Monday, February 14, 2011 @ 6:05 AM

Analyzing the Competition – Check Indexes

The beauty of the Internet is the inherent open nature of competition. It is so open, you can check indexes when analyzing the competition to improve your site.

Analyzing the Competition

A key step to any search engine optimization effort is to analyze the competition. The simplest way to do this is to simply go to their site and look at the code. Most browsers let you do this by clicking the “view” tab and then selecting “source.”


You competition isn’t stupid. Many sites will bar browsers from showing source code using the above technique. If your competition takes this step, is there anything you can do? Yes, there is.

Indexes

Almost everyone knows how to check if their site is indexed in a search engine. Simply go to the engine and search for “site:yourdomainname.” This technique can also be used to see what your competition is up to.

If you want to see a glimpse of how a competitor is pursuing search engine optimization, check how many pages are indexed in the relevant search engine. Do a search for “site:competitorsdomainname.” You’ll be presented with a list of their pages, the meta title and meta description. This works particularly well with Google.


The resulting list of pages can be analyzed in a couple of different ways. First, you can isolate the particular keywords being pursued by the site. These should then be compared to your site to ascertain whether you’re missing anything. You almost always are missing a key niche. Second, you can analyze the meta description to see both the layout and particular formation of sentences and keyword placement they are pursuing. Again, compare it to yours. Using this process, you can get an idea of how your efforts differ from a competitor.

Importantly, this approach should not be overvalued. It is only a glimpse of the competitor’s site, not a thorough review. It will tell you nothing about how pages are arranged, keyword density approaches and so on. You’ll have to hunt and peck around the site for that information. Still, the meta information gained from this approach makes it worth a go if you are shut out from the code of a site.

See more: http://www.marketingtitan.com/internet_marketing_articles

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Sunday, January 23, 2011 @ 5:08 AM

The Secret To Getting Indexed In Yahoo

Getting indexed in Yahoo has become very difficult in the last few months. The indexing robot, Yahoo!Slurp, has become erratic. For some sites, the robot will view all pages, but only add a few to the Yahoo database. For other sites, sub-domain listings actually start disappearing! So, what’s the secret to getting indexed?

Pleasing Yahoo!Slurp

The secret to getting indexed in Yahoo involves constant updates to your site. The updates, however, have to be done on both the site and through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. Here’s how you go about getting indexed.

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Friday, January 7, 2011 @ 5:54 AM

How to Analyze a Competitor’s Website

Competitors' websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. Here is an article on how to analyze a competitor's website.

Identifying the Leaders

Start off by identifying the major players. A good place to do this is Yahoo’s directory. It is good to view the major players in similar fields to your own so that you have a better view of your web site as perceived by others. You may want to print out the directory to take a closer look. Check some of the bigger companies and find out some of the innovative approaches and new products offered.
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Sunday, January 2, 2011 @ 5:05 AM

The Internet Marketer and Site Designer - The Chicken and The Egg

An age-old question is, “Which came first? The Chicken or the Egg?” In ecommerce, the same question can be applied to site designers and Internet marketers.

Before we settle the answer, we need a few parameters. For purposes of this discussion, a marketer is some formulating and creating Internet marketing strategies and campaigns. This includes search engine optimization. In using the term “designer”, we are throwing a bigger net to include programmers and people writing html.

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Friday, December 31, 2010 @ 6:31 PM

Long Term Marketing Strategy

Once your site is up and running, the best method for getting immediate traffic is pay-per-click search engine marketing. Although you have to be patient, you should also be focusing on search engine optimization as a long term strategy.

Search Engine Optimization – “SEO”

Search engine optimization, or “seo” as it is better known, is the definitive long term Internet marketing strategy. So, what is it? Seo simply refers to taking steps to make sure your site appears high in non-paid search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010 @ 5:18 AM

Short Term Marketing Strategy

After spending a lot of time and effort on building a site, many wonder where they should start with Internet marketing. Site owners can be bombarded with pitches about marketing and it is hard to sort out what should be done. In this article, a short term marketing strategy is discussed.

The single best short term marketing strategy is pay-per-click marketing campaigns. A “PPC” campaign simply involves placing advertisements on the results pages of search engines. In essence, you open an account with the PPCs, develop a list of keywords and create ads for those keywords. The two best PPC platforms are Google Adwords and Overture.

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Saturday, December 25, 2010 @ 7:18 PM

Internet Advertising for Business

The two prime internet advertising platforms for business are pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. Whether search engine optimization is technically advertising is debatable, but we will assume as much for this article. The issue we are going to discuss today applies equally to either of these platforms as well as any other internet advertising you undertake.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010 @ 6:10 PM

Branding Goal – Internet Marketing Strategy

Branding refers to the vague notion of creating an identity for a product or name brand with consumers. The classic example, of course, is Coca Cola. Being first on the scene, the company has been able to create such a strong name brand that most people use the word “coke” instead of soda even when they prefer Pepsi. In the world of marketing, all bow before the marketing team that accomplished this branding.
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Saturday, December 18, 2010 @ 5:20 AM

Buy Targeted Web Site Traffic

Many sites make the mistake of trying to be all things to all people. It is far better to stick to a specific service or product than it is to offer limited options to customers. If you are selling hiking gear, be the best damn hiking gear site on the net and nothing else. This same problem arises when sites target traffic generation strategies.

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Tuesday, December 7, 2010 @ 9:19 PM

Strategies – Web Ecommerce

There are many strategies for web ecommerce projects, but one has been proven over and over. Of all the strategies, the “need strategy” is the clear winner.

I always laugh when listening to mainstream marketing company blabber on about branding and demographics. On the web, ecommerce is boils down to one concept and only one. You must determine the needs of your prospects and provide solutions.
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Thursday, November 11, 2010 @ 3:28 PM

Establishing an Online Business Development Strategy

If you have any aspirations of earning an income online you will need to establish a business development strategy. The reasons are simple, your business venture will have to have a product or service, a way to promote it to the public and a plan to make improvements as needed. In this way your chances for online success will increase dramatically. When working online you will need to adapt to an ever changing environment by adopting new and improved strategies as you move forward, you must evolve!
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010 @ 5:40 AM

5 Steps to Discovering Online Success

Although there are many paths you can take to achieving online success one thing is always certain, the first steps are yours to take. Working online has allow many to realize riches they would have never thought possible otherwise due in part to much lower start up costs. However, starting an internet business is one thing, but growing it into a full time income to replace your day job is quite another.
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010 @ 12:45 AM

Increasing Productivity When Working Online

When you are working online increasing productivity should be an ongoing goal and one you have targeted from the very start. As an entrepreneur you will face many responsibilities and challenges that will test your skills and patience. By facing these challenges and meeting your responsibilities your skill sets will naturally evolve and your personal productivity will increase as well! Along the way one challenge you will continually face is how to maintain and increase your work productivity. Remember, in most cases you will be working alone, so encouragement and assistance from others is not something you will be able to rely upon.
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Monday, November 8, 2010 @ 5:34 AM

Starting an Internet Business - What to Expect

When starting an internet business it is common for your enthusiasm and energy levels both to be sky high. The excitement and anticipation of achieving financial independence with your new business venture is understandable and justified. In fact this energy will be needed, especially in the early stages being there will be much to do. On the other hand maintaining realistic expectations also plays a significant role in your online success as well. Expecting too much and too soon can set you up for disappointment and even failure if your expectations are not monitored and managed correctly.
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Sunday, November 7, 2010 @ 1:31 AM

Blog Search Engine Optimization

Blogging has become a truly popular form of media for the sharing of ideas, the facilitation of communication and other methods of collaboration on the internet, and as a result it has generated a great amount of interest and buzz traffic to all kinds of different website. When it comes to creating and maintaining a blog from an internet marketing perspective, things like blog search engine optimization become vital because they pave the way to attracting new people to our web pages.
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Saturday, November 6, 2010 @ 7:03 AM

Tips for Improving Number of Blog Visitors

All bloggers are looking for ways that they can improve the popularity of their blog, in order to increase the number of blog visitors. They work hard to make their blogs popular, and spend most of their spend time doing this. The longer that you blog, the more little tips and tricks you will learn to improve your number of blog visitors. Here are some of the tips and techniques that you can implement when your focus is on improving the number of blog visitors for your blog.

Tip #1 – Use your own domain name. If you are serious about blogging, and about increasing your blog visitors, you should buy a domain of your very own. When you have your own domain name, it will show people that you have a professional approach toward blogging. Choose your own domain name that is short, relevant and easy for blog visitors to remember.

Tip #2 – Update frequently if you want to make your blog truly successful. You should be updating on a regular basis and you should be writing content that appeals to your niche in order to maintain your blog visitors. When you update more frequently, search engines and people will be able to find your blog more easily.

Tip #3 – Contribute within the community. Search online on Google and find forums and other outlets for communication and collaboration that correspond with your niche. Add the URL for your blog into your forum signature so that when you provide relevant and useful information to the community, people will feel inspired to travel back to your blog via that link so that they can see what else you have to say.

Tip #4 – Participate in social media websites at least for an hour a day, including Digg and StumbleUpon for example. Develop a solid profile on these websites and submit popular sites and stories that you find on the internet that relate to your niche. You can submit stories from your own blog as well, but only in the mix with stories from other websites if you want good results.

Tip #5 – Participate in blog directories, especially top blog directories that have a good page rank and get a lot of blog visitors. Submit your blog in the right niche category and the blog visitors will begin to roll in.

Tip #6 – Find the top bloggers that are operating within your niche and read their blogs. Comment in their blogs, leaving not spam but rather informative and relevant comments that work well with the content posted there. Make sure to include a link back to your own blog so that those bloggers can check out what you have to say.

See more: www.blogtrafficexchange.com

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Thursday, November 4, 2010 @ 1:56 AM

Earning Online By Not Doing Anything

Someone asked if it is possible to earn online through advertising by simply creating a website and then not really doing anything after that.

Don’t we all want that — to earn on autopilot without doing anything at all?

One of the first mistakes is thinking that you can create a website, leave it and not do anything yet continue to earn from advertising. I know of sites “abandoned” by their owners that continue to earn good advertising income, but these are sites where some great work was done early on (i.e. get optimized for the search engines and links developed).

I think it is possible if you have a page or a few pages of REALLY COMPELLING content that have legs — meaning without any work in terms of adding new content or promoting the page, you can still get constant stream of traffic and people are responding to the ads. This is possible if you have a viral website that attracts visitors like magnet who then share it to others. But that is not easy to pull off.

With millions of websites out there, your first work is to make people find your site. You cannot assume that you simply create a website, forget about it and people will find it — that’s not how the Web works. Without traffic, you won’t have visitors to view or click on the ads — which means no income.

When you create a site, you need to think of two major things:

  • content creation
  • traffic generation

If you don’t want work in terms of content (meaning you don’t write the articles or you don’t hire writers), then do something like MySpace or Digg or Craigslist where it is the users who actually generate the content. But even then, there’s a lot of work involved in terms of cleaning up the content and keeping the community in check and ensuring that the right technology can support the activities of the site.

If you want to earn online income, then you need to work on it. Maybe not “working hard” but more by “working smart.”

See more: www.powerhomebiz.com

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Tuesday, November 2, 2010 @ 6:20 AM

What Should be the Topic of Your Website?

The topic and focus of your website is a result of a number of factors:

What is your objective for creating the website? A website for personal expression is vastly different from a website created to change the way people do things. A website where you are happy to communicate to others your thoughts is different from a website where you aim to earn a million dollars (or more). A website where you share your knowledge is different from a website where you want to see people connect to each other. Your focus and goal will dictate the topic of your website.

What are your interests? After defining your objectives, you can use your interests as a way to narrow and select the topic for your site. If you want to earn money on the Web and you have an interest in pets, you can start an online pet accessory store or advertising-based pet care information site. If you want to attract a huge number of users and you love networking, then you can create the next-generation social networking website.

What are your skills and resources? The level of complexity of your website will depend on your skills as well as the size of your pocket. If you want a social networking site that can earn millions for you, yet you have no tech skills to program and design the website, and you’ve got no money to hire programmers and designers, then your website will remain just a pipe dream. If you can’t do it yourself, you need to have creativity to find the resources to enlist the help of experts to create and design your website.

What is your business model? If your goal with your website is to earn money, then the topic needs to lend itself to earning money for you. If you plan to monetize your website via contextual advertising such as Google Adsense, then you need to choose a high paying topic that attracts users that are responsive to ads.

See more: www.powerhomebiz.com

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Local Search Optimization Strategies

The Web may have no borders, but an increasing number of users are looking for products and services available in their local areas. Hence, it is important that you take time to ensure that local customers can find your business when they look at local resources.

Here are some tips on how to ensure that your business is visible in local search:
  • Make sure that your business is included in your local phone directories listing.
  • Many local directories use content from any of these three content aggregators: InfoUSA, Acxiom and Amacai. Check and update your business listing on these companies.
  • Submit your listings to local directories of search engines such as Yahoo Local
  • Include your listing in map search such as Google Maps Local Business Center
  • Update and check your listing in the top yellow pages and vertical directories. Use Local Search Guide to see listings of yellow pages and vertical directories
  • Optimize your pages to rank high in your main keywords as well as in your local area. A well optimized title could include your business name, keyword and location
  • Reach out to local bloggers who talk about your area and businesses in your area. Let them know about your business, and if possible, give them a sample of your products and services. Hopefully, they’ll like it enough to write a positive review about your business.
  • Find Web sites about your area (e.g. city guide and tourist information area). Check if there’s a way to have your site listed, even featured in the site. Consider advertising as well.
See more: www.powerhomebiz.com

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    Monday, November 1, 2010 @ 7:13 AM

    5 Essential Principles to Make Money Online

    How to Make Money Online? Whether it is because of the flagging economy or the lure of being able to produce some extra cash to augment their income, more and more people are trying to find ways to make money online.

    Many will undoubtedly succeed, but the fact is that the majority of Internet marketing newbies who have no real clue as to what they are doing will give up before they have even begun to do the work required to generate a decent online income.

    Which is a shame, really, since there are so many money making opportunities available on the Internet.  The main reason why most newcomers to the arena of online marketing fail to meet the expectations they have set for their businesses is that they have the wrong ideas on how online marketing is supposed to work.

    If there is anything that I have learned while plodding through this business as a newbie myself, it is that I will never achieve anything if I stick to certain misconceptions and don’t make the effort to try out ideas that are supposed to work.  The online marketing arena is a huge jungle and if you don’t have the right mindset to make things work for you, then you will only meet failure in the end.

    There are five lessons that I have learned the painful way as a newbie in this arena, and these are what I shall impart to you right now.

    1. Start with the Right Mindset

    The biggest mistake that newcomers to the business typically make is thinking that it doesn’t take a lot of work to make money online.  Sure, the sales page of the online marketing e-book you just bought says generating wealth with an Internet business is very simple.  However, you should never let yourself believe that it is not going to take a lot of work at all.  In fact, you’d be amazed at just how much time and effort you need to spend just to get things up and running.

    The thing is that if you want to earn some serious income with an online business, you had better be prepared to work for it.  The first six months will be the most crucial for the long-term survival of your business, and the amount of effort you put into it will determine just how successful your business will be in the long run.

    2. Never Work Alone

    Working online sometimes gives you that sense that you’re all alone in this game.  It may certainly feel like it, but that is one trap that you must avoid at all costs.  With all the work that you need to do to establish your online business, you will not be able to get much done if you work on your own.

    First, you need to find a mentor.  If the Internet marketing guru from whom you bought the system that you are using offers one-on-one mentoring, you should make a beeline for it.  You will never know what gems you can pick up from that kind of personalized mentoring.  But if you cannot avail of that one, you should scour the Internet for other learning resources as well as connect with other Internet marketers like you.  You can profit a lot from the exchange of ideas you will get from these interactions.

    Second, you should hire people to do some of the work you need to do.  For example, if writing is one of your weaker points, then you should hire a freelance writer to do your writing for you.  With all the work that you need to do to get your business going, you should learn to leverage your time by using other people’s time to get those tasks done.  Focus on what you can do and delegate the other tasks to the people you hired.

    3. Don’t Expect to Earn Something Out of Nothing

    All businesses require some sort of capital.  This is a business we are talking about, after all, and so you will need capital to get your business running.  If you are really serious about your business, do not hesitate to shell out some cash for the essential stuff.  At the very least, you should invest some $10 on a website domain and some more on the fees and salaries of the freelancers you will hire.

    There is no such thing as a free lunch.  I don’t deny that the idea of being a bum marketer, where you can earn money online without spending a lot as business capital, does work from time to time.  But the money that you will earn from being a bum marketer will come in trickles, not serious enough to make you wealthy but enough to get you some extra change from time to time.  If you’re only after some extra cash, then you can be a bum marketer.  However, if you want to generate a really decent income, prepare to make an investment in return.

    4. Don’t Spend for What You Can Get for Free

    Having said that you have to spend some to make some, you should also know that there is also some stuff that you can benefit from for free.  It is up to you to find out what these things that you need for your business that you can get without spending a dime.

    For example, if you want to make money online through blogging, you do not have to pay for a webhost provider for your blog if you cannot afford it.  You do not have to hire a web designer to make you a blog template, either.  Instead, you can try out free hosting services like Google’s Blogger and download some free templates.  Just buy a unique domain name for your blog and then point it to your Blogger account.

    5. Always Deliver Quality

    The most important lesson that you must bear in mind is that at all times, you should deliver quality – to your customers, to your team, and even to yourself.  Needless to say, you have to make sure that the products you have to offer your customers are impeccable in quality.  They should be worth the money you are asking as payment for them.  In addition to that, you should treat your team with fairness as well.  Pay them according to the effort they have given the work you assigned them; also, a little kindness goes a long way.

    Lastly, you should expect quality for yourself.  Remember that the success of your business lies in your own hands.  Give your business your all if you expect to get a lot out of it.  Never settle for less.

    See more: www.quickonlinetips.com

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