Article Categories

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Branding
• Business
• Cloud Technology
• Ecommerce
• Email Marketing
• Facebook
• Google
• Keywords
• LinkedIn
• Linking Strategies
• List Building
• Local Search
• Marketing
• Miscellaneous
• Mobile Applications
• Page Rank
• Pay Per Click
• RSS
• Sales Copy
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Security
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Networking
• SPAM
• SPN Featured Articles
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Virtual Office/Telecommuting
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• WordPress
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Editor's Corner
• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• John Sylvester
• Kalena Jordan
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

SEO Techniques to Promote Your Nonprofit

By Julie Ann Ross in SE Tactics

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial for any nonprofit that wants to have an online presence. This is not just limited to for profit companies that are trying to market themselves. It means more than just building a website and assuming your organization will win search rankings. You need to practice SEO in order to place higher than other nonprofits with the same name or in the same arena.

Take a quick test: Google these three search terms: your organization’s name, your organization’s name and city, and your organization’s field and city. For example, “Tampa Humane Society,” “Humane Society, Tampa FL,” and “animal welfare Tampa FL.”

Where did your organization rank? If you do some proper SEO, your site should appear at the very top of the search rankings, or at least the top 5. If your SEO efforts are lacking, your site may not have even appeared on the first page. We have seen several nonprofits whose websites are outranked rather severely, even by newspapers that wrote a single article about the organization. Obviously this will not do for nonprofits that are trying to increase donations through their online efforts.

One SEO technique for nonprofits is to publish your newsletter on your website. The easiest (and best) way to do it is to publish each individual article as a blog post. This helps your SEO by giving additional content for the search engines to find. The more content you create, the better your search engine performance. You can still publish your newsletter, but recycle the content and use it in more than one location.

Another option is to publish the entire month’s newsletter on an a separate web page. This will keep each article on one page, which will make it easier for your web programmer, but will not give you as many SEO benefits as the blog option. Remember, good SEO is based on frequency and recency, meaning update a lot, update often. If you can republish your articles as blog posts, you will have better SEO results than if you publish a single page newsletter.

Another SEO technique is to purchase a domain name that includes your field and city. This is one of the best ways to improve SEO rankings. Get a unique, local domain name — “TampaAnimalWelfare” or “TampaFloridaAnimalWelfare” — and create a single page with basic information about your organization, with links back to your main website. Be sure to use keyword-rich content in order to win the searches for that particular term. By creating a microsite like this, you can have a powerful backlink to your main website, which improves its rankings.

If you have offices in more than one city, use this technique for each city, county, and state. Or if your field can be defined by many different terms — animal welfare, animal protection, animal care, animal shelter — then use each term with your city. The more pages you can do this with, the better your search engine placement. You can purchase inexpensive domain names from sites like GoDaddy.com, and they will often provide you with a single page for free.

A final SEO technique is to use videos as part of your marketing. Messages from the CEO, videos of special events, speeches, and fund raising events. Host your videos on YouTube, create your own YouTube channel, and embed the videos in blog posts or web pages. Not only are videos some popular content for search engines, but it is another way to get your audience and donors engaged with your organization, and to deepen the relationship.

While many nonprofits do not like to think of themselves as a business, they need to remember that they are competing for discretionary dollars, not only with other nonprofits, but with restaurants, movie theaters, bookstores, and TV. The sooner nonprofits start approaching their fund raising and development as a real sales and marketing effort, they will begin to see dividends from their SEO efforts.

---

With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Ventures has refined the SEM SEO Expert Formula. Rostin Ventures offers local online marketing and SEO services that are affordable and easy to access and are combined to build the formula that drives search engine ranking through Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Social Marketing and web 2.0 communities and resources.

Backlink Follow Vs. NoFollow

By Davide Botticelli in SE Tactics

When linking to other websites from your site, you inevitably have a decision on your hands. Should you add a ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ attribute to the HTML anchor tag used to link to the third-party website, or should you leave it out (do-follow it).

In the eyes of the search engines, a do-followed link from your site is basically a vote for the site being linked to. In a way, you’re vouching for the legitimacy of the site you’re linking to. If that site turns out to be abusive, you risk hurting your site’s credibility with the search engines by linking to that site.

On the other hand, linking out to high-quality sites that are relevant to the subject matter of the page you are linking them from, is known to actually benefit your site. As long as you don’t overdo it, most search engines appreciate your letting them know that a site is worth linking to, and will give your site a little more credibility as a result. If you no-follow links to high-quality sites and pages that have content that is relevant to your site’s content, then you are basically telling the search engines, “I can’t be bothered to check that this site is worth linking to, but I’m going to link to it anyway.”, which obviously doesn’t encourage the search engines to have confidence in either you, or your site.

Of course, it’s not always possible to thoroughly vet each and every site you may link to on your website. There’s also the possibility that a site may change for the worse after you have visited it. The search engines understand this and will give you some leeway as a result. Nevertheless, it’s in your best interest to investigate the sites you are considering linking to wherever possible, and make an informed decision about whether you want to link to them, and how you want to link to them

Paragraph First impressions are often the best guide when you visit a new site. Does the site instill you with confidence? Does it look like the webmaster takes their site seriously, or are they just slapping up any old content, and spamming the site with keywords? Are there obvious issues with spelling and grammar, and with page layout and site navigation? Does it make you want to leave, or stay?

Is the content on the site relevant to your site, and in particular, is the page that you are linking to relevant to the page that you are linking it from?

You may also wish to check out some of the sites that the linked site is itself linking to. Are these quality sites and are they relevant to the page they are linked from? And yes, I know what you’re thinking – “Where does it end?”. A quick and cursory sampling of a small, random selection of the linked sites is all that you need, but this can sometimes tell you more than all the other factors combined. Remember that search engine link juice can flow a long way along the link chain.

If your overall impression of the site’s quality and relevance is good, then you should consider do-following it. If it is bad, or you don’t have the opportunity to check the site out, then consider no-following it.

NOTE: You can learn more about the ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ HTML anchor tag attribute by visiting the Wikipedia page at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow

---

Davide Botticelli – Seo serch engine, specialized in google position. posizionamento motori ricerca

How to Use Strong Keywords

By Brad Hess in SE Tactics

Of all the important parts of creating excellent content, using strong, keyword-rich content is among the most important. Keywords, links and site visits help searchers find your content and website. Without strong keywords your potential visitors won’t find you. If you are not using the same keywords in your content and meta tags that searchers use when they begin their search in Google, Bing, or other search engines, your site will not show up in the search results.

1. Keyword Research—Do some research to find out which keywords will best fit your content. First you need to realize that not all, if any, of your customers are familiar with industry jargon so create a broader list of keywords that your customers might be searching with. After you have created this list, run those keywords through a keyword research tool, such as Google Suggest to find out how many users are searching with those words, how many of those searched convert to sales, etc.

To get some good keyword suggestions, visit https://adwords.google.com and click on their link to get keyword ideas. From this page you can enter an industry phrase or your company website to get some good suggestions for keywords to use. The results also list the statistics of how many times each keyword is searched for every month, and other local statistics to help you determine which keywords will theoretically be the best to use as your tags.

2. Create Content Based on Keywords—After you have discovered the strongest keywords, create content about those keywords. You want to make sure that this is quality content but keep the topic centered around the specific keywords that you have chosen. You don’t have to use all of your keywords in one blog or article but try to use as many related keywords as possible.

3. Edit Content for Over-Use of Keywords. No one will read your content if it doesn’t make sense. Be sure to review your content to ensure its overall quality. Over-using keywords will make your content hard to understand. Above all, ensure quality for your readers and create something that they would like to read rather than something that only fits your purposes. In addition, if you over-use keywords in your document, the search engines will flag your content as potential abuse and not give you a high rating in search results.

4. Meta-Tags—Using Meta tags in your blogs, articles and press releases is basic and still important. This will help search engines find your relevant topics more quickly. Many blogs allow you to sort each blog into a general category of other similar blogs but using meta-tags is where you will really score points with search engines. Include all appropriate keywords in the Meta tags to ensure search engines will find your content and provide your content in the search engine results.

5. Good Titles—How well does your title relate to your content? Make sure that your title is directly related to your content. Use relevant keywords in your title as well. Search engines give more weight to titles than other content in your article. The title is also the first thing your potential visitors and readers will see in the search engine results so make sure it is enticing and relevant to their search.

Excellent Keywords are essential to future link-building and generating traffic to your website to increase your search engine rankings. Be very selective and use the most appropriate keywords for your content. Be sure to research relevant keywords and follow all of the steps to appropriately use strong keywords. Just because you create content doesn’t mean that people will come read it. Make it enticing and relevant to your reader.

---

For this and other articles by Brad Hess, please go to http://www.mymark.com/articles . MyMark, LLC is a media rich professional social networking website that gives you the tools to use social media optimization to enhance your search engine optimization and generate revenue. Visit http://www.mymark.com/ today to set up your free account!

Search Engine Optimization And Quality Content

By Kerry Russell in SE Tactics

The Importance of Quality Content for SEO One of the most common misconceptions is that in order to rank well for SEO you have to have pages and pages of content that are packed with keywords and phrases that relate to your topic. While it is very true that you do need to have a high quality design to your website that does incorporate important keywords, it is not true that you need to pack the website with too many keywords. In fact, quality content is much more important to most website owners anyway. In fact, quality content makes a difference to search engines too.

The one thing you have to realize is that website owners now need to focus on quality content more so than just seo terms. The fact of the matter is, quality content is not just something your readers want and expect to have, but it is also something that the search engines are learning from. Search engines like Google and Yahoo, for example, now have complex software programs that not only provide readers with the right website by using keywords but they also understand language. In fact, these programs are designed to actually keep learning language. If your website is jam packed with useless information but has a great deal of keywords related to your topic, you will not fool these search engines. In most cases, you will see that your seo results are not anywhere near what they could be.

However, many website owners fail to see this and they jam pack the website even more so with keywords believing that they may not have the right information at all. The key, on the other hand, is to write quality content that relates to your readers. In fact, after you have done all of the work to get the reader to your page, the last thing you want to do is to not encourage them to stay there and to perform the action that you want them to! Provide them with valuable information and chances are good they will stick around for the long haul. That is something you most definitely want to happen.

Instead of packing keywords with just basic information, provide quality content. Be sure that you avoid over stuffing your website with keywords. Focus less on density and more on quality content. In the end, that is what matters the most when it comes to improving your websites functionality.

---

Kerry Russell works full time in the Internet Marketing field. She helps others succeed online by sharing the knowledge and skills she has gained over past years. To learn how you can build and grow your very own online business from scratch visit: http://footsteps-to-your-success.com

Long Tail Keyword Choice for Niche Marketing

By Dr. Christopher in SE Tactics

Long tail marketing consists of niche marketing to a great many niches, selling small quantities of many products or services to each. Customers are targeted with “long tail keywords.” What does the term “long tail” refer to?

Chris Anderson popularized the “long tail” in an October 2004 Wired magazine article. Long tail keywords and niche marketing go together on the Internet. To see the long tail, get a spreadsheet of related keywords with their monthly searches, sort the keywords in decreasing order by searches and make a graph of the searches. You should find a very few keywords with many searches and a long tail of the distribution with few.

Most of us can successfully compete only for keywords in the tail of the distribution. The questions are: Which keywords in the tail? And compete how?

You can divide the keywords four search bands: the super, the high, the medium, and the low search keywords. The border between low and medium searches can be set to somewhere around 500 searches per month; between medium and high around 1000; and between high and super around 10,000.

You can divide the keywords into four competition bands as well: the super, the high, the middle, and the low competition keywords. The border between low and medium competing pages — pages containing the exact keyword phrase — can be set to somewhere around 10,000 searches per month; between medium and high around 20,000; and between high and super around 35,000.

To use a metaphor, the number of searches is the quality of the fruit — the higher the number of searches, the more ripe, plump, and tasty it is. The level of competition is where the fruit is on the tree. The super competitive keywords are on the tip top branches. The low competition keywords don’t even require you stretch. There are two not perfectly consistent principles for harvesting the fruit: (1) harvest the best fruit you can, and (2) pick the low-lying fruit first. Here are some suggestions on how to do that:

1. Remove the super high competition keywords from your list. You will not get that traffic.
2. Remove keywords with too high a level of competition for the number of searches. Why bother competing for them?
3. Do not target the high competition keywords first. Devote your time where it will do more immediate good.
4. Usually it is worth optimizing web pages by hand only for middle- or higher-band keywords. An exception might be for selling products with a high profit per sale — provided also the searcher is intending to buy.
5. You can devote web pages to low search and competition keywords if you generate the pages. That way, you only have to create the template once, but you get to reuse it for many keywords. It would not be worth your effort to write each one individually.
6. You can use the high end of the low band keywords in alternative titles of ezine articles. When you submit the articles through a submission service such as Submit Your Article or Unique Article Wizard, those services submit randomized variations of a your article to hundreds or thousands of article directories and blogs. They permit many alternate titles. You can have many articles spread around the web with titles including the low band keywords, all with less than twice the effort of submitting a single article. All these articles invite interested people to come to your web site. For the low competition keywords, appearance in a page title and page name (both of which you typically get in an article directory) may be enough to get the article listed on page one of the search results. Many page-one listings with few searches apiece is in the spirit of long-tail marketing.
7. There are a lot of searches for phrases the search engines have not seen before. You can devote a page as a destination for these very low frequency keywords. Create a page with a couple of thousand words of text filled with words and phrases related to your topic. When the search engine encounters some semantically-related but not yet indexed query, your page would be a good recommendation. You can also drop low-competition keywords into the text. They will bring a few searches themselves as well as contribute to the semantic classification of the page.

Divide your keywords by search frequency and by numbers of competing pages. It will help you plan your long-tail marketing.

---

For more information on using long tail keywords for ezine article marketing or to improve web site traffic, visit the web site http://ezinearticleshow.com/ created by Dr. Thomas Christopher, a Colorado Front Range public speaker.

Understanding the Many Facets of SEO Consulting

By Julie Ann Ross in SE Tactics

SEO consulting has become an integral part of Internet marketing success in today’s saturated web world. As corporate America inevitably shifts to a focus on online information and transactions, the reputation of a company can be made or broken in a matter of mouse clicks. As a result, the importance of being “found” online and being found the right way cannot be overstated.

Many companies understand the need for optimization of their webpages, but know little about how to make it effectively happen. Half-hearted optimization attempts or those created by employees who are untrained in the area of SEO can easily sink a business rather than help it rise above.

A certified SEO consultant can help a business design a plan for their website and their company, helping them to rank on the first page of search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, in addition to any number of smaller and more specifically-focused search engines. However, SEO consulting is not simply limited to being #1 on every page. There are multiple facets to any solid SEO campaign, and every business would do well to meet with an SEO consultant to discuss which parts of keyword and website optimization would be most beneficial to their unique goals. Perhaps the best way to understand the impact of SEO consulting is to briefly examine five of the ways in which a consultant can help grow a business by effectively managing a client’s online presence.

First, SEO consultants can take a look at a company’s local presence. How well is the business known in the neighborhood and the community? If the answer is not at all and its target market is its immediate surroundings, then it may be best to undergo a consultation for a local SEO campaign. Specialists can help to get the business listed in multiple local directories, as well as the larger national directories, to get the process of positive recognition started. The most loyal and dedicated customers can be some of the best supporters of a business, both by word-of-mouth and online.

However, local optimization is often not enough for many companies – merely an excellent first step on the long road to online success. SEO consultants can also examine a business’s national footprint, and determine how to most effectively increase their online profile. Using the latest Web 2.0 technology, a solid SEO consulting program can drive the right kind of traffic to a company’s website – the kind that is interested not simply in “window shopping”, but that has a strong chance of converting and re-visiting.

SEO consulting can also take the form of customized packages, such as a focus on individual product submission to search engines for companies that are heavily involved in E-commerce. For these companies, hiring a consultant to enter each of their products individually into engines such as Google can dramatically increase sales volume.

While SEO consultants typically focus on ways to drive traffic to a company’s webpage and to make sure that information about the company is easily available, there are situations in which reverse SEO consulting can be useful. In these instances, incorrect or damaging information about the company may have become public or highly ranked, and an SEO consultant can help to ensure that this misinformation is pushed to the far recesses of major search engines, and supplanted with updated and corrected data.

Search engine optimization and the submission of the relevant details to major search engines are practices that require planning and research. Finding the right SEO consultant to provide effective services at a reasonable price can vastly improve a company’s Internet presence.

---

With 20 years in marketing, 10 in online marketing, Principals of Rostin Ventures are on the cutting edge. Combining Social Media Optimization with more traditional SEO and SEM methods, Rostin Ventures is a consulting firm specializing in enhancing clients’ online presence and managing their public relations online. SEO, SEM and ORM, Online Reputation Management, are combined in this successful formula. http://www.rostinventures.com

Do Not Make These 10 Common SEO Mistakes

By Martin Sejas in SE Tactics

The time has come to list the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by website owners worldwide.

If you are not too happy about your website’s rankings on the search engines, then look through this list and make sure that the 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 realise that the mistakes covered here are all based on my previous articles about SEO.

On Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made on your actual website.

1. Not Targeting 1 Keyword Per Page

This is the most important facet of on page SEO yet so many people are either unaware of its importance or forget to do it. It’s heaps easier to target a single keyword per page than to target 10 keywords per page. At the very maximum, you can target 2 keywords but you should try to keep it to just one. Focusing your efforts on 1 keyword per page will get greater results quicker. I can guarantee it.

2. No Keyword In URL

The URL of each page should have the keyword you are targeting for that page. If it doesn’t, then it’s just going to be harder for you to get that page ranking for that target keyword. Fix up your URL if you have to because this is crucial to SEO success.

3. No Keyword In Title Tag

I cannot count the number of pages I’ve been webpages not have their target keyword in the title tag. Just in case you’re not aware, the title tag is what appears at the top of your browser when you’re on a webpage. This is the one mistake I see the most because it is so obvious when I visit a webpage. It’s amazing how many home pages of websites have the word “Home” in their title tags. You MUST have the target keyword in your title tag because it will make a huge difference to your SEO efforts. This is certainly one of the top 10 SEO mistakes out there today.

4. Bad Use Of Meta Description And Meta Keywords

The most common mistake regarding meta description is people not using it at all. Just in case you weren’t aware, the meta description is a short description which is used to describe your website in search engine result listings. You should use it to encourage people to visit your website when they find you on the search engines. It’s also doesn’t hurt to have your target keyword there.

Regarding meta keywords, the most common mistake people commit is putting too many keywords there. You should limit yourself to a maximum of 5 to 8 keywords because putting more will only get you punished by the search engines for keyword spamming.

5. Bad Keyword Density

Unfortunately, many people are still committing this grave SEO mistake. Some are mentioning their target keyword as much as possible on their webpage to try and get it to rank highly. It used to work in the early days on the Web when engines were not intelligent but these days it can only guarantee your websites getting punished or even banned.

On the other hand, there are also people who do not use their keyword enough on their webpages. This is equally bad because it means that the search engines have no idea as to what keyword your webpage is trying to rank highly for.

When it comes to keyword density, your goal should be 3% which is not too much and not too little for good SEO results.

Off Page SEO Mistakes

This section refers to SEO mistakes made outside your website, but which hamper your website’s ability to rank highly on the search engines.

6. Bad Keyword Research

Keyword research is the basis for SEO success. If you target keywords with a high level of competition, then your ability to rank highly and get traffic will be diminished in the short term. On the other hand, you should not simply target keywords because of low competition because there may not be enough people searching for that keyword. It’s all about finding a balance between the number of searches and the number of websites competing for that keyword. Using tools such as Google Keyword Tool can help you achieve that objective.

7. No Keyword In Anchor Text

Off page SEO is all about building backlinks aka links back to your website. Nevertheless, while doing that, most people forget to put their keywords in the anchor text of the backlink. For example, if “computer repairs” was the primary keyword of your website, then you want to be sure that computer repairs is in the anchor text, just like in the following:

“Visit the best computer repairs service in town.”

Please note that the above is just an example.

This must be one of the most simple top 10 SEO mistakes committed today.

8. No Anchor Text Variety

While it’s great to use your target keyword in the anchor text of your backlinks, you must also mix and match with other keywords. In other words, if you use the same keywords in the anchor text of 100 links, then the search engines will regard this as suspicious and will punish your website. For this reason, you should find about 5 other related keywords and use them in your anchor text too. The greater the variety, the better your SEO results will be.

9. No Link Source Variety

There are plenty of ways to get backlinks, however, one of the top 10 SEO mistakes committed by people too often is by using only a minimal amount of link sources. For example, some people simply use article marketing to get their backlinks. Others just use social media. You need to be using a large range of sources to get your backlinks. The reason why this is the case is that the more sources you utilise, the more natural the backlinks will appears to the search engines, and the higher it will rank.

10. No Natural Build Up Of Links

Building on the previous mistake, you have to make sure that the amount of backlinks your website gets takes place in a natural, human-like manner. For instance, getting 300 links in just a single week will certainly grab the attention of the search engines and as a result, they will punish your website accordingly. However, if you get 300 links over the course of a month, then that will appear to be more natural and they will more than likely than not reward you.

Fix Them And Then Avoid Them

I suggest that you go through all of your websites and see whether they are committing the SEO mistakes covered in this post. After correcting them, it’s all about avoiding these common SEO mistakes so that your website get the rankings and traffic they thoroughly deserve.

---

Martin Sejas – If you are looking for an SEO consulting service based in Sydney which can guarantee results for your website, don’t forget to register for your free consultation.

2010 SEO Checklist

By Debbie Everson in SE Tactics

2009 saw a lot of exciting changes and additions to the world of online marketing and search engine optimization. Some important events that took place were the launch of BING, announcement of Google Caffeine, the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft search. 2010 will see real time web emerging which will become more popular than the traditional methods of optimization.

Following is the list of pointers to get your website on top, reach out to potential customers and ensure brand visibility in 2010.

1. Decrease Webpage Load Time. Google’s Matt Cutts recently hinted that the load time of a website may affect its ranking in the search engines. That is, the faster a website loads, the better its chances to rank well for its niche keywords. Website load time is touted as the next big step towards improved rankings. The pre-requisites to a good webpage load time are; reputable web host and fast internet connection.
2. Get Listed in Google Local Search. Getting listed in Google Local Search ensures brand visibility in front of visitors from the nearby places. It has been proven that the number of visitors to a website increase exponentially when listed in local search results. The reason being, a customer will always prefer to purchase a quality product which is easily available in his or her vicinity rather than order it from another unfamiliar city or state.
3. Get Involved in Social Media. Social Media is the flavor of the season and in 2010 organizations are going to actively engage in conversation and social networking and reach out to their potential customers. Social Media Marketing is a must for every organization as it helps create brand awareness and build relationships with consumers in the highly competitive market. Micro targeting and Personalization will be the keywords in 2010.
4. Optimize Your Website Mobile Users. With and ever increasing number of people tweeting and using Facebook from their mobile devices, a lot of organizations are now finally paying attention to how their websites appear on mobile phones. You can have your website appear on the mobile under the same URL or have a special domain for the same. The most common way is to have the domain name as mobile.websitename.com.
5. Apply Web Analytics to its full potential. There are hundreds of web analytics tools in the market which provide a mountain of data pertaining to the visitor’s usage. Some of the most well known web analytics tools are Omniture, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics etc. Web Analytics tools can answer the “how” but not the “why”. That is, you can find out how many visitors checked the product catalogue webpage, but not the answer to, why the visitors didn’t place an order for the product. Organizations need to dissect the data from web analytics tools and successfully apply its learning’s to enhance their visitors experience and in turn increase sales revenues.

In 2010 companies must go beyond organic search engine optimization by integrating social media marketing and optimizing their websites for mobile users.

---

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants and receive your free consultation.

Tips For Forum Posting

By Karen Thomson in SE Tactics

Posting on forums is one of the cheapest and fastest ways in which you can advertise your affiliate products on the Internet. However, in order to do this successfully, you must do a number of things with care. You cannot simply start a thread which contains your affiliate link straight away. You will almost definitely get banned from that forum board and you certainly won’t get any sales from it.

The general procedure involves making multiple posts on a forum board before you even setup a signature file, which includes a link to your site. Even if the particular forum you are using does not specifically mandate this, you will want to do this, anyway, as it will increase your credibility – which is your real goal.

Finding a forum related to your niche is relatively easy to do. Simply type the name of your interest followed by the word ‘forum’ into your favorite search engine i.e. if your niche is golf, type in ‘golf forum’ into your browser and you will likely get a list of active forums on the return page. Alternatively there are a couple of URLs that you can use to obtain the same information. They are “big-boards.com” which is currently the largest forum directory on the Internet or you can use “board123.com/forum_directory.php” which has some lesser directories but does contain some forums that the first doesn’t list.

Once you have chosen a few forums that you are interested in, you will need to find out what their rules are when it comes to signature files. Some don’t allow links and others do but may not accept these links to be of a commercial nature. It’s vitally important to stick to the rules of these forums or you will find yourself banned pretty quickly.

Once you have your list of forums that allow commercial links, it’s time to start posting! Right from the beginning, make sure that you post messages that are meaningful and relevant. Set yourself up as an expert in your niche and try to give value to the group by posting useful articles and lists that others will appreciate. Only once you have developed a good reputation on these forums which will take approximately one to two weeks of regular posting, you can begin advertising through your forum signature. If it is allowed, make your signature eye-catching by using an assortment of colors, words and symbols. Link your signature to an affiliate product or an auto-responder course purposefully designed to capture email addresses.

Repeat this process throughout all the relevant forums that you discovered earlier but ensure you pick forums that have high traffic, are used regularly and are audience specific to your niche. Not all forums are created equal and you do not want to waste time on those that are just too quiet to drum up any attention. Remember to add a memorable signature file so that you draw people to click on your link and you will find that this method will pay off considerably and much faster than other methods.

---

Karen Thomson is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant. If you found this article useful, claim your free social media for business e-book and more goodies, available at =>

http://simplecashblogbonus.com

How to Find Long Tail Keywords for Niche Marketing

By Dr. Christopher in SE Tactics

Long tail keyword tools are essential for small web entrepreneurs. You cannot compete for the most searched keywords — by now they have insurmountable competition. You must put together collections of micro niches which you can dominate. Each niche needs keywords by which people can find it. You need to do long tail keyword research to find those niches of low-competition keywords.

You need to find a large number of keywords, the number of searches for them per day or month, and the amount of competition for the keywords. The competition, at minimum, consists of all those web pages containing the keyword. More detailed information would include the number of pages optimized for the keyword. You can get all this information for free on the web, from Google; although, there is software available that automates the process for you.

You can use the Google keyword selector tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal as a long tail keyword generator. It suggests a large number of keywords with low search volume but low competition.

When you type in a keyword into the Google keyword selector tool, it suggests related keywords and gives you a downloadable spreadsheet of their search frequencies, and AdWords competition.

Sort by declining numbers of searches and delete those keywords with too few. They are not worth optimizing pages for. What’s too few searches? That is up to you, but I have heard people say they set the limit somewhere between 200 and 300 searches per month (7 to 10 per day).

If you wish, you can reserve those keywords with too few searches to sprinkle into ezine articles. Keywords with low competition may bring the article to page one of a search engine’s results.

Next you use the Google search page. It is not usually thought of as a long tail keywords tool, but you use it for two competition searches. Do a Google search for the keyword in quotes to find the number of pages containing those keywords as a phrase, that is, adjacent to each other. The first page of the results gives an estimate of the number of pages containing the phrase. Do not search without quotes — that counts all pages containing all the words in the keyword phrase even if they are not close on the page.

You can cut the keywords with too many exact matches from your list. Your pages will be lost in the clutter if you try to compete for them. What’s too many? Everybody has their own limit, but I have heard recommendations of somewhere between 25,000 and 35,000.

The next step of long tail keyword research is to find the number of pages optimized for the keyword, and you can find the number of pages optimized for a keyword by a Google search. A page is optimized for a keyword if (1) the keyword is embedded in the URL of the page, for example in the domain name or in the page name, (2) the keyword is in the page title, or (3) the keyword is in the anchor text of one or more links pointing to the page.

You tell Google to return the pages with these optimizations by searching for intitle:”keyword”, inurl:”keyword”, and inanchor:”keyword”. Delete the keywords with too many competing, optimized pages, more than 50 or 100, say. (You can find information on advanced Google query operators at http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/operators.html )

Pages simultaneously optimized for the keyword in title, URL, and anchor text indicate that someone is intentionally trying to compete for the keyword.

If you want to sell to the people searching with these keywords, it would help to know if those people intend to buy. You can check their “online commercial intention” (OCI), at least estimates of their OCI, from an algorithm that some people at Microsoft have trained — there are questions about the methodology and assumptions used in this tool. Give the tool a keyword and it gives you a fraction between zero and one. Zero means the search seems to have no commercial intent whatsoever, and one means the people searching seem intent on buying NOW. The fraction indicates a kind of confidence level in the answer. It does not indicate a fraction of the people intent on buying. In experiments, the average value returned for non-commercial keywords was about 0.2, and the average for commercial keywords was about 0.83. Fractions near 0.5 had a high rate of incorrect classifications. Many people who intend to sell delete those keywords with an OCI less than 0.6 or 0.7. The calculator is on page http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/

By using the Google keyword selector tool, the Google search page, and optionally the MSN online commercial intention page, you can do your own long tail keyword research for free.

---

Dr. Christopher, a Colorado Front Range public speaker, has set up a web site devoted to ezine article SEO at http://ezinearticleshow.com/ where he has gathered videos and other information about finding long tail keywords.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

Home Newsletter Archives SEO Forums Webmaster Tools Webmaster Resources Link to SPN Top SEO Tools Website Templates SPN Partners Contact Us Privacy Advertise

ExactSeek SiteProNews MetaWebSearch SPN Videos EzineHub ISEDN DropJack NewWebDirectory.com SEO-News SEO-News Forums Blog Search FreeWebSubmission SmartWebGadgets