Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective, fastest and most cost effective ways of earning money online. Affiliate programs level the playing field for Internet success, letting everyone get a part of the huge amount of money spend on the Web. So, it is no wonder many people choose this as their business model for making money.
Sounds great, but...
Like all businesses, there are mistakes you need to avoid if you want to be successful. Many affiliate marketers, from the brand new to the seasoned veteran, make some common mistakes that keep them from reaching their earning potential.
So, let's talk a little about these affiliate marketing mistakes you need to avoid.
Mistake # 1: Choosing The Wrong Product To Promote
Many people see the huge potential of affiliate marketing and rush to join any products program. Often, they don't use any type of criteria to determine if the product is something they want to promote and be a part of. If it seems "hot", or something they "think" might sell well they jump in with both feet.
Don't promote a product just because it has an affiliate program.
Pick a product that you are familiar with. Ideally, you should own the product yourself and experience firsthand how the product of service does what it says. At the very least, you should research the product and its capabilities before recommending it to others.
Your reputation is determined by the product you endorse, so be selective and choose wisely.
Mistake # 2: Joining Too Many Programs At Once
Affiliate programs are very extremely easy to join. Therefore, there is a temptation to join as many programs as possible in the attempt to maximize your commissions. Many people think "the more the merrier".
But don't just promote any and every product you find. Successful marketing is not a question of quantity, but QUALITY! You'll make much more money promoting a few hand-picked products that are excellent solutions to your visitors problems, than recommending any and every product out there.
As an affiliate marketer, you make informed recommendations because you are in a position to know better. People will only take your recommendations if they believe you are providing insight into the BEST solution to their problem. So, do your due diligence.
Again, be selective in the products you promote and choose wisely.
Mistake # 3: Not Owning The Product You're Recommending
As an affiliate, you main job is to help people with a specific problem find the best solution. To do this, you must know if the product you are promoting IS the solution to the problem. And there is no better way to do this than to own and use the product or service you are recommending.
Your potential customers can see through a general recommendation fabricated from the sales page. Personal experience really shines through. Remember, you are trying to UNITE customers with the RIGHT solution. And there is no better recommendation than showing how using the problem fixed the problem for yourself!
Listen...
Affiliate marketing is not trickery. You are not trying to trick someone into buying a product they don't need and won't benefit from. You are trying to help people by recommending a real solution to their problem.
So once more... be selective and choose your recommended products carefully.
Once you've picked the right product, narrowed down your recommendations and experienced the products benefits for yourself, all that's left to maximize your affiliate income is to follow a proven plan for success. Many people are surprised to learn that the most effective solution is often the simplest.
My suggestion, don't try to reinvent the wheel on affiliate marketing and follow the lead of the top affiliate marketer in the world.
Eddie Lomax reveals his 9 step plan to building and Internet Empire on http://www.BigWealthSystem.com with free videos, reports, mini courses and articles. Download these Two Free Affiliate Marketing Reports and stop making those costly mistakes once and for all!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Edward_Lomax
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
10 Tips on Increasing Your Website Traffic
By Inga Salechova
Not so long ago I had read an article about a woman who dramatically increased her page ranking from article submissions on her new website.
That was a fact I already knew, just like many other Internet Marketers. However, that article was the inspiration I needed to make some changes with my daily business habits.
Since I started studying the changes in my online traffic, the effects on adding content to your website and the change in search engine rankings, I've learned the importance of writing what you know and sharing it with others on the Internet.
I never took submitting and writing articles on a consistent basis too seriously when I first started my home based business. Part of the reason was because I was not confident enough to share what I knew with others.
Sure I posted a few articles, but I never posted those articles to as many directories and ezines that would accept my article.
Now before you go about thinking it might NOT be necessary to write an article periodically, take a look at some of the facts I have taken more seriously and learned as a result of posting articles online.
10 Benefits Of Submitting Articles Online:
Website Traffic Tip #1. Posting an article online has more of a dramatic affect than one might think for your home based business. Posting articles online builds the needed momentum of website traffic in the form of increased popularity and other sites linking to your site. All of those sites linking to you are one way links!
Website Traffic Tip #2. As you begin to submit more articles to more directories, your list of places for submitting articles will keep expanding.
Website Traffic Tip #3. Submitting to websites regularly will add more popularity to your website. This is the easiest way to improved your link popularity as well as your increased website traffic.
Website Traffic Tip #4. Most directories usually will let you include a resource box with your name and your website link with your article. Your website address will be found every time someone reads your article, creating more one way links to your site.
Website Traffic Tip #5. Most article directory websites store submitted articles in their archives. Since the search engine spiders love content, these sites are crawled often. This means YOU will benefit from the traffic and hyperlinks from each of your archived articles on their website.
Website Traffic Tip #6. The more articles you consistently write and distribute, the more you will become known as an expert for your home based business. The more you provide informative articles, your business will be given extra credibility which will help you to compete against your competition.
Website Traffic Tip #7. The more exposure your articles get for you, the more you will see your content showing up all over the Internet. Increasing the level of awareness and popularity builds credibility. Increased credibility may lead to requests to write other articles and improved sales of your product or service.
Website Traffic Tip #8. The more articles that you submit to major article directories, the more likely your content will be used for wider publication. The main reason this occurs is because many newsletter and ezine publishers like to use article directories to search for good quality content for their articles.
Website Traffic Tip #9. Adding content that is useful for both the readers and to the search engines will increse your website's popularity. By posting your articles in popular directories, you are more likely to be chosen for a featured article in a newsletter and have several webmasters republish your article on their website.
Website Traffic Tip #10. If you have a blog or RSS syndication, you should submit your articles written in your blog to article directories. The most overlooked source of traffic for a blog is through article submission. You can turn your longer posts into articles and submit them to ezines or directories.
In summary, make sure each article is written to inform and appeal to the reader, so that they are getting useful information from you. Once you start writing articles, be systematic about submitting new ones on a regular basis so they built momentum.
You will find the articles already posted have been hard at work because they are free advertising from other people to post on their web sites. In months to come, you will start getting the traffic and attention you'd been wishing for.
Brought to you by: World Wide Information Outlet - http://www.certificate.net/wwio/, your source of FREE Content online.
Inga Salechova: owner of several successful online businesses & Affiliate Programs. Expert in Website Promotion & Marketing.
For Top Home Based Business Opportunities & Affiliate Programs check here http://www.BestFreeHomeBusiness.com
Not so long ago I had read an article about a woman who dramatically increased her page ranking from article submissions on her new website.
That was a fact I already knew, just like many other Internet Marketers. However, that article was the inspiration I needed to make some changes with my daily business habits.
Since I started studying the changes in my online traffic, the effects on adding content to your website and the change in search engine rankings, I've learned the importance of writing what you know and sharing it with others on the Internet.
I never took submitting and writing articles on a consistent basis too seriously when I first started my home based business. Part of the reason was because I was not confident enough to share what I knew with others.
Sure I posted a few articles, but I never posted those articles to as many directories and ezines that would accept my article.
Now before you go about thinking it might NOT be necessary to write an article periodically, take a look at some of the facts I have taken more seriously and learned as a result of posting articles online.
10 Benefits Of Submitting Articles Online:
Website Traffic Tip #1. Posting an article online has more of a dramatic affect than one might think for your home based business. Posting articles online builds the needed momentum of website traffic in the form of increased popularity and other sites linking to your site. All of those sites linking to you are one way links!
Website Traffic Tip #2. As you begin to submit more articles to more directories, your list of places for submitting articles will keep expanding.
Website Traffic Tip #3. Submitting to websites regularly will add more popularity to your website. This is the easiest way to improved your link popularity as well as your increased website traffic.
Website Traffic Tip #4. Most directories usually will let you include a resource box with your name and your website link with your article. Your website address will be found every time someone reads your article, creating more one way links to your site.
Website Traffic Tip #5. Most article directory websites store submitted articles in their archives. Since the search engine spiders love content, these sites are crawled often. This means YOU will benefit from the traffic and hyperlinks from each of your archived articles on their website.
Website Traffic Tip #6. The more articles you consistently write and distribute, the more you will become known as an expert for your home based business. The more you provide informative articles, your business will be given extra credibility which will help you to compete against your competition.
Website Traffic Tip #7. The more exposure your articles get for you, the more you will see your content showing up all over the Internet. Increasing the level of awareness and popularity builds credibility. Increased credibility may lead to requests to write other articles and improved sales of your product or service.
Website Traffic Tip #8. The more articles that you submit to major article directories, the more likely your content will be used for wider publication. The main reason this occurs is because many newsletter and ezine publishers like to use article directories to search for good quality content for their articles.
Website Traffic Tip #9. Adding content that is useful for both the readers and to the search engines will increse your website's popularity. By posting your articles in popular directories, you are more likely to be chosen for a featured article in a newsletter and have several webmasters republish your article on their website.
Website Traffic Tip #10. If you have a blog or RSS syndication, you should submit your articles written in your blog to article directories. The most overlooked source of traffic for a blog is through article submission. You can turn your longer posts into articles and submit them to ezines or directories.
In summary, make sure each article is written to inform and appeal to the reader, so that they are getting useful information from you. Once you start writing articles, be systematic about submitting new ones on a regular basis so they built momentum.
You will find the articles already posted have been hard at work because they are free advertising from other people to post on their web sites. In months to come, you will start getting the traffic and attention you'd been wishing for.
Brought to you by: World Wide Information Outlet - http://www.certificate.net/wwio/, your source of FREE Content online.
Inga Salechova: owner of several successful online businesses & Affiliate Programs. Expert in Website Promotion & Marketing.
For Top Home Based Business Opportunities & Affiliate Programs check here http://www.BestFreeHomeBusiness.com
Monday, February 11, 2008
10 Hints For Most Successful Advertising
By: Daniel Clarke
If you're like most people starting out on the Internet,you have been along this well known path; You have tried free classified ads sites and get bombarded with spam by people trying to sell you stuff.
You finally get into the top twenty results in the Search Engines, and then a week later your site has dropped back to number 150.
The Internet may be the largest market in human history, but how on earth do you reach those millions of people? Well, the answer is ezine advertising. Its the surest way on the Web of reaching your target audience.
Ezines (short for 'electronic magazines') are email newsletters that are sent out regularly to subscribers, like the one you're reading. They're sometimes called 'opt-in' lists because everyone who receives an ezine has chosen to do so.
And the way ezine advertising gets results is that people read those ezines and they'll read your ad. And if you well matched the ezine with the product you're selling, it's cristal clear... you have reached your target audience.
Have a look at the ads in your favorite ezine and ask yourself, why are they there? Well, the answer is simple... Because they get results.
There are currently around 90,000 ezines being published every month. So whatever you're selling, there's more than likely an ezine that will take your ad straight to the audience you want to reach.
Ezine advertising is not only effective, but cheap as well. A 5-line ad in an ezine that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 to $20 per issue. As a general rule, you'll always get back at least the cost of the ad, and usually much more. So there's very little risk.
But there are some rules for successful ezine advertising:
1. The first and most important rule in ezine advertising is: "Track your Ads!". You might place your ad in 5 different ezines and get a hundred responses, but if you don't track your ads, you won't know which ezines were pulling responses and which were not.
To advertise effectively in ezines, you have to learn from experience, its a process of trial and error. Eventually, you'll end up with a handful of ezines that you know are bringing you a high response rate. After that, you just keep placing your ads in those ezines and you'll have a guaranteed stream of customers.
But how do you track your ads?
The simplest method is to place a key or a code at the end of your email address. If your ad was in this ezine (for example), this is the email address you'd place with the ad:
yourname@y...?subject=freeezine
Then, when you get a reply with 'freezine' in the subject field, you'll know which ezine it came from.
For a URL, same principle:
http://www.yourdomain.com?freezine
However, if you're going to code your URLs, you'll need a sophisticated webstats program to track the coded URLs. Here are a couple of free ones:
http://www.hitbox.com. http://www.openwebscope.com.
Here's another way to code your URLs: for every ezine ad, create a duplicate of your homepage and name the page after the ezine that your ad will appear in. So, if the ad is appearing in Ezine A, this is the URL you'd place in that ad:
http://www.yourdomain.com/EzineA
Again, you'll need to use a good web stats program to track the hits to your coded URLs.
2. The second rule is to target your audience. It may seem obvious but some advertisers does not pay attention to this. If you're selling a marketing course, don't advertise in an ezine that deals with stock options; they probably won't be interested.
Use the 'subject categories' in any ezine directory to find ezines that relate to the product you're selling. You can find a list of ezines directories in 'The Free Directory of Ezines' at:
http://www.netmastersolutions.com
3. Once you've chosen a number of ezines that target your audience, subscribe to them and examine the ads closely. If you see an ad that keeps repeating issue after issue, you can be pretty sure that its getting results. You've found a good ezine to advertise in.
4. Check to see how many ads are in the ezine. You don't want your ad lost in an ezine farm at the bottom of the newsletter. You probably won't get much response from an ad in an ezine that has 15 or 20 ads per issue. Readers of those ezines have become hardened to the ads and have learnt to skip them.
5. Check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue - your ad will be much more effective if its the only one of its kind in that particular issue.
6. Small ezines vs. Big ezines: bigger is not always better. The big ezines with 1000's of subscribers tend to have more ads than the small ezines. Also, small ezines with only a few hundred subscribers often have a much more targeted audience than the big ezines.
7. Repeat your ads. Research shows that off the Web, an ad has to be seen about 21 times before someone acts on it; on the Internet its about 9 times. If your budget allows, try and have your ad repeated at least three times in a particular ezine. Most ezines offer discount packages for bulk advertising.
8. Email address vs. URL. Opinions are divided on this; some people prefer to give an email address, others prefer to give a URL. The advantage of giving an email address is that it gives you the opportunity to send a powerful sales letter to the person who responded to your ad. Its also much easier to track your ads with an email address than a URL.
9. Offer something free in your ad copy. It'll often tip the balance between a response and no response.
10. Keep your ads short, even if you're not using the number of words you're allowed. Short ads are more likely to be read. Keep your sentences short too; they pack much more power. Use the word 'You'. Don't describe your product but tell the reader what your product can do for them.
Daniel Clarke is the webmaster of TorontoBizGuide.ca He wants to share with other webmasters ideas of how to successful advertise online business. Subscribe for a free Newsletter at: http://www.torontobizguide.ca
If you're like most people starting out on the Internet,you have been along this well known path; You have tried free classified ads sites and get bombarded with spam by people trying to sell you stuff.
You finally get into the top twenty results in the Search Engines, and then a week later your site has dropped back to number 150.
The Internet may be the largest market in human history, but how on earth do you reach those millions of people? Well, the answer is ezine advertising. Its the surest way on the Web of reaching your target audience.
Ezines (short for 'electronic magazines') are email newsletters that are sent out regularly to subscribers, like the one you're reading. They're sometimes called 'opt-in' lists because everyone who receives an ezine has chosen to do so.
And the way ezine advertising gets results is that people read those ezines and they'll read your ad. And if you well matched the ezine with the product you're selling, it's cristal clear... you have reached your target audience.
Have a look at the ads in your favorite ezine and ask yourself, why are they there? Well, the answer is simple... Because they get results.
There are currently around 90,000 ezines being published every month. So whatever you're selling, there's more than likely an ezine that will take your ad straight to the audience you want to reach.
Ezine advertising is not only effective, but cheap as well. A 5-line ad in an ezine that goes to 3000 people will cost you between $5 to $20 per issue. As a general rule, you'll always get back at least the cost of the ad, and usually much more. So there's very little risk.
But there are some rules for successful ezine advertising:
1. The first and most important rule in ezine advertising is: "Track your Ads!". You might place your ad in 5 different ezines and get a hundred responses, but if you don't track your ads, you won't know which ezines were pulling responses and which were not.
To advertise effectively in ezines, you have to learn from experience, its a process of trial and error. Eventually, you'll end up with a handful of ezines that you know are bringing you a high response rate. After that, you just keep placing your ads in those ezines and you'll have a guaranteed stream of customers.
But how do you track your ads?
The simplest method is to place a key or a code at the end of your email address. If your ad was in this ezine (for example), this is the email address you'd place with the ad:
yourname@y...?subject=freeezine
Then, when you get a reply with 'freezine' in the subject field, you'll know which ezine it came from.
For a URL, same principle:
http://www.yourdomain.com?freezine
However, if you're going to code your URLs, you'll need a sophisticated webstats program to track the coded URLs. Here are a couple of free ones:
http://www.hitbox.com. http://www.openwebscope.com.
Here's another way to code your URLs: for every ezine ad, create a duplicate of your homepage and name the page after the ezine that your ad will appear in. So, if the ad is appearing in Ezine A, this is the URL you'd place in that ad:
http://www.yourdomain.com/EzineA
Again, you'll need to use a good web stats program to track the hits to your coded URLs.
2. The second rule is to target your audience. It may seem obvious but some advertisers does not pay attention to this. If you're selling a marketing course, don't advertise in an ezine that deals with stock options; they probably won't be interested.
Use the 'subject categories' in any ezine directory to find ezines that relate to the product you're selling. You can find a list of ezines directories in 'The Free Directory of Ezines' at:
http://www.netmastersolutions.com
3. Once you've chosen a number of ezines that target your audience, subscribe to them and examine the ads closely. If you see an ad that keeps repeating issue after issue, you can be pretty sure that its getting results. You've found a good ezine to advertise in.
4. Check to see how many ads are in the ezine. You don't want your ad lost in an ezine farm at the bottom of the newsletter. You probably won't get much response from an ad in an ezine that has 15 or 20 ads per issue. Readers of those ezines have become hardened to the ads and have learnt to skip them.
5. Check to see if the ezine publisher has a policy of never running ads for two similar products in the same issue - your ad will be much more effective if its the only one of its kind in that particular issue.
6. Small ezines vs. Big ezines: bigger is not always better. The big ezines with 1000's of subscribers tend to have more ads than the small ezines. Also, small ezines with only a few hundred subscribers often have a much more targeted audience than the big ezines.
7. Repeat your ads. Research shows that off the Web, an ad has to be seen about 21 times before someone acts on it; on the Internet its about 9 times. If your budget allows, try and have your ad repeated at least three times in a particular ezine. Most ezines offer discount packages for bulk advertising.
8. Email address vs. URL. Opinions are divided on this; some people prefer to give an email address, others prefer to give a URL. The advantage of giving an email address is that it gives you the opportunity to send a powerful sales letter to the person who responded to your ad. Its also much easier to track your ads with an email address than a URL.
9. Offer something free in your ad copy. It'll often tip the balance between a response and no response.
10. Keep your ads short, even if you're not using the number of words you're allowed. Short ads are more likely to be read. Keep your sentences short too; they pack much more power. Use the word 'You'. Don't describe your product but tell the reader what your product can do for them.
Daniel Clarke is the webmaster of TorontoBizGuide.ca He wants to share with other webmasters ideas of how to successful advertise online business. Subscribe for a free Newsletter at: http://www.torontobizguide.ca
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Affiliate Marketing Mistake.
Not Buying The Product Or Using The Service
The most ironic thing that can happen in affiliate marketing business is that the affiliates themselves will be promoting the products that they do not even buy or use them. Most of them will only be thinking of that if I can promote to a lot of people through my affiliate link and it people buys, I will earn my commissions. In fact, not buying the product or using the service is the biggest mistakes that most affiliate marketer will make.
As an affiliate, you main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service to the customer so that they will buy. For you to be able to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that particular product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried the product. Thus, you will not be able to promote and recommend them convincingly. You will also fail to create a desire in your customers to any of the other products that you are offering.
Try to buy the product and use it personally first to see whether the product delivers the promises that it has make. If you are able to do that, you will be a living testimonial of the products advantages and disadvantages. You will be able to convince your customer more easily and the customer will have the trust in you because you have personally used the products. This will definitely increase your income.
Many affiliate marketers are making this mistakes which are causing them to put the money on the table. Do not fall into the same situation as the other affiliate marketers do. Try as much as possible to avoid making the same mistakes. Time will be the key factor to your business. Take the time to analyze the past mistakes that people make and do not repeat. If you are able to do that, you will reach your affiliate success at a faster rate.
About the Author: Zack Lim is an up and coming affiliate marketer. He recommends all potential affiliates to find a way to make money while they learn. After all, there’s no better way to measure results by cold hard cash! If you’re ready to finance your affiliate education and get FREE “7 Days To Affiliate Marketing” Course, Zack recommends visiting:
http://internetaffiliatemarketing.atspace.com
The most ironic thing that can happen in affiliate marketing business is that the affiliates themselves will be promoting the products that they do not even buy or use them. Most of them will only be thinking of that if I can promote to a lot of people through my affiliate link and it people buys, I will earn my commissions. In fact, not buying the product or using the service is the biggest mistakes that most affiliate marketer will make.
As an affiliate, you main purpose is to effectively and convincingly promote a product or service to the customer so that they will buy. For you to be able to achieve this purpose, you must be able to relay to the customers that particular product and service. It is therefore difficult for you to do this when you yourself have not tried the product. Thus, you will not be able to promote and recommend them convincingly. You will also fail to create a desire in your customers to any of the other products that you are offering.
Try to buy the product and use it personally first to see whether the product delivers the promises that it has make. If you are able to do that, you will be a living testimonial of the products advantages and disadvantages. You will be able to convince your customer more easily and the customer will have the trust in you because you have personally used the products. This will definitely increase your income.
Many affiliate marketers are making this mistakes which are causing them to put the money on the table. Do not fall into the same situation as the other affiliate marketers do. Try as much as possible to avoid making the same mistakes. Time will be the key factor to your business. Take the time to analyze the past mistakes that people make and do not repeat. If you are able to do that, you will reach your affiliate success at a faster rate.
About the Author: Zack Lim is an up and coming affiliate marketer. He recommends all potential affiliates to find a way to make money while they learn. After all, there’s no better way to measure results by cold hard cash! If you’re ready to finance your affiliate education and get FREE “7 Days To Affiliate Marketing” Course, Zack recommends visiting:
http://internetaffiliatemarketing.atspace.com
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Super Money-Making Affiliate Marketer
3 Mandatory Tools for the Super Money-Making Affiliate Marketer
Do I have what it takes to become a super affiliate marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut strategy to affiliate marketing brilliance? All these questions linger around in the minds of affiliate marketers who desire to make it big in this business.
Although affiliate marketing is publicized as one of the easiest and most effective ways to generate money online, it is not as easy as it appears to be. The shrewd affiliate marketer plans every action and implements every action the best way he can. He should also increase the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a thriving affiliate marketing business. I have sought advice from some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business for you and below are the top three mandatory tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.
Important Tool #1: Your Own Website
The most important and indispensable tool in affiliate marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will attract your prospects and motivate them to click on the links to the products and services you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first focus your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more dependable endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good name is a good step in building up a dedicated consumer base.
Important Tool #2: Offers And Incentives
Competition is a very major problem in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a
About the Author: Samson Michael is an internet entrepreneur whose been marketing online for 1 years. You can watch his free step by step online video tutorials that show you in detail how to build an extremely profitable affiliate marketing business by building a huge opt in email list. You can get these videos at Work From Home Businesses http://adsensemoneys.com/_part1/affiliate/
Do I have what it takes to become a super affiliate marketer? What are the ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut strategy to affiliate marketing brilliance? All these questions linger around in the minds of affiliate marketers who desire to make it big in this business.
Although affiliate marketing is publicized as one of the easiest and most effective ways to generate money online, it is not as easy as it appears to be. The shrewd affiliate marketer plans every action and implements every action the best way he can. He should also increase the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a thriving affiliate marketing business. I have sought advice from some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business for you and below are the top three mandatory tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.
Important Tool #1: Your Own Website
The most important and indispensable tool in affiliate marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will attract your prospects and motivate them to click on the links to the products and services you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first focus your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.
The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more dependable endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good name is a good step in building up a dedicated consumer base.
Important Tool #2: Offers And Incentives
Competition is a very major problem in the internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a
About the Author: Samson Michael is an internet entrepreneur whose been marketing online for 1 years. You can watch his free step by step online video tutorials that show you in detail how to build an extremely profitable affiliate marketing business by building a huge opt in email list. You can get these videos at Work From Home Businesses http://adsensemoneys.com/_part1/affiliate/
Monday, January 14, 2008
Features of a Good Affiliate Network
The online marketplace is strewn with affiliate networks serving as platforms for merchants and affiliates. You can join most of these networks free of cost and earn handsome revenues through various promotional activities. However, with so many options available, you have to be very sure while choosing a network for operations.
Listed below are a few crucial points that can help advertisers in taking a decision:
* The network should allow targeting on the basis of geographical location, language and demographics. This will help you create better campaigns and reach out your niche audience.
* It should provide different kinds of commission structures, the important ones being Pay per Click, Pay per Lead and Pay per Sale. This will ensure that you pay your affiliates as per your business plan.
* The affiliate marketing network should facilitate communication between you and your affiliates. If it is too self-imposing, there is a likelihood of fraudulent activities creeping in somewhere. It should not make you dependent, and instead give you a free reign for all sort of operations.
* It should take care of activities that can negatively impact the growth of your business. Frauds like URL hijacking, automated clicks, etc. should be well-monitored and controlled by the network.
* Being a network, it should provide you with comprehensive, collated details of your marketing campaigns. It should also present a true and clear picture of your affiliates' efforts and their results. This will help you decide on the continuity of your association with a particular affiliate or the network itself.
* Interference from the affiliate network should be as less as possible. Even when scrutinising affiliates for online association, you should always have the upper hand in taking the decisions.
As a merchant, you should not be contractually bound by the network you work with. Your trading transactions should be hassle-free and dedicatedly handled by managers assigned to your account.
About the Author: Suzanne Jones is an affiliate programme manager with Rupiz Affiliates. To make money with affiliate marketing, join the Rupiz Affiliates network as an advertiser or publisher. To earn handsome revenues through affiliate marketing, join the affiliate programmes offered by Rupiz Affiliates. The affiliate network provides dedicated account management and scalable report tracking technology to all its clients.
Listed below are a few crucial points that can help advertisers in taking a decision:
* The network should allow targeting on the basis of geographical location, language and demographics. This will help you create better campaigns and reach out your niche audience.
* It should provide different kinds of commission structures, the important ones being Pay per Click, Pay per Lead and Pay per Sale. This will ensure that you pay your affiliates as per your business plan.
* The affiliate marketing network should facilitate communication between you and your affiliates. If it is too self-imposing, there is a likelihood of fraudulent activities creeping in somewhere. It should not make you dependent, and instead give you a free reign for all sort of operations.
* It should take care of activities that can negatively impact the growth of your business. Frauds like URL hijacking, automated clicks, etc. should be well-monitored and controlled by the network.
* Being a network, it should provide you with comprehensive, collated details of your marketing campaigns. It should also present a true and clear picture of your affiliates' efforts and their results. This will help you decide on the continuity of your association with a particular affiliate or the network itself.
* Interference from the affiliate network should be as less as possible. Even when scrutinising affiliates for online association, you should always have the upper hand in taking the decisions.
As a merchant, you should not be contractually bound by the network you work with. Your trading transactions should be hassle-free and dedicatedly handled by managers assigned to your account.
About the Author: Suzanne Jones is an affiliate programme manager with Rupiz Affiliates. To make money with affiliate marketing, join the Rupiz Affiliates network as an advertiser or publisher. To earn handsome revenues through affiliate marketing, join the affiliate programmes offered by Rupiz Affiliates. The affiliate network provides dedicated account management and scalable report tracking technology to all its clients.
Google Adwords - How to Achieve Success Through Failure
If you are involved in Internet marketing to any degree, you have probably tried advertising through Google Adwords at one time or another. Adwords offers a number of advantages over other types of advertising - you get fast results, you get potentially huge exposure, and you can occasionally get your advertising for a reasonable price. The downsides can be serious, however; you can easily spend a fortune without it leading to any sales. For that reason, a lot of people have simply given up, convinced that it just isn't possible to make money using Google.
Will Haimerl is just such a person. He claims to be a "Super Failure" and says that he has spent more than $100,000 trying to figure out how to make Adwords work profitably for him. A lot of people give up after spending just a few hundred dollars on Google advertising, so a six figure loss represents a lot of lessons from the "school of hard knocks." Will claims to have learned a lot from his experience, and he's now written a book about what not to do when you set up a Google advertising campaign.
The new book, "How to Guarantee Failure Using Adwords" offers an extensive guide to setting up a profitable advertising campaign with Google by showing you exactly what you should not do. Will has compiled a list of some fifty mistakes that advertisers make so that you won't fall into the same traps as everyone else. Some of these mistakes are obvious, but some are so subtle that you might easily miss them. By offering a "how to" on what not to do, Will is offering you a chance to succeed.
Google suggests to advertisers that testing is the key to success, but they offer little in the way of advice. That, Will says, is because Google profits from your testing whether you succeed or fail. The less you have to test, the better off you will be, and the more money you save. Money you save goes straight to your bottom line in the form of profit, so while this isn't really a book about making money per se, it can have a serious affect on your finances.
Google Adwords is one of the best, fastest, and most cost-effective ways to advertise on the Internet, provided that you know what to do and what to avoid. "How to Guarantee Failure Using Adwords" offers a terrific guide to helping you avoid the mistakes so that your ad campaigns can quickly become profitable. Since money you don't lose is money in your pocket, it makes sense and cents to give this book a read.
About the Author: ©Copyright 2007 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Affiliate Marketing Shop, a site that reviews affiliate marketing products, as well as other sites devoted to making money online.
Will Haimerl is just such a person. He claims to be a "Super Failure" and says that he has spent more than $100,000 trying to figure out how to make Adwords work profitably for him. A lot of people give up after spending just a few hundred dollars on Google advertising, so a six figure loss represents a lot of lessons from the "school of hard knocks." Will claims to have learned a lot from his experience, and he's now written a book about what not to do when you set up a Google advertising campaign.
The new book, "How to Guarantee Failure Using Adwords" offers an extensive guide to setting up a profitable advertising campaign with Google by showing you exactly what you should not do. Will has compiled a list of some fifty mistakes that advertisers make so that you won't fall into the same traps as everyone else. Some of these mistakes are obvious, but some are so subtle that you might easily miss them. By offering a "how to" on what not to do, Will is offering you a chance to succeed.
Google suggests to advertisers that testing is the key to success, but they offer little in the way of advice. That, Will says, is because Google profits from your testing whether you succeed or fail. The less you have to test, the better off you will be, and the more money you save. Money you save goes straight to your bottom line in the form of profit, so while this isn't really a book about making money per se, it can have a serious affect on your finances.
Google Adwords is one of the best, fastest, and most cost-effective ways to advertise on the Internet, provided that you know what to do and what to avoid. "How to Guarantee Failure Using Adwords" offers a terrific guide to helping you avoid the mistakes so that your ad campaigns can quickly become profitable. Since money you don't lose is money in your pocket, it makes sense and cents to give this book a read.
About the Author: ©Copyright 2007 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Affiliate Marketing Shop, a site that reviews affiliate marketing products, as well as other sites devoted to making money online.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Robots.txt
We all know search engine optimization is a tricky business. Sometimes we rank well on one engine for a particular keyphrase and assume that all search engines will like our pages, and hence we will rank well for that keyphrase on a number of engines. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. All the major search engines differ somewhat, so what's get you ranked high on one engine may actually help to lower your ranking on another engine.
It is for this reason that some people like to optimize pages for each particular search engine. Usually these pages would only be slightly different but this slight difference could make all the difference when it comes to ranking high.
However because search engine spiders crawl through sites indexing every page it can find, it might come across your search engine specific optimizes pages and because they are very similar, the spider may think you are spamming it and will do one of two things, ban your site altogether or severely punish you in the form of lower rankings.
So what can you do to say stop Google indexing pages that are meant for AltaVista, well the solution is really quite simple and I'm surprised that more webmaster's who do optimize for each search engine don't use it more. It's done using a robots.txt file which resides on your webspace.
A Robots.txt file is a vital part of any webmasters battle against getting banned or punished by the search engines if he or she designs different pages for different search engine's.
The robots.txt file is just a simple text file as the file extension suggests. It's created using a simple text editor like notepad or wordpad, complicated word processors such as Microsoft Word will only corrupt the file.
Here's the code you need to insert into the file to work:
Red text is compulsory and never changes, while the blue text you will have to change to suit the file and the engine which you want to avoid it.
User-Agent: (Spider Name)
Disallow: (File Name)
The User-Agent is the name of the search engines spider and Disallow is the name of the file that you don't want that spider to spider. I'm not entirely sure if the code is case sensitive or not (maybe someone can let me know) but I do know that the code above works, so to be sure to check that the U and A are in caps and likewise the D in disallow.
You have to start a new batch of code for each engine, but if you want to list multiply disallow files you can one under another. For example -
User-Agent: Slurp (Inktomi's spider)
Disallow: internet-marketing-gg.html
Disallow: internet-marketing-al.html
Disallow: advertising-secrets-gg.html
Disallow: advertising-secrets-al.html
In the above code, I have disallowed Inktomi to spider two pages optimized for Google (internet-marketing-gg.html & advertising-secrets-gg.html) and two pages optimized for Altavista (internet-marketing-al.html & advertising-secrets-al.html). If Inktomi were allowed to spider these pages as well as the pages specifically made for Inktomi, I run the risk of being banned or penalized, So it's always a good idea to use a robots.txt file.
I mentioned earlier that the robots.txt file resides on your webspace, but where on your webspace? The root directory that's where, if you upload your file to sub-directories it will not work. If you want to block certain engines from certain files that do not reside in your root directory you simply need to point to the right directory and then list the file as normal, For example -
User-Agent: Slurp (Inktomi's spider)
Disallow: folder/internet-marketing-gg.html
Disallow: folder/internet-marketing-al.html
If you wanted to disallow all engines from indexing a file, you simply use the * character where the engines name would usually be. However beaware that the * character won't work on the Disallow line.
Here's the names of a few of the big engines,
Excite - ArchitextSpider
Altavista - Scooter
Lycos - Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex)
Google - Googlebot
Alltheweb - FAST-WebCrawler/
Be sure to check over the file before uploading it, as you may have made a simple mistake, which could mean your pages are indexed by engines you don't want to index them, or even worse none of your pages might not be indexed.
A little note before I go, I have listed the User-Agent names of a few of the big search engines, but in reality, it's not worth creating different pages for more than 6-7 search engines. It's very time consuming and results would be similar to those if you created different pages for the only the top five. So more is not always best.
So now you know how to make a robots.txt file, to stop you from getting banned by the search engines. Wasn't that easy. Till next time!
Article by David Callan - admin@akamarketing.com
David is the webmaster of http://www.akamarketing.com.
Visit his site for free internet marketing articles, advice, ebooks, news and lots more.
It is for this reason that some people like to optimize pages for each particular search engine. Usually these pages would only be slightly different but this slight difference could make all the difference when it comes to ranking high.
However because search engine spiders crawl through sites indexing every page it can find, it might come across your search engine specific optimizes pages and because they are very similar, the spider may think you are spamming it and will do one of two things, ban your site altogether or severely punish you in the form of lower rankings.
So what can you do to say stop Google indexing pages that are meant for AltaVista, well the solution is really quite simple and I'm surprised that more webmaster's who do optimize for each search engine don't use it more. It's done using a robots.txt file which resides on your webspace.
A Robots.txt file is a vital part of any webmasters battle against getting banned or punished by the search engines if he or she designs different pages for different search engine's.
The robots.txt file is just a simple text file as the file extension suggests. It's created using a simple text editor like notepad or wordpad, complicated word processors such as Microsoft Word will only corrupt the file.
Here's the code you need to insert into the file to work:
Red text is compulsory and never changes, while the blue text you will have to change to suit the file and the engine which you want to avoid it.
User-Agent: (Spider Name)
Disallow: (File Name)
The User-Agent is the name of the search engines spider and Disallow is the name of the file that you don't want that spider to spider. I'm not entirely sure if the code is case sensitive or not (maybe someone can let me know) but I do know that the code above works, so to be sure to check that the U and A are in caps and likewise the D in disallow.
You have to start a new batch of code for each engine, but if you want to list multiply disallow files you can one under another. For example -
User-Agent: Slurp (Inktomi's spider)
Disallow: internet-marketing-gg.html
Disallow: internet-marketing-al.html
Disallow: advertising-secrets-gg.html
Disallow: advertising-secrets-al.html
In the above code, I have disallowed Inktomi to spider two pages optimized for Google (internet-marketing-gg.html & advertising-secrets-gg.html) and two pages optimized for Altavista (internet-marketing-al.html & advertising-secrets-al.html). If Inktomi were allowed to spider these pages as well as the pages specifically made for Inktomi, I run the risk of being banned or penalized, So it's always a good idea to use a robots.txt file.
I mentioned earlier that the robots.txt file resides on your webspace, but where on your webspace? The root directory that's where, if you upload your file to sub-directories it will not work. If you want to block certain engines from certain files that do not reside in your root directory you simply need to point to the right directory and then list the file as normal, For example -
User-Agent: Slurp (Inktomi's spider)
Disallow: folder/internet-marketing-gg.html
Disallow: folder/internet-marketing-al.html
If you wanted to disallow all engines from indexing a file, you simply use the * character where the engines name would usually be. However beaware that the * character won't work on the Disallow line.
Here's the names of a few of the big engines,
Excite - ArchitextSpider
Altavista - Scooter
Lycos - Lycos_Spider_(T-Rex)
Google - Googlebot
Alltheweb - FAST-WebCrawler/
Be sure to check over the file before uploading it, as you may have made a simple mistake, which could mean your pages are indexed by engines you don't want to index them, or even worse none of your pages might not be indexed.
A little note before I go, I have listed the User-Agent names of a few of the big search engines, but in reality, it's not worth creating different pages for more than 6-7 search engines. It's very time consuming and results would be similar to those if you created different pages for the only the top five. So more is not always best.
So now you know how to make a robots.txt file, to stop you from getting banned by the search engines. Wasn't that easy. Till next time!
Article by David Callan - admin@akamarketing.com
David is the webmaster of http://www.akamarketing.com.
Visit his site for free internet marketing articles, advice, ebooks, news and lots more.
Monday, January 7, 2008
7 Essential Steps to Web Site Promotion
Copyright 2003 by Herman Drost
Web Site promotion should be the major part of your web site marketing plan. It's not enough just to design a beautiful web site and put in on the Net. Promoting your web site has to be done constantly if you want to get a continuous stream of traffic to it. If you don't drive traffic to your web site, your online business venture will soon fail.
1. Create a web site marketing plan - if you fail to plan then you default to a plan for failure. When designing your web site, create a plan on how to market it as well. Try to put yourself in your customers shoes when doing this. It's too easy to just view your web site from your own perspective. You need to have a clear vision for your business, goals (short and long term) you wish to achieve and the strategies of how you will accomplish them.
2. Define your target market - many online marketers promote their web site aimlessly in a field which is too large i.e. they may use bulk mailing as one of their promotion strategies. Of course you may get some visitors but the chances are you will not make many sales. Why? You have not narrowed your field of customers and targeted them. If you sold Cadillacs online for instance, you are not randomly going to market to every person on the Net. Your target market may be previous owners of cadillacs, or people who routinely purchase luxury American cars.
Getting targeted customers to your web site, will increase sales, because they will have more interest in your product or service than marketing to a general audience.
3. Use several promotion strategies - don't just stick to one form of promotion because you never know which one will work the best for you. If you use many channels i.e. search engines, email marketing, forums, writing articles etc you have a greater chance of getting more traffic to your web site.
4. Promote continuously - if you want to drive constant traffic to your web site, you must promote it continuously. Web traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. For example, you could constantly optimize your web pages for the search engines, resubmit them if needed, visit discussion forums every day and write an article for online publications every two weeks.
5. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) - this means keeping track of how much money you invested in your marketing plan and what profit you received in return. This will avoid wasting large sums of money thrown aimlessly into advertising.
If you calculate it takes 100 visitors to your web site to generate one sale and with each sale you make $10, then you shouldn't spend more than 10 cents to get each targeted visitor and still make a profit.
In order to know which aspects of your marketing campaign bring the most visitors, you must be able to monitor visitor activity to your web pages.
6. Analyze your web site traffic - by analyzing your web site traffic, you can determine what marketing strategies are successful. You can then change them as necessary, to boost the sales or services from your site.
Your analysis may include what keywords your visitors are using to find your web site, which web pages are the most popular and where your visitors are coming from. These are essential statistics you should know, instead of blindly promoting your web site and hoping for the best.
7. Test, monitor and track your results - to run an effective online marketing campaign, you need to constantly test what works and what doesn't. Tracking the response to an ad may cause you to refine it until it generates a great return on the money you invested. Once your results are satisfactory, you can then roll out your ads on a larger scale and spend greater sums of money.
You should also monitor your site in the search engines, so you can optimize your web pages for higher search engine rankings. This will attract more visitors which leads to higher profits.
Web site promotion strategies will differ for everyone, and will depend a lot on your product, web site and your personality. Try everything you can, record the results, and see what works for you.
Herman Drost is the author of the new ebook "101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site" a powerful guide for attracting 1000s of visitors to your web site. http://www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion
Web Site promotion should be the major part of your web site marketing plan. It's not enough just to design a beautiful web site and put in on the Net. Promoting your web site has to be done constantly if you want to get a continuous stream of traffic to it. If you don't drive traffic to your web site, your online business venture will soon fail.
1. Create a web site marketing plan - if you fail to plan then you default to a plan for failure. When designing your web site, create a plan on how to market it as well. Try to put yourself in your customers shoes when doing this. It's too easy to just view your web site from your own perspective. You need to have a clear vision for your business, goals (short and long term) you wish to achieve and the strategies of how you will accomplish them.
2. Define your target market - many online marketers promote their web site aimlessly in a field which is too large i.e. they may use bulk mailing as one of their promotion strategies. Of course you may get some visitors but the chances are you will not make many sales. Why? You have not narrowed your field of customers and targeted them. If you sold Cadillacs online for instance, you are not randomly going to market to every person on the Net. Your target market may be previous owners of cadillacs, or people who routinely purchase luxury American cars.
Getting targeted customers to your web site, will increase sales, because they will have more interest in your product or service than marketing to a general audience.
3. Use several promotion strategies - don't just stick to one form of promotion because you never know which one will work the best for you. If you use many channels i.e. search engines, email marketing, forums, writing articles etc you have a greater chance of getting more traffic to your web site.
4. Promote continuously - if you want to drive constant traffic to your web site, you must promote it continuously. Web traffic is the lifeblood of your online business. For example, you could constantly optimize your web pages for the search engines, resubmit them if needed, visit discussion forums every day and write an article for online publications every two weeks.
5. Calculate your return on investment (ROI) - this means keeping track of how much money you invested in your marketing plan and what profit you received in return. This will avoid wasting large sums of money thrown aimlessly into advertising.
If you calculate it takes 100 visitors to your web site to generate one sale and with each sale you make $10, then you shouldn't spend more than 10 cents to get each targeted visitor and still make a profit.
In order to know which aspects of your marketing campaign bring the most visitors, you must be able to monitor visitor activity to your web pages.
6. Analyze your web site traffic - by analyzing your web site traffic, you can determine what marketing strategies are successful. You can then change them as necessary, to boost the sales or services from your site.
Your analysis may include what keywords your visitors are using to find your web site, which web pages are the most popular and where your visitors are coming from. These are essential statistics you should know, instead of blindly promoting your web site and hoping for the best.
7. Test, monitor and track your results - to run an effective online marketing campaign, you need to constantly test what works and what doesn't. Tracking the response to an ad may cause you to refine it until it generates a great return on the money you invested. Once your results are satisfactory, you can then roll out your ads on a larger scale and spend greater sums of money.
You should also monitor your site in the search engines, so you can optimize your web pages for higher search engine rankings. This will attract more visitors which leads to higher profits.
Web site promotion strategies will differ for everyone, and will depend a lot on your product, web site and your personality. Try everything you can, record the results, and see what works for you.
Herman Drost is the author of the new ebook "101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site" a powerful guide for attracting 1000s of visitors to your web site. http://www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion
Friday, January 4, 2008
Drive more UK traffic tips.
Google optimisation is essential to help gain valuable traffic from the web as it holds the largest share of the search market, with a 60-70% UK market share. Getting a high ranking on Google can therefore be worth more traffic than all the other search tools put together.
Not surprisingly, Google optimisation is becoming increasingly competitive as more and more companies realise the importance of getting a high ranking here, but it is also one of the most 'user-friendly' search engines to work with! Google updates frequently, deep indexes many pages from a website, and is also good at ignoring sites that try to 'spam' the listings through the use of unscrupulous techniques.
Submitting a site to Google.
It is free to get your site listed on Google and, as it conducts regular updates, it can take anything from several days to several months for a new site to appear, depending on the links to a site and the structure in place.
Google provides an online submission form5 where the URL of a site can be submitted, or it is possible to submit a website through its sitemaps6 program, but it can often be better to get a site linked from an existing domain on Google, so that the Googlebot spider will find the site through its travels around the web.
Google is able to deep index complex websites, either on the first visit or after several updates, including pages within a frame. It will also index PDF documents hosted on a site.
Factors to consider for a high search engine ranking on Google.
Like most search engines, Google will use the content on a website to determine search term relevance, but it was also the first search tool to use external factors such as inbound links as a key element, thus adding an element that would be harder for spammers to manipulate. It also assesses inbound links for quality and relevence, making it hard for new websites to establish high ranking positions immediately, but it can also create very reliable and relevant results.
Factors to consider to achieve a high ranking include:
* Use relevent keywords within the title tag of each page
* Consider the position and emphasis of keywords within your content
* Create a defined 'theme' for the site, including the number of pages indexed and the use of keywords throughout
* Seek a listing on the Open Directory7 with a keyword relevant description
* The number of inbound links8 from other relevant and and established websites are especially important.
Written by the web search workshop
Not surprisingly, Google optimisation is becoming increasingly competitive as more and more companies realise the importance of getting a high ranking here, but it is also one of the most 'user-friendly' search engines to work with! Google updates frequently, deep indexes many pages from a website, and is also good at ignoring sites that try to 'spam' the listings through the use of unscrupulous techniques.
Submitting a site to Google.
It is free to get your site listed on Google and, as it conducts regular updates, it can take anything from several days to several months for a new site to appear, depending on the links to a site and the structure in place.
Google provides an online submission form5 where the URL of a site can be submitted, or it is possible to submit a website through its sitemaps6 program, but it can often be better to get a site linked from an existing domain on Google, so that the Googlebot spider will find the site through its travels around the web.
Google is able to deep index complex websites, either on the first visit or after several updates, including pages within a frame. It will also index PDF documents hosted on a site.
Factors to consider for a high search engine ranking on Google.
Like most search engines, Google will use the content on a website to determine search term relevance, but it was also the first search tool to use external factors such as inbound links as a key element, thus adding an element that would be harder for spammers to manipulate. It also assesses inbound links for quality and relevence, making it hard for new websites to establish high ranking positions immediately, but it can also create very reliable and relevant results.
Factors to consider to achieve a high ranking include:
* Use relevent keywords within the title tag of each page
* Consider the position and emphasis of keywords within your content
* Create a defined 'theme' for the site, including the number of pages indexed and the use of keywords throughout
* Seek a listing on the Open Directory7 with a keyword relevant description
* The number of inbound links8 from other relevant and and established websites are especially important.
Written by the web search workshop
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
What Search Engines Want From Webmasters
Self-proclaimed search engine experts have, over the years, touted all kinds of methods for ranking higher in search engines. This has included things such as hidden text, hidden links, meta tag stuffing, double meta tags, page stuffing, cloaking, redirect pages, bulk-quantity doorway pages, and other “secrets” of dubious quality.
Those techniques, and newer techniques that still amount to trickery, can result in lower rankings just for using them. In a worst case scenario they can even result in your domain being banned. Once banned, it’s hard to get back in. Let’s look at search engines from the search engine perspective instead of a selfish perspective.
My site, www.boogiejack.com, has consistently been ranking high in search engines since it opened in 1997. The ranking will fluctuate from time to time with each search engine, but I usually enjoy a few front page and number one links at any given time. Try a search for “left border backgrounds” now (one of my specialties), and see how it ranks at several search engines.
What’s my secret? It’s quite simple, I know how search engines want us to behave, and I have always followed the rules. I do everything I legally can to optimize my pages, but always play within the rules using only legitimately recognized (read that search engine approved) methods. When a search engine catches on to new trickery, you can be dropped or banned without warning.
So what do the search engines really want? They want to be able to help their web site visitors find what they are looking for, and they want to give them the best and most logical matches first. They can’t do that easily with webmasters trying to manipulate their ranking by artificial means.
They want webmasters to show the search engine the same content you show your visitors, so anything like hidden text and links, cloaking, redirects and other tactics that show the search engine one thing and visitors another are high risk tricks that often result in being banned.
Your web site’s content is the search engine’s content, so they want sites with high quality content above all else. They want to show the best sites available for a search return, because if their content is helpful to the searcher, the searcher will be more likely to use their site for searches time and time again.
It’s hard to get search engine employee’s to comment on how their engines rank sites, but speaking on conditions of anonymity, here are the words of a technology specialist from one search engine (…and I won’t knowingly betray a trust, so don’t ask who the specialist is or what engine he works for, I won’t tell):
“Design your site so that your text accurately reflects your content, products, and services. We penalize sites that make obvious attempts at manipulating our engine. No tricks, no misleading verbage designed for placement.
Link popularity is very important, so make sure the sites that should link to you are linked to you, and you to them. This is more than the latest buzz, this is reality. So if your site is about MP3’s, you should have links with music sites, MP3 software sites, band fan sites, and so on.
At the very least you should be exchanging links with non-competitor sites whose content complements your own, and if you’re not afraid to link directly to competitors and they’ll exchange links with you, all the better. We give a little boost to sites that link directly to competitors.
One of the things we’re after with this is to have your site “pre-judged” for us by your fellow webmasters. All links help, because it shows others find your site valuable enough to link to you, but links from relative content sites help your ranking even more.
I’ll admit that sometimes people find ways to manipulate results for a short time, but sooner or later we catch on to these techniques (nobody studies our search engine harder than we do), and we’ll penalize or ban sites for obvious manipulation attempts. Whether we ban a site or just penalize them, is partly determined by the degree of cheating and partly by the mood of the reviewer!
Once we’ve flagged your site, you’ll have a hard time getting a top ranking again no matter how well you clean up your act. You’ve heard the expression, “once a cheater, always a cheater?” So have we. And here’s a dirty little secret for you: if we catch you once, we may check other domains you own with a fine-toothed comb to see if you’re spamming or cheating us with them too.
We don’t place quite as much emphasis on themed sites as some engines do, but a themed site will give you a boost with us too. That’s not to say your MP3 site can’t talk about your love of dogs, just that if you cover many topics within a particular theme, you’ll get a boost in rankings. You’re not penalized for addressing many diverse or unrelated topics.”
So there you have it, search engines want the same things surfers want. Quality content presented accurately and honestly, links to and from sites with complementary content, at least one major theme, and no dirty tricks.
Gosh, that isn’t a great revelation is it? It shouldn’t be, it’s the way we should all be doing business in the first place - honestly and accurately. It is what works best in the long term with search engines and in life, and your site will never be penalized or banned by playing fairly.
Dennis Gaskill is the creator and owner of Boogie Jack’s Web Depot at http://www.boogiejack.com - a popular webmasters resource site ranking in the top 1% of the most linked to sites on the Internet. He is also author of the new book Web Site Design Made Easy and publishes Almost a Newsletter, named the Best Ezine of 2000.
Those techniques, and newer techniques that still amount to trickery, can result in lower rankings just for using them. In a worst case scenario they can even result in your domain being banned. Once banned, it’s hard to get back in. Let’s look at search engines from the search engine perspective instead of a selfish perspective.
My site, www.boogiejack.com, has consistently been ranking high in search engines since it opened in 1997. The ranking will fluctuate from time to time with each search engine, but I usually enjoy a few front page and number one links at any given time. Try a search for “left border backgrounds” now (one of my specialties), and see how it ranks at several search engines.
What’s my secret? It’s quite simple, I know how search engines want us to behave, and I have always followed the rules. I do everything I legally can to optimize my pages, but always play within the rules using only legitimately recognized (read that search engine approved) methods. When a search engine catches on to new trickery, you can be dropped or banned without warning.
So what do the search engines really want? They want to be able to help their web site visitors find what they are looking for, and they want to give them the best and most logical matches first. They can’t do that easily with webmasters trying to manipulate their ranking by artificial means.
They want webmasters to show the search engine the same content you show your visitors, so anything like hidden text and links, cloaking, redirects and other tactics that show the search engine one thing and visitors another are high risk tricks that often result in being banned.
Your web site’s content is the search engine’s content, so they want sites with high quality content above all else. They want to show the best sites available for a search return, because if their content is helpful to the searcher, the searcher will be more likely to use their site for searches time and time again.
It’s hard to get search engine employee’s to comment on how their engines rank sites, but speaking on conditions of anonymity, here are the words of a technology specialist from one search engine (…and I won’t knowingly betray a trust, so don’t ask who the specialist is or what engine he works for, I won’t tell):
“Design your site so that your text accurately reflects your content, products, and services. We penalize sites that make obvious attempts at manipulating our engine. No tricks, no misleading verbage designed for placement.
Link popularity is very important, so make sure the sites that should link to you are linked to you, and you to them. This is more than the latest buzz, this is reality. So if your site is about MP3’s, you should have links with music sites, MP3 software sites, band fan sites, and so on.
At the very least you should be exchanging links with non-competitor sites whose content complements your own, and if you’re not afraid to link directly to competitors and they’ll exchange links with you, all the better. We give a little boost to sites that link directly to competitors.
One of the things we’re after with this is to have your site “pre-judged” for us by your fellow webmasters. All links help, because it shows others find your site valuable enough to link to you, but links from relative content sites help your ranking even more.
I’ll admit that sometimes people find ways to manipulate results for a short time, but sooner or later we catch on to these techniques (nobody studies our search engine harder than we do), and we’ll penalize or ban sites for obvious manipulation attempts. Whether we ban a site or just penalize them, is partly determined by the degree of cheating and partly by the mood of the reviewer!
Once we’ve flagged your site, you’ll have a hard time getting a top ranking again no matter how well you clean up your act. You’ve heard the expression, “once a cheater, always a cheater?” So have we. And here’s a dirty little secret for you: if we catch you once, we may check other domains you own with a fine-toothed comb to see if you’re spamming or cheating us with them too.
We don’t place quite as much emphasis on themed sites as some engines do, but a themed site will give you a boost with us too. That’s not to say your MP3 site can’t talk about your love of dogs, just that if you cover many topics within a particular theme, you’ll get a boost in rankings. You’re not penalized for addressing many diverse or unrelated topics.”
So there you have it, search engines want the same things surfers want. Quality content presented accurately and honestly, links to and from sites with complementary content, at least one major theme, and no dirty tricks.
Gosh, that isn’t a great revelation is it? It shouldn’t be, it’s the way we should all be doing business in the first place - honestly and accurately. It is what works best in the long term with search engines and in life, and your site will never be penalized or banned by playing fairly.
Dennis Gaskill is the creator and owner of Boogie Jack’s Web Depot at http://www.boogiejack.com - a popular webmasters resource site ranking in the top 1% of the most linked to sites on the Internet. He is also author of the new book Web Site Design Made Easy and publishes Almost a Newsletter, named the Best Ezine of 2000.
Referrals and linkages for rankings.
Referrals and linkages of high-ranking websites always influence search engine rankings. The more the referrals, the higher the website ranking will be. The algorithm considers referrals and links to have a major impact on the traffic quality that any website receives. The basic purpose of the website design is served when it is accessed regularly and popularly. The investment made online has a profound effect on the business profitability.
Getting referrals and links is linked to the fame of a website. To receive fame on cyberspace requires in-depth and perfect services and this takes most websites years to accomplish. There is software that can also be used to generate links. Such software are part of the link popularity program that finds and manages reciprocal link partners, to increase the website link popularity ratings, which in turn improves search engine rankings.
Such software though expensive, can handle the whole process. Website gurus consider such software to be the anti-algorithm of a search engine algorithm. This website track of every site the request has been sent to permits the website to monitor what stage the link request is at.
To move up the ladder on a search engine ranking, the website may come across some on-line services that make false promises. Such services ask for a large amount of money and offer pathways, which may have no impact on the website. They might be over thousands of pathways directed towards the website, but with a non-existent traffic. This may occur on account of the position, quality and relevance of the pathways being negligible.
The algorithm of search engines increases their mathematical dimension every year. The algorithms are able to state the relevance and the usefulness of the website. This is the reason why software having the anti-algorithm can work miracles for the website and improve the volume of traffic the website receives.
Most Internet browsers use a search engine optimization method that really analyzes the web pages having a better and a high ranking for their keyword. In such cases, a tie-up with the optimization company could also lead to increased traffic to the website. The profit arising out of the investment offers real value for the money spent.
Getting referrals and links is linked to the fame of a website. To receive fame on cyberspace requires in-depth and perfect services and this takes most websites years to accomplish. There is software that can also be used to generate links. Such software are part of the link popularity program that finds and manages reciprocal link partners, to increase the website link popularity ratings, which in turn improves search engine rankings.
Such software though expensive, can handle the whole process. Website gurus consider such software to be the anti-algorithm of a search engine algorithm. This website track of every site the request has been sent to permits the website to monitor what stage the link request is at.
To move up the ladder on a search engine ranking, the website may come across some on-line services that make false promises. Such services ask for a large amount of money and offer pathways, which may have no impact on the website. They might be over thousands of pathways directed towards the website, but with a non-existent traffic. This may occur on account of the position, quality and relevance of the pathways being negligible.
The algorithm of search engines increases their mathematical dimension every year. The algorithms are able to state the relevance and the usefulness of the website. This is the reason why software having the anti-algorithm can work miracles for the website and improve the volume of traffic the website receives.
Most Internet browsers use a search engine optimization method that really analyzes the web pages having a better and a high ranking for their keyword. In such cases, a tie-up with the optimization company could also lead to increased traffic to the website. The profit arising out of the investment offers real value for the money spent.
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