It’s the dream of every online blogger to be the acknowledged king of the hill. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), to be king of the search engine hill is to have as many people link your site to theirs. One-way.
Search engine optimization is a method of preparing a site for high ranking in search engine queries. Methods on optimization vary between legitimate ways like continually improving content relecvancy and ease of navigation to tricks like keyword stuffing, link farming, etc.
The term used for people to have your site linked to theirs one-way is to have an inbound link. With search engine giants like Google and its PageRank system, it places significant value on the number of links pointed to your site because it is considered a vote of confidence and relevance by that site.
As stated by Google: “In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B.” And a large vote of confidence online not only means fame but most likely even fortune. This is because the relevancy of a site causes it to rank higher in the search engine search strings, attracting more attention from consumers and attracting revenue from companies willing to pay to appear on the same site.
In effect, one-way inbound links are now as good as gold.
So far, there are five effective ways to acquire inbound links:
1. Wait for Offers. The normal way of getting inbound links. This method is the most ethical of the strategies. This methods banks on the fact that if the site has great content that is constantly fresh and interesting, with a navigation system that does not require rocket science, people will eat it up. Offers will come of their own volition. Then you get your links.
2. Play Musical Chairs. A devious way of getting inbound links using reciprocation with a twist. Reciprocation is the most common form of getting links which doesn’t hold much water with page ranking systems of search engines.
Normally search engines can detect reciprocal links, but if reciprocation is layered, i.e. indirect, it takes the engine much more work to detect it, requiring more complex algorithms. The price for doing this trick is steep, though. You have to have more than one website. Some people make a pretty penny putting up links one-way.
3. Apply for Inbound Links. Yes, it’s not a crime to promote your site. You can submit your site for review at people-run directories whose interests run into the subject matter of your site.
If the world wide web is the analogy of the earth, a directory can be best described as a town, where almost everybody knows each other. Any new arrival gets a thorough once-over and the whole town votes to see if you can get to stay.
4. Links for Sale. Some high-ranking sites are willing to sell their outbound links to the highest bidder. Sites that are popular with PageRank or other search engine ranking systems use this extra capacity for extra income sometimes.
However, the drawback to this is that the sites are only mercenary, selling their sites for rent. You have no link-equity other than the amount of cash you shell out to keep on existing on their site. Search engines such as Google are actively trying to dampen these efforts as it degrades the relevance of their search engine results.
5. Be Generous, Distribute Content. Of all the strategies stated, this is a highly effective method of getting better quality, legitimate one-way links. You give other websites a reason to put a link on their sites to point in your direction.
All sites are always looking for fresh content for their sites. A site cannot expect to stay number one in relevancy if they just keep on refreshing the content of their sites once every month. Most of the time these sites will even pay for fresh online content to a slew of writers. For a discounted offer, you can have a “about the author” link posted on the site with your own content. Be creative. The key is to make it mutually beneficial.
Ultimately, with a little patience, elbow grease, and luck. It pays to just be honest and stick with the stuff you like to talk about. You don’t regret eating up the time and you enjoy the process.
You can build your list simply by writing articles, whether you have thought of it or not.
Quite simply, you write and submit your articles on your topic of expertise or business nature to popular article directories where eZine publishers and readers are looking for the information you provide.
Leveraging your viral marketing efforts on article writing can be rewarding, if done right. In the real sense, you are actually proving your worth and demonstrating your expertise about your business through the articles you write.
So, how can this method in effect build your mailing list? The answer: the resource box you attach to your articles. In your resource box (also known as bio box), you include a brief detail about yourself and your business site together with its URL.
It is strongly suggested that your resource box URL links to your mailing list’s landing page where you can get your visitor’s name and email address, which will in turn help you build your mailing list at no cost.
If your articles are found worth sharing, eZine publishers will republish your articles together with your resource box for their readers and subscribers. The wonderful result: viral marketing without effort on your part!
You can start by writing and submitting your articles to trusted article submitter sites such as http://www.articlemarketer.com and begin your article marketing journey today.
Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:
1. Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.
2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.
3. Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.
4. Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.
5. Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.
6. You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.
When you purchased an item or availed of a service of a certain establishment and are satisfied with what you got, don’t you recommend that to a friend? And when you give your recommendation, doesn’t your friend buy or avail of it as well?
More often than not, we express our satisfaction with some product or service by telling our friends and relatives about our experience. Some of them will actually try the same product or service that we recommended. Essentially, we have just successfully advertised the product through word-of-mouth without the establishment having to spend a penny on it.
That is the idea behind viral marketing. Viral marketing is an advertising strategy that entices people to pass on a marketing message to their relatives and friends. It is called as such because of its similarity to an epidemic that easily spreads out, with an exponential growth, once an individual gets “infected.”
How did this marketing phenomenon start?
The concept of viral marketing, which is passing along a message, has been around for a long time now, even for centuries. There was just no specific name for it until 1997 when Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist, came up with the term “viral marketing” to describe Hotmail’s marketing practice then.
Hotmail’s practice was to append an advertisement of itself on each message that is sent using their service. When a recipient gets interested and clicks on the ad, it will lead to Hotmail’s website for him to signup. This will go on and on, and the growth is similar to an exponential curve.
Types of Viral Marketing
There are different ways to apply viral marketing strategy.
- Pass-along. This is the most common type of viral marketing. Web sites that ask their users to tell-a-friend about their products and services is an example of pass-along messaging. However, there is a risk of the message being labeled as “spam” by email providers. Thus, it is important that the “from” and “subject” lines do not contain any word that may be tagged as spam.
- Incentivised viral. This is a marketing technique used by companies in which users are offered rewards when they refer somebody to the company. This becomes more effective when the referred person needs to take action for the reward to be given.
- Undercover. The most difficult viral to spot, undercover marketing sends a viral message that is disguised as just an unusual page or piece of news without obvious link citations.
- Edgy gossip or buzz marketing. This type is most common in the entertainment world. A good example is the spread of different controversies, like getting married or divorced, involving the stars of a movie that is yet to be released. This is like a word-of-mouth advertising for the movie.
Methods of Transmission
Spreading the viral message can be done in different ways.
- Email. This is the most common type, when people forwards messages such as inspirational messages, jokes, funny clips and pictures that advertises a certain product or service.
- Instant Messaging. People who receive links from friends through instant messaging servers, like Yahoo or MSN, are more likely to check it out because of the notion of urgency of the sender.
- Web sites. Most of the articles now published online have a link that says “Send to a friend.” This is one way to make the article reach a good number of people by just posting it in one site.
- Word of mouth. Of course, this is the traditional way of passing on a message to another person; and most of the time, the most reliable method too.
Though there are several ways on how to do this kind of advertising, there are also barriers to it. One was already mentioned, which is the risk of the message being labeled as “spam.” Since a lot of companies now are using this method and promoting their products through email, email providers proactively created some sort of filter in their system to separate potential spam emails from the more trusted ones.
Other barriers can be the size and format of the viral message. If the content is a video clip, its reach may be limited because of size limitations of most of the email providers. Media format is also one thing to consider because not all recipients of the message may have the right application to open the file.
But despite of these constraints, businesses are already getting into this style of marketing. Indeed, this technique helps in dramatically increasing revenues by reaching a huge number of the target market without having to spend a big chunk of money for advertisements. Viral marketing will definitely go a long way, especially in the World Wide Web.
Nowadays, even the smallest company uses the Internet as a main tool in building a customer base, keeping in contact with their clients and this is also their most basic means of advertising.
Designing a company web site is cheap and effective, not to mention essential because the world wide web is the only medium that offers instantaneous information access to millions of users around the globe.
Any web developer worth his salt should know about search engine optimization or SEO.
This is the key towards building an effective web site that would get a lot of hits and visitors. A web site that nobody visits is useless so the challenge lies in leading Internet users to visit your web site.
Thus, your web site need to be "found" when users type in keywords in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, AOL and others.
Once a keyword relating to the products or services that you offer is keyed into a search engine, a direct link to your web site should emerge on top of the list.
You should employ search engine optimization techniques to lead traffic your way, and get more hits that would later on lead to more profit for your company, which is your goal in the first place.
Here are some tips on how you can make it to the top of the list of search engines, and use your SEO techniques to benefit your web site and your company:
1. If you have an existing web site and domain, just optimize the one that you currently have instead of purchasing a new domain.
It will take some time before your web site will show up in a particular search engine, like Google, so it better to use the one that you currently have instead of switching to a new one.
2. Know who your target audience is and aim for them.
If you are in the manufacturing industry and a user types in your product in a search engine, then you would immediately have your target right in front of you.
As soon as the user hits the Enter button or clicks on 'Search', then the person will be lead to your web site.
Make sure that your target market will get 'hooked' on your web site. Once the search engines show the link to your web site, their job is done.
What you should do next is to make sure that your visitor will not leave your web site without them trying out your products or services, or at least leaving some pertinent information so that you can contact them in the future for marketing and advertising purposes.
When hitting a particular target market, learn about their interests, location and age to have an idea of what you can offer them in return.
Also, you can somehow link their interests to your products and services.
3. Search for the right keyword.
You should be creative, persistent and flexible when looking for the keyword or keyword phrases to use in optimizing your web site.
Google and Yahoo offer some tools and tips on how you can come up with keywords that will yield results.
Do not settle for just one keyword. You can also vary the words and phrases that you use for each page on your web site so that you can have more hits.
4. Consider your target market when designing your web site.
The design itself would include the general theme of the web site. You should also pay attention to smaller details such as color and font style and size.
Make sure that the web site is user-friendly and do not forget to insert helpful articles, tips, hints and related links that can be shared to other users.
It is a good thing to have an option to send a link or an article to a friend, which will add more users and increase your client base.
There should also be various ways to browse through your web site, to fit each user.
A person might find it to difficult use the scroll down option so you should also provide hyperlinks which are accessible to them.
5. Concentrate on the web site content.
Regularly update the content of your web site so that old and new users can find something new when browsing through your site.
Make the content brief and precise. Writing a content which has more than 600 words will make the users lose interest, since most of them do not actually read but just skim through the text.
Strive to be the best and most comprehensive web site and you will make your mark when it comes to information about the products and services that you offer.
It helps a lot to pay attention to detail, too.
Finally, keeping your web site's content updated is a must.
Spread the word about your web site and use the basic search engine optimization techniques and you will surely gain positive results once users visit your web site.
Author’s assistants are well-known inside the publishing world, but not recognized by many outside of it. We predict that will change very soon because of the increasing numbers of authors who are getting published, either as independent publishers themselves or the more traditional route with established publishers.
Every big-time author has an author’s assistant – someone the author can call on to do the amazing number of tasks that surround the successful completion, publishing and marketing of a book. But first-time authors are lucky – they can have author’s assistants, too – virtually.
A new author can pay for just the time and expertise needed, without having to create a staff, making a virtual author’s assistant an important part of an author’s success. Here are the four biggest reasons this is an essential member of the author’s success team:
1. There is just too much work for one person. So many new or aspiring authors have day jobs and this is what they must do until their writing pays the rent. Until an author can clone him or herself, he or she must rely on others to help carry the load.
2. An author’s assistant has special expertise. Look for someone with training and experience in doing what you need done – from preparing a manuscript, to doing a competitive analysis, to coordinating a self publishing process to running a virtual book tour or an Amazon best seller campaign. Author’s assistants can do all this and much more. They understand the industry, the technology and have already established resources and connections.
3. The cost is greater when you do it yourself. There is a high learning curve for anyone who has never made the publishing journey. Whether the author is paid $70 an hour or $270 an hour as a coach, therapist, attorney or entrepreneur, the author’s assistant is a tremendous value at a much lower per-hour cost. With an author’s assistant the author has the freedom to concentrate on those things only the author can do, especially writing the best book he or she can. Expect to pay from $30 to $60 an hour (and it goes higher with greater expertise) for a qualified virtual assistant.
4. The synergy of the collaborative effort. There is nothing that inspires work like someone waiting for it. An author’s assistant is there to help you take each step so precious little time goes by between your writing and preparation for publishing and marketing. If you set the date, the author’s assistant will be there with support and encouragement to help you make it happen.
If you haven’t worked virtually before, talk to someone who has. Most people who start are hooked. One of the keys to success to have clarity about the tasks you want to have done and the payment arrangements – and then to memorialize these in a contract. Another key is to find someone with demonstrated training and experience since the first-time author may be in the dark about what the tasks actually are.
Take it from the established successful authors, don’t go it alone. Get the support you need and you will be well on your way to publishing success.
August 6th at 9:00 PM EDT
Learn the secrets of how to implement our amazing new eReport and get new ideas to market your business in a soft economy.At the end of the webinar you will be able to:
- Identify which techniques will work best for your business
- Start with low and no-cost marketing immediately
- Make better marketing decisions that will boost your bottom line.
- A – Very important. This is something that you must do, something that has SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES for either doing it or not doing it.
- B – Something that you should do but that is not as important as an A item. There are consequences associated with doing it or not doing it but they are only MILD CONSEQUENCES that don’t last for very long.
- C – Something that would be nice to do but for which there are NO CONSEQUENCES at all for your career or your success.
- D – An item that you DELEGATE or outsource to someone else who can do it pretty much as well as you. Delegate everything possible to free up enough time for you to concentrate on your A activities.
- E – ELIMINATE. These are items that are such low priority that you could eliminate them completely and it would make no difference at all. Sometimes the disciplined act of eliminating low value tasks can simplify your life and free up enough time for you to accomplish those tasks that have the greatest possible consequences for you.
Just about everyone has a website today. Certainly, if you're in business one way or another, you have a website. And people have different objectives behind their sites. Some are content-driven. Others provide an online service and have sophisticated user interfaces. Others still are designed to entertain and amuse their visitors. But regardless what your website is designed to do, there are a few primary objectives you should keep in mind before you start building.
This first website objective is FOCUS. Your site needs to have a narrow and specific focus. Why is this? Because there are literally millions of websites out there and the visitors you're lucky enough to attract will only take a few seconds to decide whether they'll stick around or whether they'll simply click the back button and continue browsing elsewhere. Within those few seconds, your site needs to communicate exactly what it's designed to do so the visitor can decide if it meets his or her needs or not.
One of the best exercises to enhance the focus of your site is to establish a 15 to 25-word positioning statement that guides all your development activity going forward. Think about it like a mission statement. It should articulate exactly what your website does in just 15 to 25 words.
Another way to look at it is to do a Google search for a keyword in your field and see what comes up in the results page. Under each listing, there's a short description of what that site is all about. As it turns out, the search engines get that description from the meta tags on those websites but it's exactly the same thing. What do you want YOUR description to say?
Once you've established a positioning statement, you should display it prominently on your homepage. It should be one of the first things visitors see when they land on your website. And as I mentioned above, the same statement should be included in your meta tags as your site description. That way, the search engines know exactly what your site is about at the same time. And if your site shows up in a search results page, that description will show up as part of your listing.
The second objective is DEPTH. Again, this objective serves your visitors as well as the search engines. Build a massive amount of content all about your narrow business focus. That way, if a visitor lands on your website and decides in the first few seconds that they need what you're providing, they'll go on to find a ton of resources all about that topic, satisfying their need and establishing trust along the way.
Depth of content helps your website with the search engines as well. Google uses complicated algorithms to assess value to different websites and one of the biggest things they look for is content. If your website has a narrow focus and lots of content about that focus, it will get ranked higher within your area of expertise. Google will consider your site a good resource for people searching for your narrow focus.
The third objective is to make your site STICKY. This is a relatively new term that describes a website's ability to keep a visitor on the site. A lot of sites do a fairly good job of attracting visitors but many of those visitors take one look at the site and leave within a second or two. As I mentioned earlier, the positioning statement can do a lot to help someone understand what your site is designed to do. But you need more than that to keep them browsing.
The visitor needs to see immediate value when they visit your site. They need to see something that will benefit them right away. They need to see something they can use to make their own lives better. This is the foundation behind today's value-first marketing moniker. People have been over-marketed and have become skeptical in clever marketing slogans. They want to see the value. They want proof that you can deliver. They want to sample your product or service before they buy anything.
You should spend some time and think about what you can offer your website visitors as soon as they land on your site. It could be information. It could be a tool or calculator of some kind. It could be a free subscription. It could be an entertaining video or an interactive game they can play. Whatever it is, you need to capture your visitor within seconds and guide them to something that will benefit them.
Once they've received one piece of value, give them a second and then a third. Guide them through a maze of value, encouraging them to continue browsing and discovering even more. This is the key to a sticky website and you can get a good idea of your progress by measuring your average time on the site through your analytics platform.
There are a million different websites out there and they're all designed to achieve different objectives. But each one of those websites can be a bit better by incorporating more focus, depth and stickiness. All three improve your website' effectiveness and all three offer benefits with the search engines as well.
About the Author
Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets. Visit the website for actionable guidance for revenue generation.
