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By Valerie Melton in Featured

business1When one starts their online business, generally speaking they cannot afford to spend a lot of money on PPC campaigns or pay for Google Sponsored Ads, especially when they don’t even know if their efforts will bring guaranteed success. So how do people start a successful campaign without an advertising budget to play with?

Well, you must’ve heard about Article Marketing. Most of us have heard about it but just feel it takes too much time and effort to do it. There must be an easier and quicker way to promote your business right? Wrong! Article Marketing has become one of the most risk free, popular, tried and tested online marketing strategies used to get more traffic and publicity for your online business, leading to more sales.

There are no shortcuts to building a lucrative online business. So the sooner you learn to accept that you will need to write your own articles for your online business or alternatively pay someone to write them for you, the better.

As they say; “the best things in life are generally free.” Well, it applies to article writing so aptly. You don’t need to know HTML coding or have any internet marketing experience or background to do it successfully. It is a tried and tested online marketing strategy; there is no escaping it.

You can reach global audiences, establish your business credibility, brand yourself, enhance the presence and visibility of your website online, sell any service or product you have, pre-sell your product, gain resell value for your brand and get niche-based international promotions for your business and products – and it can be done free (assuming you are willing to put in the time and effort). I guess it all boils down to, how badly do you want to make it online? How important is the success of your business to you? Are you really serious about gaining financial freedom online?

This article, and my personal website, is built around those who have a burning desire to make money on the internet by getting their businesses off the ground, leading to total online success, who need cheap, no cost or low cost ways to do it. It is for those who have a realistic understanding or acceptance that there is no quick get rich scheme or program online that can make you rich over night. All businesses take hours of sweat, tears and hard work to make them lucrative.

So how does one start? Here are some guidelines to help you in your Article Marketing efforts:

Your article should be theme based (based on the subject matter of your website, product or service).

It should be no less than 500 words.

Make sure your article has quality based content in it. Recycling useless information is simply not going to work – period! You should incorporate lots of useful tips and practical advice that the reader can follow, and substantiate what you are saying in your article.

Your article needs to be Search Engine friendly, ie. Search Engines will need the right set of keywords throughout your article so that they can easily index your articles on their search page. Think of the keywords relevant to your website, product or service. Keywords are the words that people are most likely to search for on Google, as well as keywords that are popular with your audience.

Make sure you have an end objective or a call to action at the end of your article, eg. – For more tips and tricks delivered to your inbox every week, join our Newsletter here.

Choose a captivating title for your article. This is one of the first things your reader sees. Your title will determine whether your reader will read your article or not. It either grabs their attention or not. Ensure your title also contains the relevant keywords. The title on your article actually determines its popularity or ranking online – so pay serious attention to it. Sometimes it is easier to write your article and then think of a fitting title for it. Keyword research can go a long way in helping you here.

Make sure your articles are unique and original. Don’t let your article or title be something everyone has already read about on all the scores of similar articles of recycled information available online. This will reduce your credibility and you will not be able to track your article online either.

Don’t use keywords in your title that have no relevance to your article or subject at hand. We all live in a fast paced world where no one has time to read stuff that is either obvious, redundant or unnecessary.

Don’t make the common mistake of putting your company’s name in the title – this is way too old and redundant. Don’t populate this limited space with unnecessary words like a company name. This title is to be seen as a one-way ticket to getting indexed on search engines.

Since time is precious to your readers and they don’t have time to scan your entire article to find out what is in it for them – try to put the benefits for them in your title.

Once you have completed your article, you will be required to fill in an Authors Biography. Sell yourself here. This needs to make a lasting impressing on the minds of the readers and will also enhance your credibility online. A Bio should highlight your skills, competencies, achievements and give the readers a glimpse of your experience and qualities. You really do need to make the most of this space too. Self flattery won’t work either. People need facts only. If possible, you should make a note of key milestones with dates in order to impress your readers, giving integrity to your work. Be sure, however, not to turn it into a fact sheet without personality or flavor. You need to devote time to creating your own impressive Author Biography.

Now you need to add the URL to your website, product, business or blog. Professional authors no longer use their real website name in the anchor text. They embed the link in a phrase that contains keywords. If you want to use your real website name in the link, consider doing it in conjunction with keywords, eg. “Website name – Your one stop book shop”, or something to that effect.

This phrase should be relevant to the audience you wish to attract and should contain keywords relevant to your site. This URL is the most crucial part of the Author Biography since this is what leads to better click through rates to your website. The Bio should only be one or two sentences long, so just mention things there that make you an authority on what you’ve written. These sentences must relate directly to your topic. You need to convince the reader that by clicking on your link, they will benefit somehow. You can even include a quote you like or aspire to which will assist the readers to connect with you on a more personal level. Selling is all about touching other people’s emotions and connecting with them. Start your Bio in the first person to give personal insight into your beliefs and values, shift a little later to the third person to give a more neutral and unbiased perspective to your authority on the subject matter.

Once you are finished, submit your article to one or two article directories ONLY and make sure you read the guidelines. This gives your article exclusivity. If your article appears in Google with a page rank based on the keywords you’ve written about, your site traffic will suddenly increase and you will make sales. Now repeat the same exercise at least once a week, preferably more, and you’ll start to succeed with your new business online. What did it cost? Well, if you did it yourself, it cost nothing! So maybe it is true: “the best things in life are free.”

Remember, article writing is a tried and tested online marketing strategy that will guarantee you free quality visitors to your website that will enable your financial freedom online. Better articles equal better PR (Page Rank), better PR equals better business. Invest time into building up your new online business and you are sure to make money online.

For more direction to build your lucrative online business and make a success of it, visit all the many wonderful and best marketing resources and articles on our website, which is filled with proven online marketing strategies that have been tried and tested. Also, bookmark it for guidance and help as you build up your business online.

You too, can gain financial freedom online by starting your own lucrative online business for financial freedom online through Article writing.

Having been in the online marketing world for over 12 years, I have experienced first hand, the frustration of online marketers trying to make it online. I have finally come to the point of putting all that I’ve learned into easy-to-read and easy-to-follow articles, in an attempt to assist others in their online endeavors.

In order to assist new e-entrepreneurs online, Valerie has carefully studied online marketing to try to pin-point why the failure rate online is so high, and has put together guidelines for new online marketers to help them avoid the online marketing scenic route and gain faster financial freedom online. Her websites, free and paid online marketing tools, resources and articles can be accessed through this portal:http://just-visit.us/?i=185695/Article_SLOB-FFO

By Gayle Hawks in Featured

business1The advent of social media and its integration into our lives has turned traditional marketing techniques upside down, but it has also given us many, new and unique ways to market that are creative and innovative. In the good old days you ran a marketing campaign and knew how much you spent and where you spent it and how much revenue was produced from it. But today the world moves a little differently. Social media marketing is here to stay and is, at times, difficult to measure as far as effectiveness is concerned.

Just as you have an Internet marketing strategy, you also need a social media strategy as more and more companies are getting on the bandwagon of advertising via social media. What you do with the data gleaned from your social media interactions is extremely important. Social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Foursquare to name a few. So, how do you measure success or effectiveness within the social media realm? Here are a few methods to gauge how you’re doing.

Awareness of Your Brand – Building awareness of your brand is one of the most important aspects of why you’re engaged in social media. Ultimately, you can measure your awareness by how many followers you have, the number of searches for your brand name, the number of site visits tracked through links, and the number of keywords or phrases searched for. You need to be able to trend this and track it.

Honest Discussion – The online discussion that you will get can have mixed blessings as it will be unfiltered and completely honest. This means you will get good feedback, neutral feedback, and at times, bad feedback. It’s often referred to as share of voice and it reflects the number of times your brand was mentioned in a conversation. You should use a monitoring program to track both your feedback as well as those of your competitors.

Sphere of Influence - Signals of influence can be found with the number of inbound links to your site. Microblogging sites like Twitter and social networks like Facebook. LinkedIn, YouTube, or Foursquare might have people that have made comments and Liked your brand or product. This is then shared with friends and others and the conversations continue. Measuring these social media tweets or likes can provide you with information about why they like the brand or why they don’t.

Signs of Interaction – The interaction between people and your site and your brand are important to see how interested people are in what you have to say or offer. This means the ratings given to your brand, the number of mentions good or bad, retweets, photos, video views, and the number of new pages of Facebook likes.

Popularity - This is really the number of people that subscribe to your email or RSS subscribers, followers on Twitter, members of LinkedIn groups, and number of people who like your Facebook page or other social media sites. Other places to track include industry hang outs or content communities like Flickr or YouTube.

Use Monitoring Tools – Seeing lots of activity on Facebook likes or Twitter tweets does not mean much if you don’t measure, monitor, and track the information that you are getting from these social media sites. Google Analytics and Measure Map are two tools that can be used to track and analyze the data so that you know exactly how people react and what you need to change in terms of advertising.

Listen and Learn – Pay attention to the feedback that you receive from the social media sites not just the positive feedback but the negative or neutral to see what you can learn and possibly change if necessary. Be proactive about tracking the data and USING it to make necessary adjustments to your ads or your way of advertising. Listen carefully to what is being said, make some suggested modifications, and you will be successful.

Color Card Administrator is the parent company of PrintBusinessCards.com and several other innovative Real Estate Business Cards website, we’re eager to share with you what it is we do. Give us a call today at 858-522-9335 or email at Author@CardAdmin.com for Print Business Cards. We look forward to discussing your comments, suggestions, or hearing any ideas for future article topics you may be interested in regarding online business cards design or business card management.

By UKFast in Featured

business1SMEs are risking their online success by not analysing website data and optimising their sites accordingly. This is the warning issued by a panel of e-commerce experts at a recent round table held by hosting specialist UKFast.

Liam Ahern, Online Business Specialist at online marketing firm I-COM, told the panel that the key to e-commerce is the ‘trackability’ of the data. He said: “There is a lot of data and part of optimising a site is gathering all of it and analysing it. We need to know why customers buy a product before we can make decisions on how to improve a website.”

Nick Rhind, managing director of web development company CTI Digital, said: “Making a change to a website can make or lose millions. Companies need to prepare changes properly and ask what it is that they want to achieve, how they can do it and how easily they can revert back to the old style if it does not succeed.

“Clients have asked us to build their site around a particular page but when we have looked at it, it is the worst converting page on the site. Businesses need to analyse their figures properly because tools such as Google Analytics may only tell half a story; the page may get a lot of views, so the business thinks that it is doing well, but in reality visitors to the page are dropping off within five seconds and it is one of the worst pages. We need to look at the information as a whole to understand the site.”

Analysing information for every visit to your websites is a time consuming job and not all businesses have the capabilities needed to make the most of the data, especially smaller retailers.

David Grimes, director at MyParcelDelivery.com explained that time is not the only factor, having, or hiring, the right expertise is a worthy investment. He said: “From an SME point of view we have just engaged with a company to help with our SEO because we wanted that expert view on analytics. If I was to look at the data of a site, all I would see is a whole lot of statistics. I wouldn’t be able to drill down into it and that’s where we need that expert’s opinion to give us a really good insight into how our site is doing.”

Jonathan Bowers, communications director at UKFast spoke about the e-commerce businesses on their network. He said: “From what we can see the e-commerce websites that grow quickly are those that are obsessive about offering a great user experience and the majority of them found this out by directly gaining feedback and scrutinising the web data.”

Ahern explained that analytics tools should not only be used to monitor pages that need improving but also to see why and how customers are choosing to buy products.

He said: “Businesses still haven’t mastered what is called conversion attribution. What is it that makes a customer buy a product, where did they first see the product, what drove them to the site? Was it a TV advert or a magazine advertisement? Where did the customer go before visiting our site?

“If ultimately they click through a PPC advert to buy the product, even if they have visited the site several times before and been through a whole other journey, tools such as Google Analytics will only show that the sale came from a PPC ad.

“Proper in-depth analysis can give us a full picture of our site, but businesses are still yet to master this.”

Top E-Commerce Tips for SMEs:
* Don’t deviate from the norm in terms of functionality – consumers know how they like to shop online and expect to follow the same journey
* Focus on a simple and clean platform that gives users a quick and problem-free shopping experience with the option for an enriched experience if the user requests
* Invest in expert analysis of data
* Establish your delivery offer early on – it could dictate the design of an e-commerce platform
* Think about how to give users the ‘touch and feel’ experience online – through augmented reality and detailed descriptions.

UKFast is one of Europe’s fastest-growing technical companies (as ranked by Deloitte) and has been at the heart of the UK internet industry for more than 10 years. In addition to being named as one of The Sunday Times best companies to work for, it won the UK IT Awards Employer of the Year in 2010.

Previous accolades include the industry’s Best Customer Service Award in 2009 and being named the ISPA UK’s Best Hosting Provider four years consecutively. UKFast has over 400,000 web domains on its network and over 4,000 clients across all industries. Clients include Virgin, Microsoft and UKTV. UKFast is a member of the Cloud Industry Forum.

By Jacob S Strandlien in Featured

google+Social networking has grown steadily in scope and importance over the last decade, and over the past few years, Facebook’s position as the top dog of social networking services has been solid and unquestioned. Enter Google+. Google’s attempts to step into the realm of social networking have been plentiful and almost undeniable failures, but Google+ is undoubtedly their strongest showing yet, and has the best chance of success. It is growing steadily in popularity, but how well does it work and what sets it apart from its competitors? Read on.

Social Networking, Google Style

Google has a long, tumultuous, and mostly unknown and ignored history with social networking. The following is a rundown of their previous attempts.

Orkut: As far as I am aware, this is Google’s earliest and (until now) most successful attempt at a social networking platform. It never gained much popularity in the United States, but it is huge in Brazil to this day, and it also has a following in India and other various countries.

Open Social: Launched in 2007, it’s not technically a social network in and of itself. Open Social is Google and MySpace’s attempt to create a common programming interface that can be applied across several social networks, allowing programmers to easily integrate these networks into websites and other applications. This has largely been drowned out by Facebook.

By Chip Cooper in Featured

taxmanProposed legislation in the U.S. Congress, if passed, will essentially make online merchants tax collectors, forcing them to collect sales taxes for all purchases. This is the latest attempt by cash-strapped states to collect sales tax revenues from online sales.

The Main Street Fairness Act (MSFA), introduced by Senator Dick Durban (D-IL), would change the current law which requires merchants to collect sales tax only when the merchant has a physical presence in the state. The effect of MSFA on online merchants, particularly small merchants, could be huge.

The Current Sales Tax War

The general rule regarding sales taxes is that merchants are required to collect sales taxes on the sale of tangible property to purchasers located within the merchant’s state. For sales to purchasers outside the merchant’s state, the merchant is required to collect sales taxes only for sales into a state where the merchant has a “nexus”, meaning a physical presence. The taxes on these sales are supposed to be paid by the purchasers in the form of use taxes, but most use tax obligations are not paid, and as a result states claim that they are losing between $21-34 billion.

Currently, Amazon.com and big box merchants such as Wal-Mart and Target are locked in a war involving whether Amazon’s affiliates should count as nexus for sales tax purposes, even though Amazon.com does not have a physical presence in the affiliates’ states.

Up to now, attempts by several states to force out-of-state merchants such as Amazon.com to collect sales taxes have been relatively unsuccessful. For example, Illinois and California passed so-called “Amazon laws” requiring out-of-state merchants to collect sales taxes if they employed marketing affiliates located in Illinois and California. Amazon.com retaliated by shutting down its affiliate program in Illinois and California, just as Amazon.com had done previously when Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island passed similar legislation.

After these shut downs by Amazon.com, it’s been reported that Wal-Mart and other big box merchants added fuel to the fire by offering to work with the terminated Amazon affiliates.

The Main Street Fairness Act

The introduction of MSFA is the most recent attempt to bring the U.S. Government into the war, but in a different way that does not involve nexus (a physical presence). Under MSFA, a participating state would be able to require the collection of sales tax by remote merchants that do not have a nexus in their state.

It’s important to note that MSFA makes no mention of nexus. Under MSFA nexus in no longer a consideration. Instead, to take advantage of MSFA, a state must have adopted the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA) and passed implementing legislation. In part, SSUTA requires states to follow uniform practices, including uniform product definitions, uniform sales tax filing requirements, uniform collection through the same office, an uniform registration of merchants through a centralized multistate filing system. At present, 24 states have implemented SSUTA.

What are the benefits of MSFA? The huge beneficiaries are participating states in terms of increased tax revenues collected by merchants. Estimates of “lost” tax revenues for all states combined generally fall in the range of $21-34 billion.

Are there any benefits for online merchants and consumers? Dick Durban’s website claims that MSFA:

* does not create a new tax, but provides a necessary tool to collect an existing tax in a simple and fair manner;

* releases consumers from tax remittance obligation;

* treats all merchants with equal sales tax collection responsibilities; and

* reduces collection costs and provides compensation for all sellers required to collect sales taxes.

Somewhat surprisingly, Amazon has reportedly come out in favor of MSFA. Apparently, Amazon’s opposition to the prior “Amazon laws” was based on Amazon’s belief that these laws would make it more difficult to report and collect sales taxes. Under MSFA, Amazon believes that the playing field has been leveled.

What about start-up and small online merchants? Will they conclude that tax collection is really not worth the administrative hassle? One key provision of MSFA is an exemption for small sellers. The catch is that Durban’s bill doesn’t define “small”, so we don’t know at this time the scope of the exclusion.

Conclusion

If MSFA passes, the big winners will be the state taxing authorities with increased tax revenues.

Large online merchants such as Amazon.com will not be losers because they have the administrative resources to collect and pay the taxes with the new uniform rules.

Will small online merchants be losers by having to deal with the hassle and expense of the additional administrative burdens? The answer depends on how the “small” exemption is defined. If you’re a small online merchant, you should pay close attention to MSFA. Better yet, contact your U.S. Senators and express your concerns.

Leading SaaS attorney Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting Website Legal Documents with his Website Legal Forms Generator. Use his free online tool — Website Documents Determinator — to determine which legal documents your website really needs. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to draft your website legal forms at http://www.digicontracts.com/whichdocs/ .

By Graham Bray in Featured

marketingIt’s an unnerving fact, but of all potential internet marketing wannabees, only 5% go on to sell products and make a success of their ventures. There is a huge drop-out rate with the vast majority failing to make it even past the first hurdle.

Why do so many people give up before they’ve barely begun? These figures are in stark contrast to those published for more traditional business start-ups. According to statistics published by the Small Business Administration (SBA), seven out of ten new employer establishments survive at least two years and 51 percent survive at least five years. This is a far cry from the previous long-held belief that 50 percent of businesses fail in the first year and 95 percent fail within five years.

So why the big difference? One of the key factors is the ease with which internet businesses can be started. What are your initial outgoings? – a simple website, a product, a domain name, a hosting company, an autoresponder? All of these can be collated for less than $500. If you’re not even willing to do this simple stage yourself, then there are many, many ‘gurus’ who will offer to set up sites on your behalf.

Compare this with a traditional business owner. They will have to find premises, source all of the stock, possibly find employees, arrange for accountants and lawyers to look after the financial and legal side of things… and the list goes on. I’ve just done some “back of an envelope” calculations for starting up a new traditional business, and the figures are a little eye-watering! One time start-up expenses would be in the region of $40,500, with monthly ongoing costs in the region of $12,000. Assuming that it may take 6 months to get established and consistently find customers, then the total start-up costs for the first six months amounts to $112,500!

Let’s just put the two figures side-by-side. $500 for an internet business start-up and $112,500 for a traditional business start-up. Guess who’s going to be more committed to their business!

The key word here is ‘investment’. The more you’re willing to invest in your business, the more willing you will be to stick with it and really give it your best shot. Who in their right mind would be willing to throw away $112,500? In contrast, giving up a $500 internet business is no great loss.

It frustrates me when I receive emails from wannabee internet marketers who quibble about paying $197 for a product that could really launch them into a profitable online business. Get real! – if you’re really committed to your internet dream then do your homework, shop around a bit and then make a commitment.

I speak here from experience. One of my passions is trading on the foreign exchange markets and stock exchanges. When I first started I looked for the cheapest system available, and ended up purchasing a number of these, all $50 or less. Without exception the systems were complete and utter rubbish!

After months of frustration it began to dawn on me (I’m a slow learner!) that if I continued to pay peanuts then I would continue to get monkeys. I therefore spent some time looking for the best system and eventually invested over $3000 in a suitable product. I can honestly say that I have not been disappointed – the level of support and training has been fantastic, and I have an effective system that will continue to generate an income for me.

Recently I made a similar decision with my internet marketing. For years I dabbled, and purchased many ‘products’ that were more or less scams. I then found a system being offered by some guys I know well and trust, invested a significant amount of money, and my marketing has gone from strength to strength.

It hasn’t been easy, but because of my investment I am willing to make the necessary commitment of time and effort.

So what about you? Are you still trying to get your business started ‘on the cheap’? Or are you willing to do your homework and make an investment in your future? Do you want to be one of the 5% who succeed, or are you going to continue failing and remain in the 95%? I think that the answer is obvious, but at the end of the day it’s got to be your decision. I wonder what you’ll decide to do?

Graham Bray is an enthusiastic internet marketer, and for nearly five years he has been developing websites as part of his Multiple Income Pathways. To learn more about internet marketing and how you can download newsletters, training videos and a *free audio recording and transcript* visit his blog at http://www.easierinternetmarketing.com

By Janna Jungclaus in Featured

googleplacesThough the World-wide-web is often praised as the foundation for globalization, and links us across countries and continents, new developments have shown the relevance of emphasizing the local places listings and other local aspects of internet marketing.

How to SEO is Over. Local Places Listings are in. Facebook Check-in, the rise of Foursquare and Yelp, and the popularity of Google Places listings and Google Maps establish this point.

There are several main aspects to your local business listings: local directories and your business address; the content of your local listing and customer reviews.

Let us look at each of these in greater detail.

Local Directories and Address

Your address is vital as it indicates where you are positioned and which other places of business are in your area. Needless to say your location is crucial for prospects to find you and for the listing to be shown to potential buyers in your region. Your listing in local directories, such as the online telephone book or White Pages, Yelp for the US, the United kingdom and Germany, or TrueLocal for Australia, will automatically be recognized by search engine spiders and typically syndicated to other listings. By way of example Google Places draws on data from most of these directories and shows them in the final search results. Most of the time, local directory listings are created by other people, but they do need to be owner-verified. Thus, if you see your organization listed somewhere and you didn’t set-up the listing, don’t be anxious, simply go through the steps to claim the listing, or get in touch with the directory directly.

Content of Your Local Listing

The content of your local listing is critical because it demonstrates what types of products you provide. First, be selective when you choose your classification and the key terms for your business – these are the elements your ideal customers are searching for. In the listing itself you want to give your potential customers the right amount of info – neither too much nor too little. You may consider adding photographs and video clips if you have them available – the more your potential shoppers can discover about you, the better.

Customer Reviews

A truly impressive feature of local business listings is the ability to post a review. These days it is supported by most local directories and can either be great for the owner of a listing, or horrible. Nonetheless, potential prospects are much more likely to make contact with you if they find out that others have been pleased with your service. And on top of that, many times your listing will appear more frequently than others if you have more reviews. That suggests implementing a strategy to ask past and current customers to post a review is very important.

In the event that you’re receiving undesirable feedback, make certain you react to the critic as soon as possible – they may simply have a little difficulty that you can sort out swiftly and easily. And even if it’s a more substantial issue, you will know what your customers think of you and what you can do to improve your company.

For more information on online marketing, including our monthly internet marketing newsletter visit http://www.eminentonlinemarketing.com.au

By Elmar Sandyck in Featured

gate“He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.” – Rabindranath Tagore

Content gating, do you know something about it?

Technically, it’s that thing you do as an online marketer to force potential clients or prospects to reveal their contact details first in order to get free downloadable content. You literally put up some sort of gate to block any interested person to automatically get free content without getting something in return for it. There is a Latin maxim that can perfectly describe this: quid pro quo, which literally means “this for that” or “something for something.”

Content gating is one of the most popular ploys that online marketers or entrepreneurs use to build an email list. It’s a white hat marketing practice but the thing is; it may not really be helping you in your business at all!

Ericka Chikowski wrote an article for the Entrepreneur magazine called, “Why You Shouldn’t Wall Off Your Web Content”. David Meerman Scott, a marketing strategist, mentioned that marketers who are practicing this kind of content gating are harming their business instead of improving it!

Here is a quote taken from the article:

The author of Real-Time Marketing and PR, Scott believes content gating doesn’t make for a good getting-to-know-you phase between marketers and potential customers. “I liken it to a singles bar where some guy comes up to you and says, ‘What’s your phone number?’ without even introducing himself. It sets up an adversarial relationship,” Scott says. Instead, consider collecting information after prospects get a taste of your expertise — and realize how much they can learn from you.

Scott has found that ungated content gets between 20 and 50 times more downloads. He says a gated piece of content that would be downloaded 2,000 times could skyrocket up to 100,000 downloads if you open the lock. So in what way do we ask for their information? Put up a secondary offer at the end of that freebie. But before prospects can view that webinar or download the next PDF, they’ll need to pony up their e-mail address. Assuming that only 5% of the 100,000 takes up your offer, you will still get around 5,000 leads.

And, adds Scott, “you will definitely know that they have read the white paper you sent them. I had a few conversations with sales people and they said that they prefer someone who has already read the white paper and wants to know more about it than someone who just gave out his/her e-mail address, got the white paper, and has never read it.”

So, should you or should you not do content gating? I’d really love to hear the comments of those who are practicing this and those who do not.

Online Marketer Elmar Sandyck Is Giving Free Online Tips On How To Use Content Gating. Learn All About It By Visiting http://www.InternetMastermindStrategy.com

By Alesya Krush in Featured

spn_exclusiveSometimes SEOs and site owners encounter the problem of their sites suddenly going down in the search engine results pages for no particular reason, it seems. When this happens, it is often hard to figure out why your rankings nosedived.

So, let’s consider possible reasons for and solutions to the problem. I arranged them by relevance, starting with the most common ones.

1. Your Site Got Penalized for Using Black-Hat SEO Techniques

Google has Webmaster Guidelines by which all SEOs and webmasters must abide. If Google finds out (or your site gets reported) that you are not playing by the rules, your rankings may drop substantially, or your site may get removed from Google’s index altogether.

As stated in Google Webmaster Guidelines, one must not “participate in link schemes” (buying/selling links is basically meant here), create “doorway pages”, or use “hidden text” on a site. These are considered illegitimate (Black-Hat) SEO practices and may incur Google’s wrath.

The Way Out

Well, if your site does get penalized, find out what might have caused this. Re-read Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and remove whatever is in violation from your site – then file a reconsideration request.

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