Benefits of Link Building

A properly executed link building campaign will help boost your ranking with many search engines, but this is only part of the benefit. The quality sites that have agreed to link to you will also send you highly relevant traffic. Also, your brand and name will become better known within your industry as a result of the link requests that you make. Finally, your additions to Yahoo and the Open Directory will send you a great deal of additional quality traffic. Link building is a laborious process, but if done properly it is most definitely worth the effort. Maximizing the number of web sites that link to your web site is one of the most important factors to successful online marketing. An effective linking strategy establishes your site in the online marketplace that already exists for your industry.

The key benefits of link building are:-

• Increasing Link Popularity : Most search engines place huge emphasis on 'Link Popularity' when determining a sites ranking. Your sites Link Popularity is determined by the number of incoming links to your site - so the more incoming links, the greater priority your site will be given in the search engine rankings. This logic is based on the principle that if your website is of a high quality, more and more websites would want to link to you.

• Driving Relevant Traffic : Simply having incoming links will drive relevant traffic to your web site.

• Brand Building : Increasing the number of incoming links from quality web sites will build brand awareness and trust in your company or brand.

Source: media13

The 7 Secrets of Internet Marketing

Many marketers have been shifting their marketing budgets to the web over the past few years. Marketing online allows you to target specific audiences and easily track return on investment, commonly referred to as ROI. Unlike traditional marketing methods, results of Internet marketing campaigns are almost immediate. This allows you to better evaluate what elements of your campaign are producing results and which are not. When buying online media, you must be willing to shift your marketing dollars to the online methods that produce a positive return.

To be successful at Internet marketing, you must understand the essential secrets of Internet marketing. These secrets can allow you to achieve success by finding the right audience, communicating your message properly, and leading consumers down the path to purchase. These secrets include:

1. Website Directory Listings. Before you begin any marketing campaign, make sure that the website you’re promoting has been listed in the common directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo!, and Google. Even if you’re using a marketing page off of the root directory of your website, be sure that the primary site is listed. This ensures that prospects can continue to find your marketing pages long after you’ve launched your campaign.

2. Generating Traffic. In order to realize a return on your investment, you need to generate traffic to your marketing pages. There are a number of ways to do so online. Some of the most popular include Google AdSense, Overture, and Looksmart. Other methods include affiliate programs and targeted website advertising. Research other websites that have the audience you’re looking for and negotiate favorable ad rates for your online marketing campaign.

3. Marketing Pages. Don’t lead prospective purchasers to a generic website. If you do, potential buyers won’t know what to do next. The easier you make if for prospects to take advantage of your offer, the better. Whenever creating a marketing campaign online, provide a specific page for leading purchasers to your product or service or a billboard that showcases the offer. Take the guess work out of making a purchase and more consumers will buy.

4. Testimonials. Customer testimonials are the most powerful way to sell your product or service. When consumers hear from those who have purchased and used your product or service, they gain a certain level of trust and comfort in what you have to offer. Solicit testimonials after each purchase and use those that are the most convincing to prospective purchasers.

5. Create a Compelling Offer. Be sure to offer something that no one else is currently offering. If your offer is similar to your competitors or is not very interesting, consumers have no reason to learn more. Of course providing something for FREE is often a great way to entice potential customers. Maybe it’s a 3-day free trial or a free evaluation of some kind. Be creative, try something new, and measure the response.

6. Developing Trust. Before anyone will buy from you, your website or company needs to be seen as reputable. This means that consumers can purchase from you and not worry about the safety of their credit card information, personal information, or anything else being exchanged. A good method for developing trust is to purchase and display safety and reliability icons such as BBB Online, Trust-e, and VeriSign.

7. Provide a Guarantee. Nothing makes a consumer more comfortable with a purchase than offering a guarantee. Perhaps you can offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee or a money back guarantee. A guarantee is a great way ease the risk of making a purchase. If your competitors are offering a guarantee, you want yours to be equal or better.

Internet marketing is an incredibly powerful medium for segmenting your prospects and delivering targeted advertising. Online, you can easily measure you return on investment and refine your marketing campaign over time to improve results.

If you are a local business you can benefit from Internet marketing as well. Look for local directories to list your business or service. Or, you can supplement your local advertising with product marketing pages on your website. Internet marketing is more than just placing ads online, it’s using the web to communicate the value of your products and services.

Source: media13

7 Ways To Make Money With Articles

If you write and submit articles on the Internet, you need to make sure you are getting the most money out of each article. Here are the 7 different ways to make money with articles:

1. Promote Your Website

Add your author bio at the end of each article with a short ad for your products or services and a link to your website. People who like your article and click on your link will be more ready to buy from you than a cold prospect.

2. Promote Affiliate Products

You can promote affiliate products in your author bio, and make commissions on all the sales you refer. Just register a domain name (so your link at the end of the article looks professional), and redirect it to your affiliate link.

3. Content Sites With Adsense

Use your articles to build content websites packed with useful information. Content websites are likely to get lots of free traffic from search engines. Place the Google Adsense advertisements on your pages, and get paid for each click.

4. Blogs

Start publishing a blog. Search engines love blogs because they are regularly updated with fresh content. Blogs tend to get a lot of traffic from search engines. Break-up your articles into smaller chunks and turn them into blog entries.

5. Mailing List

Collect your website visitors names and e-mail addresses – ask them to sign up for your newsletter. Regularly e-mail your articles to your newsletter subscribers, along with promotions for your website.

6. Information Products

When you accumulate enough articles, compile them into an e-book. Turn your articles into book chapters. Change a few things here and there, and you will have a new information product to sell.

7. Viral E-Books

Instead of selling the e-book that you made from your articles, you can also use a viral marketing approach. Add promotional copy to your e-book along with links to your website and affiliate links, and give it away. It will spread around the Internet like a virus, advertising your products and services and putting more money in your pocket.

Source: media13

Online Bookmarks Are A Great Way To Promote Your Web Site

Many people who are introduced to the internet for the first time make a bee-line for social networking sites like Facebook. You aren't anyone who is anything if you haven't got a Facebook or Twitter profile. These sites help you to take advantage of online bookmarks and these are a very powerful means of marketing to.

Essentially online bookmarking is a tool which lets users rate, organize and share their favorite websites. Other users who have the same interests will pick up this information and visit those sites themselves by clicking on the links available. Rating these sites provides other users with a recommendation regarding what they might be useful for and how useful they are.

Online bookmarks can be used to categorize, organize and rate websites and their value. People who share the same interests are attracted to sites that have been recommended by other like-minded people. Word of mouth in any community has long been considered to be an extremely powerful form of marketing. You only need one bad review and it soon gets around, and the same applies to the good. The magnitude of the internet combined with this makes marketing strategies, nigh unstoppable.

Users often bookmark the sites they have found though other members themselves and pass this information on. They can store the links to the websites for use at a later date, and this is where the term "bookmarking" came from.

Online bookmarking first came into being as far back as 1996, with the first generation of social networking sites. However at that time there was no model in use to actually create money making opportunities. With the growth of affiliate marketing this has now changed.

One of the first online bookmarking sites in 1996 was "itList" but there was no model available for people to make money with this. When social networking and online bookmarking became popular again with the second generation of these sites they were provided with powerful money making tools also.

These powerful marketing tools have effectively set off a bookmarking revolution on the web. There is no comparison between online social bookmaking and traditional search engines. This is because people organize, rate and rank sites, not a search engine. No matter the complex algorithms used in search engines, they cannot beat the impact humans have.

Page results are ranked by the amount of users or by the amount of times a particular keyword has appeared. This is essential for search engine optimization and online bookmarking is an essential add-on for any company with an online marketing strategy.

Source: Articledashboard

Using Twitter For Profits: Convert Twitter Traffic Into Your Traffic

Using Twitter to link to your site is a great way to increase profits. The key to success is to persuade your tweet readers to click your link rather than read their next tweet. So how do you link effectively?

Getting your tweets seen is a good starting point. For your tweets with links to your site you want to maximise their potential to be seen. A couple of simple steps that you can take to help are to include keywords and to leave room for retweets.
Having keywords in your tweets will make them easier to find by people interested in what you have to offer.

Leaving blank space in your tweets makes it easier for someone to retweet them without having to edit your tweet. Being retweeted you’re reaching more people and these new readers are in effect getting a personal recommendation from the person retweeting.

To help keep your tweets compact always use a URL shortener. This not only greatly reduces the size of the link but also disguises where the link goes adding to its curiosity value. Some URL shorteners allow you do some analysis on which links are being used. This could be very useful for finding out which links are working for you and which aren’t.

To avoid your links being ignored it helps if you can get your followers to click on your links out of habit. When you tweet about general stuff include links to cool sites, news stories, You Tube videos etc. Not only does this help build rapport with your followers and when they see a link in your tweets they don’t automatically think spam.

When linking back to your site link to the exact page you want them to go to. So if you’re tweeting about a new product send them to that products page and not a page with a list of your entire range.

Try to present your link in an interesting way so avoid going “this is my new product, click this link” and come up with something more engaging.

You can make money with Twitter if you can turn readers in to clickers. All it takes is a bit of effort and creativity to make you links findable and interesting.

Source: Articledashboard

How To Build Your Online Business In A Recession

Without a doubt, a recession is a most challenging time during which to jump into new ventures. The market is unstable, economists keep predicting it's going to get worse before it gets better, and the average Joe is hoarding every red cent he is lucky enough to get his hands on. However, giving up only fuels recession further. Whether you are contemplating starting an online business or have successfully run your online business for years, the following guidelines will provide strategies with which to overcome the unique challenges posed by national economic turmoil.

The Basics

If you've been in online business for some time now, you'll recognize the attributes listed below as the building blocks for any online business. If you're just starting out, make sure you take each of them into account when making decisions about your business. Each "building block" is listed with advice about how it is affected by the recession.

Find Your Niche

By highly specializing your online business, you will be giving yourself the best chance of becoming a subject expert in that field. During a recession, there are many new niches created surrounding living frugally, saving money, dealing with issues such as joblessness, foreclosure, or disappearing retirement savings. Take advantage of the current economy by providing quality information and advice that people can use.

Products and/or Services

Your online business' main source of income should be a product or service that can be delivered digitally. Reducing overhead by employing this strategy will render your online business more resilient than more complicated operations. Consider selling subscriptions to your home rental or recipe Web site.

Multiple Streams of Revenue

This is of particular importance during a recession. Join affiliate programs or sell space to advertisers in order to pull in revenue on your quality content-driven pages. Be creative and think of other ways your online business can make profits.

Overcome Shrinking Budgets

It's difficult to spend the money necessary for effective marketing and advertising when everybody's purse strings are drawn tight. Knowing that your return on investment won't be nearly what it's been in the past makes it more difficult. Determining how much advertising will actually pay off is nearly impossible, and for dwindling online startups it can be a fatal game to play.

There are, however, a multitude of marketing and advertising strategies that can be used to provide exposure to your online business without costing nearly as much. Of course some of these strategies will require time, effort and energy on your part, but that's just part of the challenge you took on when you decided to start an online business.

The following ideas are ways to get the word out about your online business and ultimately boost your bottom line:

. Public Relations instead of Paid Advertising

. Build Your Brand

. Build Your Database (leads, prospects, customers)

. Use Social Media to promote your online business

. Establish Measurable Goals and Meet Them

. Go Above and Beyond with Your Existing Customers

. Offer Incentives for Referrals

. Differentiate from the Competition

The Bottom Line

The bottom line in terms of how to build your online business during a recession is to not give up. Use creative new strategies to reinforce and promote what you are already doing. Don't freak out over bad economic reports or even dwindling sales. Think outside the box and come up with fresh new ideas to keep you customers coming back and to attract new customers without incurring high costs. Most importantly, stay optimistic, treat your customers well, and enjoy life.

Source: Articledashboard