Mar 31

Author : Kristi AmbroseHey, in my opinion if you have a website online you need both SEO and SEM aspects But we won’t be talking about needing one or the other more Instead, we will be talking about the differences between each option For some reason, a lot of people get the two confused Or they think they are both the same thing! Oh no They are both very different in their own right

While both search engine optimization and search engine marketing will make your business more visible and hopefully more successful there are a few things you should be well-aware of when choosing which one you want to utilize for your website! Let’s take a look at a few of these differentials listed below

The main definition behind search engine optimization, also known to some people as SEO is the action of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results Even though there is no way to really figure the secrets to search engines algorithms like Google, there are still various distinct attributes you can try out in order to accomplish high ranking status

For the most part you are going to want to try and reach for the first page on the results of these search engines This process allows you to optimize your website for search engines to be able to find your website and in turn index it If your website is indexed on search engines like Google and Yahoo your pretty golden in terms of “being seen” See when you are indexed your site will show up on these engines when people search for certain phrases

So say your website is about laptops or more specifically Sony Vaio, if your website is optimized correctly and you use word in your meta tags and site title like “Sony Vaio”, then when people search for Sony Vaio laptop on the search engines, your site will show up Obviously this is an important part of getting people to your website but it also boosts page rank as well The higher the PR you have the closer your website will show up on Google within the pages of the results

SEO is something that I would suggest you hiring someone to do This is something you really need to understand and get right Do you know where your META tags are? Or how to place keywords on your headers? If not, then you should either educate yourself or hire someone to do this for you It’s quite cheap Plus, they know exactly what they are doing so it takes them a few minutes to do it right the first time, while it might take you hours on end and you did it wrong!

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion Other sources, including the New York Times, define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings

This is something you can do yourself or you can hire someone In order to marketing your website you might want to try registering your link with the following engines: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Ask, Baidu, Rambler, Yandex, Timway, Onkosh, and Ayna Other suggestions? Try practices which will result in backlinks such as directory submission, article marketing, content creation, etc

While SEM is a bit less confusing, there is a lot of “parts” to it This is usually a very broad term for a bunch of different facets So if you don’t know which option to choose from - you could just as well hire someone Or you could do a little reading and do it yourself

Either way, as aforementioned I would seriously suggest doing both of these different aspects for your website It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small Chances are if you have a website - you have it for a reason You probably want to sell products or services Maybe you have CPA, CPC, CPM programs on your website Maybe you belong to Amazon, eBay, Linkshare, Kolimbo or Clickbank Either way - if you want to make money you absolutely must be seen Without views and traffic and sales, you’re just another statistic!This Author is a huge fan of Raleigh Website Design

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Mar 30

Author : Andre NiemandAre you constantly blogging but the numbers you see in your traffic logs are embarrassingly low? It can be maddening to check your stats and realize that no one is actually stopping by Don’t give up yet, because there are four great ways you can get traffic fast

Traffic Tip #1: Do Your Keyword Research

Many bloggers make the mistake of thinking they can just throw some posts up there and expect to get traffic There is a lot more to it than that! You need to make sure you are looking at the keyword data to find terms that are getting a lot of searches Ideally, you want these terms to have low competition so it’s easier for you to rank Once you start basing your posts around these kinds of keywords you should find that you’re getting a lot more traffic

Traffic Tip #2: Write Enticing Articles Off-Site

Submitting to article directories isn’t just a good way to get backlinks to your site, it’s also a great way to get readers! Sites like EzineArticles have their own readership of people who are looking for the exact topic you’re blogging about If you write a compelling article that leads into your resource box, people will be enticed to visit your blog

Traffic Tip #3: Give People a Reason to Come Back

Getting traffic in the first place is one thing, but what you want to do as a blogger is have them coming back over and over again The best way to do this is to create special offers or exciting events For example, you can give away a prize each week to the new people who subscribed to your list or your feed You can also run a contest for people who leave answers as comments on your blog posts Make your blog a happening place to be and people will want to visit often and tell their friends

Traffic Tip #4: Create Linkbait

Linkbait is when you write a blog post that is so exciting or controversial it gets people to come to your blog, comment, and link to the post You may share some shocking news or offer an opinion you know is bound to stir people’s emotions You do need to have thick skin when you write linkbait! Don’t expect everyone to agree with your opinion

An example of linkbait is going the opposite way everyone else goes For instance, imagine you have an electronics blog and you decide to review the iPhone After reviewing the product you decide you don’t like it You then write to tell your readers why Since this was a product everyone was gaga over when it first came out the chances are good you would have gotten a strong reaction right off the bat

There you have it! These are four solid ways you can start to increase the traffic on your blog as soon as possible When you put these methods to work you’ll realize that the secrets to getting great traffic were in front of you the whole time Andre Niemand is a dentist,with a love for marketing, especially the latest unique strategies.Find out how you can easily choose the right platform for making money with your blog at http://www.swotreviews.com/BLOGGING and using PPC to drive your traffic at http://www.swotreviews.com/PPC

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Mar 30

Author : Andre NiemandWhile no one knows exactly what the formula for search engine rankings is, we do know that it has a lot to do with how many “votes” you have out there on the web These votes are counted as backlinks If you think about it, what do you when you find something you really like and want to share with others? You link to it! That’s why the search engines count these so highly While you should definitely aim to get to the point where others will link to you, it’s possible to take things into your own hands for now

Below are some of the top strategies you can use for building backlinks to increase the value of your blog in the eyes of the search engine

Write Articles and Submit Them

Writing and submitting articles is a great way to build backlinks! There are sites out there like EzineArticles and GoArticles that allow you to post your content with a link back to your site That means you get to have your link on authority sites! The more articles you write, the more you can submit them The beauty of this is that you can often submit the same articles to different sites, or rewrite them quickly to have something that is more unique

Comment on Other People’s Blogs

It’s a great thing to remember that a huge part of blogging is getting involved in the community Commenting on other people’s blogs will not only get you some recognition from their readers right away, it also counts as a backlink! Keep in might that some of these links are termed as “nofollow”, which means the search engines may not pass along ranking or “juice ” That’s okay, because the algorithms are always changing, and since these links are so highly targeted they are a great thing

Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts for other niche blogs is an amazing strategy People love to let you do this because it gives them a day off from blogging Readers love it because they get a fresh perspective on a topic they are interested in You’ll love it because it means you get a link back to your site and all you had to do was write an extra post for the day

Use Social Bookmarking Sites

Another thing you can do is bookmark your sites Now, there are some rumblings out there that these won’t count as highly in the future as they do now Still, bookmarking your sites lets the search engines know “you are there” for fast indexing If you take the time to make sure the sites you bookmark with are high quality, you’ll get the benefit of those links as well

Paying for Links

There are many different ways you can pay for links It is important to know that Google and other search engines frown on this because it’s like you’re gaming their algorithm Whether you choose to do this or not is up to you, but it can be an effective strategy if you don’t go overboard and aren’t obvious You can contact people directly or even work through link exchange networks

Learning how to build backlinks to your blog is extremely important if you want to rank well Add a few links at a time and they will build up in a massive way over the long run Andre Niemand is a dentist,with a love for marketing, especially the latest unique strategies.Find out how you can easily choose the right platform for making money with your blog at http://www.swotreviews.com/BLOGGING and using PPC to drive your traffic at http://www.swotreviews.com/PPC

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Mar 29

Author : Shawn WilsonThings are really changing in the music industry and yet again the record companies are making yet another mistake Depending on how old you are you might have even owned records and if you did you have over the years seen quite a few changes in the music industry and how it get’s music to the consumer Of course the internet has changed everything and just when you thought MP3’s and ipod’s was the last change you needed to deal with in your lifetime I have news for you Not bad news just news

There is an emerging technology in the internet world called cloud computing To explain quickly it basically refers to users and business storing information to be made available on the web through a web connection Most of us have been using one of the earliest forms of cloud computing for years now, web based email Instead of having your emails sitting on your computer you have no doubt over the years used services like Hotmail, Yahoo mail and even Gmail This really is one of the best examples of cloud computing Where things have become more interesting is now the “cloud” will have the ability to store everything you currently have on your desktop and any other hard drive for that matter

Google recently launched a service called Google docs, which allows anyone anywhere the ability to upload and store any document on the cloud or in this case on Google massive network of servers Another cloud service that is used by millions is Facebook, it is a cloud for your pictures, address book and the list goes on

So back to the music industry many of us are now getting familiar with the idea of owning an MP3 player where we convert our old CD’s to this format and play them in our cars and house stereo systems The ability to not only have a huge amount of music all on one machine that you own, but the ability to find other albums and songs through services like iTunes it quite convenient Here is where the cloud takes things to the next level

What if there was a service or multiple services where you could at any time from any computer or phone access every song ever written and recorded Instead of having some music copied on one machine you could have access to every song through the cloud Pretty interesting, isn’t it!

If the music labels are smart and history shows that they aren’t, they will invest in the this type of music sharing There are already a dozen or more sites that already offer this service, the sad part is just like Napster the record companies are trying to stop it If they had any business sense and again history shows an extreme lack of it, they would embrace this technology

So how can the record companies make money off of this service Well today most users pay a fee to buy MP3’s and CD’s, the sad part is most music is attained through file sharing If all of the record companies got together and built a consortium or sorts they would make billions and recover much of the money they have lost over the years They would in the end make money from charging a monthly fee Would you pay $10 a month to have access to every song ever recorded? Even at $5 a month just think of how many of us would be willing to pay for this service that normally either didn’t bother buying CD’s and MP3’s in the past or currently source music through file sharing services I have to think the numbers would be staggering

Whether the music companies embrace this or not, this is the future of how we find, search and listen to music! The good news is, changing your Tapes to CD’s cost a lot of money, going from MP3’s to the cloud could be very economic and in these times that’s a good thing!This article was written by Shawn Wilson, a member of the customer support team at Datepad, where we always offer free internet dating. Datepad has a massive directory of informative free dating articles along with a great list of dating site reviews on our dating blog.

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Mar 28

Author : Janet DriscollHere I thought I knew a thing or two about Twitter, and then I came to this session!! The session was given by Jon Henshaw of Raven Internet Marketing Tools, Dan Zarrella, a social and viral media consultant, Lee Odden of TopRank, and David Snyder of Search & Social The session covered many great tools to use with Twitter and strategy and tactics around using Twitter for business

Jon Henshaw

Jon gave pointers on how to get started with Twitter He mentioned the tool Twitority to find friends You can also follow RSS feeds from Twitter Search to find people who tweet about your subject

He does not recommend “pimping” yourself or your company right off the bat Develop relationships first Don’t overfollow too quickly! He suggested Twimailer which gives you more information when someone follows you, like their number of followers, their interests, etc so you can decide off the bat if you want to follow them back

Some interesting facts:
Twitter users are most active on Wednesdays
Monday and Wednesday are the best day of the week to get retweets
The best time to tweet to get retweets is between 5am-4pm
Twitter users are most engaged during 8am-4pm

Use keywords and hashtags in your twitter posts and keep most tweets non-promotional No one wants to follow you if you only promote yourself

He highly recommended TweetDeck for following tweets He also recommended Friend or Follow, a tool that lets you put in your username to see who is following you back SocialToo also gives some valuable info HootSuite allows you to SCHEDULE tweets Splitweet keeps track of tweets TweetStalk allows you to follow someone without technically following them in Twitter

Lee Odden

Lee started off by sharing some stats about Twitter- it has grown by over 964 5% in a year It is starting to encroach on traditional search tools, like Google Blog Search Lee covered the many benefits of using Twitter, many of which are related to public relations and brand

Lee discussed a social media roadmap, looking at audience, objectives, strategy, tactics and measurement in determining a social media plan He showed that Twitter outdrives traffic directed to their blog at TopRank over other tactics, like StumbleUpon and other methods It’s also helped with getting covered by reporters

Some tools Lee endorsed:
Twhirl and TweetDeck
TwitterFon for iPhone
search twitter com
Twitturly com (track retweets) and backtweets com/top-links
Cli gs and bit ly for URL shortening and analytics
twellow com and twibs com -Twitter directories
twitter pbwiki com - a wiki of applications for Twitter

Dan Zarrella

Rules to get Retweets:
Leave room for people to put in RT to retweet you
Don’t put the @ as the first symbol
Give credit
Try to keep the original tweet as much the same as possible

70% of all retweets contain a link- it’s a great way to promote content! More followers = more retweets, but it’s not as strong of a correlation as you might expect The most retweeted words include: you (how YOU can do something), post, blog, new blog post, please retweet, etc Asking for a retweet does work, but don’t do it every time

How tos and instructional content, news, warnings, freebies, etc When you ask for a retweet with using the word “please,” you’re more likely to get a retweet The more something is retweeted, the more likely it will be retweeted again

Also be sure to display tweet-it buttons so that readers of content can easily Tweet the blog post or content

David Snyder

Last up was Dave Snyder who told us how to “pimp Twitter for money” -what we all want to know! Dave coverd a case study about The Book Bank Foundation, where they increased brand awareness and generated leads Don’t use followers as your core metric - that’s not true measurement It’s about viral communication They raised $20,000 in two months via Twitter use

How did he do it? First they seeded with power users on subjects that were relative, like homelessness He stressed solid content creation Defintely monitor and measure Dave uses TweetLater, which is a Twitter management service Dave says you should definitely track retweets

Dave’s main rules:
Have a game plan
You get what you give
Be consistentJanet Driscoll Miller is the CEO and Lead Search Strategist of Search Mojo a full service search engine marketing firm. Her company offers both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services and Pay Per Click (PPC) Management services to help clients improve search engine rankings.

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Mar 28

Author : Karl GlantschnigBlogs have literally taken in the internet by storm It seems as if just about everyone has a blog Blogs are so popular that it there is a good chance that you have one While blogs are nice, it is sometimes difficult to get them seen Many blog owners, maybe even yourself, are unsure how to go about generating more internet traffic Luckily for you and other blog owners, there are a number of different ways that you can work to increase the number of page views that your blog receives

The first step in getting traffic to your blog is to make sure that you have an interesting topic If you are writing about your personal experiences, you may find that not everyone wants to read about them, that is unless you lead an adventurous life However, if you blog on a wider range of topics, such as working from home, saving money, or being a good partner, you are automatically likely to get a bigger audience This is because more internet users, especially ones that you do not know, would be more willing to read information on these topics, rather than your daily adventures or lack of adventures

Once you have found a topic that you would like to write about, you will need to start creating your blog, if you haven not already When making your blog it is important that you write content that will be useful to your blogs general topic It is also important to include lots of content Content is what most search engines use when picking up websites In the event that your blog gets indexed by a search engine, you will find that your blogs traffic should automatically increase This is because a large number of internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for

Although a high search engine ranking may help to increase the amount of traffic your blog sees, it is sometimes difficult to do Most individuals do not go further than the third or fourth page, when looking at search engine results This means that if your blog is not considered to be high ranking, you may not get the results that you were hoping for However, this does not mean that you should give up Instead, it means that you just have to find another way to promote your blog

One of the many other ways that you can go about promoting your blog is through the use of online video websites, particularly the ones that are free to use Online video websites are websites that allow internet users to upload videos that they have created Once uploaded, these videos can be viewed by thousands, if not millions, of internet users If you are looking for a fun and low-cost way to market your blog, you are advised to give online video websites some though

Before uploading your video, to an online video website, you will have to make your video To do so, you will need a recording device The best devices to use include camcorders and webcams When making your online video, it is important not to make your video sound too pushy or like spam It may be a good idea to state the purpose of your blog and what can be found there You may also want to record yourself or someone else visiting your blog to showcase your blogs features You could also take still shots, also commonly known as screen shots These shots will allow you to post pictures of your blog pages Having those pictures float through your online video is a great way to show internet users what your blog is all about

Once you have finished making your video, you will need to upload that video to your computer Once your recording device is hooked up to your computer, it should be recognized by a moving making software program These programs will not only allow you to save your video, but edit it as well Once your video is saved, you will need to follow the uploading directions for each online video website that you would like your video or videos to be uploaded to

It is important to note that you are not guaranteed to see an increase in your blogs traffic, but why not at least give it a shot? With most video websites being free to use, there should not be any risks associated with incorporating your blog into your next online video Karl Glantschnig, a WordPress Blog Expert will show you a quick and easy way to create a high traffic, Google optimized Wordpress Blog…Guaranteed! Click here to know more: http://www.ezleadcapture.com/member/expertwordpress.htm

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