complete books and self-made ones. With complete books these are PLR eBooks that have already been written in their entirety and are ready (in varying degrees) for sale. All the owner has to do is slap their name on the book and change a few links and they can call mom and tell her they are a published author (sort of). Self-made eBooks are eBooks made either “by hand” or through the use of some specialized software. They take multiple PLR articles and combine them into an eBook. If you have the rights to do so, you can alter these articles and make them flow a bit better. No software yet can take boring or very general material and spruce it up better than a human writer. Of course there is a third method for obtaining an eBook on a particular; hire a ghostwriter. The average going rate can be between $15-30 per page. We’ll rule out this option for now and just stick with PLR eBooks.

With PLR eBooks that are already written one has to look at resell rights and observe the letter, if not the spirit of the agreement. Can you alter them? To what extent can you alter them? Premade PLR eBooks can be a little dicey sometimes as often they are someone else’s self-made eBook being marketed from PLR articles someone else purchased. Like cooking sometimes people will enjoy the fare and sometimes they won’t, but the cook always likes their own cooking. Beware, premade PLR books might or might not fit your needs, but you most likely will not know until you have bought the resell rights. Generally it is only then that you actually get to see the work in its entirety. This is where buying from a provider you know and trust comes in.

Making your own PLR eBook has the benefit of being put together using material you already own and (hopefully) like. Be careful when it comes to what you throw in. There are lots of eBook made up of rewritten PLR material thrown together by the author and “bound” into eBook format. You might get away with this or you might not. Really it just depends on the customer base you have. If you decide to go this route make sure that the material you use (the stuff you rewrote and are putting in your book) is no longer available on the internet.

Strong evidence indicates that if one does make their own eBook they should consider rewriting all the material. The law of averages states that if you buy the rights to sell an existing eBook, you most likely will have to do some rewriting as well. If you are not a writer, or too busy to write an entire eBook there is the option of hiring that ghost writer mentioned earlier and having them give it a quick (and much cheaper) run through.

Whatever course of action you take with an eBook, keep it original. Originality, be that in verve or information will make sure you stand out from the crowd and build a customer base. The last piece of advice is simple; realize that if you don’t want to take the time to make sure it is properly written, no one else will want to take the time to read it.

Is it a Good Idea to Rebrand E-Books as an Online Business Building Tool?

By Michelle Jayes in Featured

Many well known internet marketers recommend rebranding e-books when possible as a way to increase visitors to your website and build a successful online business income. Because re-branding e-books has proved to be profitable does this mean that it is actually the best strategy?

Like so many other things with internet marketing this question has both a for and against answer, and it basically needs to be looked at as a separate case in each instance.

1. Reasons why rebranding e-books is a good idea:

It is easy to do
Rebranding an e-book can take a very short period of time to do and can bring you extra income over a long period of time. These e-books can usually be offered as a free download as an incentive for someone to join your emailing list, which just requires them to fill in their name and email address in an optin box on your website and then they can download the book.

Alternatively you could add a free download section on your website where visitors would be able to download a variety of e-books. If they choose to purchase any of the products that are offered via an e-book that you have re-branded, you will get the benefit of earning a commission on that product.

An added advantage of using this method is that it does not involve you having to write anything, create any graphics or create a product. All that is required of you is to re-brand the book and share it with other people online.

If you are involved in any type of MLM affiliate program, by passing on a rebranded e-book you will not only make a direct profit, but will also benefit from any affiliates below you who may generate extra income for you as well.

2. Reasons why re-branding e-books may be a Bad Idea!

Inside every re-brandable e-book there are certain links that cannot be changed and these are links that generally belong to the person who created the book in the first place and they will also continue to benefit from the work that you do in sharing the e-book with others.

If this scenario does not appeal to you then you should think about writing an e-book that is perhaps similar to the one you were thinking of rebranding and then you could keep all the profits as all the ads will be your own.

Another disadvantage of a rebranded e-book is that if you find an affiliate product that you would like to sell and the creator of that product offers you an e-book that you can rebrand to get started, chances are if the product has been around for any length of time, that the e-book can already be found all over the internet and it will not attract many interested people.

With affiliate products it is important to have a unique selling point if you wish to be successful and if you have something that is already last weeks news it will not work for you. With a little extra work you could have a report that is unique and that no one else has seen yet and this will give you a much greater chance of being successful.

Rebranding e-books definitely has a place in marketing an online business opportunity and should not be judged too harshly. The secret is to look at each case individually and make a decision on what will work best for you. Depending on what you want to achieve and the quality of the book, you can then make an educated choice on what will work best for your online income business.

10 Simple Steps to A Successful Local Listing

By Emily Thompson in Featured

Local search has become one of the most affordable and important ways for small businesses to be found by their customers. In a recent ComScore study, they found that 42% of local searchers wanted to find a business within 6-15 miles of their home or place of work*. Searchers are looking for more relevance than ever before. With statistics like this, it’s more imperative you are giving those local users every opportunity to find your business.

The reality is that there are many factors that can contribute to a successful local, online presence. In today’s market, it takes being available at different times and in varied formats to reach the right audience. One of the main ways prospects can find you is through a local business listing. With prime placement right at the top of the search results page, these listings give a previously unheard of visibility to small and local businesses.

Google takes a bite out of Apple’s Tablet

By John Sylvester in Featured

The bitter friction between Apple and Google following the release of its Android operating system was one thing, but sour relations between the two companies has reached a new stage of intensity following Google’s announcement of its own Tablet.

Steve Jobs recently accused Google of “stealing features from the iPhone” and that the company had “entered the phone business.” At a company meeting, he remarked: “Make no mistake, they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.” Apparently, this attack was met with “thunderous applause” from Apple’s employees.

No doubt this corporate squabbling is the result of the success of Apple’s new iPad, which has prompted other tech companies, like Dell and Toshiba, to enter the Tablet computing market.

In a report by the BBC, Appleis said to have sold more than 300,000 units of the iPad Tablet computer on its launch day in the US, which sent Apple’s share price up to a record high of $238.49. Forbes, however, says that Apple has sold its millionth iPad, after the Tablet computers had been on sale just 28 days.

Bob O’Donnell, an industry analyst with International Data Corp opined: “Anybody can make a Tablet. I could go to Taiwan, hire a contract manufacturer and make ‘Bob’s Tablet,” he said. “The hard part is doing the software and getting the applications.”

And with it the cross-partisan competition lines up behind its preferred brand: Dell’s Mini 5 Tablet will use Google’s Android operating system, while H-P is planning to use Microsoft software to power its Slate device. Some smaller companies are also selling their versions of the Tablet, with Fusion Garage, a Singaporean startup, offering the JooJoo, which went on sale in the US in March.

But this doesn’t appear to be a bandwagon-jump ,as H-P is said to have been developing its own Tablet for five years and has released a handful of videos and blog entries about the Slate. But the problem with iPad’s rivals is that Apple has 140,000 apps that you can run, which makes it incredibly difficult for the competition to catch up.

The spat between the two titans of tech was summed up succinctly in a New York Times report as: “Today, such warmth [between Apple and Google] is in short supply. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a gritty battle royale over the future and shape of mobile computing and cellphones, with implications that are reverberating across the digital landscape.

“While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personal overtones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have long characterised technology industry feuds,” that has exposed “the clash between Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs offer[ing] an unusually vivid display of enmity and ambition.”

At the heart of the dispute is Jobs’ sense of betrayal: that Google has “violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone”.

But when you compare Apple’s controlled approach to the development of apps, the Google Android allows an open source approach to the submission of programs and also allow users to download them from third-party sources. The Google Android Tablet is also likely to provide support for Flash and will no doubt provide apps for Google’s services, such as Gmail and Voice, a practice Apple does not permit.

But PC World is urging us all to take a “reality check” in that they say the New York Times really stated: “Google is ‘exploring the idea’ of building a Tablet device. It is ‘experimenting’ with possibilities. Despite some bloggers’ tendencies to fill in the blanks with big words, there’s no indication that this is a done deal, let alone something that’s likely to occur at any moment.”

John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

Concise Guide to the Most Common SEO Mistakes

By Martin Sejas in Featured

It is time to reveal the 10 most common SEO mistakes committed by website owners the world over.

If you are not too happy about your website’s ranking on the search engines, then look through this list and make sure that your website is not committing any of these mistakes.

I’ve decided to divide this article into 2 sections: on page SEO and off page SEO mistakes. As you read through this article, you will realize that the mistakes covered here are all based on my previous articles about SEO.

iPAD killed the Photocopier

By Jennifer Robinson in Featured

Not since the IBM PC was developed has a computer hit the market that can change the way we view the world. While people talk about Apple’s Tablet PC, the iPAD, being a competitor to the notebook, there are larger implications. The iPad is the first computer that can change the way we view documents. It combines the visual appeal of print and the interaction of the web together in a way no product has done before. The iPAD is the first step into a paperless world where all documents are viewed as data.

In the first 28 days since its release, Apple sold one million iPADS. This figure is even higher than iPHONE sales when it was launched. The iPAD succeeds where previous products such as Amazon Kindle have failed, but it was not greeted with universal approval when launched. “Isn’t it just a big iPHONE?” was the most common remark, whilst others tagged it ‘iLAME’. Dom Jolly even revamped his mobile phone sketch using the iPAD. The iPAD name, which Apple purchased from Fujitsu, has also been the butt of jokes on twitter, where users made fun of its resemblance to a feminine hygiene product. One twitter user posted “I am already going through 4 – 5 iPADS a day due to my heavy workflow”. However, Apple have a loyal following in desktop publishing with the Steve Jobs/Jef Raskin Apple Mac, and the iPAD appears to be exactly what Apple fans have been waiting for.

The tablet PC has been around for a while. Bill Gates’s Microsoft made the term popular in 2001 when it launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. HP-Compaq developed the TC1100 series. In 2007 Axiotron produced a Modbook, this was a heavily modified Apple MacBook Tablet. Frontpath manufactured a Linux based tablet called the ProGear.

The iPAD is the start of a new era that will see the transition from Print to Pixels, bringing the worlds of print and web publishing together. Beautiful pages where typography and design are not compromised can now be produced with interaction, animation and video streaming alongside articles. Notebooks don’t offer the same portability of the iPAD, and the iPAD is the best in the field for screen based reading.

Printers and Photocopiers could become a thing of the past in a few years with less and less output to paper. Books, newspapers and magazines will be completely reinvented online. By changing how we read documents, Apple have created the next big hardware battle. Already Chinese manufactured iPAD clones, working on Google’s Android Software, have started to appear. Microsoft Courier is set for release soon, a 7 inch dual screen booklet that will see Microsoft making further strides into hardware manufacture following on from Zune and Xbox.

The battle for the Screen Based Reader audience is unlikely to be defined by the operating system but by the hardware itself. Imagine a iPAD that is wafer thin and you can roll up and put in your back pocket like a magazine. That is what the future holds.

Flexible screen technology is very close to production with a team in Ireland close to a touch screen prototype. Samsung unveiled their 7 inch flexible LCD screen in 2005 and Fujitsu have a 3.8 inch flexible LCD panel that does not require a power supply. Ultimately, it’s the flexible screen technology in the near future that will see users finally turn away from paper based publishing. Apple have won ’round one’ of the screen based reader and have brought their product to market before Microsoft’s Courier, but this hardware battle has a long way to run. Google have already produced the Nexus One, an internet mobile dubbed the Google Phone, and the Android operating system may yet enter into screen based readers as well. Amazon potentially have the most to lose if the iPAD continues to grow, with Apple’s iBOOKS directly competing with another part of their core business, following the success of iTUNES, so presence in the screen reader market will be essential for Amazon.

5 Internet Marketing Ways to Use Twitter Trends and Build Your Brand

By Mark Etinger in Featured

Whether you’re a national name or local start-up, it’s important to keep your brand on the tips of consumer’s tongues—or at least on the tip of their cursor. Reinforcing your name and your product is relevant in every stage of the business cycle, and a cornerstone of smart internet marketing. After all, brand recognition drives web sales. If your business offers e-commerce, know that smart internet marketing is a way drive revenue quickly and cost-effectively. Twitter trends are an overwhelming flux of seemingly irrelevant buzzwords.

Here’s a smattering of today’s top Twitter trends:

#breakuplastwords, #ihatequotes, #nowplaying, #OMGIKnowRight, #Justin Beiber.

It may be hard to believe these words are worth repeating, but this chatter could mean traffic for your website and business. How do you run with the word-flow without getting lost in a deluge of diatribe?

Five pointers for smart internet marketing with Twitter trends:

1. Ride The Right Trends - Not every high-flying topic is going to be brand-supportive, so choose trends wisely. Know what your bottom line is, and make sure your chosen keyword won’t detract from your brand equity.

2. Timing Is Everything – Just as today is a chance to introduce your business through exciting, new trend associations, yesterday’s buzz is just that—in the past. It’s best to stick to the day’s trends to attract as many eyes as possible.

3. Be Creative – Engage the banter around trending topics through clever promotional copy. If you own a cleaning company and wanted to catch today’s #nowplaying trend, think about unique plugs and points of reference for your brand. A client’s home entertainment center, perhaps. You could run with this: ” #nowplaying in your living room: Clean, Calm, Collected.” Just remember to link to your service.

4. Pace Yourself – Piggy-back on Twitter trends strategically. Don’t abandon straight-forward promotional tweets as part of your marketing mix just yet. You should still routinely communicate who you are and what you offer to your core market in plain Twenglish. Use trending creatively to boost short-term sales through web-exclusive incentives, or to remind consumers of recently-launched products.

5. Invent The Wheel (Or Word) If You Must – Don’t see enough opportunities to creatively spread the word? Take initiate to get new keywords trending by tagging a concept, category, or catchphrase. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start tomorrow’s top trend—and drive brand awareness through smart internet marketing while you’re at it. Don’t miss an opportunity to promote your brand and your product with personality. Don’t be afraid of using humor (carefully!) when there’s an opportunity to shine. Twitter’s snappy stream of top trends is a high-low stream of abridged messages—the perfect platform to stand out with short, sweet and smart internet marketing. Spread your message by turning your Tweets into a conversation. Make your 140 characters worth a thousand words by knowing which trends work for you, seizing its moment, starting a conversation—and most importantly, using it when it’ll help you most.

10 Tips for Launching your Business Blog

By Beth Hrusch in Featured

Are you thinking about launching your business blog? You’re not alone. A recent study by GuideWireGroup revealed that approximately 89 percent of businesses polled use blogs as a way to communicate with their customers. In another survey, Burson-Marsteller found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs. A successful business blog can generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue each year, with figures for large corporations typically much higher.

So, business blogging is becoming a mainstream marketing tool. That does not mean, however, that blogging comes easily or naturally for many companies, their owners and employees. Blogging, like any form of content, is a commitment of time and resources – namely, you have to know how to write (or have access to good writers) and you have to maintain your blogs with fresh, original and insightful new material on a regular basis.

The Essentialness of Online Marketing Fundamentals

By David Jackson in Featured

If you’re a sports fan like I am and watch sports on tv, you’ve probably heard certain athletes being described as “fundamentally” sound.For example, Tiger Woods is always described as being fundamentally sound. That means the follow-through on his picture-perfect golf swing is always the same, and when he putts the ball he always keeps his head perfectly still, is in perfect alignment and makes solid contact with his putter. Those are some of the fundamentals of playing golf.

His amazing god-given talent notwithstanding, Woods greatness is tied directly to his spectacular consistency. He’s consistent because he’s not only mastered the fundamentals of golf, he consistently applies those fundamentals. That’s one of the reasons, he’s arguably the greatest golfer of all time.