Let's go Article Marketing!

Now that you have a basic understanding of article marketing we can discuss its value as an internet marketing tool.

As I said yesterday I posted an article at two different article directories. The first one I selected was Ezine@rticles.com.They are rated number one by Alexa.  

Alexa is a company that rates article directories among other web related items.

I figured if I was going to try to get an article published I might as well shoot for the top. They accepted my submission and today they sent me an email. The email stated I had some errors in the text and the content was too biased and my hyperlinks went nowhere. They claimed the article was a promotion for a product or service.

The email was worded very kindly and even offered solutions to help repair the article.

I am not quite sure how I stepped outside their guidelines. Since I was still not sure what they didn’t like, (I didn’t add any hyperlinks) I was not able to correct the issue. I then sent another article in its place. I am waiting for the acceptance or rejection of that article.

I submitted the same article to GoArticles.com. My article was approved the same day needing no corrections. This is something you may want to keep in mind. GoArticles.com is also ranked highly by Alexa, but they apparently have differing submission requirements.

With that being said let’s look at the article directory itself.

Article directories allow users to search their sight for articles of a specific topic or niche. You then search for a keyword and they give you a list of results like any search engine. If you notice my article came up in the first page of results. Here’s where I missed the boat.

In my arrogance, I enjoy giving my daily blogs cute names. It’s fun for me and hopefully you enjoy it as well. So, when I decided to compose an article on the merits of blogging (To blog or not to blog) I decided to be cute and title the article; “To be or not to be…” an obvious play on words.

Cute, yes. But it doesn’t help people searching for information on blogging find my article. Instead it ends up with literary results. Live and learn I guess. 

Note to self: Use a title that conveys the content of the article. 

When you post an article to an article directory, you are giving permission for anyone who visits the site to; view, copy and/or re-post the article at another web site. 

I have seen postings from my blog copied to other sites. I was performing a Google search to see where my web site was listed. Searching for Eric’s Work at Home Reviews I got these results. I then opened the first few links, to my surprise this was one of the results.

So, it is not uncommon for someone to “borrow” your content. In the case of article marketing, that is the purpose. You want people to post your work at their site thus creating a back -link to your site.

I have read the more back-linking you have from site to site, makes it easier to receive a higher search engine ranking.  Again this is what we are trying to achieve.

In my case, since I blog daily I am not sure I need or have time to drive traffic from article directories. 

As I had reported I am now working part-time from my home setting appointments for an Independent Life Insurance agent. This coupled with commitments at church, my family, yard work, and two other web sites (yes, two others more on that tomorrow) writing an extra quality article every day and posting it at multiply sites may not be in the “time budget” for me.

Now If I blogged at my site once week or once a month, I would then write a short article daily and post it at as many article directories as I could. I could even use an edited version of my blog, but people are not going to visit your website to read what they just read. Not more than once anyway.

And keep in mind; at a site like mine I want people visiting daily and hanging around to click the banners. Fresh content helps keep that a reality. Regardless of what the “experts” say, I get a lot of traffic to my affiliate marketing partners every day from my banner advertising.

In summation, I see the advantage of article marketing. I can see how this would drive traffic to a site. If my site was simply put in place to market a product or service, article marketing makes perfect sense. It gives you the blogging platform without the need for a blog taking up space at your site.

At this point time to get it done will be the issue. Even if I was paying a service to post the articles daily, I would still have to find time to write them. Your case may be different. If I had more time or things change I may pursue the article marketing further, it does make good business sense.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR forum to post questions or request a review of a site. You can also email me directly at ewahr2011@yahoo.com

 

Peace.

Happy Holiday Re-post of definitions of words or phrases used in Internet marketing

Since it Easter Sunday and a beautiful day here in Southern Wisconsin, I will not be posting a new blog today. 

This is a re-post of definitions for words or phrases used in internet marketing. I wish you all a safe and happy holiday.

It has been brought to my attention that I may be assuming everyone understands the Internet marketing lingo I have been using daily. I would like to take today to provide definitions of some commonly used words in Internet marketing.

Blog - A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links.

Forum- an online community where visitors may read and post topics of common interest.

Internet Marketing - is an all-inclusive term for marketing products and/or services online – and like many all-inclusive terms, Internet marketing means different things to different people.

Website - A website, or Web site, is not the same thing as a Web page. Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, they should not be. So what's the difference? To put it simply, a Web site is a collection of Web pages.

Web page - A Web page is an individual HTML document. Web pages can either be static or dynamic. Static pages show the same content each time they are viewed. Dynamic pages have content that can change each time they are accessed.

Web Hosting - the business of providing the storage, connectivity, and services necessary to serve files for a website.

Link - a link (text or banner) to a site outside of your site

URL - stands for Uniform Resource Locator. The location of a resource on the Internet.

Hit - request of a file from a Web server.

Page view - request to load a single HTML page.

Impression - An impression is counted each time a Web page is shown to a visitor. Impressions are counted each time a page is visited by a user, so a single user can rack up numerous impressions for one website.

Unique Impressions - Unique impressions, which count only the number of unique visits to a website. For example, if one person views 3 pages on a website, while another person views 4 and and a third person views 10, their visits would total 17 impressions, but only 3 unique impressions.

Clicks - the process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.

Click through rate (CTR) - The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.

Conversion Rate - The percentage of visitors who take a desired action.The desired action can take many forms, varying from site to site. Examples include sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any activity beyond simple page browsing.

Pay per click (PPC) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying click-throughs.

Pay per Lead (PPL) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.

Pay per Sale (PPS) - online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying sales.

Banner - A graphical web advertising unit, typically measuring 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall.

Banner Exchange – A network where participating sites display banner ads in exchange for credits which are converted (using a predetermined exchange rate) into ads to be displayed on other sites.

Affiliate - the publisher/salesperson in an affiliate marketing relationship.

Affiliate marketing - revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.

Keyword - a word used in a performing a search.

Keyword Density – the number of keywords as a percentage of indexable text words.

Whew, and that is only some of the basic vocabulary you will need while Internet marketing. I will try to be more mindful of definitions as we move forward. If I missed anything, please let me know.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR forum to post questions or request a review of a site.

Peace.

Work at home success

As of today, I am completely satisfied with this webpage and my daily blog. Getting to this point took approximately 6 weeks. I like the look of the page , the length and style of the blog, I am happy with my affiliate marketing partners and I am very happy (and thankful) for the traffic.

The traffic being all of you who read this blog. The fact that the banner and text link ads are getting impressions means people are visiting the site. People visiting the sites means my efforts to drive traffic to the sites are working. I consider it a success. Now the job is to steadily increase traffic and sales.

The site has not created income to this point, but it is also has not cost me a dime to operate other than the electricity to run my PC and my time. I will continue to update the blog daily and review as many home based business opportunities as I can. Like I stated yesterday, I fully believe I will see income from my affiliate marketing efforts yet this quarter.

So, instead of talking about this blog everyday I will start to share the other sites progress. But, before I do that I want to share some of the changes and tips I learned in the last 6 weeks.

First of all, If you want to start a home based online business using no start up capitol, you need start by working online. Sign up with Amazon M-Turk and a good survey provider or two like MySurvey or Vindale Research and start getting paid for working online. The extra $20-$30 a month will pay for business cards or any monthly fees you have accuired.

This should provide you with plenty of income to get the ball rolling. Take advantage of free services. Google, Yahoo, Yola, Blogger all are excellent places to get these free resources.

You can even practice blogging at Squidoo and get critiques and tips from other bloggers. One of the best tips was to use smaller paragraphs or modules when writing a blog. Here is a paragraph from my second blog at Blogger.

Hello again,

  I spent some time last night going through the sites where I am registered to earn money viewing e-mails ads. The first thing I realized was, I do not like the "sales pitch" in general. Having spent a number of years in manufacturing I have heard "the pitch" a thousand times! Be it from supervisors looking for more resources to foreman trying to get parts or processes approved. "The pitch" always comes with quantifiers, all the reasons the part or process isn't perfect and never will be.
  Most of the ads I reviewed were merely a re-hash of the same tired cliches. It's like they are not even trying a full 50% of the time, just throw some text into the template and sit back and let the money roll in! They give little to no reason to even view the entire page. And the cars and women, come on ladies and gentleman, haven't we moved past using these two things to portray  happiness. It's getting insulting. I can see why some people are buying up these sites, re-working them and "flipping" them, they must be totally useless to the people who purchased them. Just because anyone "can build a website of their own" doesn't mean they should.  More on that later, it is something I am going to pursue later this month.

Notice how everything is bunched together, bland and difficult to read. Even though it has a few keywords, it is not optimized.

This is from a blog I posted last week.

I want the reader comfortable as they read. I also want the reader to come back. So I have an RSS link (Really Simple Syndication) so you don’t have to go to the site every day, it comes to you. I know in my case, if I have to “work for” or wait to view a website, I am moving on.

If you keep these things in the foreground, you can save yourself some time. Of course a blog based site is not your only option. Though, I think it is a very good solid option.

I also have a forum style site. This is a site designed to allow musicians to post questions and comments about musical equipment. It is in fact another “Tool” I am using for affiliate marketing. I use the site to post advertising for my affiliate partners. I chose the affiliate partners specifically aimed at the musician demographic (a specific group of customers). Visit the site and you can review this option.

Nice short modules, space between the modules and lots of keywords (I still higlight them for your benefit). These tips and many more I will share are secrets the System Sellers don't want you to know.

For the most part the System Sellers don't want to see you again after you have paid for the system unless you signed on to pay a monthly fee then they want to hear from you once a month. The sad fact is 80% of them don't have anything to sell. They are just sending you to another site and getting an advertising or referral fee.

The best example I ever saw was during my first year of community college. The local paper had a classified ad which stated; Send me $5 and I will send you a fool proof way to make money at home.

Since I was a fool at the time, I sent him 5 bucks (which is like 30 bucks today) and he sent me a letter.

The letter stated I should place a classified ad in the local newspaper telling people to; Send me $5 and I will send you a fool proof way to make money at home. And they should do the same. He sold me a system.

I am pretty sure in constituted mail fraud and didn't get invovled, but getting someone to send you $5 and all it cost you is a piece of paper, an envelope and a stamp is a great scam.

Next time I will discuss how to identify a scam.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR Forum to post questions or request a review of a site or, you can e-mail me directly at ewahr2011@ yahoo.com

Peace.

Simply SEO

Keywords (a word used in a performing a search) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO, the process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a web search) are tools that must be used to create and maintain a profitable website.

“choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a web search”. That's about as clear as mud!! Let's break it down and I will show you examples of each.

Keywords, a word used in performing a search. The majority of people searching for a product or service on the internet, will enter a complete or partial sentence as their search criteria. If someone is looking for a purse, they may enter the query “purses”. If they do they will get millions of hits relating to purses.

The search engine spiders (A spider is a program that a search engine uses to seek out information on the internet, as well as to index the information that it finds so that actual search results appear when a search query for a keyword is entered. ) will comb the web looking for any webpage with the word “Purse” in the content. More specifically the keywords in the header (a line or lines of text serving to indicate what the passage below it is about). Purse is the keyword. 

 

Here is what a search for Purses looks like. Purses search results 42,500,000 results returned .

If you have a couple of weeks you could sort through the list and find the purse you want. Or, you could be more specific. This time you search for Liz Claiborne Purses (that's what my wife buys) you get this.Liz Claiborne purses search results 728,000 results returned .

Still a lot more choices than you will want to go through. And those who have used the internet for shopping for any length of time know to be as specific as possible to narrow search results.

So, know we search for Liz Claiborne silver beaded evening clutches for less than $35 you get this.Liz Claiborne silver beaded evening clutches for less than $35 search results 30,600 results returned.

Notice how the amount of results gets smaller and smaller as the search query is more clearly defined.

But know the keyword issue becomes more complex.

 

Let's look at the query, Liz Claiborne silver beaded evening clutches for less than $35. 

 

Now, the spiders are looking for the keywords; Liz Claiborne, silver, beaded, evening, clutches and less than $35. And here is what they found in the first site listed. Cached results

The content of the page is Keyword rich. It has been optimized using those keywords in the body of the page. If you look at that page at the top you will see, Keyword results.

If you scroll down you can see where the keywords are highlighted in the text.

This section defines the keywords used in the search. You can access that information by clicking the Cached link in the search results. Link example .

I hope this helps to explain SEO. Another tool for SEO is Google AdWords Keyword Finder Click here.

The keyword finder does exactly what is says it does. You enter a search query and it tells you what keywords are most likely to be used in a search. You must be registeredwith AdWords to use this tool. Registration is free.

So, if we enter Liz Clairborne silver beaded evening clutches for less than $35 into the word or phrase box at the top we get this, Google AdWords. If you scroll down it will show how many results were returned for each keyword or phrase. Keyword count. 

 

I have a red box drawn around the highest counts. These are the keywords you want "sprinkled" throughout your header and content if you are marketing that particular purse.

For some reason this was the hardest thing for me to get my head around. It is like this is some deep dark secret only shared among internet marketing gurus. 

So now if you look at the search for my site you see. Simple Search.

Here is what is in the cache, Cache Results. 

 

Notice the highlighted keywords. Now go back and take a look at yesterdays blog looking only at the bold and or italicised words. How many keywords do you see?

Hopefully, the light bulb turned on at this point just like it did for me. Sorry we didn't get to a review today. I think this is a very important tool and I wanted to discuss it with a little more detail.

Like always, join and follow the blog, click the banners and text links to start making money. You can use the EWAHR Forum to post questions or request a review of a site or, you can e-mail me directly at ewahr2011@ yahoo.com

Peace.