Traffic Exchange - Does it add up?

Traffic Exchange

If you haven't heard about them, you're definitely in the minority. Traffic exchanges are sites that allow you to either install a toolbar or set a start page that gives you credit for surfing websites and/or squeeze pages. Often times you'll earn a single credit or mulitple credits for each site you view.

As your credits increase, the number of times your very own website or squeeze page is displayed throughout the traffic exchange network by other members. Most traffic exchanges allow you to select the specific categories of sites/squeeze pages you wish to see.

So what's the value? From my perspective, its not what you might think. Personally, I've used Traffic Swarm to test my squeeze pages - not for traffic generation. You might be asking yourself, isn't traffic the necessary component of an effective promotional page? Well, there is some truth in that without anyone viewing your promotional pages, its next to impossible to determine their effectiveness. The other challenge is that many users are just surfing to earn credits.

That being said, I find traffic exchanges to be a real tell-tale sign of your squeeze page's effectiveness. If you can stop someone in their tracks to view your page and take an action (free report, download, go to purchase), then you have a winner.

If you want to learn more about traffic exchanges, check out Traffic Swarm, TrafficG, or simply do a Google search. Happy surfing!

Back to Basics - SEO

This week, one of my favorite SEO guru's, Matt Callen distributed a fantastic SEO article that I consider "back to basics". Here's what he had to say:

Search engine algorithms are becoming increasingly complex and they keep changing every day. Not everyone can be expected to do the hard work, keep up with the details and figure out exactly what the search engines want – in fact most people are still unclear on what the basics of search engine optimization are. Asking regular people who are trying to establish a business online to figure all of that stuff out is too much.

This article will do two things. First, I'll discuss what search engines are aiming for when they rank and index web pages (in the search engine wars you have to be familiar with the battlefield). After that, I'll give you a rundown of the most important search engine ranking factors that, in my view, will do your websites a load of good not only in getting indexed fast , but also in getting high rankings across the search engines.
The Holy Grail Of Search

Let's start of with what I like to call the “Holy Grail of Search” – this differs for each individual search engine but to generalize, here is a brief definition:

To deliver the most relevant result to a user's search query.

That statement sounds meaningless until we define ‘relevant' as well. A relevant result is one that:

* Matches directly with the user's search term

* Is correct and authentic – information that is accurate

* Is NOT a copy of another web page

* Is informative

* Provides the ability to dig deeper into the topic

* Gives an answer quickly and effectively

To put all the above into an example:

If I search for car repair service in New Jersey , the answer (the web page delivered to me as the top result) should be:

* On or about car repair services (or a particular car repair service) in new jersey (and not a gambling site operating out of Mexico)

* Should give me details on car repair services in New Jersey – stuff that I can use to contact them, evaluate how good they are, find out how much they charge, etc.

* If it's not a specific site, it should give me links to different car repair services in the region – and if there's analysis on each service, that's even better

* Should be focused on that topic – a web page that focuses on one topic as compared to a web page that is about several different topics is ‘cluttered' – note that this does not always apply to a website – clutter on a web page is bad, avoid it.

Ideally, the first result should provide all the answers a user needs. In reality, you get a bunch of ‘best fit' web pages that are most likely to match your question / search. This is a result of building an automated system – and it also shows that:

* No answer is perfect.

* Everyone has a chance to be on top of that list if they can get at what the search engines are looking for.

To arrive at their list of best-fit web pages, search engines use a mixture of on-page and off-page factors to determine rankings for specific keywords. On-page factors are those elements that can be evaluated directly from a web page document (such as the title tag, keyword frequency, and also details about the website the page is on). Off-page factors basically refer to link-based analysis – or rather, analysis of the web pages linking to that particular document.

On-Page Ranking Factors

How relevant this document is to the search query? This determined through the following factors – note that I'm putting in only those that are MOST important:

Title Tag

The title tag reflects the contents of the document. This is elementary and yet many people get this wrong. How you refer to the document yourself makes a lot of difference – and if you're not putting your important keywords into the title tag, the search engines are going to think that this is not a relevant page (for those keywords).

For example, if you have a website on exercise equipment and one of the pages is a review of the ProForm treadmill – which one do you think would be a better title tag?

* ProForm Treadmill Review >> URL.com

Or…

* URL.com >> Treadmills >> ProForm Review

The first one is much better optimized for that page's key term – “ProForm Treadmill Review”. The second one will only confuse the search engine, and as a result of the unclear title tag that page would have been ranked much lower.

Put your keywords (focused and specific to that page) first.

Keyword Use in Document Text

Keyword density has been abused ever since search engines started becoming popular. Search engines don't measure density anymore – they analyse your content for various types of ways your keywords are present (keyword concurrency, related words, keywords in tags (headings, style, image), keywords as anchor text to other pages) and base their decision on that.

Getting keyword use right is tough when you are also trying to write for your readers and therefore trying to maintain a natural flow to your writing. Most people tend to resort to search engine spamming – forgetting their readers and writing heavily optimized pages that are tailor-made for the search engines but drive readers away.

The solution to this is to make sure that the topic of your page is extremely focused and specific – this will allow you talk in depth about one thing at a stretch – the optimal keyword usage that you want will come out of this sort of focused writing.

Accessibility of Document

Accessibility here refers to two things:

1. How accessible your website is:

* easy to follow links (plain html links, not hid behind javascript redirects or embedded in flash)

* common navigational structure (menu)

* sitemaps (google and regular)

2. And how accessible the pages are:

* no extra-long urls with multiple parameters (such as www.url.com/random.php?id=1&x=2&y=3... (and so on))

* Keeping all javascript code in an external .js file.

* Minimising the amount of flash and other non-indexable content on your pages.

Primary Subject Matter of Site

The topic of your website matters greatly (determined usually from the main page, but also through an analysis of your web pages as a whole) – for a search engine, the more focused the site is on a topic the better it is at providing information on that topic – this knowledge of course is combined with link wealth (what everyone else says about that site) to give definite answers.

Keyword Spamming

In short, keyword spamming is easiest and the stupidest way to get your website busted by the search engines. This includes keyword stuffing in the meta tags, in the title tags, in the alt image tags, etc. White on white text is also another incarnation of keyword spamming and is caught pretty easily by the search engines.

Avoid keyword spamming – you can spend the time doing something far more important, such as tweaking your title tags.

Off-Page Ranking Factors

Everything I've said about on-page factors is relevant, but the reality is that with overwhelming link wealth, you can trump all of those factors (in most cases, just get the title tag right, use the keyword once or twice in the text and boom, your link profile can take care of the rest).

Off-page factors are important because of a ‘real-life' analogy – link-based analysis – that Google brought to the search engine world and the other SEs have subsequently adopted to some extent. Google's analogy to the real world:

Links act as recommendations / editorial votes of quality for web pages. As each “editor” is different in terms on knowledge, expertise and primary subject matter, these votes have different values as well. Expertise in an industry is gauged through the number and quality of votes one gets.

This is democracy in search – a good idea in theory, but in practice it is quite hard to manage, especially because of the temptation to game the system and create inflated link wealth by pursuing links through blog spamming on one end, and buying up links on the other.

In this backdrop, what are the key off-page factors that search engines consider most important?

Anchor Text of Links

The anchor text of the links pointing to a web page is about as important as the title tag of the page itself. This anchor text acts as a quick identification mechanism of what the linked-to page is about. If you can in some way control your anchor text, you can make sure that you get optimized links.

One way to ensure that you remain in control of your anchor text is to remember that when you are exchanging / buying links, it is most effective to give people the exact html code that they should insert in their website. People are lazy and for someone who isn't too proficient with html / site coding, this small step may just be the reason you get that link.

Make sure that you vary your anchor text considerably – use related words and extended key phrases as much as possible.

Links to Document from Your Site's Internal Pages

This refers to the links the webpage gets from the internal pages of the host website. Essentially, while internal links are not as important as external links for ranking purposes, they can give a huge boost especially if the anchor text is optimized and these links are within content.

This is one way that you can use to transfer your site's link-wealth around to your most important pages.

External Links to the Document

How many links does this page receive from other websites? While your inner pages may not get many links from outside your website, any page that does automatically stands a great chance of being ranking for its key terms.

When you are exchanging links, getting a couple of links to your internal pages is always a good idea, especially if they are focused around a popular keyword. Also, once you start creating good, linkable content, people coming to your website will also start linking to your pages gradually.

Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community

This is something that's still being implemented, but what you can see of its implementation is the rise in importance of themed links. The Ask search engine is most advanced on this front, with Google close behind. Themed links are an extension of the ‘real-world' democratic model of search – editorial ‘votes' from highly ranking websites within your industry are worth more than votes from outside.

One thing most people forget is that when you are going after themed links, make sure that you cover your related industries as well (for example, a vote from a successful online business counts a lot for an SEO service).

Global Link Popularity of Site

This one is self-explanatory – essentially, how many links the website have, how many of those links are high-quality links, which of those links are themed links, how of them are one-way, etc. These questions (and more) help determine the link popularity (or link wealth) of your website, and eventually, your search engine rankings as well.
Recap - Using This Knowledge To Your Advantage

So, if you're looking for a quick rundown of what you need to do to improve your site rankings, here are two lists.

First, get all your pages in order by making sure that:

* your title tags are optimized

* your web pages are using the right keywords

* each web page is specific / focused

* each web page (and the site as a whole) is accessible

* you're not spamming the search engines


In addition, get your link-building campaign in order as well by making sure that:

* Your website gets themed links

* Your internal linking is well done – in-context linking to related pages on your website

* You create web pages that are linkable – to help you get deep links naturally

* You use internal pages when doing your link building

* You get links from high-ranking websites


Just by following these simple steps you will be ahead of 95% of your competition in no time at all.

For a FREE SEO Report that reveals even more SEO secrets, click here

The Secret Sauce in SEO... Part I

When showing the SEO I've been able to produce for some of my clients (and even my own website), I'm often asked, "Michael, what's the secret sauce to getting top placement on Google?". Good question - and I could probably charge hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for the secret. But I'm more than happy to share it with my blog readers. Why? Because as simple as the answer is, it's not easy - it takes work. Which is true of most things valuable.

Let me begin with the answer, "Links". That's it... my work here is done. If that's the secret sauce, the next question you should be asking is "How do I get them?". I'll go one step further. You should also be asking yourself which links are the most valuable and understand the most efficient and effective tactics for getting them.

I'm going to spend the next few days and weeks explaining the types of links that are most effective and the best methods of getting them. First let me start by explaining that the best links are the "right" links. The "right" links are those which contain the proper anchor text. Anchor text is simply the link text or the words that are visible in a link that points to your site. An example would be Internet Marketing Expert. You can see that the visible text and the URL it points to are different. Be sure to use your keywords in the link text. This is the most powerful SEO marketing tactic you can use to increase Google Search Engine Results.

Now that you have a tactic for the type of link you need, we'll start to cover the tools for building links. Today I'll be introducing you to article marketing. Article marketing is the practice of developing quality content (articles) in a given area and posting to your website or sites that aggregate content and distribute that content to other websites across the internet. This type of article distribution is what keeps many websites relevant and packed with quality information.

The tool I personally use to distribute my free marketing articles is Article Submitter Pro. This tool allows me to distribute my article to quality article distribution sites (hundreds of them) in order to get thousands of links back to my website MarketingScoop.com. When using article marketing as a primary link building strategy, the key is in the "About the Author" section. This is where you place the specific anchor text (mentioned above) with a link back to your website.

Alternatively, you can submit your articles manually. This can take a considerable amount of time but is equally effective. At the very least, I recommend submitting your articles to: EzineArticles.com, ArticleAlley.com, and GoArticles.com. These three sites alone account for about 25% of the total distribution of quality article content on the web.

If you'd like to understand the power of article marketing, just do a search on "7 Reasons to Start Blogging". On Google you'll find 2,990 results. If you search for the article with this title you'll find many more. When clicking through to these links, you'll notice that most of them have an "About the Author" section pointing back to my site. Keep in mind that this is just one article...I've writting dozens of them!

The Power of Testimonials

If you are a direct to consumer marketer there are two things you should intuitively know. The first is that "free" is still the most powerful word in marketing. The second is that testimonials sell.

I was recently asked to provide a testimonial for Brad Callen's Search Engine Optimization product called SEO Elite. The site/marketing pages were recently redesigned and rely heavily on testimonials from satisfied customers - nothing is more compelling. Check out the site by clicking here to view how testimonials can be used to drive perceived value and evidence points to encourage purchase. Well done Brad!

NASCAR. We can all learn from the marketing experts!

This weekend I attended a NASCAR event in Phoenix Arizona. For those of you who are not all that familiar with the NASCAR fanfare, let me say that there's more than meets the eye. Behind the fast cars, driver celebrities, and more than 75 million fans is a highly sophisticated marketing engine and hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorships.

The most valuable part of any sponsorship is the direct business derived from events such as the one I attended at the Phoenix International Speedway. As a marketing professional, I have to say that it was a lot to take in. None-the-less, I used the experience to learn about direct marketing and brand building. From the promotional tents to the big logos on car hoods, the exposure for individual brands is huge.

The real question that has to be answered, is whether or not sponsors are able to measure their return and see a positive return on investment. In my opinion only a few of the top sponsors did this effectively. Much of the branding was for the "masterbrand" but without a call to action or direct response mechanism. A lot went into advertising, very little went into measurements and calculating return.

The most productive promotion I saw was a promotion that asked individuals to visit a booth and swipe their card to win. This generated traffic that could be tracked and measured once they visited the tent. Other than this one promotional tactic, I didn't see much of an effort in terms of directly measuring ROI. Somewhat ironic that these companies would spend so much and place such little effort on measurement and lead generation.

SEO Secrets for Google Revealed

So what did 27 of the top SEO experts do when they were together at a recent SEO conference? They collaboratively worked together to identify the top criteria for the Google Algorithm - what decides where your site is listed in Google. This information is aligned with everything I teach about SEO and puts it in an easily understood summary:

Every experienced webmaster will know Google is the main supplier of search engine traffic on the web, getting listed on the first page or anywhere in the top 10 positions for popular keywords will result in plenty of free quality targeted traffic.

Briefly listed below are some of the main ranking factors you should be optimizing your web pages for in your marketing. The majority of these ranking factors will be very familiar to most webmasters who take full advantage of any and every SEO tactic which will give their site an edge over their competition.

Here are some of the main ranking factors to consider:

1. Keywords In Your Title And On Your Page

Place your keyword or keyword phrase in the title of your page and also in your copy. Many webmasters use variations of their keywords on this page and also include it in the H1 headline.

2. Keywords In Your URL

Keep your page on topic and place your keyword in the URL. Use your keyword in the H2, H3... headlines. Place it in the description and meta tags, place it in bold/strong tags, but keep your content readable and useful. Be aware of the text surrounding your keywords, search engines will become more semantic in the coming years so context is important.

3. Create High Quality Relevant Content

Have high quality relevant content on your pages. Your content should be related to the topic of your site and updated regularly depending on the nature of your site.

4. Internal Onsite Linking

Internal linking is important to your overall ranking. Make sure your linking structure is easy for the spiders to crawl. Most suggest a simple hierarchy with links no more than three clicks away from your home/index page.

Creating traffíc modes or clusters of related links within a section on your site has proven very effective for many webmasters, including this one. For example, creating a simple online guide on a subject related to your site's topic can prove very beneficial. Keep all the links connected and closely related in subject matter and don't forget to have occasional external 'anchor keyworded' links coming to these internal links on your site instead of to your homepage. Deep build your links.

5. Only Linking To High Quality Related Sites

Don't forget to link to high quality PR related sites. Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Build relationships within communities on the topic of your site. Be extremely careful not to link to bad neighborhoods, link farms and sp@m sites... when in doubt, don't link out!

Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site's overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.

6. Global Linking Popularity

One of the major ranking factors is the Global Linking Popularity of your site. You should try to build plenty of inbound links from quality sites. One simple and effective way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them to the online article directories. Only related sites will pick up and display your articles with your anchor text links back to your site. These are often ONE-WAY-LINKS.

But don't just write articles to get links, write quality content that will help the reader first and the links will come naturally. Also remember an article is an extremely good way of pre-selling your products and gaining trust with your potential customers.

7. Anchor Text Is Very Important

Anchor text is an important factor your must not forget to use. Perhaps more importantly these inbound links should be related or relevant to your site's topic, which will play an important role in your rankings. Don't ignore the text surrounding your links and use different anchor text links to avoid keyword spamming.

Keep in mind, as search engines become more semantic, the whole text of your article will probably be considered your anchor text, thus making articles even more important to your rankings.

8. Number And Quality Of Your Inbound Links

Your inbound links should also come from related high Global Link Popular sites. The more links your have from these popular related sites the higher rankings you will get. Many SEO experts suggest you should have a steady stream of new sites (inbound links) added each month to keep your rankings growing. These links will age and increase your rankings after 4 or 5 months. Both quality and quantity is important.

9. Reliable Server And Service

Like any business, Google is only serving up a product (SERPs) to its customers, this service must be continuous and available at all times. Make sure you have a good reliable server because any extended downtime when your site is inaccessible to the Bots may be detrimental to your rankings. If it is down for over 48 hours, you could be dropped from the index. Ouch!

10. Duplicate Content Is A NO NO!

Make certain you don't place duplicate content on your site. This may affect your rankings and get your pages thrown into the supplemental index. Be careful not to use duplicate title or mega tags on your pages as this will lower and disburse your internal page rankings, resulting in poor optimization.

Your overall SEO strategy should be to provide valuable relevant content and links for your visitors and the search engines. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, be extremely careful who you link out to from your site. Avoid sp@m sites, link farms or selling links. Although it is a bit outdated, using the Google Toolbar will still give you a general overview of a site's PR or Page Rank.

These are some of the most common and important ranking factors Google uses to rank and display their search engine results. Optimizing your site or keywords for these factors can prove very beneficial and rewarding.

There are many more factors so you should use the link in the resource box below to get all the gory details. For any novice or experienced webmaster it makes for a fascinating read and is extremely helpful in tackling Google's complex ranking system or algorithm. Conquer it and an endless supply of free organic traffíc is yours for the taking.

About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer. For the most effective web marketing tools try his main PR6 site: http://www.bizwaremagic.com . Make sure you chëck out Seomoz.org for the complete líst of ranking factors. 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Why You’re Losing Traffic and How to Make Them Stay

If you’re like most website owners, chance are you’re losing a large percentage of your visitors before they complete a desired action on your website. Although the number of factors that drive potential consumers away can be varied, I’ve noticed many common mistakes in my work of optimizing websites for optimal performance. Here’s where many sites go wrong:

1. Lack of a Clear Purpose

Why was your site designed? What is the purpose of your site? Are you selling a product or service? Are you sharing information or serving as a forum to aggregate ideas and comments? Are you providing social benefit?

If your website doesn’t communicate purpose in 3 seconds or less, you’re going to lose visitors. I’ve seen this numerous times- especially among companies who don’t know what they want their site to be or communicate. Make sure you site has a clear purpose and everything else will follow.

2. Making it Long-Winded and Complicated

Today, individuals have less time than ever before. As a result, time is their most precious asset – don’t waste it. The majority of people using the internet today still prefer brevity over verse. Try to say what you need to say in as few words as possible. If users have to scroll through 2 screens or more to get all of the information they’re seeking then it’s too much.

When writing for your site, keep things brief and highlight things of importance. You can use bulleted lists, short paragraphs, bold and underline. Some of you may be asking about the marketing websites with long copy. If you know what I’m talking about, these are generally marketing pages (squeeze pages) that have been developed to promote a single product or service. This is not what I’m referring to here. For websites, copy should be brief and to the point.

3. Giving Web Visitors Too Many Irritating Distractions

Websites should be designed to direct visitors to the information they want and that information should be the content you want to deliver.

You cannot sell someone a product or service they do not want. A real prospect is one that needs the same information you want to provide; the art of sales is directing potential clients to relevant information, and presenting it in a way that visitors see your product or service as fulfilling their needs.

On the surface, third-party advertisements and banners may seem like a good way to make some extra cash from your traffic, but these ads become so distracting, visitors either get fed-up or click on one of the links that takes them away from your site. Whatever few bucks you earn from these ads, you are loosing by chasing real customers away; this of course assumes you are a real business with something legitimate to sell and not a website that's an excuse to deliver advertisements.

Other nonsense like favorite links and silly fluff-content merely distracts visitors from investigating your site to find what they are looking for.

4. Giving Web Visitors Too Many Red Flags

Website visitors are constantly looking for red flags that tell them that the site they are visiting should be skipped as soon as possible.

If you want to make sure visitors won't deal with you make sure you don't provide any contact information: no contact names, no phone numbers, and no mailing address is a sure sign that you won't look after any problems that arise from a website transaction.

Your website must be designed to build trust and foster a relationship, not scare people away.

5. Giving Web Visitors Too Many Decisions To Make

How many decisions do you demand from your visitors in order for them to do business with you?

Take for example the seemingly simple task of purchasing a new television. Do you purchase the inexpensive but old tube technology, the newer Plasma technology, or the LCD technology? How about all the various features to choose from like picture-in-picture, commercial skip-timers, and on and on? All you really want to do is relax with your spouse and enjoy a good movie - is that on a VSH, DVD, Blu-ray, or HD-DVD?

6. Give Web Visitors Too Many Stumbling Blocks

Do you make people go through the order processing system before they can find out how much something costs, or do you demand potential customers read a ridiculous amount of small print legalese that only a lawyer could understand?

If you want to drive traffic away from your site make sure you build in as many stumbling blocks as possible.

7. Give Web Visitors Too Many Forms To Fill-in

Do you attract your visitors with special offers or free white papers and then demand that they fill-out complex forms, surveys, and questionnaires before you give them access to what they came for? If you do, you are probably losing a lot of people you attracted, and you are guaranteeing that your next email promotion will end up in the trash.

How to Write Effective Online Ads

Are you familiar with AIDA? It's an acronym that stands for: Attention, Desire, Interest, Action.

This is a tried and true copywriting technique you should always refer to when you write any advertisement.

Get the readers Attention with with a captivating headline. Your ad is going to be next to many others, so you need to stand out in the crowd. Maintain their Interest with benefits that support the claims made in the headline. Let them know what you're offering.

Create Desire by telling them what they they'll get if they take action right now. People want to know, "What's in it for me."

Give them an obvious call to Action. Click the link below... Sign up now... Hurry before it's too late...Don't miss your chance to... etc.


Creating Unique Ads
Most affiliate programs provide pre-written ads for you to use – While it is convenient, you'll get much better results make them unique. Add a personal endorsement. With all the hype online, people are more likely to read and click on something that you personally recommend.

Include a testimonial from the salesletter for the product you are promoting. That's an easy way to get content for a good solo ad.

Use other people's ads. One of the easiest ways to come up with ideas for good ads is to subscribe to a slew of marketing lists and look for ads that catch your eye. Modify them to fit the product you're promoting and add your own personal touch. You can use this method to build a massive portfolio of great ads.

Always Track Your Ads
Use the ad tracking software included with your membership to track visitors, sales, conversion rates, and net profit fro every ad you place. Track everything - even free marketing. Nothing is free if it takes up your time and does not produce results.

This information is critical for determining how well each ad campaign does and how well you're converting visitors into sales. Sometimes you just need to tweak your ad copy and run the ad again for better results.

Successful Email Marketing Tips

One of the most critical factors to succeeding online is building an email list, you hear it time and time again the money is in the list. To a certain extent that is true obviously it has to be a responsive list you could have a list of 100,000 email addresses in your database but if they do not take the desired action or worse don't even open your email then it is a complete waste of time. I have written this article to give you 5 killer ways to succeed in email marketing.

1. Pay For An Autoresponder Service

This is something that is vital to your email marketing success, there are certain times when free has its place in online business but autoresponders are not one. If you want your emails to even reach your subscribers inbox never mind get opened then you must use a reputable paid autoresponder service. Deliverability is a big problem caused by the spam issue this shouldn't be a problem if you have a good autoresponder service they will have built a good relationship with most of the email providers such as yahoo etc to help get your email delivered instead of flagged as spam. A good auto responder service will have a function where you can check your email for spam triggers before you send it out. One last thing before we move on is make sure your subscribers are double opt in which basically means when a visitor signs up to be on your email list a good autoresponder service will give you the option of sending a verification email which the subscriber has to go click on the link to verify they have requested to be on your list.

2. Test Your Subject Line

The first thing your subscriber will see when checking there email is the subject line of the email, what you need to do is make it compelling enough for your subscriber to want to open the email especially if it is a promotional email. The best way to get an indication of whether your email will be opened is to test different subject line. So how do you do this? Well you would send the promotional email to a small section of your full subscriber list for example if you had an email list of 10,000 you could select the first 500 in your database 250 would receive one subject line and 250 would receive a different one then you would check how many opened the email from each group giving you the figure of which worked best. Then you would roll out the most successful subject line to the rest of your list. There are many ways you can do this technique obviously depending on the size of your list you could test as many subject lines as you want or send the test to a higher percentage of your list.

3. Which Format HTML or Text?

This is something that a lot of new internet marketers will not think about but it is very important. When sending email most autoresponder services will give you the option of plain text or html emails now a big point you need to consider is that there are many email clients that only read plain text so when they receive a html email it shows all the html code making your email look totally unprofessional and also unreadable, my advise is send your emails in text format if you want a fancy layout in html you can always direct your subscribers with a link to your blog or html newsletter page.

4. Have you got an Opt in Form?

It absolutely amazes me how many websites I visit that do not have an email opt in form on there site. Remember this if nothing else in this article ALWAYS ALWAYS and another ALWAYS put an email opt in form on every website you create even if you do not have anything to sell at that time you must start building an email lists as soon as possible.

5. Resend To Unopens

Ok this is the final point and something that is rarely talked about in internet marketing when you send out an email especially a promotional email check your unopened stats most quality autoresponder services will have a function that shows you who on your list did not open your email, what you must consider is that even with the best subject there is always a chance your email will slip through the net especially if your subscriber is on many email lists (internet marketing is a prime example) or on holiday etc. You can resend the email to people who did not open your email when you originally sent it out there are so many lost sales because online business owners just thought oh well move onto the next promotion seriously don't make this mistake if they did not open the first time try again even if you only get one sale it was worth doing.

I hope these points have given you ideas of what you can do with email marketing

About the Author

Black Hat Jack is the author of The Theory Of Internet Marketing and publisher of Black Hat Marketing Ezine you can find both at http://www.blackhatjack.com. Black Hat Jack is dedicated to helping people who are serious about creating a successful home based online business.

What is Hosted Web Content?

It goes by many different names: content swapping, advertorials, pre-sell pages and hosted content – all basically the same idea. The way hosted content works is that you, the author, pay a site owner to display your article.

However, now, instead of the back links to your site coming at the end of the article, you embed those links in the body of the text surrounded by your target keywords and actually useful content for the reader. In the "eyes" of a search engine, this is among the highest valued back link.

Hosted content is basically renting a page on another site with links to your site embedded in the main body of the article. The web site that hosts the content receives payment from the author plus fresh content, the author gets a valuable back link and visitors to the hosting site get useful content.

This strategy isn't new. It's simply doing what search engines want us to do – produce content that's useful, beneficial and appears on quality sites. Not only does a quality piece of content receive more visibility when hosted on an authoritative site, it also delivers increased benefit to the author, and the page may even rank itself for target key phrases. When a major site hosts your content, you gain from its page rank in strong testimonials and referrals. Whether or not the site owners want to monetize their site by allowing approved authors to post content is the same debate as whether or not links should be bought and sold. Publishing high quality unique and useful content is a tested SEO tactic.

Designing a Hosted Content Page

You're paying for the placement of this content so you want it to be good. In the eternal quest for successful link bait, you also want the content to be ranked by search engines because it provides real value to the reader and is hosted on an authoritative site. Optimize your pages accordingly with h1 and h2 tags, bold mentions and so on. For specific Internet Marketing tips, visit MarketingScoop.com.

Now comes the most important part. As you write the article, carefully place links to topically relevant pages on your own site within the body of the article's text. These are high value links that will improve your SEO. However, it's also important to place your articles on sites that are topically related to your piece (and probably already rank for related topics). The authority of the site hosting your content, the relevance of the site (topically speaking) and that back link make your site look stronger as far as search engines are concerned. Also, remember that the quality of the content to which you link also matters. Link to strong pages (those with quality back links) on your site, as well. Your article should reference other authoritative, relevant articles so that search engines see that your piece was written to offer real value to readers.

It's Not Quantity That’s Important, It's Quality

It's no longer simply a matter of how many links point to a site. There are many cases of sites in which 50 quality links outrank sites with hundreds of links. It's not quantity that’s important, it's the quality of the links that improve ranking in the SERPs.

Editorial links (links in hosted content) are more "natural" from a search engine's perspective and, therefore, more valuable because the article has, at most, two or three targeted links pointing to your site's pages. Just like quality link bait, which is unique, original and useful content, quality hosted content on respected sites will also naturally develop its own back links - the ultimate validation and the desired outcome of placing quality content. Finally, because these links are found on pages optimized with your keywords, search engines will consider them extremely relevant to the subject at hand.

Start Your Hosted Content Campaign Now

It's being done everyday, successfully building small sites into larger sites, providing free advertising for the thought-leader/author, delivering less duplicate content to search engines and more new content (plus revenue) to the hosting site and, perhaps most importantly, hosted content actually delivers useful, relevant information to readers – exactly what search engines rank in the first place. As with any link-building technique, hosted content can be abused, but topically authoritative sites are not going to accept content that does not meet their high standards – so everyone wins when the goals are white hat.

Start searching for websites that might be interested in hosting your next article, or start looking for a site owner interested in content swapping. Create content that's unique, useful and well-written and you may find that you won't even have to pay a site owner to share your content with their readers – exactly how it should be.

Add a live person on your website?

Recently, I have added a live person in my company's homepage. We are trying to generate awareness and product interest in a product not many people are familiar with.The supplier I used was OnSite Videos. Not like its competitors, it is also feasible for smaller site/ small company to use as their pricing is very reasonable and flexible. Check out their website and detailed pricing at http://

How to Maximize Your Online Press Release Campaigns

One the the fastest and most efficient ways to improve your online search result placements is with an online press release campaign. To see the benefit of such a campaign, just Google today's top new story, event, or individual. You'll find top listings, dozens of incoming links, and much more. In today's post, Craig Cannings provides a case study on Online Press Release Campaigns. Enjoy!

I was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while certainly apart of his company's communication strategy seemed to have little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter!

However, this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and a significant increase in our overall web visibility. The campaign proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traffic and gaining great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it? Before I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let's first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign:

• High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website
A well-constructed Press Release campaign can result in multiple in-bound links from various sources such as industry-related websites, news and media sites, many of which have a decent Google Page Rank. Given that our business was launching a new website, we literally went from zero exposure to hundreds of one-way links and listings within a couple days.

• Top Listings in the News Search Engines
An optimized press release may see top placement in many key news engines such as Google News, MSN News and Yahoo News potentially resulting in a steady stream of traffíc for up to a period of 30 days. To put it into perspective, Google and Yahoo News have the largest Internet News Audience in the world, even bígger than CNN or the BBC.

• Improved Natural Search Results for Particular Keywords
As mentioned earlier, a recent Press Release Campaign of ours resulted in a top 5 listing for one of our keywords in Google as well as multiple top 20 listings all in matter of a two week period.

• Increased Web Visibility
For new web companies, Press Releases can be a very effective and low cost means of increasing the sheer number of web listings and overall exposure.

• Enhanced Brand Awareness
Optimized Press Releases through useful media portals like Prweb.com and Pr.com can significantly increase the brand awareness and recognition for both new and existing web businesses.

• Promotion in a Rapidly Growing Medium
Statistics have revealed that more than 70% of Americans actually read their news online, so press releases are certainly a part of an increasingly popular news medium.

• Low Cost Means for Increasing Exposure and Web Visibility
As mentioned, there are a number of key PR distribution portals such as Prweb.com that provide a great vehicle for syndicating your releases to thousands of news outlets as well as optimizing it for the Search Engines. I would highly recommend spending at least a couple hundred dollars to take advantage of a few SEO tools offered there.

• Quality Exposure to Industry Specific Editors
I include this last benefit as an added bonus since your press release might be deemed very newsworthy and subsequently picked up by multiple editors and news channels. However, I must emphasize the number of editor calls or inquiries certainly should not be the primary measure of success for your Online Press Release campaigns.

So, the big question here is how do you actually optimize the Press Release in order to achieve some of the results we experienced in previous campaigns. Let me roll back the curtain and show you the basic formula we employed.

1. Targeted Keyword Research and Selection
Before even commencing with drafting your online Press Release, it is imperative to conduct some thorough keyword research for your targeted audience and subject matter through such tools as wordtracker.com and keyworddiscovery.com. It is ideal to select targeted keywords that have the greatest degree of volume with the fewest competitors that will also make the most sense in the context of your Press Release. Again, it is important to marry relevant and newsworthy content with good SEO practices. I would recommend narrowing your keyword selection to approximately two to three words for your Press Release with a primary keyword and a couple secondary words. You will lose SEO potency by trying to incorporate too many keywords into one 500-800 word Press Release.

2. Strategic Keyword Placement in the Press Release
It is essential to include your main keyword(s) in the title of the Press Release as well as in the first or second paragraphs of the body. I would recommend optimizing the first 250 words of your press release and then include the keywords in strategic and relevant spots throughout the remainder of the body.

It is also recommended to maintain a keyword density of approximately 3-5% for the main keyword and 1-2% for secondary keywords. (Keyword Density refers to the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords) I must emphasize here though that while it is important to be aware of your keyword density, it should not come at the expense of relevant and high quality content. That will ultimately defeat the purpose and desired result of your PR campaign.

3. The Effective Use of Anchor Text
Creating Anchor Text (keyword-rich links) with your targeted keyword(s) will provide valuable optimization and relevant back-links to your respective landing page.

4. Relevant and Optimized Website Content
The use of targeted keywords in your Press Release will only have real value if you also include those same words with reasonable keyword density on your landing page. Make sure to include the keywords in the H1 Header Tag as well as strategically placed in the first 250 words or so of the landing page.

5. Tagging Strategies
Finally I have experienced great value in incorporating Technorati Keyword Tags as well as popular Social Bookmark tags such as Del.icio.us and Digg at the end of the Press Release. Those visitors that like the Press Release and choose to clíck on a technorati tag or a social bookmark tag provide high quality trackbacks or back links that will ultimately enhance your site's link popularity.

In summary, I believe an optimized Press Release using some of the above strategies can be an excellent marketing channel with a good viral effect and great SEO potential long-term. I would highly recommend making the small ínvestment through popular PR distribution sites such as Prweb.com, Prleap.com and Pr.com in order to maximize the potential for yielding top keyword listings, high quality back links and great long-term exposure for your business.

I should note that while the optimization of your Press Release is paramount, it is essential to provide a newsworthy and journalistic feel to the release as well. Great content combined with skillful optimization will yield the best results for your PR campaigns.

About The Author
Craig Cannings is the owner and managing director of ESalesGuru.com, an innovative outsourcing portal connecting ebusinesses with niche Internet Marketing Specialists and Firms worldwide. Visit www.esalesguru.com or contact Craig for more information at craig@esalesguru.com.

Click Fraud - What is it and can it be stopped?

Pay per click (PPC) advertising continues to gain popularity in the online marketing world as an effective and inexpensive way to drive targeted visitors to web sites.

Major trusted search properties such as Google, Yahoo Search Marketing, and others offer PPC campaigns in which you pay only when someone clicks through your banner ad or link. But PPC also has an enemy--click fraud--and understanding what it is and what to do about it should also be a key part of your PPC campaign.

What is Click Fraud?
Click fraud is when someone or something generates illegitimate hits on your banner or text advertisement causing you to pay for worthless clicks. AS PPC campaigns have grown in popularity and keyword prices and bidding have become more competetive, click fraud is on the rise.

Online marketers are becoming increasingly worried about the prospect of click fraud. According to CNET News, some marketing executives estimate that "up to 20 percent of fees in certain advertising categories continue to be based on nonexistent consumers in today's search industry."


Who's Doing it and Why?
Click fraud perpetrators are most often motivated by trying to increase revenues from affiliate networks or attempting to damage competitors' revenues by forcing them to pay for worthless clicks. The Google Adsense program, in which affiliates receive payment for clicks whether they are real or not, has caused great concern for Google and has intensified its focus on click fraud.

Those engaged in click fraud use a variety of techniques to generate false clicks. Low cost international workers from all over the world are hired to locate and click on ads. The Times of India provided investigative reporting on payment for manual click fraud happening in India. Unethical companies may pay their own employees to click on competitor ads.


Last but not least, click fraud can be generated by online robots programmed to click on advertiser or affiliate ads. Some companies go to great lengths creating intricate software that allows for this to happen.


How Can You Deter It?
Many advertisers know about the possibility of click fraud but generally haven't done much in the past to prevent it. Some feel that if they complain to any of the search conglomerates, it could ruin their free listings. Others feel like the problem is beyond them.

Companies who do understand and report click fraud to search engine properties have had success receiving refunds for fraudulent clicks. For those advertisers who want to address the possibility of click fraud in PPC campaigns, good option do exists. At the most basic level, advertisers can use general auditing many have been known to compile lists of sites that generate high numbers of clicks but not sales. This will indeed put up a red flag.

On the other hand, because click fraud is advancing at such frequency, click fraud detection companies and software have been popping up all over the country. Let's take a look at some of the options:

• ClickDetective - ClickDetective allows you to track return visitors to your site and alerts you if there is evidence that your site may be under attack. Its reports show you every click in real time rather than a summary hours later.
  


• Clicklab - Clicklab employs a score-based click fraud detection system that applies a series of tests to each visitor session and assigns scores. Calculations are made to indicate bad/good sessions to show an advertiser the quality of traffic.

Click fraud is a big problem in search engine marketing that's only going to get bigger in the future. It is wise for any online advertiser to implement some auditing system. Why continue to waste precious campaign money?

Clicks are Just the Beginning: Taking Your Click Marketing to New Heights

So many marketers are focused on clicks today that you would think that its "all about the clicks". Well, truth be told, clicks are pretty much worthless. Strong statement? It might be, but its the age old argument of creating awareness.

It's difficult or near impossible to run a business on awareness alone.. you need conversions. When it comes to the marketing professionals who say, "You need to create awareness", I say, "What's the point"? Awareness that doesn't generate a transaction isn't worth the web page its printed on.

Tonight I was driving by a billboard and thought to myself what a waste of marketing dollars. I tried to think of at least 3 billboards I remembered seeing ever. I'm embarassed to say that I could only recall three - but that's not the point (for the curious mind the three were for Kisimee St. Cloud, Miller Light, and Hair Loss). I could go into significant details as to why I remember these, but I'll keep it brief:

• The Kisimee billboard was available on a roadside every mile for 20 miles driving through Florida.


• The Miller Light billboard had a beautify woman in a white bathing suit pictured with an ice cold Miller Light


• Hair Loss - it was a cute billboard and since I'm starting to thin out, I thought it was a timely message.

Okay, so I remember about 3 or possibly 5 billboards I've seen in my lifetime but the real question is, did I take ANY action? I know this is market research of one, but I didn't make a single phone call, visit a website, or make a purchase as a result. Did it create awareness? Sure it did, but awareness without action is meaningless!

The same holds true for pay-per-click advertising. So your getting clicks - good start... are the clicks converting into sales? If so, how many clicks and at what cost does it take to generate one sale? If your expense is more than your revenue, you're losing money.

Focus on your marketin return, not on clicks... clicks are pretty much meaningless. Do you agree? Leave a comment.

The Impact of Personalization on Search Engine Optimization is Here

SEO can be a complex area of study. It's always changing and evolving. This contribution covers the evolution of personalized search and how that will impact your SEO efforts. We're a little ahead of the curve, but its never too early to start evolving and planning your SEO initiatives.

Personalization of search has been a growing topic of interest for a while, but has stayed under the radar for most people until now. With Google's widespread integration of personalization into standard search results, search marketers' attention has finally been firmly riveted on the issue. Up until recently, Google provided two personalization options:

• You could customize your Google Personalized Homepage for quick access to information of your choice (email messages, news headlines, etc.).
• You could get automatic personalization from your search history.

Recently, Google started combining the above two options for users who sign up for services through their Google accounts. When you sign in, you get access to tailored results utilizing information from your search history and your Google home page. If you don't wish to see results based on your past searches, you simply sign out of your Google Account or turn the option to track your history off in your Account settings.

To quote Danny Sullivan, "...anyone who signs-up for any Google service using a Google Account (such as Gmail, AdSense, Google Analytics among others) will automatically be enrolled into three additional Google products: Search History -- Personalized Search -- Personalized Homepage." In the past, Google Accounts required you to manually enable Search History. However, with the recent change, personalized search has been enabled for all accounts, new and old alike. All accounts also automatically get home pages generated based on account information.

Widespread Personalization

We don't know for sure how rapidly search personalization will take hold. However, a 2006 Choice Stream Personalization Survey shows that consumer interest in the issue is strong, with 79 percent of respondents indicating a willingness to receive personalized content and more than half of the 18-24 year olds asked expressing an interest. The study also saw an increase in the number of people who would be willing to trade privacy for increasingly tailored results.

These findings can likely be generalized to search users because the information required for search personalization is less intrusive than the content participants were questioned about in the survey.

Benefits and Drawbacks for Users and Site Owners

Personalization benefits users because it can help make their searches more relevant based on past search behavior. It also can help Web site owners who have excellent content and well-written Titles, since the Web sites with the "stickiest" content will be weighted more favorably. However, in both cases there is also the possibility of closing out potentially useful resources because they do not fit a user's previous history.

In addition to good content, Web pages need good Title and Description Meta tags. Because these are displayed on the search results page, they represent the way human users will judge the site and decide whether or not to click through.

You can also gain by getting yourself on the Google personalized homepage of many search users. One way to do this is to offer users a feed, a Google gadget, or Add To Google buttons on your pages so users can subscribe to your content. Another tip is to put Google Bookmark buttons on your pages, such as those provided by AddThis. The more a visitor relies on your site, the better ranking it will receive when that user performs searches related to your keywords. The winners in personalized search are those who make a connection to their users because the results reward loyalty.

Implications for SEO

Increased personalization in search results has obvious implications for anyone performing search engine optimization since search results will now differ from user to user based on search history and user profile. Naturally, all queries will show a change in ranking positions between personalized and non-personalized results. Practitioners have analyzed this effect and found that results for personalized vs. non-personalized search can vary as much as 90 percent. Clearly, on page elements, particularly in the content and Meta data, will become extremely important again.

Rank Checking

The area most affected in the search optimization process is rank checking. An article by Mike Moran in Revenue January/February 2007 states, "Widespread personalization will doom traditional rank checking". Moran also asserts, "It's the biggest change in search marketing since paid search."

Extensive personalization will affect the traditional rank checking process because site rankings will differ based on users' idiosyncratic search habits. SEO analysts will be looking at average rankings rather than absolute rankings. This will force a change in search engine optimization techniques. Currently, SEO requires decision-making based partly on researching targeted keyword phrases used by leading competitors. With personalization, it becomes difficult to identify the leading competitors because all search results will differ.

Therefore, new methodologies for making search engine optimization decisions will have to be devised. Traditional SEO and on page optimization will still be very important and SEOs will need to continue to improve pages, making them superior to other pages for specific targeted keyword phrases. This will require more thorough analyses of competitor on-page and off-page factors.

The process of SEO competitor analysis will require data collection, quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as multivariate analysis. Multivariate analyses can help determine the relative importance and influence of multiple factors compared to each other, yielding the competitive landscape for your targeted key terms. The strengths and weaknesses of this landscape will help practitioners make the SEO decisions needed for targeting the right terms for optimization.

In-depth competitor intelligence will give SEO practitioners more accurate readings of how their client's Web pages compare to their competitors' pages, and the result will be more accurate information than we currently get with rank checking.

The Challenge of Competitor Intelligence

In-depth competitor intelligence can reveal what's working and what's not for a site's strongest competitors. It can reveal which sites are competitively strong (or weak) compared to the client's site, regardless of what the respective ranking numbers would show with rank checking.

New age competitor intelligence will tell you what optimization factors are most important for specific competitive landscapes. Technicians will learn the true competitive nature of a keyword phrase rather that just the number of results returned for a specific query. They will know exactly what SEO factors to work in order to strengthen their client's position rather than guesstimate based on general guidelines.

In-depth competitor intelligence will tell practitioners how to prioritize the SEO factors to be optimized, revealing semantic relationships between the client's content, the competitors' content, and the semantic nuances of a keyword phrase related to search personalization of user results. Optimization in the era of personalization requires robust competitive intelligence, and this will pay big dividends to those who master analyzing the competitive landscape.

It is undoubtedly true that search will change dramatically once personalization is widely adopted. However, SEO is an art that is extremely flexible and will adapt with widespread use of search history to affect rankings. SEO practitioners have always been creative, and we will develop new techniques to achieve search visibility for our clients as personalized search becomes more prevalent.

About The Author
Claudia A. Bruemmer is a former Managing Editor of ClickZ (1998-2001), where she achieved the editorial success resulting in its first sale to Internet.com. Currently a freelance Internet writer, her clients include Bruce Clay, Inc., Search Engine Watch, TopTenWholesale and more. She can be reached at cbruemmer@bruceclay.com and has a website under construction at claudiabruemmer.com.