by Nicholas | SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing |
In today’s net-savvy world it has become common for any business to have a website which they use mostly for advertising their products and services. With the advent of search engines, it has become even easier for the customers to search for the stuff online. For a website to be successful its link should land in the first three pages which the search engine brings and the rank of the page should be high which means many visitors come to the site. This can be achieved by applying search engine optimization or popularly known as SEO. This is a marketing strategy that increases the quality and quantity of traffic flow to a particular website via search engines.
SEO not only affects the search engine results, but also image search, video search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. It determines how a search algorithm functions and searches what is popular with people. When a website link is submitted to a search engine, a spider crawls through a page to gather links that lead to other pages and stores those pages on the server of the search engine. The information collected from these pages is sent to the indexer, whose job is to extract information from those pages such as the keywords and their weights, the location of the page and other links that are stored for the spider to crawl in the future.
In the beginning, the search engine optimizer algorithms were dependant on the keywords, Meta tags, and index files provided by the Webmaster. Meta tags provided information about a particular page, but using them for indexing the pages didn’t prove to be successful as some Webmasters added irrelevant Meta tags to increase the number of hits and earn huge ad revenue. They even changed the HTML of the web pages to achieve a good rank for the page. But this was a case of abuse as it fetched irrelevant pages.
Search engines then began utilizing complex ranking algorithms, which was difficult for webmasters to manipulate so as to provide web surfers with genuine results. The rank of the web page was calculated mathematically by functions using the strength and quantity of the inbound links. The higher the rank of the page the more chances it had to be viewed by a person. Later algorithms were developed which considered various other on-page factors such as rank and off-page factors such as hyperlink. Since the webmasters couldn’t manipulate the page rank, they began exchanging, selling and buying links, which lead to link spamming and even creation of numerous sites dedicated to this purpose.
Algorithms became more complex by every passing day and top search engines kept their algorithms a secret. As the cost of SEO increased, advertisers were roped in to pay for it, which finally resulted in high-quality web pages. Although investing in SEO is very fruitful, but at the same time is risky because without any prior notice the algorithms being used are bound to change and the search engine will stop directing visitors to the page. Many consultants are available in the market that provides SEO services. They manipulate the HTML source code of the web site like menus, shopping carts and sometimes even the content of the website to draw more traffic. Search engines like Yahoo have algorithms that extract pages not according to the page rank but according to the cost per click or set fee, that is if an advertiser desires that the page containing his ad be displayed, he is expected to pay money for it. This is a point of controversy, as only the big businesses will be able to increase the number of hits of their page but not the small business who might be having a better quality page.
Google Ad Words explores ads that have words typed in the search box by the surfer. The Million Dollar Homepage started the concept of Pixel advertising, which is a graphical kind of advertising. Depending on the pixels, space is sold to the advertiser. Keyword advertising involves advertisers who buy URLs of a site and place their ads at that location. Thus SEO is a market on its own which is yielding great results for businesses on the Internet.
by Nicholas | Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing, Leads Generation |
Web technologies are taking the Internet by storm. They have captured the hearts and minds not only of Internet Marketers but of their target markets too.
More and more people are using Web sites to either connect to their friends and family or to create their own hobby or fan sites.
These technologies can be extremely important in your traffic generation strategies because it allows you a method of direct contact with your target market. Done well, web technologies can provide you with thousands of visitors plus a valuable boost in the search engine rankings.
There are hundreds of Web 5.0 sites, with more cropping up every day in more focused niches. These are the sites that are of particular interest to the Internet Marketer as you have a tightly focused niche of people who would be interested in your product or services.
Of course, you can’t just walk into a Web 5.0 site and start promoting your product. Doing this will get yourself shot down in metaphorical flames. Marketers who do this quickly find themselves hounded out of the market.
When you use a web 5.0 site you have to use it like you would a list. You have to establish yourself in the niche as an expert, someone to listen to and who knows what they are talking about. Sometimes this means being yourself, other times you may have a pseudonym.
Whatever the case, you need to spend some time understanding the group and the market so that you can appeal to them in the best way. Be helpful, provide valuable information and you will soon be viewed as an expert.
Once you have established yourself as an authority figure you can easily promote your products and services as people will link your expertise with them. It allows you not only to promote your products but to promote products as an affiliate.
One word of caution is to not spread yourself too thin. Working on a social networking site to establish yourself as an authority can take a lot of your time and if you try to work on too many, you find yourself unable to do enough on any of the sites. Pick just a couple to focus your attention on, one niche site and one general site.
Another web 5.0 sites allow you to create your own websites. Some of these frown on overt commercialism, whereas others are pretty much a free for all.
This type of site is best used to push your product or information site up the search engine rankings.
You create sites on web 5.0 properties using unique content based around your keywords. You then create active links through to your own website. You do some simple promotion of these properties (pinging, social bookmarking etc) to give them some link juice, and then they will work to boost your website in the search engine rankings.
Whilst this doesn’t give you direct traffic, it will give you a leg up the organic search engine rankings. This will help to further increase your traffic. Plus, the additional benefit is each of these Web 5.0 properties will rank in their own right and get traffic, some of which will be passed on to your main site.
Web 5.0 sites are an incredible method of getting traffic. If you use them properly and spend the time on them, they can help you get thousands of additional visitors for free!
by Nicholas | Content Marketing, Affiliate Marketing |
Content marketing can go by a lot of different names such as private media, branded content, customer media and so on, but they are all essentially content marketing. This is probably one of the best ways to make sure your marketing is being truly effective.
One definition of content marketing is a technique of making and distributing valuable and relevant content to bring in a much-defined target audience with the overall objective being the creation of sales. Basically this is a way to reaching out to your customers and potential customers in a way specifically designed to attract them to you and keep them coming back.
Content marketing is all done without overtly trying to sell a product; it is intended to educate and inform the customers. With typical marketing, the goal is to make a sale and the product or service is the main point of the approach. Content marketing is very different from this approach and has proven to be very effective.
The idea of content marketing is to deliver consistent and useful information to the customer. In return, they will reward the company with their business and, over time, their loyalty to the brand. This form of marketing creates a bond between the customer and the company. This bond is a very hard one to break and results in ongoing business over time and a loyal customer.
Traditional marketing is becoming less and less useful as customers are able to skip commercials or change the channel on the TV. Ads in papers and billboards are not interactive and provide no real help to the customer. Pop-ups on the Internet are another way advertisers try to market their products but this can be ineffective as more and more people use their pop-up blocking tools on their browsers to avoid these invasive marketing tactics.
Content marketing breaks the mold completely and as odd as it may seem, the customer is the one who searches out the information they need. Not only do they remember where they found what they needed, they remember who provided useful information as well -and this is where the marketing comes in.
Potential customers will buy from a company they trust and feel has the same interests as they do. This is why providing helpful advice and information is so very important to this marketing strategy. Most of the time, the people reading information on a web page don’t realize they are being marketed to as they read the content.
Recent studies have shown 70-80% of people who were surveyed, felt more comfortable buying something from a company they trust. Content marketing builds trust because the customer begins to look forward to your next content installment and may make decisions based on the information given.
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