Archive for March, 2006

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Search Engine Secrets – How to Avoid Website Downtime That Can Affect Your Search Engine Listings, Cost You Money, and Damage Your Reputation

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

If your web pages are down even momentarily it can hurt you several ways. Learn why, and what to do to make sure your pages are visible the maximum amount of time.

The Internet has changed the way we access information, and the way we buy and sell products and services. When it works, which, fortunately, is most of the time, ideas and cash flow from person to person, company to company, and country to country.

But when the inevitable happens and your pages go down, your business, your bank account and your reputation can suffer, especially if you are unaware of the down status of your e-business operations for more than a few minutes. One way this can hurt you is with the search engines.

Whether you operate a corporate website, a mom-and-pop or something in between, theres no question about it. If you want to get traffic via the search engines, you have to work at getting and maintaining placement on the first page of the current big four Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves. Depending on the keywords youre trying to get high results for, this can be a time-and-resource intensive process.

Everyone who uses search engine marketing knows that getting and keeping high placement is an ongoing process filled with many unknowns. The rules of the game seem to change without notice, causing frustration, disappointment and even desperation among beginners and veterans alike. Methods that work today may not work tomorrow. Tactics that may be legal today may cause problems tomorrow.

Its as if, despite all the research, experimentation and best intentions, there really is no exact formula that can be applied to guarantee results. There is, however, one aspect of search engine marketing that is a known quantity. If your pages are down even briefly when the spiders visit, you run the risk of losing your place. And unless they come back up immediately, they may be dropped altogether.

For example, Googles Information for Webmasters area says that if your pages cannot be crawled after several attempts due to network or hosting problems, they wont be listed meaning theyll be dropped and it may take a few weeks to for them to show up again. MSNs guidelines state that if your server is offline or there is another access problem when their spider tries to crawl your site, it may not return until a later time. Neither Yahoo nor AskJeeves seems to have guidelines on this issue, but its reasonable to assume that they and other search engine spiders operate like Google and MSN.

Another pitfall of web page downtime is wasted pay-per-click advertising dollars. When PPC landing pages go down, your clicks go nowhere and your money is needlessly depleted. And the PPC medium may suspend your ad if your landing page goes down for too long.

Its a fact that web surfers have limited, if any, patience for page not found errors. Building credibility and trust on the Internet is a challenging task. When surfers click to your page, and its not there, they may conclude that you are out of business. At first exposure to you, if your page is not available they are likely to find a competitor and forget all about you. Yes, you can create a custom 404-error page, but if your entire site is down, that wont help you much.

Suppose you sell advertising on your site and it goes down. What will your advertisers think if they visit your site and dont see their ads?

Maybe you have a paid membership site. What will your members think when they try to access your site and its not there?

Suppose a reporter visits your site and its down. That could kill a budding story about you, or it could inadvertently cause them to write something negative about you.

Why risk all these problems when the solution is so simple and cost-effective?

The answer is remote website monitoring. For under $20 per month, you can get basic monitoring that will inform you if your site is down so you can take immediate action to fix the problem. Depending on the complexity of your e-business operation, you can get more sophisticated service features that can monitor not only your pages, but also your database, servers, transactions and can even check for content changes on your pages. If someone hacked into your site and changed the content on your home page, wouldnt it be nice to know about it before the rest of the world does?

To check out companies that offer these services, do a search for remote website monitoring. Most companies have free trials. The key is to find a company that has flexible service options. Depending on the scope of your e-business, you may or may not need certain features that are bundled together. Why pay for what you dont want? Also, bigger may not be better. Look for an established company that is not too big to give you excellent customer service. During your free trial, send a question or two to their tech support and see how fast they respond. This will give you an idea of what youll get after you pay.

Whatever you do, do it today. You cant afford to not know if your web pages are down.

About the author:

Nick Nichols directs marketing activities at WebSitePulse.com, a leading provider of website uptime and performance monitoring services. Visit http://www.WebSitePulse.comfor a free trial and know how your site is doing 24/7.

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Search Engine Optimization – 301 Redirects and Search Engine Optimization

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

There are multiple reasons to redirect URLs. For one, your web pages may have moved but their old URLs may still live in users’ bookmarks or in search engine indexes. Without implementing some sort or redirection, that traffic would be lost to a 404 Error Page.

On occasions, you may also want to register several extensions for your domain name: ‘mydomain.com‘, ‘mydomain.net‘ and ‘mydomain.org‘, and have ‘mydomain.net‘ and ‘mydomain.org‘ automatically redirect visitors to your site, hosted under ‘mydomain.com‘.

Furthermore, if your company sells several products, you may want to give each of them an individual domain name, and have it point to a specific subdirectory of your main site. For example, if you own a site called ‘businessvideos.com‘ that sells a product called ‘Marketing Made Easy’, you may want to set up a domain such as ‘marketingmadeeasy.com‘, and redirect it to subdirectory: www.businessvideos.com/marketingmadeeasy/.

There are several ways to redirect domains, however, most of them will get you in trouble with the search engines. The search engine friendly way to redirect URLs is to use what is know as a 301 redirect (you can see how Google and Yahoo! specifically endorse this kind of redirection). Here is my take about the different redirection methods and their implications on search engine optimization:

Meta-Refresh Javascript Redirect

You can redirect visitors by placing a snippet of javascript code within the HTML code of the page you want to redirect. With this method, you can specify the number of seconds before the visitor is automatically redirected to the new page. Search engines don’t like this method, because of the potential for abuse: you could write an optimized page for a non-competitive search term, and then automatically redirect your unsuspecting visitor to whatever URL you want. For example, it could be relatively easy to write a page about english literature, have it indexed and highly ranked by the search engines, and then redirect your visitor to a casino or Viagra site. If search engines allowed this, users would quickly stop trusting them. That is why search engines penalize this practice, and why you should avoid it.

Parked Domains

You could register an additional domain name, park it, and make it point to the DNS servers of your main site’s hosting account, so that when somebody types the additional domain, they will be transported to your main site. However, this approach may lead to search engines listing the same content twice, one for your main domain, and one for your additional domain. In the past, unscrupulous webmasters would use multiple domains to spam search engines and directories, making them list the same pages hundreds of times under different domains. Even if your intentions are good, we don’t recommend this approach to redirecting your additional domains, since search engines may penalize your site for duplicate content.

302 and 301 Redirects

When a request for a page or URL is made by a browser, agent or spider, the web server where the page is hosted checks a file called ‘.htaccess’. This file contains instructions on how to handle specific requests and also plays a key role in security. The ‘.htaccess’ file can be modified so that it instructs browsers, agents or spiders that the page has either temporarily moved (302 redirect) or permanently moved (301 redirect). It is usually possible to implement this redirect without messing with the ‘.htaccess’ file directly, using your web host’s control panel instead.

>From a search engine perspective, 301 redirects are the only acceptable way to redirect URLs. In the case of moved pages, search engines will index only the new URL, but will transfer link popularity from the old URL to the new one so that search engine rankings are not affected. The same behavior occurs when additional domains are set to point to the main domain through a 301 redirect.

The URL Forwarding Feature

Most domain registrars offer a feature called URL Forwarding. With this feature, you can register a new domain, such as ‘mydomain.net‘, and have it point to mydomain.com (or to any other URL). The problem, however, is that registrars usually do this by implementing a 302 redirect (page moved temporarily). While Google handles 302 redirects very well, passing link popularity from the additional domain to the main one, other search engines don’t do this well, diluting link popularity by splitting it between the two domains, and negatively affecting rankings. Therefore, it is better not to use this method, and implement a 301 redirect instead.

Redirecting Old URLs

To ‘301 redirect’ an old URL to a new one, just go to your web host’s control panel, and choose the “Redirects” option. You can then set up the redirect by filling the blanks. You want to chose redirect option “Permanent” to implement a 301 redirect.

Redirecting additional domains

To 301 redirect an additional domain (like in the case of the .net or the .org version of your domain name), you have to set it up as an add-on domain with your web host (some hosts offer this option for free, and some others charge a small monthly fee per domain). If the additional domain was not registered with your web host, you will first have to go to your domain registrar and change the DNS (domain name servers) to the DNS of your web host (you may have to wait a couple of days before this change becomes functional). Once you’ve done this, go to your web host’s control panel, choose the “Add On Domains” option, and set up your add on domain as follows:

New Domain Name: additionaldomain.com (Do not put any http:// or www)

Username/directory/subdomain: additionaldomain (Enter ‘additionaldomain’ by itself. Do not put any ‘.com’ or ‘www’)

Password: 123ABC (Enter whatever password you want).

Then, set up the redirection by filling the appropriate box with the URL of the landing page (where you want your traffic to go).

Once your additional domain is redirecting to your landing page, take this one last step to see if everything is working fine: go to a server header checking tool, type your add-on domain in the query box and hit enter. If you get a message similar to this: “Status Code HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”, then your 301 redirect is working.

You can also use 301 redirection for common mispelled versions of your domain name, or for other good domain names that you don’t want your competitors to get.

About The Author

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), an internet marketing content site packed with useful articles and resources, and SEO Tutorial (http://www.seotutorial.info) where you can learn the basics of search engine optimization in four easy steps.

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Marketing Secrets – The Best Internet Marketing e

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Martin Avis

Before I start waxing lyrical about these three books, I must state for the record that this is my opinion only. I have bought maybe 15 or 20 ebooks this year (yes, I truly believe in investing in my own education), and these three stand out in my mind. Another reader, with other passions may choose differently.

And, this article is only concerned with ebooks that I have purchased from January to June 2002. The best book of all, dollar for dollar, is the very excellent ‘Make Your Site Sell’ by Ken Evoy. But that came out in 2001. You can download a free trial version of this book, to give yourself a taste (with no obligation to buy) from http://www.BizE-zine.com/special_downloads2.htm

What do I look for in an ebook?

1. It has to be well written. I like an easy, friendly read. It must flow logically and not run off at tangents.

2. It must teach me something. I really don’t appreciate books that simply rehash stuff that I already know, or can find online for free – however well written they may be.

3. It must be eminently practical. I don’t want to be taught theory that is too complicated for my simple brain to put into action.

4. I have to be able to see right away that there is a real money-making potential.

So which of my purchases meet the criteria?

1. Mini Site Profits, by Phil Wiley.

Phil Wiley is an affiliate marketing expert. He has developed a system of producing quick, easy websites that pull in a disproportionate income.

His book, which comes with a whole host of extras, takes you by the hand and leads you to profit.

All the tricks and tips that Phil uses himself are here, with clear examples. He shows you how to select a product to sell, how to identify an audience, how to set up the site, where to get content, how to take the money. Everything you need to know.

Note that I say that he shows you. This is not some technical journal full of theory and long-distance advice. Every lesson is backed up by real-life examples from Phil’s own sites.

Phil Wiley is one of life’s ’super doers’. This book shows you how you can join him in that elite group.

http://www.BizE-zine.com/minisitesecrets.htm

2. eBook Secrets Exposed, by Jim Edwards and David Garfinkel.

The subtitle of this book is ‘How to make massive amounts of money, in record time with your own ebook!’

Jim Edwards is a prolific and highly successful author with six top selling ebooks and info products so far released – and more on the way.

David Garfinkel is one of the top online copywriters who has not only written some highly acclaimed ebooks himself, but has made millions writing for others.

Put these two together and you get a dynamite product.

The book takes the form of an extended interview between David and Jim. Jim ‘tells all’ about how he goes about the business of making a fortune from ebooks.

How he gets his ideas
How he finds the audience How he researched
How he writes
How he markets
How he makes huge amounts of money

There is little doubt that everyone has a book inside them. This ebook shows you how to get to it, and how to profit from it. I was hooked from beginning to end, and many of the things I learned came in very useful when I was putting together ‘Success Stories’.

Put this book together with Mini Site Profits and you have a complete business in a box.

http://www.BizE-zine.com/ebook_secrets.htm

3. The Silent Sales Machine, by Jim Cockrum

This is my latest acquisition, and it is a very clever book. Millions of people buy and sell on eBay – in fact the site gets about one-and-a-half BILLION hits a month! Yet very few know about the ideas that Jim Cockrum so clearly writes about.

* How to harness the hits that your auction gets – even if people don’t bid.

* How to make a great profit even if nobody bids on your auction at all.

* How to put in place easy money making ‘machines’ that work for you 24/7.

Jim makes it all sound so simple – and by the time you finish reading his book, you know that it is.

I have never been particularly interested in eBay. I’ve bought a few items here and there, but never had any interest in selling. Now that has all changed. After reading this book, I am very excited about getting going. Jim’s ideas are revolutionary, but at the same time so simple that even a complete novice like me can quickly jump in and get started.

The Silent Sales Machine blends so well with Mini Site Profits and eBook Secrets. If you can take ideas from each of them you will have the tools to build an incredibly strong business.

Why haven’t I started yet? I only bought this book a few days ago, and my mind is still racing with the possibilities. I will write in BizE-zine about how I get on.

Martin Avis is a management and training consultant. His free weekly newsletter, BizE-zine, is packed with articles, interviews and quotes to help you be the best in business or Internet marketing. mailto:subscribe5@BizE-zine.com or visit his information-packed website at http://www.BizE-zine.com

PROMOTE YOUR E-BUSINESS WITH AN E-BOOKPolly Hummingbird

Most online businesses are looking for ways to promote their products or services using the resources that are available on the Internet.

One of the resources that can be used as a way to promote the products or services of a business are ‘ebooks’.

A product information package can easily be put into an ebook in an attractive and appealing way. Then this ebook can be offered as a free promotion.

Put your ebook in .pdf format. This is the most popular type of ebook there is available, and Internet users are used to downloading them.

Design your promotional ebook to be both dynamic and functional. Provide exact ways for placing an order for your products or services.

Ebooks are easy to revise, so you can always include “Special Offers”.

Consider including a colorful brochure or an electronic business card. This is a chance to show off your products in a visible way. Include photographs or images too.

Because an ebook is read offline, at leisure, it can have more detailed sales information than website copy.

Avoid too much hype in your information because it undermines the intelligence of your potential customers. It can also make your product or service appear to be a scam, where there is nothing actually being offered. Be professional and practical for the best results.

Ebooks are paperless, and are therefore good for the environment. This issue is becoming more important as people become aware of the need to care for our planet resources. Recently, banks have introduced paperless bank statements, as a way of assisting in saving trees and paper.

Be sure to keep the ebook to less than 20 pages long.

The next step is to create a small ad for your ebook. This is a vital part of the promotion, since it must invite a person to initiate a download. Again, if your ad appears to be hokey, it will not be effective for gaining the right kind of attention.

Try to include the number of pages in your ad, since people might be reluctant to download a large promotional ebook.

Example of a promotional ebook ad:

FREE 8-page ebook! “Products of ABC Online” Download Today (http://…)

Once you have your ebook set up, you can place your ebook ad in many places:

> small pop-up on your homepage > top of your newsletter > email signature
> resource box at the end of an article > as a gift to tell-a-friend users > in the content of your webpages > on other sites
> ebook directories

EBOOK RESOURCES

http://www.planetebook.com http://www.ebookmall.com href="http://www.free-ebooks.net">http://www.free-ebooks.net http://www.ebooksnbytes.com http://www.abode.com/epaper/ebooks.main.html http://www.thefreeadnetwork.com/covers/index.html

M.P. Hummingbird
Author. Researcher. Designer. http://humming.biz.gq.nu/home.html Email Polly at: mailto:polly@humming.biz.gq.nu FREE 10 Tips For Running A Super Business mailto:autoreply5@sendfree.com

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Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Pitfalls of Network Marketing

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

Network marketing sounds great. You network, market products using the Internet and…presto, produce income.

Would that it were this simple. For most, network marketing becomes a money sink. It did for me. I am still counting my losses and wondering whether to go forward. I may, I may not. But a few lessons learned the hard way are worth sharing.

1) Every opportunity is presented as the best, the greatest, and the next sure thing.

2) The only ’sure thing’ is that once you spend $39, $79 or $479 on a subscription, software tool, advertisement or distributorship position, it’s not coming back. Well, it might if you try for a refund…

3) Most network marketeers do not focus their efforts. As I did, they bask in the promises of riches and become frustrated when these do not arrive. Instead of ‘milking’ the first opportunity longer – or just giving up the game – they dump diminishing funds in another…and another.

4) It is vital to network, vital to work with others. Yet it is even more vital to get to know people before signing on to a ‘joint venture’ or another project.

5) You must know your strengths and apply them. Know your weaknesses and don’t apply them.

Most importantly, decide if this is what you want to be doing. Even if you are sure you can make several hundred dollars per month at the game (and not many do), it won’t continue unless your heart is in it. The ‘game’is largely about prospecting, hustling potential new program recruits, and spending large amounts of time organizing your marketing/sales efforts.

Too little time is spent selecting a viable and legitimate product. You should ask yourself if you feel good selling a product or program, and move on if you don’t. If you find the rare, credible program then ‘work it’ with integrity, but do not expect riches to come your way.

About the author:

I am a freelance writer and amateur jock. I write fiction and non-fiction. Currently I am writing a book on tennis technique that I am looking to publish.

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Search Engine Optimization – Website Promotion: 10 Search Engine Optimization Blunders to Avoid

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

If you want to develop a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, go out of your way to avoid blunders that limit search engine rankings.

Here are 10 to keep in mind:

1. Don’t use frames.

Why would you want to use frames if SEO is important? Don’t risk confusing the search engine spiders, which happens often with frameset sites. Sure, you can write scripts or adjust the content to work within frames, but you probably have better things to do with that time and energy.

2. Don’t use Flash.

Everyone agrees–Flash looks awesome. But it also slows down the user experience and Flash makes it tough to get ranked. The Flash future looks bright for the ability of search engines to read some keywords, but what good will this serve if site pages lack visible, readable text?

3. Don’t skimp on title tags.

Why would you simply call a page About Us in the title tag when this meta data occupies prime SEO real estate? Always include effective search phrases that reflect the content within title tags.

4. Don’t overstuff title tags.

Limit titles to 70 characters, with commas between phrases in EVERY title tag; use fewer characters on pages with limited content.

5. Don’t bury text.

Design often gets in the way of Text. Make sure your visible text is located high on the page.

6. Don’t use graphics as page headers.

Graphic headers are a waste of space, and thus of time, when it comes to SEO. Use text as page headers and support them by utilizing strategic keywords – in the header, after the header or below the header.

7. Don’t use the wrong words.

Website owners love one-word search terms because they seem to get lots of traffic. The reality is that only a fraction of Internet users entering a broad search word want what you have to offer. Go for search terms using two, three or four words that will help visitors qualify their interests.

8. Don’t ignore link building.

Hunt down links from other websites that have content and categories that relate to what you offer. If you sell sweaters, find a specialty guide about sweaters or a portal about clothing.

9. Don’t overwhelm your pages with keywords.

You might not write the same keyword in succession 10 times, but you can make the mistake of too much repetition. Mention your strategic search term several times throughout the page, but promise yourself not to force its use too much.

10. Don’t use long URLs.

If you use a database to maintain the website, you may end up with long URLs with several session IDs and parameters that produce many question marks and equal signs. These lengthy URLs can hinder search engines from properly indexing the pages. Work with your developer so as to limit them or to remove them altogether as much as is possible.

About The Author

Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO (http://www.fathomseo.com), a Cleveland, Ohio-based search engine marketing (SEM) firm. A member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), he also authored the white paper, “Search Engine Marketing: Get in the Game.”

mmurray@fathomseo.com

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Search Engine Secrets – Monitor and Increase Your Search Engine Visibility with the DIY SEO Tools

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006

PaulCopyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

In this three part article, youll find many tools that any webmaster can use to monitor your sites search engine position, and use to increase the visibility of your site in major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

URL Trends
http://www.urltrends.com/

Most of the coverage I’ve seen focuses on the ability of UrlTrends to allow you to “View Any URLs Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Popular Search Terms and Incoming Links”.

And that’s a great thing, to be able to see all of that from one place. But one great thing missed about this tool are that you can subscribe to changes to the results via RSS -hands off monitoring of your site.

Fagan Finders URL Info
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/

This online gadget is like the Swiss Army knife of site information, giving you one-page access to dozens of pertinent check-ups. But monitoring relevant search engine information like your backlinks, or the cached pages in a search engine are just the tip of the iceberg.

You can use URL Info to check that your HTML code is validated, translate your page, and if youre a blogger, discover where your site is mentioned in the blogosphere.

Spannerworks Spider Simulator
http://www.spannerworks.com/spidersimulator.0.html

Ever wondered what your site looks like to the search engine spiders that crawl the web, looking for information to include in their databases? Go to this page to see what information is seen by the spider and what it skips over.

Spannerworks.com can also help you figure out how to troubleshoot content that seems like it should show up to a spider but doesnt, with its HTTP viewer. They also have a tool that will analyze your keyword density.

GoRank.coms Top Ten Comparison
http://www.gorank.com/seotools/

If youve been banging your head against the wall in an attempt to figure out why you havent hit the top ten results in Google, GoRank.com has a page that can give you important clues to help you figure it out. One of my favorites, the Top Ten comparison report, will scrub the raw data of the top ranking results for a given keyword.

In studying the results, you may find it easier to understand where your own optimization efforts are going wrong. Dont forget to stop by Google for your API key at http://www.google.com/api as youll need it to create your free account.

Search Guilds Keyword Difficulty Checker
http://searchguild.com/difficulty/

This ones an old favorite of mine. When you find what you may think is an ideal keyword, before you start tweaking your pages, its a good idea to run it through this tester. Using the Google API, it analyzes whether or not a given phrase will be worth your efforts.

Youll already have to be well-versed in how to find good keywords to plug into the tool, but once you have that nailed, its pretty reliable in telling you whether its worth your time to target that phrase. If you use flash on your site, check out the flash viewer on their utilities page as well.

In the next article in this series, you can read more about tools specific to Yahoo and Google that will help you track your rankings and study your site.

About the author:

You can find hundreds of pages of tips and news on traffic generation, search engines, blogs and RSS every day at www.freetraffictip.com.

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Search Engine Marketing Secrets – Mobile Marketing tips for Small Businesses

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

Welcome to the next frontier in marketing wireless or mobile marketing, also known as m-commerce.

Analysts predict that 2005 will be the year that mobile marketing really takes off and that companies will take advantage of this medium in much the same way as they did in the early days of the Internet.

>>>>The benefits of mobile marketing

The key benefits of mobile marketing are clear to see. Most mobile users carry their phone or keep it within easy reach at all times, which means that mobile marketing offers a very personal way for marketers to communicate their message to customers. Messages are almost guaranteed to be read, unlike e-mail marketing or direct mail. It also allows companies to build a relationship with their customers, track preferences and highly target their marketing.

>>>>And the dangers

There are of course dangers in using such a personal medium and a badly thought-out mobile marketing campaign could easily be considered intrusive and cause the sender to alienate or lose customers.

>>>>Can any business do it?

Is mobile marketing just for big companies then or can small businesses do it too?

If you are a small business person then the good news is that mobile marketing is a technique that companies of every size can employ. There are of course several points you need to consider before embarking on your first mobile marketing campaign.

>>>>What technology is involved?

The options available to you are primarily WAP and SMS. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is essentially a cut down version of a web browser that enables people with WAP enabled mobile phones to access very basic versions of web pages.

SMS stands for Short Messaging Service and is also known as text messaging or texting and allows mobile users to send and receive text messages of up to 160 characters long. Most small businesses will find it easier to use text messages to communicate with their customers rather than WAP.

>>>>Mobile marketing how do I do it?

What does a small business need in order to carry out a mobile marketing campaign?

Firstly of course you need to get your customers to agree to disclose their mobile numbers (they must opt in to receiving messages via their mobile phones in order for you to comply with privacy and distance selling regulations).

While on the subject of privacy, you must ensure that when you do market to people via their mobiles, you give them a way of opting out of receiving further communications from you. Allow them to text you back with the word Unsubscribe or stop, for example.

>>>>Whats the best way to collect mobile numbers?

The simplest way to get customers mobile numbers is to ask them. If you run a bricks and mortar business, ask customers for their numbers when you are talking to them or in your newsletter, brochure, advertising or direct mail. Similarly, if you run an online business serving the local area, ask them for their number when they inquire or purchase or when you email them. If necessary, incentivize customers to give you their number by, for example, running a competition or draw and offering a prize.

Bear in mind that if you are a small business, mobile marketing using text messages will work best if you are targeting your local market. If you run, say, a dry-cleaning business, there is little point marketing to people on the other side of the country.

>>>>How can my business use mobile marketing?

It depends on your business but, for example, you could use it to inform customers of new product ranges that may be of interest to them, or special offers and special events. Or you could invite them to participate in a competition. Just make sure your messages are targeted.

>>>>What does mobile marketing cost?

Mobile marketing costs are low it doesnt cost a lot to send a text message. However, costs may vary depending on the mobile network used. Talk to your phone company.

>>>>What should I say in my message?

The message length available to you is 160 characters so plan your messages carefully, keep them brief and to the point and make each word count. Include a call to action in each message such as call now or come into the shop now (and the opt-out instructions).

>>>>Im still not sure

If you are not sure whether mobile marketing will work for your business, why not try it and see. A small campaign will cost very little (especially compared with something like direct mail) and your business could be in for a pleasant surprise as a result.

About The Author

Chris Smith is involved with Mano Design ( http://www.mano-design.com ) – a Vancouver design and marketing agency and is also a freelance copywriter.

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Search Engine Optimization – Top 5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

Top 5 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes

 by: Robin Eldred

There are a lot of ways to promote your website and, unfortunately, a lot of these methods are mistakes. Here is a list of some of the more common mistakes (often referred to as Black Hat SEO) that you should steer well clear of.

1. Bad Neighbourhoods

These sites are also known as free for all (FFA) pages and link farms. They serve no other purpose other than to list tens of thousands of unrelated websites. Not only will these sites not provide your site with any traffic, certain search engines will ban sites who participate.

2. Over Optimization

Optimizing your web pages for a particular search engine can be a good thing. Over-optimizing can defeat the purpose, however. Search engines are catching on quickly to pages that appear over-optimized. Stuffing keyphrases into your pages is the most common problem. Never use hidden (invisible) text to add keywords. You will get caught, and your site will get banned.

3. Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are orphaned web pages that are typically optimized for a particular keyphrase and a particular search engine. They are promoted to the search engine in an effort to achieve high rankings. They are not linked back to by any other page on the website and, as such, search engines are able to flush them out quite easily and penalize the entire site.

4. Traffic Generation Scams

Services that purport to drive lots and lots of traffic to your website are typically not very useful. The traffic tends to come from seedy places like domain names that have lapsed in payment or commonly misspelled domain entries. Most of the traffic that hits these pages is accidental and is therefore of no value to you. Other traffic may come from other participants in the program who are required to visit other websites to gain credits for their own site. Again, this traffic is not targeted and therefore of no value. Some traffic may even be generated by automated software!

5. Shadow Domains

Shadow domains are small, optimized, supplementary websites designed to drive traffic to a different website. The way this works is that an SEO company will design and optimize a website on your behalf. The danger here is that the you do not own this new website; the SEO company does! This means that if the relationship sours, they may choose to redirect this sites traffic to whomever they choose (see #4 above), or even sell the site to one of your competitors! Be very, very careful of this technique, as some supposed search engine experts even use this method (no naming of names here, however).

One final note: Any company that tells you that it can achieve guaranteed rankings is either lying to you or using some of these Black Hat techniques. Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee a number one result within (unpaid) search results. When choosing a search engine optimization company to work with, be sure you feel comfortable with them and trust them (e.g. money back guarantee). And if you decide to promote your website yourself, consider yourself a little better educated against these common mistakes.

About The Author

Robin Eldred is the president of Apis Design, a Calgary Web Design and Promotion company specializing in building, managing and promoting quality, results-oriented websites for small businesses (http://www.apis.ca/)

robin@apis.ca

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Marketing Secrets – The Difference Between Article Marketing and Traditional Article Writing

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

Lately, there seems to be some confusion between Article Marketing and regular article writing. People wonder why I would write articles when I’m not getting paid for them. Paid, of course being the traditional way where money is exchanged for labor.

Article Marketing is not “article writing” as you may know it if you’re a writer or reader of magazines, journals and such.

Article Marketing is a new concept that’s being used by web experts to help spread the word about their businesses. It’s a tool that’s meant to increase your website’s visibility.

If you’re familiar with link exchanging and link distribution, you know that the more websites who include a link to your own website, the more exposure you get and the more chance you have for making a sale.

Of course, the drawback to Link Distribution is that there’s nothing about your link that stands out in a crowd. But what if I told you that you’d be able to include information along with your link? And that information could be written in the form of a short article?

That’s it, that’s Article Marketing. It’s not *really* about fantastic writers creating amazing and life-changing articles that took months of research and development.

It’s about marketers and savvy web entrepreneurs who want to increase their popularity on the web while at the same time using a personal touch – an article – to draw in a loyal following who will be interested in purchasing their products.

Imagine what you could do with a little space to add some words and warmth and compelling copy to that website link of yours! Imagine no longer. Kids, the dream is here and it’s Article Marketing.

Article Marketing Explained in 4 Points

1. Article Marketing starts with an article syndication site.
2. The site collects articles written by marketers and writers.
3. The article authors are asked to include a personal bio and link to their website.
4. The articles are then picked up by other websites who want to showcase fresh, relevant content in a specific niche.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I don’t get paid cold hard cash to write articles for my own company (although you’re welcome to pay me cash to write yours!). My payment for article marketing is exposure.

Exposure comes in the form of your articles that make front page search engine headlines. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s say you’re in the car wash business. If you write several articles about breakthrough conveyor belt technology, those articles will come up in the search engines when web surfers go hunting for that information. The more articles you write, the more frequently your website link and your name will come up… and then, the more interested prospects will come to your website. You want to sell that technology, right? Then start writing those articles.

So: who should think about using Article Marketing as a way to become well-known, respected, and potentially rich on the internet?

Anyone who wants to create a product.
Anyone who has a website.
Anyone who wants to build a brand.
Anyone who wants to start a web-based business that will be profitable for the long term.

Characteristics of Web Articles:

- Short and to the point – Broken up into easily digestible sections of text – Helpful, informative copy – Light promotional tone – Should always, always point to your URL

You can hire someone who works relatively cheap to write your articles. But a better strategy, if you really want to be a big brand name, would be to find someone who is willing to “concept out” your articles.

Get a real copywriter to streamline an aggressive marketing campaign to pitch a product that you will sell by way of that “gateway” – the link at the end of your article.

Article Marketing is Link Distribution plus Useful Information to lure in your reader. It is not meant to bring you the Nobel Peace Prize for your writing achievements. It’s good old web marketing with a creative writing twist.

Want to join the article marketing craze and get your website noticed? Well then, go warm up with a few web articles! They’re quick, painless and even fun to write.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to write that article.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

About the author:
Dina Giolitto is the author of ARTICLE POWER: Create Dynamite Web Articles and Watch Your Sales Explode… a 49-page manual covering every aspect of article marketing on the web. Learn about article marketing, copywriting and more at http://www.wordfeeder.com

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Search Engine Secrets – Not Ranking High Enough On Search Engines? Heres Some Help!

Tuesday, March 28th, 2006

VelvisSearch engines are frugal things. (Froogle, too, haha! Sorry, lame joke) They take many, many things into consideration when ranking your pages. Below are some things you should do to be sure youre ranked as high as possible.

Keywords

Go for keyphrases, not single keywords. Unless you want to spend the next 3 months trying to break into the first page for a single keyword, focus on keyphrases. Besides, most searchers search for two or more words. Single keywords just dont provide the targeted results searchers are looking for.

Focus on the keyphrases that you can take over. Keyphrases like Exit now or Exit Here or even a keyword like Exit will be next to impossible for you to get a top 3 ranking, because of the overwhelming popularity for porn site landing pages to put a link to Yahoo, Google, or Disney with the anchor text of one of those keyphrases mentioned above. Go ahead, try it out type one of them into Google and see what you get. Funny enough, Disney recently took the lead over Yahoo for the keyword Exit. Go Disney go!

Site Focus

Don’t allow your site to focus on more than 1-2 different things. Create separate sites for each product or service, and if youd like, a main site to describe your company, and have it link to all of your products. This will allow you to better target your pages, because a user looking for widgets isnt going to stick around long on a page for a company that sells widgets and woozles, when they dont see information about widgets (even if its blatantly obvious) Think about it this way: Youre always one click away from losing a customer on the internet. Do everything you can to eliminate that one click.

Content: More is better

The more content you have, the better. Wait, let me rephrase that the more RELEVANT content you have, the better. Plain old content, or keyword-stuffed will only get you so far. Remember, youve got to keep your visitors in mind primarily, because it doesnt matter how high your SE ranking is if your visitors dont convert to customers.

How do I get new, relevant, free content?

Start posting articles on your site; youre the expert here, so utilize that information. But keep your articles from sounding like youre only writing it to advertise your product (advertorials). If it sounds too much like an ad, your visitors wont read it.

Also, try to mention your chosen keyphrases as much as you can without making the article sound stuffed. Whats stuffed mean? Heres an example: Youre writing about widgets, you wrote the widgets article about widgets so you could say widgets as much as you possible while talking about widgets. Would you want to sit and read that? No. Neither would anyone else.

There are also quite a few places on the net where you can find articles that are free to reprint on your site. A few of them are http://www.EzineArticles.com, http://www.Content-Articles.com, and http://www.ArticlesFactory.com. As I said, there are many sites like these, but these are the 3 best, in my opinion. Some article directories are focused on a single set of topics (like Business Marketing) and others, including the three mentioned above, contain articles from many, many categories.

If you write your own articles, submitting them to as many article sites as possible, again including the three I listed before. The more places you submit your article, the more sites will pick it up either through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or by cutting and pasting your article to their site. The latter option is preferable to you, because your article will stay on their site longer. This will work hard to generate you more traffic from visitors to those sites who read your article and increase your SE rankings through backlinks. (For more information, check out an article I wrote about backlinks at http://www.Content-Articles.com/article.aspx?i=24)

How often should I add new content?

Add new content at least weekly, and absolutely no less than monthly to give your customers reason to come back, and Search Engines will also increase your ranking because your site is active and youve got good content.

What about forums?

Forums can be great tools for site promotion, if you do it right. Do NOT post ads to a forum that isnt for posting ads. You will do more to destroy your credibility than generate traffic. Put a link to your site in your signature, and post questions and answers to the site, just like everyone else. If a topic that your site contains information about comes up, feel free to post the URL in the body of the topic (make sure this is allowed by the forum rules first) but always mention that its your site, so nobody is mislead and thinks the post is a referral, which its not (because its your site).

These tips are just a few of the things that you can do to increase your search engine rankings. Take your time and develop a good site, write quality articles, submit them to as many places as possible, and watch your ranking go up while the visitors come in.

About the author:
Jason is an Internet marketer and owner of Premier MicroSolutions, LLC. Submit your articles to http://www.Content-Articles.com- The Free Web Site Content Article Directory

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