Business Blog Savvy: Avoiding the 8 Pitfalls of Do-It-Yourself Blogging

By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. and Denise Wakeman

The Blog Squad

You can pat yourself on the back if you're one of the thousands of small business professionals that have set up a blog to communicate with your potential clients. Or, maybe you haven't started your business blog yet, but intend to. Take note now so you can avoid some of the consequences of do-it-yourself blogging.

You've heard all the hype, listened to a few podcasts and teleseminars, and finally sorted out for yourself how blogging can really work for your targeted niche of readers and potential clients. You've set up your business blog.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "If I'm so smart at my business, why do I have a dumb do-nothing blog?"

Here are a few of the pitfalls of creating your blog without any guidance from blogging experts:

1. You don't know how to use your blogging software, yet you expect to look like an expert and build credibility. How could you know? Blogs haven't been around that long, and the blogging software is continually being upgraded. You need to learn how to use your blog features that increase your findability on the Internet and readership. For example, you need to regularly use trackback, pinging, and permalinks features.

2. You are writing in a vacuum, without knowing what questions your clients want answered. You haven't done any keyword research, or asked your current clients what they'd like to read. Even worse, you under the impression that a blog should be like an online diary. You are writing about your personal life and details, detracting from the on-target, focused purpose of your blog as a business building tool.

3. You haven't researched other blogs in your field, or spent any time on them, leaving comments. You need to get out there and raise your hand in the blogosphere, so people
will know you're there. You also need to know what's going on in your field.

4. You haven't put a subscription form on your blog, and you don't understand the whole RSS feed thingy. Your readers can't find you or know when you have updated your blog.

5. You haven't put any images on your blog and your blog doesn't look as neat and tidy as your business is. It doesn't reflect your business image or brand.

6. You haven't put any content-appropriate ads on your blog, that don't distract from your own products. Your blog has a non-professional, non-business look and feel to it.

7. You haven't used categories for your blog posts and your readers are confused about wide-ranging subjects you write about. What is your core message? What is the focus of your blog? And important question you must answer for your readers: What's in your blog for them?

8. You haven't written anything for a month. When you've got a blog that has lack-luster traffic, your enthusiasm for writing begins to wane. Why bother posting, if no one is reading your words of wisdom? Then your blog slips even further, and begins to look like a ghost town. Worse, it's still up on the Web, and people will find you and decide you maybe don't care, went out of business, or changed your mind.

Here's what is promised by having a blog:

- Search engines will find you better - website trafficgalore
- Instant credibility in your area of expertise
- A way to communicate with people interested in your field
- Dialogue through comments with potential clients
- Increased sales of your products, whether tangible goods, informational products, or services

How could you possibly know the most effective blogging strategies and tactics without learning and guidance by experts? Sure, blogs are for everyone and the software makes it easy and cheap for anyone to start a blog.

But a professional business blog that drives traffic and gets clients must be optimized correctly and treated as a valuable marketing strategy.

Here are some solutions:

1. Study the professional business blogs in the blogosphere and model their strategies.
2. Buy an ebook on how to set up and optimize a professional business blog
3. Take an advanced course in blogging (not one that just tells you how to get a free account and set it up, but one to explain how to optimize for business.)
4. Hire a team of professional blog experts to coach you in using your blog for your business.
5. Hire a business blog consultant team to help you tweak your blog, or do an extreme makeover
6. Delete your blog and start all over again

Blogs are an effective and powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes and types. Like any tool, though, you need to know how to use it correctly to maximize your results.

About the Author:

As the The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman have teamed up to work with professionals to maximize their marketing strategies by implementing blogs, ezines and ecommerce tactics. They have co-authored "Build a Better Blog: The Ultimate Guide for Boosting Your Business with a Professional Blog." Take The Blog Squad's free assessment to find out if you're ready for a business blog: http://snipurl.com/Blog_Assessment

Internet Marketing - What Comes First?

By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

Someone asked me recently, if I were to expand an existing professional services business onto the internet, what marketing steps would I take first: set up a web site, a shopping cart, a newsletter, or a blog?

This is a very good question. Five years ago most Internet marketing specialists would have all responded in chorus, "A website, of course!" Then they would recommend their services to create an elaborate website with lots of bells and whistles.

I had an interesting email this week from a reader who asked me about website design fees. This is not my area of expertise. But this reader is a very smart guy. Why? Because he knows from my ezines, blogs and web site that I've been online for a few years and making a decent living from it.

He's a rabbi who has many years experience counseling people. He now has made a wise decision to start offering coaching services to people, and wants to leverage the internet to find clients, sell ebooks and other programs.

The First Step - Ask Questions

He has many questions about what to do first, where to invest his marketing dollars, and how to get set up so everything works seamlessly and automatically.

While I don't profess to have all the answers to his particular questions, I want to emphasize what's important here. He is asking questions!

Many people just go with their gut or common sense. It goes something like this:

"I need a way to find people online. Ergo, I need a web site. Who can do a web site for me, that doesn't cost too much? Oh, you can? Only $1000. Okay, that seems reasonable. Do it."

It's only later on down the road when they want to start an ezine, or a blog, or sell an ebook that they realize they need more than just a web site. That's when the web designer kicks in with hourly fees.

I've never heard a programmer say they can't do something. They always say they can easily set up autoresponders, gather email addresses, send out a newsletter, create a blog on your site, and even create a secure payment system for sales. I'm sorry, but here's the real news: programmers and web site designers can do all these tasks with your web site, but they will charge you for it, and it still won't do everything automatically. And you will be tied to their hourly fees (and schedule) forever.

Back to the question asked of me at the beginning of this article.

While my partner and I recommend an all-in-one solution and setting up all the elements together if your budget permits, there are a couple of ways to get started.

Unless you have a database of prospects, you will not sell your services or products. Therefore, we recommend getting started the right way by building your database - by offering an ezine or free content to attract people to your business. And, you need a place on the Internet where people can find you and subscribe to your content.

The first two pieces then, especially if you're just starting out and have a limited budget, are a blog and a shopping cart program with an autoresponder system.

Third Party Shopping Cart Systems

A third party shopping cart system is where you get an account hosted online by a company that specializes in providing automated database management, autoresponders, email broadcasting, online merchant credit card and payments, ad tracking, and affiliate programs.

When you start out, all you need to do is deliver your ezine and automated emails through autoresponders. You can get a basic level shopping cart account. As your business grows and you develop products, you can upgrade to get more features on your shopping cart, such as affiliate program management and digital delivery.

There are many online email broadcasting services to manage your newsletter. But be aware that an all-in-one solution such as a shopping cart program will save you time and money in the long run.

We strongly recommend starting off with a shopping cart program that can manage your database and newsletters under one roof. It is better to have all your automated marketing functions with one service provider, than to separate your database and newsletter out to another external email service provider.

For detailed information and questions to ask about how to pick a shopping cart system, there are a series of articles you can review: http://snipurl.com/Pick_a_Cart

What's next?

You have your shopping cart system, now what? We'll explore the issue of websites vs. blogs in our next article.

About The Author

As the The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman have teamed up to work with professionals to maximize their marketing strategies by implementing blogs, ezines and
ecommerce tactics. They are co-authors of "Secrets of Successful Ezines: A Guide to Writing and Publishing an Ezine that Gets Results." Get The Blog Squad's free report on the "Top 10 Reasons to do an Ezine and A Blog": http://snipurl.com/Ezine_Blog

Internet Marketing: Start Right, Start Smart

By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

Internet Marketing: Start Right, Start Smart

When a professional or small business owner decides to launch their business on the Internet, they often start with a website. They've heard that everybody has to have a website. Then they learn that they should have an email newsletter.

Many people start out piece-meal. Website with one company, newsletter delivery with another provider, online payments with another, and as each need arises they get an account with a new provider. In a previous article (http://snipurl.com/Internet_Marketing1), we recommended starting with a shopping cart marketing system. The next step is to establish your online presence.

Website First, Blog First?

As stated above, it wasn't long ago that you would get started with your online business by creating a website. However, after several months and several thousands of dollars you may learn your website isn't enough. You do need a web presence, and there is an alternative to hiring a web designer to do it for you - you can create a blog for your business.

Since the invention of easy-to-use blogging programs, we recommend to many small businesses and professionals to skip a website, and start off with a blog. A blog can do just about anything a website can, and has several big advantages. (A blog actually is a website, only its software provides for easily updated content and reader participation.)

1. A blog is user-friendly. You can learn how to manage it yourself, no need to hire a web designer, pay big fees or be at the mercy of their busy schedule.

2. A blog is inexpensive. An account at Typepad.com, the leading blog provider, runs from $5-$15/month.

3. Blogs are search engine friendly. Even if in the beginning you don't have a clue about how to optimize your site for the search engines, don't worry. Just know that when you are writing about your niche, to your targeted audience, you will be using the very same keywords that get entered into Google when people are searching for things. This will increase your chances of getting found on the 'Net' by the people who want and need you. Websites are a little more complicated and if they aren't updated frequently, they don't get indexed by the search engine spiders very often.

Huh? What's a Spider?

Don't worry about the technological jargon. You don't have to understand how a blog and search engines work right now. But you do have to know that these elements are "must-do's" for anyone who wants to use the Internet to build and grow a business online.

Take some teleseminars - there are plenty and they're often free - or, buy a couple of ebooks that show you how to manage these tasks.

Don't make the mistake of getting overwhelmed by all the possibilities and all the companies trying to sell you their services. Start out slowly, ask questions, gather information, inform yourself about the options and benefits before you even think about setting up your website or blog. While we can't really make recommendations for you without knowing about your business niche, in general, you can't go wrong by setting up a shopping cart and a blog so you can start your business online the smart way. The two go hand in hand. If you want to make money online, you can't have one without the other.

About The Author.

As the The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman have teamed up to work with professionals to maximize their marketing strategies by implementing blogs, ezines and
ecommerce tactics. They are co-authors of "Build a Better Blog: The Ultimate Guide for Boosting Your Business with a Professional Blog." Are you ready for a blog? Take The Blog Squad's free assessment at http://snipurl.com/Blog_Assessment

15 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

By David Riewe

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:

1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by http://TNL.net

2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3.) Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?"

10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

About The Author:

David Riewe - Internet Marketer and Publisher
http://www.free-online-course.com

How is Yahoo using your RSS feed?

By Robert Fuess

The format for the site submission has changed in the free Yahoo web submissions http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request . At first it allowed you to submit your site to it using the free submission form. This was normally the home page, and you would hope that their spider would crawl the rest of your website from there. Some webmasters have found this inadequate and have submitted other pages that Yahoo failed to notice otherwise.

More recently Yahoo allowed you to put in a text document with a list of URL's to simplify the submission process.

A few weeks ago I noticed that Yahoo also allows RSS feeds of your website, Atom feeds, or a text listing of urls in this submission form. What does this mean? What will Yahoo do with the links in the RSS feed?

The text list of URL's was obviously an effort to simplify the process for Yahoo to find all the pages in a website, as their documentation describes. But the RSS? Will they just add this to their database of RSS feeds for RSS searches, or will they follow the links with their spider to evaluate all the pages listed?

I have been working with Google Sitemaps since they came out. (Google uses their XML-formatted Google Sitemaps to help discover all the pages in a website, as well as to evaluate what pages have changed recently.) I am wondering if this is Yahoo's response to the Google Site Maps. Does anyone know? http://www.spiderweblogic.com/GoogleSitemap.aspx

If I was them, then I would use RSS feeds to evaluate changes in the website. This has more information than the list of URL's, since it also has descriptions and date changed. They have all the right information. If this is the case, it would be advisable for webmasters to have a RSS feed for their whole site to submit. That way Yahoo could just check the feed and know what pages to re-crawl, or what pages have been added.

It could be just as possible that this is just a field for us to submit RSS feeds, in addition to the other pages in your website. If this is the case, then we may need to submit both the feed and the home page of the website.

For myself, unless I find out differently, I am going to submit both. I intend on having a Google Sitemap and a RSS feed on all my future websites. I think it is safest to help out the search engines in any way possible. If they want information on what files have changed, I want to be proactive in giving it to them.

In addition, for those who have the coding experties, it is advisable to automate pinging Yahoo when your RSS feed changes. This is a standard blogging technique.

If you use movable type, the following article will help you configure your Yahoo to be automatically notified of a change in your RSS feed: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001490.html .

There is an alternate way, for those who don't have movable type or standard blogs. Lets say you want Yahoo to know about the RSS feed you built for http://www.yourdomainurl.com and have the RSS file, myRss.xml. You could automate (or even have a web shortcut for) the following HTTP request:
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://www.yourdomainurl.com/myRss.xml

For more information, see the official Yahoo documention on RSS here: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide

About the Author:

Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes
in making dynamic search engine optimized websites.
http://www.SpiderwebLogic.com http://www.SchoolAndTeacher.com

Kick Start Your Internet Online Home Based Business With Blogging

By John Woon

A weblog, or more popularly known as "blog", is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.

The popularity of blog is gaining momentum globally with each passing month. A recent survey conducted by Comscore.com shows the following findings:

1. 50 million of the population in the USA visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005.
2. This indicates an increase of about 45% compared to First Quarter of 2004.
3. An average blog visitor spends 23 hours per week online while an average Internet user spends only 13 hours online.
4. Blog visitors are 11% more likely than the average Internet users to have incomes of $75,000 or more.
5. Blog visitors are 30% more likely to buy products or services online.

Anybody thinking of starting an online venture, would be silly not to recognise the importance of blogging being one of the best tools of Internet marketing.

Blogging is a perfect way for the average person to make money online without going through all the troubles and frustration of learning how to set up a website and be an efficient internet marketer.

Let's now talk about nich products. Why do you need a niche product? And what has this to do with "blogging"? You may ask. It is because your online business has little hope of succeeding if you're going head to head with the big boys. As a small Internet entrepreneur, you can never hope to compete with the big boys in terms of the power of pricing strategy and advertising. But you can be successful by finding niche markets or niche products that you seldom find at your local mall in order to stay away from the empowering presence of the big guys.

Niche market basically is a market with a significant amount of interest online that does not encounter the same competition as in other regular products. You can easily create a niche market based on any topics including even your own hobbies, e.g. gardening, guitar, tropical fish, D.I.Y etc. As long as the topic is being searched for online, you would have a great opportunity of making some profit through adding ads to your blog and making some effort in promoting your targeted affiliate programs and products.

Many internet marketing newbies opt for blogs to set up their niche markets because as beginners, they can very easily add pages, images, banners, downloads, ebooks etc to their blogs. Unlike the regular websites, they do not need to worry about having to understand HTML (the website design language)!

Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that is free because you could create your blog almost immediately at no cost compared to the setting up of a conventional website.

Putting information in your blog to help establishing your presence in the Web is now a growing phenomenon. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to enhance the visibility of your products and services.

With the continuing improvement in software technology, publishing, introducing plug-ins, banners, pictures etc to create a fun and interesting "website" has become a breeze even to those retirees with old and rusty brains.

The more content you add to your blog, the more traffic you get. And you can add these materials almost on a daily basis.

You could get high ranking search engine placement for many internet marketing terms just by designing your posts around certain targeted keywords. This phenomenon is more prominent when handling niche markets due to the lack of competition. Free articles could be easily obtained from many article directories in the web and posted to your blogs for the benefits of your visitors.

There's almost no limit to what you could and want to do with your blog. You can include your ideas, opinions, expertise in your field of work, resumes, home recipes, pictures, audio or video clips, e-books, poetry, products, services, consultations etc., etc.

What are the main differences between a blog and a website then? You may ask.

Most websites are relatively permanent with only occasional updating. With blogs, you could post any new content almost on daily basis. Also, websites are usually less personal as far as their relationship with the visitors is concerned.

How do you start your first step to set up a blog? There are many host services providers you could join. Among the most popular are Blogger.com and LiveJournal.com. You could start with Blogger.com which many newbies find serving their needs just perfectly.

With Blogger.com, posting your web content is like a breezy walk in the park. Photographs of your produces etc, along with any text, could be uploaded to your blog right away with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Another facility you could use is Audioblogger that enables audio posting to your current blog site with any phone at any time from any place. It is not only effective but also easy and fun. You call a given number, record a post, then your blog is updated with an audioblogger icon and a link to your recorded audio. Your message in your own voice is instantly posted! The beautiful part of it all is the fact that this is totally free of charge!

Blogging has been used for some years as a platform for individuals to record chronological publication of comments and thoughts on the web. Now we know how one could go beyond this to capitalise the strength of blogging to enhance one's Internet business.

About The Author:

Sung-Liang Woon (John Woon) is a Rubber and Latex Consultant with about 30 years of experience. He enjoys writing, lecturing, travelling, tai chi, playing flamenco guitar and singing. Check this fantastic website to find out how he has ventured into Internet business:
http://www.PlugInProfitSite.com/main-9747 Visit his website http://www.johnwoon.com and take a tour at his Blogs: http://www.blogwithjohnwoon.blogspot.com and
http://lowpricepharmacy.blogspot.com

How To Display An XML Feed On Your Website

By William Lee

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has taken off in a big way. Just as satellite television beams more channels into your home than you can watch, RSS allows to you display an endless amount of other peoples content. Whilst RSS XML feeds are plenty, there's not as much in the way of clear, simple instruction when it comes to making use of those feeds.

If you're one of the webmasters who uses a content management system that makes using RSS XML feeds as simple as specifying a feed URL then you're fortunate in that respect. For others, the options available tend to be offered by developers of the software and the usage instructions provided can often be riddled with technical jargon. Many cry, "Use my feed", but fewer tell you how.

One of the best and easiest ways I've found to show the content from an RSS XML feed on one of my websites is to use a ready made PHP parser. Now, don't worry about what that means, just think of it as somthing that someone has already created; a blackbox that makes it easy for you to use content from RSS feeds and display it on your website.

For this guide, I've used MagpieRSS because it's compact, works well and is distributed under the GPL, which basically means it's free for you to use. Now, MagpieRSS is written in PHP so you'll need a compatible hosting account that allows you to execute PHP scripts.

For the purposes of this guide, I'm assuming you've some level of basic knowledge about websites e.g. you know how to FTP, change file permissions etc. Covering the basics of running a
website is beyond the scope of this article.

Instead, let's cover what are probably the most difficult steps; displaying the content from an RSS feed on your website.

1. Download the latest stable release of MagpieRSS.
2. Extract the contents of the ZIP file onto your computer.
3. The core files you need from the ZIP package are rss_cache.inc, rss_fetch.inc, rss_parse.inc, rss_utils.inc. You'll also need the extlib folder together with the Snoopy.class.inc file inside of it.
4. Create a new file to display your RSS feed. I've called mine, index.php. Inside this file, copy and paste the contents of the file referred to below and save it.
5. Upload all of the files and the folder mentioned in steps 3 and 4 to your hosting account. Put them into the desired location, but ensure that the Snoopy.class.inc file is still within the extlib folder.
6. Then visit the file you created in step 4 using your web browser.

That's the basics of it. Once you've got this far, customising the way you present the content of the feed is relatively easy. Just refer back to the MagpieRSS website for guidance on how to do this.

About The Author:

William Lee is the Internet Marketing Fool (http://www.internetmarketingfool.com). The MagpieRSS website is http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/. The code to copy in step 4 can be found at http://snipurl.com/example_code.

How to Find Free Content for your Web Site

By Kalena Jordan

I see a lot of webmasters complain in forums and chat rooms that they don't have enough content on their web sites but they don't have the means or the knowledge to find more.

There are actually many ways to obtain more web site content. You could hire someone to write it for you. You could purchase some ready made content about your site topic or you could spend some time and write content yourself. But did you know that there is a way you can get hundreds of pages worth of high quality, fresh content every day without paying a cent? There is. It's called article syndication.

Article Syndication

Articles relating to thousands of topics are freely available for syndication on web sites. Authors provide them for this purpose to gain a wider audience and achieve more back links. Generally, the only requirement for webmasters is that the author's by-line, resource box and link is included with the published article. In terms of copyright, you simply need to follow the author's publishing guidelines when republishing their article. This usually involves an "About the Author" paragraph at the bottom of each article with a sentence and link to the author's site. These syndication requirements are generally specified in the article itself.

How to do it:

1) Browse the Internet to find articles you can syndicate. I use the article announcement groups at Yahoo Groups but you can also find them at sources such as Submit Your Articles.

2) View the articles being distributed by the group and check their freshness and quality.

3) Join the email list or subscribe to the RSS feed of any article groups that seem to be distributing content relevant to your web site.

4) Check your email or feed reader regularly to browse and select new articles.

5) Cut, paste and publish the articles into your web pages, giving credit to the author as requested in their syndication guidelines.

6) Voila! Fresh, daily content.

Articles for Blogs

If the article content is to be used on a blog, there is an even quicker way to publish it. Depending on what blog software you use, you can simply forward the email containing the article directly to your blog control panel using the publish via email option and then edit the post to correct any formatting issues. The other advantage of this method is that search engines LOVE blogs and tend to index them more often than regular web pages.

I use blog article syndication quite successfully for a couple of my clients. One is in the travel industry and the other has a large wedding portal. I simply subscribe to articles on travel and wedding related topics and publish them to the blogs belonging to each client. My clients supplement these with articles and blog posts written by their own staff or hired writers.

Advantages

There are a number of advantages to using article syndication:

Relevant, Timely Content - You can choose content that is closely geared to your existing content and of interest to your audience. For example, if you sell airline tickets, publish travel articles about exotic destinations. The idea there is that persons reading travel articles might be thinking about traveling themselves and need to be reminded to book their plane tickets.

Cross Promotion - You can choose content that gives you the opportunity to up sell to your own products or affiliate products. For example, if you sell scented candles online, you could choose to publish articles about increasing the romance in your marriage and then include a link at the end of the article to your candle sales catalog (would you like fries with that?).

SEO Value - Apart from the obvious value of having fresh content regularly available for indexing, there are other SEO advantages to article syndication. Most articles are keyword-rich, meaning that they contain a lot of keywords and phrases that people might use in search queries. Publishing these articles means that your site has a better chance of being found for related search queries. One of my clients noticed their syndicated article pages ranking in the top 10 Google SERPs for target keywords within two days of publishing! You can also embed links within the articles or at the end of articles to related areas of your site using keyword-rich anchor text.

Increased Traffic & Sticky Content - It's not only search engines that love fresh content. You'll find that you'll attract more visitors when you publish relevant articles. Provided you find ways to interact with your new visitors such as allowing them to comment or sign up for your article feed, your site will become stickier and retain those visitors more easily.

Disadvantages

There are really only two disadvantages that I can think of about using article syndication. One is that the same article published on various web sites can sometimes be treated by search engines as duplicate content. So generally, a search engine will try to determine the original source of the article and index/rank that page while ignoring all other versions. If you publish a fresh article quickly enough, you can sometimes be lucky and have your version of the article picked up and treated as the *original*. The other disadvantage is that it can be time-consuming to trawl through the hundreds of new articles announced daily and choose the ones you want. You also have to scan them carefully to ensure accuracy of facts and to check if the author has used correct spelling and grammar usage. But compared to the costs of paying somebody to write articles from scratch, I think this is a very minor inconvenience.

Want to get the jump on your competition and increase your traffic? Use article syndication to publish fresh, relevant content on your site every day.


About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

Using Blogs For Affilate And Adsense Profits Combined

By Chris Taylor

How do you set up a blog for effective affilate and Adsense profits?

Here is the low down of how it's done and some of the in's and outs of rss.

For this example I will use web hosting as the affilate product we selling on the blog.

1. Rss is great for getting the robots to visit but it will not get you visitors until

*You have quite a number of pages
*Have decent page rank.

2. Best blog platform. http://www.wordpress.org

3. Blog page - index page.

*A two column blog I find works the best
*The sidebar should be on the right hand of the page for SEO purposes
*Heading for your affiliate reviews shouls be first. something like "In-Dpeth, Top 5 Cheap Hosting Reviews". Two links underneath, one going to reviews and the other to "why our reviews are more relaible than other sites"

4. Reviews of your products.

4 to 10 reviews, make them long and give info of what benefits one product has over the other and a rating for different aspects. Do not put adsense on your reviews page.

This site does it really well - http://www.keywordworkshop.com and it's a blog to boot.

5. Next heading in the sidebar - "Articles"

A link going to current articles followed by a search box for your articles. Each article page is where your Adsense sits and here are some good tips.

*All links including Adsense, one color underlined.
*Research has shown the normal blue and darker blue get's the best hits
*Adsense in the middle and at the end of all your articles. You will get less click troughs with Adsense in the borders

6. Next heading "contact Me"

Blurb. A little confused with all the info, so many choices or an aspect of one of "hosting reviews" (Linked to your review page. Feel free drop me an email any time.. blah blah

Then more headings after this is you wish. "My fav top ten hosting tips articles". "Top 5 Domain Name Website Reviews"? and so on.

The way I see it, is if they are customers coming for information on a given product, service or business area, why not stick some products up and make some more money!

If they are just interested in the articles monetize those with Adsense.

And then if for any reason you have a bad Adsense month, the affilate income is there as a backup.

The final tip is to keep your blogs clean so people can easily find the information they are looking for whether that be a product or articles. Heres one of my article directories as an example.

http://www.thewebtrafficco.com/adb/

About The Author:

Chris Taylor is the director of Catdynamics, an established online company which specializes in all areas of online business implementation, internet marketing and search engine optimization - http://www.catdynamics.com/web-master-affiliate-program.html

Understanding RSS And Its Effect On Viral Marketing

By Seomul Davis

RSS and Viral Marketing:

Viral marketing is one of the most creative ways of promoting a business. It can work wonders for any business although there are certain principles that play a lead role in making viral marketing for business websites so effective. Different businesses use different techniques while applying viral marketing to enhance their visibility and here are some of the best and time-proven techniques that can help your business too.

One way is to create content and share it with other publishers. RSS makes the transfer of content a lot more simple and hassle free. With this ease in sharing content make sure you have a signature in your content so that your link spreads online virally as well to boost your link popularity.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is one of the most valuable technologies available for webmasters, administrators and users. In spite of RSS being such a valuable technology only 12% of users know what RSS is while only 4% have used RSS. So let us try and understand what RSS really is and how it can help you or your business.

RSS is a type of feed that internet users can subscribe to. The RSS feeds updated on a regular basis and mostly distributed in XML format. This helps in creating custom tags. There are quite a few websites, which will have the RSS logo in orange and if you click on the icon, you will get connected to the website's feed.

As far as the content contained in a RSS feed is concerned, it depends largely on the feed that you might be viewing. Most of the RSS feeds consist of a title and a brief portion from the article. RSS is becoming overtly popular with bloggers because in this the headline format comes in automatically.

There are many reasons why bloggers and even regular users are choosing RSS. One of the primary reasons being that using RSS can save time especially on an everyday basis. Let us take an example to understand how it saves time. If you are a technical expert and you visit at least 6 websites on a daily basis to collect information then you probably open each website on a separate browser to look for news items. So in a way, you are visiting them one by one as you can't see all of them together.

On the other hand, if you have RSS, then all you need to do is visit a RSS feed reader or a RSS aggregator and this will help you to instantly identify the websites that have added new articles and these websites will be separated from the ones that don't. Another salient point is that you can see all the past entries using RSS.

If you are visiting only one website but on a regular basis then there are times when you will miss a new article added on the website on one of those days when you didn't visit the website. This is where the RSS fits perfectly. Let us for once imagine that there are 20 websites for which you want to keep tabs then RSS will prove to be truly indispensable.

In order to use the RSS, you will first have to find a feed, the one that you can use. If you are using Mozilla's Firefox then you will be able to find out with ease if a particular website has accessible feed or not. You don't even have to go through the entire webpage looking for an RSS icon. When you open a website on the Firefox, you will see an orange icon on the right side of the navigation/URL bar. If you see the icon then it means that the website has RSS feed.

Click on the orange RSS icon in your Firefox browser and it will ask you where you would like to save the feed. Firefox treats RSS feeds as live bookmarks. Once you have saved the feed, go to the particular folder. The folder will have an expand arrow and you can click on the arrow so that it can show all the new entries that has been added on the website in an ascending order with the latest entry on the top.

There are times when your browser may not find a particular website's feed as not all of them have RSS feeds. This is where you will have to search through the web pages to find any items related to feed. There are some websites that have FeedBurner feed, which normally displays the current feed subscribers for that website. If you find a FeedBurner feed icon then click on it and copy the location of the link.

This is the basic information regarding RSS feeds for all those who want to use it to their benefit personally or for viral marketing purposes.

About The Author:

Seomul Davis is a SEO Services expert with SEO 1 Services a Dallas based search engine optimization company (http://www.seo-1-marketing-services.com) and a frequent contributor on http://www.seo-services-expert.com.

Blog Optimization 101

By Nick Stamoulis

Getting your blog out there and seen is the point, right? You want visitors to see your blog so that they can either click on the ads or click through and buy from your site, otherwise whats the point of the blog, right?

So how to get the blog out there. First is to make sure that blog directories and the blog search engines are picking it up. Also link or claim your blog at the social bookmarking sites. To give all fo this a jump start take a look at the following check up list. If your new to blogging and just setting up a blog these are good starting points. if your blog is not performing the ways it should be then the following tips are good for giving your blog a check up.

• It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.

Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.

• A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
• If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
• If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.

If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.

During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic
appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.

Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.

Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www. .com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.

Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.

Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.

• Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.

General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:

1. Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
2. Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
3. Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
4. Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
5. Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.

Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results

1. Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
2. Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
3. If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.

About The Author:

Nick Stamoulis and experts at Brick Marketing provide companies with Internet Marketing services. Nick Stamoulis writes daily in his blog the Search Engine Optimization Journal. Call 877-295-0620 or visit: http://www.brickmarketing.com

Five Quick Tips For Getting Your Blog On The First Page Of Google

By Kevin Sinclair

It is so easy to make money with a blog. Whether the purpose of your blog is to get traffic to your sales page or to sell affiliate products or to get Adsense clicks, getting your blog onto the first page of Google can be done quickly and easily.

Using the following quick tips you could get listed on the first page of Google for some keywords within a month or two, depending on how competitive your niche is. A video game site that followed these tips got on the first page of Google, in the fifth spot, for a popular search term when the site was less than one month old.

Here are the five quick tips for getting to the first page of Google:

1. Put some original content on your blog. Post at least once a day but not more than every two to three hours. It doesn't look good if you are posting every few minutes. Continue adding new content regularly. Some of the content can be duplicate content (from an article directory or private label rights articles) but the more original content the better.
2. When you have at least five posts with original content then submit your blog to Google's sitemap. It's not hard, and it only takes a few minutes. As long as you have a blog that looks authentic and is not filled with scraped content, this is a good start to getting noticed by Google.
3. Write some original articles and submit them to article directories such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleAlley, and SearchWarp. Do not submit more than one a day since it is better to not inundate the article directories or they might think you are spamming them. It is very important to have a good resource box with links back to your site.
4. Submit your RSS feed to at least fifty sites. This can be done in less than a couple of minutes using RSS Submit (RSSFeedsSubmit), a great piece of software that automatically submits your feed to more than fifty sites. The price is very reasonable (less than $50) but if you don't want to spend any money and would rather do it by hand, Robin Good sells a list of 55 RSS submission sites for a very small fee.
5. Get your URL link listed in as many places as possible. Submit your site to directories like DMOZ. Answer questions at answers.yahoo and include your URL with your signature.
   Leave comments on blogs that are in a related niche to yours, again including your URL in the signature. Do a search with the phrase "keyword add url" and add your URL at sites that allow you to do it for free. "Keyword" would be replaced by one of your keywords for your niche. Submit your blog to Technorati. Submit your original posts to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Netscape, Redit, Plugim, and so on. Be sure to tell friends to vote for your submissions at the social bookmarking sites.

These five quick tips will give your blog a powerful boost and get your blog on the first page of Google in a very short time. Within days you should be getting traffic from Google as you rise in the search engines. And you did it with spending little or no money.

About the Author:

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business. http://besuccessfulnews.com/

How To Market Yourself With A Blog

By Kim Klaver

Fabulous Micropersuasion published the link...

If you are an entrepreneur, and you like writing, blogging could help grow your business. The Boston Globe published a set of "why blog" tips.

Here's one (of several) for entrepreneurs:

"5. Blogging makes self-employment easier.

You can't make it on your own unless you're good at selling yourself. One of the most cost-effective and efficient ways of marketing yourself is with a blog. When someone searches for your product or service, make sure your blog comes up first.

Curt Rosengren, a career coach, periodically Googles ''career passion" -- words he thinks are most important to his business -- just to make sure his blog comes up high on the list. He
estimates that his blog generates at least half of his coaching business." More here.

Sometime Friday, 4.21.06, a new show, "How to market your business with a blog-1" should be live on the "Talking about Your Great Thing" Podcast. This one shows where and how to set one up. It takes time and interest, not money.

This is the first part of the teleseminar I did with the CEO of Jiggerbug, Ryan Azevedo, about 10 days ago. They're like Netflix, but for for CDs. And they even have my audio books for rent. :)

( Visit Jiggerbug's Network Marketing Page, hosted by Kim Klaver )

Ryan's finishing a little ebook on blogging and how to use it to help market yourself, and it will be available on the house on this blog, as soon as it is.

To be a fly on the wall as two well-known blog pros discuss "Can Bloggers Make Money?" check out their debate in the Wall St Journal 4.19.06

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10 Presentation tips from the Cluetrain

I've been rereading this little book, Cluetrain Manifesto, and the 95 tips it offered 5 years ago to people making sales presentations.

Network marketers: Before you make another presentation to even one more person, check it against this list of imperatives. That is, if you want to make your listeners feel special.

Top-10 Cluetrain Theses: Imperatives for presenters

NOTE: The list of 10 starts about halfway down the page.

P.S. Here are three:

3) "Already, companies [read: people-kk] that speak in the language of the pitch, the dog-and pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone."

7) "Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor trick. It can't be 'picked up' at some tony conference."

8) "The inflated self-important jargon you sling around - in the press, at your conferences - what's that got to do with us?"

Amen.

About The Author:

Kim Klaver is Harvard & Stanford educated. Her 20 years experience in network marketing have resulted in a popular blog, http://KimKlaverBlogs.com, a podcast, http://YourGreatThing.com and a giant resource site, http://BananaMarketing.com and now her new online MLM community http://NetworkMarketingCentral.com.

Having Trouble Maintaining Your Company's Blog?

By Chris McElroy

Most businesses that do some work online have come around to accepting that a company blog can help to get them noticed - both by the search engine spiders and by current and prospective customers. However, despite knowing that a blog can help with their marketing tasks, not everyone knows how to get started.

Those who do get started with blogging also face a number of challenges. Some have trouble deciding between blogging platforms. Some choose to host their blog on a free site rather than on their own server along with their web page. And, those who do end up getting a blog up and running often find that it's hard to stay on top of posting, updating and even knowing what to write about.

The good news is that you don't have to always come up with new topics to write about.

That doesn't mean that you should follow the advice that some websites give - you shouldn't just pull articles from directory sites. Nor should you copy or just rewrite all of the information that's already on your company's website.

What it does mean is that you can consider hiring a content provider who can maintain your company's blog for you.

Imagine working with a company that will install blogging software on your webhost. Picture yourself talking with a search engine optimization professional, someone who can help you to determine which keywords and key phrases will best benefit your site when it comes to search engine rankings and who can establish the appropriate categories for your posts.

Then, once your blog has been set up, think about what it would be like to have a content writer create daily posts for your blog. Each post will be relevant to the products or services that your company provides, and written specifically to a category of your blog. Not only that, but keywords and phrases that are relevant to your site, your products and services and your company will be included in the title, body and closing links of your post.

The writer who creates your blog content will begin a dialog with your current and prospective customers - telling them more about the products and services that you have to offer, more about your company and information that they're looking for. More importantly, the writer who posts to your blog will be able to build links back to your blog, comment on issues that are relevant to your business and your industry and establish your company's reputation.

Whether your business sells tangible goods like DVDs, computers or airline tickets or your company offers bookkeeping services or marketing research, a company blog can help you build customer relationships and credibility. More importantly, it can help to draw traffic to your website.

Everyone knows that original content is king - a blog can add original content to your website on a daily basis. And, when you hire a content producing company like Article Content Provider to maintain your company's blog, you can rest assured that you will have keyword rich, relevant content that your readers can rely on, content that will keep them coming back for more.

Why struggle to come up with the right words when a writer can do it for you? Why invest in search engine optimization techniques that don't always work when you can keep the search engine spiders coming back to crawl your site each and every day?

Let a content provider install blog management software, work with you to choose the right categories and assign a writer who can create quality content for your site - each and every day.

About The Author:

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic manages several blogs for companies and can help you with your blog as a consultant or manager. Visit http://www.seoserviceprovider.com for more info.

RSS In A Nutshell: What It Is And What It Does

By Matthew Hedges

You've probably heard the term "RSS feeds" before, but if you're like most people, it doesn't mean much to you. However, if you sell online, it's high time you discover this powerful marketing tool and what it can do for your E-Biz. According to Jeff Molander(http://www.ThoughtShapers.com), CEO of performance-marketing consulting practice, Molander and Associates, the potential of RSS as a promotional vehicle for online retailers is tremendous.

Really Simple Syndication -
That's what the letters stand for, but RSS is actually just a web feed format, or a means of transporting data across the web. It's often specified in XML (extensible markup language), which is simply the way the data inside a feed is structured. Says Molander, "Think of RSS as an internet plumbing system and XML as a standard way to transmit and receive data through those pipes."

You may already be using RSS feeds and not even realize it. If you get news updates through an information portal like Yahoo, Google, or BlogLines, those updates are powered by RSS behind the scenes. Like your plumbing system, it's in the background doing its job - you aren't supposed to see it.

A Multi-tasking Medium
Currently, RSS feeds are mostly used for syndicated data, like news or sports stats, made available by publishers. But e-marketers are starting to catch on to the possibilities this technology poses:

• With RSS feeds, you can alert your customers whenever you're running a special or adding a new product to your line-up. They can opt-in to receive updates and discussions about the products, in real time, so they're not relying on receiving numerous emails.
• You can attach almost any kind of information to an RSS feed - podcasts, internet radio transmissions, blogs, etc. Some blogging services have made it as effortless as clicking a button to generate a URL that notifies users whenever you publish something new.
• For your customers who prefer to consume their news the old-fashioned way, you can use feed blitzes to turn your feeds into emails. They receive the same instant information access; it's just delivered in a different form.

Straight from the Source
There are a number of companies that can help you publish feeds, and advertise through those channels. Right now, it's possible to monitor how many people are signing up for feeds, but it's hard to obtain any relevant statistics about them.

Here are some great resources for educating yourself about, and utilizing, feeds:

• http://www.SyndicationGumption.com helps you assess and understand RSS audiences.
• http://www.TechCrunch.com gives you the latest news on who's adopting RSS feeds and how they're using them to innovate.
• http://www.MarketingStudies.net provides marketers with tips for capitalizing on RSS, as well as the latest developments surrounding it.

Hitting the Mark - Every Time
You can offer your customers RSS feeds as an alternative to traditional emails. Molander explains, "It's a deliverability issue. We're in a time where distributing desired or valuable information on the web is actually somewhat difficult, specifically for advertisers." Unlike emails, which are often lost, or picked off by spam blockers, RSS brings news directly to your users. It's 100% opt-in, so you know your users are not only getting it, but that they really want it as well. Once they subscribe to your feed, literally nothing stands in the way of your delivering it to them.

About The Author:

Product Sourcing Radio is Created and Hosted by Chris Malta and Robin Cowie of http://WorldwideBrands.com, Home of OneSource: The Internet's Largest Source of Genuine, Factory-Direct Wholesalers for online sellers. Visit http://www.WorldwideBrands.com for more FREE E-Biz & Product Sourcing info!

Earn Passive Income With Blogs

By Chris Chew

Everyone says that one of the easiest ways to earn easy money from home is through the internet. Yes, it is very easy to set up an internet business with little or no money upfront but
questions abound. How do you get visitors to your site and how to get them to buy your products or click on your pay per click ads?

Firstly, let's take a look at how to earn money online. You can earn money online even if you have no product of your own. That means that there will be no inventory and logistic costs too.

One of the ways to earn money online is to create a blog. Creating a blog is free. Then go and apply for Google Adsense and Google will put advertisements on your blog. When visitors at your blog click on your ads, google will pay you a commission and you can actually receive monthly payments from Google.

Now, in order for people to come to your blog and then to click on your advertisements, your blog must be found. The best way for your blog to be found is through the search engines because every day, there are millions if not billions of searches done on the internet. What is more, if your site can be found on the internet, then you are getting visitors and potential customers to your blog for free.

The problem is that there are billions blogs and websites out there and people normally don't look beyond the second page of search engine results. In other words, if your blog do not make
it to the first two pages of any search results, it will probably not be found and your dream of making easy money at home will be dashed unless you cough out money and advertise your site.

However, just think about it. What if your blog can make it to the first two pages of major search engines for many of your keywords? Hey, you will be getting thousands of vistors every day and getting hundreds to thousands of clicks on your ads. What happened then is that you are receiving passive income.

Now imagine what will happen when you duplicate this process again and again? You will have multiple streams of passive income without any capital investment or business risks. Setting up blogs is an easy way to earn money, yes, but getting your blog found need some work. However, once it is done, those blogs can almost be left to auto pilot.

Well, there are hundreds of things search engines take into account when ranking your blog so it will be too simplistic for me to explain it in a short article like this. If you go to the internet and type in "search engine optimization" or "SEO", you will find many articles and books that can teach you how to get top rankings in the search engines.

So you want to find easy ways to earn money? Then learn how to get top search engines ranking for your blog. Other then that, you will probably have to spend some money advertising your blog and the return of investment may not be what you are looking for.

About The Author:

Chris Chew is a blogging entrepreneur. More articles at http://create-attract wealth.blogspot.com and http://universityeducation.blogspot.com

Writing And Blogging For Your Business

By George Meszaros

The key to online marketing is quality content. To get ahead of your competition, you have to be prepared to write well. The ability to write well is an advantage in terms of social media marketing and search engine marketing. In addition to written content, Video and audio are effective online marketing methods.

The best online marketers are experts at getting other spread the word about their products or services. Dedicate yourself to provide remarkable content to empower others to help you get the word out about your business. Take advantage of the inherent viral make up of Internet.

Write Articles

You can significantly increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise. Be sure that your articles are informational. Don't waste anybody's time with commercials disguised as articles. The key to successful article writing is to provide value. People will notice when you have something of value to say.

Articles deemed valuable are; posted on article directories; e-mailed in newsletters, embedded in e-commerce site. In most cases, the author receives a link to his website. The links help in a couple of ways. One, they generate traffic to the site. Second, links help to improve your search engine results. The more links you have pointing to your site the better. Search engines view links to your site as a vote of confidence. The more links you have pointing to your site the more valuable your web site becomes.

You can contact website that might benefit from your articles, and offer your articles. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. Articles offer an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds, or even thousands, of links to your site over time.

Practical Example: As you become a prolific author of articles related to your service you build reputation. Through your articles, you enable you customers to find your website indirectly. A business owner may find one of your articles while searching for marketing advice online. After she reads your article, she may click the link to your site from within the byline. Because you have already provided her with value, she is more likely to become a customer.

Start a Business Blog

Your business blog is one of the best ways to get others to link to your site. A blog is less formal than an article and more conversational. You have the power to make your industry interesting to your readers through conversational writing. Theblog is not about you. It is about providing value for your customers. If you offer outstanding content and regular industry comment, people a