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Online Internet Marketing - 3 Top Tools and Services for an Effective
                 Internet Marketing Solution
By Sydney Nelson (c) 2007

Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and
continually evolving. The major players in the continual
evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and
consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual
changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include
a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will
outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutions
available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.

SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free
advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined
by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new
Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on
the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the
popular keywords. Statistics show better than 90% of people only
look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage
only click on the top search listing.

In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed
around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The
keywords must be included in the page's title, keyword META tag,
page's description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag),
throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on
the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options
that, although will not guarantee a first page listing, are
definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet
marketing strategy.

In most cases, there is too much competition for certain
keywords such as "golf clubs". A better strategy would be to use
"golf clubs Chicago" or handcrafted golf clubs". The more
specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of
free tools are available that will show the popularity of
keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a
monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page
knowing the keyword phrase's popularity. If you get the first
page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month
for instance, then it doesn't matter because your traffic will
be very limited.

Link Exchanges

Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page
optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are
perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. If you
download and install the Google toolbar on your browser, you
will see the Google PageRank of each site you visit. Your
PageRank is determined by the number of other sites linking to
your site, and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration.
Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the
site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above
are considered as authority sites and a back link will send
Google's spider to your page on a regular basis.

There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You
can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange and if
they agree you would return the favor by placing a link to their
site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of
sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to
quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search
engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two
might be well worth the investment in the long run, as new sites
are placed in a "sand box" by Google for several months until
they prove their longevity.

One back link from a PR8 site is worth 1,000 back links from PR2
or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low
ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site, because
each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too
many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be
reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do
your research on the site that offers to link to yours because
if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the
same fate and you probably will never recover from this.

A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to
limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And
by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its
algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now
the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the
PageRank of the sites listing to THAT link. Links from link
farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be
better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like
Yahoo or DMZ. It's definitely worth the investment as these are
authority sites and are a major vote for your site!

Blogs

As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major
factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the
enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A
very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the
first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline,
are preceded by an online search for more information. And a
large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People
are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of
interest.

The major blogs are updated on a daily basis which is very
important to Google's algorithm which uses the frequency of
updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in
the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by
the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to
the major article hubs such as EzineArticles.com. The article
hub benefits by having continually updated information (which
Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense
ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog at
the bottom of the article.

As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article
hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated
virally to a number sites on the Internet. This creates a number
of back links to your blog or your site generating an enormous
amount of pre-qualified free traffic.

In Summary

These are just a few of the most effective online Internet
marketing options available. Other options such as
auto-responder email, Ezine advertising and pay per click
advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet
marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you
definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your
listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly
optimized page.

Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques
such as generating back links with the major site directories,
link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs.
Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing
as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it's not a
sales page. Once they have received enough information and you
have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up
with a life time customer.
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Sydney Nelson is a Microsoft Certified Professional and has a
Bachelor in Information Technology. Please go to
http://PromoBlackBoxZone.com for more information on how to
dramatically increase your Website's conversions and presence on
the Internet. More articles on Internet marketing can be found
at http://blog.PromoBlackBoxZone.com
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