Do this & get viral marketing traff...

I’ve read them and I’m pretty sure you have as well  e-books.
If you can think of a topic you can probably guess that there is an e-book out there covering it.

Benefits of Giving Away E-books

If you’ve ever expected some sort of viral marketing traffic then you have to consider writing an e-book that you can give away as a bonus offer for your visitors in return signing up to your newsletter or blog feed. If you’re running a blog or any sort of site chances are that you expect decent traffic to come your way and if this is case you need to start writing your Free give-away e-book immediately. You could even give other webmasters the rights to give them away and in doing so you may create a viral marketing effect that can be a powerful part of your SEO Internet Marketing campaign.

If you’re asking yourself how this could happen I’ll tell you it’s very possible assuming that you employ the following suggestions in your e-book development stage. You have to make sure that you include live links of your web address on your e-book. You can make this happen by dropping anchored linked keywords within your article that readers can follow to your sites. It’s also recommended that you include e-mail contact information, and in some cases if appropriate you may even include your business telephone number in addition to any other information you’d like to share.

If you expect this to work it’s important that you keep in mind that your e-book cannot be garbage, it has to be something compelling, interesting and worth the readers time. It’s a difficult task because just like in every aspect of writing you have to capture your readers attention and keep them reading until they get to your links - if they find your book or the information you are sharing to be obsolete, full of ad’s and content that’s not worth it, this is the very impression they will have of you and your site. KEY IS: Write something worth reading and include links that will allow them to get to your site that will create new leads.

A free e-book does not need to be 100 pages long, you can create a simple 10 to 15 page e-book that assuming it’s good will generate long lasting viral marketing traffic. If you’ve branded your e-book with your logo or name, it can help to spread your brand across the web and establish you as an authority within your niche.

Imagine the tremendous and positive improvement to your traffic once you’ve created and published your e-book. In addition to providing your book to other webmaster you can also list them on e-book distribution sites that allow their users to download e-books and content of their choice, this will help to catapult that viral marketing effect we’ve talked about in the previous paragraphs.

Here is a list of the 3 reliable e-book distribution services.

FreeBookSpot

FreeBookSpot is an online source of free ebooks download with 4485 FREE E-BOOKS in 96 categories which up to 71,97 GB.

You can search and download free books in categories like scientific, engineering, programming, fiction and many other books. No registration is required to download free e-books.

Free-eBooks

Free-eBooks is an online source for free ebook downloads, ebook resources and ebook authors. Besides free ebooks, you also download free magazines or submit your own ebook.

You need to become a Free-EBooks.Net member to access their library. Registration is free.

GetFreeEBooks

GetFreeEBooks is a free ebooks site where you can download free books totally free. All the ebooks within the site are legal downloadable free ebooks.

Need more of these e-book providers - find a list of the 20 best websites to download free e-books here

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Google will remove your links, what you ...

I assume you all know how valuable search engines are for us bloggers and online business owners but there are some guidelines you need to follow if you want to stay in the search engines and continue to bring in the natural traffic.

There are some cases where Google had no impact on a bloggers success rate (John Chow) but that does not mean you will be so lucky. Make sure you follow the guidelines in order to keep your self ranking.

What’s going to get you banned and thrown out to the google curve?

Here’s a short list of possibilities.

Hidden Text
If you’re trying to outsmart the search engines by blending in links,keywords or text into the background and thinking that your getting away with it - your so wrong. Don’t do it if you want to continue to play.

Irrelevant Content
For “Adsense users“: don’t try to pump your blog or site with content that is irrelevant to your niche because you feel keywords in that niche pay high.

If your blog is mostly or only about technology and the Google Bots browse your blog and find irrelevant keywords like “swimwear” they are probably going to serve ad’s that relate to that category of fashion when your audience is probably not interested in swimwear at all.

If Google finds that you’re doing this just to maximize your profits on that particular key phrase you’ll probably end up penalized because Google’s ultimate responsibility is to their customer which are the advertisers - so it’s only fair.

Over Optimizing Penalty

Optimizing  is a great technique to improve your ranks in the result pages, however, even this method  has suggested guidelines that you must follow, if you wish to stay in the game.  It’s about ethics and doing it the morally right way.

Aggressive link building can get you penalized because when you do this, you come off as a spammer. You now how much you hate it when you get e-mail spam, so why do you expect the search engines to feel any different about link spamming?

How to avoid being seen as an over optimizer?

Discontinue your habit of link building using the same anchor text.
When building your links you should focus on using a variety of keyword terms. The best way to figure out if you’re overdoing it with a particular term is to use a “Back Link Analyzer Tool” and take a look at the percentage rate on each keyword on the report you get back.

Another tip to consider is to vary the type of keywords your using from Short Generic Keywords to the Long Tail Keywords. The long tail keywords are somewhat more direct and in most cases are more relevant to the user behind the search.

If you just started your blog, don’t over do the link building - it’s recommended that you do at least 3 to 4 natural links per week in the form of comments on blogs, forum signatures, articles etc. The key thing to remember is that this link building process needs to be a natural process and one done over time.

So you’re probably wondering what to do when you are done with the external link building?  this is the moment where you need to work on deep linking to your internal pages or articles that relate to one another. - for bloggers using “Wordpress” there is a great plugin that handles this task for you. (SEO Smart Links).

Cross Linking Penalty

How many blogs do you own? If you’ve been blogging for a while,chances are that your probably running more than one. Maybe those blogs are niche related and maybe they are not but if you are linking all of them together, chances are that Google has just categorized you as a link scammer.

It’s not recommended that you cross link all of your sites because whether you had the right motives to do it or not, you don’t want to answer an e-mail where you are being accused of this - The Big Daddy of Search Engines almost always wins these type of cases, don’t get on the hot seat and if you’ve done this (Cross linked your own sites), undo it right away before your bumped to the G curve.

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Using Generic Keywords? Dont!...

It took me a while to learn this but eventually I did and although it seems common sense from where I stand, its not. but after you read this article in its entirety you will learn why you should quit using the generic and short keywords in your online marketing and blogging campaigns.

The motivation behind this post comes from the idea that you guys have regarding keywords. Most of you guys believe that targeting one word keywords will get you more traffic than using the long tail keywords and that is just a lie. There are some cases where the short keyword will probably get a lot of traffic but its not the traffic you want.

Those guys that do research have determine that long tail keywords are more profitable than the short tail keyword and this is why:

If you are an Asian woman and you search for hair products on the search engines of the world you will probably get a ton of sites that cater to women that don’t have your specific hair type. You will probably browse the site, find that they don’t have what you need and you will leave not buying a thing, however, you have not given up yet. You now go back to the search engine and move forward to narrowing your search down by typing a long tail keyword that is more specific to what your searching for - “Asian Hair Products”. Now that you’ve found that site catering to your needs, you will probably end up buying that product since its exactly what you were looking for.

Buyers, tend to take time to type in very specific keywords related to their wants and needs, therefore, as a blogger, web site owner or designer you need to start thinking about using long tail keywords. It does not matter if you have an actual product to sell, or if your goal is to increase your reader volume the best way to accomplish the goal is to target the long tail.

In short folks who use generic or short tail keywords tend to be the researchers and the folks who use the long tail are the customers or the guys and girls that are probably going to stick around.

PS: If you use Long Tail Keywords when optimizing for the search engines you will realize that long tails are easier to rank for due to lower competition…

Did you already know this?, probably, and probably not but hey if you already did, doesn’t this serve as a reminder of what you should be doing.

Here’s a tool I personally use to help me find the long tail keywords - make use of it and good luck..

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

(oh and also check out this article: 101 Free SEO Resources )

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Search Engines - SEO...

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the method used when building websites or while running them that help the search engines to archive the sites in high position within the search engine result pages. There are various ways to optimize a site and each and every day these methods become a bit more dynamic and interesting based on how social media and online marketing evolve.

I know everyone has different views on search engine optimization - it’s become a bit complicated with so many ideas on what is ethical and what is not ethical in the search engine game -  I guess the simplest way to think of an ethical SEO technique is to always keep the user in mind. If you optimize keeping people in mind across the board then your employing a white hat search engine optimization strategy and the search engines will probably rank you well.

If your hoping to trick and cheat the search engines by spamming, and building web pages for the sake of links while damaging the users online experience then your probably employing black hat SEO techniques.

When you think of SEO you have to look at what you have (Your Site) and figure out: where you want it to be in the search engines,What keywords do you want to target?, What is your competition? among a few other criteria you need to follow. Once you’ve determined the answers to these questions then you have to follow a plan to get yourself there.

I’ve launched a few sites and for each one of them I’ve always employed some sort of search engine optimizing technique. My main goal for every site I launch is to land my links within the first three pages of the SERP’s(Search Engine Result Pages) and that should be your goal as well.

SEO is an extensive and continuously growing strategy but here are a few things you should focus on from an SEO perspective while building, launching and running your site.

Domain Names
It’s very important that you choose a good domain name; the best way to choose the appropriate domain name is choose something that is fairly easy to remember, it’s keyword relevant(make sure your main keyword is somewhere in the domain name), and finally make sure it’s easy to remember.

Keywords
Keywords are the meat and potatoes that surround search engine optimizing. They determine your ranking in the results therefore its important to keep in mind that choosing appropriate keywords is a crucial step in any SEO process.

Content Optimizing

Just like choosing the right keywords is important, dropping them on your pages at a decent frequency is one of the most important elements of SEO - this is what helps the search engines determine that your site is relevant and relates to the keywords your attempting to rank well on.

Link Building
Think of the days when you were in high school, the popular kids got the most attention out of all the students in the school. Search Engines kind of work in the same way; Search Engines will judge and rank your site based on all of the SEO elements above but the amount of quality inbound and outbound links to and from your site will help them to determine that you should be high on the search engine ranks.

The idea behind this concept is that if you have a good amount of good quality links to your website then your blog/site/content must be important within that niche. The end result and winning prize - a great rank in the results.

Do you Optimize your site for the search engines and if so how do you accomplish your SEO Goals?

for those that had no idea about SEO and have learned some basic principles behind it, it’s time to SEO the crap out of your site so that you may rank fairly well in the search engine results. Good Luck!

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20 Free Keyword Tools & Resources...

When you love online marketing you have to learn the in’s and out’s of this industry and one of the most important aspects of this business is how to improve your visibility on the web.

Using proper search engine optimizing techniques you can catapult your self to an increased ranking in the results pages of the search engines, however, you cant play the guessing game when trying to accomplish this goal, and this is why I have compiled a list of several and most importantly free Search Engine Optimization tools and resources to help you in your quest at improving your search engine rank.

Keyword Research

I always talk about the importance of performing research prior to rushing off and launching a site just because you’re excited about it - it’s important to determine which are the keywords that you will be targeting and these free resources below will help you achieve the task. It’s your choice if you want to prepare a tasty meal or if you want to forget some condiments and have it taste like cardboard.

1. Keyword Research Tool - Webmaster toolkit
2. Keyword External Tool - Google Adwords
3. Keyword Selector Tool - Inventory Overture
4. Keyword Suggestions Overture - SEO Chat
5. Website Keyword Suggestions - Webconfs
6. Keyword Suggestion Tool - Self SEO
7. Keyword Research Tool - GoodKeywords

Keyword density

Keyword density is another aspect of proper search engine optimizing, you don’t want to overdo the use of your keywords and you don’t want to under-do it either. Search Engines use a meter to determine your keyword density and these tools below will help you achieve a desirable and close to perfect keyword density.

8.    Keyword Density - SEO Chat
9.    Keyword Density & Proeminence - Ranks
10.  Keyword Density Analyzer - Keyword density
11.   Analyze Keywords Density - Google rankings
12.   Keyword Density Checker - Webconfs
13.   Keyword Density Analyzer Tools - SEO Book

Keyword Competition

As I’ve said before if you would’ve started the online thing several years ago, things would have been much easier but now you are faced with thousands of competitors so it’s great to have some free resources that will help you determine who your competition is and how saturated a particular keyword or niche may be.

14.    Free Competition Tool - SEO Digger
15.    Competition Analysis Tool - Seoscorecard
16.    Top Competitor Tool - Webuildpages

Free Search Engine Keyword Position Tools

Once you’ve done your keyword research and your competition analysis it’s a good idea to see if your ranking anywhere in the search engines for your chosen keywords - and the following tools help you to achieve this goal.

17.    Search Engine Keyword Position - SEO Chat
18.    Keyword Analysis Tool - Mcdar
19.    SERPS Position Checker - LinkVendor
20.    Website Position Tool - Rnk1

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Internet Marketing Industry Achievement...

Although its not exactly a huge milestone I consider it to be a pretty decent accomplishment;  I’m on page one of the Google SERP’s for my targeted keywords.

Internet Marketing Industry” & “Online Marketing Industry

When I started this blog over two years ago I remember the excitement and the passion I had for the concept, the idea and the direction of launching a blog targeted to frustrated and beginning online marketers.

I had zero followers, readers and better yet I didnt even have a mailing list to promote to.  The lack of readership and prescence did not deter me from launching and most folks warned against launching a blog within a niche that seems to be so saturated and overwhelmed with so called experts but do you think this matters to me? It really didnt.

Although I was not intimidated by the idea of competition drowning my concept and blog I did let the dust pile up on the blog.  Dont get me wrong its not because I was lazy or uninterested - it’s because I was spending most of my time building one of the most popular social networks and blogs within a Niche that I’d rather not disclose at the moment.

I raised those sites from the ground in the same manner I plan to grow this one so if you watch me closely you will soon realize the power behind effective and consistent internet marketing.

I have an idea of what online marketing consist of; heck I would even say that after three years of learning and applying i’m actually very good. - it’s no different than any other task as long as you’re educated and experienced on your niche.  Even if your not 100% knowledgeable yet - as long as you are in the mix by getting News updates, following the top bloggers within your niche you are a step in the right direction.

Shadow the behavior of those that have achieved your desired results and before you know it you will become an expert yourself with others desiring to be in your position - the truth is that I personally feel there is no secret - the “secret” is already out there for you to take a hold of - it’s in the style of writing, the visual effect, the copy of that sales page or blog, the back links the anchor text , the relationships you build- it’s all in your face so if you do your research and play your cards right  then I have no doubt that you will achieve the goal.

I wanted to show you two screen shots of the achievement we’re talking about here. I can now move on to my next niche specific target keyword.

Internet Marketing Industry Image

"Internet Marketing Industry" "SERP" Screen Shot Image

Online Marketing Industry

Online Marketing Industry

I achieved this result by using my favorite keyword research tool to determine what long tail and short keywords had the most and the least searches on “Google“.

After performing this niche market research I would then determine how much competition was out there for that particular keyword and if my findings determined that number was under 10K I would start my marketing efforts to rank on page one.

How do you rank on page 1?

it’s easy, participate in forums without spamming and make sure that you “naturally” include your desired keyword within the content that your sharing with the forum, if the forum allows for links within your post then include an anchor link  using your target keyword back to your site or blog - if they dont I would still recommend that you use your target keyword in the content and make sure to have the anchor text link in the signature area of your post.

The second step is to research which are the top 10 blogs within your niche and become an avid reader, and commentator - I will stress this - PLEASE DO NOT SPAM! it does not make sense - while you are there read the content, learn from what they have to say and reply with your feedback on that particular article - in the name section make sure to leave your “Target” keyword as the anchor text - so if your taret is “SEO” although its clear your name is not “SEO” type “SEO” in the name field so its the anchor link back to your site - even if that blog has “NO FOLLOW” it still helps those clicking on the link to determine what your site is about prior to getting there - it peaks their interest.

Another important steps is “Article Marketing“; write articles and submit them to the popular article directories out there - make sure to link back in the author resoure box with an anchor link including your targeted keyword, make sure the article is interesting so those reading can follow the link to your site - its not all about the search engines - try to get some of those readers to come over to your site and perhaps they may subscribe to your RSS feeds or Newsletters.

At the end of the day “Ranking” in the search engines is determined by many factors but I’ve found that the strongest factors is proper link building - if you have many links then your site appears important to the search engines and therefore deemed important in the ranks - its all about being consistent and doing it the right way - I feel you will waste more time spamming your way to the top then actually building your rank the ethical way - at the end of the day your site will fail to achieve the ranks if all your doing is spamming for links - impress your readers, have a profound effect on their thought patterns regarding your niche and you’re on the right path.

What methods do you employ when trying to rank for your target or desired keyword? have you found your methods to be effective and are they inline with the methods above?

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Are you Google Sandboxed?...

What is one of the most important things for an online business? If you ask me having a website would be a good start and once that’s covered I would move on to say that traffic is the most vital element to the success of an online business.

If you’ve been blogging or marketing online for more than 6 months then you may have heard this term time and time again “Google Sandbox” and if  you haven’t then I’m glad you’re here because its time that you learn of it.  If you’re anything like I was when I started you may cringe at the idea that there is actually a google sandbox out there specifically reserved for sites that google deems as useless. [is that fair?]

If i am building a business online and I’m sandboxed and denied my rightfully deserved rights to organic traffic then I would assume that this defeats the purpose of having business online.  If my online business front ends up in the “Google Sandbox” then this probably means that according to Google my site is not acceptable for the mother of the search engines and unless I pay for the traffic I’m screwed.

That’s the Wrong mindset!  First of all lets remember that Google is not the only fish in the sea there are other major search engines that will index you and drive traffic to your sites. Granted its understood that Google is the most popular of the search engines and its a huge benefit to be in their index but don’t panic if you feel you’ve been sand-boxed because the world doesn’t end there.

The fact remains that there is no real evidence that this “Google Sandbox” even exists so since its just a theorized rumor don’t even worry about it, however,for the sake of argument and of this post I will share this popular five year old theory.

How and When was this theory born? A few years ago, around 2004.

This idea surfaced because during one of the infamous Google updates of their index results databases, several webmasters took notice to the decline of their site rankings within the search engine results pages for their main targeted keywords or keyphrases.   Many sites including the famous ProBlogger was hit with the update declines that fed life to this theory.

With Research a pattern was discovered, and the pattern was tracked down to domain registrations that took place around March of ‘04 - the common trait was that sites purchased after this date range were affected by the “Sandbox Effect”. Why would decline in rank lead to the idea of the existence of a sandbox? because webmasters from the USA to “Tim-buc-To” took note that their sites were ranking poorly even for search terms that they optimized the life out of  - it just didn’t make any sense….but with future updates some sites were returned to their original rankings or close to the status they once held….

Either way, its out of your control - you have an idea of what bred life to this theory, now that you know I’ll give you this tool provided by google to determine if your site is indexed. If you note that it has been indexed just continue to work hard on your sites and continue to optimize and market your business or services because with the next google database update you may end up with the rank you are hoping for..

Now go see if your site is indexed:  Check My Status in Google’s Index

Another way to manually do this is by going to the search bar and type “Site:http://www.yoursitename[dot]com” <without the quotes.

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Domain Parking & Adsense...

I wrote an article last night when i heard about Adsense for Domains and I posted it up very quickly in an effort to share the news - but I recently read an article on DailyBlogTips that made me think about the overall effect of this new launch.

I first noticed the “Adsense for domains” program when I logged in to my own Adsense account and noticed a new link in the Adsense Setup Tab. According to Google its only available to USA publishers but should be going global pretty soon.

Domain parking has been a profitable niche for some marketers in the past, however,there were only a few options on domain parking service providers. These companies would serve the ad’s on our domains and in return would provide us with a very minimal amount of the “Revenue” earned on that particular site. Google just laid out another slap. These companies are going to be losing business now because we all know Google is well know for high payouts to their Adsense publishers so I would guesstimate that a large percentage of domain parking publishers swill be transferring this service over to Google Adsense for domains.

If you have domains, that your are not using; its time to put some Adsense up. You never know if you’ll make some good money, maybe not a fortune but I hear that you will probably earn more than sticking with the domain parking companies - at this point I guess its time to start testing this theory and see which player does better at the game. Google has a good track record, so lets see how it pans out.

I’ll be testing myself on a few undeveloped domains; i’ll let you know how it goes.

If you want to learn about other ways to monetize your domains click here

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