Author: enetwal

Article Marketing – A Backbone Strategy

You want your web page to be ranked at the top of the search engines when your customer types in keywords relevant to your business.

While you can buy your way to the top using pay per click advertising, it’s more productive and quite feasible for you to move to the top of the various search engines if you apply the optimization tactics we’ve discussed over the past month.

Now some keywords will be harder than others, but if you are serving a local market, and use geographical keywords as I have suggested, it should be possible for most of you to get to the first page, if not the top listing.

The way to cement yourself into that top ranking is via back links, and while there are lots of ways to generate backlinks, the most powerful over the long haul is article marketing.

While you and I use the internet to market goods and services, most people use it to find information. And Google in particular caters to this need for information above your and my crass mercantile interests.  Article marketing helps us turn that on its ear.

A good article not only provides critical back links that will help boost us in the search engine results, it brands us as a resource to those who look for information online.  It conveys to us “expert” status and good will. This credibility will serve us well when we finally get the customers attention at a buying point.

Our first step is to cover a topic well in the form of multiple articles exploring all aspects of our product line.  Then we post these to the article directories where they can be picked up by bloggers and ezine editors.  While they are getting something free from us, when they republish our articles they are actually trolling for customers for us.

So while we advocate article marketing for the immense value we can derive from the back links it can generate, we also love the traffic it sends us. And not only do we get traffic, we get educated targeted traffic from prospective customers who already know that they want what we have.

That makes our sales job a breeze.

The value of article marketing is so great, that I have decided to start a new blog dedicated to the topic. It is called Article Marketing Hint. I hope you will take a moment to visit it and consider subscribing to the RSS Feed.

I already have a number of posts up, and have several more planned. I will of course discuss the topic here from time to time as well.  The url is http://ArticleMarketingHint.com

Resell Rights Game Plan

What’s the fastest way to get a new product created?

Whats the fastest way to write a set of auto responder messages to people who opt into your list?

What’s the fastest way to find products you can offer as bonuses to help sell your new product?

What’s the fastest way to do research on a niche?

If you have money to invest the answer may well be to hire it all out. If that’s you situation, I have some good ideas and resources for you. Drop me an email.

But if you are the do it your-selfer, building your internet fortune from the bottom up shoe string style, the answer is PLR and/or Resell Rights Products.

And right now, today is the day you need to take action to grab a hold of the best deal in PLR and Resale products anywhere.

I’ve written before about Resell Rights Fortune, and am writing again today for two reasons. One the price is going up on the monthly membership tomorrow.  That’s actually the reason why I am writing today.

The second reason is that there really is an advantage to this program that you cannot get anywhere else. And it’s an advantage you can use to speed up your progress online.

That’s the ability to search for the products you need. You can search by topic, keyword and various rights and other attributes such as whether or not they offer a sales page, have graphics you can use, etc.

Sunday, I spent about an hour and identified not just one but five products related to a niche I want to master.

It’s an area I know a lot about already, but am not what I would call an expert. But I was able to identify within the group a resell product I could offer for resale with pride, and two additional resell rights products I could offer as bonuses to enhance the attractiveness of my first product.

I was also able to find some PLR material. Frankly one of which was pretty lame but did make a couple of good points worth passing on. Another was well written and more importantly had a good table of contents.

My plan is to take that table of contents and use them as themes for a sequence of blog posts and eventually articles to post on article directories. The blog posts will be on a new url I have acquired.  I will read all my new material and then write the actual blog posts in my own words. The PLR material and even the Resell Rights material will amplify my existing knowledge, so I will be able to write with authority.

Finally, I will use all the same material, to create a series of follow-up auto responder messages. Again using ideas gathered from all of the above.

The PLR and Resell rights material provides the research, and organizational ideas. It provides the background and fills in gaps in my own knowledge, and allows me to write faster, and offer a far more valuable product covering my niche. When I add in my own unique knowledge I add my own personal statement and build value as well.

It should be possible for me to finish this project within a week. At the end of which I will have a new blog, a giveaway product I can use to get optins and build my lists, a product with some nice bonuses I can sell and monetize the whole thing and a valuable series of emails I can send to those who opt-in.

I will have used 5 of the 30 downloads (I signed up for the 30 for $27 option)  So I will be able to do the same thing next week in another niche.

This is the workperson method. It will require work, but it is the sure way to make real progress. And at the end of the week I will actually be an expert in the niche. You see when you take the time to teach a niche to others in this manner, you actually learn the material more deeply than if you just read it.

For $27 a month, if you are willing to work, this plan of attack will get you where you want to go. The introductory pricing ends tomorrow, so take my advice and join Resell Rights Fortune today.

Resell Rights Fortune

Twitter Tips and more

While I have been focused on search engine optimization in terms of my postings the last few weeks, I have continued to expand my use and understanding of Twitter, the current rage.

I have also published a new report on on how to build your business with social networking. Its free and you can get a copy at Start Social Networking My opt in page still needs some work, I messed up the graphics while tweaking it.  I hope to get that fixed soon, but don’t let that get in your way. I think its a good overview of the field.

Some people refer to it as web 2.0 and other names, but what ever you call it, it is critical for small business people who are using the web to get as grounded as possible in the various venues.

That doesn’t mean you have to be active in each, but understand that their are distinct markets and populations that use each of the various services.

Perhaps the biggest at least intially was MySpace. And while some think of MySpace as a place for teeny boppers, there are millions of folk well past their teens active there. And while you can get banned from MySpace for inappropriate advertising, it is still very possible to advertise and build your business pressence with MySpace. To learn more go to My Space Profit Strategies.

It’s twitter that is today catching the bulk of the buzz.  As I’ve written before, I initially thought Twitter was a joke. That changed after I started listening to some of Doug Champigny’s ideas on the topic.

I jumped in an slowly grew a list, and following Doug’s lead began to get quite a few followers.  I was hooked. When I passed five hundred and then approached a thousand followers I became determined to build as big a list as possible. Then I got Doug’s most recent and authoritative report called Advanced Twitter Marketing.  (ATM)

It blew me away.  And made me go back to start. I was building a big list alright, but an undifferentiated list.  Now I have 8 twitter accounts. I just started a new one today.  Thanks to ATM, I now know not only how to grow a list, but how to target it properly.

While Doug was doing the research for ATM he did a case study, which he has released documenting his experiment in growing a targeted list from scratch.  The Case Study is available free and I encourage you to grab a copy.

Now these ATM tips and the how to’s are critical to developing a strategic use of twitter, but they also require a bit more work as well. Anyone can toss out affiliate marketing links to a list of Twitter followers.  Most people don’t really seem to mind, they just ignore them.

If you want to be successful with Twitter, you need to offer more.  And that takes time.  Thankfully, master Blogger Mike Paetzold stepped into the breach with his Twitter Time Saver report and accompanying videos.

Using the ideas in Twitter Time Saver, I learned how to use google news to link to Google Reader and in turn Friend Feeder to automatically pass selected relevant news articles to my various lists. I still need to review and select which articles to post, but the system saves a ton of time.  I posted to 7 or my eight accounts this morning in less than half an hour. (1 didn’t have anything worth posting so I didn’t)

This has helped establish me as an authority with my followers in these niches.  This will be critical to my long term success and yours as well.

By the way, as I mentioned Mike is a Blogging expert, and his most recent product is worth mentioning as well. Every business would be well advised to have a wordpress blog.  That’s easy for me to say, but it took me a while to actually get my first blog up.  Mostly, because there are so many options available. While most are free, the wide variety of themes, plug ins and settings are mind boggling.

Mikes new product called, Word Press Made Easy is actually a re-release of a prior product updated to include the most recent changes that were instituted by Word Press a couple of days ago.  Mike is a beta tester for them, so he was able to produce a completely up to date product. Even if your technical skills are limited to the ability to do email, Mikes Word Press Made Easy will show you how to get your Blog up and running in about an hour. Not only will it be running, but you will have your plug ins selected and the settings set the same way a Master blogger does.

If you read this today Saturday, and hurry, you can still get the $20 off introductory pricing through midnight EDT tonight. If you read this later, you should still pick it up, if you need help getting your blog optimized.

I’ve been following Mike’s blogs for some time now, and incorporating his suggestions in all my blogs. He knows his stuff.

Well, I have rattled on long enough today.  The grass needs cutting and we are having a sunny Saturday for a change, so its time to get up from the computer. Hope you have a great weekend.

Beyond Squidoo: Get Support from HubPages

Get More Link Juice Via Hub Pages

In my last posting, I spent some time describing Squidoo.com and how useful it can be as a source of quality backlinks to your site.

Squidoo offers you the opportunity to create your own backlinks that you can custom design. By that I am referring to your ability to use anchor text that uses precisely the keyword phrase you want to rank for, and the ability to direct that link to a specific page on your web site.

Since Squidoo is free to use, there is no reason why you can’t create multiple Lens, and add additional links to your site.  From a search engine optimization standpoint it makes sense to have multiple short Lens rather than one long comprehensive one. So if a home stager wants to create a lens on staging a bedroom and another on staging a living room and a third on outdoor landscaping you now have three sources from which you can send links back to your web site. Within each lens you want to include a couple anchor text links to various pages on your site.

The power of Squidoo comes from it’s internal grouping system. Once you have created your lens, you want to join your lens to every relevant group you can.  If you are a potter, you will want to sign up your lens with all the various pottery groups, as well as art and crafts groups and any others that make sense.

The search engines see Squidoo as a large web site with many different topics. Normally this would be negative as it’s not focused and many lens are not specifically relevant. However since your lens is connected and linked to internally via your group memberships and also by  Squidoo’s own internal tagging system you are seen as part of all the groups you are associated with.   The strength of your  individual link is a product of all these relevant association within Squidoo.  To learn more about the internal linking and groups within Squidoo get a copy of Squidoo Basics.

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A similar venue like Squidoo is the Hub Pages site. Go the www.hubpages.com. Set up an account there, and jump right in.  The set up is different but similar to Squidoo. You will need to create a title of 120 characters or less, which becomes part of your url. Just as with Squidoo, you want it to consist of the keywords you want your own web site to rank for. So if you are following my advice on using geographical keywords you may want to name your site, CincinattiDryCleaning if you are a dry cleaner in Cincinatti.

Just like Squidoo, you want to create anchor texts in your hub pages. You can use much of the same material in your hub pages that you did on your Squidoo pages, but you want to rework it into a different format so it is distinctly different than the way it appears on Squidoo or anywhere else. Make it unique.

Now while you will be including links to various pages on your web site, you also want to create some links from your Hub pages to your Squidoo pages. That’s why we talked about Squidoo first.

Remember last week when we talked about “link juice.” Hub pages have a little less link juice than Squidoo. But they are still a highly ranked site, just not quite a big. Your link from Hub pages pours link juice into your Squidoo lens. This link juice accumulates there and is passed via your Squidoo lens to where it links, ie. your web site.

It is important that you maintain the one way nature of this linking. As we also discussed last week, if you reciprocate links the link juice cancels each other out.  So for my purposes, I always link from my Hub Pages to my Squidoo pages and never the reverse. Since I have many different niches this rule keeps me out of trouble.

Which one you use to link to the other is less important, than that you make sure to keep the one way relationship alive. And please remember that means you cannot link from your web site to your Hub pages as this would create a circle and negate the benefit of all the links.

Next time I will begin to discuss why article marketing is so powerful.

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Two additional tidbits. I have had a lot of projects building up lately thus the delay in getting this post out. I am still doing my analysis of peoples web sites. But am now restricting myself to just four a week. These are very useful to people and I want to maintain my hands on service to as many people as I can. To get details go to http://cli.gs/7gH1Zr

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In addition to maintaining your web site and getting it set up for search engines, the most powerful thing you can do for yourself is to blog from your own wordpress blog. WordPress blogs are easy to use and free, but can be very bewildering because there are so many options in terms of themes, plug ins, widgets and settings. I have learned a lot about blogging from Mike Paetzold who is a master blogger. He just released a new “How to” eBook and video series Tuesday night and is offering $20 off until sometime Saturday.  It’s called Word Press Made Easy and is a “must have” in my opinion. He walks you through all the plug ins and settings he uses on his plethora of blog sites. If you are going to blog, and you should, it is a good idea to copy a master blogger, until you learn enough on your own to make specific variations. With his help you can have your blog up and running and or re-tuned in about an hour.  Well worth it, I promise you. http://cli.gs/mv5Whd

Squidoo – Who ever came up with this name?

Getting to the Top of the Search Engines XI

Squidoo – Who ever came up with this name?

Building Backlinks on Squidoo

We have established that to advance up the search engines your site needs to be set up properly in terms of on page factors, and also needs to get Back Links from other sites to boost your credibility. Ideally these backlinks should be in the form of anchor texts that highlight the specific keyword you want your page to rank for. For most locally based businesses, it also makes sense to have these keywords and anchor texts include your specific geography such as Home Staging Atlanta or Minneapolis Best Meat Market, etc.

One point I should have made already and didn’t is that these back links need to be one way backlinks. I’ve used the term “Link Juice” before. Imagine that a web site by linking to you is passing on to you some of their Link Juice. If they are a high value web site the back link may be a gallon jugs worth, if it’s a lower ranked site you might just get a pint. That’s if the link is one way to your site from theirs. If you return the favor, you have a hole in your bucket, dear Liza. The Link Juice leaks right back to where it came from. Now if you have a higher ranking than the person linking to you, you may actually loose juice in the process.

At one time it was all the rage to build reciprocal linking arrangements, and one of our readers reported just that after my last post. Unfortunately these are no longer wise moves in terms of search engine ranking. That said, they may still make sense if they send traffic and business from one market to another as part of a referral system. If that’s the case, you may well want to keep them even if they cost some “juice.” But don’t build reciprocal relationships hoping they will help out your search engine ranking. They won’t.

Nor can you set up a circle, where A links to B and B links to C and C in turn links to A. Such circles are readily detected by the search bots, even when inadvertent. So pals we may be, but mutual admiration societies are not the way to get ahead on the search engines.

So how do we get these one way links? There are a lot of ways actually. I mentioned a few to you last time and today we will take a closer look at one of my favorites, Squidoo.

Squidoo is one of many so called Web 2.0 sites, which merely means it is part of the recent wave of sites that allow visitors to interact with the site rather than just read it like a static web page.

There are four primary things I like about Squidoo. First it’s Free. Second, it allows you to put blatantly self promoting commercial messages on it. And thirdly, it’s relatively easy to use. A fourth factor is that is has a high page rank of 7, which means that back links from Squidoo to your site send you giant economy size bottles of Link juice, which is very nice indeed.

To get to Squidoo just go to www.squidoo.com. Once there, sign up for an account. It’s free and easy.

Once you have your account, you are going to create your first site, which Squidoo refers to as a lens. Perhaps the most important thing to remember when setting up your first lens is that what you name it is critical.

For my Minneapolis Meat Market, I want to name the Lens “Minneapolis Meat Market” – if that is the phrase that I want to rank for on the search engines. Now every lens on Squidoo needs to have a different name, so your favorite term may already be taken. If that is the case try adding hyphens between words, or an extra relevant word before or after your desired name.

Some times it is easier getting your Squidoo lens ranked high in the search engines than your main web site due to Squidoo’s high page rank and its tens of thousands of pages, many of which are new every day. The search engines are crawling all over Squidoo constantly, and they will find your new lens very soon after you publish it.

Once you have created your title, you need to fill in the introduction module. Here you want to repeat your keyword/title in anchor text with a link to the page on your web site you want to drive traffic to. So if you are Shar Sitter, one of my Home Staging Clients you may introduce your lens as: “Rooms with Style is a Minneapolis St Paul area Home Staging firm specializing is serving the South Metro Area etc etc…”

If you did a good job creating your web site’s meta tag description, you may want to use that here. It should have your keywords in it, and be a pretty good sales pitch while including the key geography you serve.

By using HTML code to create a link on “Minneapolis St Paul area Home Staging” as I did above, the search engine bots learn that the end link is about Minneapolis and St Paul Home Staging and they have good memories. This is called anchor text and we went over how to set up this HTML code a few messages ago.

This is one of the advantages of Squidoo. Since you are creating the link yourself, you can control the way the link is created. You always want to use anchor text links. The only exception is when you are specifically letting people know what your web site address is and even then, make sure you use anchor text elsewhere in the posting.

If you go to Shar’s site via the link above, you will see it doesn’t go to her home page. It could have, but instead I set it up to link to her page titled “services.” This is called internal linking because it links to an internal page on her web site. Google in particular likes this, and you get a little extra juice for your overall site because of it. Since you have control of the link creation on sites like Squidoo, it makes sense to create these internal links whenever you can.

At any rate, the goal is to use anchor text right away in the introductory portion of your Squidoo lens. That will serve as a powerful back link to your web site. Complete the first module with what other introductory material you feel appropriate.

I’m already at book length for this post. So let me quickly say that the rest of the lens can be simple or complex. It’s up to you. Squidoo uses modules. I tend to use their text modules and fill them with text and pictures. To insert pictures you will need to learn a tiche of HTML code, which is not difficult. You can search on Squidoo for a lens on HTML, there are several good ones. Alternatively, I publish an inexpensive ebook called HTML in Simple Terms for under $10. The advantage of the ebook is that you can print it out and keep it handy by your computer. I find it easier to look things up in print than online.

I also publish an eBook called Squidoo Basics. It costs $17 and will help get you acclimated to Squidoo quickly.

The thing to keep in mind about Squidoo, is that you can publish as many lens as you want. For link building purposes they don’t need to be fancy or even complete. But spend a little time on them and focus on one topic about your business. Create another lens to discusss another aspect. If you serve more than one town, you can be DryCleanersOmaha and OmahaDryCleaners or SouthOmahaDrycleaners. Etc. Each additional link of this sort will help increase your ranking for Omaha Dry Cleaners.

If you are a home stager, you might want to create a lens just for Realtors, and use the Lens as the place you make your special pitch to them. Just be sure to link back to the Realtor page on your main web site.

Once you get the hang of putting up pictures, and I promise you that learning the little bit of HTML code to do that is not difficult, you may want to create a before and after lens for each of your projects.

Just be sure to include back links in each new lens to your web site’s various pages and in no time you will discover than not only is your web site on the top of the search engines, so too will be a number of your Squidoo lens.

When your prospects find you not just on the top, but also number 2, 4, 6,7 & 8 on the listings, they get pre-sold pretty fast that you are the dominant player in your community.

Yes, it will take a little work. You may need to learn a couple new tricks, but with a bit of persistence you can do it.

Next week, we will look at a similar site called Hub pages and maybe a couple of others. If you have questions about today’s post be sure to leave a comment. As I did today, I will incorporate any questions into the next posting.

Twitter Tactics For Marketers

The twitter craze has spawned dozens of ebooks, and countless tools and an awful lot of advice, much of which is itself awful.

If you are online to make money as I am, you need to come up with an effective strategy. Over the past 4 to 6 weeks, I have been exploring just about everything I could on the topic of Twitter and am satisfied that the best long term strategy is the one outlined by Doug Champigny in Advanced Twitter Marketing.

While the eBook itself costs $47, the tools he recommends and I now use are free.  So you don’t need to worry about an up-sell, need to invest in a handful of expensive tools to make the strategy work. Additionally, Doug offers a 60 day guarantee so you can really dig in and prove the strategy to yourself. But frankly you won’t need 60 days. The value of the book became self evident to me right away as I realized I had been going about twitter all wrong. My guess is you are too.

I can’t let the secrets out, it wouldn’t be fair, but suffice it to say I now have multiple twitter accounts, and am not focusing all my attention on getting the biggest number of followers as possible.

Maintaining multiple account has its own issues. Providing value is another important aspect of twitter success. And that can take time. Now I learned a trick on how to provide that value a while back for my original twitter list, but when I went to duplicate it, it turned out I lost the secret link I needed to make it all work.

The idea is to use Google Reader to find relevant posts in Google, patch a Reader feed into Friend Feed and get Friend Feed to automatically post the items into Twitter.  This tactic is very powerful but tricky to set up. Thankfully MikePaetzold came to the rescue with a new ebook and video product that describes  what to do, and then mercifully shows it step by step on video.

Now I’m dense and it took me while to get it down, but I now have added this technique to the six twitter accounts I have running at the moment.

This time saver is called Twitter Time Saver and it is a godsend. I don’t know about you, but I have found myself spending way too much of my time on Twitter.  This simple idea combined with the main strategy outlined in Advanced Twitter Marketing has moved my Twitter game plan ahead significantly already.

More importantly it has set the stage for a bright future with Twitter as I develop a series of targeted twitter accounts.  If you can see beyond the ego trip of building the largest list of followers possible and can see the advantage of highly targeted lists where you are perceived as an expert by your somewhat less large number of target followers then you are
an ideal candidate for both products.

Twitter may be a passing fad, but it is more likely to be a growing fad for the next year or two at least. There is a lot to be said for having a sound strategy to position yourself as a leader in you niche or niches of interest. Now is the time to do it.

Advanced Twitter Marketing http://cli.gs/zsYrrD
Twitter Time Saver http://cli.gs/ySsgSj

P.S. This morning, I posted over a dozen news articles to 5 of my 6 Twitter accounts in less than 30 minutes. These were interesting topical articles in newspapers from around the world. Stuff my list members wouldn’t otherwise see. That’s adding value to my twitter lists.

Internet Marketing Success Library

If you have been reading my messages for a while now, I want to thank you. I do appreciate it. Over the past several years I have often talked about Bob Jenkins, aka Bob the Teacher.

I’ve learned a lot from Bob, in fact I probably had my most significant aha! moments from him as he actually explained how to do various things, like understanding my cPanel, using autoresponders effectively, creating products, and doing tele-seminars among others.

I got so much out of his products I’ve been a little like the new convert who tries to convince everyone else to join their new found faith. If I have ever gotten too out of line, I apologize, but I retain my conviction that Bob has some of the most useful, and more importantly, most accessible training online.

I’ve since found several other good teachers who have helped me build on the base I got from Bob. I will always be looking for others, cause I will never stop learning. But when it comes to the basics and more, Bob is top notch.

My only problem with Bob was he was always creating new courses, and the prices were a bit aggressive in some of them. Not that they weren’t worth the price, it’s just a bit of a stretch when one is starting out. That’s why his new program has me so excited.

Instead of selling his products individually, has put most of them, including some of the most expensive ones, into a membership program you can access for under $50 a month if you act right now. Since I paid over $1000 for the courses I took that are in this package, I can tell you this is a super deal.

Internet Marketing Success Library http://cli.gs/u3TEE1

And no, I’m not bitter that you will be able to get them so much more cheaply, because frankly, I am hoping you will learn the basics faster and eventually become a joint venture partner of mine as I start to produce more of my own products down the line.

Since you can quit at anytime, you can grab the ones you want and then leave. But as I’ve learned it takes time to learn well. And since Bob is always adding new products, he’s betting and I’m thinking most of you will hang around a while. I know I will be, and I’ve already taken over half the courses he offers.

I see myself as a teacher. And I have been trying to do that with my blog and e-mailings. But I recognize talent and want you to take advantage of the best, particularly now as he is launching this new service. The price will go up soon, to around $80 a month so that should be incentive enough. But for those of you who are really quick, he is making the monthly membership a 35 day membership, which means that you will get two months free in your first year. Nice idea.

I am a grateful student who has learned a lot from Bob. I know you can too. And since you will be able to access courses Ipaid hundreds for right from the start, I can’t see how you can afford to pass up this opportunity. I’m serious. This is golden.

Go to: Internet Marketing Success Library

Perry Marshall’s Adwords Bootcamp

Two years ago, I attended the System seminar in Chicago. This is one of the premier events on the internet marketing training circuit. These days there are hundreds of major training events, so it may get a bit lost in the shuffle of email hype for every Tom Dick and Mary’s event. But I think it still retains its luster among those who “know.”
The highlight of the event for me was meeting Perry Marshall.  I had just acquired his Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords, and as a result it felt as if I were meeting with a lesser deity. Turned out he was a very likable person as well as a master of Adwords.
Perry has been holding periodic training courses on Adwords that are usually sold out in days. His Bobsled course which he holds at his own house have made millionaires out of many of his students. As a result, he is able to charge a fairly stiff fee for his courses, but then he offers real value for that investment.
He spells out a pretty specific guarantee, that you can read for yourself. When you do, you will get a sense that this is not your typical  hype fest you are being invited to participate in. This is for business people, interested in doing a lot more business this month, using adwords. No fairy scary stuff here. Just hard nose, how to, from the top expert in the field.
If you are ready to take a bold step forward to grow your business using adwords, there is no question about it. You must grab this opportunity. If you do your homework, Perry guarantees you willprofit from the course. How can you go wrong?

How Many Backlinks do you have? Getting to the top of the Search Engines IX

Getting to the top of the Search Engines IX

How Many Backlinks do you have?

A bit of a detour today. I have had several people ask how they can find out how many backlinks they have to their web site. A good question and one I can answer.

First thing you want to do is go to Yahoo.com rather than Google or MSN and search for the term “linkdomain:” and then the web site you want to inquire about using the Yahoo search box.  This will take you to Yahoo’s Site Explorer site.

When you do this for your site you will see two boxes at the top of the page. One will show the number of pages on your website, and the second will show the total number of inbound links to your site.  These are your backlinks.

Now if you want to see what you need to do to outrank that pesky competitor of yours, it wouldn’t hurt to enter their domain name the same way and see how many backlinks they have.  You might want to check out who they are, because there is a good chance you should be able to get back links from some of the same places.

Now as we mentioned before, not all backlinks are created equal.  Some have higher page rank and are thus weighted more than others. So it’s possible that someone with fewer backlinks could rank higher.

As an experiment, go to Google and enter the keyword “Home Decorating” in the Google Search Box. When I did it for this article the top three “organic” listings were www.home-decorating-made-easy.com ; www.tuscan-home-101.com and www.hgtv.com

I looked at each site with the Yahoo Site Explorer and found the top ranking site had 627 pages of content and 1726 back links.  The second ranked site, the tuscan one, had 88 pages of content and 794 backlinks.  I believe the number of backlinks to be the major determinant in the higher ranking by home decorating made easy site.

But what about the third place site, HGTV? It has 203,974 pages and 7,285,773 backlinks.  A behemoth by anyone’s standards. This is where relevance plays a role. HGTV has a lot of pages and backlinks, but not all of them were specifically relevant to the keyword term “Home Decorating.”  At least not in Googles eyes.

If you enjoyed this exercise, play around with a few other keywords, and see if the number of backlinks doesn’t seem to play a role in most of them. As you do, you will come to appreciate how important backlinks are to ranking.

In our next article we will discuss some easy ways to get a bunch of high value backlinks. ( I should be charging for this. )

Get Stomping the Search Engines 2 (a $497 value) Today for $1

The Stomper net folk are the leaders in Search Engine Optimization. Compared to them I am very small potatoes, but I do try to learn all I can from them and others to prepare my advice for Micro Businesses and other small business people.

Now many of you don’t need to concern yourselves with all the nitty gritty the stomper net people get into.  Afterall, they are aiming much of their attention to highly competitive situations, and frankly most locally based small businesses can usually win the top listings in their markets following the tips I offer. However, it never hurts to listen to the big guys, and take from that conversation the underpinnings you need to meet your challenges.

Now they are running a promo for a new membership newsletter called the Net Effect, and in the process are making available their highly valuable Stomping the Search Engines 2 release which is $497 value and easily worth that much.

If you have been following my search engine series and want to learn more, there is not likely to be a better opportunity to grab a deal like this.  I encourage you to sign up for the package and if you decide you don’t want the newsletter, cancel it.  Times are tough, take advantage of the offer and you will be miles ahead in understanding the issues involved in search engine optimization. Your first copy of the Net Effect is free as well so, you only need risk a single dollar for a ton of valauble information.

There are thousands of people making a living on the subject of search engine optimization that probably know less than you will once you go over this package.  http://cli.gs/TpmR1u

SEO Off Page III What is a backlink?

SEO Off Page III

What is a backlink?

I’ve already spent a couple articles talking at least in part about back links without specifically explaining what a backlink is.

According to Wikipedia, Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Thus when I create a hyper-link in this blog post to one of my Home Staging clients, Jane Ann Lance and her web site http://enhancedbylance.com it appears blue in most web browsers and you know that when you click on it, you will be taken to her web site. This is thus a back link to her web site and when the Google bot or one of the other search engine bots scans this page it will follow that link to her site and note it as a backlink. Notch one up for Jane Ann’s site.

Now even better would be a link to another of my home staging clients if instead of using her web address, I just sent you to this link: Hamptons Home Staging. In this case, the link is being made to http://www.styledandsold.com/home.html in the form of what is known as anchor text. This anchor text, “Hampton’s Home Staging” tells the bots that this back link is about Home Staging in the Hampton’s and reinforces the keywords on Allegra Dioguardi website. While both are backlinks, the second is more powerful.

Unfortunately, since we are now dealing with off page factors, you no longer have direct control over how others will link to you.

Thus we come to realize that not all backlinks are equal. Some are more important that others. A backlink from a blog that’s been published regularly for many months is going to have a somewhat more valuable link than one started today with just a single entry assuming the new blog is even visited by a bot. Even more valuable is a link from a site Google considers to be an authority site. Google has devised a series of page rankings that it uses to provide guidance as to the relative standing of various major web sites. A back link from a site with a 6 rank may be worth dozens of back links from dozens of unranked sites. That said, there is still a great deal of value in having back links from a large number of sites even if smaller.

So while we will be talking about some places where you can get some relatively highly ranked backlinks, don’t neglect getting links from lesser lights as well.

In our next session, we will show you how to get some backlinks with anchor text that you can control and that have high page ranks. The best of both worlds.

Happy Memorial Day

As a veteran myself, I tend to give pause for a moment or two on Memorial day to recall friends of mine who lost their lives in battle, and to reflect on all of my compatriots who stood side by side in the call of duty. As a typical American, I also relish this day as the unofficial start of summer, and while the water is still too cold for swimming here in Minnesota, it sure is a great day for picnics. In an hour or so I will be off to the Wabun area of Minnehaha Park to snag a table for the Minnesota contingent of Netwals to gather.

As a marketer, I recognize most of my readers are away enjoying their weekends, but as an international marketer, I know not everyone celebrates this day.

For those of you who use the internet like me to generate an income selling goods or services, my strongest recommendation has to do with a new eBook called Advanced Twitter Marketing.

This seemingly inconsequential service with its tens of thousands of unread tweets seemed like a fools errand to me. Why would anyone give it a second thought?  And yet today, I am tweeting a way, several times a day, and while its not yet raking in tons of new business, I am making real progress with it.

There are a lot of twitter tools out there. Some are paid, some are free, most work and a few don’t.  But other than building a list for the fun of building a list, what good are they?  Not much, unless you have a strategy.  A plan of attack that makes sense. And that is what I have found in a new eBook by my mentor Doug Champigny.  Now I’ve been associating with Doug for a while now, so some may think I am touting his book as a team player. And the truth is, I would. But I am asking you to understand that this book opened my eyes to a strategy to use this new Twitter craze effectively.

No longer is my goal to build the largest possible list, it’s to build the largest “focused lists” possible. The keywords are focused and lists (plural.)

While the book is an investment of just under $50, all the tools described and recommended in the book are free. So no traps here. No expensive upsells, no memberships. Just a solid straightforward way to think about and execute a successful Twitter campaign.  Now as I mentioned, above, I haven’t been making huge sales off of Twitter directly. But I have been successful in sending people to my blogs and getting them to join my lists.

I’ve been using www.cli.gs to shorten my links so they don’t take up as much space in my tweets. The advantage of this service is that they offer statistics so I am able to see how many people actually click on the links. Thus I know, that people do read and follow my twitter messages.  While it’s hard to sell an ebook in 140 characters, you can get people to go to your site, where you can pre-sell them and offer alink to a sale page.

I hope you can see the power of the above scenario.  And let me warn you. There is a bit of a first adapter advantage for niche marketers. You will have an advantage in your niche, if you start implementing the strategies in Advanced Twitter Marketing, before your competitors do.

And while you may be hesitant to put out $50 let me remind you that the ebook comes with a full money back guarantee. If you think you may already know all you need to know about the topic, fine. Buy the book, read it and if you don’t find it to have a significant new wrinkle to the topic of marketing on Twitter, ask for the refund.  Don’t be bashful about it. But I will be surprised. Cause this isn’t some fluffy duffy rehash of everything others have written on the topic, this is cutting edge.

This eBook has my highest recommendation. If you are into internet marketing, and list building, you really should grab a copy today. You will find the contents easy to read, understand and follow. You will change your opinion of Twitter, and will quickly see results.

Advanced Twitter Marketing

Finally, a Twitter Strategy for marketers – One that works! Advanced Twitter Marketing.
I started out thinking Twitter and the twitter rage now dominating the internet was a joke.  But I set up an account anyway, since so many other marketers were saying it was the thing to do.
I read a number of articles, reports and ebooks on the topics, and frankly some were pretty clearly hog wash, and others seemed as if they knew what they were talking about. One of the best was a series put out by Doug Champigny.  I liked it so much I promoted it a bit.
Doug sent me an advance copy of his newest eBook on the topic called Advanced Twitter Marketing. And let me tell you it is advanced.
I have completely revised my understanding and appreciation of twitter.  I now have a strategy, and what’s better, I am seeing real results.  I liked it so well I sent Doug a Testimonial, and he seemed to like it so much, he put it on his sales page, second to the bottom.
Twitter is here and growing. Most people are clueless about how to effectively use it.  If you are using the internet to market a product, you really do want to get a copy of Doug’s book as soon as you can. Once you read it, you will change the way you think about twitter and when you apply the strategies he reveals, you will get far better results – quickly.
This is a five star recommendation.
Finally, a Twitter Strategy for marketers – One that works!


Off Page SEO Factors II

Getting to the top of the search engines VII

In out last post we suggested that the key to getting ranked higher in the search engines was getting back links.  Today, we will look at that a little closer, but first we are going to discuss my perceptions as to what Google is looking for when it ranks web sites.

Now keep in mind that Google is just one of about 40 major search engines. And what applies for Google doesn’t always apply to all the others. But also keep in mind that Google has about 60% of the search market in the US, so it really is the elephant in the room.

The key distinction that lead to Google’s ascendency in the search engine business is not just the speed with which it found relevant sites, but the relevance of the sites it found.

Google understands this deeply, and it remains their paramount objective to deliver the most accurate results to their search engine customers as possible.  Most of the people who go to their computers to look up something are looking not for something to buy.  Most are looking for information. And most are looking for free information, if they can find it.  I bet that true of you as well.

Now if Google finds more than one site that appears to be relevant to a particular keyword search, they need to find a way to determine which one is the more valuable site.  There ability to do that is what has made them famous.

One of the factors is size.

That’s why we suggested you might want to get your main page up to at least 425 words of text when we were talking about on page factors. That suggests to Google that your site contains some material of relevance. It’s also why we suggested that you try to have your keyword appear from 1-4% of the time.

When you do that you are offering Google an indication that the CONTENT on your site is relevant to what the searcher may be looking for.  In internet marketing circles the mantra is, “Content is king.”

It’s one thing for you to say your site is about the keywords you put in your meta-tags and on your page. Too many people have tried to fool Google before by stuffing keywords on the pages and in their meta tags. Google learned and adapted.  It now looks outside those factors to what others have to say about your page. Do those outside factors confirm what you have listed on the page?  And who is it that is confirming the authenticity of your site and your keywords.  We will discuss all of this, but the first message I want you to understand is that the more and better the content of your site meets the needs of the searcher the better your chances of ranking higher in the search engines.

You may think your visitor is looking to hire you. Maybe they are, but what they are more likely interested in is information about the type of product you are selling or the service you are providing.

They are searching for information, and that is what Google wants you to be giving them. The searcher has questions in their head, they may not even be fully able to articulate them. You must answer those questions on your site, in your content.

Google looks to your site and those sites that link to you for clues about the quality of the content on your site. If you appear to be answering peoples questions, you will rise in the ranks compared to other sites.

I hope I have made myself clear.  Way too many web sites are brochures about the company or person portrayed. Instead they should be about the questions their likely visitors have in their minds.  Google isn’t a mind reader, but they do everything they can to figure out if your content answers those questions or not.  Make sure your pages do.

Thus for my home staging friends. Your page will perform better if you answer the questions, “How much does it cost?” and “Is it worth it?”  Or, “Do I need to de-clutter my house fist and then invite the stager in, or can I call her fist and get her to help me,” and a myriad of others. If you spend at least some of your time answering these questions, Google will notice the content and you will probably rank higher. More importantly, you will be giving prospective customers the information they want and need.

There are a lot of tactics to getting links to your pages, and thereby improve your ranking in the search engine. The first and foremost item is providing worthwhile content on your site.

Due to the Memorial Day holiday in the US, the next post on this topic will be scheduled for next Tuesday, May 26.  We’ll get into more nitty gritty next week.

Now I have been doing my homework in an effort to share with you the lessons I have learned about SEO. While I’ve learned alot about the topic, the experts in the SEO field are the guys at Stomper Net.  They are probably the number one resource used by professional internet marketers on the topic. They have just released a FREE 7 lesson course on SEO that you will find interesting.  While it covers some of the same material as I do, I think you will find their presentation to be more than worthwhile, and as I said its free. Go to http://cli.gs/T8aGze

Off Page SEO Factors

Getting to the top of the Search Engines VI

Over the past two weeks or so, we have focused on what I call “On Page” search engine optimization.  We are now ready to move forward to discuss the “Off Page” factors that affect how Google and the other search engines rank your site.

It was important to deal with the on page factors first.  They are for the most part they are the easiest to change and or fix.  You have complete control of the on page factors.  Second, the off page factors require work.  Now some of you may go running and screaming because of that four letter word, but what we are about to launch into take some effort. It will be worthwhile effort, if you did what I have already advised.

If you haven’t yet or are confused about any part of it, spend a few bucks on my <a href=”http:///askearlabout.com/WART/index.html” target=”_blank”>WART Analysis</a> and I will tell you exactly what needs to be done. Then if you find you still can’t do it. Let me know and I will arrange to do it for you. Most of it is simple.

But if you only have 60% of it done, all the work you will be doing on off page factors will only get you about 60% of the effect they would have if you had fully completed the front end on page things. Clear enough?

In the old days, getting your keywords, meta tags, titles and etc. done correctly was enough to get you to the top in the search engine rankings. In narrow niches it still may be, but if you are playing second fiddle to a competitor or two for your favorite keyword you have some homework to do.

Professional search engine optimizers use a wide array of tools to get their client sites to the top of the search engines, many of which aren’t necessary for most small business operators serving a local market.  You can largely count on your geographical keywords to get you in front of most of your customers.

While there are a variety of tools, the key concepts of off page search engine optimization is focused on one concept: Backlinks.  And when discussing backlinks the two major components are Focused Keywords and Anchored Text.

As we progress over the coming week of two, these words will reappear frequently.

There are many different ways to generate backlinks to your web site.  In discussing this topic we will return to talk about the content on your site, social media sites like Squidoo, Twitter, Hubpages, directories, article marketing, forums, press releases, blog networks and more.

In the next post we will talk about Google in particular, and ask why Google ranks one site higher than another. Or at least my best take on that topic.

Teleconferencing is a Powerful Tool, but when it goes badly…

Teleconferencing is a powerful tool, but when it goes badly it can ruin your day, and even lose you customers and clients as well as immediate business.

One of the top teleconference providers is Ric Raddatz. I’ve used his prior company without any problems, but that wasn’t true of everyone. Not that Ric’s system was faulty, the occasional problems were true of all conference systems. Ric has identified the 7 most significant problems and designed his new service to specifically deal with each of them.

I signed up and will be announcing my upcoming teleconferences soon. One will be aimed at the Search engine optimization topic we have been dealing with here for the last few weeks. The other will be aimed at one of my niche markets, the Home staging industry.

The teleconference system will record these teleconferences, and with a bit of editing, I will be able to turn the conference into an audio product I can sell or give away or include as a bonus. I can also get the audio transcribed into text and have a written version that I can edit and reuse in the same manner.

Imagine a one hour tele-seminar can be re-purposed into a product much quicker than if I were to try to write it out in long hand. Think about that. And then grab your own account with Nconnect.

Here’s a five step process to get started.

  1. Signup for 30 day trial membership
  2. Mark a date on your calendar for your first conference
  3. Write up a simple outline of 3-10 key points on the topic of your choice
  4. Publicize the event to your list, customers, students, friends etc.
  5. Do it.

Doing a teleconference is nothing more than talking on the phone. You can do it naked and no one would know. Pick a topic, organize your thoughts, and recruit an audience.

Four Top Picks You Don’t Want to Miss Out On

Happy Victoria Day to my Canadian Friends.
I have 4 items of above average value for you today. I have already been promoting one of them the new Teleseminar service that launches on Tuesday. This new service will solve the glitches that caused headaches with prior systems and is a genuine cutting edge improvement.  One of my mentors makes his entire business off of doing tele-seminars. They are quick, easy to set up, incredibly inexpensive and powerful. The new system will make things even more fool proof.
Go to http://cli.gs/zQ3Uy7 for details.
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If you are an internet marketer like me, you have been bombarded over the years with different platforms to manage to various critical support systems needed to effectively run this seemingly simple but incredibly complex business of online marketing. Sometime very soon, perhaps by the time you read this John Delavera’s new platform will be released for free. This is not something to miss. I repeat, don’t let this opportunity pass you by. I did once. At least I passed by an earlier version when I was just starting out and frankly confused about all the different elements involved in this process.
In hindsight and from conversations with other successful marketers I’ve learned that Johns system has the best reputation out there. It might not have been the most hyped, but the most stable. Now he kept adding tons of stuff to it and evolved it into a monster that I couldn’t afford and or spend the time to learn. Recently he decided to cut it down to the key essentials and that is what he will be making available free later today or already. Be sure to sign up for it. At free you can’t go wrong, and it may very well make your progress online go a lot easier an cheaper than you could ever imagine.
That link is: http://cli.gs/W0Q2yM
—–
The next topic is another giant in business Dr Glen Livingston. His expertise is in understanding the psychology of pay per click advertising. He is a psychologist who has made a tremendous contribution to the field. I have been learning from his email for several years now. I don’t know of anyone who provides as much top caliber free material.  If you do any pay per click work at all, or just have an idle interest in the psychology of marketing, you will learn a ton from Glen. I know I have.
To take advantage of his wisdom go to: http://cli.gs/R0hLaW You won’t regret it.
Now Glen has low price products and some very high priced product as well and if you are interested in finding a vendor you could be 100% confident in and proud to represent, I invite you to join me as part of
his affiliate team. http://cli.gs/RmX214
—-
Finally, I want to recommend a product from another friend of mine, Mike Paetzold. While less monumental, and I do think each of the above are monumental in their own ways, Mike’s newest project is still basic and valuable.  For those of you still exploring which niche to pursue, or those who like me pursue multiple niches pay attention.
Mike’s new product is called the Niche Affiliate System, but what it really is, is a guide on how not to spend time and money chasing a niche idea down a blind alley.  Let me tell you, I have several projects that I have spent big chunks of time, and sweat on that I did not properly evaluate up front. Several of them are just digital dust, a few are producing but at no where the level I had hoped. What Mike’s new eBook does is walk you through a process to evaluate a niche before wasting your time and effort only to find that what  sounded like it would be a winner is a dud after-all. It takes some effort up front, but if you follow this process, you will be able to enthusiastically launch into your next project confident of success. And let me tell you that is well worth the effort.  You can get Mikes eBook at:  http://cli.gs/UAmpnU
I highly recommend all of the above. I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have on them.