How to Get Free Traffic from YouTube

Google is the largest search engine in the world followed by the internal search engine of the video sharing site YouTube, which Google also owns. Perhaps because of this relationship, many users are noticing more YouTube videos in Google’s own search results. Because of this, many marketers are realizing that YouTube can be used to drive traffic back to a website.
Many want to begin making videos to drive traffic to their main websites, but few know how to do this properly. Learning how to get free traffic from YouTube is easy with the right strategies.
Target Long Tail and Ultra Long-Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are specific and descriptive phrases, with ultra long tail keywords being even more specific, but also lower in search volume. They often have less competition, but convert visitors into leads and sales at a much greater rate.
YouTube’s domain authority is so high, that videos targeting well chosen keywords may rank highly with little to no promotion. Larger phrases can be targeted as well, but targeting the long tail phrases produces the largest return in the shortest amount of time.
Add Clickable Video Links
YouTube videos are embeddable on other websites. Adding in a link to the video itself lets viewers click to visit your site. People viewing a video on a third party site may also click the links within the video to visit your site.
Put the link in early when the video begins playing. It is also possible to use YouTube’s annotation tool to link to related videos to increase video views and the chance of getting a click through to a website.
Videos Need a Call to Action Too
Many video creators miss this point. It is important to put links in the video and the description, and to ask or tell viewers to click on them for more information. Some calls to action need to be stronger than others, but this can be tested to determine the best way to get viewers to click through.
Create a Great Channel Page
If viewers like a video and choose to subscribe to the channel, they will often visit that channel. YouTube channels can be edited to include custom background colors and images, descriptions, tags, and the option of which videos to show first to new subscribers.
Write an Article Length Description
Many make the mistake of only adding a link to a website and several tags in their video descriptions. This can be okay for established channels, but those trying to drive more users to a website, it is a bad practice to place a bare link with no other content.
Taking the time to include an article to accompany the video serves several important functions. One is that it gives users the incentive to stay on the video for its entirety and that enough interest to earn a click on one of the links in the description itself.
The other and more important point is that more content creates more opportunity for videos to rank highly for a larger quantity of long tail keywords. Content does not need to be any longer than a short blog post, and can be optimized in a similar fashion as blog content when targeting specific and secondary long tail keywords and phrases.
Link to More Than One Property
Getting traffic from YouTube can happen in a roundabout way. Some users are more interested in engaging socially than they are clicking through to a website to read more. Putting links in to social media profiles offers another chance to build trust and develop an audience. When the audience begins trusting the quality and information of videos, they may be more likely to visit a website.
Follow the Trends
YouTube is showing no signs of slowing down. Online video consumption is estimated by some to increase over 30% per year, per person. YouTube’s unique standing as a Google owned property, as well as trends concerning consumer preference make clear the need to establish a presence on YouTube. The trends speak for themselves.

Guide to a Successful YouTube Channel

Day to day, an astounding amount of traffic flows through the vast network that we call the Internet. It may come as no surprise that a large chunk of that traffic is directly attributed to users watching videos on YouTube. The social video powerhouse has led to the success of thousands of users over the years. Ideas are easy to come by; it’s only those who put the proper work in that reach their goals. People near and far are creating content, uploading it to YouTube, growing their subscribers and making money while doing something they thoroughly enjoy!
You may be contemplating creating a YouTube channel of your very own. It’s far too common to see a new channel start only to end abandoned a month later. Having a game plan, figuring out your challenges and setting goals will serve you well. This guide will provide clear and straight-forward advice that will surely lead your new channel to continued success.
What’s the big idea?
You probably have a good idea about what you’d like your channel to be about. The issue is (unless your idea is very unique) there’s likely others who have already thought of it and are far ahead of you in the game. It’s a good idea to stick to the subject you love but introduce a unique element to your videos. Anything that will set your channel apart from the rest will have a large impact later on down the road.
From a practical point-of-view, check out what options you may have for filming and editing. Test any cameras you own and use the one that provides the best picture. If the quality isn’t where you’d like it to be, a new camera might be necessary. Start to think about how many videos you’ll be uploading at any given time. Don’t take on more work than you have time or energy for.
A Catchy Name
Perhaps the most fun (initially) and most agonizing part of creating a YouTube channel, or anything for that matter, is choosing a name. Writing a list of names and then asking friends to pick which ones they like and give their own opinion can help you decide as well as spark additional ideas. Take a look at the front page of YouTube, it’s evident that many successful YouTubers possess short, smart and sometimes humorous account names. Ultimately a name that will stick with people is what you’re aiming for.
It’s impossible to predict the future but it’s naive to not to plan for it. A not so unrealistic scenario may present itself later and you don’t want to be left wondering what to do. If the direction of your videos changes, choosing a name too specific may confuse your subscribers. It could potentially make marketing your channel more difficult as well.
Curb Appeal
Books are judged by their covers, people judge others by how they dress and visitors will judge your channel by the first thing they see. If someone happens upon one of your videos, that video had better be 100%. If someone happens upon your channel, that channel background had better be professional and captivating. Think about the visual style you’d like your videos to embrace. Intro and outro clips are something to consider. A custom and unique YouTube channel background is a good idea and will help your channel stand out.
Time to Sell!
The videos you provide are the most important part of your channel but a close second is marketing it. Having amazing content is great but you’ll quickly realize that a “set and forget” approach will not work. You’ll need to get out there and get your channel known. Some common marketing techniques on YouTube are to befriend and comment on channels that are similar to yours. Not only will you be seen in the comments of videos but you may eventually earn some shout-outs. Doing collaborative videos with other more established YouTubers can be a quick way to expose your channel to a wide audience that will be interested in your content.
Marketing your YouTube channel doesn’t only involve action within the YouTube.com site. As you well know, social networking is a hot topic and more people than ever use sites like Facebook and Twitter. Setup a Facebook page as well as a Twitter page. You’ll want to inform followers of new videos but more importantly, provide them with something a bit more. Users need a reason to follow or like you, only posting that you’ve uploaded a new video isn’t reason enough. Holding giveaways on YouTube and utilizing your Facebook and Twitter pages can help gather interest very quickly. Pick a prize that closely relates to what your videos are about. This will ensure a higher probability that the extra eyes you harvest will actually stick around.
Expectations and Goals
If you love something and have great enthusiasm for it than the work is easy and fun but if that work becomes too much for you to handle than you may grow to hate what you once thought was a blast to do. Be honest with yourself; only devote time that you know you’ll have available. This doesn’t mean squeeze in 30 minutes here or there. All your videos have to be your best work. Remember, first impressions are everything.
Staying consistent is very important. If three videos a week is too much, do two videos a week. If two videos a week is too much than do one video a week. Whatever you decide, stay consistent. Continue to upload videos regularly, keep commenting on videos and interacting within the community. Set goals that challenge you but not so much so that you set yourself up for failure. As your following grows and your channel gets more activity, you’ll find yourself raising the bar and setting higher and more challenging goals to obtain. As you reach those goals, set your sights on the next. Follow this guide and it will lead to a successful YouTube channel.
About the author: Josiah S. has been helping YouTube users reach success for 5 years. He runs BackgroundTube.com – a site that offers professional (free and custom) YouTube channel backgrounds, avatars and more.

Basic Marketing Tips for Local Businesses

Local businesses have the best chances of success if they engage with their customers and communities both online and offline. A web presence is now essential for all types of businesses, but a new business owner will also build long-term customer loyalty with traditional ways of networking and marketing. After using available local resources for starting a business, an entrepreneur can leverage community involvement, local directory listings and social media campaigns as effective marketing strategies.
Research Local Business Resources
Many new entrepreneurs are unaware of how many resources are available to help them plan, organize and implement a new business venture. The US Small Business Administration is one of the most recognizable organizations that can assist local businesses, and the SBA has chapters in a large number of communities. Representatives can offer consultations about writing a good business plan, preparing financial budgets for a new venture, understanding legal requirements and recruiting the best employees.
The SBA and similar organizations also offer financial assistance for new business start-ups. Entrepreneurs who meet certain application criteria can secure grants or low-interest loans to help them offset expenses, such as office rental deposits, computers and beginning product inventory. First-time business owners often feel overwhelmed at the large volume of information to organize for a new start-up, so SBA counselors are available to help them with each step of the process. These types of entrepreneurial training sessions often carry little or no cost as well.
Invest in the Local Community
Once a new business is up and running, the next important step is to become an invested part of the community. Some business owners feel this investment needs to be financial in the form of donations, and they are unable to do so before they begin turning bigger profits. Other methods of investing in the local community do not need to be financial at all. They can include mentoring local students who are interested in a business’s niche, offering unpaid internships or speaking at local high schools and colleges about what is involved in being a business owner.
Use Local Listing Directories
Promoting, advertising and marketing a local business are key areas of focus, and they are critical to bringing in steady customer numbers. Establishing an online presence is now an essential component of these efforts, and the first recommended step is to sign up for several local business directories. Some of the most recognizable ones are Yelp, Manta, Yahoo Local, Google Places and Yellow Pages. Business owners can submit their company names, street addresses, phone numbers and website links to a local directory for potential customers to find when searching for specific products or services.
Submitting a business’s basic information to these directories is one of the simplest first steps to building the necessary web presence. Many first-time business owners are unsure if they need to have a complete company website before submitting to local directories. While a complete website is ideal, a new business owner can decide to have just the basic website created before submitting to local directories. The sooner a company’s contact information is online, the better the potential for attracting higher customer numbers. A new business’s website can always be expanded and updated after local directory submission.
Learn about Social Media Campaigns
After signing up with local directories and launching a company website, a local business has higher chances of profitability if the owner interacts with customers through social media. This marketing strategy helps a business owner learn details about his or her customer base, such as preferences and needs that the company can meet with products or services. Essential parts of a successful social media presence include a Facebook business page, a Twitter account and a LinkedIn profile. Some savvy entrepreneurs also spend time talking to their core customers about which other social sites they use on a regular basis. This tactic will help with strategies for expanding a local business’s social media influence.
Local directories and social media profiles are two means of attracting online attention from potential customers. The number of social sites and associated information may seem large to business owners who are new to social networking, so many start-up consultants recommend beginning with smaller and simpler strategies in this case. Combining online marketing with community participation will make a difference in a local business’s long-term profitability.

Promoting your Business for Free

Having a website is no longer considered a luxury; it is a necessity and especially if you own a business. With costs amounting in a downed economy, “inexpensive” is good, but “free” is even better. Having a free business website is not only a great way to cut huge costs, but is the best way to promote yourself. People aren’t turning to the phone book or the papers anymore; your audience is online and they are searching for your services every day. But be cautioned; just because a website is free doesn’t mean it will cost you. In fact, it could even hurt your business. Many companies that offer free websites make their money by plastering their client’s sites with advertisements. This is a sure way to detour your potential clients. Also, they will use generic cookie-cutter templates and out-dated technology to cut costs.
When utilizing a free website it is imperative that they offer their clients the following:

• Professional, unique design
• Current, state-of-the-art technology
• No advertisements
• 24 hour customer support
• Affordable, upgradable websites
• Advanced features and tools
• Marketing support

When finding a company that offers these must-haves, give them a shot and test the water. Remember that they need to earn your business, just as you work hard to earn business from your clients. Determine if they are meeting your expectations and representing your brand as you specified. If everything looks in order, then keep active with your website, and start reaching out to a broader sphere of influence.
Some “Dos and Don’ts” in Running your Business Website
Networking and link building is all part of the work involved in running a successful business website, but don’t make this overly complicated. In an article published through The Huffington Post, the author warns business owners not to overwhelm their website with links that will send their potential customers into “surf shock”. Keeping your website clean and free from annoyances will offer better results in keeping people in your website. After all, if you went into a shop and it had signs posted everywhere and clutter in the aisles, would you want to stay?
Using other online resources to promote your website is not only a smart move, but in today’s competitive online market it is essential to your growth. Many website companies offer marketing support with social media platforms such as Facebook. If your company provides this option, USE IT. Recently, Facebook has gained tremendous popularity as an online tool for business marketing. Its mission was, and still is, to make the world a more open place by providing a platform in which people can share thoughts and ideas. Approximately 175 million Americans log into Facebook every day. It has grown to become a huge cultural obsession, and businesses are tapping into this. Be sure to contact your website company’s marketing department, and ask them how you can utilize Facebook to broaden your sphere of influence in the business world.
Your Brand, Your Reputation
Having a business website not only serves the purpose to offer a platform where clients can make transactions with you, but a good website will allow you to control your brand and reputation. Your free website must showcase you as an expert and leader in your industry. You will also want to use it to build credibility, and to ensure you have your client’s trust. Also, running a blog on your website is a great way to give your website good organic ranking in the search engines, attract new customers, engage current clients, and promote yourself as an expert in your field.
Remember, your free business website is not “an online business card” for people to refer to; it is your identity as a professional. Be selective in which company you partner with to build your website. You are, after all, putting your identity, brand, and reputation in their hands.

Keyword Research: Your Visitors are Not Robots

Most small business owners are not proficient with keyword research. If you spend a little bit of time looking at the comments of any number of marketing blogs and forums, you’ll see story after story of websites that never rank for their keywords. And if they do, they never convert their visitors into subscribers or customers. The truth is – with the right approach and follow-through, keyword research can lead to an effective marketing campaign.
Most start with a specific niche, like “playing the guitar”. Then they open up the Google Keyword Tool, paste in their main keyword and look for terms that get traffic without massive competition.
They may even do a couple of “allintitle:” searches while they’re at it…
After that, they write or order a few articles, build some links, wait to start ranking and making money, and then get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. They picked the wrong keywords and now have wasted huge amounts of time on their website.
Keyword research is a big part of a reaching success. In a lot of cases, choosing the wrong keywords can be harmful to a website’s content development and strategy. Keyword research drives content strategy, which drives conversion rates.
Most marketers are doing incomplete keyword research. Proper research takes time and effort, but the following strategy is both effective, and fairly simple once you get into a rhythm. It also helps to use a good keyword research tool.
We Still Need Search Volume
Knowing the estimated monthly search volume of particular keywords does two things. The first is that it gives you an idea of the volume of traffic you can get if rank highly.
Second, is that knowing that a keyword gets a certain amount of interest can help to guide your content development efforts. From determining whether an article is even worth writing, to the headlines you use, search volumes provide valuable insights.
Choose your niche, figure out what sort of competition you are willing to deal with, determine the lowest amount of traffic worth your time, and then pick the right keywords.
Transitioning to Market Research
Niches can be broken down into relevant keywords. Relevant keywords can be broken down into relevant, topic based stories. Telling those stories requires that you know your audience.
There are two great places to get a feel for your market first. Number one is Quantcast, a provider of demographic data on websites and niches. The other is the trusty discussion forum.
Quantcast has long been a secret weapon of the most thorough marketers online. Knowing the demographic makeup of an audience is very powerful. Both content and product development depend heavily on this type of information.
Doing forum research is a pain, but it is still relevant and valuable in 2012, and will probably continue to provide value in 2022. Choose one or two and track the most popular threads, then move along.
We only want and need to track a handful of forum threads because we now have social media and a few easy tools to track the information most relevant to our needs.
Using Social Media Resources
Since so many online marketers seem to be a little squeamish when it comes to SEO, we still need to find a way to drive cheap, targeted traffic to our sites. Just creating useful content isn’t enough. It has to be the right kind.
Everyone knows about social media, but few have any idea how to make it fit their general marketing strategy. When it comes to research, there are three important tools to use.
One is Twilert, which sets up alerts on whatever keywords you provide to show what has been shared on Twitter.
The other is Sulia. Sulia lets you monitor what is going on in a Pinterest type of layout, with a storyboard feel to it.
Both of these are great to see what is happening on Twitter, and with Sulia, Facebook as well.
The last one is Topsy. Topsy is a social search engine that will let you enter either a URL, or a keyword, to see what is getting shared the most.
Keeping Up with the Action
This part is a bit boring, but simple to do:

• Set up a spreadsheet with keywords, traffic volume, and competition.
• Add in values for social media shares. While you’re at it, add the top ten most influential people in your market and track their sharing and interactions as well.
• Look for similarities in headlines and the types of stories that spur activity in your market.
• Start your own profiles, and begin sharing other people’s work, interact with them and get an even clearer overall feel for the “flow” of your market.

Take a couple of weeks to compile this information, then sit down and sort through it. Look for similarities in stories with a lot of social sharing and comments. Which types of discussion topics are active on forums? Pick out the items commonly repeated and figure out what they mean to your strategy.
Pro tip: For the big keywords, plan “clusters” of content around them. Use synonymous terms in your headlines, and make sure your headlines are both interesting, and appropriate for your market.
Conclusion
Keyword research goes beyond simple AdWords values and PageRank analysis. It goes much deeper into a market. Take the time to analyze and plan your strategy now, so you can launch to a flow of traffic, and begin making money much earlier with your next website.

The Google Gadget that Makes Selling Online a “Snap”

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Addme

If one or all of the following applies to you, please raise your hand – “I want to sell something on the Net”, “I have no technical or coding skills”, or “I don’t want to be bothered with a merchant account”.

Do I have your attention now? How about if I told you that there’s a quick and easy solution to your online selling problems? Well, thanks to  Google, your prayers have been answered. Google Labs is a testing ground for new services thought up by the geniuses who work there. One of their latest concoctions is called “Google Checkout Store Gadget“.  Its basic function allows you to copy and paste some code onto any webpage or blog, and become an instant merchant selling your own products.

Let’s take a look at the “man behind the curtain” to see how it all works. The very first step is to open a Google Checkout Merchant account, which is easy to do by going to http://checkout.google.com/signup Fill out all of the required information, and you’ll also need to input a bank account  here your hard earned sales funds will be sent to. Google Checkout will process all incoming orders for you. The orders will appear under the orders tab”. On another note, make sure to uncheck the box that says, “my company will only post digitally signed carts”, then hit the save button. Also,  make sure to write down your “Merchant ID” number as you’ll need it later on.

The next step is done using a Google Docs Spreadsheet which will track all your inventory. Google provides a template that can be copied which can be found here, http://tinyurl.com/yhebl4y  . Take out the “dummy” product information and replace it with your own. There are separate columns for each item, even for shipping information. Each product can have its own separate shipping charge if need be. Keep in mind when filling it out that it can be viewed by the general public, so don’t include any private information in it.

After you’ve entered all your items, hit “share” in the upper right hand corner, and publish as a “web page”. Also, check the box that says Automatically Re-Publish when changes are made.”

Google makes it easy to set up your online store by using http://storegadget.googlelabs.com . It takes you through the process step-by-step, and when finished you click on “start publishing” and select where you’d like to embed the code, for example your website, Blogger, etc. Copy the code and paste it where you want the gadget to appear. There are no coding skills necessary, and anyone can do it. Really, it’s that simple.

If adding to a Blogger Blog, go under “edit layout”, add a “gadget”, then click “add your own”, and paste the gadget code. Now you’re selling items from your Blog that quickly.

So what’s all of this going to cost? There is a small transaction fee charged by Google Checkout for any monthly sales as follows:

Under 3,000.00 2.9% plus .30 per transaction

3,000.00 to 9,999.99 2.5% plus .30 per transaction

10,000 to 99,999.99  2.2% plus .30 per transaction

If you’ve been putting off getting up a store front because you thought it was too difficult or technically complicated, Google really has simplified the process. With “store gadgets” even a child can sell online.

For more information see these resources:

Google Checkout Blog

Google Docs blog

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Merle’s Mission Blog – a passion for net marketing, affiliate marketing, social networking. An avid Blogger and writer with several niche sites to her credit. Find out more at

Google Analytics URL Builder

If you’re like me and constantly having to track what traffic is coming from where and why then you would already be familiar with the Google analytics URL builder (provided you use Google Analytics on your website).

If on the other hand you are currently managing display, email and other traffic driving activates to a website that is using Google analytics and not using the free Analytics URL builder then you really should check this out!

This free URL builder from Google takes the pain out of creating tracking URLs for your promotional campaigns. Simply enter in the URL and follow the steps.

Ensure that you use a descriptive title in each mandatory field as these are used later on in your analytics account to identify the traffic.

See below for an example of what the tool looks like:

Once you’ve entered in all the fields simply click on the Generate URL button and it will produce a tracking URL with all the above entered parameters, the URL should look a little something like this:

“http://www.yoursite.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=small-banner”

You can now use this URL as the click through link for a banner ad in a newsletter.

Checking the results of this is simple, log into your Google Analytics account; choose “Traffic Sources” then “Campaigns”. Within here you will be able to see each campaign and the traffic it has delivered, thus making it simple to see what works and what does not work for traffic generation.

And there you have it, a quick and simple way to build a tracking URL for Google Analytics.

Google CEO Changing of the Guard

Latest news from Google apart from it’s massive earnings is, the current CEO Eric Schmidt is standing down as of April 4th 2011.
Co founder Larry Page will be stepping in as the headman of the company after the 4th.
Schmidt will still remain within the company his new role, as Executive Chairman will give him more time to focus on further developing the business via partnerships, and other business relationship initiatives.
Schmidt started out with Google in 2001 – 10 years, what a ride!

10 Essential Free Blogging Tools – Thanks Google!

As most companies and individuals have realised, blogging is not just a great way to get your information out there, done properly it is a big part of any search engine optimisation strategy. Google created a whole industry and to get the most out of your blogging, and develop your content (articles), they loaded it with a range of tools that can be used to assist your blogging – not really too surprising is it? Here is a list of the essential 10 great not only for SEO, but for developing and working your content and blog.

Gmail. If you are not using it then you should. The spam filter really does work. Say goodbye to computer file clutter and store it all in your account.

Google Docs. This is kind of part of your Gmail and many people don’t even know it exists. It is like having a global intra-net with anyone you choose. With added features such as online file sharing and much online software available, and loads upon loads of space, if you are not taking advantage of it, you really do not know what you are missing. Kiss goodbye Microsoft’s expensive and bug-prone Office and other common tools you used to use. Save everything online and never have to worry about keeping your folders and files in order again – they wont even be on your computer. This is the safest form of storage for anyone on the go, and is even easier to share.

Search – Additional Features. Sure we all use Google search, but with a range of other search functions it can be seriously beneficial to any blogger. Real-time search is great because it searches Twitter and other blogs (among other things) and is a great way to keep track of what is going on, on any particular day. Selecting the super cool tool of Wonder Wheel, after conducting a search is great for article ideas that relate to your searched phrase, and to help you improve search keywords good for your website. This works like one of those visual thesaurus sites, but importantly in terms of searches and content on the web.

YouTube. You tube is a great way to give you a whole new traffic source and because Google owns YouTube it interfaces well with all of your optimisation strategies. YouTube will do wonders for how much Google likes your site, and the chances you are going to come up higher on searches is extremely high. Add video spice to your site and forget about hosting.

Google Chrome. There is nothing better than a great web browser to handle your web design as smoothly as you made it. Chrome is incredibly fast and there is just not another browser that can compete with it.

Feedburner. This is the most popular service used by most bloggers to manage their RSS feed. Switch to Feedburner and you will manage your Feed with ease – perform other tasks like track click through rates and add AdSense to Feedburner Feeds.

Google Alerts. Every blogger should be using this. It is the single most effective way to be monitoring yourself or your brand online. You enter certain terms and get emailed whenever blogs or websites use those terms. Enter your name, or your brand, and you will be notified if they are used in other websites. Another way to use it is to set it for terms that you are interested in — a great way to find sources of information relative to you, and a form of update.

Google Analytics. Yes everyone is using it. It is extremely powerful and tracks and records all sorts of information in relation to your blog and site. Go there and check it out for yourself, because if you are doing SEO then you just have to be using it. Set it up for your blog easily after a signing up for a Google Analytics account.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool allows you to see how often certain words and phrases are searched for in Google. There are a number of ways we can use this information, from choosing new keyword rich domain names, getting an idea of PPC (pay per click) advertising, and a relative indication of what you might be earning from one of your AdSense adverts that is targeting that keyword. A great way to better understand which keywords to focus on.

AdSense. A simple way to get some income from your site, and all it takes is for you to sign up for an account and add a little amount of code to your site and you will have adverts. The best and easiest way to earn money if someone clicks on them, although the amount will depend on the content of your blog and the value of the keywords to the advertisers.

Creatively apply the use of tools to help you develop your content, decide where to put it and get a better understanding of how your site and your content works with the way people are searching for information.

About the Author- Marcela Dias

With over a 10 years experience in website concept design and marketing, Marcela’s skills have flourished through her work in Brazil and Australia. In her marketing roles she has worked with Tourism Australia, Berocca, Sunglass Hut, Lurpak and NRMA to name but a few. She has been a key element in driving strategies involving product and clients management, social media, and online marketing projects (SEO and PPC).

What You Need To Know About Penguin & Panda Updates

It is natural for webmasters to want to have their sites set up for search engine optimization (SEO) to gain high placement in browser searches by potential customers. Along with performing adequate search engine submission and fine-tuning the landing page content, it is important to keep up to date on how the most popular search engines are changing their search methods.
Some of this information is publicly disclosed; a website like Search Engine Watch maintains regular updates, and so do many site submission companies like AddMe.com.
Website promotion begins with the initial selection of a domain name and website submission. To gain high placement with popular search websites like Google and Yahoo, the small company owner or webmaster should always research information about Penguin and Panda updates as they occur. These are the most well-known Internet “characters” that present a constantly changing challenge to those who seek successful site promotion.
What Is Panda?
In the days before the first Google algorithm change commonly known as “Panda,” promotion relied heavily on optimization of website text to include keywords that might be used in searches. Website owners went to extremes, called keyword stuffing, in their efforts to rank highly with search engine robots. The Panda adjustment devastated many companies who counted on keywords and text manipulation to do the job of promotion.
The algorithm is a complex and detailed set of calculations incorporated into the method used to determine priority listings of websites in search results. In the long run, however, the algorithm changes drove website owners to rethink their websites in an effort to become more relevant, authoritative and concise. Along came more changes for search engine operation with Panda II, and now Penguin.
What Is Important to Know About Penguin and Panda Updates?

• Panda is trying to eliminate keyword stuffing and spammy content
• Penguin is looking mostly at links, and it targets poor quality, spammy links and backlinks

How Can I Improve My Website to Avoid Conflict with Panda and Penguin?

• Don’t keyword stuff and don’t link stuff
• Become an expert; remember now that quality content is king, not keywords
• Fine-tune your website so every element is high-quality content
• Learn all you can about the search engines
• Update your website with relevant content weekly or more often
• Use blog posts, videos, podcasts, and webinars
• Become a pillar of your social networking websites; offer high-quality information as an expert resource to others
• Make any link you set a good one as defined by the search engines

Website success depends on obtaining high ranking in searches of relevant keywords by potential customers. Before you attempt submission of your website to search engines in bulk or individual site submit actions, and before you eagerly post your website using add URL or URL Submit, research the facts about what the ongoing Penguin and Panda updates demand.

5 Ways You Can Promote Your Website on Facebook

The genius of promoting products and services over the Internet was already gaining popularity even before social media websites obtained prominence in the cyber world. Then Facebook entered the scene, and the whole online marketing business got blown to proportions way beyond people’s initial expectations.
As Facebook gained prominence and its membership grew by millions, it became more than just a simple social networking service. It has become one of the world’s leading social media marketing medium as well. With the vast diversity and large population of its members, it only made sense that it led to what we now call Facebook marketing.
Facebook as a Marketing Tool
Facebook provides one important thing in marketing: market. The entire membership is a wide, deep ocean of potential customers that business owners simply need to tap into.
Facebook marketing is a social media marketing strategy wherein business people and entrepreneurs promote their businesses and websites through Facebook.
The following are five Facebook marketing techniques that can help you with your website promotion.
1. Have A Unique, Official Logo
Take the official logo or banner of the business, product or service offered in your website and use it as a profile picture. Preferably, it should be striking, attractive, stands out, memorable and distinct from all the other logos out there. This will distinguish your Facebook account from other individuals and encourage people to regard you with respect as a business.
Logos are a necessity in basic marketing. It is all the more important in Facebook marketing because there are multitudes of photos and profile images in Facebook. You want to be easily recognized so that people will pay attention to your status updates regarding the latest developments of your website.
2. Install Facebook’s RSS Graffiti Application
This is a free application that you can easily access through Facebook. Simply search for it through the search box and authorize the application to access your profile account. Add the RSS Graffiti into your business’ official Facebook page. Enter the RSS feed or URL into the RSS Graffiti and complete your preferred settings (how many posts, how often, when and the like). Once you’ve saved everything, your Facebook page is all set for Facebook marketing and website promotion!
Depending on your settings, the RSS Graffiti will automatically publish the articles you add in your website. You no longer have to individually post updates and new features. Everything will be automatically done for you.
In addition to this, the application will also provide you with the stats of the website you’re publishing on your Facebook wall.
3. Provide A Link In Your Profile Page
Once you get people’s attention with your status updates and RSS feeds, they are likely to click on your profile page and learn more about the business. Provide them with the basic information about your services, and then direct them to your website for more information and exciting offers. This is website promotion and social media marketing in its most direct form.
4. Utilize Facebook Groups and Fanpages
Opening a group page in Facebook is one way to filter contacts and stragglers into a condensed population that truly has the potential to become your future customer and client pool. Write a short, personal message for each invite you send out. If he/she chooses to be a member and stay updated with your Facebook group, this is a very good sign indeed.
In social media marketing, sometimes it is more sensible to target the right market than just assimilate large numbers of contacts wherein a larger percentage will simply be indifferent to you. It is far easier to reel in visitors to your website when you all share a common interest and if they are truly interested in your group.
5. Utilize Walls and Status Updates
Each person has his own wall where he can publish his own messages and receive messages from other people. Whenever these posts are published, they also appear as alerts to all the other contacts of the person. This is a perfect opportunity for website promotion.
This works similarly with the RSS Graffiti. However, with posting on your and other people’s walls, you can be more casual and promote new updates to your website in an offhand manner that doesn’t reek of website promotion. People will simply bypass your alert if they sense that your main purpose is for them to click on the link and buy something off you.
In addition, respond to inquiries and posts published in your wall. If you do this often, you’ll also stay near the top of the updates list on everyone’s home page.
With the success of the Internet as a medium for communication, people from all over the world are connected regardless of distance, language, color and culture. It also paved the way for social media marketing, particularly website promotion and Facebook marketing. You can promote your website to a very wide audience and achieve a lot more through Facebook.

Is Facebook Marketing Good for Small Businesses?

Facebook is a social networking site that has more than 900 million users as of 2012. It is the most popular networking site in many countries, including the United States. Facebook launched a portal in 2011 that will help marketers promote their brands on Facebook. The determination of whether or not Facebook marketing is beneficial for a small business requires you to consider many factors, such as the customers, budget and objectives of the business.
Popularity
The usefulness of Facebook as a marketing tool requires an accurate estimate of the number of small businesses that use this form of social media. This number is difficult to estimate due to the large variation between sources. Almost 50 percent of small businesses don’t use social networking at all according to Hiscox, an insurance company for small businesses. Facebook only accounted for 19 percent of the businesses that use social media in this survey. Palore is an Internet marketing firm that surveyed small businesses about their use of social media. This survey showed that 54.2 percent of small businesses have a Facebook page and 22.3 percent of small businesses have a Twitter account and a Facebook page.
Customers
Customer engagement is a primary factor in determining the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. Facebook is more likely to be useful for large businesses that have stores in many locations. The Roost Local Scorecard is an analysis of Facebook pages for small businesses. This analysis found that an average of 15 percent of the “likes” on the Facebook page for a small business were from local users, which means that a Facebook page would provide little benefit for small businesses.
Budget
A business must consider the cost of a particular marketing strategy, especially small businesses with limited financial resources. Facebook does not charge a fee for creating a Facebook page, but a Facebook page used to market a business requires a substantial investment of time and money. This includes the resources needed to update the page with fresh content and respond to comments. A large business typically hires consultants to maintain a Facebook presence, but small businesses often must perform these tasks themselves.
Objectives
The effectiveness of Facebook also depends on your specific marketing objective. Small businesses typically rely on sales leads more than brand awareness to increase revenue. Facebook can be highly effective in building brand awareness, but it is less able to generate sales leads. A lead generation program that consists of rewarding people for referrals is often more beneficial to small businesses. These businesses may generate leads with a direct mail campaign. Webmaster tools can also allow small businesses to implement pay-per-click and SEO campaigns.

F-Commerce: Turning Facebook Likes into Buys

At the risk of stating the obvious, Facebook is booming. The daddy of social media platforms recently announced its billionth member. Business usage in terms of Facebook pages stands at over 11 million (and counting). Most savvy business owners recognize the value of Facebook when it comes to communicating with their customers. The majority will recognize the importance of word of mouth recommendations and where better than Facebook to get those? The real question is how to win over those customers sufficiently to turn that engagement into revenue and growth.
Building a Page
This step may seem really basic, but it’s where every successful Facebook centric business has its roots. Getting this step right is crucial for future success, so spend some time perfecting your page. It should reflect your business, as it is where your most important interactions will take place. The cover photo is the best place to start – choose one that encapsulates what your brand is all about. While it’s okay to change your cover photo as you move forward, perhaps to advertise a competition or sale, for consistency your profile picture should always display your company logo.
Next on the agenda is to add important milestones to bulk up your timeline. This is where you can get creative and use pictures to maximum effect. You might include an image of the launch of your physical store or pictures of the awards your business has won. The final step is to encourage any existing customers to head over to your Facebook page to like it. Make it super simple by adding a “find us on Facebook” icon to your website and other communications.
Quality Content
When your page is up and running, the next task is to engage your fans with interesting content. Indeed, engagement is the key driver for maximizing the benefits of Facebook. You should balance the need to update your audience on Facebook with your need to get on with other tasks crucial to the success of your business. A good start can be made with as little as two or three posts a week. Since user likes appear on their newsfeed, each post you make should be considered as an opportunity to not only touch base with your existing audience, but also to reach out to their network of friends as well.
Although not all of your interactions on Facebook should be about sales, from time to time it’s a good idea to reward your fans with a coupon or exclusive offer. Otherwise keep things human by asking questions, soliciting opinions, and sharing third party content your users may find interesting. Make sure you’re on track by setting a reminder to review your timeline every month or so. When you look back, it should be filled with useful posts, videos, images, and the odd special offer. If yours doesn’t look this, it could be time for rethink.
Make Advertising Work
If all that seems like it will take longer than you’re prepared to wait, you’re probably not a million miles from the truth. If you want to build your fan base more quickly, consider Facebook ads as a way of finding fans that can ultimately be converted into buying customers. You have the option of setting a budget so you’ll never end up spending capital you don’t have if a particular ad attracts a record number of clicks. Be sure to experiment with different well-targeted ads. At first, you will have to make tweaks to your ads regularly, making use of the simple reporting tool to discover what ads better suit different audiences and adjusting appropriately as you go on.
Research suggests that over 50% of Facebook users are more likely to purchase a product after they have “liked” it. That’s a fairly compelling number for a marketing channel that is to all intents and purposes free to use. Following these tips to getting started with Facebook for business will have you up and running in no time and start you on the road to converting fans into customers.
About the Author:
Linda Forshaw is a Business Information Systems graduate from Lancaster University in the UK. A contributor to Degree Jungle, she is a full time writer and blogger specializing in education, social media, and entrepreneurship. Contact her on Twitter @seelindaplay

Make Email Auto Responders Work

Now here’s a thought and it was jogged by an email I received just this morning.
I’ve complained about email auto responder once before, though I think this was over Twitter. The reason being that when we shoot out our newsletter I get 1,000′s of thank you emails etc; all of these auto responders.

Granted this is a nice, reassuring message to get when you’ve just sent an email to someone, knowing they received your message and will get back to you in 24 hours (though I’m yet to see too many people reply within 24 hours).
Look at this from a commercial aspect, what about the value of an auto responder / thank you email when someone has just signed up to your mailing list?
For those of you (which should be all) that have signed up to the AddMe newsletter, you know that I send out a confirmation email and the latest newsletter.
1. Let the subscriber know we have their address in the database
2. Welcomes the new subscriber to the list (otherwise known as the AddMe family)
3. They’ve asked to join the mailing list so let’s send them out the latest newsletter, some reading to tide them over till the next newsletter comes out.
4. They may have been interested in a service or product we’re offering and requested more information.
The 4th point is where an auto responder is perfect from commercial use!
Let’s say you have a customer who is interested in buying product x, they’ve read your website and figured they might have a use for this in later days, weeks or months so they sign up for your email newsletter.
Tracking where they sign up from (Product Page X) send them out a customized email, informing them of added benefits of product x or possibly a special offer enticing them to “buy now”. You’d be surprised how an incentive can help bring that sale over the line.
Creating such a auto responder can require some coding though some tools and email marketing programs that can support such a facility, one in particular I would recommend is ConstantContact.

11 Email Marketing Terms You Need to Know

As an email service provider we are constantly throwing around terms
that sometimes our customers may or may not know. So I decided to pick
11 email marketing
terms and give you the low down on what they mean. Don’t be offended if
you know some of these, I’m trying to cover a lot of bases here. Here
goes!
ROI (Return on Investment) – Your ROI is
the measure of the profit you make and/or costs saved at your business.
For your email marketing campaigns you calculate cost of sending email
plus time.

ROI = [(Payback - Investment)/Investment)]*100

So
if you made $780 on your email campaign, your time was worth $50 to
create it and it costs $15 to send it it would look like this:

(($780 – $65)/$65)*100 = 1100% ROI (which is really good!)

If you want to take it a step further subtract your cost of your products or services as well.

Open Rate – Your open rate is simply the number recipients who opened your HTML emails. It is typically
measured as a percentage of the total number of emails sent,
although
calculation methods may differ. The open rate is considered a useful
metric for judging response to an email campaign but it should be noted
that open rates for text emails can’t be calculated AND some email
clients don’t display images as a default which would under report your
total number of opens.
Above the Fold – The
bottom of your browser window or the bottom of your email before you
have to start scrolling is commonly referred to as
the “fold”. These viewable areas should be where your most important
information should be located since it’s the first thing your viewer
will see.
Preview Pane – Email programs like Microsoft Outlook, Entourage, and Mac Mail allow
users to view email through a preview pane before your recipient clicks to open. The preview pane is
important to bear in mind when composing the opening lines of an email so you can get your recipient’s attention fast.
Copy – Your copy is simply the text of the email you write.
Hosted Email
- A hosted version of an email allows users to view the email message
as
a web page, ensuring that all formatting remains intact.
VerticalResponse does this for you for free you just need to include the
“hosted version” link. Hosted versions of your email are also great for
you to send your Twitter and Facebook followers to when you launch your
campaign.
Spoofing – Email spoofing involves forging a sender’s address on email messages.
It can be used by malicious individuals to mislead email recipients
into reading and responding to deceptive mail. These fake messages can
jeopardize the online privacy of consumers and damage the reputation of
the companies purported to have sent the messages. Spoofed email often
contains phishing scams. VerticalResponse doesn’t allow for this in our systems.
Phishing – In a phishing scam, a spammer, posing as a trusted party such as a bank
or reputable online vendor, sends email messages directing recipients
to Web sites that appear to be official but are in reality fraudulent.
Visitors to these Web sites are asked to disclose personal information,
such as credit card numbers, or to purchase counterfeit or pirated
products.
Targeting – Targeting gives you the
ability to deliver emails to those most likely to respond to your
emails, based on a variety of things like their geographic, demographic,
psychographic
and behavioral information.
Whitelists – Whitelists are usually created by an ISP (internet service
provider) and are made up of commercial emailers (including ESPs) who have
been approved to send email through their gates. The ISP requires a list of IP (internet protocol) addresses that
email will be sent from, and in some cases a test period where the
commercial emailer will be approved or rejected. VerticalResponse is on all available whitelists.
Web Friendly fonts – Almost all web browsers are capable of displaying four primary fonts
properly: Times, Arial, Helvetica, and Verdana, as well as their
variants (Arial Narrow, Times New Roman, etc.) If a web developer
decides to stray from one of these fonts he or she risks browser
compatibility problems and the prospect that their pages may render
inaccurately when viewed through certain web browsers.
Got any other terms you were wondering about? Let us know!

29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business

There are a ton of ways to get people to sign up for your email marketing offers. I’ve put together a list for you to read, so you know all of the ways you can be growing your list.

1. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
2. Tradeshows – Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
3. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
4. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
5. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.
6. Host your own event – Art galleries, software companies (one here has a party every quarter and invites the neighboring businesses), retail shops, consultants (lunch & learn) can all host an event and request attendees to sign up.
7. Offer a birthday club where you give something special to people who sign up.
8. Incentivize your employees – Give them $ for collecting VALID email addresses.
9. Giving something for free like a PDF? Make visitors sign up to your opt-in form before you let them download it.
10. Referrals – Ask you customers to refer you, and in exchange you’ll give them a discount.
11. Bouncebacks – Get them back! – Send a postcard or call them asking for their updated email address.
12. Trade newsletter space with a neighboring business, include a link for their opt-in form and ask them to include yours in their newsletter.
13. SEO – Make sure you optimize your site for your keywords. You need to be at the top of the natural search when people are looking for your products or services.
14. Giveaways – Send people something physical and ask for their email address as well as their postal address.
15. Do you have a postal list without emails? Send them a direct mail offer they can only get if they sign up to your email list.
16. nclude opt-in forms on every page on your site.
17. Popup windows – When someone attempts to leave your site, pop up a window and ask for the email address.
18. Include a forward-to-a-friend link in your emails just in case your recipient wants to forward your content to someone they think will find it interesting.
19. Include a forward-to-a-friend on every page of your site.
20. Offer a community – Use Ning as your easy-to-set-up community and have your visitors interact and sign up for your newsletter.
21. Offer “Email only” discounts and don’t use those offers anywhere but email.
22. Telemarketing – If you’ve got people on the phone, don’t hang up until you ask if you can add them to your newsletter.
23. Put a fishbowl on your counter and do a weekly prize giveaway of your product – then announce it to your newsletter. Add everyone who put their card in on to your newsletter list.
24. Include an opt-in form inside your emails for those people who get your email forwarded to them.
25. Tradeshows – Collect business cards and scan them into a spreadsheet. Make sure you ask permission to send email to them, then mark the card.
26. Use Facebook – Host your own group and invite people to it, then post new links often. From time to time, post a link to sign up for your newsletter.
27. Use Facebook – Post the hosted link from your newsletter into Linked Items to spread the word.
28. Use Facebook – Include an opt-in form on your Facebook Fan page.
29. Use Twitter – Twitter the hosted link of your email campaign every time you launch.
    If you’ve got any additional ideas, let’s hear them!

Send Your First 250 Emails Free – Increase your customer sales with email coupons, newsletters and sales announcements from VerticalResponse, an award winning email marketing provider.

3 Must-Have Features For Email Marketing

First there was direct mail marketing, but as soon as the Internet came into popular use it was only a matter of time before email marketing became a force to be reckoned with in the online world. Despite a rough start where people got so sick of spam that the US Government passed the Can-Spam Act in an effort to curb the growing trend in mass junk mailing. The problem still remains today but ethical email marketing has risen above that and people recognize it for what it is – a method for businesses to communicate with them.
So what types of features should you be looking for in an email marketing solution?

1. List Management

You may think you’re only ever going to be working with a single mailing list but that will quickly change once you really get involved with email marketing in a serious way. The email marketing solution you choose should allow you to handle multiple lists in the simplest possible way.
It should also allow you to create autoresponder sequences and a single broadcast mailing to the same list with just a few clicks – the more intuitive the package is the better. In addition it should allow you to segment your list so you can target just specific groups within your mailing list. We found this very important when we did the marketing for a customized cancer treatment startup I worked for.
Remember you want this to be as automated as possible so there’s very little work for you once you’ve generated the opt-ins to your list.

2. Double Opt-Ins

Because of the splurge of spam that caused the creation of the Can-Spam Act in 2003 you must, must, must have an email management solution that works with the double opt-in process. This basically means that once the person signs up to your list they’re sent a second email asking them to confirm their subscription and at least this way you’re completely minimizing the amount of unwanted opt-ins that you receive.
You’re also staying clear of any legal issues or potential complaints against you. Any solution that doesn’t offer the double opt-in feature should be avoided like the plague.

3. Tracking

Once you’ve created your list you’re going to be emailing your customers and readers and an important aspect of this process is checking what’s called your Open Rate. This tells you of the number of e-mails you sent out how many were actually opened and read. This type of analysis is critical to ensure that you’re writing the most effective and enticing subject lines possible for your email campaigns.
Also if you’re including any links in your emails for products or services you’re recommending or just sharing resources with people then you’ll need to know how often these links are actually being clicked to measure your click through rate. Again this is an important part of analyzing your email promotion efforts – it allows you to fine tune what you’re doing so you can improve your next broadcast to your list.
Getting email marketing right isn’t rocket science but getting the right solution in place at the very start is the key to success here. There’s nothing more frustrating then creating a list with one provider and then realizing that they’re not going to be able to offer you what you need.
Then you’re going to have to try either migrating your entire list or worse again asking your customers and clients to opt-in yet again to an entirely new email management system. Neither one of these is fun and the entire process can quickly become a nightmare that involves people simply opting out of receiving any emails from you at all.
Look at what solutions other successful email marketers are using and simply follow their example – they’re using it because it works.
About the Author:
Lior Levin is a marketing consultant for a psd to html company and for few other Internet companies.

As The Seasons Change, So Should Your SEO

Almost all businesses are subject to some form of seasonality. For many companies, sales cycles and other factors are directly influenced by the changing of the seasons. For example a company that sells snow blowers and other snow removal equipment will have a boom come late fall and throughout the winter, but probably won’t have many sales during the spring and summer months. With other companies, seasonality coincides with changes in fiscal years. Accountants and tax preparers have their busiest months from January through April when the deadline to file taxes falls in the middle of the month.
What search engine optimization cannot control is the amount of search volume in a specific niche, which influences both site visitors and conversion rates. However, seasonal SEO can better position your website to reap the benefits of an influx in business due to changes in the seasons. Here are a few tips to help your business use SEO to boost peak sales cycles.
Plan Your SEO before the Season Starts
Take a dance studio for example. Registration for classes usually starts in late August or early September with classes starting shortly thereafter. If the studio wants seasonal SEO to help drive visitors to the website, they can’t start their SEO in August hoping it will have a profound effect on their end of summer registration period. Instead the studio should focus on building their SEO strategy and creating and promoting content in May or June (right after the dance season is over) so that their company is well positioned in the SERP’s and so that the search engines have a plethora of content to pull from. That way when parents start doing their research in August the studio will have a strong online presence.
Work on SEO Continually Through the Off-Season
The off-season doesn’t mean that SEO gets to take a vacation. The company that that sells snow blowers will be competing heavily for business during the winter months, but will see a lot less search volume and competition over the summer. The lull in traffic and sales is the perfect time to work on link building and planning your SEO for the upcoming busy season. Use the time off to build links, optimize pages, and schedule content out months in advance to avoid scrambling to build SEO at the last minute.

Hold on to Content for the Following Year
Search engine optimization, much like wine, improves with age. A page builds more trust the longer it has been online. Plus, search engines rank individual pages and not the website as a whole. This means the more optimized pages of content you have, the more trust you build with the search engines. Even if the pages you optimized for this year’s busy season didn’t perform as well as you hoped, leave them up and let them age over the course of the next year. That way when the next busy season arrives, your site’s SEO will have had time to build and improve.

From Nobody to Influencer: 5 Tips to Building a Successful Blog

Blogging is more popular than ever. Blogs are cheap to set up, easy to run, and can be abandoned easily when they don’t work out. This is both a good and bad thing. Conversations are better when everyone has a chance to make their point, but competition is stiff, and finding success with your blog is easier said than done.
Standing out in a crowd is a difficult task, but new blogs are started everyday that go on to become social hubs and sources of influence. Successful bloggers often have a plan and an understanding of what the right move should be. These five tips will help any new blogger find their way towards success.
1. Focus on Building an Audience
Every day, millions of people use Google, Bing or Yahoo to find information on all types of topics. Because of this, many bloggers start optimizing their blogs for search engines, and not for people.
This is an approach you should avoid.
People make links, share on social bookmarking sites and social networks, and they leave comments and spread stories by word of mouth. People make up an audience.
Look at two important resources for guidance.
One is Facebook. When starting a Facebook Page, one of the available tabs says “Build an Audience”, which is code for “run ads”. The key word is audience. An engaged and responsive audience is the most important factor in a blog’s success, so optimize for people.
The other is Google Analytics. The traffic statistics are presented as “Audience Overview”.
2. Learn the Basics of SEO
Your main focus should be creating content for people, but this does not mean that Search Engine Optimization is to be ignored.
There are a handful of steps that a new blogger should take to set up their blog for maximum search engine exposure without using shady tactics.

• Keyword research using Google’s Keyword Tool to find relevant terms with reasonable search volume. Anything over a couple hundred searches is plenty.
• Optimize the meta title tag and meta description to include your targeted keywords.
• Emphasize your keywords in the content by using an H1 or H2 heading title tag.
• Optimize your images by utilizing the ALT tag.

SEO can be far more advanced and complicated, but the fundamental basics are good enough for most bloggers.
3. Design is King
Powerful and engaging content are vital, but an ugly design will never entice users to bother reading what you have to say. Take the time to find a clean and easy to navigate theme that is free of clutter and any other confusing elements.
Making sure that your blog is also set up to recycle visitors through social sharing and eventually email opt-ins is an important element of blog design. Take the time to measure social sharing and email opt-ins to make sure your design is optimized for both audience experience, as well as retention.
4. Master the Art of Writing Headlines
It does not matter what masterful point you may make in your blog posts if nobody bothers to read them. Headline writing is key to getting clicks from search engine users, as well as social media and (eventually) email subscribers.
Headlines are far more than article titles. Learning how to write effective headlines can lead to spikes in traffic and significant buzz around a new blog.
There are a number of resources to help you learn to write good headlines, but the best resource is practice. Before publishing an article or post, write several headlines, narrow down the best two or three, then work on those until they’re perfect.
Headlines are often the key to new blogs generating off-site discussion and achieving near instant success.
5. Be Yourself
It is fine to be a novice on some, or even all, of the topics your blog covers. Not everyone is an expert, and readers can tell when a blogger is faking expertise for whatever reason.
However, bloggers who are genuine and are obviously putting in the work to learn more and present useful content in a unique way will eventually become an authority on their topic.
More importantly, they will earn the trust of their audience and build a brand. When a blogger becomes seen as both a person and a brand, the ultimate success has been achieved.
Building Something Worthwhile Takes Time
Popular blogs do not sprout overnight. Not usually. To grow a blog, it takes a clear and focused plan, patience and determination to make something that others believe is special.
As a final tip, a successful blog requires a certain level of daring. Great design, slick headlines, and an engaged audience are all more likely to happen when you dare to make something great.

Search Engine Submissions in 2013

Search engine submissions have been on the downward trend since the early 2000′s. However, many people still utilize submission services to save time and increase exposure across the smaller search engines.
During the 90′s to early 2000′s, search engine submissions were the talk of the town and it seemed to be the fastest way to get a site indexed by the search engines.
These days, it’s a very different story. With the advancement of search engine technology, the time it takes to discover and index new web pages has drastically changed. Back in the days, it used to take weeks, if not months, to get a new site indexed in Google or Yahoo. But today, it can take as little as a few minutes to hours before a new page is indexed.
To understand the purpose of search engine submissions, one needs to understand what search engine indexing is. To be indexed by a search engine means that the search engine has crawled your web page and it has been added to the search engine’s database. Once indexed, links to your site may appear within the search results when someone runs a search for keywords related to your niche.
3 Ways a Website is Indexed by the Search Engines:

• You can submit your URL directly to the search engines.
• You can submit your URL to the search engines via a web program or software.
• You can let the search engines find your site.

In regards to the 3rd point, you may be wondering how in the world a search engine would find your site when you haven’t submitted it. Well, there’s 2 possible ways.
The first way is by crawling the web and discovering new links. If you happen to have gotten a link from a site and Google crawls it, there’s a good chance your site will get indexed fairly quickly.
The second way is more theory than hard truth. Some SEOs believe that when new domains are registered, the registrars share this public data with the search engines. A new domain registration would be the signal for a new website or just a domainer purchasing a new domain.
Either way, the search engines will crawl the domain and check to see if indeed there is a site there.
If you don’t mind submitting to one search engine at a time, you can visit each search engine individually and submit your URL.

• Submit to Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?pli=1
• Submit to Bing: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
• Submit to Yahoo: not necessary because Yahoo gets its search results from Bing.

If you prefer not to go through the tedious task of submitting one at a time, you can use a free search engine submission tool online. These web-based programs allow you to automatically submit to multiple search engines using a single submit form. Here’s our very own search engine submission tool.
If you’re in no rush to get your site found, you can just let the search engines find you naturally. Articles are like food for the search engines, so they love to find fresh and unique content.

How Do I Get Wikipedia Links?

We all know that links are an extremely important part of SEO. Inbound links pointing to your site are what help to convey trust to the search engines. Links coming from high authority sites are very beneficial. Perhaps one of the most high authority sites on the web is Wikipedia. If you conduct a search for just about anything, it’s likely that the corresponding Wikipedia page shows up within the first few results. Obtaining a link from a site like Wikipedia is a huge link building win, so how do you do it?
While it seems like it might be an easy feat since Wikipedia content is added by users, unfortunately the opposite is true. Sure, it’s somewhat simple to set up a page for your business and add in some links back to your website but there is no guarantee that the page will remain active. Each page is carefully reviewed by an editorial team. Wikipedia prides itself on being a non biased source of information where people can share helpful information with one another. It’s not meant to be another avenue to market your business with. So, if a page appears to be created by a business and is dedicated to promoting that business and its products or services, it will be taken down. Wikipedia can trace the origin of the page via IP address and if it was set up by a business or its marketing company and is overly promotional it will be removed.
Plenty of businesses have Wikipedia pages though, so what’s the problem? Well, what these businesses have in common are that they are typically large corporations that have a large user base that is willing to create content on their behalf. If an outsider (like a client or customer) is creating the page or adding content to the page, that is acceptable. While a huge, trusted corporation like Apple can easily get unbiased content written on its behalf, it’s doubtful that a small business owner can, which is why those pages often get removed.
While it may be nearly impossible to get a Wikipedia page active on behalf of your small business, that doesn’t mean that you can’t obtain any inbound links to your site from Wikipedia. It just takes a little more effort. The most natural and appropriate way to generate links from Wikipedia is to establish your business as a thought leader and a resource. If you are creating and publishing great content on the web that is non promotional, it will be linked to and shared across the web, on sites that may include Wikipedia.
Despite the fact that it is difficult to get a small business page to stay active on Wikipedia, you can try. Your best bet is to reach out to your community and ask for contributions from them, so that all of the information isn’t coming straight from you. That way, it’s more natural.

Optimizing your Email Marketing Strategy

The number of businesses that now choose to conduct their marketing online has risen exponentially. Most businesses now operate a website and / or mailing list, and those who don’t will find themselves missing out on a huge share of advertising potential. Digital marketing has diversified considerably and is now available in more forms than was ever possible for traditional marketing strategies. It is also more cost effective and quicker than traditional advertising, and can take place across many platforms; social networks and email being the two most popular.
Email marketing is a great choice for businesses which are looking for a significant ROI, which is possible due to the relatively small initial cost of setting up a capable email marketing strategy. However the mechanics of email marketing demands at least a small amount of know-how from any business which intends to conduct an email marketing campaign.
Planning Your Email Marketing Campaign
A great email marketing strategy takes time, preparation, knowledge and creativity. For an email marketing campaign to be effective it needs to reach the optimal amount of people at the right time, and deliver the right content in the right way to increase engagement.
When planning an email marketing campaign you should always take into account the following factors:

• The quality of your leads and lists.
• What segments you need to be targeting to achieve your campaign objective.
• How appealing your content is and how your audience will respond to it.
• How relevant your product is – whether it’s information or an offer – to your audience.
• Where you want your subscribers to end up when they click your links.
• How well optimized your website is to receive visitors.

The last point is an important one. No matter how great your email marketing campaign is, if your website is sluggish, dull, over optimized or irrelevant your visitors will leave as quickly as they arrived. Your website needs to be optimized before you begin your email marketing campaign, not during, and certainly not after. When considering website optimization you will need to take into account the look, accessibility, content and visibility of your site, which may well mean implementing SEO and social media networking to boost your rankings.
Creating Your Marketing Emails
Your subscribers will fall into one, or both, of two categories; list specific and offer specific. Since each group will be more and less receptive to particular offers and information you must create emails which target each group accordingly. Diversification is your friend; by keeping your content as relevant as possible you will see a much higher conversion rate.
Planning and creating content is a crucial part of all email marketing strategies. Your subscribers need to be able to connect with your brand and product straight away, which is no easy feat for even the savviest of marketers. But by paying attention to current trends – such as the recent rise of infographics – and by following in the footsteps of other companies who have already conducted highly successful email marketing campaigns, you will gain inspiration for creating your own amazing emails.
Conducting Your Email Marketing Campaign
Once you’ve created your highly relevant and interesting email campaign you must determine the optimal time to deliver it to your subscribers. There is no set frequency for optimizing the delivery of your email marketing campaign since results are dependent upon a number of factors, such as the size of your company and subscriber list, and your product type. However data collation shows that both under and over exposure can do more harm to your campaign than good.
Sending too many emails is a sure fire way to lose revenue. How? By sending emails too frequently you may cause your subscribers to develop fatigue and turn off from your campaign. A good marketing email should not catch your subscribers off guard, nor should it seem too ‘salesy’. Great content and good timing can make all the difference between a sales email reading either like an advert or a useful bit of information.
Optimize Your Email Marketing Strategy Today
There’s only one dependable way to optimize your email marketing campaign if you don’t already have experience in this field. By employing the services of a professional email marketing campaign manager or company you will be able to utilize their experience and expertise alongside your own, to serious advantage.
About the Author: Amanda writes about online marketing, email marketing services and other tech topics for businesses.