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By Dele Ojewumi in Featured

Since economic resources are scarce and not limitless, one has to make choices according to one’s scale of preference in order to allocate scarce economic resources amongst competing alternative uses.This is the genesis of the comparison between Article Marketing and Guest Blog Posting.

From basic economics, opportunity cost is the real cost of anything in the sense of the alternative forgone.

In the light of the above, since resources, in this case time and money to be spent is not limitless and has so many competing uses, the internet marketer has to schedule these resources between Guest Blog Posting and Article Marketing amongst all other internet marketing strategies.

The comparison becomes more relevant since both aim to achieve almost the same objectives of building backlinks and generating traffic and so are effectively substitutes.

The question often arises as to which of these two strategies is a better option.

My answer to this question is very simple. Start by identifying which objectives each of these options aim to achieve and identify which of the two achieves these objectives better.

Guest Blog Posting usually require very original but shorter articles.

Secondly, the guest blogger quite often gets one or may be two links for each article he gets published on the host website. In most cases, guest posts reside majorly on the hosting website and are not usually syndicated widely.

Some guest blog posting is done free but ironically? some sites require you to pay before you can guest post.

I say ironically, because as you will see in my analysis and final conclusion to this article, I would even consider greatly whether it is worth my while to guest post not to talk of being asked to come and make payment to do this.

They call them by different names to cover up the true intent of such schemes e.g. link building mechanisms.

Such schemes only end up being of greater benefit to the hosting website since content is being supplied to them and being paid for at the same time.

Now to a comparison with Article Marketing

In Article Marketing, the major snag is that you have to write a longer article of about a minimum of 400 words.

Ordinarily, the article should be original. Note that I use the words “ordinarily should be original” contrary to when i was referring to Guest Posting when I used the words “very original.”

This is because article spinners and article leverage tools are now the “in-thing” in article syndication such that it is questionable to refer to such articles as “very original.”

However, once written and syndicated, each article can be distributed to the entire network of article directories of an article syndication service or an article submitting software and with each article entitled to have about two backlinks each pointing to the author’s website, then you can multiply out the number of backlinks each article will produce in comparison to the just one or two, of the Guest posting.

These backlinks and accompanying traffic generated through article marketing now even goes viral when the articles begin to be republished from the original article directories the article syndication service or article submitting software syndicates the articles to.

Do you now see why I made the earlier statement that I will even think greatly before accepting to guest post for free not to talk of being asked to make payment to guest post.

To me, except the hosting website is a very high traffic website and/or high authority website (with very high PR), I do not think it is worth the while, depleting scarce resources of time and sometimes money on such strategies (Guest Blog Posting) given their opportunity cost in terms of the alternative foregone (article marketing) since one will definitely impact the other in terms of the volume you are able to churn out.


Why not visit Dele Ojewumi’s blog => www.homebiz-supermarket.com,/a> for more internet marketing techniques to gain massive backlinks and traffic

Dele Ojewumi is an Internet Marketer, Chartered Accountant and Economist and the webmaster of => www.homebiz-supermarket.com//a>

By Kristin Gabriel in Featured

securityA zombie is a computer that has been infected with malware, allowing an attacker to gain complete control which is a security threat. Tens of thousands of computers are infected with some type of botnet or ‘bot’ and computers that have been infected are generally referred to as ‘zombies.’

These criminals are able to access lists of ‘zombie’ PC’s and activate them to help execute denial-of-service attacks against various websites, host phishing attack sites or send out spam email messages. Trying to trace an attack back to the original source is useless. They will find a victim rather than the criminal because they are so clever.

How do you know if your computer is infected? If you notice anything odd as you are working, such as a slow computer or a computer that seems to slow down or crash for no reason, there might be some malware running in the background. You need to scan your computer with current versions of your anti-virus software, to detect malware. Zombies can be used extensively to send out email spam.

In fact an estimated 80 percent of all spam worldwide was sent by zombie computers. This is what enables spammers to avoid detection. Spam greatly furthers the spread of Trojan horse computer viruses, which rely on the movement of emails or spam to grow.

They can be used to conduct distributed denial-of-service attacks, where a large number of zombie computers make simultaneous requests of a website’s server with the intention of crashing the server thereby preventing legitimate users from accessing the website.

There is a variant of this type of attack known as distributed degradation-of-service. Committed by “pulsing” zombies, distributed degradation-of-service is the moderated and periodical flooding of websites, done with the intent of slowing down rather than crashing a victim site. The effectiveness of this tactic springs from the fact that intense flooding can be quickly detected and fixed, but pulsing zombie attacks and the resulting slow-down in website access can go unnoticed for months or years.

You should make sure to have the latest anti-virus software, install firewalls, and make sure you always delete suspicious email messages. Cloud technology automatically stops viruses and spyware before they reach your computer. This is a new way to protect your computer and it won’t slow you down.

Anti-virus software should have the following features:

- Only real-time updates to safeguard you from the latest online threats today and in the future
- Easy on system resources so your PC runs faster.
- Is designed to be easy-to-use and understand with simple screens and graphical reports.
- It also should block spam.
- Has parental controls keep kids safe online.


Kristin Gabriel writes for Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security, developer of cloud technology to automatically stop viruses before they reach your computer. Real-time updates keep PCs protected from the latest online threats. It’s easy-to-use and understand with simple screens and reports. Titanium anti-virus software is light on system resources so computers run faster www.trendmicro.com

By Sandra Martini in Featured

socialmedia2As I put the final touches on my new report and what it means to businesses of all industries — online and offline — there are several things which have hit my inbox this week as great examples of how NOT to market your business and I want to share a few of them here.

1. I received 3 emails from someone whose list I’ve been on for well over a year and received so few communications that I completely forgot I was on her list (okay, that’s a mistake in itself, but not the one I’m focusing on). The 1st email mentioned that she’s been busy and asked how I was (that’s it…just a few words). I forget what the second was and the 3rd is to sell me a $700 program. Seriously? No contact in “forever” and then sell me a $700 program after asking how I am? There are no words.

2. Another program offer/sales page talking about how “in demand” the coach is and that she isn’t often able to include 1-on-1 time with her clients, but will for a limited time as part of a larger program (limited time and number of people not included in her sales page) and ending with how much she cares about my success and always over-delivers. There’s no doubt that she and I differ on the definition of “over-deliver.”

3.
The following is an excerpt from an email sent to me yesterday (name withheld for privacy reasons): “Hi Sandra, I have been in a couple of programs recently. One at a platinum level that I still could not talk directly to my coach unless in a small group 1 hour call once per month… I am currently trying to leave a program that is not delivering what it sold and certainly not giving me the real information I need to move forward to a profitable business model.” The concerns here are obvious: 1) This individual will likely never invest in anything else offered by either of the two program hosts she’s currently involved with, 2) She may have shared her poor experiences with her friends/colleagues who will have less than overwhelming respect for the program hosts and 3) Others in the same programs are likely feeling/experiencing the same lack of happiness/results — all of which have longer term impact for the programs’ hosts.

Marketing our businesses isn’t just the promotion/launching of new programs, products and services. Or posting on social media and our blogs. Or sending out a consistent ezine.

Marketing our businesses takes places every day in every action and interaction — with current clients, former clients and acquaintances. It’s how we show up in everything we do.

In other words. . .”Ordinary things, done consistently, create extraordinary AND consistent results.”


A Strategic Marketing & Profitability Mentor, Sandra Martini , creator of Escalator Marketing – shows creative heart-based entrepreneurs how to build sustainable businesses without losing their integrity or their minds. You can catch up with Sandra on her blog at www.FromTheDeskOfSandraMartini.com or Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SandraMartini

By Andrew Schiller in Featured

BrandingYou may be at a point where your site has lots of usable and compelling content. Unfortunately this isn’t always enough to gain new readers and revenue. It could be time to build a link strategy to boost your brand authority and site ranking. The way to begin is by making partnerships, starting conversations and trading links so more webmasters (and their readers) know who you are.

Why? The majority of computers and much of the media are now social, so it’s time for you to break out of your bubble.

Getting your site optimized can be time consuming and often you won’t see the results of the labor for a few weeks, if not months. A site that ranks well is the outcome of shrewd planning and lots of effort with few shortcuts. You have to make good decisions early in the process to gain a good amount of momentum. Basic SEO strategy is a lengthy process, and you can find out smart ways to begin here.

Similarly, incorporating social media into the public face of your business is a long process that will take time to reach its potential. Success in social media relies on cooperation and engagement with your clients and customers (and sometimes even your competitors). Where do you begin?

By Marshall Adler in Featured

Online competitive intelligence tools are fast becoming a popular resource for Internet Marketers, Entrepreneurs and Small Business owners. As the need to stay #1 in your field increases, so will the number of people who continue to seek out new ways to spy on competitors.

I know many of you who read this may be experienced marketers and will probably already have your own set of online competitive intelligence tools and that’s totally okay. I wrote this article to name essentially my favorite top three tools and online resources for spying on the competition.

1. Altavista – A Rarely Used Search Engine Anymore!

I find it interesting how Yahoo, Bing & Google have practically taken over the entire Internet. Nearly 7 out of every 10 web users have at least one or more of these major engines as their “go-to” starting point for most searches. The others use Ask.com, Aol.com etc.

But AltaVista.com was popular back when I was in 9th grade (I’m 27 now) and I used to love searching for things on there. Now I actually use it a lot more because I discovered something quite amazing.

By Elmar Sandyck in Featured

BlogDon’t you just love blog commenting? I definitely do

And it’s not simply because I want to get backlinks from Do Follow blogs. It’s really good to learn from other bloggers, and get valuable information from other blog commenters too. It is always beneficial to participate in an interactive community. Eventually, the internet today is all about building relationships, and the sharing of valuable content.

Notice how I place emphasis on “do follow”. This is because if you’re commenting to attract backlinks to your own blog, if you’re doing it on No Follow blogs, you are not getting any backlinks.

Do follow vs. No follow blogs

Do Follow and No Follow attributes comes into play whenever you leave a comment on a blog that has your link.

Do Follow blogs tell the search engines to follow the link left together with the comment. NoFollow blogs, on the other hand, tell the search engines NOT to follow the link that is left with that comment. That is to say with the former, you can get link juice in the form of backlinks; in no follow blogs, you don’t.

By default, a WordPress platform is a No Follow blog. But in order to increase visitor involvement, a lot of bloggers (like me) have turned their blogs into Do Follow blogs. If you’re new to blogging or if your blog is still set to the default No Follow, you may want to consider turning yours into an interesting interactive community.

Here’s what you should do: identify what plugins you will need, and let your visitors know you have joined the DoFollow movement.

How to Do Follow your blog

Simply do a search for Do Follow plugin. Select one, install it and activate it! This will remove the NoFollow feature in your comment section. You can install plugins to prevent spam comments when you do this as well. Always keep in mind to let people know that you are a Do Follow Blog.

Some visitors may have no idea what that means, but those who do know will often times leave a comment on your blog!

One last thing

When you are on a DoFollow blog, make sure you leave quality comments. Well, one liners are okay, but if you can ask some questions or add valuable content, then that’s really great! Search for Do Follow blogs that are in the same niche as yours and have good traffic flow to make blog commenting really work for you. This will allow you not only to leave a great comment and get more traffic, but gain a backlink as well.


Do You Have A Do Follow Blog? Elmar Sandyck Is An Expert Internet Marketer And You Can Get More Online Marketing Tips And Techniques By Visiting www.InternetMastermindStrategy.com,/a>

By Scott Buresh in Featured

marketing2The newly coined term ‘results measurement’ is used by companies to define the purposes of lead tracking in SEM campaigns, and is a valuable means of understanding the many decision factors your prospects use to choose your company for its products/services. A finely-tuned lead tracking channel – often aided by your search engine marketing company – demonstrates to the potential customer that his or her inquiry about your company’s products/services was received with a sense of urgency. For SEM campaigns, proper lead tracking may not be the only fast track solution to increased sales, but does give potential customers insight into how your company values its leads. With a greater ability to track leads and responses, an immediate follow-up is also possible, allowing prospects to decide if your response time was fast enough and if your company provided a better customer experience than your competitors.

In the last article, we discussed how an ideal lead tracking scenario equates to greater success when it comes to closing leads in SEM campaigns. Plus, knowing where your leads come from helps determine which channel is the most profitable and, of course, which should be continually refined to bring in even more quality leads. Though this may be common knowledge, we are led to the two less-than-ideal scenarios that are unfortunate, though surprisingly frequent, despite the prevalence of comprehensive lead tracking software and tools.

Lead Tracking Scenarios

Scenario #2: Workable– The client company cannot, for whatever reason, have web leads automatically populated in its sales database, which, in this case, is often a proprietary system built in-house. Yet, there are still some ways to identify leads properly, which your search engine marketing company can help you compile for SEM campaigns. PPC leads, for example, can be supplemented with added parameters when sent to an inbox to reveal their source. With the right lead tracking in place, you can easily have emails pop right into your inbox with a header that notifies you that you’ve just received a lead via a specific channel. In these cases, the onus is on the person who enters the leads into the sales database to also include the lead’s source.

Ideally, your search engine marketing company needs to meet and/or correspond regularly with you to discuss the source and quality of each lead within your SEM campaigns. Leads can be analyzed at the individual level, so that when a lead closes, it can be attributed to the proper channel (organic SEO, email marketing, PPC, etc). With frequent collaboration between the search engine marketing company and the client company, ROI for each individual channel can be deduced, and expenditures on each channel can be properly allocated to maximize performance.

Scenario #3: Common but Unfortunate– In this scenario, the client company usually has limited offline lead tracking ability. Sometimes the leads are sent directly to varying sales people who use their own individual systems for tracking their leads within SEM campaigns.

Clearly, this limits the ability of the search engine marketing company to properly allocate ROI to individual web channels. Even if the individual sales people take note of where the individual leads came from, compiling all of that data into something useful can be a bit like herding cats. The client company also can’t determine which online sales and marketing initiatives are the most effective to developing SEM campaigns and could therefore unknowingly cut the most profitable initiatives when times are tough. Another consequence is that your sales department could be spending time chasing bad leads from the same sources day after day and not even know it.

Furthermore, when your search engine marketing company is trying to come up with ROI calculations, the math tends to get fuzzy. You and your search engine marketing company are left with vague numbers regarding offline closure rates, value of the average sale, and the like, making any attempt at deriving useful ROI figures a virtual stab in the dark. As you can imagine, such a system does not allow for informed decisions in regard to your individual online initiatives.

Increasing Your SEM Lead Tracking Abilities for Success

As a company, we work very hard to get clients up to at least the workable scenario (#2) in order to prove the value of individual online initiatives and to knowledgeably hone SEM campaigns for the best possible return. Even though scenario #3 isn’t the most effective and modern way to run a sales department, it is still fairly common. We’ve had many clients who had very weak tracking elements in place, and, step by step, we’ve cajoled them into a more uniform and robust tracking system.

Almost invariably, once clients see the impact on their bottom lines through improved lead tracking, they start demanding more and more tracking information and transparency – rightly so. Of course, any good search engine marketing company will be more than happy to oblige.


Scott Buresh, internationally recognized internet marketing authority and CEO of search marketing firm Medium Blue, is consistently published and cited by influential industry publications and contributed to How to Build Your Own Web Site with Little or No Money: The Complete Guide for Business and Personal Use (Brown, 2010), The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). In both 2008 and 2010, Medium Blue was honored to receive a prestigious American Marketing Association award. Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including the Atlanta Humane Society, Afterburner, Inc., Oliver Wight Americas and DeKalb Medical. To see how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals, please contact us.

By Eddie Prentice in Featured

long-tailIn 2004 Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson, popularized the long tail theory in an article called “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More.” In retail terms, the long tail describes a niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities.

The increasing popularity of online retailers presents an interesting opportunity for artists and suppliers alike. Because it doesn’t cost ecommerce sites like Amazon.com any more money to list a marginalized book title then it does to list a bestseller, they can afford to do so. A brick-and-mortar shop however, with rent and overheads to pay, cannot. The advantage of this to the supplier (Amazon) is that they are making another sale. The advantage to the artist (novelist) is that their book is being sold and potentially recommended by the websites various recommendation channels and features.

With regards to web content providers, the long tail theory suggests that smaller web sites, focusing solely on a niche area, might come to threaten larger search engines that cover a vast array of subjects.

Social media and marketing expert Seth Godin warns us against getting too comfortable in the theory of the long tail. In his blog post entitled “When the Long Tail is Underwater” he acknowledges that the long tail is real, and that given the choice, people will find what’s perfect for them. However, he rightly points out that there are still millions of songs on iTunes that are never bought and millions of blogs on the web that are never read. While he encourages us all to continue to think outside of the box and design our business plans slightly outside of the lines, he warns against going too far, to point where people are no longer interested.

When designing a business plan a company should always look at the competition. What similar things are currently available, how are they being marketed and how successful have they been? If it turns out there is a market for your product or idea, then by all means, launch it and input your own twists. If there isn’t a market though, it might be worth asking yourself why. There is likely to be a good reason.

Similarly, when you market a product or design a website, consider how your competitors have done it. Marketing strategies, website designs and content are the time to be unique and create a sense of company individuality and avant-garde thinking. So if you’re going to splash out, splash out there.


Adaptive Consultancy is a London based internet marketing company specializing in website design,eCommerce, and internet marketing. Learn more about Online Marketing Consultants here www.adaptiveconsultancy.com

By Jobette Escobanas in Featured

webtrafficYou are done selecting your market or niche and you had purchased the right domain for your site. Now you are ready for your first blog post.

Google said that content is king, but in reality quality content alone cannot bring visitors. Competition for Google search engine users are high, and Google ranks those websites and blogs with high authority that have been live for more than 2 years.

The following are experiential advised to ensure quality content both from human reader and search engines. This is what we called the art of writing for human and for machine.

1. Choose a topic that has considerable search volume and create contents out of it. You can use Google external keyword tool to find the most popular keywords or topics. Here are the things you can do using the tool:
a. Type a general topic or certain areas related to your topic. Let’s say we are looking for the right term for telesales tips. Do not just search right away with this topic and use the general term telesales.
b. Select advance option to view the geographical location of searcher.
c. Select “ideas containing my search term” to discover semantically related keywords. You can arrange the result from highest to lowest by clicking global search volume.
d. Now if you find specific keyword like “telesales tips”, research this keyword again to get more specific semantically related keywords.
e. You should be able to see the related keywords or key phrase such as telesales training, telesales technique, telesales skills and calls.

Doing this will give you 3 advantages:

i. You have semantically related keyword for your blog post, as well as know how to avoid keyword stuffing and improve keyword density.
ii. Possible topic for a future post.
iii. Once the next article is done you can now create internal linking.

2. Add image or video to your post. Image complements your content. The image can also help encourage the reader to read the content.

You can get a video from YouTube. This video serves as bonus to your reader. Make sure the video as well as the image are related to your post. These two elements can help minimize bounce rate. Bounce rate is also used by Google to determine the quality of your site. You can find many resources to reduce bounce rate. Quality and unique content is the way to go.

3. Make sure that your content is crawled by Google, Yahoo and Bing. Now you have your post. It’s time for you to give incoming link to your post. Never leave your new blog post or new website without external of incoming link. Newly established website or blog took longer time to be crawled so you need help from high authority social bookmarking sites.
a. Sign up to top 10 social bookmarking sites and add or submit your blog post. Use only one username and password to remember them easily. Submit your blog post URL and use the title of your blog as the title in these top social bookmarking sites. Make sure the description is different from each other.
b. Suggested top friendly bookmarking sites are stumbleupon, yahoo buzz, digg.com, jamespot, mix, delicious, folkd, pimpthisblog, facebook and clipmark.

4. Get traffics after 1 week to 1 month.
a. Once the blog post is live and crawled, it will be included in Google search engine index. However, it will not stay on the top as new blog post related to your topic will remove you from the blog search engine results.
b. Now give your blog post a minimum of 5 to 10 do follow incoming links by submitting the post to these do follow social bookmarking sites. The site www.bmbuzz.com has a good collection of social bookmarking sites. It is recommended that you find an online article that discusses steps and tips in social bookmarking.
c. The blog post will not rank after 24 hours or the next day. It will not go on Google 1st or 2nd page within one week. However, as you have created external links and as the blog post get’s older, it will gain its own authority.

5. Get referral traffics. The top 10 social bookmarking sites could give you both an opportunity to be crawled faster and get traffic referrals. However, the best traffic referrals are those in your community or group. Here are some tips to do it:
a. Create your own followers. Visit top blogger with good twitter followers and try to invite them to follow your twitter. The quality of your message or tweet is one best way to get followers.
b. Design or create a Fan page for your blog and invite your online friends to LIKE your Fan page. You can also visit the Facebook of well-known bloggers, who are also talking about the same niche that you have. Befriend their followers, send them quality information that are useful to them and then invite them to your fan page.

6. Capture new visitors’ emails through freebies. In a research about best sources of traffic, the pay per clicks is the best, followed by email marketing, guest posting, and then search engine optimization.

In my own test, even if my keyword is number 1, I can get only 2% of the total search volume. Referral links from guest post can bring more traffic than your rank in Google search engine. However, search engine visitors are more profitable than guest post visitors. To make sure your new visitors will become regular visitors follow the following steps:
a. Research and write white paper in the form of downloadable eBook.
b. Create yet professional sign up form using wordpress plug in, free contact us from awebber form.
c. Once you’ve captured their emails you can send them interested information that they may want to know. This time you are just recommending good stuffs to your visitors.

7. Link wheel your post. Since the beginning of your first post, you’ve already included other possible topics that you can discuss in the future. If you decide to make new blog post about these topics, make sure that you create link from the old post. These processes have various benefits such as:
a. Purposely increasing number of links to your posts will improve its search engine keyword ranking. If you visit your webmaster tools, you will notice that Google regularly collects your internal links. You can control the quantity by creating links around your blog post as long as there are related topics.
b. Link wheeling your topics will improve your visitor page view, visitors reading time as well as reduce bounce rate.
c. Well link wheel posts will give your visitors complete or satisfactory information about your site. 2 thumbs up customer behavior will guarantee your site to be bookmarked by your visitors.

A regular blog update of about 3 topics a week would be enough. It will provide you with 12 page a month. These 12 pages will have 5 incoming links each post or a total 60 links a month. By the end of three months you will have 180 links. So when Google update the page rank you will have higher website authority as well as regular visitors from your followers and emails list. You will now enjoy both search engine and non-search engine traffic.


Jobette Escobanas is SEO Manager of a well-known Lead Generation and Virtual Assistant provider from the Philippines. He has been a SEO specialist for over 3 years, and a regular blogger.

By Mary Petto in Featured

social networksIf you can’t fathom jumping into the online world of social media for your business, start with your personal life.

You’ve probably heard that any business committed to long-term growth has added social media to their marketing plan matrix. You’ve also probably heard your friends, colleagues, competitors, and, of course, your kids bragging about how social networking has solidified deals, increased business, or kick-started a creative campaign. But, alas, this Internet thing is not for you, right?

If it’s hard to imagine why you need to jump into this alternative universe if your business is already running smoothly, consider starting with the light version of social networking by setting up a personal account on Facebook. Joining the world of Facebook can be a real turning point in your relationships, family management, social life, and self-improvement; the likes of which could never have happened before. Here are just a few examples of the life-changing purposes a personal Facebook account can serve:

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