Given that there are a heap of websites out there who are on the first page, what is their secret? It is a little industry term called “SEO” and it stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO basically consists of the customisation of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website’s ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimise your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a pain staking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we’d want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with a hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website and webpage’s ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the list goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listing.

Keyword Use Factors
The following components relate to the use of the user’s search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag – Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.
2. Keyword Use in Body Text – Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords – Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.
4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag – Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL – Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes
The following elements comprise how the Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

1. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure – Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.
2. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages – Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?
3. Age of Document – Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant.
4. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.
5. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) – Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes
The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

1. Global Link Popularity of Site – The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).
2. Age of Site – Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).
3. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site – The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.
4. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
5. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site – The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

Inbound Link Attribute
These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

1. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.
2. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.
3. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.
4. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community – The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.
5. Age of Link.

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes
There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

* Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
* Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
* External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
* Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
* Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming)

It’s now time to get busy! Start prioritising your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task, improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy, what might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you’re after.

What Makes an Authority Site?

One of the main characteristics of an authority site is it has more content or pages than any other site in that niche. The search engines love content, so if we give them more content to crawl all over, then they will look more favorably on your blog. Lots of content that has good formatting with proper headings and html tags are an important for the search engines to crawl successfully over your content.

The real secret behind ranking well and becoming an authority in your niche is backlinks. When search engines see one site linking to another they look at this as a vote for the site. Each “vote” is not weighted equally however, because the more links the first site has going to it, the more that site’s vote will count.

How Do You Establish Your Site as an Authority?

One of the easiest ways to begin this is to add more content. The more useful information you can provide to your readers, the more people will naturally link to your posts. If you continuously think of your readers first and search engines second, you will dominate the rankings.

Do some homework and find out what your competitors are talking about. This is a common practice, but the key to doing this well is presenting the information in a new way or perhaps going further in depth. It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel, just repackage it or make it better.

Now that you know the topics you need to cover, it’s time to create more pages. If you are like most people, then patience is not a strong virtue of yours. You do have other alternatives such as giving the task to someone else or you can hire someone to do it.

How Can My Content Make Me an Authority?

When you write, be mindful of the posts you have already written, and link to helpful posts. This will point your readers further into your site, and the search engines love a site that links to itself. Writing a series of posts on a particular subject will keep your readers engaged and will give you great credibility with the search engines.

When writing your new posts, remember to link out to others in your niche. Not only will they possibly link back to you (giving you that extra vote), but it will also once again point your readers to useful content. It may seem ridiculous to link to your competitors; however the search engines will put more weight on a vote from a page that is related to your page. This is also a great way to build a relationship with your fellow bloggers.

Becoming an authority blog or site takes some time and forethought. With some calculated steps, such as the ones I’ve outlined, you will one day become an authority site. Remember the cliche is true “Content is King”. If you want to be #1, then you have to earn it with top of the line content.

Google Your Competitors

This is one of the method which many webmasters or even so call “internet gurus” rarely speak about, but it is very effective. Assume you are selling handmade lamps via online website. If you are new into the selling lamp business, definitely you going to have almost no one linking to you. Therefore, no traffic from third party source. You could find your nears 10 online competitors, and Google their domain name. You may use other search engines, but Google alone should be fine.

Once you have Google their domain name, you will see the search results that many other websites which are linking to them. Some of the links could be from comments in blog, forums, community websites and etc. Visit as much as you can each one of these links and try to place your comment, you input in forums, joining the community websites and do repeat this process until you have Google all the competitors’ websites. Now, you already have links from all the major sites which referring your competitors. If done properly, the link will last long and will help your traffic build up and link popularity.

Yahoo Answer – A Must To Do

If you ever visited to Yahoo Answer, you will realize many people asking questions regarding many issues. If you see the answers given, often people are pushing some kind of products or services which the asker has to purchased. Very few will give a straight answers, and this sometimes make the asker to feel frustrated. Remember, people are looking for answers and not promotional talk.

You should always visit Yahoo Answer, and provide relevant and good answers for a question asked. However, you could leave some crucial informations from the answer and ask the asker to pay a visit to your website to get the remaining of the information. Try to make it clear that you are not pushing any ebooks, but sincerely offering an answer for the question asked. When you leave a link in Yahoo Answer, always give the link straight to the page where the reader could find the information. This link will be alive for many months or years, thus giving you repeat visitors in future.

Comment In Blogs

This method of marketing is known to give good amount of visitors to a website if it is done properly and regularly. Try to get a list of 30 to 50 high traffic blogs related to your own website/blog topics. Try to make it a point to visit few of these blogs everyday, and leave constructive comments. Remember, constructive comments does not mean you have to agree every time with the blogger’s view. Sometimes writing opposite views properly could excite the blog environment and cause many reader to wonder who are you, and visit your website instead from you signature. Your signature carries your website link, and unless the blog owner removes it from his blog, your link will be alive and diverting traffic to your website.

Generating traffic is very important, and always trying to leave links in other peoples’ website is better compared to generating traffic from sources which does not give you a permanent link back to your website. A permanent link will be able to transfer traffic for many years, and building a chain of these links are crucial for a website to be successful.

If the content you write in your blog is relevant, informative, and helpful, your chance of getting back links rises considerably.

Four Important Blogging Rules

1. Write your blog posts just like you would any other article. The temptation is to stuff your keywords in your posts and overdo it. Google is looking for quality sites maintained by real people. Blogs have been abused so much in the past that it’s a very important you post your own content that you’ve created. I don’t recommend using free content that’s so widely available or even private label content.

2. You need to offer something of value to anyone who visits your site. Remember that you’re the expert on your topic. Not everyone knows what you know about shoes, landscaping, or whatever else you’re writing about. A good technique is to review other products or websites and offer something of value that can help someone in a pre-purchase decision. I also don’t recommend putting RSS feeds in your posts since this is a common technique that blog spammers have used in the past.

3. You need to make your blog unique. Give somebody visiting for the first time a reason to come back. Make sure you have a way for readers to subscribe to your content. This is usually done with an RSS reader button somewhere on your page. This is also a great place to put an opt in newsletter box where people can sign up and get free articles or free e-books.

4. Whatever you do, don’t neglect your blog. If you keep your blog updated and offer new posts on a semi regular basis, you will increase your back links and visitors to your site. The worst thing you can do is start strong and simply let your blog die out. We’ve all seen the blogs with 4 or 5 consecutive posts on successive days only to have ZERO posts the last few months, or years! This can actually hurt you in the long run. If visitors see that you can’t maintain your own blog, they might assume that you can’t provide a good product or service. So make sure once you start your blog that you continue to maintain it.

Getting Links

Getting back links from a blog is a natural process. You can put links from your blog to your own website. Make sure you don’t put links that only point to your website. Add resources, information, and other directories and sites where people can go to if they come to your website.

The natural progression is that somebody will visit your blog read your article and hopefully click a link to go your website. Or even better, someone will like your post and link to your post or link directly to your website. The benefit to blogs is that your posts will be syndicated to other sites and directories almost immediately. While syndication is a benefit, it also means your content will become stale faster.

Be very careful about what types of information you’re writing about on your blog. If you’re doing a review, don’t use an affiliate link to another site. Using affiliate links is the fastest way to discredit your blog. If you do any linking at all, link directly to the site you’re reviewing or referencing. Don’t lose credibility for the sake of a few extra bucks.

It’s also okay to put a resource box at the end of each post. Just make sure you’re not trying to sell anything or offer “special deals”. People want to know they’re getting high quality information with no strings attached. Let your information speak for itself and if someone is still interested they will naturally follow your link.

Blogging is a simple and highly effective way to get back links

Blogging can get you the back links that you desire if done correctly. It’s easy, doesn’t take a lot of time, and will help you in your ongoing linking strategies.

If you are at all interested in using this technique, you can sign up with blogger.com today. You don’t have to have your own domain name or even your own web host. That’s why it’s so important to add blogging to your linking toolkit. It’s just too easy.

Blogging, along with article and directory submissions, is a powerful combination that will help you get ranked well for your search terms in all the major search engines. Use liberally.

Blog is basically an online diary which usually comes in the form of a website. Users can add postings from time to time. Blogs include photos, text etc. Blogs are in different templates, designs, background colors. You can create your own blog. There are websites like blogger.com which is owned by Google. It allows you to choose blog address and control your blog and post messages on to your bog. Other web users can subscribe to your blog and you can edit or control the comments. Blogs are in the form of personal diaries, new diaries, specific diaries some of them could be highly technical.

RSS Feeds

RSS (really simple syndication) is a style through which users can easily read your web feeds. With RSS Reader you can automatically download stories, news,blog feeds to your desktop. For SEO, you can begin to really get your blog postings subscribed by creating information and interesting blogs. This will result in giving your information, links and site information out to the masses.

Advantages of blogs

Blogs are search engine friendly as they always contain the new content which is interlinked. Some successful blogs even come in the top of search engines on certain common searched keywords or terms with less effort as compared to websites. You can promote a site with a blog in an inexpensive way. Blogs are easy to maintain and update. It can be maintained by even those who do not have initial knowledge about creating a webpage. Anybody can run a blog as it’s easy to update, edit text, add or remove links from pages. From SEO point of view blogs are straightforward, undemanding, and cost effective way for achieving search engine ranking, online feedback and product or service sales.

Blogs encourage repeat visits because they provide the fresh content. You can include links in blogs to make it popular from SEO point of view. You can feed blogs into other people RSS Feeders. In this way your blog becomes syndicated (subscribed to). Hundreds of people can subscribe to receive your blog when you publicize the URL of your blog feed of a well written and interesting blog. Thus people receive the blog postings written by you by clicking on the links into your website.

Use of blogs

In past it was trend of making personal homepages. But nowadays people are making their own personal blogs. Some blog interpret people personal thoughts, activities, and reactions. Some are in the form of a family news letter and some promote as their personal hobbies. Other use is blog helps in building online communities of people with similar interests. Blogs are also used as a news source in the form of online news papers. The major news agencies now have online news blogs of their own. Webmasters helps in providing webmasters adding content to their sites. Blog becomes powerful source for SEO when it has keyword rich content and in imbedded links Thus Blogs provide quality search engine optimization.

Future of blogs

With the increase in the internet users there is increase in internet journals too. Most of these are in the form of blogs and now there are millions of blogs on the internet. And this figure is going to increase in the future. So the popularity of blogs is continuing to grow at a faster pace. The reason for this is that blogs are gateway for visitors of a site to communicate and leave feedback to the publisher of the website. Webmasters use blogs to get ideas feedbacks about the new products from the site visitors. This has made the blogs the most precious marketing and SEO tool and its importance is going to grow in the near future.

Due to the sheer size of the Internet one can find themselves amongst a mass of marketers trying to dominate your niche, therefore diluting your traffic and sales. With so many blogs popping-up in your niche, it would seem almost impossible to stand out from the crowd. However, learning strategies for increasing blog traffic will help give you that edge, while claiming your very own profitable corner of the web.

Listed below are three strategies you should be doing right now to increase traffic to your blog:

The first step in increasing blog traffic is done by submitting articles on your chosen topic to article directories. This will help you achieve high rankings in the search engines for targeted keywords relating to your niche. Remember to include a keyword link in the about the author box.

A 2nd way for increasing blog traffic is to form some type of partnership with other blog owners that offer a complementary product or service to yours. This way you will be pooling your efforts and sharing targeted visitors and customers with very little effort.

For this 3rd method of increasing blog traffic, you will be capturing the visitor’s you worked for in the other 2 methods above. Display an opt-in form on every page of your site with the view to capturing those visitors who were not quite ready to buy your offer but would like to find out more. You could sweeten the deal and give your subscribers something of value for free, like a report or guide relating to your offer. This way you can follow-up with your subscribers over and over again, each time encouraging them to come back to your blog.

By truly knowing ones own niche market you will begin to see countless opportunities and new ways for increasing blog traffic. Therefore, it is important that one continues to read and research as much as possible, so these new ideas and opportunities can present themselves to you.

SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the free advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listing on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 90% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only click on the top search listing.

In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords must be included in the page’s title, keyword META tag, page’s description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that although will not guarantee a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.

In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as “golf clubs”. A better strategy would be to use “golf clubs Chicago” or handcrafted golf clubs”. The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of free tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase’s popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn’t matter because your traffic will be very limited.

Link Exchanges

Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. If you download and install the Google toolbar on your browser, you will see the Google PageRank of each site you visit. Your PageRank is determined by the number of other sites linking to your site, and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link will send Google’s spider to your page on a regular basis.

There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange and if they agree you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offer this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the investment in the long run, as new sites are placed in a “sand box” by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.

One back link from a PR8 site is worth 1,000 back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site, because each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will never recover from this.

A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites listing to THAT link. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically spam links. You would be better off purchasing a listing in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMZ. It’s definitely worth the investment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!

Blogs

As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline, are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.

The major blogs are updated on a daily basis which is very important to Google’s algorithm which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their money making AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog at the bottom of the article.

As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified free traffic.

In Summary

These are just a few of the most effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, Ezine advertising and pay per click advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page.

Further optimization must include the off-page SEO techniques such as generating back links with the major site directories, link exchanges and articles submitted to the major article hubs. Using a blog for a reference in your article can be a good thing as people will be more inclined to visit a blog since it’s not a sales page. Once they have received enough information and you have generated their confidence in your opinions, you can end up with a life time customer.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a tool useful for saving or retaining updated information on websites that you frequently visit or websites that are your favorite. RSS utilizes an XML code which scans continuously the content or subject matter of a certain website in search for new informations then transmits the information updates by way of feeding the information to subscribers.

RSS feeds are generally being utilized in blogs or news sites, though any website wanting to broadcast and publish information can use them. Once new information is sent, it will contain a headline, a little bit of text, and either a rundown or a brief review of the news or story. A link is needed be clicked upon to read further.

So as to accept RSS feeds, a feed reader is needed, called an aggregator. Aggregators are widely and freely available online, and all that is needed is a bit of searching, you will be able to locate a certain interface that best interest you. What’s more, RSS feeds can likewise be read and retrieved from cell phones and on PDAs.

Once you encounter upon a website that you want to add or insert to the aggregator, the process can be done in two ways. Almost all sites offering an RSS feed displays an RSS or XML button in their homepage and with one click, it promptly add that particular feed to one’s aggregator. Some aggregator however, requires the need to copy and then paste the URL of the feed unto the program.

Whatever the method used, you can be certain that the feed will be accessible soon as you have inserted it, likewise, in just seconds, the next update can arrive. In the event that you do not anymore would want to accept or take in updates, you may simply delete or erase the feed from the aggregator.

Through e-mail subscriptions, you can receive newsletters. RSS feeds on the other hand, can be more convenient in keeping up with newsletter updates since they are prompt and available in an instant; you no longer have to wait for a scheduled time or day to obtain a news summary, plus, these news will never be detained through a spam filter.

RSS feeds are widely used everyday by individuals who understand and appreciate the accessibility of fast reports and news that can be readily read and only read certain updates that appeals to them.

Aggregators

Aggregators are popular use of feeds, having several kinds. Web aggregators or portals as they are sometimes called, create this view which is then made available in a Web page. Also, Aggregators have been incorporated into e-mail patrons, users of desktops, or dedicated and standalone software.

Offering a collection of special features, such as combining more than a few related feeds in just a single view, hiding certain entries or statements that has been already viewed, and classifying entries and feeds, the aggregator is a versatile component.

Why make a feed available?

You will have more viewers, since now, your viewers can conveniently see your site without even going out and looking for that certain site. While at first, it may seem corrupt, it will in fact enhance the visibility of your site; this is so because users can easily keep up or keep tract with your site, to allow them to view in a way that they want to; its more probable that guests are aware should something that is in their interest is available or accessible on your site.

For instance, every month your website broadcasts a new feature. Having no feed, your viewers will always have to keep in mind to go to your site in a certain time to see if they discover something new; that is, if they can remember, and if they still have the time.

However, if you supply a feed for your viewers, they can just point to their aggregator and it will instantly provide them a link along with a description of happenings or events at your site immediately.

What format to choose?

Syndication is very confusing as it uses a lot of formats that can usually be come across in the web. However, this can easily be solved as in general, syndicated libraries are used by aggregators which conceptualize a particular format that a feed is in, in order that they can utilize a certain syndication feed.

With this, whatever format to pick is just a matter of personal preference. RSS 1.0 is far reaching, and practical should it be integrated into Semantic Web systems. RSS 2.0 is very easy and simple create by hand. And atom is an IETF Standard, does it brings constancy, stability and a natural and accepted community to support its usage.

One innovative way to get the clicks where you want them is take part in a social bookmarking site. If you have not yet heard of the phenomenon, there are sites where you can store your list of bookmarks online. This is convenient for the person who’s always hopping from computer to computer; you’ll always have all the information you need at your very fingertips. Even better, you can make your bookmarks public; you can share things like your favorite news sites, or your top ten favorite webcomics. The big advantage to this sort of service comes when you realize that you are an expert. Make a list of bookmarks that feature other sites that are like yours and make it public.

Social bookmarking sites work because of the selection involved. As more people become wise to the concept of search engine optimization, they are a lot more wary of the first ten hits that come up when they check Google or Yahoo. Social bookmarking works because it has the endorsement of another real person. A real community can spring up around the idea of social bookmarking and it becomes a network of people who are trading information. With the right list of bookmarks made public, it will take a very small amount of time before your blog will be getting more hits than ever before.

To get started with social bookmarking, there are a number of sites that you can go to. http://www.technorati.com/ is one of the first sites to take advantage of this phenomenon and the interface is quite usable. You’ll find more technical bookmarked lists here, which is ideal if you have a blog on computers, televisions, or general gadgetry. At http://www.stumbleupon.com/ you will find a more social atmosphere, and there is more of a focus on entertainment. If you have a blog on the latest celebrity doings or even of your photography, this might be the place for you. Though it might look less polished than the other two, http://del.icio.us/ packs a lot punch with a history that goes back almost five years. Del.icio.us is a wonderful place for almost anything you might want to find and more and more people are using it to find the information they need.

This is also a good way to find out how people are coming to your blog. What searches are they using to get there? Once you can pinpoint that, you can can tailor your blog to meet the demand and receive more traffic as well. Many blogs also offer subscriptions, which will tell readers when you have updated, and in this way, with a list of readers at your disposal, you can play your content to an audience that you know better.

Social bookmarking is a trend that any blogger who wants more traffic to his site should take advantage of and with sites like Technorati, Stumbleupon and Del.icio.us, you have many avenues waiting for your personal touch.

Let’s say you are experimenting with an idea for a brand new product. You have thought about it for a while, and you are pretty sure you have a winner there. Before you would even make your first prototype you could post your idea on your blog and engage your customers. They may love the idea or attack it. No matter how they react, your visitors will tell you exactly what they think about the product. They may not be clear about your idea and ask for clarification, or they may help you improve your idea. The constant communication between your business and your customers is what makes blogging so powerful.

You may think that your business could not benefit from a blog, or that there is nothing to blog about your products, or that nobody would be interested in reading about your services in a blog. It is simply untrue. You can make almost anything interesting. You can provide valuable information about your business regardless of your business.

Think of your blog as the vehicle for fresh content about topics that excite your customers. The topics you blog about has to be valuable enough, so your customers return regularly. Your customers may not return every day, but if you provide value they will be back on a regular basis.

In addition to providing valuable content, your blog should also provide outside links to further reading. You may refer to an article you have read on another blog, embedding a link in your blog that your user can follow. The more value you can create the more your customers will appreciate it.

When you are blogging for business you can potentially reach a global audience. Your blog enables you to suddenly reach a global market. As you becoming a dedicated blogger, you establish yourself as an expert. Hence, you are building new avenues to success. As others learn about your blog, you are building your brand. A successful blogger can quickly become the talk of mainstream media.

The right blog can make or break your business. It can help you succeed online in many ways. Most importantly, it will bring you closer to your customers. When you communicate through your blog, you are building a relationship. As your customers become more familiar with your business the more likely they will do business with you. If you play your cards right, your blog can do the selling for you.

The power of a business blog compared to traditional advertising mediums is that you are talking to your customers as opposed to talking about your product. Your customers are not interested the greatness of your product until they can trust you. They couldn’t care less about marketing hype. A clever tag line will only go so far when you are just another business. Your blog can differentiate your business from your competitors. Your customers want you to talk to them. More importantly, they want to interact with you. When there is interaction between your business and your customers you both benefit. Your customers gain better understanding of your business, your products or services, and your mission. Your business benefits because your customers will provide you with a constant flow if feedback that will enable continuous improvements.

At the time of writing this article, it is reported that there are over 71 million blogs in the world. Don’t let the huge number fool you. Most blogs are insignificant projects that never trigger an ounce of interest from anyone except for the blogger that owns the blog. Most bloggers lose interest in their own blogs before anyone else would get excited about them. If you are not passionate about your blog, you are wasting your time. Without your devotion your business blog will suffer an early death.

Don’t ever use your blog to praise yourself. If your company does a good job your customers will take care of that. If you sell quality products your customers will be eager to spread the word. Be ready for negative feedback too. Companies must be willing to accept unfiltered feedback. Receiving honest customer feedback can be a humbling experience, but it is part of growing your business.

When you blog you have two audiences. Your most important audience is your website visitor, hopefully your future customer. Your other audience is the search engines. Without the search engines your customers would not be able to find your blog. So, your blog will not only have to be interesting but it has to be structured correctly too. For example, it’s important to write headlines and subheads with key words that can be crawled by search engines.

The key element of business blogs is interactivity. Blogs can function as online diaries, news outlets, training tools, or standard communication platforms. While most blogs are textual many contain audio and video.

Real world example: An accountant may create a video blog dedicated to educating her clients about the most recent tax codes. Blog videos are usually short clips. Such service would differentiate the business owner from the competition, and it would build credibility.

The blog movement is the epitome of Web 2.0 technology where interactivity is of paramount importance. Blogs are not here to replace any part of your business; they are to compliment it in its entirety. You could use your blog to engage your employees or announce the details of your latest product line. Anything and everything you ever wanted to communicate to your customers can become part of it.

You will not regret using these new ways of marketing.

The number one Internet marketing plan for drawing customers into your website is the use of a blog. A blog is a continual updated online journal on your personal views or news related subject matters. People that read your blog are constantly aware of your ideas and thoughts, especially those concerning your business and products.

The benefit of promoting your company through a blog is the fact that the search engines love blogs. Fresh new content and a few good keywords thrown in will push you higher up on the engine rankings. People will see it and more customers will click to your site.

In your blog, be sure to add valuable customer information such as product information, or business advice. This draws customer interest. In addition, other bloggers may wish to link with to your blog site, and you can draw in customers from their blogs. That will continually feed your ranking and over time; customer loyalty backed by trust will drive your website and feed new customers into your email.

However, without RSS feeds, Really Simple Syndication, your blog may be doomed to fail. RSS feeds work by aggregating the information and outlay it to the customer. The customer will need to have a web browser or special software that can read RSS feeds. Most any information is fed into an RSS feed.

The good thing about using a web blog with a RSS Feed is that often your information gets to the news media. A well-written blog with timely advice and resources lends you as creditable in your business area. Be prepared, you could have a reporter knocking at your door.

Another area in which you can spice up your website is with the use of PHP coding. One of the drawbacks to using an RSS feed is that because it is a dynamic page – the spiders will not catch it quick. For example, if it has to wait too long to index it with the code intact, it will just move on. There are things you can do to work with the PHP language, and it will benefit you to learn how to do it. At least with the PHP, you can make your pages on the site look like HTML files.

Do not forget to use the idea of text links too. Links to other great sites is a new advertising trend you can use for more website exposure. With SEO, Search Engine Optimization, companies use text link marketing to get their site into the higher rankings. You can use auctions where you bid only on what you think you need, or through a brokerage, you can buy and sell text links. Just like with banners you can change exchange links too.

Bookmark technology and ways to use them has come a long way. Most agree that getting someone to bookmark your site will lead to future sales. People rarely ask for a customer bookmark their site though. There are software programs that you can use to make book marking a snap.

All you have to do is to provide a link and your customers can bookmark easily. Some Java script software will automatically bookmark your site for your customer. There is a small fee involved for you. A simple Please bookmark this site button is often enough to get the customer to bookmark.

Certain software will also add a special icon when the customer saves the site. This makes it easy to standout from the other bookmarked sites. Pop-ups help you to get your customer to bookmark too. New ingenuous software will remind your customer to bookmark as they are leaving, and even to bookmark with their permission.

The Internet is a dynamic marketing experience. In addition, the better you are at implementing its new marketing tools – the more profits you will make. So learn all you can about these five tips on new marketing trends and go grab some lifetime customers.

If you have a real estate agency what could be better than a walk through tour of a property, a walk through of a yacht if you are a yacht broker or tours of sports clubs, hotels, workshops or what ever product you want potential customers to see.

You can hardly visit YouTube or Google Video to find a video about your hotel or sports club, you will have to make your own video or have it made for you. But let’s not talk about hotels and sports clubs, lets talk about you and the eBook or software program that you want to promote which is the reason lots of us have.

To get Flash video up and running we need to download some files and prepare our site. So lets get started now.

Step One: Preparing your site.

There are several plugins available for embedding flash video on your website, some are better than others and some are more user friendly. WP-FLV is one, FLV Embed is another and WordTube is the one that we will be using here. Visit the site, read up on the plugin and download it. Unpack the zip file and upload the folder into the WordPress plugins folder. Note do not change the folder names. You will also need the free, for personal use, Flash Media Player from Jeroen Wijering. Download the player from the website, unzip it and upload only the mediaplayer.swf file into the wordtube folder. Activate the plugin.

Go to your admin area, then Options, Manage, WordTube to set up the options. You can use the default upload folder or change it to another such as wp-content/videos. You can upload your files via Manage-Media Center. Note for streaming videos the Flash player will not show a preview, therefore you need also to upload a image (thumbnail) file. After uploading your video you can insert the tag (MEDIA=ID) into your post where you wish the embedded Flash video to be displayed. ID is the number of the video in the Media Centre. Make sure that you use UPPER case otherwise it will not work.

A blog is a shortened word for the term web log. Millions of people use their blogs to keep records or a log of their websites development as it is built, however many people use blogs for different reasons. The majority of people tend to use blogs as an online journal or diary and they write about all kinds of things that are going on in their everyday lives. People who write in their blog frequently are commonly known as bloggers.

Throughout the past few years blogging has become remarkably popular and there are millions of blogs on the web created by different people all over the planet, one great thing with blogs is that the user is free to voice their opinions about basically any subject matter, and better yet is that you can construct your own free blog at hundreds of places.

Anybody can blog and you don’t need to be a computer wiz to get started, virtually all blogging software allows you to get going straight away plus many blogging sites offer easy to use built in features allowing you to add text, links, pictures also some even allow you to put mp3’s and videos in your blog posts.

In general the majority of blogs are developed for personal use and used much like a diary or journal, people love to write about their everyday lives and share their thoughts and pictures with friends or family. Most blogs even implement an option for people to leave feedback and comment on your posts, helping you find out just what other people think of your point of view, if your blog is interesting you might get regular readers and even gain some more friends.

However blogs are not confined to personal usage, they can be about anything you want, and lots of people build blogs that on a theme such as: politics, sports, current issues, events, news, catastrophes, etc, some bloggers even use their blogs for business purposes as a system to advertise products and services or to create revenue through advertisements. You can discover a massive range of different blog themes by looking in a blog directory; you can also list your own site in a blog directory which helps you get more readers.

Blogs come in lots of different styles and can be easily modified by editing the formats and settings; you can also find thousands of templates on the internet to install changing the layout completely. Something else that’s a good thing about blogs is that the blog itself is only made up from a few template pages which provides more advanced users more opportunity to be creative with the layout.

Blogging is fun, simple and easy. So, if you are thinking about starting a blog, whether it’s for business or for pleasure, remember blogging really is for everybody.

Why should I make SEO priority? In one month 6.7 billion searches were done on search engines. Every day motivated buyers use search engines to find and buy products online. Over 200 million searches per day are made through Google. That is an immense amount of traffic.

If you can learn how to rank high on the search engines then you will increase quality traffic to your website. Superior rankings equal quality targeted traffic. If you don’t get this traffic then your competitors will scoop it up.

How much money are you losing if you don’t have a high Google search engine ranking? How much of this money has your competitor snatched?

How can you flood your website with high quality, responsive traffic for free? The answer is search engine optimization. The purpose of SEO is to improve your ranking in the search engine results. A superior ranking in the major search engines is the best way to bring quality visitors to your website.

Google is the top search engine. You can also use Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Two types of SEO:

1. On page optimization.

This is SEO that you do right on your website. You modify code directly on your site. This is what you say about your website (text, copy, links, keyword density in copy and headline, meta tags, etc.) On page optimization used to be the primary place to work to obtain superior rankings in the search engine listings.

The page title is the number one on page factor that you need to focus on.

Page title tips:

• Limit the length of your page title of 65 characters or less.
• Incorporate keyword phrases into your page title.
• Grab the searchers attention.
• Each page should have a unique page title.
• Repeat your title tag in your H1 tags.
• Your title is the link that is shown in the search results of the search engine such as Google.
• Focus on click through rates and conversion rates.

However, there are problems with on page optimization. If you want to rank for something people tend to exaggerate or lie to get traffic. This caused the results in the search engine to differ from the actual websites. Google knew this was a problem. Therefore, Google decided to focus on off page optimization.

2. Off page optimization.

This has to do with what others say about your website. Google has determined that what others say about your website is more credible that what you say. These other people act as a credible referral.

Links are critical and Google measure your links. This gives Google a way to measure what your site is about. Incoming links count as a vote to determine the relevancy and popularity of your site. An incoming link is a link from another site to your site.

Examples of links include:

• Blog post links
• Press release links
• Social network links
• Text links

Links can come from…

• Blog posts
• Press releases
• Text links
• Links from websites related to your website

Tip: Your inbound link profile is extremely important. You need to understand what your link profile should look like. You need to build a “natural” inbound link profile. It used to be about the quantity of links. However, the search engines have recently added filters that discount unnatural links.

A natural profile link includes your domain name and a variety of links that directly relate to your website. These links vary in nature. For example, don’t have the same link over and over. Have synonyms of the link instead. This is more natural and shows that you didn’t just go for quantity.

Tip: Permanent links equal equity. Equity is built based upon links that you have over time. So websites that have had links for several years have more power than newer links from newer websites. The key is to not ever stop obtaining inbound links.

Tip: Links that are in the text copy carry more weight than links that are simply on the page.

Tip: Obtain theme related links. Obtain links from websites that relate to yours.

Tip: Set up your own Blog. Put the Blog under your domain name. Write interesting posts so people will link to your Blog. Comment on other Blogs. These will build deep links. Deep links point to other pages on your website besides your homepage.

Tip: It’s more important to have a higher percentage of deep links.

1. Article Marketing
To generate traffic to your site write a minimum of 300 word articles that explain your site and how it will benefit the visitor or if you are selling a product set up the article to provide advice or techniques similar to those explained or facilitated through your product. After your articles are written, submit them to article directories and related blog’s. You should write at least 5 articles initially then follow up with an article a day for the highest level of efficiency or at least a new article a week.

2. Backlink Building
Getting links on sites outside of your own is a strong way to move up search rankings which subsequently leads to traffic increases. There are services such as those on submitedge.com that will submit your site to link directories to get links built up, but keep in mind that a ton of links in a short period may cause search engines to penalize your site’s rank for link spam.

Search for websites similar to your own and propose a link exchange to their webmaster because search engines love when similar sites link to each other. Also, type in Google “link:http://www.competitorssite.com” replacing “competitorssite” with the address of top sites for your site’s topic on Google to see what sites link to them. Once you see what sites have links leading to a competitor’s site, seek to get links on those sites as well, copy the competition and do better.

3. Search Engine Optimization
This is the best method for those without a budget who want to get traffic without spending a lot of money or using services to submit your site to an assortment of directories. The first thing is to set up meta tags on your site. Search Google for a meta tag generator and make sure you use targeted keywords in your description, title and keyword tags in your html head.

Once that is done seek to have 5-7% of your site’s content including targeted keywords, this is known as your page’s keyword density. Follow 1 and 2 which will boost your website’s rank along with bringing in traffic. This is a time consuming method but once you get on page one of Google, your site will have countless traffic.

4. Social Bookmarking
This is a relatively new method of obtaining web traffic and can be extremely effective when done correctly. There are a variety of sites that provide “social bookmarks.” Social bookmarks are simply enough when a visitor to your site likes your sites content and goes to a social bookmarking site (like digg.com, del.icio.us, etc.) and they tag your site’s content with keywords in which others can then find your site through that tag.

The best thing to do to get social bookmark tags from visitors is to place bookmark scripts to your site which can be obtained at the Digg website and addthis.com for delicious bookmark buttons. Your site can initially be submitted to Digg.com yourself and to many other social bookmarks through onlywire.com, which is a site that allows you to submit your site to a dozen or more social bookmarking sites.

5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising
The last tip of the article is paying for web traffic. This can be very expensive, but if done correctly can produce revenue far beyond your advertising costs. The leader in PPC advertising is Google AdWords. AdWords allows users to set up a small ad set up around keywords that are displayed as sponsored links when a user searches for a topic on Google. Keep in mind that the higher your budget the more traffic you will get, and that low budgets make it very difficult for your ad to produce conversions.

Secondly, keep in mind that extremely broad keywords likely have a lot of competition for ad slots and would be very expensive, so seek to have highly targeted, tightly targeted keyword phrases that target visitors that have the highest potential of becoming customers.

Blog marketing will keep you very busy. If you have more than one blog going that you want the highest and the best rankings for, you may have to hire some help. However make sure that you have good content. If you do not have good content, there is no reason for your readers to come back to your blog after their first visit. Keep writing good content as well. If it starts to go down hill, you may find that your reader status does as well and that could hurt you in the long run. Good content is key.

Something else that many blog owners do not realize when they are marketing their blog is that it needs to be updated. Post content in your blog regularly for the best results. Maybe once a day is good for you? Perhaps you are more comfortable with one post a week? Whichever it is, be consistent with it and know that it will pay off to continue posting as you should. If you are struggling to get content to your blog, we recommend you join a site such as Turbo Membership.

Just having a blog about anything, or random subjects is not always a great idea. You have to have a niche market in order to market your blog successfully. For example, lets say one day you made a blog post on the current news, and the next day it was on your current marital situation. You will not be able to keep a blog audience posting off the wall things time after time. Find your area of expertise and run with it. You can be an expert on that market in your blogging community. Readers will go to your blog daily to find out what it is that the expert is going to say next. It really does work this way.

Make sure that your blog design stands out. You don’t want your blog to look and feel like everyone else’s, so make it different. Having your own look is a huge plus in the blog marketing world. You will find that most blogs all look the same and you can have your own look by just using HTML and adjusting the code to suit your taste. You are going to see that this will truly make a difference with your blog as well as your readers. Try to get a theme that is going to match the market that you are promoting in your blog. Doing so will make it look even more professional. As a member of Turbo Membership, you get free templates. It’s a good place to start your blog design.

Do you know SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. If you are not familiar with SEO, you need to get that way and fast. Using SEO will help you to market your blog to the fullest extent possible. Optimizing your blog posts as well as the HTML will get you results that you will love. Studying everything that you can find on SEO will help you immensely. You will find that there is so much more to bog marketing than just making a post on your blog everyday.

If you don’t all ready, be sure that your blog has the RSS feeds. Having these feeds will allow others to be able to link to you blog. Having many links a huge part of blog marketing that you want to take advantage of as well. When someone uses the RSS feeds from your blog, they are able to get the posts that you make, and will give you a link back from their blog, or website, whichever they posted it on.

Since Joomla is an open source web solution, it is free and that should make many corporate professionals very happy. They might request that a blog be created on the corporate website and will be pleasantly surprised when a blog module has been installed and is working perfectly by the end of the business day.

There are many modules that can be changed around in a Joomla template to further expand the creativeness of the web developer that has been tasked with managing the corporate website. The Joomla Content Management System website has a blog that developer’s use all of the time to discuss the various areas of programming that go into creating a Joomla template.

Some of the software modules for the Joomla open source program are free, and others have been developed by the core software development team and are offered at a reasonable price. There are many blog modules available in the core management teams databases, so any type of blog can be selected and used on websites around the world.

A Joomla site is easy to manage and any corporate blogs could be updated several times in a very short amount of time. The community of developers that are devoted to extending the open source library get very creative when they are coding for a blog module, and many of these blogs will have insertion points where photos can placed to let the world know what the blogger looks like.

The expandable framework offered by Joomla gets the creative juices flowing. By adding a browser based interface to their website, a blog could be generated to publish press releases, or keep employees at several corporate offices in tune with the latest changes in corporate policy. The blogs are not restricted to one size either because the framework of Joomla is so expandable.

The blogging software that is included in the Joomla Content Management System is part of a large number of extensions that are made available by open source code developers around the world. This blogging software is compatible with image and multimedia galleries on a website, and will work well when posted on a website that simply features directory services for clients to use around the world.

Freedom of Speech is virtually assured with the blogging software in the Joomla Content Management System. In fact, people might want to discuss many things during the course of a day, and through those discussions feel very open about sharing their extension for Joomla with the rest of the world. Joomla can be test driven before it is implemented into any company intranet, and it is very search engine friendly, so the rest of the world will quite possibly notify the corporation that they are happy to read the positive news about their company through this handy copy of blog software.