Social Media Optimization - A Priority For Your SEO Campaign

Social media optimization (SMO) is an imperative ingredient of your SEO campaigns. In the past, social networking sites were little more than an oddity. Today, several have acquired enormous ranking authority from top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to improve your exposure and communicate with your niche market, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors.

In this article, we will describe the influence that social media optimization is currently having on search marketing. We'll also give you the rules of engagement for executing an effective SMO campaign. We'll explain what SEO social media is, and the advantage of hiring an experienced SEO consultant to spearhead your social media optimization efforts.

The Influence Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing

Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffíc. For years, gaining that exposure was based solely upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search engine marketing.

10 Things You Need to Know about SEO

I have compiled a list of 10 vital things - from choosing an expert to instructing your web developer - that every marketer needs to consider when undertaking search engine optimization as part of their marketing mix.

1. Strategy First
Please, don't ask for a full SEO proposal from an agency until you have set your strategy. Too often, agencies will respond with a full proposal, including lots of articles to be created, sites to be built and links to be implemented without a clear strategy.
Some sites are more straight forward but others are complex and would benefit from asking a couple of agencies to get involved at the research stage - ask them about the strengths and weaknesses of your site, what they think of your competitors, and what strategic approach they would take with your site.

To get the best advice from this process, expect to pay the agencies involved. A small percentage of your online budget spent on good strategy will save you dollars in the long term. Even better, pay two agencies for a strategy recommendatíon and then choose the best one for your business!

Writing Effective Search Engine Optimized Copy for the Web

Writing SEO copy can be like negotiating a minefield. Get it right and your website will attract new customers via search engines and see improved sales. Get it wrong and new customers simply will not find your site. The good news is, there are some simple things you can do that will make all the difference.

As far as the search engines are concerned, they want to find the most relevant content for each user's search. They do this by looking at two things. The first is inbound links, which tell the search engines how important you are. The second is the content, which tells the search engines what you do and how relevant you are for each particular search.

Think Web Pages, not Websites

Google looks at each of your web pages on its own merits, rather than looking at your site as a whole. So, when you are planning the structure of your website, you need to think about your key areas. Make sure that each area has its own page. That way, you can optimize each page for a particular product, offering or benefit.

For example, if your website sells electrical products, divide the site into separate pages for broad areas such as kitchen appliances, then create individual pages within these categories for products such as washing machines and irons.

Keyword Research

It is crucial that you get your keywords right, so rather than guessing, use keyword research. Single keywords tend to have more competition, making it difficult to get good organic search rankings for them, so it is far better to be more specific and choose keyword phrases.

For example, an airline should use 'cheap flights to Malta' rather than 'flights'. This also helps to ensure you get good quality traffic. People are more clued-in these days about search engines and know that more specific keyword phrases are more likely to deliver what they are looking for.

SEO Results Take Time

There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is How long till I start to see results? This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.

It doesn't matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don't come over night.

Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn't matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development - you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.

In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.

Streamlining Your Social Web Presence in 6 Steps

Following the advice of social media and Web 2.0 experts, you have established your own blog and joined a number of social sites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, LibraryThing, and Upcoming.org, among others. Now, the experts say you must add content to each of these accounts regularly to keep them dynamic. So, how's this supposed to make your life easier?

Relax. With some careful planning, you can streamline the process of keeping all of your Social Web accounts fresh and engaging without breaking your back or the bank. The trick is to make your social accounts work together. Most social sites use the concept of open source to make it easy for developers to write applications that enhance the features of the site. For our purposes, we will look at applications that can help us streamline our existing presence in the Social Web.

To demonstrate what I mean about streamlining the process, I'll start with an example. Imagine that you have the following social media tools and accounts already in place on the Social Web:

* A WordPress Blog
* A Facebook Profile
* A Facebook Page
* A MySpace Page
* A YouTube Account
* A Flickr Account
* A Twitter Account
* An Upcoming.org Account
* A GoodReads Account

Your 6 Step Plan to a Streamlined Social Web Presence:

Step 1: Optimize Your Blog Feed

The very first step in streamlining your presence in the Social Web is burning your blog's feed to Feedburner. This is a free service, and obtaining a FeedBurner account will help you to easily manage and track your feed subscriptions. Once you have burned your feed to FeedBurner, note the URL of your new feed, which will look something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyBlogName .

Step 2: Feed Your Blog Now

You want to make sure that you are getting the most mileage from your blog posts. To do so, feed your blog entries into all of your social accounts that offer blog feeding applications. Remember that each social site may provide its own different way of accomplishing this.

Facebook, for example, allows you to feed your blogs into the Notes section of your Facebook page. Click Edit in the Notes box of your Facebook page and find the option that allows you to import notes from an external blog.

Feeding blog entries into MySpace is a little different. Find and add the application RSS Reader. You can access many MySpace applications by clicking More/Apps Gallery from the main menu of your MySpace homepage.

It is possible to feed your blog posts into Twitter, but blog posts are typically too long for this purpose. If you read on, I will clue you in to a better solution for streamlining your micro-blog entries.

Step 3: Maximize the Use of Your Multimedia

Maximize the exposure of your images and video clips by adding galleries and badges to your blog or Website, and by feeding your images and videos into your social networking profiles and pages.

WordPress has many plugins available for integrating Flickr images. My favorite right now is Flickr Tag, a plugin that allows you to easily place your Flickr images right into your blog posts, and create galleries.

A Flickr badge is a snippet of Flash or HTML code that you can place on the sidebar of your Website or blog that will pull in and highlight random or specific photos from your Flickr account. Find out more by going to: http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne.

Similarly, you can embed video galleries into your blog or Website by using your YouTube channels. After you've added videos to your YouTube channel, you can generate code for a video gallery and place this code on your Website or blog.

To feed images from Flickr into your Facebook page and MySpace profile, find the appropriate application and add it. For Facebook, I use an application called My Flickr; for MySpace, use Happy Flickr.

You can place videos on your Facebook page by implementing an application called YouTube Box, and using the application YouTube Favorites, you can display video clips on your MySpace profile.

Step 4: Integrate Other Social Tools

The way in which you proceed in step 4 depends entirely upon which social tools and Websites make up your Social Web presence. In the example I have created, we have accounts with Upcoming.org (a social event calendar) and GoodReads (a niche book sharing and author site) that have not yet been integrated. By searching the applications in Facebook and MySpace, you'll find that Facebook offers an application that allows you to integrate your Upcoming.org events, and both Facebook and MySpace include applications that allow you to display your GoodReads books and book reviews.

Step 5: Take Advantage of Streamlining Tools

Using the social tool, Ping.fm, you can add short posts to your mini feeds on Facebook, MySpace, and your micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Jaiku. Ping.fm is a useful tool that lets you post one brief entry, or often a status update, and feed it into a number of social sites.

Step 6: Research and Repeat

The very nature of the Social Web is connecting people through social platforms and applications; therefore, when deciding whether or not to invest time and resources into a new social tool, it's best to research the ways that tool will accommodate your existing Social Web presence. Can you feed in your blog posts? Does it allow you to import images from a photo sharing site or video clips from from your video sharing community? Have sites like Ping.fm integrated the new tool yet, or do your existing social sites offer applications to integrate the new tool?

When you do decide to integrate a new social tool or Website, do so as best you can by repeating the applicable steps presented above.


Source by:
Deltina Hay is the principal of Social Media Power, and founder of the new social media Website service, Plumb Social. Ms. Hay's graduate education in computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology led her naturally to social media consulting. Her new book, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization, will be released in March 2009.

Seven Words That Will Make Your Website Worth Viewing

Seven. It's just a number like any other, but it does seem to come up on a fairly regular basis. There's the Seven Wonders of the World, The Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Dwarfs: Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Doc, Dopey, and my personal favorite, Grumpy.

Phone numbers are seven digits, and they say the optimum brand name should be no more than seven letters long. Seven it seems is a magical number, as the average human brain can only grasp seven things at a time. Interesting, my wife says I've got trouble with two, never mind seven, but that's another story.

So I've been thinking, what are the seven most important words associated with Web-marketing. I'll give you a hint: Search, Engine, and Optimization don't make the cut.

So what words do make the líst? What are the seven words that will make your website worth viewing?

Words Can Move You

By someone's count there are 171,476 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, plus another 47,156 words that have fallen out of favor. This of course doesn't count the 9,500 additional permutations, that don't deserve their own special attention.

Fifty percent of these words are nouns, twenty-five percent are adjectives, and 14.285% are verbs, with the rest made up of all those other things, the purpose of which most of us have long since forgotten.

Others may find fault with these numbers, but no matter what the total, it's a lot of words. Of the several hundred thousand words to choose from, the average person recognizes less than ten percent, while the average teenager seems to only be able to handle about half that amount; of course that doesn't count slang, instant messaging jargon, or the ever-popular four-letter variety.

Why the heck are there so many words if we all refuse to use them. I mean why waste all those perfectly good words on English teachers and college professors. By the way, they say swearing is the refuge of the feeble-minded, people who can't express themselves in a more articulate manner, but to be honest, I really don't give a damn.

Here's the thing, words have meaning and impact, and they provide the emotional context of our communications, to which we can add subtlety and nuance through their delivery by means of tone, cadence, and gesture.

So as important as words are, the way they are delivered is even more important.

What Website Design Is Really About

The other day I was listening to a local all-news radio station. It is mostly rip-and-read wire service stuff that they repeat over-and-over like some kind of psychological torture, but they do provide traffic reports on a nauseatingly regular basis. You only have to wait ten minutes until they repeat everything, so if you want to hear what traffic snafus to avoid just wait a few minutes; but here's the problem: the announcers talk so fast that no matter how hard you concentrate, you can't quite get the particular information you need; and if you're driving, you have other things to consider, like the idiot in the Hummer who just cut you off.

None of these guys ever uses a period, let alone a semicolon or comma. Either they have very small bladders and are under pressure to finish quickly, or they're late for their afternoon pilates class. They seem so intent on rushing to the commercials that they don't ever deliver the content in an appropriate manner. And your website just might have the same problem.

Too much information is as bad as not enough. Information overkill leads to information anxiety, buyer's remorse, reduced satisfaction, unattainable expectations, and purchase-decision paralysis.

Website owners have been told that visitors won't wait for anything, that they are impatient, and you've got to get to the point fast, make the pitch and close the deal; well that just isn't going to work with any sophisticated product or service.

Your website presentation needs to slow people down so they hear what you have to say, and you have to say something worth hearing.

Website design is about more than layout, markup language, and technical wizardry. Website design is about communication, it's about turning advertising into content, and content into an experience that viewers will remember.

Seven Words To Remember

1. Communication
People are always asking us what's wrong with their websites, and the answer in the vast majority of cases can be summed-up in a quote from the movie, "Cool Hand Luke" (1967): "what we have here is a failure to communicate." Communication is the key to success, and that doesn't just apply to your website, it applies to almost everything you do both inside and outside your business-life.

If your website isn't communicating on both a rational and emotional level, if it doesn't provide the psychological and emotional context of your marketing message, then exactly what is it doing?

2. Audience
I can't think of too many people who actually like being sold. In fact, sometimes customers get so irritated by sales tactics that they end up not buying the thing they came specifically to your website to purchase.

Solving the problem is merely a question of altering your perspective; the average buyer is predisposed to dismiss and ignore high-pressure tactics, and meaningless sales pitches. So instead of treating customers like customers, try treating them like an audience. Audiences want to be engaged, enlightened, and entertained. And that is the most effective way to make a sales impact.

3. Focus
All too often websites inundate their Web audiences with facts, figures, statistics, and an endless líst of features, benefits, options, and whatever else the sales department can think of throwing in. All that stuff just confuses people.

Focus your message on the most important elements of what you have to say. If your website can embed that singular idea in an audience's mind, then it has done its job.

4. Language
The words used, and how they are put together provides meaning; they inform personality; they provide mental sound bites; and they make whatever you are saying, worth remembering.

Language is one of the critical elements of 'voice', the ability to convey personality; and writing without a 'voice' is instantly forgettable.

5. Performance
Even the most articulate prose can be lost in a befuddled delivery. Communication is more than words; it's a combination of language, style, personality, and performance.

Things are rarely what they seem. Even our memories are a stylized version of what we've actually experienced. Creating a memorable impression is about managing the viewer experience, and providing the right verbal and non-verbal cues that make what is being said memorable.

6. Personality
Every business has a personality. The first problem is, few medium-sized companies ever attempt to manage that persona, and as a consequence, the buying public forms its own opinion. And that opinion is often not the way you want to be regarded.

The second problem is companies either don't have a firm grasp of who they really are, or they know, and they are afraid to promote it. If your company's identity isn't worth promoting, it is time to think why that is, and change it. The bottom line is, a company without a personality is a company without an image, and that makes you instantly forgettable.

7. Psychology
The most important feature you can provide your audience is psychological fulfillment, not deep discounts, fast service, or more bells and whistles.

The real reason people buy stuff is that it makes them feel something. Cosmetics make women feel attractive or sexy, while cars make men feel they've achieved some level of status. Even services make people feel important, as in "I've got a guy, who does that for me." Finding the psychological hot spot in your marketing, and promoting the hell out of it consistently and continually should be your primary marketing goal. All those features and benefits are merely the excuse for a purchase, not the reason.

The Web Is Fast Becoming A Video Environment

Websites are not just marketing collateral; they are not just digital brochures. They are a new presentation medium that requires specialized communication skills, and knowledge of how best to use the medium.

You may be a great salesperson, and nobody knows your business like you do. You may even be skilled at delivering speeches at conventions and seminars, but performing effectively in front of a camera is a whole different ball game, and for most people, it's way out of their comfort zone, let alone their skill level.

The same old methods that used to work won't work any more. You're no longer competing with just the company down the street; you're competing with the entire world.

Web-businesses may not ever actually meet their customers face-to-face, or even talk to them on the phone, so it is imperative that they use marketing presentation methods that deliver an experience worth remembering.


Source by :
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit MRPwebmedia.com, 136Words.com and SonicPersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

The Plan - 4 Steps To A Website Brand

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn't that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn't make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your very own Website Branding Plan, let's talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you don't know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you've heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you don't start with where you want to end-up, it's unlikely you'll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabbage? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, doesn't help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don't start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let's start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan

1 The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sits underneath your logo, that simple little phrase somebody in your office came up with that makes you sound important, stuff like "the cool air conditioning company." Most small and medium size companies don't think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no memorable meaning at all, like "the best people for the best job."

Just because you're small and don't have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto, doesn't mean you shouldn't have one. That catchphrase is who you are, and how you want people to remember you, short, memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, "Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!" a demand to articulate what was important without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2 The Story Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of information into a statement that won't offend anybody. A wise man once said, "If what you're saying doesn't offend somebody, maybe you're not saying anything" and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down amendments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let's forget about mission statements, after all this isn't the military, and we're not planning the next Desert Storm. Instead let's think loglines, or what you can think of as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of 'House,' or 'Desperate Bimbos.' They are a short form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinctive style that you've heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here's the format used in many movie trailers: "In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theatre near you." Sound familiar?

Let's take our air conditioning example, you remember, "the cool air conditioning company." Let's say our fictitious company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer might sound something like this:

"In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue. When the mercury rises to eye-popping, mind numbing numbers, the men from Kool spring into action, bringing relief to the sweltering masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It's coming sooner than you think; it's coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning company."

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we've covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know-how). Now that's a mission statement; one with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There's the action movie format that's suitable for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that's ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hardnosed business executives scoff at the idea of spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely redundant and irrelevant.

4 The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it's not grasping the concept tha's so hard, it's implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly created movie trailer style website elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important, and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is what's going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happen to be able to provide you with one: check out SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.


Source by :
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit MRPwebmedia.com, 136Words.com and SonicPersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Discover The Answers To The Top 10 SEO Questions

Owning any type of online business will strongly benefit from a few SEO techniques. However, everyone and their brother has advice on how to do it. All this 'expert' advice can make the simple task of optimizing your site incredibly confusing.

Here are some straightforward answers to the most common SEO questions.

1. What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. A search engine is a tool many internet users use to find sites that are relevant to their needs. The three biggies when it comes to search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are however, hundreds of search engines available to internet users. Search engines work by sending out spiders to crawl through the World Wide Web and gather information. If you have the information they're looking for, in the places they are looking, they'll find you and place you in their results when a person is looking for your information.

The task of understanding what search engines are looking for and putting it in the right places on your website and in your content, is the essence of search engine optimization. So now you might be asking…what do search engines look for and where do they look for it? The answer is keywords and links. Keywords in your html coding, keywords on your webpage content, keywords in your content, and the number of incoming links you have to your website.

2. How important is SEO?

Let's just put it this way. What's better a few visitors who stumble upon your website or hundreds of visitors that go to your website with the direct intention of learning more or making a purchase?

With more and more people searching and shopping online, getting on the first page or two of the search engine results can mean the difference between keeping your day job and becoming an internet millionaire.

3. What are text links?

Links are just one of the tools you can use to increase your search engine optimization. The more quality links you have, the better your search engine ranking will be. Text links are links that contain only text. Wikipedia is a great place to examine internal text links. The links are contained within a sentence and when a reader clicks on them they are taken to a different page on the same website. The kind of text links you're looking for will be text links that will take readers from your article, ebook, or web copy to your website.

An excellent tool to generate incoming links is to write copy for online audiences like article directories, blogs, and ezines and insert text links in the copy. Webmasters will link to the content and thus to your site. Additionally, when you allow free reprints of your copy provided the links are maintained, you're encouraging links to your website.

4. What are link farms and link exchanges?

Search engines don't accept just any old link. The link has to be from a relevant and quality company. This means you don't want to participate in link farming. If a search engine suspects your links to be lacking, they'll actually penalize you. Link farming or link exchanging is essentially the process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase your search engine ranking. A link farm is a Web page that is nothing more than a page of links to other sites. Stay away from link farms. When you generate a link from another site, it had better be relevant and coming from a real web site.

5. What is duplicate content?

The definition of duplicate content is web pages that contain substantially the same content. Search engines will penalize you for this. How do you avoid duplicate content? Don't publish the same article in several locations. There are many tools available online to help you re-write your content so that it is 30%, 40%, and even 50% different. However, the best way to avoid duplicate content is to simply write new content.

6. How do I find the right keywords?

There are several steps to finding the most profitable keywords. The first step is to generally do a bit of brainstorming and come up with a list of keywords you think people will use to find your products. The next step is to research supply and demand for those particular keywords. Supply means how many other websites are using those same keywords and demand is how many people are looking for those particular keywords.

The key is to find keywords with high demand and relatively low supply. There are many effective and useful keyword tools to help you find this information and to generate keyword ideas. Once you decide on a few keywords, it may be useful to do a bit of testing before you commit to them.

7. How do I optimize my web pages?

Placing your keywords in the right location is a good start to optimizing your web pages. Search engines look to the headings, subheadings, domain name, and title of your website. They also look in the content on your page and primarily focus on the first paragraph.

Try to get a domain name with your primary keyword included. When you include your keyword in your URL it tells the search engine spiders immediately what your site is about.

Title Tag. Your title tag is the line of text that appears on search engine results pages that acts as a link to your site. This is a crucial element of your webpage as it describes to your visitors what your page is about.

If you view your source code, your title tag will look something like this: <TITLE>Search Engine Optimization Tips</TITLE>
Keep your title tags brief, descriptive, up to date, and keyword rich will help to increase the relevance of your site in the eyes of the search engines, as well as giving your potential visitors a good idea of what they can expect from your site.

Meta Tags have lost their importance to the search engines however it is still helpful to place your keywords in your meta tags. In your source code they look something like this: <META NAME="description"......

8. Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

The simple answer is - no. Search engine spiders are always out there doing their job and collecting information. Every time you update your website, add content, or change your keywords, the search engines capture the information and record it. However, if you want to be listed on a directory, like the DMOZ Open directory project, then you will need to submit to those.

9. What are spiders?

Search engine spiders are also called web crawlers or bot. They're basically automated programs which scan websites to provide information to search engines often for the purpose of indexing or ranking them.

10. How does content help my SEO?

Content is one of the best tools to improve your search engine ranking. It is a great place to emphasize keywords, encourage linking to your site, and increase traffic. The key to content is to make sure you're offering quality content and you're updating your website and your content frequently. Content can be provided in many forms including:

* Blogs
* Forums and chat rooms
* Articles
* Reviews
* Case studies
* Reports
* How to guides
* Tutorials
* e-books and much more.

Source by:
Jeremy Gislason - Want to know proven ways to dramatically increase membership sales? Want to take membership marketing to a whole new level of overflowing profits? Build high-earning membership sites like a pro by going to http://www.membershipmillionaire.com.

How to Get Free Targeted Traffic to Your Site Through Article Marketing

Article marketing has become one of the tools that sites used to increase their page rank in search engines like Yahoo and Google; increase their site views and of course also increase their site advertisements.

To those who are not familiar with the term, article marketing is the use of articles to promote a product or create an awareness about a topic that is closely related to the product. For instance, if you are selling a product that treats hypertension, you will have to come up with articles that will make people with hypertension take notice. And what would interest them more than an article on their illness! These articles will frequently have bio box at the end, which will detail the name of the company and their contact information. Some who are writing savvy will even be able to incorporate the product's name into the article.

Writing for the web is a lot different as compared to feature writing on magazines or even in the newspapers. This can be easy to do once you get the hang of it. All you've got to have are ideas about a specific topic that you want to become an expert on. But if you really do not have the knack for this craft, you can always hire freelancers to do the task for you.

Article marketing used to only exist in flyers and mailings. But now with the world wide web, articles have proliferated sites. Not only are articles now used to market products, it is also now primarily used to promote the site and increase its page rank in search engines. With a good page rank, site views are better and therefore revenues from site advertisers will also be good.

The use of articles for this has however led to problems in article quality and reliability. Articles now have become lousy in terms of the information that it gives as well as in the way it is written. All are haphazardly done, perhaps because site owners sacrifice quality for quantity.

First thing that you have to remember when writing the articles is that you must have a specific audience in mind. You will address your materials to them. You are vying for their attention that is why you are writing your articles in a way to reach out to them. This is the kind of topics which they are interested to, so you write about it until you are considered and expert. That will not be hard to do especially when you have good content which your target market is always on the lookout for.

You have to be subtle in promoting your own web site, products and services. This rule applies when you get your articles published on different submission sites. Most of the time, you will be allotted a box, an ample space wherein you can create an author's bio. That's the part where you can have a link to your site. The idea here is when you already got the trust of your readers, they will be interested enough to click on your specified links.

Take note of the word count. Other submission sites would accept 300 or so words for articles. But most sites prefer 500 to 550 minimum word count. Read the rules thoroughly so that you won't get banned from any of those useful sites.

Also be careful in using keywords. Do not use it too much to the point that it will annoy your readers. Stuffing your articles with keywords will just make your readers turn away from your materials as long as your motives become very obvious.

Lastly, choose an article submission site that ranks high on Google and in Alexa. You don't want to submit your work on spammy sites. That will not do your business any good. You can also study where your competitors do their submissions. This way, you can zoom in on those sites and start on your submissions.

Read through an article on Internet marketing just like this one before you plunge into a territory which is still unknown to you. This way, once you've entered the battle, thetre will be no turning back.

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Copyright © Anne-Marie Ronsen

Keyword Research That Works Right The First Time

On the internet, keywords are terms or words that relate to particular topics. Keyword research will involve various aspects, such as finding sales, oriented keywords or driving maximum qualified users to increase their online sales.

Keyword research is the first step towards a successful search engine optimization campaign. You have to be very careful when selecting keywords, as it can be very tricky to select targeted keywords for a website.

The selection of keywords should always be based on various aspects such as product names, services, brands, or general terms. Often times, people forget about targeting geographical terms when they have global presence.

When doing keyword research, it's highly recommended to do a very thorough market research analysis to find the best keywords used by search engines to find products and services online - and find out what keywords are targeted by competitors who are doing well in marketing on the internet.

The first step in finding the best keywords is to make a list of the products, topics, and services that you offer. You can also make good use of your website logs to know which keywords have brought you the traffic in the past.

Be sure to select keywords that clearly define your business and products to drive traffic from the search engines. There are some websites which get high levels of traffic through general keywords although they might not end up being sales.

Today, users of search engines are aware of how they work, for searching products and services on the net. Users always look for the better products, locations, etc. Therefore, you should cover all terms for each - products, locations, etc.

There are numerous tools available which will help you identify keywords that are suitable for search engines. The challenge here, is to determine which keyword is the best to generate traffic.

Entrepreneurs and opportunists all over have been looking for new and original methods to get money away from the bigger industries, and earn their share of the profits. with many industries shutting their doors, there is already one in existence that creates large volumes of money for people everywhere - affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing programs work by rewarding website owners for hosting materials and products on their site. The affiliates are then paid on a commission basis, as neither party pays anything to one another during the initial transaction. Instead, the affiliates are paid as and when they manage to attract new customers to the primary site.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best and most successful online advertising opportunities. It's a program that runs on simplicity and efficiency, although in a way that works extremely well for both parties involved.

The industry of affiliate marketing is a cost effective way for small and large companies to reach out and expand their influences. Instead of being restricted to one website, large companies can get noticed on hundreds of sites - and normally even thousands.

On the other hand, the affiliate industry is also a thriving source for income for millions. Affiliates have been reaping the rewards of huge financial profits and the popularity that the industry provides.

Single affiliates can earn anywhere from 35% and below of the money generated by each customer they produce. With this type of revenue lasting for the entire lifetime of the site, an affiliate has virtually unlimited earning potential.

Unlike other online industries, there are no specific requirements to become an affiliate marketer. There are no strings attached, or any tricks, which is why millions of people are turning to affiliate marketing to make their income on the internet.


Source by : Terry Dating

11 Content Ideas to Put on Your Website

1. Information About Your Company
Place information about your company on your company homepage, or create a page just for company information. You should let your visitors know who you are and what your business is all about. The goal is to help customers trust you and feel comfortable about doing business with you.

2. Your Company’s Products and Services
Of course, this is probably the most important part of your website. It is important to have a website to show that you are a part of a business and have the credibility in your industry, but the products are the main reason people will be visiting your site. The products are why you are doing business online. If you have a lot of products that you offer to customers, don't try to put all of them on one page; use several pages to display them.

3. Contact Information
Make sure that you have posted information on how a customer can contact you. Have your contact information on both the homepage and on a separate page labeled contact information. On the separate page you should include the following.

• Your address for mailing
• Fax and phone numbers
• Email addresses for employees
• A map of your business location
• A picture of the building where your business is located
• Driving directions

4. Any Memberships and Associations for Your Business
Use the memberships that you belong to on your website to show your customers you are trustworthy. Associations like the Better Business Bureau and Chamber of Commerce are a wonderful way to show your potential customers that you are an upstanding member of the business community.

5. Frequently Asked Questions Page
If you regularly receive certain questions from your clients and customers, you might want to create a frequently asked questions page to answer those questions for your site visitors. Put a link to this page on your contact page so that a customer can access the frequently asked questions before they try to contact you with one of the questions.

6. Testimonials from Satisfied Customers
Ask your satisfied customers if they would be willing to add a testimonial to your testimonials page. It will give your potential customers a good feeling about trusting you when they read the comments of other customers.

7. The Benefits of Doing Business with Your Company
Give your customers reasons why they should do business with your company. Show the reasons that you are a better choice over your competition. What does a customer have to gain by selecting your company over your competitors? This is the place where you can show all of your company’s great points. Don't be modest when you are trying to sell your company.

8. Images
Show your customers the work that your company does. Show the products you have created for your clients. If your company provides a service, you can use methods that show your potential customers how well you served other clients.

9. Employees
Show some pictures of your staff and employees. This will add a personal touch to your business that customers will love. If you have some employees on your staff who are experts in their fields, you should show their qualifications on this page.

10. Your Business Equipment
If your business uses some special equipment to perform the job, you display it for your customers here. You can also describe the equipment. Tell customers why it is the best to perform the work for them. It can give them a great reason to do business with your company, if you are using state of the art equipment.

11. Give Some Information About the Industry
If you find that your customers would benefit by knowing some of the inside information about your industry, then you should include such information on your website. They might find the information interesting and be thankful that they have gained some new knowledge from you. You will also be demonstrating that you have expert knowledge of the industry.

These are just a few of the things that you can include on your business website. You will have to let the web designer know what information needs to go on your site. When a visitor comes to your website, they are most likely looking for some information. If you can give them this information, they will be more inclined to do business with you. Don’t pass up the opportunity to give your customers what they are looking for.


Source by : Paul Coulter

10 Article Writing Tips for Effective Article Writing

If you must have to advertise and write articles on the net you have to do it right. The art of persuasion is by and large carrying out a win-win situation. It is presenting an instance that visitors find favorable to agree with. It is making them an offer they can hardly refuse. Article marketing which can spawn higher tick through rates and lower cost per tick.

1) As in anything there are techniques that can make your job easier and your case more convincing. Although there are exactly no hard and fast rules there are strategies that are used commonly because they simply work.

2) Before anything else, know your audience. It is significant that you have targeted the right audience. Know their knowledge level because people who are able to understand what you are driving at can easily adapt your ideas.

3) Choose a topic that you feel comfortable with. It can be a topic or article which feels good when it can help others that may have struggled with the same problem.

4) Be repetitive. It is essential in creative writing. Repetition gives emphasis. This way a reader can easily understand what you are trying to say. Be repetitive in a good way. It could either be through an example, using a story, or quoting a famous person.

5) The figures of speech like metaphors, similes and analogies can be a writer's best friends. Comparisons can make it easier for the readers to recognize the picture you are painting. It is like being in common grounds. There is nothing strange or something the readers are not familiar with.

6) Use power words that agitate and stir opinions. Your words have to be emotion-ridden. But at the same time they give solution as an answer that things will be better. These are words that eventually provoke response. But you have to make sure that the specific phrase has something to do with your business. Make every word count.

7) Consistency in ideas shows integrity and rational actions. Being consistent would make it difficult for the reader not to agree with you. It has been established in sociology books that consistency in our thoughts and actions is a valid social trait.

8) Connect to the future. Provide your readers with a glimpse of what is to come. Try to extrapolate recent events into probable future results. Here is where your credibility stands. If you are able to back up with remarkable credentials and obvious understanding of the subject matter, this will become a powerful technique of persuasion.

9) Never bother with commercials in your article. Your readers are humans who have al the right to benefit from your article. With the use of the resource box don't fill it with commercials. This will establish your credibility as an expert author on your chosen topic.

10) As much as possible make your article short. Let your ideas flow naturally in clear and short article. Write an attention-grabbing title and give it away for free. Make an alliance with others and encourage them to give your e-book as bonus for their paid products.

SEO Guide to Article Writing

Have you ever though you could write on a subject you love, that many others would find interesting or even better, useful? If your answer is yes, then you could harness the power of article writing to gain reputation and credibility as an expert in your domain, other than gaining those, so hard to get, quality links to your website.

I am not talking about reciprocal linking, which kind of reminds me of those childhood games, I will show you mine if you will show me yours, but quality links from authoritative sources that vouch for your credibility which would generally take thousands of dollars to accomplish (sorry to my dear friends from PR).

We know that search engines are known to love content, especially content that many of their users will find useful, informative or just plain entertaining. So every now and then we sit down to write, and then a few hours later it slowly dawns on us that what we wrote is just plain incredible. By the next read we are convinced that the brilliant masterpiece we just wrote, is just what the world has been eagerly waiting for, so we create a new page for our website, or (if you are one of the smarter folks) a new blog entry.

My blog entries rank far better than pages that I have personally optimized on my site and blog entries are surprisingly found by search engine spiders in matter of minutes most of the times (I wonder if there is a blog conspiracy behind this…maybe I can explore this in my next blog or article).

As a general rule, search engines hate duplicate content for obvious reasons. What that means for you is that once you have created one page of content for your website, or a new blog entry, that content is basically useless anywhere else on the web. In fact you could get penalized if the search engines figure you have the same content on different websites. Now if you are like me, and can't get down to writing every single day, you would want to maximize the exposure of your content across various channels without pissing off the search engines.

Welcome to my world of lazy seo practices. The secret is to write one article and get it published in hundreds of article sites that are waiting to give you exposure. Articles are not considered as duplicate content, and the search engines will love you for it. You can also use the article to create fresh content for your own website and get others to link to your website. Now that's killing two birds with one stone.

The benefits of article writing:

1. Increased visibility with every article published 2. Increased online reputation as an expert in your domain 3. Boosting your link popularity and link reputation (link building) 4. Write once and get published in hundreds of article sites 5. Reaching a wider market otherwise inaccessible to your website 6. Appease the mighty search engines 7. Gain favor with article publishers and their readers 8. Start syndicating and leveraging your every article 9. Upload article on your website, and submit link of your article to various article sites 10. It's for FREE, it can't get any better!

Where to submit your articles:

1. Go to Google and type - "submit an article" "keyword phrase" It will throw up a list of sites that are accepting articles based on your keyword phrase. What is to be kept in mind is, keep the category of your keyword phrase broad so it throws up related sites that have an audience that could be interested in your type of content.

2. Yahoo Groups, and Google Knoll are great places to publish articles on every imaginable subject under the sun. There are also various other directories that accept article submissions.

3. Go to Creative Commons and complete the form to add a copyright notice on your articles and blogs on your Web site. http://creativecommons.org/text/ (Sign up for Creative Commons Search here)

4. If an article publishing site wants copyright for your article, make sure they pay big bucks for it. You may have written the article over a nice cup of coffee…but still it's yours, and you would like to share your knowledge with the world (unless ofcourse its made worth your while)

5. Make sure you submit your name, author bio, and a link to your website with every article you submit.

But how does that help my company?

If you are in a seo business like me, then writing articles gain credibility for both me as a seo expert, and also for my company's website. With every article I submit I am allowed to place my name, a little bio (in some sites) and a link to my website. So while I am building a following of readers from across various article sites who are interested in the learning about search engine optimization and search marketing, I am also giving them a link back to my website. This could mean business for my company. In addition a link to my website from a high page ranked article publishers site will do wonders for my websites' rankings.

What if I can't write?

Well you never know till you start! Otherwise get some good article writer to do the messy work while you enjoy the benefits.

I can write but don't have the time to submit it to article sites?

You can use the services of a good seo expert who will submit your article to the hundreds of article publishers within your target group.

So what have I learnt from this article.

It pays to write, it pays to be lazy, and it pays to become an expert!

So START writing!


Info by : Nevil Darkuhanawala

Writing Tips - Why You Must Use Words on Your Website

If you watch your TV read the daily newspapers or even look in your favourite magazine. You will almost certainly find a story about the latest advancement in technology today. Most people will tell you that "Technology Rules" or that "Image Sells" Now while these statements are true to a certain degree, there is something that you should never forget. Which is that nothing beats the power of words.

Just imagine for a moment that you have a offline business. It could be a Hair Saloon or a Butchers shop. What is the first thing that you say to all customers who enter your shop? Saying hello would be a good idea to start with before moving on with a little small talk.

As a offline business owner you will quickly begin to realise that your success or failure is linked to the relationship that you have with all people who enter your shop. If you really do own an offline business, then all of what I have been saying thus far will seem obvious. Relationship building is the only way to go in a offline business, but here's something that may suprise you. Relationship building is the only way to go in a online business.

Please read this paragraph again slowly so that you can take in what I have just written because 90% of all online businesses do not get this.There are thousands if not millions of websites which are brilliant in design, have great graphics logo's the whole nine yards, but there is one important thing missing"WORDS"

You must use words on your website because it builds trust and respect over time. Try to remember what most people are looking for when they access the internet,information. Your job is to provide it. Do this correctly and you will see a vast improvement in your online profit margins. Don't try to be to clever with the words that you use on your website because it will just confuse the person reading it.

Mix up the length of each sentence and paragraphs in your ad - copy, and remember that you don't have to be an expert in your chosen subject matter, you just have to know more that the person you are writing for. Use your words to give web surfers more than what they were expecting upon arriving at your website. Be personal in your writing individuality will set you apart from the rest of the herd on the internet.

All of this may seem like hard work to you, and I'm not going to lie to you, because it is going to be hard work unless you find your inner passion. My passion is online marketing. Actually this is not entirely true my true passion is Affiliate Marketing. I enjoy writing about all things related to this subject, which makes all of the hard work seem a lot easier and far more enjoyable.

This is what you must strive for before even thinking about starting a online business, find a topic that really interests you do the proper research and then follow your dream.


Info by :
Paul Profitt - visit his website for a choice of over 11,000 digital products from the clickbank marketplace and learn how you can get started in Affiliate Marketing today. There is also a Free List Building eCourse availiable for you upon arrival. http://www.my-1st-promotion.com

How to Categorize Your Content for Feeds

Now that you have an RSS strategy, let's take a look at what content you might like to syndicate.

Start by listing the target audiences you want to deliver your content to via RSS. Each of your audiences has different content needs, resulting in different groups of RSS feeds that need to be created: the media, your employees, the general public, your existing customers, investors and so on.

You can even go further and divide your master groups into sub-groups, based on their prevailing interests. Here are some examples of how this could be done.

The Media:

1. Company News release, segmented by topic.

2. Breaking news that you'd like to go to a restricted audience of preferred journalists and bloggers

3. News and expert commentary about your industry

4. The latest product news

5. Interviews with corporate officers, developers, analysts and other interesting people the media would want to hear from. Do this in both text and podcast format

6. Case studies

7. Other press mentions

Customers and Prospects:

1. Customer service updates

2. New ideas and uses for the product

3. New inventory (cars, houses, retail)

4. Questions from customers with answers from your in-house experts

5. How-to articles with data that actually helps your readers improve their lives.

6. Peer product reviews

7. Customer product reviews published on other websites than your own

8. Whitepapers

9. Case Studies

10. In the News press mentions

Owners and investors:

1. Annual reports

2. Internal reports

3. Press mentions about the company

4. Latest comments from customers

Break your content down only as far as it makes sense. It's all about giving your subscribers a choice - let them subscribe to the content they need and want.

And it all depends on your business. You might find that you have only a few audiences and you need to deliver just one or two content types and topics to them.

The benefit of RSS feeds is that you can offer the exact content they are looking for in a way that they want it -clean, guaranteed delivery of the content they really want to receive.


Info by :
Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with their rapidly moving audiences.

Your RSS Marketing Strategy: Deciding How To Deliver Your RSS Content.

You're interested in RSS marketing, but there either seem to be so many options of how to do it or you've only ever come accross simple RSS feeds that just don't seem to be the approach you're looking for.

The problem with most RSS marketing plans is that the marketer doesn't really go beyond providing a simple RSS feed for all of his online news or his blog. But since you've been reading this column for a while now you know for a fact that RSS offers so much more.

To get started the right way you need to correctly plan your RSS Marketing strategy, starting by deciding how you are going to deliver your RSS content.

The right way to go, even if you're only starting out with a simple RSS strategy, is to provide individual RSS feeds for:

* your individual target audiences,
* your different types of content and
* even your different content topics.

Think of this as a consequtive list of how to develop your RSS strategy.

TARGET AUDIENCES

Start by listing the target audiences you want to deliver your content to via RSS. Each of your audiences has different content needs, resulting in different groups of RSS feeds that need to be created for these target audiences. One group for the media, the other for your employees, the other for the general public, the other for your existing customers and so on. You can even go further and divide your master groups in sub-groups, based on their prevailing interests.

CONTENT TYPES

Now consider the different types of content you want to deliver to these audiences. For example your latest news, your blog posts, your how-to articles, your press releases, your podcasts, the latest posts from your forums, direct communications messages and so on. In most cases these types of content don't mix well together. If someone wants to receive your blog updates, which are full of your company representatives' personal opinions and commentary, they don't want to receive your corporate-speak press releases.

If someone is interested in what's happening in your forum and what the latest forum posts are, they don't want to receive your how-to articles in the same RSS feed, simply because these two types of content are so much different. And so on. Essentially, you will need to provide separate feeds for each of the different content types, and you will need to determine what content types you wish to deliver to each of your target audience groups and sub-groups.

CONTENT TOPICS

Finally take a look at each individual content type for each individual target audience and further break that down by content topic, if needed. And if you're trying to cover many different topics for each content type, you will need to provide different RSS feeds for these different topics, because, again, people interested in topic A are not neccessarily also interested in topic B.

While this may sound complicated, it's really simple once you start doing it.

The point is, this is about giving your subscribers choice of what they subscribe to. Instead of forcing them to subscribe to everything, allow them to subscribe to only what they want and need.

Quite simple, right?

Just remember that you should only break this down as far as it makes sense, keeping in mind the actual content that your target audiences want from you.

Depending on your business, you just might only need to communicate with one target audience, deliver only one content type and deliver only one content topic for that target audience.

DECIDE HOW YOU ARE GOING TO DELIVER THIS CONTENT

Once you have your RSS content mapped-out, you need to consider how you are going to make this content available to your target audiences. This is especially important since it's going to influence the tools you need to get started with RSS publishing

ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL RSS FEEDS

This is about as standard as it gets --- publishing one RSS feed to meet the needs of all of your target audiences at once or publishing multiple topical RSS feeds, which always remain the same. The easiest to do, can be done with any RSS publishing tool on the market

CUSTOMIZABLE RSS FEEDS

The more and more complex you get with the different feeds you're offering, the more difficult it is for your visitors to select what exactly they want, simply because an individual subscriber might be interested in 10 of your 100 feeds, but he doesn't want to be subscribed to that many feeds by your company.

In this case the best way to go is to also offer your visitors the opportunity to customize your RSS feed they decide exactly what content type and content topics they want to receive in one or a few RSS feeds they'll be subscribing from you.

The opportunities here are quite endless, as you can allow them to customize their feeds based on topics, content types, authors and more.

If this is the way you need to go because you are offering so much content via your RSS feeds that it makes it difficult for someone to subscribe to only one or a few feeds from you, you will need your RSS publishing solution to support feed customization.

SEARCH-BASED RSS FEEDS

Search-based RSS feeds are a subset of customizable RSS feeds, and they work just like a search engine. You type in a certain keyword or keyword combinations and the search engine gives you the most relevant or the latest results for that keyword combination.

You can do the same with RSS, allowing your visitors to enter specific keywords and then get the content from you only based on those keywords.

PERSONALIZED RSS FEEDS

Giving users the choice to customize the content they are receiving from you is one thing, but certain content may actually demand you to personalize the feed using your subscribers personal information.

The most basic variation, used to lift response, is addressing your subscribers by name or using other data about the customer from your database, such as his address, previous purchases etc.

In other cases a bank might want to deliver information directly relating to your bank account, directly via RSS, such as your latest credit card transactions, and so on.

RSS FEEDS WITH CONTENT TARGETING

Now imagine that you want to create individualized campaigns to individual subscribers, based on the information you already have in your database about their activities, demographics and so on, for example to send a promotion for product A only to those subscribers that might be most interested in product A.

In this case you will need an RSS solution that can pull this data from your database and then segment your subscribers based on the actual data.

AUTORESPONDER RSS FEEDS

Since their introduction, e-mail autoresponders have become a relatively mainstream internet direct marketing tool, although they haven't really made their way to the world of public relations.

The concept is simple a certain action by your visitors on your website triggers a sequence of e-mail messages, delivered to that visitor, provided you have his e-mail address, over a period of several days.

Direct marketers use this to automatically communicate with the prospect after a certain action, trying to get him to do what they want.

The most common application is offering your visitors a free report, delivered to them via e-mail. After subscribing they start receiving consequtive parts of the report day after day or a every few days, receiving both new information as well as being exposed to the marketer's promotional message.

Other applications include autoresponder messages in relation to transactional e-mail:

* Subscribe to a free e-mail newsletter. The first autoresponder message thanks you for the subscription and also gives you access to one of the newsletter issues. A couple of days later, while you're still "hot as a lead", you receive another e-mail, pertaining to the newsletter topic, giving you more advice or information on the topic and trying achieve a sales conversion. And so on.
* Complete a webstore order. The first message thanks you for the purchase and recommends an additional product at a lower price. The second message tells you more about the product you purchased. The third messages makes a special additional purchase offer. The fourths message gives you some great additional tips, and so on.
* Start an online order, but don't finish it. The first message reminds you that there are still products in your shopping cart. The second message reminds you again, giving you added inscentive to complete the order. And so on

The opportunities are practically limitless, but you get the picture.

Now simply transform this concept into the realm of RSS.

Someone subscribes to your RSS feed. The first couple of content items, spread-out through the first week, serve as a series of welcome messages giving the new subscriber access to your top content and inviting him to actively participate. Your latest feed updates come through as well, but your new subscriber also gets the extra treatment (content) in the same feed.

And now apply this to anything you're doing with RSS, where it makes sense to follow-up with additional information to your new subscribers once they subscribe, of course depending on the feed topic and target audience.

Very few RSS tools today offer autoresponder capabilities, but some do.

TO RECAP

Think of your RSS publishing strategy and try to establish which of the these publishing models your RSS publishing tool should support:

* Topical or Target Audience Oriented RSS Feeds
* Customizable RSS Feeds
* Search-Based RSS Feeds
* Personalized RSS Feeds
* RSS Feeds With Content Targeting
* Autoresponder RSS Feeds


Info by:
Rok Hrastnik is acknowledged as one of the top worldwide experts on RSS marketing. Get the easy way to mastering RSS marketing today. Click here now to get all the details on how to make RSS marketing work for you and help you increase your online profits: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/?src=sa31

What Are RSS Feeds?

RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.

Benefit to the Webmaster As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.

RSS allows webmasters to:

1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

3.) Automate content delivery.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.

Benefit to Web Surfers The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.

RSS allows for users to:

1.) Easily locate information.

2.) Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.

I highly recommend FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com by BradSoft as a newsreader. FeedDemon is extremely easy to use and allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics. FeedDemon allows users to quickly scan, sort and scroll through headline and article summaries, while viewing the actual content in a split screen web browser.

Finding Topic Specific Relevant Feeds In order to find feeds that provide niche information users can search Feedster. Feedster http://www.feedster.com is a rapidly growing news search engine that indexes information contained within RSS feeds. Searches for topic specific feeds can be conducted and feeds can be retrieved for syndication.

Benefit to Content Developer While the benefits to users and webmasters are clear the distribution opportunities made available to content developers should not be overlooked. Information contained in the RSS feed can be easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach.

RSS allows for content developers to:

1.) Increase exposure in niche markets.

2.) Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.

3.) Disseminate relevant information.

4.) Define themselves as an industry expert.

5.) Automate content delivery.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

The distribution potential, while albeit difficult to measure, is still attractive to all parties making the likelihood that RSS popularity will only continue to grow.

RSS Feeds to Try Feeds exist for almost any topic consider trying these feeds out by entering the url in your feed reader:

Small Business Feed - small business tips and news http://www.small-business-software.net/blog-feed.xml

Software Marketing Blog Summary - software marketing and online news http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml

SMS, Wireless Messaging Related News. - news related to telecom, wireless industry and NotePage's software http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml

Free Content Articles - collection of free content articles, updates when new article is released. http://www.small-business-software.net/article-feed.xml

Software Marketing News - news related to software conferences, awards, software development and marketing http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/feed.xml

Info by :
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for FeedForDev http://www.feedfordev.com an RSS component for developers.

The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan

If you're wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here's a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance.

Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you're on the right track.

1. START USING RSS AS AN END-USER

The first step to getting started with RSS marketing/publishing is getting your own RSS aggregator, subscribing to other RSS feeds and just seeing and understanding how it all works.

There's a variety of RSS aggregators to choose from. Just a small sample:

a) Web-based RSS aggregators (websites): http://my.yahoo.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.bloglines.com

b) Desktop RSS aggregators (software): http://www.awasu.com, http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/, http://www.stevenwood.org/stories/2003/06/08/voxLite.html

c) Integrated RSS aggregators (integrate with IE or Microsoft Outlook): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (browser with integrated RSS features), http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.attensa.com/index.php?ys=1

2. PLAN YOUR RSS FEEDS

Planning your RSS feeds might be the most important thing you do about RSS. You most certainly need an RSS feed for your e-zine, your news section, your articles etc.

But how you will package these, what others you might want to offer and other important issues, are much more complex than we can cover in this space. A precise overview of all of the opportunities is available in the "Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS" e-book at http://rss.marketingstudies.net?src=sa13

You might also want to do follow-up (autoresponder) RSS feeds, feeds for your affiliates, feeds for your employees or business partners, feeds for the media, and so on.

3. CREATE A LIST OF RSS MARKETING/PUBLISHING REQUIREMENTS

Then create a list of requirements for the RSS marketing/publishing solution you will be getting to publish your feeds. The list should answer the basic questions, such as:

a) Do you want to integrate RSS publishing with your existing content management system?

b) What RSS metrics you'll want to watch? For example, are you satisfied with just a rough idea of how many people are reading your RSS feed, or are you interested in more precise subscriber counts, clicks and even individual content item popularity?

c) Do you need feed personalization, such as personalizing your RSS content with the receipient's name and other details?

d) Do you want to provide your subscribers with the ability to precisely select the content they want to receive in your RSS feed (customization), such as by content topic, keywords, authors and so on?

e) Do you want the RSS feeds to be hosted on your own server?

f) Do you need the ability to target promotional messages or other content to your individual RSS feed subscribers, for example based on their previous clicks and reading habits, or even their subscription data?

g) What's your budget?

h) Etc.

More information on all the different possibilities provided by RSS is available in the free Business Case for RSS report at http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

4. CHOOSE AN RSS PUBLISHING TOOL AND CREATE YOUR FIRST FEED

After you've prepared a list of requirements you can start searching for the appropriate tool. These come in a few general categories:

a) Desktop feed generation tools Desktop software you can use to inexpensively, quickly and easily generate RSS feeds, but doesn't allow for more advanced features such as content targeting. The market leader in this category is http://www.feedforall.com.

b) Hosted online RSS publishing solutions If you don't want to be bothered with a desktop tool and having to constantly upload your RSS feeds to your server, you could try a basic hosted online RSS publishing solution, such as http://www.myrsscreator.com. Using their simple service you don't even need your own website to publish via RSS. Another good choice, especially if you're in PR, is http://www.press-feed.com/

c) Advanced RSS marketing solutions These will cover more advanced RSS marketing capabilities, such as metrics, scheduled autoresponder messages, database building capabilities and similar. The strongest contenders in this market are http://www.simplefeed.com, http://www.nooked.com, http://myst-technology.com and some other strong players as well. Solutions aimed especially at smaller companies include http://www.rssautopublisher.com and http://www.market-soft.com/bypass/

d) Other options There are many other options as well, one for example being using your existing content management system to publish RSS feeds, or using a blog publishing solution such as http://www.movabletype.com

5. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH YOUR OWN CHANNELS

a) Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain: what RSS is; how the visitor will benefit from using RSS; where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!); how they can subscribe to your RSS feeds; and why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds.

Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds. In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com).

b) Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.

c) Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always "above the fold". Promote your RSS presentation page (telling your visitors that's where they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.

d) If you're publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics on the site.

e) Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages and e-zine issues.

f) As for the content, don't just say "Subscribe to receive news from my site", but rather prepare compelling copy to specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe to your content in the first place and why they should subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.

e) Enable Auto-discovery Just include the following piece of HTML code in the <head> section of your webpages and you'll be all set: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="ENTER_RSS_URL">

6. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH EXTERNAL CHANNELS

a) Submit your feeds to the appropriate search engines and directories. A good list can be found here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

b) Ping the RSS aggregation sites each time you update your online content, letting them know that new content is available to be indexed. You can use this free service: http://pingomatic.com

7. OTHER KEY RSS ACTIVITIES

a) Measure and optimize your feeds

b) Syndicate your feed content to other web media

c) Display third-party RSS feeds on your site

Rok Hrastnik is acknowledged as one of the top worldwide experts on RSS marketing. Get the easy way to mastering RSS marketing today. Click here now to get all the details on how to make RSS marketing work for you and help you increase your online profits: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/?src=sa31


Info by :
Rok Hrastnik is acknowledged as one of the top worldwide experts on RSS marketing. Get the easy way to mastering RSS marketing today. Click here now to get all the details on how to make RSS marketing work for you and help you increase your online profits: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/?src=sa31