Internet Marketing Advice: Building an Online Presence

August 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

If you want to succeed with your website or online business, the most important piece of Internet marketing advice that you can receive is to build your online presence. Building an online presence takes a lot of work, and there are many different ways of going about it. The best strategy is to incorporate several different approaches to ensure that your presence grows as large and as quickly as possible.

One of the most essential ways of increasing your online presence is through search engine optimization (SEO). Your presence in the search engines is the key to the amount of traffic that your site receives and is extremely important to your success. To build your presence with SEO you have to spend time doing keyword research and link building, choosing a good domain name and implementing other fundamental strategies that can aid in your success.

Internet gurus who give expert Internet marketing advice say that many people fail in internet marketing because they spend some time on basic SEO, but they don’t spend time on other strategies to increase their online presence. If you truly want to grow your business, you have to do much more than just basic SEO.

One of the other tactics that you can use is to participate in social networking. Social networking involves all of the different web 2.0 communities that are available today. These include the major sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to link sharing sites like Digg and media sites such as YouTube.

If you spend time joining some of these different networks and participating with their communities and members, you will help your business gain a foothold in your market, finding new prospects along the way. All of the major social networking sites are different, and they all won’t work for everyone. The challenge lies in learning which ones are appropriate for your company and figuring out how you can exploit the sites for your advantage.

Another potential way to help build your online presence is through article marketing. Article marketing entails writing and distributing articles to various online magazines and directories. You get to include a resource box with your article that includes a blurb about yourself and your company, and links back to your website. And linkbacks are very powerful in getting your site noticed by the search engines and Google.

By providing unique, interesting and valuable information in your articles you can increase your site’s reputation and establish yourself as a knowledgeable member of the community. People will begin to seek you out as a trusted source of information, and you’ll see more traffic to your site.

These are just a few of the ways that your site can see an improved online presence. The best path to success is one that involves many different techniques that work together to produce the greatest results.

Cat Williams, an internet marketer and freelance writer, provides more valuable internet marketing advice at: http://www.internetmarketingfornewbiesreview.com/.

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Use a Link Directory to Build Quality Backlinks

August 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A link directory’s quality is an important factor to consider when your goal is to build quality backlinks. When you understand how important quality backlinks are, you’ll be willing to put in the time and energy to find the right link directories for your website and to even consider a premium links directory that might require payment for your site to be listed.

A link directory is simply one way of organizing websites in a way that searchers can find the information they need. Link directories can be general and broad, like Dmoz or Yahoo, or they can be niche directories, focusing on a single topic, industry, or category. There are thousands of link directories on the internet, each of which varies in content and quality. By quality, I mean the way that the link directory is seen by the search engine. The higher the quality of the link directory, the better impact you’ll have by listing your website on the directory. Quality is determined by two factors – the website’s Google page rank and the Alexa Traffic Rating.

The top link directories, or premium link directories, are the five that every website will want to be listed in. They are Yahoo.com, Dmoz.com(owned by Google), Business.com, Bestoftheweb.com, and whatuseek.com.

Below you’ll see these five listed along with their Google page rank (PR) and their Alexa ranking. A PR of 10 is the best, whereas an Alexa ranking of 1 is best.

1. Yahoo Directory Yahoo.com – (Google Pr of 8, Alexa ranking of 2)

2. Dmoz.com (Google PR of 8, Alexa ranking of 870)

3. Business.com (Google PR of 7, Alexa of 1,693)

4. Bestoftheweb.com (Google PR of 6, Alexa rank of 7036)

5. WhatUSeek.com (Google PR of , Alexa rank of 28,418)

Remember that if you try to duplicate these results, chances are they will differ. This is because the internet is constantly in flux and the rankings will change continually. However, over time, the five premium links directories listed above have consistently ranked as the best.

Just as a warning, you might find it difficult to get your site listed on Yahoo or Dmoz. Yahoo charges an annual fee if you want your site in their link directory, but experts agree it is worth the fee to be included in the Yahoo link directory. A listing in the Dmoz link directory is free of charge, but the link directory is very rigorous in its requirements and in what it will or won’t accept. If you can tweak your content to fit their requirements, do it. You want to be part of Dmoz. Check the website of all of these link directories or any others that you are considering and make sure that you understand the submission criteria.

Don’t forget to look for niche or specialty link directories that are related to your website’s topic. If fees are required for these sites, it may be worth it if your target audience is likely to use them to find information they need. Remember that when you are building quality backlinks, the quality of the site you choose to submit yoru site to is important. So if you are in doubt about the reputation of a site, don’t post your site’s link there until you have determined the site’s quality is good.

The best way to optimize your gambling website is to add your URL &/or submit your articles to http://www.e-casinodirectory.com (a links & free articles directory); where you’ll be able to gain valuable gambling related backlinks which are relevant to your site.

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Do Web Designers Do SEO?

August 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

As the internet has become increasingly sophisticated, the various professional fields in the internet marketplace have become more and more specialized. In each area there have been massive leaps in complexity, usability, design and technology.

Even just a few years back, there were relatively few separate specialties for people who work within the arena of the internet. These days there is a vast multitude of ways in which people can specialize online. These professionals include:

Web designers, information architects, Google Adwords campaign managers, various types of program and software developers and last but not least, search engine optimization.

In my experience, most web designers these days don’t even know how to include search engine optimization in the sites that they design and build. There is ample proof of this; it is visible easily every day by just taking a look at what is out there. Websites that have either no or empty Meta tags no headline tags and in some cases no title tags! What is frustrating about this is that all of these are extremely easy to include.

So where does that leave the buyer? It leaves them with a website that will no doubt look fantastic; however the chances are that few will ever see it. Let alone become customers of whatever service or product the site is offering. This seems to be particularly true in the case of websites that contain a lot of flash, it looks great, but it is heavy in the browser and as it is purely images, the search engines cannot read it, even if there are words as the words themselves are rendered as images not text.

Therefore, when shopping for a website designer, be aware that though most will have the words ‘SEO’ or ‘Search Engine Optimization’ somewhere within their marketing or sales material. Take the precaution of checking that they actually know what that means, many don’t. The way to check it out is to look at sites they have already completed – particularly their own. Check to see if it has Meta tags such as the keyword and description meta tag, check to see if their title tags actually have something useful in them not just ‘welcome to company XYZ website’.

These things are very easy to check. The title tag is easily visible to you as you open the site in your browser, you will see it on the very top of your screen. To check the other parts you will need to look at the source code, you can do this in Firefox by clicking on ‘View’ then on ‘Page Source’. This will show you all the code of the site, the meta tags should be near the top just after the the title tags.

Lastly, check to see if the site has headline tags. Between them should be the main title of the page, including the keywords that you want people to find your site with.

DO you want help from an SEO services expert? If you want a website that will be found by your customers, or you need to transform your existing site into a search engine friendly site, visit the search engine optimisation experts at http://www.LinxHurricane.com today.

Filed Under: SEO, Site Development Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Reasons to Learn About Article Marketing

August 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Many years ago, I had a good friend who did in home shows for a very nice and upscale home decorating product. Her biggest problem was not getting the sales, but actually getting people in front of the product. She was quite confident that once a prospective client saw it, they’d love it and want to buy. She decided to canvas neighborhoods in her area which took a lot of time and got very little response. A one time direct mail or door-to-door canvassing campaign does little to get you noticed. You have to canvas or mail the same neighborhoods several times in order to get a response. It wasn’t until after I’d received at least four or five fliers on my doorknob that I called a handyman service to install peepholes for my new home.

How often are you getting unsolicited direct mail materials in your mailbox or hanging on your doorknob? Not too often I’m sure. This is a prime example of how marketing has changed, saving time and money. Article marketing is working its way as a replacement to direct mail. Business owners are being noticed faster than ever before. Article marketing is when you take an article written by or for you and submit it to various publishers, ezine directories and article directories. They can be submitted manually (one-by-one) or automatically (one push sends to 10s of 1000s at a time). There are software applications that allow you to submit your articles manually or services that submit them automatically. If you’re a little hesitant about article marketing here are a few advantages to help you make an informed decision.

Article Marketing:

1) Establishes you as an expert and makes you creditable in your industry. If you’re a party planner, you want people to think of you as the person to seek for advice and tips. If you are the supreme network marketer, what better way to sell your knowledge than by getting noticed through articles that offer a small portion of your expertise? And how would potential clients locate you the expert? Through online articles that have been submitted to various publishers, directories, and content writers containing your information. As a credible professional in your industry, opportunities will start coming to you and not the other way around.

2) Gets you notice by customers eager to buy what you have to offer. SEO is the buzzword these days. Search engine optimization allows you to set keywords relative to your topic, industry, and subject matter. When inquisitive customers are searching the net they’ll easily be able to find you because of your SEO rich articles. When submitting your articles, for example, you are able to select keywords and categories that make locating your information that much easier. Also you write it once and there is the viral effect – it keeps on working over and over for you.

3) Helps create a loyal client base for your business. As you know the best advertisement is word of mouth, but you need people to know who you are so they can pass it on. With article marketing you can create a target rich article that drives those who are interested right to your website. Each article that is submitted will always contain information about you, your business, and how to get in touch with you. This is just too EASY! Article marketing takes the guess work out of finding new customers and maintaining existing customers all for very reasonable rates.

Article Marketing is the new form of “canvassing”. It gets you in front of the people who are looking for you. Every business owner wants a loyal client base and not one time customers. Article marketing does just that. Here are a few quick tips to note when searching for a service to market your articles in addition to low cost:

a. Look for a service that offers unlimited article submissions

b. See if the size of the distribution list offered out numbers the competition

c. Seek a service that provides automated article submission

So now it’s time to get writing so you too can join the alternative to direct mail!

Janet Giacoma is a business coach, marketer, and online business owner who assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple income streams. To contact Janet visit: http://www.BabyBoomersBlueprint.com

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