Marketing Your Business Online—The Smart Way

Archive for the ‘Operations Management’ Category

A critical aspect of online marketing is the effective research of keywords. The core of getting customers to your site will always be keywords, no matter the methods you use when advertising. This is the life blood of marketing on the internet. The first step is finding the specific market that you are wanting to appeal to. After you learn what your target market is you are able to start researching keywords. But the only way to do this research successfully is through a package of software known as a keyword research tool. A lot of marketers depend on the Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool. Even though it helps you get a lot of target keywords, you will still need to look at other keyword research options in the market, such as Micro Niche Finder and Keyword Elite. This is partially due to the fact these third party tools will produce keywords that the Google one will not. Not only will you learn about keywords you will also learn which sites use them and what their rankings are. Even more importantly, you will be able to ascertain your ability to get your website on the initial page of a Google search.

Research will not be too laborious if you have a targeted market and a keyword research program on hand. For this scenario, we’ll be taking “weight loss” as an example so as to explain how to do the keyword research. Let’s say “weight loss” is your targeted niche and you are looking out to market a “weight loss ebook”. All you need to do is enter “roofing repair” into the software you have chosen for your research and then search for other related keywords. In return, you will receive a register of keywords relevant to “weight loss”. Make sure the keywords you choose off this list are “buying” keywords. If the keywords aren’t specific enough, they will be of little use to you. Since your product is about giving a solution, your keyword should be about the same. Another reason for focusing on “buying” keywords at this point is to make sure your time won’t be wasted by folks who are searching for information instead of a solution. Your goal is to sell your product or services, not just be an informational service.

As soon as you’ve decided on what your list of targeted keywords will be, open up your notepad and save that list. Next, you must go more in depth with your research. Input these keywords back into your keyword research tool to get more targeted keywords. You’ll get a list of long tail keywords that are more related to your product. It’s a whole lot easier to rank a long tail keyword than it is a short tail one. As the competition is intense, do not settle for “weight loss” as a short tail keyword that you will have a hard time getting highly placed, as an example. However, choosing a long tail keyword like “weight loss using natural herbal supplements” means you’ll rank in a heartbeat because there’s not going to be a lot of competing websites. The Google Keyword Tool simply can not provide the detailed information or long tail keywords that an effective keyword research program can discover for you.

It is very vital to use keyword research if you wish to be successful with your internet marketing. If you incorrectly choose keywords, you can really be shooting yourself in the foot with the wasted time and effort. So make sure you invest in a good keyword research tool that will help you expand your keyword list and also break into new, unknown niches that are just ready to be conquered.

The simplest approach to really perform keyword research is to have the proper resources. The keyword research tool I use the most is called KeywordSpy. I would encourage you to take a look.
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Every successful marketing campaign relies on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to create more traffic. There are many different ways to get traffic to your site, and one of them is building those links. Getting other sites in your field to put your links on their pages is called link building. The more backlinks you establish, the higher you will be ranked with the search engines.

The Safe and Automatic Way To Build Backlinks

The absolutely quickest, easiest and safest way to gain back links is to enroll your website in a Blog Directory. Once your enrolled in web 2.0 sites like Technorati, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog and literally dozens of other web aggregates, link back to your blog or webpage as soon as your site pings that you’ve posted new content. The hardest work is going to be done for you automatically when you submit your site. You simply need to create profile pages and claim your blogs on these infamous web 2.0 websites. After you have created your profile and claimed your blogs, you need to wait to see if your profiles and accounts will be accepted by them. Once your site is approved, you will start getting automated links. Due to the fact that these backlinks are from high PR sites, they are very high quality. Plus, all you have to do is set up the accounts; the rest is done automatically. This is the strategy to use if you want good results with the least amount of effort.

Social Link Building

In order to gain ground and attract followers, individuals have been writing and posting on the Internet for ages. Yet numerous vendors believe this is worthless and they don’t bother to try this technique. Overall, this can prove to be a big mistake. The advantages gained from writing articles are huge. When you take advantage of this technique, you are able to start building quality backlinks. Plus, it is not a hard as it may seem. You simply take the time to write quality, original articles about your subject matter and have them hosted through article directories. Webmasters and ezine publishers are constantly looking through these directories for content they can borrow. It is important to realize that each time you get an article published, your site’s link is included with the article in a resource box. This is a great way to build quality backlinks, and it doesn’t cost you a cent.

Leveraging Local Authority Sites

If your business site is of local interest and has a significant local following, you can accumulate backlinks from other local authoritative sites involved in the same area of business. If you are an establishment in a local area you should be getting link backs from relevant websites. Along with this, look for local business directories on the web so you can submit your business in there as well. Search engines give heavy weight to these links, and as you acquire more, you build valuable and long-lasting backlinks that contribute to the traffic flow to your site and, ultimately, to the success of your business.

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How does the Alexa Traffic Ranking system works? Well, the Alexa website provides a downloadable toolbar for people to download on their computers. This downloadable toolbar is only compatible with Firefox and not Internet Explorer. Therefore, if a person is only running Explorer on his or her computer, then this person will not be able to download the Alexa toolbar. Then how can one truly trust the accuracy of the Alexa Ranking method?

A few third party websites provide a free downloadable toolbar that will work with Internet Explorer. However, downloading any free software from the Internet is risky business. One should only download free software from websites after extensively researching that site and making sure it is safe.

The Alexa Ranking system uses different methods of measuring page views and traffic to a website. These methods are very inaccurate, especially when the website in question has low traffic.

The system only accurately ranks websites that are rank under 100,000. Any website that is rank over 100,000 is not accurately ranked. In other words, the Alexa Ranking system cannot accurately determine if a website is ranked 200,000. Why is this so?

The reason why websites ranking higher than 100,000 cannot be accurately measured is because these websites receive very low traffic, which means that too few people with the downloaded toolbar actually visit these websites for an accurate measurement to be obtained. There is simply not enough information to accurately rank these low traffic websites.

This is why the analytics for a particular website could be showing an increase in web traffic, but not showing any increase in page rank. Conversely, a website can be experiencing decrease traffic for a particular day, but the rank of the site still shows an increase for that day. This seams confusing, but this is truly what happens when one looks at site rank and traffic of websites that are ranked greater than 100,000.

The higher up the rank a website gets though, is the more accurate its traffic rank measurements and data, in relations to other websites on the internet, becomes. Therefore, a website that ranks #2 has more accurate data, which is derived from more people who have downloaded the toolbar. The rank of such website is therefore more reliable. In this case, there are many people who have the toolbar, so the sample size is much larger, thus giving a more accurate measure of visitors to the site.

In many cases the Ranking system used by Alexa could be affected by its method of measuring website traffic. With millions of hosts on the Internet, it is often difficult to determine which hosts are serving the same content. This is why automatic procedures used to measure data can be incorrect, Alexa. This explains why many websites usually experience fluctuations in their site rankings, day after day.

There are very few websites that are successful on the internet, which means that there is a very large amount of websites that don’t do well, in terms of traffic. There is definitely a larger quantity of websites with ranks greater than 100,000 than there is with ranks less than 100,000.

Accurate site ranking for sites with less than 1,000 visitors per month is often very difficult to achieve by the Alexa Ranking methods because of the enormous size of the Internet and the large concentrations of visitors on popular websites, Alexa.

Therefore, one should not only depend on the Alexa Ranking system to determine the overall popularity of a website because it is often inaccurate when it comes to measuring websites with low monthly visitors of less than 1,000 per month or website with ranks greater than 100,000. A website can therefore be doing well for a given period, in terms of traffic and still not be ranked well.

Ever Wanted to Promote Your Brand in Forums, Blogs, Message Boards, or Article Directories? Well, here is your chance! Mstardom.com is a social networking community where members submit promo articles and promo blogs about their products and services for free.
Glenford S Robinson is a Clinical Lab Scientist, Expert Author, and President of Mstardom.com.
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The ancient Chinese wise man, Sun Tzu, once said: “If you are ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, then you are a fool and certain to be defeated in every battle.” SunTzu was talking about the military battlefield and not the business battlefield. But if Sun Tzu was a businessman today, he would be thrilled with all the information he could find out about his enemies on the internet.

Business owners have traditionally turned to their marketing department for information on competitors. Now they are better off turning to their webmaster. In fact, one of the first things your webmaster should be asking you is who your top three competitors are.

This kind of information comes at a price. Run a Google search on “competitive intelligence” and over 11,000 results show up. There are literally thousands of consultants who will help you identify and gather information on the competition but it will cost you dearly. Save your money. Here are 7 ways you can be your own online intelligence gatherer and it won’t cost anything but time. Because as another ancient wise man once said: “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

Check Back Links

A recent survey by the Pew Research found that only 50 percent of internet users actually use a search engine everyday. So what is driving traffic to a website? The answer – back links. In other words, other sites that link to your competition. Find out the back links from your competitor’s site and get linked from these sites as well. You will increase your traffic dramatically.

Look at Keywords

Take a look at the competition’s keywords. This is easy information to get from sites like Key Word Density. Another way is to look at the code of their websites. This isn’t difficult. Go to the site and click on “View” at the top of the browser, then click “Source” or “Page Source.” A page of HTML code will open and the keywords will be revealed in the code near the top of the page.

Monitor Traffic

Just as you are monitoring unique visitors, length of stay, most viewed pages, and where visitors are coming from on your website, follow these same rules on your competitor’s site. You can find this information by going to Quantcast or Alexa.

Google Alerts

Google alerts allows users to set up alerts with keywords and phrases that trigger an email notification every time that word or phrase shows up on a site, blog or press release. For example, if you interested in a competitor, set up a Google alert on that company and their top executives and you will be notified every time they are mentioned online.

Monitor Twitter

It is time to get acquainted or re-acquainted with Twitter for your corporate spying. This is the place where industry buzz starts. It is where you hear the first low rumble of something that is about to happen. But you can’t just watch, you have to participate. Try to update your Tweets on a daily basis. If you are too busy to do this, use TweetLater, one of the best apps out there for accomplishing this.

Monitor Movement

You can learn a lot about a company just by reading their “About Us” page and monitoring their job listings. If your competitor is an auto parts company and they just hired a new CEO with a background in marketing, that may be a clue about how they plan to increase sales. If a company has several listings for jobs in another state, chances are it is expanding or relocating there. If the online bios of the top executives are vague, you can research them on professional networking sites like Linkedin or Plaxo.

RSS Feeds

If all this sounds like too many channels of information to monitor on a regular basis, RSS feeds are a good solution. Many experts are fans of feeds for intelligence gathering. You can keep up with industries, customers, and competitors by feeding things like Google Alerts, Twitter, and all of your other RSS feeds into one feed. MySyndicaat has very effective tools for doing this.

Sofia Sapojnikova
Writer: Dan Chambers
Vesta Digital

http://www.vestadigital.com

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Keyword marketing research is the key to online marketing. But what are keywords and how does one use them in online marketing? When someone wants information they come to the Internet and to the popular search engines at that. They’ll type in a few words and hope that their favorite search engine delivers back relevant results for them.

Here they enter the search phrase or the name of the product or service they are looking for information on and hit enter. The search engines will then return a list of 10 websites on each page (and the pages could run into thousands) that contain the keywords or key phrases the searcher entered in the engine.

Online businesses target these keywords and phrases to direct traffic to their sites. They research their competitors sits and ascertain how much traffic they are getting and from where. They then research the keywords the sites are using and go all out marketing their site with the same keywords. Chances of their web site landing on the first ten results of the search engines improve greatly.

However there is more to keyword marketing research that meets the eye. IT is not all bout just competitors sites. There may be keywords that relate to the product or service of a site and is being used millions of times in a months. These keywords can be used to market a site on the Internet.

There are other popular programs where web masters bid on popular keywords and the highest bidder gets his or her site linked to the keyword which is then linked to the URL of the site.

The keyword is then placed on the search pages and on other web sites as advertisements where visitors may find it attractive and click on the advertisement to visit the web site. This is called pay per click because every time someone clicks on an ad a certain amount is deducted from their deposit for the keyword. Keyword marketing research tools a re available for free on the popular search engines. Webmasters should make good use of these to increase traffic to their sites.

Discover the best keyword marketing research tool and make sure that you get the most accurate keyword marketing.
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