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Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Some other Keyword Research Tools
One need to choose those keywords that are frequently searched for and which is in high demand, but not being already used by many other websites and competitors, and thus has low competition. There are a number of keyword research tools that can help you find them.
Apart from the Wordtracker which was already discussed in an other article, we have some more equally important research tools like the Overture, Google AdWords Keyword and Guidebeam.
Overture’s http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ keyword suggestion tool is free and much quicker to use than Wordtracker. It works more like the Wordtracker but doesn’t tell you how many websites are targeting each keyword phrase. For example if you type ‘Computer’, the Overture search suggestion tool will tell you that during the last month the word ‘Computer’ was searched, say for example 459550 times at Overture.Com. Similarly ‘computer game’ was searched 302210 times. Also, given one word it will tell you all relevant combinations of that word, which are based on actual searches done by people. If the word you keyed in is not a common search term then you will not get any results. It means that very few people have actually searched for that word during the last month.
Even Google Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaign and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends. Features of this tool include,
• Sorting the results of your desired keyword search by popularity, past performance history within the AdWords system, cost, and predicted ad position.
• Easy keyword manipulation where you can select a few keywords here and there or add them all at once.
• Searches for keywords present even in any webpage URL specified by your search. It can also expand your keyword search even further to include those pages that are linked to or from the original URL page.
• More keyword results are generated based on regularly updated usage statistics database. This helps you to get new keywords or phrases.
Guidebeam http://www.guidebeam.com/ is an interesting resource. Type in a phrase and it will suggest a large number of related searches. The numbers generated against each phrase are Guidebeam’s estimation of how relevant that phrase is.
These softwares are useful for researching how people search the web and then optimizing your own web pages so that more people find your web site.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing
Nowadays everybody wants to earn in the most convenient manner. Everyone seems to be looking for the easiest way to get the extra bucks they would need to fill in their increasing expenses. A lot of us are asking how can we earn extra easily and quickly. The answer is as simple as 2 words. Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing came about in the early stages of the 20th century. It was like a little spec when it started and it proved itself to be effective therefore it expanded and now everybody seems to be enjoying the benefits of affiliate marketing.
If you are just new to the industry you might be asking yourself: What is affiliate marketing? Well, derived from the word itself – affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company that has this product or service they would like the public to know about through the power of online advertisement or promotion. Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed.
Having this said, so what do you need in order to plunge in to the world of affiliate marketing? To tell you frankly, you might be surprised to know that it really doesn’t require much. Aside from a decent computer, you would just need an internet connection and of course a bit of your time to this chosen online business.
Where to start? Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed. That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online. The more traffic you have on that website – the better.
Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisement or promotion. Let’s say you have at least 5,000 visits a day in your website – that will have a corresponding equivalent to your affiliate marketing capability.
That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online. The more traffic you have on that website – the better. Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisement or promotion. Having this said, so what do you need in order to plunge in to the world of affiliate marketing?
To tell you frankly, you might be surprised to know that it really doesn’t require much. Aside from a decent computer, you would just need an internet connection and of course a bit of your time to this chosen online business. Companies will gladly pay certain individuals that could actually showcase their goods online through blogs, articles or in any manner that their products will be exposed. That being said, it is obvious that you should have at least a website online.
The more traffic you have on that website – the better. Since affiliate marketing is an affiliation between you and a certain company, their product or service must be known to the public through online advertisements or promotion. So if you want your affiliate marketing to be successful, you need to have an established website first then the rest will follow.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
7 Ways to Treat Visitors from Your E-mail Groups to Keep Them Coming Back
E-mail groups can be a rich mine of prospects. It’s only logical that you do everything you can to make sure that visitors coming in from that source are well taken care of so they come back to your blog or website again and again. After all, it probably took you a lot of time and effort to target your leads and tap your network of contacts in order to generate the listing from that e-mail group. Don’t let it go to waste. Here are 7 ways you can use to treat visitors that come from e-mail groups and make sure they come back again and again:
Have a working website
Nothing could be more frustrating and annoying to a visitor than attempting to get through to a website that hangs or simply freezes. If you want visitors coming from e-mail groups to stick around or come back, make sure your website or blog delivers.
Check your website for general operability and use. Do graphics take too long to load? Perhaps it’s best to switch to an image with a lower resolution or change the images altogether. Are there dead links? It’s probably time to do a periodic site repair. Is the site troublesome? Perhaps it’s time to overhaul the whole site or switch to an account with your ISP that can accommodate your site’s demands.
Make sure your site can handle the traffic
Traffic can be a problem, particularly if you’re on a shared site or free blog. Ultimately, it all boils down to server and processor limitations, so it’s a good idea to check if your server has the memory and processor capacity to handle a surge of traffic coming from your e-mail groups. Although blog platforms and most sites are optimized to handle any traffic surges, it’s still best to check.
Know your visitors
Granted that e-mail groups are generally easier to ‘read’ and categorize than generic listings, it’s still best to determine certain tendencies that each group has. To do this, you’ll need to spend some time analyzing the figures and reports from your blog or website.
Check your most popular entries – those write ups that have generated a spike in traffic, read visitor comments, discussion threads and posts and check your stats regularly. If you receive e-mail messages from your e-mail groups, you might want to check their content for clues. Familiarizing yourself with your visitors will allow you to offer better content and service and approach them on a more personalized level.
Interact
Don’t make your visitors feel that they just landed on a deserted planet when they visit your website. Make sure that you reply to their inquiries, comments and messages. Go beyond the usual ‘Thanks for your comment’ or ‘Come back for more info’ posts. Read their messages and post replies that encourage more interaction.
Have a segregated group? Offer relevant content nevertheless
Relevant content is essential to ensuring that you treat your site’s visitors well. Regardless of how diverse your e-mail groups are, it’s essential that you still cater to their unique interests and needs. Check your content because this is how you’ll win their hearts and loyalty.
Always offer a selection
Variety makes for an interesting blog or website. Even if your site has a theme, make sure you offer other content that may be directly or indirectly related to the main subject.
Practice politeness
Political correctness may be overrated for some but politeness is here to stay. Always treat visitors that come from e-mail groups with respect. Avoid writing insults or leering comments. Remember that people are entitled to their own opinions and their right to express themselves is protected by the law.
You may not agree with what they say but hey, it’s a democracy. And that’s exactly the reason why you enjoy the privilege of maintaining your own website in the first place. So lighten up and treat your visitors with respect. Who knows? You could even build a stronger e-mail group list in the process.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Creating A Sellable Product
Many marketers have created or acquired products that they thought would sell well and, in their enthusiasm, set up everything from sales letters to websites to getting traffic. However, a lot of these marketers have forgotten the single most important factor that will affect their product sales – the “sellability” of the product.
When you begin creating products or buying rights to a certain product to sell, the most important factor you must take into account is the demand of the product. Do people want your product? It is simply stupid to waste a month’s time preparing a product, setting up the website and required sales techniques only to find that people do not even flick an eyebrow at your product!
Your final goal is to deliver the product to your customer and collect his or her money. In order to do this, you must make sure your customer wants to buy your product in the first place. How do you find out if they want your product? Simple. Just ask! Ask in forums related to your niche. Hold a survey or public poll. The Internet is a flat playing field, and you have the power to reach just about anyone in the world who has an Internet connection.
Let’s say you have this brilliant idea on creating a step-by-step instruction on how to cook Malaysian food. First, you must find out if anyone is interested (or even heard of) Malaysian food. To do this, go to a food-related forum and ask tactfully if anyone would be interested in learning Malaysian cuisine. Do not ask blatantly whether anyone would like to buy an ebook with instructions on how to cook Malaysian food, or you might be in danger of being accused of spamming.
On the other hand, you can give out a few samples of your Malaysian recipes to test the waters – see how the forum members react to them. If they show enthusiasm for learning more, then you definitely have a market in this. If they show no interest, then it is time to look for a new idea to market. You save time in the long run because you don’t have to find out the low demand for your product the hard way.
If your idea is welcomed by the forum members you surveyed, you can go ahead and compile your extensive ebook on cooking Malaysian food because there is interest in the information you possess. Where there is interest, you can easily build up desire for your product, and with desire (plus good marketing), your purchases will arrive naturally!
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Can Article Marketing Help Your Business
Can article marketing help your business? The answer is yes because not only are you able to post your articles for free but you get to reach a specific audience that is interested in your product or service.
Article marketing can help your business the minute you submit these to different article directories. If these are approved for posting, people will be able to visit your site or may want to get in touch with you as they click the link or look at the resource box.
The resource box is usually found at the bottom of the web page. Here, writers can put their name, website and email.
If your article had a significant impact on the reader and they would like to post your article in their websites, they can do so which means more people will be able to see your work without you having to do anything.
Articles that are posted in directories usually ask you for keywords so this can easily be found when someone visits the site. These keywords are also given to search engines so if people type it in, your article will also appear and they will be able to view it.
Another way of getting people to see your site is giving this in the form of a report or e-book to potential customers. With all the information there, that person will surely want to know more and get in touch with you in the future.
People who are serious about article marketing have to venues where the articles can be displayed. The first is high traffic distribution sites while the second is submitted to highly relevant niche publishers. The difference between the two is that although the second will not be read by many, it will be easy for those who run this site to refer qualified visitors to the author.
It doesn’t matter if the article you are writing about is for a small, medium or large business because there are ways to promote it. For instance, if your article is for a small restaurant, you should put in the title something related to the location of the establishment. The same goes for the medium and large scale business. The key here is to come up with a catchy title that your audience can relate to.
Of course there are other ways of promoting your business such as paying for pop up ads and meta-tags. But why would you spend when you can get this for free? So, take advantage of this free marketing tool and see what it can do as it has done for others. You surely wouldn’t want to pass up on the chance so write something about your business or get someone to do it for you.
Is article marketing better than conventional print publications? The answer is yes because people will easily find your article by typing in some keywords. Print publication on the other hand is difficult because you will have to browse through how many back issues of newspapers and magazines just to find it.
Also, conventional publication is only relevant to the time it was written. The online form will be there for many years ahead as this information is stored somewhere in the cyber space. Just make sure this is updated if something new comes along so you are sure that article marketing is able to help your business.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Hits and Earn: Hit per Sale Ratio Affiliate Program Decisions
Congratulations! You have gone through the grueling task of deciding whether or not to try your luck with affiliate marketing, choosing the products you would be promoting, and establishing your affiliate marketing sites. The first few dollars have managed to come marching in, and you think it is enough. I know you are fed up with decision making and would rather just wait for the money to flow, but in order for you to succeed more, you have to make more decisions: that is what businesses are all about.
One of the best tools you can use to aid you in your affiliate program decisions is the hit per sale ratio. What is hit per sale ratio? Everyday, a number of unique individuals visit your site. Each unique individual is called a “click.” However, out of the hundreds, nay, thousands who visit your site, only a handful end up purchasing your product. This handful of people is called your “sales.” A hit per sale ratio is the number of hits you must get in order to get one sale. To calculate, simply divide all of the hits you get in a day by the number of sales you get in a day, and voila! You have the hit per sale ratio of your affiliate marketing sites!
But how, you ask, do you get anything important out of a simple number? Well, knowing your hit per sale ratio and making informed affiliate program decisions based on that is one of the best things you could ever do to elevate your affiliate marketing enterprise. You might find yourself wishing you had a higher hit per sale ratio by either having more hits everyday, or having more sales out of your current hits. You could actually choose from a million solutions out there, but in this article, the liberty has been taken to discuss two of the most logical affiliate program decisions you can make and to which a lot of other affiliate marketers can attest to.
ADVERTISEMENTS
Ads are great if you simply want increased hits, which can lead to increased sales, everyday. You should take note, however, that since you are working on increasing your profit, you should never shell out more cash than you can afford (you might especially be tempted to bet all or more than your earnings when you discover that the ads you pay for are significantly raising your profits). Do a simple computation of how much money you can spend on these advertisements, and base your decisions on these.
For example, if you have a total of 300 hits per day, to which only 5 are ending up in sales, which means it takes 60 hits before you could establish sales (this is your hit per sale ratio). And if each sale gives you a profit of $25, it means you are earning $225 per day. This is the maximum amount you can spend on advertisements. To play it safe, pay for something that is significantly lower than your current profit so that when your ads prove to be worthless, you still have a bit of cash to take home.
So let’s say you made the decision to spend $100 bucks on ads. That leaves you $125 assured take-home money, which isn’t half as bad as taking home nothing. Let’s say your $100 ad doubled your total hits per day, and thus, doubling your sales (from 5 sales to 10 sales). That would mean that you have a $450 figure as your total sales. Subtract the amount of the ad, and you have yourself a total profit of $350. Not bad, eh?
PAY PER CLICK PROGRAMS
Pay per click programs are programs you could establish with search engines for your products to appear on top of searches. You are bidding per click here (for the keywords you have chosen), and this means those who bid highest find themselves on the top of the food chain. This is a relatively tricky business, so don’t get caught up in false hopes.
Now, to our calculations. Supposing you have a hit per sale ratio of 60, and a profit of $25 per sale, like the last example. In order to know the total amount you can risk on bidding, simply divide your profit per sale by your hit per sale ratio. That leaves you with a $0.40 figure. Again, do not risk this entire amount into bidding. You would do well to bid half of your safe value just so you can still be reassured of a bit of profit even if this program does not work out. A $0.20 bid per click shouldn’t be bad enough.
You would find some affiliate marketing enterprises bidding dollars for each click. DO NOT DO THE MISTAKE OF FOLLOWING THEIR STEPS. Instead, find a way around them by bidding on different keywords. Always keep your profits in mind.
However, in the world of affiliate marketing, increasing your profits isn’t as easy as simple arithmetic. You have to weigh your options well, and no one could ever teach you that as good as experience can. Try your different options as well as you can, make smart and informed decisions, and if you work hard enough, you might find yourself singing happily all the way to the bank.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Must Have Features Your Web Site
Just don’t focus on the home page, keywords and titles.
The first step to sales when customers visit your site to see the products they were looking for. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site or make them buy. The customer having visited your site, now ensure that he gets interested in your products or services and stays around. Motivate him to buy the product by providing clear and unambiguous information. Thus if you happen to sell more than one product or service, provide all necessary information about this, may be by keeping the information at a different page. By providing suitable and easily visible links, the customer can navigate to these pages and get the details.
Understanding Your Target Customer
If you design a website you think will attract clients, but you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy, it is unlikely you make much money. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard storefront. You can send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. Ask them about their choices. Why do they like your products? Do you discount prices or offer coupons? Are your prices consistently lower than others? Is your shipping price cheaper? Do you respond faster to client questions? Are your product descriptions better? Your return policies and guarantees better than your competitor’s? To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple contact form with name, address, age, gender, etc. when they purchase a product.
Does your website give enough contact information?
When you sell from a website, your customer can buy your products 24 hrs a day and also your customers may be from other states that are thousands of miles away. Always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website, complete with mailing address, telephone number and an email address that reaches you. People may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. Also have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online provide enough options like credit card, PayPal or other online payment service.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
4 Ways to Promote Your Blog Using E-mail Listings
When it comes to survival in blogosphere, it’s all about connections. All those links and good word thrown in by happy and loyal readers and visitors do wonders for promoting your blog and spiking its traffic. And then, there are those e-mail listings – e-mail addresses and names of people who just might be interested in becoming regular recipients of information and news from you. If you want to give your blog a fighting chance, here are 4 tips on how to promote your blog using e-mail listings:
Target, target, target.
If you have to start promoting your blog now, then start right. Carefully determine your ‘market’ – the type of readership you want to focus on and the type of visitors you want to bring in. This can vary greatly, depending on the main theme of your blog.
Look at your main subject and the sub-topics you regularly write about. Who would want to read your blog on a regular basis? What kind of topics would they want to find in your blog? Once they find their way to your site, would they stick around and look at your other entries?
Would they participate in any polls, discussion boards and forums you might offer or at least leave a comment? Furthermore, would the people in your e-mail listings be willing to promote your blog to others or mention it on their own blogs? With a targeted e-mail listing, the answer to these questions is a resounding yes.
The point here is simple: the market for your blog is already out there. It’s now up to you to let them know who and what you are and where they can find you. By focusing on promoting your blog to highly targeted e-mail listings, you can avoid marketing to that segment of blog visitors that: a) are totally uninterested in what your blog has to offer, b) are only partly interested and cannot be relied on to stay for long and c) have vague interests and may or may not be willing to participate or sign up for your promotions.
Offer relevance at all times
If you are unable to use relevance in your invitations, it will be like throwing thousands of invitations to a violin concerto in a gym full of wrestling fans. You probably could hit a few bull’s eyes and some might be even willing to give your invite a try but the meager results will not compensate for the sheer effort and resources you will be using.
Avoid wasting your precious energy by ensuring that when you promote your blog using e-mail listings, it will be relevant enough for the recipients to respond positively to.
Be clear about your motives
The people who belong to your e-mail listings may be very familiar with the industry by now. When promoting your blog, make sure you state in clear terms what the blog is about, what subject(s) will be offered and how they can respond.
Don’t hide behind vague terms or try to be mysterious. Remember that your e-mail list has plenty of other options out there, blogs that are willing to state their offerings in clear, understandable language.
Allow your e-mail listings the freedom to opt out
So maybe you’ve garnered some terrific responses from your initial foray into opt-in subscriptions with your e-mail listing to promote your blog. Does that mean risking a percentage of that number to unsubscribe by offering an opt-out option? Definitely.
Allowing new members obtained from your e-mail listings to opt-out is not only polite, it also shows professionalism on your part. Withholding the opportunity for subscribers to unsubscribe is considered rude and makes you seem desperate for readers.
If you choose this method of retaining your readers, you risk being ridiculed in the industry. If word gets around, you could risk losing even more potential leads for your e-mail listings. To gain respect and eventually, a loyal following for your blog, promote it with your visitors’ interests in mind.
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Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
What is Article Marketing
What is article marketing? It is a form of advertising wherein a business hires a writer or does it themselves to write short articles in the hopes that this will promote their business. These articles are made for distribution and publication which means this can viewed by just about anybody both in the print and online form.
So people will know who wrote the article, at the bottom there is usually a bio box and byline which shows the references and contact person of the one who wrote it. If the reader liked the article so much, they can get in touch with him or her which, translates to increased sales.
Article marketing has been around for quite awhile. Some say this was first used when mass print became available. In the print form, this type of advertising was used by entrepreneurs as a means of obtaining free space. This is given to a newspaper free of charge in exchange for the business’ contact information with the article. Most newspapers are happy to accept this kind of arrangement because their budget was very limited in compensating writers for their work.
The setup is not that different for online article marketing because writers may post their work in different websites as well as put it in their own. Articles that are posted elsewhere are known as an article directory.
The reason why articles posted in such sites are free is because the directory owner puts advertisements on the side and collects revenue from it. As more traffic is achieved, both the directory owner and the writer gain something from it.
Some websites give the writer the option of choosing the kind of advertising to be displayed on the page. If you don’t like the options, you can always go for the page without any advertisements.
There are differences though between printed and online article marketing. For one, it is much faster to look for a certain article online because keywords are often used for search engine optimization. This means if you are looking for a certain topic, you will be able to see what you are looking for in just a matter of seconds.
If you think that the articles posted can only be seen in sites such as www.ezinearticles.com or www.about.com, think again because some have now used social networks to their message across. Examples of sites include Facebook, LinkedIn and Friendster. This strategy is known as Web 2.0 generation.
Some people say that the rise in the number of people who use article marketing has a negative effect because it has brought down the quality in the articles written. To prevent this from happening, you have to post articles that are relevant and informative.
Article marketing is just one way of promoting a service or product. If you don’t have enough money to market it using other means, this will be a good way to get started. In posting elsewhere or in your own website, the most important thing to do is to use relevant keywords so it will be easy for visitors to see your site.
For that, you have to think what words will a person likely type to see your site. If you are able to figure that out, it won’t be long before you will get a lot of traffic which translates to additional sales to your business.
Posted in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
Monday, August 25th, 2008
Keyword Density
Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn’t be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.
If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.
Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.
Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords, by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%
The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5%, to get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it.
Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.
Simple steps to check the density:
• Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.
• Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and click ‘Select All’. Now go to the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Word Count’. Write down the total number of words in the page.
• Now select the ‘Find’ function on the ‘Edit’ menu. Go to the ‘Replace’ tab and type in the keyword you want to find. ‘Replace’ that word with the same word, so you don’t change the text.
• When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.
• Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Remember: Kabonfootprint is the SEO Parrot
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