Thursday 22 February 2007

101 SEO and SEM Tactics for 2007

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
Proven | Guarantee | Health | Results | You | Your | Beautiful

Courtesy Harry J. Friedman
The Friedman Group


Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay 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. %):

  1. Google Adwords (60%)
  2. Yahoo Search Marketing (14%)
    Sign up and get a $25 credit.
  3. MIVA (11%)
  4. Enhance Interactive (5%)
    Sign up and get $25 in Free Clicks!
  5. goClick (5%)
  6. MSN AdCenter (5%)
  7. 7Search (2%)
  8. Search123 (1%)
  9. SearchFeed (1%)
  10. ABC Search (1%)
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 Releases

The 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 feeds

RSS (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 Maps

Generate 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"
meta name="description" content="…"
meta name="keywords" content="…"
meta name="robots" content="Index, Follow"
meta name="Revisit-after" content="1 days"
meta name="rating" content="general"
meta name="document-type" content="Public"
meta name="document-distribution" content="Global"
meta name="copyright" content="…"

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 Podcasts

You 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 Exchanges

Do 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 products

Ask 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:

  1. Expedia (AU)
  2. AutoAnything
  3. Amazon
  4. Google
  5. eBay
  6. Yahoo!
  7. Bodybuilding
  8. Medifast
  9. Gate.com
  10. Skinstore
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 ;-)


klikhir is a new project and web site I am developing. The goal is to use free reprint article feeds to automatically filter products from Google, eBay, Commission Junction, and Amazon. "I'd rather read an article with the related products in view than go searching elsewhere', is the theory. I'll be improving klikhir and trying to follow my traffic recommendations.

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.

Sunday 11 February 2007

Recommendation Age Filter Engines Unify Content and Products

Inspired by the teachings of Chris Anderson and The Long Tail.

It wasn’t too long ago we were embracing the information age. Most of us still think we are in it. But the consequence of the information age is the overwhelming volume of information on any given subject, product or service. We are forced to spend a great deal of time sifting through sites, bits and bytes to [hopefully] discover what we are looking for.


Be it music, film, books or other products the sheer volume of choice makes it more difficult to find what we want; but we are also offered an abundant picking list: This immense list has emerged because a) production has been democratized: Never before has any single human being anywhere been able to operate independently to bring something of value to the world stage; be it a sound track, desktop wallpaper image, Flash cartoon, computer programming service, or indeed, more and more, a paid commentator, and b) distribution now takes the form of bits and bytes, meaning zero goods stock holding so companies like Amazon can print books on demand and iTunes can deliver music in bytes.

These two forces create abundance in choice and transform information into saleable products and services.

But sifting through tons of information to get to what we want is a bit like weeding the garden. We have to look at almost every blade of grass to get all the weeds out before we see the right result. And usually we miss a few patches.

What if we had someone helping us weed? Like a tennis umpire overlooking the landscape and directing our attention to important areas within our focal length. Moving from Information age to Recommendation age the collective wisdom of the crowd is the new connoisseur. More and more people spend time writing reviews and recommendations, creating Blogs about everything, posting comments, writing forum topics and replies and so on and these serve as beacons for us searchers by highlighting areas of interest through a process called filtering.

Today filters are king! They help us find what we are looking for within the overwhelming abundance of choice. Sites like Google filter pages to bring us the most relevant to our search term. Amazon provides recommendations and reviews along with every book on the planet. Netflicks tracks our search patterns to filter and offer movies that closely match our needs for titles we haven’t even heard of. Ten years ago my local music store offered me 4000 titles. Today iTunes offers me over 4 million. I may have spent an hour browsing my local music store. How many would that be online?

Filtering transcends search and browse behavior. It is amplified through word of mouth. Sites like MySpace are huge filtering engines for new music bringing us informed democratic choice though collective sharing. ‘Linkers’ build online bookmarks and the numbers of clicks to those web sites are like endorsements, showing us where to click next.

With monstrous data crunching technology more and more sites are able to measure consumption patterns in real time and make changes just as quickly. This is a grand shift entering the Recommendation age.

Google Adsense filters immense volumes of keywords to bring quality ad content to any web site. Amazon Associates are easily able to place recommendations and reviews on their own web sites. These targeted ads and recommendations act as beacons or short cuts to what seek in a landscape filled with abundance. With good filters diamonds can be found anywhere.

Sites like Rhapsody, MySpace, Netflicks, and Commission Junction are the modern day factories. The workforce has been democratized so that any individual anywhere can produce hard or soft products and services for anyone to consume. All of these sites offer sophisticated filtering through recommendations, reviews and statistics. Still other sites like Digg, Reddit, Folkd, Shoutwire and Care2 are aggregators of opinion on any given topic and filter information based on democratic consensus and democratic publishing.

Klikhir.com unifies article feeds with targeted recommendations from trusted brands acting as a filter that shows users what they most likely want without navigation away from the article.

Bloggers filter niche market information providing direct access to relevant data. Blog comments are like fine tuners and direction finders helping us home in without reviewing every option ourselves.

The age of information is over. We have entered the age of Recommendations. Successful entrepreneurs would be wise to consider the new way to wow the crowd is to automate filtering through sophisticated engines and to engage users with interactive features like commenting, recommendations, reviews, Blogs and articles.

Steven Rich operates klikhir.com, A Web 2.0 Search Aggregator andf Filter of Quality Articles. www.klikhir.com transforms around 150 new articles, reviews and recommendations every day into copy-able web pages with value added content from trusted brands.