Any good marketing coach can explain that easily. If your site is placing high in free (organic) search results, you’re getting free advertising. Notice the word “free.” That’s always a good thing. Building a strong PageRank (PR) by getting good quality links coming in to your site takes time, but it isn’t going to eat a hole in your pocketbook.

You want to work on raising your site’s PR to get “authority” with the search engines. A site with “authority” gets better visibility in search results. Really understanding the algorithm behind your site’s PR will likely have you reaching for a bottle of aspirin. In the beginning, just concentrate on understanding the basics and how they relate to your efforts to promote your site.

How Is PR Defined?

Google says PR is all about the “uniquely democratic nature of the web” and “using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.” Basically, a link from one page to another is a vote for that page. However, not all votes in this democracy are equal. Some votes come from higher-quality pages and are weighed more heavily. (Other factors in determining PR include the relevance of search phrases on a page and actual traffic to the page.)

How Is PageRank Expressed?

PR values are expressed on a scale of 0 to 10. Sites from 0 to 2 are probably pretty new to the Web and have few incoming links. Sites that have made it to PR3 to PR5 are fairly well established; PR6 and above are really popular and have a lot of high-quality links. There are very few sites that make it to the PR7 to PR10 range.

The ones that are ranked that high are usually owned by big corporations or major media outlets like the Wall Street Journal (PR8). Improving your site’s PR by getting relevant, high-quality, incoming links is one of the most affordable SEO methods at your disposal. Rather than trying to get to a specific number, just concentrate on improving your number.

Is My Site’s Homepage The Only Page With PR?

No, each page in your site will be assigned a PR, something that is emphasized in marketing coaching as a valuable tool. You can use relevant interlinking to distribute PR throughout all your pages.

Huh? Well, just hang on to that thought for a minute. For right now, just understand the concept that some pages in your site may earn a higher PR than others, and that you can use that to your advantage.

PageRank Passes From One Page To Another

Here’s how it works. A page with a high PR passes some of its value to a low PR page over a link. You can use this to promote your site in a couple of ways. When your site’s pages are interlinked in a relevant way, PR gets distributed more evenly throughout the site. Also, you can “court” relevant sites that belong to other people through your link-building campaign. This is really how your site starts to gain “authority.”

Start By Building Your Index Page’s PR

Generally, marketing coaches will tell you to begin by working on your home page’s PR. This can be time-consuming, and not just because you’ll be building relationships with other site owners. You have to do your time in what’s popularly called the Google “sandbox.” This just means that new sites like yours probably won’t get any PR at all for the first few months you’re on the web.

How Do I Check My PR?

There are a number of free, online tools for checking PR including PRChecker and SearchStatus. At PRChecker you type in a page’s URL to see its PR. SearchStatus is a FireFox extension that shows a site’s PR at the bottom of your browser. (It also shows your site’s Alexa rating, another method to measure online “importance.”) You can also install the Google Toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer and enable the PageRank function.

Is Building My PR All I Need To Do?

A marketing coach will tell you that having a strong PR is only one part of your SEO campaign. For instance, say you’re looking around for a site to link to yours. You find one with a high PR, but it’s a site that sells links. Move on. Their high PR number doesn’t do you any good because a link from that site to yours will have a lower quality and will pass less authority to you.

Understanding the basics of PageRank is essential in putting together a high-quality link-building campaign for your site, but don’t get fixated on the PR number and ignore other important facts. Just gain a basic understanding of what PR is and how it functions and use that to your advantage in building a reputation of authority for your site.

By Paul Marshall (c) 2010 Strategic Web Marketing Net

About The Author
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a realistic budget. You can learn about his professional Internet Marketing Coaching and Consulting Services on his home page: StrategicWebMarketing.net He also offers affordable SEO services (and d-i-y Coaching), which you can learn about at: strategicwebmarketing.net/seo.html. Get to know Paul, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!

Subject I: Search Result Presentation

It’s easy to see why some readers simply dismissed this document out of hand, as the first section starts off being little more than a rehash of the standard “Use Page Titles, Use Meta Descriptions” advice found in any SEO-101 manual. Only by persevering to the part talking about Google Sitelink Triggering, does one begin to suspect that there may be a little more to the report card than meets the eye. Here the authors throw out a couple of crumbs about categorizing website and link-structure, and consolidating a site’s URLs to maximize its informational focus with the aim of increasing the chances of Google generating Sitelinks.

Even so, it’s nothing most professionals haven’t heard before, and I suspect that by this time a lot of readers had given up, thinking that nothing interesting was in store.

Subject II: URLs and Redirects

This is where we see a little glitter among the rubble, as the section starts off with the statement that: “Google products’ URLs take many different forms. Most larger products use a subdomain, while smaller ones usually use a directory form…”

In itself this is not an exceptional statement, and the chapter continues to give handy, but hardly unique, information about canonicalization, URL structure, and redirects until Page 10, where we find the following declaration:

“Subdomains require an extra DNS lookup, slightly affecting latency, which is very important at Google.”

Page load-speeds are an important factor to Google. There’s been talk and speculation about this ever since Matt Cutts dropped the first hints last year, and these days most SEOs are busily proclaiming that slow websites are now a handicap.

Haven’t they always been?

Be that as it may, this fact is not common knowledge with the average webmaster, as demonstrated by a question I’m regularly confronted with over at the Google Webmaster Help Forum:

“Which is a better way to categorize my site, subdomains or folders?”

The standard answer to this question used to be “Whichever you prefer” before load-times became an issue. Now, however, we find a clear indicator that a folder-based approach is much-preferable unless a category actually contains enough information to merit its own site, which is effectively what a subdomain turns it into.

Subject III: On-Page Optimizations

While at first glance this chapter is more standard SEO-101 fodder, it’s where we find a sizable nugget, as the report talks about semantic markup, and how Google uses it to gauge a page’s content.

“Nothing new here; we all use H1 tags.” you might say, but you’d only be partially right, because this issue not only runs much deeper than H1 headings, it runs beyond Heading tags altogether, as I’ll explain shortly. For the moment, however, let’s stay with them.

In the past few years, a great many Optimizers have reached the conclusion that only H1, and, to a degree, H2 are of any promotional value, and that lesser headings (H3 – H6) carry practically no weight at all. But let’s take a look at the following statement, taken from Page 38 of the Report:

“Most product main pages have an opportuníty to use one <h1> tag, like the example above, but they’re currently only using other heading tags (<h3> in this case) or larger font styling. While styling your text so it appears larger might achieve the same visual presentation, it does not provide the same semantic meaning to the search engine that an <h1> tag does.”

For starters it’s obvious that the lesser headings are alive and well, and being used by Google. We’re also told that Google does not, or cannot, judge the visual-context meaning of CSS styled text. The conclusion is to use more heading tags instead of CSS styles wherever your content calls for it. However, there’s more to it still. Let’s take another look at part of that statement:

“…but they’re currently only using other heading tags…”

It would appear that Google still places greater value on other semantic markup tags (em, strong, blockquote, etc.) than many professionals give them acknowledgment, for these days. Otherwise why would the author specifically note the fact that Google only uses headings and font styles?

I personally know quite a few professionals who have long-since abandoned most semantic markup tags in favour of CSS style, since the prevailing attitude of designers and SEOs has been that making text bold or italic no longer carries much promotional weight, following widespread abuses in the mid-2000s and Google’s consequent algorithm updates.

And although the above statement may be a tentative one, it might just point the way back to a more HTML-based approach to web design. Indeed, if it can be taken at face-value, it’s entirely possible that those SEOs and designers advocating CSS-based, table-less design as the way forward are barking up the wrong tree. Whatever the case may be, there is undoubtedly more to the SEO Report Card than first meets the eye, and at the very least, there is a little gold to be extracted from the mass of standard information. Only by reading the full document will you be able to make an assessment yourself.

What should also be remembered is that the SEO Report Card is not aimed at high-flying SEOs or E-lebrity industry pundits, but at the intermediate webmaster for whom even the report’s basic information is of immense value, if read alongside Google’s SEO Starter Guide.

By Sasch Mayer (c) 2010

About The Author
Sasch Mayer is a writer and consultant with a career spanning well over a decade and a half. Over the years, his web design and promotion advice and Professional Keyword Research have helped countless clients diagnose and solve problems with a wide range of site issues.

Starting a Fan Page for your business may be your answer. But how can you use a Fan Page to achieve fantastic results?

1) The first way to leverage Fan Pages is to set up your Page for success.

One of the first things you need to do when you set up a new Page is to give it a title. A tip with this is to think about using keywords related to your business that you would like to be found for. You also want to choose a good, clear photo for your Page. Another thing to note is to make sure you have filled out the Info tab on your Page thoroughly with all the relevant information about your business.

2) The second way to leverage Fan Pages is to build your Fan base.

You have to be a little proactive about getting Fans, especially when your Page is new. An easy way to invite people is to use the “Suggest to Friends” link underneath the picture on your Fan Page. Facebook will then pull up a list of your Facebook friends and you would just click on the ones you want to send invitations to. You’ll want to consider people like former and current clients, people you’ve partnered with in your business, vendors you work with, people who you know have purchased from you before, etc.

3) The third way to leverage Fan Pages is to interact and engage with your Fans.

Once you have some supporters of your Page, you want to encourage more dialogue and interaction between yourself and them and even among each other. The biggest impact comes from simply having conversations with people. One thing that I do on my Page is to just ask open-ended questions. Asking people to share experiences is another great way to get a dialogue going.

4) The fourth way to leverage Fan Pages is to provide good content.

Offering regular content will naturally encourage interaction because you are giving people something to respond to. You don’t need to come up with all the content yourself, either. You might just link to an interesting article or blog post you have found on the web related to your business or industry.
What content like this does is attract comments from your Fans, which is activity that in turn goes out into the News Feed. The more activity on your Page then, the more attention to your Page you have a chance of attracting.

5) The 5th way to leverage Fan Pages is to use them to drive traffic to and from your blog or website.

To do this, you definitely want to list your website in the Info section, and you also want to share links in your updates to your own site.
You can also use an application like Notes to enter your blog feed so that it pulls your posts into your Page. You also want to add your URL to your email signature, and use the free badges and widgets Facebook provides that you can add to your website.
You can check out http://www.facebook.com/facebook-widgets for those. Once you have something like this on your site, visitors can just click on it and they will land on your Page where they can become a fan.

So, if you don’t have a Page yet, head over to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and start one now. If you do have one set up, use these tips to help make your Page stand out, get noticed, and become a helpful destination for all of your raving Fans.

About the Author:

Christine Gallagher, MLS, MSIS, founder of CommunicateValue.com, teaches small business owners and professionals how to conquer the overwhelming aspects of online and social media marketing to increase business and maximize profits. For free tips on how to build profitable relationships, leverage technology and create your own successful online business, visit http://CommunicateValue.com.

Diversification is important for more than just maintaining your sanity too. It stops you from making a huge mistake. Consider, for example, if Google outright ignored links from directories. Would your site’s rankings survive? What if Google said they no longer counted links from article marketing and press releases?

I’m not saying they are or aren’t counting them right now or how much weight these types of links carry. That, my friends, is a debate for a different day. My point is to get you to consider what your link profile looks like and what sort of audience they’re reaching.

There are several different types of links to consider:

• Generic Link Building – These include the straight link generation with very little to no content involved. Directories and social profiles are a good example.
• Content Link Generation – This type of link building involves mass written content and often involves distribution. Article marketing, press releases, advertorials, blogs, and reviews, for example.
• Social Media Link Building – To be perfectly honest, I see these as being more about traffic than actual links, but I’ll included it here regardless. These involve social bookmarking sites, Twitter, Facebook, and other similar formats.
• Alternative Media Link Generation – This is the creation of videos, podcasts, widgets, and apps, all of which link back to your main website.
• Audience Generated Links – Online quizzes, contests, and link bait all fall into this category. These tactics encourage others to share your content and link back to you for various reasons.
• Content and Media Placement – Instead of buying thousands of dollars worth of links, this type of link building involves a much higher investment into the actual content. This content is then placed on authority sites in an effort to gain permanent, high quality links.
• Link Networking and Feeder Sites – Creating networks of different sites that all link back to your main site.

How you choose to use these methods and what ratios you choose are totally up to you and should depend specifically on your audience. After all, if you’re going to build links, you may as well generate some interest and traffic with it, right?

Here is a collection of some more excellent hints, tips, and guides for quality link building:

Setting Up, Techniques and Tips

How to Set Up a Link Building Campaign for a Web Site or a Blog

Ask Kalena tells Excel fanatics how to track links using a series of worksheets. While this might not be the best for everyone, I think it gives us a great starting point and the system can be easily manipulated to match your particular tastes and needs.

Ask the Link Builder — SMX East 2009

Again, this content is a bit older, but I think the ideas and tips covered here are worth a read, even if you’ve already seen it. BruceClay also covered this topic, but has a slightly different version than Marketing Pilgrim you might find interesting. (I’m pretty sure there was an ‘Ask the Link Builder’ session at SMX 2010, but didn’t happen to see it online. If it is around somewhere, I’d be more than happy to add the link here, and would be interested to see it.)

Link Building Techniques and Tips

Over on David Naylor’s blog, Paul Carpenter left a great post on link building, but I particularly like it’s focus on quality content (surprise, surprise). These points aren’t deep secrets of professional link builders, but I think they’re vital for good link building and helping to build your site’s authority. Definitely a huge bonus! (David also has 10 Link Building Tips that are worth checking out while you’re there.)

Link Building With Content Ideas

In this post, Link Spiel’s Debra Mastaler gives a really good example of how to come up with content that should do well in terms of encouraging linking. It also gives some good ideas on how to promote and use that content for link generation. A lot can be taken out of this article for those who are willing to apply the lessons covered here.

Link Building — How To Build Quality Links For Free

This time, it’s the Wordstream Team with some interesting thoughts on link generation. And while I could care less about PageRank, it does a really good job of covering the basics as well as some great links on the topic of PageRank that are worth checking out.

A Big Bunch of Link Building Ideas

The link queen, Debra Mastaler, covered a number of Twitter tools and techniques you’ll be able to incorporate into your existing strategy and help you get the most bang for your buck. (Again, if you’re looking for more info on link building, her blog Link Spiel is definitely worth wandering through. Wiep Knol’s Wiep.net is another fantastic link building blog I find myself returning to rather frequently. My favorites are the ‘Link Building This Month’ posts because he usually finds some I’ve missed.)

Link Bait and Getting the Most Linking Power From Your Content

The Anatomy Of Linkbait

Jordan Kasteler takes a look at the finer points of link bait over at Website Magazine. This has some absolute ‘must’ do’s for good content and the social sphere. If you’re planning any sort of major link baiting strategies, you’ll definitely want to have a look.

21 Tips to Earn Links and Tweets to Your Blog Post

Rand composed a post outlining a bit of his link bait strategy in this SEOmoz post. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, nor is that all there is to it, I think it’s a great post for beginners and webmasters who aren’t super familiar with the concept.

Determining the Value Of Links

Link Worth — What’s Yours Worth

Tim Nash tackles the complex world of link worth, including a number of factors he feels determine the amount of power each one has. It will definitely get you thinking about your own link strategy and content placement programs.

A Guide To Qualifying Link Prospects For Relevance, Value, and Potentiality

Garrett French also looked at the value of links when visited Search Engine Land, but in a slightly different manner. He also has a link in this article to another link building worksheet you may find helpful.

Link Builder’s Guide to Historical Ranking Factors

While we’re on the topic of link quality, head over to David Harry’s blog and check out his guide to historical ranking factors. It may just inspire you to improve your linking strategy!

10 Factors That Determine the Value of Inbound Links

David Wallace took a stab at defining the value of various links over at SearchRank. Again, I’m not sure if I agree with everything he covered here, but I definitely think the ideas he brings up here are worth some consideration and thought. (David Snyder’s thoughts on link value can be found here at Search Engine Journal.)

Link Value Factors

Wiep spent some time chatting and questioning a number of the industry’s biggest and brightest on their link building beliefs. You’ll find the download link for the results of that research on the bottom of the page.

Video Link Building and General Link Building Worksheets

12 ‘DoFollow’ Video Sharing Sites to Distribute Videos and Build Links

Ann Smarty put together a great list of video sharing sites over at Search Engine Journal. And while it was written over a year ago, I find it’s a really convenient page, particularly if you don’t normally focus on videos and video SEO. (By the way, if you’re interested in learning more about video SEO, you’ll want to sneak over to Reel SEO. I found them through Joseph Morin, and I’ve yet to be disappointed.)

Ontolo’s Downloads

These guys have a great collection of tools, worksheets, and research that will make you a much better link builder. This includes their Link Building Outreach Worksheets as well as their Link Qualification Worksheet.

SEO Content Inventory Worksheets — One of my favorite patent geeks, Bill Slawski released an excellent Excel sheet and article on content inventory. I loved it, and I think you will too.

Helpful Link Building Tools

Majestic SEO — Let you gather link data, backlink history, and have a bulk backlink checker, but they also have a neighborhood checker that’s pretty cool.

Raven SEO — They dark boys at Raven have put together a great set of tools that make it easy to watch and manage your website as well as identifying adjustments that need to be made to your current campaigns. Their collection includes a contact and competitor manager, keyword research and manager, design and quality analyzer, link manager, website directory, content management system and a whole heap of other stuff you’re going to love.

Bad Neighborhood Tool — Created by Michael VanDeMar, it…well…scans your site and flags possible issues.

Linkbait Generator — You give it a subject, and it comes up with link bait titles. Not really sure about this one. I’ve never actually used any of the titles it’s created, but I did find it worked well for coming up with ideas. Something to try if you’re stuck.

Backlink Watch — These guys let you get a good quick look at your backlinks. I like the additional information they provide here. Of course, there is the Back Link Analyzer software from SEOBook as well.

Debra Mastaler and Wiep Knol also created some great lists of link building tools you may find helpful.

There ya go! By the time you get through this list, you’ll be a link building master.

To completely over-simplify things, the applications are what make it possible for us to create, share, and use the content we find on the Internet. So to say content is King, you’d have to also say that the applications are Queen in order to have a more complete view of the Internet. There are all kinds of applications from the browsers that make surfing the Internet possible to all sorts of applications that manage and deliver the content.

Think about it. Without the application we know as Google, how would you find the content you’re looking for on the Internet? I’ve been there and I remember finding things online was next to impossible, but that was back in 1987. Then we have Adobe TM Flash that allows us to see and hear sounds and images over the Internet.

There are all sorts of content management systems available to us today that simply didn’t exist a few years back. As it becomes easier and easier to manage and digest, the demand for new content grows and grows.

Marketers who create quality content often find they are able to generate large amounts of traffic, they usually have large mailing lists, and it almost goes without saying that they usually have healthy bank accounts.

It all starts with the content. The more you create, share, distribute, the better off you’ll be in building a profitable business on the web. If you want the real secret to Internet success, this is it.

Content comes in many forms, and it’s best to use as many forms as possible on your web site because there are now so many ways to access and use content and not everybody wants it the same way. Some people love to read, others prefer to listen, some prefer to sit back and watch a video.

As you develop your content, think about creating not just written articles, white papers, and special reports. Be sure to add streaming audio, podcasts, videos, screen-captures, and even animations to your mix.

Sometimes it’s best to give the same content in different formats. For instance, you might present an article as both a regular web page and a downloadable .PDF file. You might present a video and also present just the audio track from that same video.

Now how do you get from creating content to building a successful business?

Think about why most people use the Internet. They get online and check e-mail. They log into their social networks to keep up with their friends. They search for information to help them answer a question. They look for things to purchase. They come to play games and meet people. All of these activities revolve around finding and using content.

When you’ve got content on your web site and you make it easy for people to find, you íncrease the traffic to your web site, naturally.

The more content you have, the more people will be stopping by your web site. Truly the days of the single-page sales letter web sites are done. You’ve got to do more than make a compelling sales pitch, you’ve got to demonstrate that you’re the leader in your market. You’ve got to show people why they need what you have and how it will truly make their lives better. And most of all, you’ve got to let them sample your stuff before they purchase.

Let’s look at it from the customer’s perspective. Your customer wants the best of what’s available but how can they figure out what’s best from a sales letter alone? They need more information that’s not in the form of a sales pitch. They need to feel like they can try it on, test it out, and they can do that when you present them plenty of content on your web site.

So if you’re selling a product that is best demonstrated in a video, be sure you have a number of videos on your web site showing customers using and loving your product. If you sell consulting, demonstrate your knowledge of your topic with articles, reports, white papers, audio presentations, and even videos of you speaking to an audience.

As you plan your content, also keep in mind how you’re going to present it on your web site so that it’s in the formats people can really use, that it’s easy to find, and that it’s readily accessible from different Internet devices, including smart phones.

If you’ll take to time to do this, what you’ll soon realize is that your sales letters will perform better, people will not need as much strong-arm salesmanship before they purchase, your mailing líst will grow, and your web site will show up in more places on the Internet.

It’s no surprise that web sites that present a lot of content lead the field when it comes to sales. Take a look at your web site today and think about how a new visitor would really get to sample what it is you do without having to purchase what you’re selling.

How good is your web site at attracting new visitors with little or no direct effort on your part? Do you have enough easily accessible content on your web site to keep people coming back for more?

Most web sites, including my own, can always use more great content. Adding content is the best and most profitable use of your marketing dollars because the return on your investment continues for years.

For instance, in 1991 I wrote my very first article on marketing. It was published in a national business magazine a few months later and it continues to appear on the internet almost 20 years later. In that time, this one article has been read more than a million times, and has generated countless sales for my business. What other kind of marketing can do that?

In my opinion, no other marketing piece can do what adding fresh content to your web site can. Ideally, you’ll be adding new content regularly, and expiring content that is no longer relevant. When you do, you’ll have the most profitable marketing strategy working for you all day, every day for years to come.

By Robert Imbriale (c) 2010
About The Author
Robert Imbriale is the author of the best-selling book, Motivational Marketing (Wiley, 2007). He has personally coached thousands of business owners since he began coaching in 1995. He is a leader in the marketing industry and regularly appears on radio and television. To get your copy of Why People purchase go to www.UltimateWealth.com/money.htm

When businesses think about search and social media, a great deal of the time they are thinking about traffic, customer engagement, and brand awareness. While these are all good things to consider, there may be more to that last one that you have spent much time thinking about.

Brand awareness goes beyond just having a random customer find your site in a set of search results or through a link from their Facebook news feed. Have you considered how channels like search and social media are used by media outlets and journalists? The fact of the matter is that journalists and bloggers alike utilize both to a great extent while covering their beats.

Search and social both play significant roles in PR. This is a topic that WebProNews recently discussed with TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden. Odden calls journalists customers, and in many ways they should be treated as such when it comes to getting your product or site in front of their eyeballs.

Odden says to look at what it is you can do as a marketer to make it easier for the journalist to do their job. Optimize your content for what a journalist is looking for. This is one way you can potentially increase your media coverage, which can obviously increase brand awareness.

Odden makes a great point about online journalists often having tighter deadlines, and turning to blogs and social networks for sources and quotes. For example, the real-time nature of a Twitter search might be just what a journalist or blogger need to find someone who’s talking about the subject they’re writing about, at nearly the moment they’re looking for it.

For that matter, Google’s real-time search can help for the same reason, and most journalists and bloggers frequently use Google to search for what they’re looking for. If what they’re looking for happens to be related to a newsy topic, they just might see Google’s real-time results literally before anything else. If that topic happens to be related to something you’re talking about, you just might end up in those results too. Google is also indexing updates from Facebook pages here now, by the way.

The point is, if you are looking for increased media coverage, there are ways to increase your chances of getting in front of the right people, and it is certainly not limited to real-time search. Sometimes journalists/bloggers will simply tap their contacts within their social networks (or email of course) to find sources. This is as good a reason as any to engage in social media on a regular basis and network with lots of relevant people.

If attracting media attention is what you’re after, consider these five tips I offered in a SmallBusinessNewz article last year:

1. Do something that’s different – Simply do something that makes you stand out: something that gets people talking. If it creates enough buzz, the media coverage will likely follow.

2. Look for niche publications – the more niche the publication, the more likely they probably are to cover you.
3. Personalize your message – When you’re writing an email to a publication to talk about your business, for example, personalize the message for the specific person you’re contacting, so they know it’s not just a manufactured piece that you’re sending all over the web. Journalists like exclusivity.

4. Find multiple contacts – If you can find more than one contact for a particular publication, it may be wise to send your story pitch to them. This will increase the potential visibility among the publication’s staff.

5. Provide plenty of details – When sending such a pitch, it’s a good idea to include as many details about the product/story as possible. The more details available, the less research is required, and time is more valuable than ever, especially for a journalist.

Another piece of advice I would give is to not let your press center hold back your marketing opportunities. I’ve seen a lot of companies fail to keep their own press centers up to date with the latest news, even as big announcements are made, and even if they have issued press releases. Often times, these releases won’t even be available on the site until later. If you want to increase your chances of more media coverage, you should always have your latest news readily available in your press center, or via your blog – wherever you make announcements. And always provide contact info.

By Chris Crum, www.webpronews.com

Learn What’s Bad For SEO And Don’t Do It

If you take a drawing class, one of the first things you’ll learn is that it’s easier to look at the negative space than at the object itself. That means that as a beginner, you have a better shot at recreating the funky-looking space between the apple and the pear than drawing the fruit the first time you pick up a pencil. And you don’t get so discouraged when your results aren’t perfect. That’s a good concept to carry into online marketing.
Sometimes learning everything that can go wrong is a better place to start than trying to do everything right. Do-it-yourself, affordable SEO is too expensive at any cost if you’re constantly shooting yourself in the foot. Some of the biggest mistakes novices make are really the easiest ones to avoid!

Bad Navigation And No Sitemap

It doesn’t take a marketing coach to know that the entire point of “search engine optimization” on a site is to get that site crawled by the search engines. If you use images — or worse — Flash or javascript to design your navigation, the search engines will ignore you. (Also, any page that doesn’t have an incoming link won’t be crawled.)

Not having a sitemap is just as bad. Many website owners don’t think they need a sitemap because people don’t use them. It’s not about people! Search engines love sitemaps. They literally crawl all over sitemaps. Even if you have to maintain the sitemap manually, have one and link to it on every page of your site.

Poorly Constructed Title Tags And URLs

There’s nothing wrong with building your website, but pay attention to what your software is doing. Many site building packages and content management systems repeat the same title tag on every single page. Good programs of marketing coaching teach you that the title tag is probably the single most-important SEO element of any page. The title tag must fit the content of the page itself.

But, don’t pay attention to the title tag and ignore the URL. This is especially a problem in content management systems and shopping carts. The URLs are full of numbers and letters. You need to be including your keywords in your URLs so the search engines pick up on them. Don’t waste the invaluable potential in either the title tag or the URL.

Banning A Search Engine By Accident

It’s not unusual for a novice site owner to mess up their robots.txt file. The file exists in your site’s root directory to talk to search engine spiders. You can tell them not to crawl pages or sections or send other individual instructions. Since the file is just plain text and is so easy to create, site owners wade in without really understanding what they’re doing. If you’re not careful, you can ban the search engines from your site altogether. Use Yahoo SiteExplorer or Google SiteMaps to make sure that your site can indeed be crawled.

Vague Anchor Text For Links

Using anchor text like “click here” or “next” is a waste. When you are cultivating incoming links or creating links inside your site, use useful, descriptive anchor text. You don’t want to repeat the same phrase over and over again. Get two or three relevant, keyword-rich pieces of anchor text and also use your company name. Empty phrases are just that — empty.

Doing accurate keyword research is fundamental to successful marketing. It’s a huge topic in its own right, but you basically want to concentrate on phrases that are not overly general or that have too much competition. Good marketing coaches will spend a lot of time on keyword selection and you should too. Put that chore right up at the top of your SEO “to do” list.

In reading all the tips available on marketing coaching, you’ll find that most articles and courses focus on the things website owners should do. It’s also important to look at what you shouldn’t do. A poorly constructed site that fails to make good use of readable navigation, workable behind-the-scenes code, solid naming structures, and relevant anchor text will have a tough time online. Consider the fundamentals of basic SEO from the planning stage of your site to maximize your results and get the traffic you want.

By Paul Marshall (c) 2010 Strategic Web Marketing Net

About The Author
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a realistic budget. You can learn about his professional Internet Marketing Coaching and Consulting Services on his home page: StrategicWebMarketing.net He also offers affordable SEO services (and d-i-y Coaching), which you can learn about at: strategicwebmarketing.net/seo.html. Get to know Paul, just visit Strategic Web Marketing.net today!

Video grabs people’s attention far more quickly and effectively than text, audio or photographs. Making a short video can capture a thousand words and pictures and helps to get across your personal brand and lifestyle.

It’s important to stand out in the crowd on video channels and search engines. Aim your headlines at capturing the imagination regarding your topic. So don’t be dull – test out curiosity, shock or fun tactics for getting those download clicks.

First of all, get set up.

When you’re starting out, it’s ok to just use your webcam. It will give you the opportunity to practice while you’re honing your presentation skills before you fork out for a camcorder. When you’re ready, you can buy an inexpensive digital video recorder, like say the Flip and a tripod.

Make sure you take your videos in well-lit conditions. Inside your office you’ll need decent lighting, or you can whip out your camera when you’re out and about. It makes for a much more interesting back drop.

OK. So now let’s go through each of my TOP 10 TIPS for creating and using videos to market your business.

#1: Keep your videos short

Whether you’re loading videos on YouTube or just putting them up on your website or blog, it’s really important to keep to just five or six minutes.
If needed, you can of course break longer topics up into a series of smaller videos, which you could market as a series – see tip 10.

#2: Post videos on your sales pages

You can use video on your sales page to introduce the main benefits of your product or business opportunity. How about placing a video on your sales page or sign up pages.

This helps to orientate visitors and to highlight the main points of your regular, written sales letter.

#3: Choose your keywords carefully

This is really important tip, because it will affect how your video gets picked up by the search engines and other internet ‘bots’ that seek out content.

Research your top keyword phrases. Pick keywords that will attract the right kind of traffic and leads – research like crazy to find out what your prospects are looking for – and ensure you include your keywords in headings and tags and description boxes.

Doing this research and tracking click thrus (CTR) and conversions will help you secure your most cost-effective keywords and keyword phrases.

#4: Have a clear purpose & structure

Your keywords will help make sure you target your video on the right purpose before you start. Does your video answers the questions your visitors have in their heads when they’re searching for solutions. Make things crystal clear.

Stay on your topic and give added value – unique value if possible – and the videos will convert much better for you. Write down a structure – a set of headings – for what you’re going to cover. Have a script if necessary.

You can mention any links that you have another video specifically on that related topic.

#5: Look at the camera

The aim here is to connect with your audience, both in the topic you choose and the content but also in your communication style. Remember you are talking to people – real live people. What are their needs and wants, hopes and fears.

With regards to presentation, stick your list of headings right next to the camera so you stay looking in the camera at all times, rather than looking away at a screen on down at your notes.

An authentic and honest video is far more valuable than a glossy tv like broadcast. So don’t worry if you’re not up to TV presenter standards. Just be yourself and enjoy the opportunity to reach out to people in a different way than using text copy.

#6: Create a clear call to action

You should create one very clear offer and call to action. It’s very important that people know exactly what to do as a result of watching your video.

What is your most wanted response (MWR)? Don’t confuse visitors with lots of options and different offers. Focus on the single most wanted response.

Alternatively, you can put your video up next to a sign up box – linked to your email marketing – and you clearly ask them to opt in, more than once. Provide an incentive, such as a free report or further video coaching resources.

#7: Encourage comments on your video

One of the best things about video is that it’s very personal, social medium. You’ll create loads of social buzz if you get masses of folk commenting and sharing your content.

Visitors may return to your page to see who has commented since their last comment. There may accumulate a whole list of tips that have been created by your niche community, prompted by your initial video post.

#8: Write articles, forum posts and blog & emails about your video

Write a short article (500-1000 words – like this one) on the same topic as your video. Then create a short blog post that links to your article and/or video.
If you have a list of existing contacts and subscribers, send them an email with information about your new video you just posted up. You might approach them to forward it to their affiliates. This can help with the viral process and get your video out beyond your own marketing circle of influence.

#9: Make linkages with other content, social sites

This relates to tip 8 in many ways. It’s about linking different marketing on a single, focused topic and ultimately setting up many different entry routes into your marketing or sales funnel, using the linkages and relationships you have already built up.

Use the social sites to jump start the viral effect. One of the mistakes newbie marketing make is they often don’t unleash the true power of social marketing and they totally lose out on getting more leads out of their efforts.

Make those integrations really work and the momentum will really build up on your marketing activities.

#10: Use time twice by re-purposing and repackaging your videos

Finally, following on from tips 8 & 9… put your videos on a DVD or CD and give it away for free in exchange for their contact details or other call to action (see tip 6). If you create 10 videos on different marketing topics, you would have a neat series of using internet strategies to market your business.

You can use your 10 video series in different ways, such as an email’boot camp’over 7 days, a microcontinuity subscription over 10 weeks or simply create a ‘thank you’ web page with links to the full set of videos as a bonus for opting in.

How about creating a physical DVD product with some attractive graphics as a “free plus shipping” offer for subscribing members or as a ClickBank product for affiliates to market.

To summarize… your video marketing checklist:
Short
Targeted
Structured
Clear offer
Complemented
Linked
Viral
Repurpose

By Jay Allyson

About The Author

Jay Allyson -  GetRichLifestyle.com is Mum to Two Wonderful Children, and Wanted to Work From Home. Running a Home Business since 2004, she is an Internet Marketing Coach and Wealth Consultant, Teaching People To Make $100-$250k in 12 Months Part Time or Full Time. Family Strategy Working Towards Time & Financial Freedom for a Dream Lifestyle. Find out more at: www.JayAllyson.com

“Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site,” a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. “However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive.”

Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the “shelf life” of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

“When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement,” the CEO of the company behind the case study had said.  “With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued.”

In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:

- 95% search

- 92% reading news

- 92% emailing

- 89% finding story ideas

- 87% finding news sources

- 75% reading blogs

- 64% watching webinars

- 61% watching YouTube

- 59% social networks

You’ve got to wonder if that social networks number has gone up by now. My guess is that it has, and social media has since become all the more important to search, particularly with the inclusion of real-time search results in Google and Google’s social search experiment (which may eventually move beyond experiment status).

Marty Weintraub, the President of aimClear shared some great tips and insight into the use of press releases for search in a recent interview with WebProNews. Among other things, he noted that when you do a press release, you’re “hitching a ride” in the search engine results and news results. You can use outbound links in press releases, and perhaps more importantly, you’re out there where the journalists are looking.

Here are some press release distribution sites (some are paid and some are free):

- Business Wire

- PR Newswire

- PRWeb

- 24-7 Press Release

- PR Zoom

- PR Leap

- I-Newswire

- Webwire

- ClickPress

- PR.com

- PR Log

- eReleases

- MarketWire

Beyond the distribution sites, don’t forget to include your releases on your own site. Journalists like being able to find the most up to date information from the source itself.  Earlier this year I discussed how some companies’ own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them. Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You’d be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made.

By Chris Crum

Just to cover the ground, let’s go over what link building is quickly. Link building is the process of building backlinks to your site. The more backlinks (links from other sites to your site) a site has, the higher it ranks on the search engines. Link building therefore is a mission of all money makíng webmasters.

Link building methods have changed from time to time and a specific method that worked yesterday may not work today. This is due to changes in the industry over time and in some cases extreme abuse. If a specific link building method has been abused too much, then that method will not work anymore.
It is therefore very important to know which link building method works today so that you can spend your time in a most productive way.

There are many link building methods out there today that work with some working better than others. Below are some of the today’s popular links building methods:

Article Submission

If you are reading this article, then you know that you can publish your article in article directories. Not only do you gain backlinks to your site from your published articles (see bottom of this article), you will get some traffic as a bonus. Think of you reading this article. There might be many reading your published articles as well.

Article submission is a great way of building backlinks as it provides you with 100% relevant contextual backlinks that Google loves.

Directory submission used to work lot better before, but it is still a popular link building method that still works if done properly. How many directories are out there as of this date is anyone’s guess but one thing is certain: that most of the directories aren’t worth submitting to.

Google considers a Yahoo Directory link as a quality backlink so if you can afford and justify the cost, it is worth submítting to Yahoo Directory. Yahoo charges $300 for a yearly submission and there is no assurance that your site will be approved!

Directory Submission

DMOZ is another directory that is worth submitting to and can provide great benefit in your SEO campaign. It may take months to get the approval from DMOZ and the chance of getting approved is pretty slim. A lot of small directories use the DMOZ directory categories so getting listed with DMOZ would mean getting bonus listings on many other web directories.

Another good directory to submit to is the BOTW dírectory that costs $99 for a yearly submission and $299 for a permanent listing.

Other than the above, you should look for quality directories where you can submit your site. You can judge the quality of the directories by analyzing the number of sites listed, number of backlinks the directory has, PR, age of the directory, etc.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking worked like charm only a few months ago. If bookmarked on authority and quality bookmarking sites like Digg, Mixx, Propeller, etc, then you can still make good use of social bookmarking. Other than backlinks, social bookmarking also offers you some bonus traffic depending on where you submit to. If you can manage to put together or collect a good bookmarking site líst, then social bookmarking can still be a useful link building method.

Blog Commenting

This is a link building method where lots of spamming has already been done so to make the best of it, you need to work a little harder here. It is best to find quality blogs related to your category and make on-topic relevant comments. Not only do your comments add value to the blogpost, you now have a greater chance of getting your comment approved and your comments have greater chance of staying on those blogposts.

Press Releases

Submitting to press release sites can get you some backlinks as well. It is however hard to put together a líst of good press release sites that are worth submitting to. If a good líst can be managed, then this method can give some quality relevant backlinks as well.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Pages

There are a lot of quality social media and Web 2.0 sites where you can publish your articles for backlinks. You should write articles that are relevant to your site and publish them on these social media and Web 2.0 sites with your keywords hyperlinked to your site. Some of the authority sites are Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, Wordpress.com, etc.

Social media and Web 2.0 links are very popular these days because they work great. They give quality, relevant contextual backlinks that Google and other major search engines love. There are lots of other link building methods out there, but if you can utilize the above ones to their fullest potential, there is no need for any other methods.

By SEOFocused.com (c) 2010

About The Author
For more information on Link Building and to learn about outsourcing your link building campaign, visit the author’s Link Building Service site.