Deciding which Internet Marketing strategies and SEO Tactics to adopt this year, and in what priority they must be actioned to generate the best results, will radically increase your web site traffic and save you time and money.
Based on my experience as a professional Internet Marketer for the past 12 years I recommend newbies and seasoned Internet Marketing professionals adopt a prioritized Internet Marketing and SEO strategy for 2007. You will discover loads of targeted paid for and free traffic by applying these proven and guaranteed tactics, sequentially.
DISCLAIMER: THERE IS NO QUICK WAY TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE. THESE TIPS ARE A GUIDE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE SERIOUS ABOUT ONLINE MARKETING AS A BUSINESS AND WANT TO LEARN HOW TO ADOPT GOOD PRACTICES. IN NO WAY IS THIS GUIDE INTENDED TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE OR THINK YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE AND IN NO WAY DOES THIS GUIDE COVER ALL YOUR OPTIONS. THE AFFILIATE LINKS PLACED WITHIN THIS DOCUMENT ARE TO DEMONSTRATE HOW MUCH TIME IT TAKES TO BUILD VALUE ADDED CONTENT. THEY WILL NEVER GENERATE MORE THAN A FEW BUCKS FROM THIS PAGE. YOU CAN MAKE MONEY ONLINE BUT LIKE ANYTHING ITS HARD WORK.I hope these tactics prove beneficial to you and wish you health, wealth and happiness in 2007.
Subscription Opt-In Email Marketing
Email is the fastest and most effective way to get laser targeted traffic to your web site, by far.1 | Create a news letter on a regular basis and send it to your opt-in email list |
2 | Use ad-hoc emails to notify your subscribers of important new updates on your site |
3 | Promote discounts, coupons, and special offers by email and offer discounts and incentives to ‘click here now' |
4 | Make all offers time and stock limited |
5 | Include a ‘send to a friend' link in your emails |
6 | Send quality content to your users or they will unsubscribe |
7 | Use an Autoresponder and opt-in email system I use and recommend getresponse.com I have also used aweber.com |
8 | Do not overuse or abuse email. Do not spam your users ( report spam ) |
9 | Make sure your email is HTML compliant so your users see what you see |
10 | The following 15 words are proven to engage viewers. Use them unsparingly in your emails and digital swag: Easy | Free | Safety | Save | New | Discovery | Love | Money Courtesy Harry J. Friedman |
Pay Per Click AdvertisingPay per click advertising is the fastest sure way to get targeted traffic from searchers. But be prepared to throw money at the problem for at least two months before your CPC comes down to an acceptable bid price. Make sure your landing pages are highly relevant to your keyword search terms and you follow Google's guidelines for Quality Scores . Priority list for Pay Per Click advertising (approx. %):
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11 | Research keywords properly, exhaustively, vigorously– never guess. I use and strongly recommend Wordtracker |
12 | Create thousands (not tens or hundreds) of keywords For one of my customer's sites I have over 11 000 keywords. I have friends who have 100sof1000s of keywords! |
13 | Ensure landing pages meet Google's quality score guidelines to reduce ad cost. Even if you use other Pay Per Click advertising, Google's guidelines are worth implementing |
14 | Create landing pages that match keywords precisely. Whoever clicked your ad is looking for instant gratification for their search. Get to the point immediately and monetize as soon as possible |
15 | Manage Ad campaigns with bid management software. I use and recommend Bidrank . I find it less complicated than Bid Maximizer with more affordable usage/purchase options. If you cannot afford these tools use Google's free AdwordsEditor software to manage bids |
16 | Manage bids continuously. Don't leave your bids the same for more than 48 hours |
17 | Do not outbid competitors who have larger budgets. Do not start a bid war over crucial keywords |
18 | Bid on Long Tail keywords and study the theory of The Long Tail by Chris Anderson |
19 | Schedule bids based on analysis of site traffic logs using Google Analytics and Alexa |
20 | Do not use your home page as your landing page and make sure your landing page calls the user to action even if only to contact you |
Banner Advertising (Pay per Click)Banner advertising is less effective than text ads at producing clicks but more effective at Branding. Even if people do not click they see your logo and name. Impressions do not usually cost money - it's free Branding. | |
21 | Use Flash animated banners whenever possible |
22 | Be creative and give users a reason to click |
23 | Stick to 468x60 banners for greatest reach |
Writing and Distributing Articles and Press ReleasesThe Information Age has passed. We are in The Recommendation Age, the age of filtering. Filtering is the process of reducing information overload and noise. Writing articles, comments and reviews are effective methods of filtering and building targeted niche traffic. | |
24 | Write at least two articles per week for 6 weeks (initially for a new site) and then one article per week indefinitely |
25 | Write articles about the benefits of a web site or product like yours but not about your actual product |
26 | Your articles should be all about pre-sales digital swag. Use them to inform – not to sell |
27 | Write around 500 words per article using carefully selected keywords relating to your business |
28 | Before you write, research keywords (using Wordtracker ) that people are actually entering into search engines – do not make up your own keywords - that is a hit and miss affair. Rather use keywords that you know people are using. Having said that, bear in mind that Google estimates that 60% of searches are only ever typed once the same way - eeek! So create variations of searched keywords |
29 | Make sure your article contains your Author byline, telling readers who you are, with a hyperlink back to your web site and landing page, relevant to your article |
30 | Submit your articles to sites like iSnare.com for distribution to approx. 40 000 publishers. In this way you can expect to receive hundreds of back links over a 3-6 month period (for each article) to your web site from article directories (like klikhir.com ) and various publishers. Almost all of them immediately submit articles to search engines, which means nearly every duplication of your article is indexed for search |
31 | Publish your articles in your Blog and bookmark your articles in your favorite Social Bookmarking sites for extra return links. Blogs and Social Bookmarks index quickly in search engines |
32 | Inform your email database using GetResponse.com or a similar service about new articles or include them in your emails |
33 | Syndicate press releases regularly using sites like mediasyndicate.com |
Create and distribute RSS feedsRSS (Real Simple Syndication) is an XML standard that allows you to produce a publicly available list of your web site's updates and news. When your RSS feed updates, users immediately see the new items as headlines in their RSS feed reader, without having to visit your site. If there is further interest they can click on the title to view the web page you are directing their attention to. | |
34 | Create RSS feeds using standards like RSS 2.0 and ATOM |
35 | Update your feeds at least 2 to 3 times per week with relevant newsworthy content |
36 | Submit your feeds to Feedburner , Syndic8 , 2rss.com , rssfeeds.com , channelweb.com , feedboy.com |
37 | Create RSS feeds with images for greater impact |
38 | Mention the location of your RSS feeds in all of your digital swag. My RSS is here :: RSS 2.0 |
39 | Place RSS Feed Icons in prominent places on your web site so visitors can subscribe to them |
40 | Automate your feeds so when your sites update your feeds do too. If you are manually creating feeds you will not be able to maintain production timing consistency |
41 | Sub Syndicate your feeds with partnering sites to include their links in your feeds for greater reach, as long as they reciprocate |
42 | Try limit your feeds to 50 items. Try to aim for 20 items and update them more regularly if there are more items |
43 | Use the correct dates and XML schemas in your feeds |
Google Site MapsGenerate Google Site Maps regularly. As much as 60% of your web traffic can emanate from Google so get your pages indexed within hours, not days or weeks, using Google's back door. Google Site Maps allow you to submit your web pages to Google automatically. You can easily set up a Python script (or similar service) on your server to update the site map. Google's Python script notifies Google to index your pages. Googlebot can be made to crawl your site daily with some training. | |
44 | Use Google's Python script to generate Site Maps |
45 | Create a Robots.txt file to ensure Google indexes only public pages |
46 | Set up an automatic command on your web server (e.g. Cron Job - ask a technician for help using a support ticket if you cannot do this yourself) to produce your site map as often as you update your pages. e.g. hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. You can check the crawl rate and pages indexed in Google Webmaster Tools |
47 | Google SEO: Try to use 20 or less great keywords per web page keyword META tag. You can put 30 or 100 in if you want to but it will hinder your results. Rather focus keywords on the precise content of your page(s). ie use keywords that are repeated regularly throughout your page – even if there is an alternative search term a user may consider. If there are too many variations, consider creating variant web pages using alternative keywords and content |
48 | Ensure the following Meta Tags are in the header of your web site's index page: meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" Remeber to enclose your META tags with "<>" |
49 | Check Google Site Maps regularly to identify problem areas and commonly used keywords for your site |
Blogs, Social Bookmark Sites, Reviews and PodcastsYou should have a blog in 2007, its part and parcel of any pre-sales swag today. Make the time and become a voice for your niche | |
50 | Create regular blog and podcast entries about a subject related in some way to your real landing pages |
51 | In your Blog entries, talk about the link you are sending visitors to |
52 | Create a friends network for your blog |
53 | Create a Blog roll of similar or related blogs |
54 | Link your blog to your home page |
51 | Submit your blog to the search engines and blog directories |
52 | Try to write 300 to 500 words every second day |
53 | If you have a large website consider employing a full time blogger to drive traffic using Long Tail theory |
54 | Welcome and promote comments in your blog |
55 | Submit your news URLs to a social news site like Digg.com , Reddit.com , Care2.org |
56 | Submit your bookmark URLs to social bookmarking sites like del.ico.us , blinklist , stumbleupon |
57 | If your web page is not a product selling page but has relevant information for users then you can submit to social news sites |
58 | Do not over use these free news and bookmarking services otherwise you will be banned |
59 | Build up a friends list as fast as possible so that when you publish they are notified about the new link and can ‘ Digg ' your web page helping you promote it to the front page of the news sites |
60 | Place entertaining and interesting news related to your niche to increase your Digg -ability |
61 | Put social news icons on your landing page so other users can Digg them |
62 | Build up your profile rankings and Karma in social bookmarking sites by actively taking part |
63 | Write reviews on related product in sites like Amazon Books |
64 | Digg pages you find interesting on other web sites |
65 | Ask friends to comment on and save your bookmarks and add a 'comment box' and 'email a friend' links to your own site. |
66 | Comment in other people Blogs and Social Bookmarks - commenting in other people's blogs give you a return link to your own web site and makes social bookmarking worthwhile. 'We' are the new tastemakers and filters for quality links and information |
Back Linking and Link ExchangesDo not underestimate the value of return links. It is time consuming to build them but they are the beacons to your site. The more sign posts (return URLs) you have the better. | |
67 | Be active in building links. The more you have the more popular your web site is according to Googlebot |
68 | Treat your web pages as pieces of real estate for which sign posts need to be located everywhere. It takes time but it's worth the effort |
69 | Content Links (like those offered by Kontera.com ) are especially useful back links that hyperlink contextually applicable keywords exposed in real time on a publisher's web page. Keywords are automatically turned into links to the most pertinent and highest paying text ad |
70 | Ensure your context links direct users to actionable landing pages |
71 | Submit links to search engines |
72 | Place ‘link to this page' html code in a text box for users to copy and paste into their web pages |
73 | Put a link exchange contact form on your site to let people know you exchange links |
74 | Ask your friend's networks to Blogroll or exchange links with you |
75 | Exchange links only with interrelated sites for maximum performance |
76 | Become a regular user of an industry related Forum . Post and reply to that forum daily, if possible. Create your own Forum with free PHP scripts from hotscripts.com |
77 | Buy and sell links using a portal like LinkWorth |
Affiliate your web site and productsAsk other web marketers and publishers to market your products for you through affiliation. (This could be prioritized higher if you business is dependant upon affiliate publishers) | |
78 | Sign up as a merchant to a well known trusted portal such as Commission Junction , Clickbank.com , Kolimbo.com , Amazon.com , or eBay.com |
79 | Sign up to an online pay system such as PayPal.com to receive online affiliate payments (and be able to use eBay affiliation) My Top 10 Earning Affiliates Picks I will personally be promoting in 2007 are: |
80 | On behalf of your affiliate publishers create deep links for each product you sell |
81 | Create banners and digital swag on behalf of your affiliate publishers to save them time and ensure brand consistency |
82 | Initially offer your affiliates a very high rate of return. 50% for digital products. Over time as you extend your reach you can reduce the rate |
83 | Sounds silly but make sure you have a great logo. |
84 | Make sure you have an affiliates, privacy statement, and contact us page |
85 | Continuously email your affiliates newsletters with the latest product offerings |
86 | Offer your affiliates a sub-affiliate program so they can earn revenue from their own sign ups |
87 | Ask your affiliates how you can improve your service. Most merchants ignore this rule so the ones who use it are noticed and appreciated more. |
Local and Industry Linking and Offline advertising | |
88 | Search for local chambers of commerce, bureaus and directories you can link from |
89 | Participate in a local industry related aggregator (local news or directory site) |
90 | Ask your suppliers to link you |
91 | Use online and offline classified advertising |
92 | Use traditional mail to draw users to your web site |
93 | Run regular competitions with great prizes |
94 | Sponsor a local social sports event to display your company banner or print logos on sports drink bottles |
95 | Take part in local trade conventions |
96 | Ask your suppliers to include you in their snail mail swag |
97 | Make a decal of your web address and stick it to your car |
Friends and Family | |
98 | Email your friends and family about new stuff on your site |
99 | Tell your friends and family what you are doing and ask them for help by forwarding your emails to their friends and family |
100 | If you are starting out with your own new web site and you believe what you are doing will pay dividends, consider asking family and friends to lend you money in return for a share so that you can work on the previous 99 items full time |
101 | If you can get through the previous 100 you deserve a day off. On your day off, carry some business cards with your URL and hand them out to people at random ;-) |
Steven Rich is a professional Internet Marketer and Software Developer and produced and operates klikhir.com, a sophisticated Web 2.0 Article Directory Recommendation Filter that unifies articles with trusted brands to display products implicit to what you are reading. Browsing articles with related products greatly reduces your searching time online. Visit klikhir.com and grab free article content and great products. |
4 comments:
Not sure about what you post here. But, it's still informative. Thanks.
Regard,
Blog SEO
sana what r u doing there........????
sana what r u doing there....????
Nice article for SEO and SEM thanks for sharing here
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