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How To Use Facebook To Make Affiliate Sales

December 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

How To Use Facebook To Make Affiliate Sales

By now, I am sure you have a Facebook page, right? The reason I say this is because most people in the world have a Facebook page of some kind. Whether you have a fan page, a personal page, a website page or whatever it may be doesn’t matter and the reason is because you can still make affiliate sales from that page.

One of the things that most people don’t realize is that there are over 800 million people on Facebook, over 500 million people on Facebook each day and all of them are potential sales. If you want to make it in affiliate marketing, then you need to utilize Facebook for what it is worth. Trust me on this one, making money on Facebook is really easy once you know what you are doing.

Facebook Marketing Tips

Get Interested Fans

One of the first things that you need to do, other than start a Facebook page of some kind is to get interested fans. The reason why you need to get fans that are interested in what you are talking about is because selling an affiliate product to somebody that is not interested in buying it is not going to go over so well. Think about it, doesn’t that make sense to you?

If you look around online you will see a lot of people being marketed to even though they have no interest in the product. If you want to make the most money from Facebook, then it is imperative that you get fans that will be interested in what you are talking about and what you are offering.

Update Daily

Another tip that you need to follow is to simply update your status on a daily basis. The reason you need to do this is to make sure that people know you are still there. The reason I advise you on updating your status daily is because the more updates you do, the more affiliate links you can put in. Just remember, if you don’t do any updates, then your followers will find it odd when you finally do add something.

Limit Affiliate Links

Something else that you really need to keep to a minimum is the amount of affiliate links you post. What many people do is post an affiliate link every time they make a status update and that is not what you want to do. What I highly recommend doing is posting no more than 3 affiliate links per week. If you can do this, then I am sure you will get some sales without making it look like that is the only reason you post status updates.

Giveaways

One other tip is to simply give something for free. This doesn’t mean that you need to send people new Ipods of things like that but you do need to give people something so they think they are getting a great deal from you. Some of the best things to give for free are ebooks, links to great deals online and even other giveaways that you spot online.

Now, I know what you are wondering, “How do I get people to like my page”. This is not as tough as many people think it is and the reason is because there are so many ways that you can get people to like your page. Below I created a list of three great ways to grow your following on Facebook and I hope you use them.

How To Grow Your Following

Comment On Related Pages

One of the best things you can do it create links to your page within Facebook. The best way to go about doing this is by commenting on other Facebook pages. The nice thing about doing this is that the fans of that particular Facebook page will see what you wrote and they might head over to your page and become a fan. This is one of the fastest ways to get more followers but you need to put in the time and effort into writing comments on other pages.

Build Backlinks To Your Page

Just like with a webpage, you need backlinks. The best part about a backlink is not that your page will go higher and higher on the search engines, the best part is that you will have a new door to get to your Facebook page. Now, I know that backlinks are not that fun to build but if you have a website or you like to read other blogs around the internet, then that would be a great time to leave a link back to your Facebook page.

Create Youtube Videos To Your Page

Something that most people don’t do, which you should, is simply create Youtube videos to your Facebook page. The reason why I highly recommend this is because that Youtube video could become viral and if it does, then you will get a lot of fans in a very short amount of time. On tip that I have for you is to also place the video that you make on your Facebook page and the reason is because the video could attract more fans to your page. Just know that the more stuff you have on your Facebook page, the more people you will be able to get. One last thing about Youtube is that people would rather watch a video than read a post so if you want to you can just update your Facebook page with videos and that will make you extremely different than what is already out there.

If you are serious about making money from affiliate sales, then it is a must to get a following on Facebook. Most people think that you need thousands of fans to make any money but that is not the truth. You don’t need a lot of fans, but you will need fans that are interested in what you are talking about. Trust me, if you follow what you have learned here, you will be making affiliate sales in no time at all.

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Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: affiliate sales, backlinks, comment, Facebook, making money, Youtube video

The Simple Ways To Building A Niche Website Empire!

December 9, 2011 By 3 Comments

The Simple Ways To Building A Niche Website Empire

If you are just starting out with Internet Marketing, there are tons of different ways of generating an online income. The problem most marketers have when first starting out is they try everything all at once for example PPC, PPV, and SEO.

There is no problem with running all those different types of advertising but it is way too hard! To be focused on all of those traffic sources can be very overwhelming and I know it because I started out that way.  I tried to make everything work but it never did. It was way too much on my plate. I would never be successful working on all of those traffic sources.

So about 2 and a half years ago I said enough is enough. I need to focus on one method of traffic generation and focus strictly on the traffic I am generating to my websites. So I picked SEO as my main focus of advertising and it still is not easy focusing on one topic versus trying to run PPC or PPV or various other traffic sources. You need to pick a traffic source and develop a system or blueprint that you can follow each and every day.

Once I started to grasp all the basics of SEO I started ranking websites very well and efficiently. I had developed my own system to ranking my websites. Things like learning to optimize Meta tags and Meta descriptions is pretty basic stuff once you know what you’re doing. If I were still working on all the traffic sources I would have never learned what I have come to learn today.

Backlinking was another piece of the SEO puzzle that I had grasped as well. I started learning that relevant backlinks where a major part of my online success. I am always seeing people add so much spam and crap to their website and I was always wondering why. I am always trying to build things for the long term instead of using any trickery that Google may catch onto.  I wanted to build a business that would last for years to come, not just a couple months.

Relevant backlinks give my websites a huge boost in rankings. Creating relevant backlinks makes Google reward me. I was ahead of the game. I was building a lot of quality backlinks that competitors didn’t have. I was beating my competitors by building better backlinks.

Some of the best places to get these links are blogs, forums, and Squidoo lenses. When building backlinks the highest authority backlink in Google’s eyes is an in content link. A backlink that is in the content of the page on the top fold. So when a searcher is reading the article they click your link which in turn gives you traffic and better ranking because Google thinks your website is something the searcher liked. So in return better rankings for you!

It is also always important to be diverse as well. You want to make sure when you build relevant backlinks that you are building all different kinds of links. You do not want to just have all blog comment backlinks because it doesn’t look natural. You want to stay under the radar by diversifying all of your backlinks. It is very important to do so that Google doesn’t think you are trying to game there system.

Once you fully optimize a website and build diversified backlinks to it how do I rank?! Well it takes time. You cannot build an online business over night. You need to build yourself up and keep growing. For example you cannot build 100 backlinks in 1 night. It will not look natural to the search engines. You cannot build links that are made industrial. For example you should build maybe 10 backlinks a day. You could build 15 backlinks a day. You always want to stay natural and under the radar. This will ensure that you keep things fresh for the search engines.

Once you start gaining momentum and ranking and you are hitting 50 visitors or more a day then it is time to add some affiliate offers or AdSense to monetize your website so we can start making money!

It is important that you do not add affiliate links to your website until you get 50+ visitors a day because it can be distracting. Checking stats all of the time is a huge time waster. You could be growing your online business bigger instead. So it is very important that you focus on traffic generation first. Chances are if you get less than 50 visitors a day you are not missing out on much money.

If you have no traffic you will have no money. That is why it is so important to focus on traffic generation first and foremost. You want to make sure you are adding value to your niche. Write good content that is unique and informational. You don’t want to give your readers a 100 word crappy article or your visitors will not like your website and most likely will never come back. You want to add value!

 

Matt Green has been a full time internet marketers for 2 and a half years building 100’s of niche websites and working with local businesses and there online presence.  http://www/evergreeninternetmarketers.com

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: backlinks, competitors, forums, internet marketing, links, niche, optimize, quality, seo, website

Making Money Before You Even Have a Product

November 18, 2011 By 12 Comments

Waiting until you have a product of your own to make money online means you’re missing out on a lot of potential profit that you could be making while you get your own products ready.

You don’t want to waste the opportunity. First, create a plan or a map of how much money you’d like to earn online and then take the steps to fulfill that plan. If you don’t have a plan or a marketing strategy to use to make money, then you won’t be as successful.

You don’t always have to go with what you know when you want to make money as an online entrepreneur. Pick a market or a niche than interests you. If it interests you, it’ll show through your efforts, and you can promote as an affiliate.

If you can write, you can earn money writing for other online businesses or marketers while you’re building your own products. You can write blogs, reports, articles and even eBooks. And other service jobs are out there too – like building backlinks for marketers, creating blogs and more.

If you can’t write or are not comfortable with it, then teach. Set up a teaching website sharing information about whatever you’re knowledgeable in and charge for lessons or online classes – ad do them via video.

Create a how-to workshop. There are many people who want to learn from the comfort of their own homes. Just make a list of the topics you know and pick a few of those to expand. Create a lesson plan, put up a site (you can even use free ones) and announce your site through free press releases, forums or blogs.

You can also let your site be used by marketers who are already making money. Sell them some advertising space on your site and promote their products. You want to make sure that what they’re offering is legitimate – because if it’s not and people get upset, you’ll get tainted with the same brush simply by association.

You can also create a site and promote the products that Amazon or other retailers sell via a link on your site. You’ll earn commission based on the products that people buy. You might start out with small amounts of money, but it will grow and it’s a fairly easy way to make money online.

This is known as affiliate marketing of tangible items. You can also check out marketplaces such as Clickbank and PayDotCom for digital download products to promote.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: advertising, articles, backlinks, blogs, clickbank, digital products, ebooks, lessons, making money online, marketers, online businesses, online classes, product, reports

Every Good Campaign Needs a Backlinking Strategy

July 20, 2011 By 7 Comments

back links

Backlinks are just how they sound – links that lead back to your site. They’re like fingers all over the Internet and each finger is pointing the way for people to find your domain. If you have a website and you write an article with a link back to your site and you submit it to an article directory, that link is considered a backlink. You might see backlinks referred to as inbound links as well.

What’s the purpose of backlinking? What backlinks have the ability to do is raise your search engine ranking, which is what every marketer wants because the more visible your site, the more traffic, the better the odds are of making money.

The links work sort of like a popularity contest. They show the search engine spiders and search bots that your website is popular. Sites with a lot of relevant backlinks will be looked on favorably by search engines.

You can garner backlinks through natural methods. This means your pages are so good, so helpful with information, that others create links on their sites to point to your pages. You can also ask websites to backlink to yours and offer a link to their site, which is known as reciprocal linking.

Some blogs will let you leave comments and you can leave a backlink to your site. Not all blogs allow this. In forums, you can do the same by having a link in your signature file.

Look for popular forums in your niche and become an active community member. You can also use backlinks in videos and on social sites or on product reviews that you do about your niche.

Getting backlinks for your website is vital to the monetary health of your business, yet it can take a tremendous amount of time to set up backlinks – time that pulls you away from working on creating products to sell or concentrating on affiliate marketing.

That’s why some marketers choose to pay other people to create their backlinks for them.  You want to make sure that whoever you hire understands how backlinks work.  You can do this by hiring a writer to create articles and turn them into the various article directories or you can hire a service that specializes in site promotion.

Backlinks should be grown slowly whether you outsource it to a professional or take the do it yourself route. You never want to show search engines hundreds or thousands of new links in a day. Pace yourself for healthy link boosts and the search engines will see that as a positive sign that your site is an authority.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, blogs, marketers, product reviews, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, social sites, video, websites

6 Ways to Make a Living From SEO

July 12, 2011 By 20 Comments

SEO

 

Megan Duckett owns a theatrical-sewing business in California that she named “Sew What?” She wanted to branch out and figured setting up a website would expose her business to new customers nationwide, and hopefully around the globe. Setting up a site, hiring one employee, soliciting past clients and cold-calling new ones did just enough to keep the business afloat; 20% of her sales were to other states, and she conducted two overseas transactions. Then Megan discovered SEO Services.

In 18 months Megan’s revenues skyrocketed 45%. Consequently, her business now employs 33 people in a 15,000-square-foot facility, and there are plans for expansion. One third of her sales are in California, 2/3 in other states, and she’s made 55 international transactions. When interviewed by Businessweek, Megan said, “It’s all been the search engine optimization and some low-budget, pay-per-click ads I’ve placed on certain industry terms…”

How Can I Do That?

1. Keyword Research

Know your competition. Use some free tools like SEOmoz Term Extractor, Open Site Explorer and Alexa Search Analytics to keep tabs on hot keywords in your niche. Take notes on what keywords your competitors rank highly for, which keywords rank poorly for them, and even the mediocre terms.

These tools also help you keep tabs on keywords that are diminishing in use so that you can update your website accordingly. Older websites, i.e., established domains, have more trust than newer websites, so older sites tend to rank higher for those mediocre terms than fresh competitors.

2. On-Page Optimization

Make sure to use keywords in outgoing links, title tags, meta descriptions, H1 and H2 headers, in bold face, and in the ALT text of images. Keep “keyword density” in mind here. Keyword density is the ratio of keywords and key phrases to the total number of words on a page. Blogs benefit from a keyword ratio of 2% to 5%, while the optimum ratio for eCommerce websites is slightly higher at 4% to 8%.

3. Content Like No Other

When writing about the latest product or event in your niche, avoid regurgitating what your competitors have written on the topic. Go into greater depth where possible with facts, stats and graphs or charts. When writing opinion pieces or reviews, do so with more clarity and depth than your competition. In short, valuable content is writing that’s easy to understand, factual (therefore reliable), and straight to the point.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Paying to have your website at the top of the search engines guarantees more traffic, a precursor to potential sales. The PPC model is affiliate-based, and as a merchant you want solid affiliates. The cost per click (CPC) paid to search engines varies based on factors such as which search engine is used, keyword competitiveness, the day and time a visitor is surfing the web, along with visitor interest, intent and location. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter operate under a complex bid-based model.

5. Linking

Building quality backlinks takes time, but the rewards can be tremendous. The goal is to have websites that rank high in the search engines link back to you. This generates a ton of traffic.

6. Blogging

Run a companion blog to your website that shows customers you are passionate about your niche. Not just passionate about what can be sold, but a fellow enthusiast, be it camping, marketing, martial arts, whatever. Use SEO techniques to get your blog ranked higher so web surfers can share in your enthusiasm for a given niche, and then find your website.

 

Amber McDougon is a professional writer and blogger with a particular
interest in the open source Joomla platform. She has been helping
companies build and maintain their online relationships with customers
since 2005. http://www.inetzeal.net/

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, Business, content, keyword density, make a living, Megan Duckett, meta, niche, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, Sew What, websites

6 Reasons for Dropped SEO Rankings

February 12, 2011 By 18 Comments

SEO drop

If you monitor your search engine ranking position on a regular basis, which I highly suggest you do in order to stay competitive with websites position, you may notice from time to time it seems to slip off the first page and drop several places or even worse several pages. This type of movement is normal, and while I wouldn’t call it predictable, there are a few things that can precipitate this type of activity.

I normally track roughly 200 different keywords for my own SEO campaign, and watched as several of them slipped this week. One of my primary keywords “Internet Marketing” which is a highly competitive one with over 100 million competing websites, and 92,000 daily searches globally usually sits in the seventh position on the first page of Google. I’ve dropped to tenth, and while I might not be happy with the drop, I do know why it happened, and roughly how long it will take to move back to where it was.

I know for many reading this, you might not be entirely sure of why you lost position with your favorite search engine of choice, so I figured I’d list out a few reasons your website might be affected.

Possibility #1

The first one is the reason I personally dropped is due to the fact that I redid my website, moving from one design to another. I not only changed the theme and framework of my site, but moved things around as well, adding and subtracting content to suit the new look.

Now before going into the switch I was dreading the drop I’d experience because I recently watched one of my competitors drop several pages down due to a front page redesign, and was thinking I’d get the same treatment. I was lucky to only move a few spots.

I will spend time in this lower position until Google can adjust to the changes, basically they want to ensure than my website is still relative for that particular keyword and others, and since content changed they need to reevaluate it. This can take a week, or it can take a month depending on just how busy Google is, and how often they visit your website. If you post daily, it is likely they will adjust much quicker than if you update weekly.

Possibility #2

The second thing to look at is are any of the competing pages that were previously running behind you in the search engine optimization race moving up and overtaking you? I highly recommend keeping a chart positioning each of your competitors to know just who is moving where, and how fast. If someone is moving up the ranks quickly, you might just want to check to see where they are getting their backlinks from, in case there is an opportunity for you there to also grab some!

Possibility #3

Just like most things in life, websites can “break”, and you need to keep an eye on what you have running under the hood. If you think of a drop in traffic or SERPS (Search Engine Ranking Position) as the warning light on your car telling you that something is very wrong, you’ll have a better idea of the seriousness of the situation. It could just be your site has a broken or non-functioning plugin, or the permalink structure is out of sync somehow. A good place to find out if you have errors is in the Google Webmaster Tools center, where you can quickly see if you’ve started seeing broken links, a drop in backlinks, or perhaps the sitemap that is being submitted is broken. (happens to my site regularly for some reason) Knowing just where the problem lies, is half the battle.

Possibility #4

Google is continually improving its algorithm, and as such the search results that you see are continually changing. They are also coming out with new technologies, like instant search, caffeine, or that little star you see beside your search results that happens to be sites you have bookmarked or favorite, and will get preference to sites that actually occupy that position. Major algorithm changes happen rarely, but smaller changes that affect a smaller number of people happen quite often, and on a continuing basis.

Possibility #5

Google is keeping an eye on you, your site, and your backlinks, and if they feel you are doing something black hat, or unethical they will also penalize you. Often website owners who mass spam their links across the internet building up thousands of links in just a few short weeks will get their site taken out of the Google index all together! In some cases even linking to a bad neighbor can result in a penalty, which is why It’s important to link to quality sites vs. the other kind!

Possibility #6

Geographic location affects search engine ranking positions as well, so that if you do a search from home, and you see your site listed as number 5, but then you drive to your cottage an hour away (you do have a cottage right? If not, just pretend) and notice that you have either slipped to 9, or perhaps improved to 3. The reason for this is Google shows results based on our location. This is relatively new technology for them, but the theory is that if I’m searching for something here in Calgary, then perhaps showing me the result that holds the #1 spot globally might not interest me. Especially If I’m looking for a restaurant or similar that needs to be in my vicinity in order to be relevant to me.

It’s important to remember that Google doesn’t care what position your website holds for your favorite keywords, what it cares about is that it is showing the most relevant results for each individual searcher. Search results are being tailored to the user in the hopes of making the search experience as efficient as possible. If your website ranks for the keyword “Baby Bottles” because you are an SEO master, yet every time Google sends visitors who type that in, they only leave after a few seconds, Google will stop sending you traffic for that keyword.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, geographic location, Google, Instant, lost rankings, Penalty, Position, search, search engine opimization, seo

Measure of a Blog

February 5, 2011 By 3 Comments

Measure of a blog

It’s 5:00 am, and here I sit once again pounding out an article on the keyboard, another long night filled with small successes, and a love for what I do. I thought I’d write a quick post about some of the different ways a blog is measured, either by the owner, the web in general, or his or her fellow bloggers.

I won’t go into why it is I do what I do, because you all no doubt already know. It isn’t unusual for you to quickly rap off a post, and find yourself still there in the wee hours of the morning, wondering where the heck the time flew to. It’s what we do, and in part it’s who we are.

There are so many factors that go into a blog, and its development, and while we can only see what’s on the surface, and glance perhaps slightly under the hood, we will never truly understand the amount of work that has gone into another person’s blog, or website. How many hours did it take them to write that e-book they offer up in exchange for visitor emails? Or how about the one they wrote, and launched to supplement their income? Bloggers are hard workers, and they pour themselves into their sites, in more ways than we can really know.

For some coding a site comes naturally, and redesigns happen often, and effortlessly. But perhaps where they struggle is with writing, and so they end up investing several hours into what some could do in minutes. We each have different skills, and we each try to play to our strengths, and the rest? Well, we simply work hard at it, and develop it!

Some metrics and areas that we measure a blog by:

Appearance

The appearance of our blog is constantly evolving as we are, and is a reflection of ourselves. While some prefer the minimalistic approach, and focus entirely on the content on the pages, and have very little in the image department, still others have pictures or caricatures of themselves as logos or headers built right into the site. The site is truly a reflection of them.

Traffic

One of the very first things I do when I arrive at a new blog (or even one I frequent often) is to check my Alexa toolbar to see how they stack up against me and others on the web. If you haven’t already installed this handy little toolbar, I’d highly recommend it; you can get it from their website here: http://www.alexa.com

For others who want a more accurate estimate of the traffic a given website receives, they can use the free services over at www.compete.com to compare different sites, or just analyze the one. This is probably the most accurate reporting tool, next to Google Analytics.

PageRank

I know, I know, page rank isn’t important! But we all still seem to glance down at that little green indicator to see just where a particular website falls on that notorious scale of one to ten.

Backlinks

The more popular a website is, and the more valuable the content the blog author produces on a regular basis, the more backlinks he or she is likely to have. Now generally we don’t go looking to see how many backlinks another blog has, unless they are considered a competitor.

Domain Age

Another metric that can tell us a lot about a blog, is the age of it. I’ll usually take a quick glance at the archives tab in order to see how long they’ve been online, and how consistent they’ve been with their posting schedule. This will give me a pretty good idea if the level of growth I’m seeing in the rest of the site is average, slow, or absolutely amazing. Just recently I discovered a blog www.techiemania.com that has only been online since June or so, and is already getting over 1000 visitors a day, and boasts over 400 posts. Now that is a fast growing blog! You can see my guest post on there today. http://www.techiemania.com/a-great-guest-blogger.html aptly titled “How to be a Great Guest Blogger”.

Subscribers

The RSS feed is a great source of pride for many blog owners, and well it should be. They have worked long and hard to build up a loyal readership of people reading their content. Having the Feedburner Chiclet looks cool, and everything, I wouldn’t recommend using it until your feed count is at least over 100 or so. If you’ve ever come across a blog with a feed count of 5 you’ll probably agree it is just a little bit sad.

Twitter count

Another Chiclet you see on a great many sites and blogs is the twitter follower counter that displays prominently the number of followers you have on Twitter. This is usually followed by an icon or text invitation to “Follow” them on Twitter.

Another aspect of this is the Retweet button we’ve come to expect from most blogs/posts and the number of tweets they generally are able to generate. The higher the number, the more engaged their followers usually are. This can be a great technique for attracting a whole new audience from other’s followers.

Facebook Widget

A social media network wouldn’t be complete without the fan page widget showing the entire world how many others have “Liked” our fan page. This is also a great way to show your new readers social proof, I mean after all if they see you have 1000 fans, 1000 followers, and 1000 RSS subscribers, they are going to have to know you put out some decent content, and are fairly well engaged!

Comments

Comments are another area that we usually look at to measure the success, and engagement of the readers. It is also a metric that is easy to see progress in if you work at it. Obviously if you are getting eight comments on average per post, when last month you were only getting five or six, you know that you are progressing in the right direction.

There are other measurements that we all use, and these are just a few, but they give us a pretty good indication of both the blog, and the blog owner, and we can generally tell if it’s a blog we want to visit frequently, and perhaps even befriend!

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: age, alexa, backlinks, blogger, comments, consistency, Facebook Fans, guest post, measure a blog, page rank, posts, rss subscribers, social proof, traffic, Twitter Followers

It Started With a Question…

January 30, 2011 By 9 Comments

It’s after 2:00 am, and I just have to get this down on paper, while I’m still bouncing off my chair. I’ve been working long hours lately to try and get my e-book finished and online, and am just putting the final touches on it here. I needed a break, and a few things have been on my mind over the last few days.

1.       Should I invest more time in article marketing, or guest blogging?

2.       How long should my blog posts be?

3.       What price should I charge for my e-book?

So I took a break, and wandered over to my trusty search engine Google, and started wandering around. I found this site called ViperChill and a post titled “Blogger’s, this is how long your posts should be!” Now I’m pretty sure he wrote that just for me, but it already had some tweets and comments so maybe not?

I was leaning toward 1000 words, and he kind of reinforced that for me, and I came away thinking I’d like my posts to be meaty, and packed full of information my readers could sink their teeth into.

Now while I was there, I noticed in the sidebar where they feature a list of the popular blog posts, something titled “Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide” (Can you see why I thought this guy was writing for me?) and lo and behold it had 271 Retweets according to the counter. (I just had to check and see if it was broken, and added mine… It wasn’t!)

Again, I was floored by the depth of knowledge, and the scope of this article, and came away with the answer I was looking for.

Glancing over at that awesome little sidebar filled with so many winning headlines, I managed to spot what I thought might be the answer to my third question.
“How I wrote a 30,000 e-book” (and you can too) Now I know that one was written for me! LOL

Again, I came away with a firm answer in mind for a question I’d had in mind only moments ago. I’m pretty sure I left another comment!

Now it was at this point that I had to know more, so clicked on the “about me” page, and it turns out this fellow Glen was only about 21 years old. If I was amazed by the writing before that, I grew even more so.

Added him on Twitter, went over to check out his fan page, and of course “Liked” that.  (Which turns out could use some “Like” Love, so help him out there if you can! Guess he’s not perfect after all!

I know I’m going to be up all night, seeing just what else he has to say, and I’ve made sure to subscribe to his RSS feed, so I don’t miss out on any future posts he makes, and now here I sit writing this post all excited about a young man, who came online, and built something amazing out of nothing more than his wit, writing talent, and perseverance.

The best part of it all is he’s now sharing what he knows and is learning along the way, in the hopes of helping others. Something that I can admire in another person with no trouble at all.

So let’s recap here for a moment shall we? Here is what he had when he started: A visitor, nothing more, looking for answers to questions I had.

Here’s what he ended up with in the end:

-          I’ve read 3 posts, and only stopped in order to type this all out in excitement.

-          Left 3 comments (think I’ll stop before he thinks I’m a spammer!)

-          A follower on Twitter who has over 20,000 followers in turn and will be only happy to share his posts with my followers.

-          3 Retweets

-          A new fan on his Facebook page

-          A subscriber who can’t wait to see what he says next!

-          And a post he couldn’t have bought complete with four backlinks to four of his pages on a popular website in his own niche. (Five if you count the logo)

And he got all this without ever knowing who I was.

So the next time you’re contemplating conversions, or how to get subscribers, add new followers, fans, or readers, I want you to remember this post, because there’s a lesson in here that isn’t too hard to find!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: article, backlinks, blogger, conversions, e-book, Facebook, fans, followers, Glen Allsop, guest post, inspiring, internet marketer, internet marketing, post, story, subscribers, success, twitter, Viperchill

SEO Education

November 9, 2010 By 13 Comments

SEO Book

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a skill that any internet marketer worth his or her salt should have or be developing, because in the long run it will provide him/her with an unending supply of free targeted traffic to any site they choose to build and promote. So where do you go to learn this secret art of SEO, and start the flood of free traffic? The answer might surprise you!

SEO is an ongoing process, and will never be complete because of the nature of the search engines. They constantly change in order that they continue to provide the most relevant results to their users. If a search engine never changed or adapted itself, then eventually people would begin to learn how to manipulate the system, and the top results, or rankings would be the companies, and corporations with the deepest pockets. Come to think about it, that’s pretty much the way it was before Google came along.

There is so much wealth of knowledge and sources of information online regarding Search Engine Optimization, ranging from articles that have been written, Video’s or screen casts recorded, eBooks, you name it! You can watch hundreds of online video’s for free published by Matt Cutts who as many of you know works for Google’s Search Quality Group, and is a respected member of the SEO community, and is all about helping individuals to rank their sites higher in the search engines, while also doing a phenomenal job of fighting link spam.

For this article I’ll discuss the two key types of Knowledge that can be found and they can be broken down into two different categories, paid, and unpaid. As I pointed out there is a ton of information available online for free, and you can build a nice SEO foundation to help you rank your sites higher in the search engines, and enjoy the resulting traffic by simply sifting through all the different resources that can be found online using nothing more than the Google Search  Engine.

Typically when paying for SEO material, you’ll either be paying for technology or information that is brand new or cutting edge, and as such can’t be found online just yet. Also you may be paying for the expertise of certain individuals who because of the level they have attained within the SEO field; it just isn’t feasible for them to give the information away. It comes down to the fact that because they are able to make several hundred dollars an hour using their knowledge to promote their own sites, they typically will charge a hefty price for their time they invest into material they are offering for sale. Due to the high level of knowledge they each possess, they will get their price too!

What skills should you learn? Skills are typically broken down into two groups, on page SEO, and off page SEO.

On Page SEO will include things like optimizing the structure of your posts, using your H tags correctly, optimizing images, ensuring that your site loads fast and has no broken links.  Here are a few on page items to take into consideration for your site.

-          Linking structure – make sure that every page has a link to it from at least one other page so that search engines can spider it.

-          Linking structure is also beneficial when naming pages. Name your pages accurately and avoid using random numbers, or dates.

-          Validate your website to make sure you haven’t got any coding errors, or warnings. I use the W3C Validator at http://validator.w3.org/

-          Load time is a factor; try to ensure your site loads quickly.

-          Use your keywords in your header tags

-          Make proper use of your meta tags

-          Optimize your images so they load quickly and have appropriate alt descriptions

-          Avoid duplicate content on different pages of your site

-          Keyword optimize your posts when you can

-          Submit a sitemap

These are some of the on page factors you’ll want to take into consideration when doing SEO on your own website or blog.

Off page factors are also a necessary aspect to a successful SEO marketing campaign, and should never be overlooked or done haphazardly, because they can cause you more harm than good if done incorrectly.

Off page

-          How many incoming links does your site have

-          How many outgoing

-          What is the authority and Page Rank of the sites linking to you

-          Are the sites relevant to your topic

-          What keywords if any are they using to link to your site

-          Link spamming will hurt your rankings so it’s important to have a solid working knowledge of link building so you don’t end up doing more harm than good.

It’s important to note that if you let the wrong individual perform search engine optimization on your website (and yes, this individual can be you) you can actually end up worsening your situation, or even end up being banned by Google all together. This is not an area to take lightly. Imagine hiring the wrong person to perform SEO on your 5 year old website and ending up banned for life by Google, where would that leave your business and website?

There are many other aspect to SEO and this covers only a handful, but gives you a jumping off point for certain skills you can look to improve in order to become more proficient when optimizing your own websites. SEO education will be more of a continuing education that never really ends, but builds upon itself for some time to come.

A great resource that is put out by an SEO site that is consistently in the top 1000 highest traffic sites on the web is the SEO Book

Click here to visit their site

Podcast version

 

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: authority, backlinks, Google, internet marketer, link building, linking structure, links, Matt Cutts, off page seo, on page seo, optimize, page rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, SEO Book, SEO education, SEO Skills, sitemap, validate

Lost Links in Yahoo

November 6, 2010 By 5 Comments

Missing Backlinks

Every few months or so, I get quite a few people contacting me with information regarding a sudden loss in backlinks as shown in Yahoo, this seems to happen two or three times a year, and I thought I’d just write a small post about it, because I know the first time it happened to me, I was quite concerned about seeing half my backlinks suddenly drop out of sight.

I’m not sure what the reasons for this are, and even after contacting Yahoo for any comments on the situation, I’m still at a loss for the reasons behind the shuffle. What I can tell you is that they generally drop approximately in half for a period of about a week, before returning to their approximate positions.

These drops aren’t accompanied by any loss in search engine rankings, in fact if anything I’ve noticed a slight increase each time these shifts take place. Perhaps like Google, Yahoo prefers to keep their motives behind these backlink changes private, and now with Yahoo search results being powered by Microsoft’s Bing, the transition to Bing powered searches for Yahoo are expected to be completed by 2010

Either way, as stressful as it is to those watching their backlink count on a regular basis, my advice to you is to not panic, they will probably come back within about a week’s time, and in the meantime, just keep up with your backlink building strategy. Backlinks aren’t something you can just do once, and hope they are done; it’s an ongoing process that will most likely last you the life of the website.

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: back links, backlinks, Bing, lost links, Missing Backlinks, yahoo
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