Building Mailing Lists, List Building, Social Media, Niche Marketing

If your business website doesn’t have a blog, get one. A blog, if done right, can act as a direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimize it to be found and ranked well in the search engines. These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers or Hx tags), the links, the links’ text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your site, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is the process of creating links (or causing others to create links) on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you’ll need to understand are related to site content and internal links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this kind of new content. You don’t need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn’t be static. It should grow over time. And the fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in the search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your internal pages as well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page’s rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your product page and, if all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site’s pages (besides the home page which is given a little extra weíght).

Now let’s consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (if only that could be true!) and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor’s site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things were equal, his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it’s so easy to use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don’t know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you’ll still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let’s say your product page for instance, you’re now building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing back to your other important pages that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you’re giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffíc and repeat visitors you’ll get.

Remember that people really don’t care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you must have the blog on your business website’s address (or domain). For example, if your website address is http://www.yoursite.com/ then your blog should be located at http://www.yoursite.com/blog or http://blog.yoursite.com/

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get additional traffic. You’ll get direct traffic from your posts, which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And, you’ll get indirect traffic from your other site’s pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You’ll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new chance to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts on your site, thereby boosting those pages’ rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn’t have a blog, go get one.

About The Author
Jason O’Connor is a Web business and marketing professional who produces The Net Gazette, a free online Web business and marketing periodical. The Net Gazette covers topics that range from blogging for business to Twitter. Read the September edition or visit the main website at: www.thenetgazette.net

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Best Practices for Freehosts

Google has made some recommendations for “best practices” for sites that allow users to create their own sites. They give the examples of their own Google Sites and Blogger. So in other words, if you run some type of site that allows users to make their own pages, you may want to pay attention.

1. Make sure your users can verify their website in website management suites (like Webmaster Tools).
2. Choose a unique directory or hostname for each user.
3. Set useful and descriptive page titles.
4. Allow the addition of tags to a page.
5. Allow your users to use third-party analytics packages
6. Help your users move around
7. Help search engines find the good content from your users.
 

When Google says, “help your users move around,” they mean let your users access their data. This is a concept that Google has become very big on. As you may have read, Google has started a group called the Data Liberation Front to address data portability, and has created a site dedicated to instructing users on how to move their data to and from the company’s various products. Basically, Google is suggesting you follow suit.

When Google talks about helping search engines find you users’ content, they mean help the crawlers. “Help us find users’ content using XML Sitemaps,” says Greg Grothaus, Staff Software Engineer on Google’s Search Quality Team. “Help us to steer clear of duplicate versions of the same content so we can find more of the good stuff your users are creating by creating only one URL for each piece of content when possible, and by specifying your canonical URLs when not.”

These may not seem like issues that a lot of people would have to worry about, but you may be (or maybe not) surprised at how often start-ups come and go, which have sites that allow users to create content. Perhaps following these guidelines would cater to an increased chance for a successful platform. More information on the guidelines can be found here.

 
About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Twitter: @CCrum237

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Hi All… I’m not sure if you were one of the many who was waiting in anticipation for Mike Filsaime’s new CPA Network release ‘Affiliate Jump’, but I was. From Mike’s ad video, to the leaked video sneakpeek site and early “Charter Member” signup, the idea was something that I thought would work well with my business profile. As I kept refreshing my browser window on the YouTube link Mike sent out (to see the comments people were leaving), and while I was waiting for the early page charter member signup to start, I started to see other people bring up thoughts that I also was having about this new CPA network.

The main concern, and I think is a legitimate one, is the dreaded “duplicate content” pages … 100′s of them. From what I see, AJ members can choose a niche market, merchants from that niche and then a background template. If several (probably several 100), choose the same merchants and layout design, won’t that be duplicate content in the SE’s eyes??? Maybe I’m wrong, what do you think?

The other downer to the program is that for the “advertised” fee (which is a monthly fee), you only get a few choices. Pay more, get more … Just looks like your bottom line gets cut a bit after the hefty monthly charge into a few targeted niches.

If I’m wrong, please let me know. It would be interesting to hear from some of the new Affiliate Jump member’s to see what their thoughts are thus far …

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The short & sweet version…

A must have in your marketing arrsonal is a PayDotCom account. PayDotCom gives you options to either market your own products or offer others products throught your site or PPP. PayDotCom is also integrated with your PayPal account and is one of the worlds largest and fastest growing online marketplaces cataloging thousands of products and services (both digital and physical products).

If You’re A Vendor …

Sell your products and services through their online marketplace, and let PayDotCom take care of all your affiliate needs. All while getting paid instantly to your PayPal account (no waiting 30 days).
PLUS, over 600,000 affiliates are ready to promote your products now.

Advantages of PayDotCom are:
•Purchases pay instantly to your PayPal account.
•Sell physical products and Digital Goods
•Collect Subscriptions for your service or membership sites
•Get Paid Instantly
•No Pre Approval
•Stats Tracking
•Promotional tools for your affiliates
•Create a new product line in 60 seconds.

To use PayDotCom you just:
•Be a free member of PayPal account.
•Signup for a free account at PayDotCom.
•Set up your product or service to sell in less than 60 seconds.
•Add our “Buy It At PayDotCom” button on your web site.

PayDotCom will then:
•List Your Product In Our Marketplace Which is Seen By Millions Each Month.
•Provide real-time access to your custom “Thank-You” page.
•Enable our massive affiliate base to promote your products.
•Enable you to recruit an army of affiliates to promote your products.
•Provide you and all affiliates with real-time sales reporting.
•Provide you and all affiliates tools and stats to track all your campaigns.
•Provide you with a MASS pay file to pay your affiliates using PayPal account.

PayPal now allows any of their members to use Mass Pay regardless of their country.

Sign Up is also free!

================================

If You’re An Affiliate …

You can promote products through their marketplace and earn commissions (between 5% to 80%), as an affiliate. The PayDotCom members area allows you to track your clicks, sales, and conversions. Sign up is free!

Earn Money
You can earn sales commissions up to 80% by linking your customers to any of our products and services in our marketplace. Sign Up now for free and start earning commissions today!

Promote
With PayDotCom you can earn income by promoting our product links to your customers or by placing links on your website. Use the Marketplace to find products and services that will be of interest to people who visit your site.

Under each product or service in the marketplace you’ll see a description of the affiliate program. Just click on the description to promote that product or service.

Tools and Stats
You can get all links and the promotion tools from the Vendor’s affiliate tools when you select the product. Then you can track all your stats.

Get Paid Your Commissions By PayPal
The Vendor will pay you your commissions each month by mass pay to your PayPal account or by check.. The Vendor chooses how to pay you. You must have an account with one of those programs to get paid if the Vendor does not choose to send checks. Please note the Vendors preferred payment settings when joining an affiliate program.

PayDotCom’s fee to the Affiliate is $0.50 to $1.50 for each transaction (Based on the sale price of the product/service sold.) The Vendor’s account will automatically deduct this amount from your commissions each month. This fee will then be paid to us by the Vendor, on your behalf, at month close (at no cost to the Vendor.)

So sign up now for free and start promoting your products OR start earning money promoting others products.

CLICK HERE to see what Michael Cheney and others have said about PayDotCom

View this article at goarticles.com

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Before you can begin building any type of online business, there are a few essential steps that must be done.

First is registering a domain name. A domain name is your address, your mark on the Internet. I suggest getting a domain name that is easy to remember, that relates to the market you are targeting, and most importantly is easy to maintain and is affordable. It is also wise to use keywords that pretain to your “niche” within the name if possible.

There are several placed to buy a domain name, I recommend DirectGlobal Domains. They offer several domain extensions to choose from and currently sell .COM names for under $8 USD for a year, with specials sometimes down to $1.99 USD per year.

Next step is purchasing and setting up a web hosting account. There are many hosting companies to choose from, all offering different pricing and discounts for their hosting packages. I suggest comparing hosting services and pricing on several before signing up. A few you may want to look at are Host Gator, Just Host or for hosting several domains, WebHostingBuzz (Get 50% off their hosting plans when you use coupon code “ICE”).

You now need to decide whether you build/create your own website or landing page(s), use a pre made web template, or use a professional web design service. There are also services like WebBizBuilder which will allow you to design your own site easily using an online step by step process which already includes hosting.
(I also do web design and would be happy to talk over what you need, budget and so on …)

If you choose to “do it yourself”, you’ll need some various web tools. A few of these tools include an FTP program (to upload/download your files to the Internet), some design software like Adobe DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Contribute … (to create/edit your web pages, design and create web graphics).

Before you upload your pages/site to the Internet, you should already have a Merchant Account. A good one to use is a PayPal Merchant Account. PayPal is accepted and trusted by many and is easy to impliment.

Pretty much the only thing left to do is find a good product or products to promote. If you do not have your own to offer your customers, try signing up for a PayDotCom or ClickBank account. Another great place to find good stuff to promote and/or give away for free is with Jeff Johnson’s affiliate program.

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I’m currently redoing (for the 3rd time) this blog’s database and updates. Hope to have it back up by tomorrow

Thx