How To Get Free Advertising By Giving Away Online Content
October 14, 2007
Giving away content is a powerful way to get free advertising. For example, give other people permission to use your article on their web site or in their e-zine. The resource box at the end of your article acts as an ad. In return, you get free advertising. It’s a win/win situation for both you and the people that need the extra content.
There are many forms of free content. It could be articles, reports, news stories, e-books, e-zines, e-mags, virtual e-mail courses, press releases, web books, etc.
You can take it a step further and make giving away content an even more powerful way to get free advertising. For example, give your free e-book to one person and allow them the rights to also give it away. Do you see what I’m leading up to? Let’s say only 20 people download your e-book. Those 20 people may give away your e-book to 20 more people. That’s a total of 400 people that have seen your ad in the e-book. And it just keeps multiplying!
Tips to Protect Data Loss
October 13, 2007
Tips to Protect Data Loss
by: Jowyne Leong
Prevention is always better cure. In order to avoid data loss situation, you could observe the following steps:
1. Use an Anti Virus software and keep it updated
Antivirus is designed to protect you and your computer against malicious computer virus. Some virus infections can delete, modify your data secretly and cause your computer to crash. So be sure to update your Antivirus software with the latest patch and signature files for maximum security.
2. Protect against power surges with an UPS
An uninterruptible power supply protects your computer and data during a power surge or failure. The spare battery in the UPS gives you ample time to save your documents and shut down Windows properly so that you don’t lose any files or damage any hardware components.
3. Keep your machine in a dry, shaded and dust-free area
Never leave your computer near places where it is directly exposed to rain, sun or humidity. Such conditions have the tendency to cause rusting and damage to your hardware parts.
4. Do not attempt to repair or open up your computer without assistance
Website Woes: Top Five Offenders
October 12, 2007
I see a lot of mistakes, but here are the top five offenders you need to correct to give your site a boost.
Bad Title. Look at the title for each page. The title shows in the top bar of your browser. It is also what shows when you set a favorite or bookmark a site. Plus, the title is what shows in the search engine results. So you want your page title to be a “headline” - something that will make people want to click on it.
Give every page a different title according to its content. Include your keywords or key phrases in the title. Remember, people won’t want to click on your company name, unless they’re looking specifically for you. Instead, they are more likely to click on key words or phrases that reflect what they’re looking for.
“Me” Language. Read each page of your site from your visitor’s perspective. It’s an eye-opener in most cases. If you want to “see” the impact of this, print the page and using a brightly colored highlighter, go over everything that is about them. You’ll be amazed at how little of the page concentrates on the benefits to them.
Copywriters: Make Friends with Search Engine Optimization
October 12, 2007
I don’t know about you, but I felt a lot of internal resistance when it was first suggested to me that I write ‘for’ the search engines.
Years of training and habit, and a lot of pride, turned me against the idea of adjusting or changing my copy to suit ’spiders’. It’s about the reader, not some computer. Right?
The whole thing smelled of compromise to me. And as us ego-driven writers all know, compromise is not something we like.
Well, I’m pleased to say that my pride finally shuffled off to one side a bit and allowed me a more objective look at the whole thing.
And now, well, I’m something of a convert. I have been for quite a while now.
Not because I have made that ‘compromise’. But because it became evident to me that both spiders and readers are looking for exactly the same thing…
Relevance.
Spiders are becoming more and more sophisticated in determining the relevance of a page when matched to a keyword or phrase that is typed in by the user. In short, pages that are most likely to satisfy the needs of the reader are being delivered first.
Arrgh. . .Those Stupid Internet Marketing Cliches Are True!
October 11, 2007
If you have read any internet marketing resource ever created, you have no doubt seen simple, one sentence, pot-shot solutions to all of your problems: You will only be successful if you think you are successful. You will make money if you work hard. Think outside of the box. Content is king!
. . .If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
How can this possibly help me, you think. These people are just crack-pots! They do not actually have any real help to offer me–just general advice, which really has no practical implications for me and for my business.
This is exactly what I thought and this is now what I see newer marketers and affiliates saying. I was always skeptical of general advice. I thought success stories that ended with an exhortation to “work hard” and “make plans” and “think outside of the box” were just plain worthless.
What I now know (what I have learned as I slowly became more successful) is that this “common wisdom”–which I initially regarded as foolish and too unspecific–was actually the best advice available on the internet and it didn’t even cost me money.
Off-Page Factors Affecting Your Position On Google Searches
October 10, 2007
Off-Page Factors Affecting Your Position On Google Searches
by: John Fowler
Different search engines use different algorithms to calculate where you appear on their search results. This article will focus on the factors that we believe affect your results on Google searches. One word of warning, Google does not publish its algorithms and is constantly changing and updating the way it views sites - so these are the guidelines for you to follow, rather than a definitive statement of the processes involved.
We will divide the major factors into two main types, namely, on-page and off-page factors. Basically, on-page factors are those things that you can do to improve your ranking by adapting the actual coding of your site. Off-page factors are those factors mainly relating to incoming links to your site. This article, the second of two will focus on off-page factors.
In terms, of off-page factors the areas we will cover are:
IBLs - inbound links to your site
Directory Listings - which directories feature your site
User Statistics - who visits your site and for how long
Inbound Links (IBLs)
Writing Newsletters Online: How to Get it Right
October 9, 2007
A strange thing has been happening to newsletters online.
They have been turning into either a) promotional emails or b) web pages delivered by email.
I’m sure you know what I mean. Go back a couple of years and you could look forward to receiving your favorite newsletter in the knowledge that the newsletter itself would contain some great content…something you could read and enjoy, or learn from.
You could open the newsletter in your email and read it, from beginning to end. There were articles, reviews or just personal rant…well written and interesting.
In short, there was real value, right there in the newsletter.
These newsletters, where significant value lies in the body of the newsletter itself, are becoming harder and harder to find.
Instead, more and more companies and organizations are using their ‘newsletters’ as a promotional ploy to drive you to pages on their sites.
In one way, it’s understandable. As anyone with a newsletter knows, if you have one or two links to your site in the newsletter, your site traffic really spikes on the days you send out the newsletter.
Linking Out is Good
October 8, 2007
Many websites I come across don’t have a single link to another website. Ask the webmaster why not, and the answer you get is simple enough: “If I link to other websites people might leave my site.” At this point I break the news that site visitors will leave your site. And there’s nothing you can do about this.
Site visitors won’t leave your site because you provide links to external sites. They’ll leave for one of two reasons:
- They’ve found what they were looking for and no longer have a reason to stay on your website
- They can’t find the information they’re looking for and leave to seek it elsewhere
“OK, so site visitors are going to leave my site. But why should I hunt around for websites to link to?” I can think of four reasons why linking out is good for you and will ultimately increase traffic to your website:
Proof there’s a real organisation behind the website
How to Get More Links to Your Websites and Improve Traffic
October 7, 2007
I feel the most effective way to get people to link to your web site is by offering web masters the option of giving away your free stuff. In exchange, they link to your web site. Why would other web masters want to do this? They may want give away a freebie to draw traffic to their web site. They also may not have the time, knowledge or skills to give away certain types of electronic freebies from their web site.
Your links will just keep multiplying. When a web master offers your freebie to his or her visitors. Those visitors may decide to also give away your freebie. And so on and so on… The more people that link to your web site the more traffic you’ll get. Below are four of the most popular types of freebies given away on the internet to increase traffic.
Free Software
Offer free software from your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.
Free Online Services
Offer a free online service from your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission or e-mail consulting, etc.
Free Information
Content Management Systems Eyeball SEOs
October 7, 2007
Content Management Systems and search engine optimization (SEO) used to be mutually exclusive terms. But the SEO community has been driving the developers of Content Management Systems to integrate more SEO-friendly methodology within their systems.
Content Management Systems (CMS) are a hot topic right now with many corporate websites are turning to these systems to handle thousands of pages of dynamic data that they need to update regularly. Content Management Systems allow information to be added, edited or deleted automatically over the entire website. This can save hundreds of hours in manual updates. Pages of content are generated on the fly using a template driven system.
When Content Management Systems were first developed, most had little regard for the requirements of search engine optimization. For some Content Management Systems this still holds true. Most CMS’s, however, now have workarounds to accommodate those wanting to perform search engine optimization on their websites. The workarounds in the Content Management Systems involve two areas: writing search engine friendly URL’s and creating individualized title and meta tags per page.
Writing Search Engine Friendly URL’s
