2009 October | Internet Marketing Muscle

Archive for October, 2009

List Building Blocks #1 — How to Add New Subscribers with SEO Articles

Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 4:23 am

Your articles serve many purposes, such as establishing you as an expert, pre-selling products and even helping to build relationships with your prospects. But you can also use them to drive traffic to your site when you take the time to optimize them for the search engines.

Here’s the 3S Strategy for creating and distributing optimized articles:

Search
Sprinkle
Share

Read on for the details…

Step #1: Search

Your first step is to search for the keywords your market is already using to find information in your niche. You do this by using a keyword tool (such as Google’s free keyword tool, WordTracker.com or even Market Samurai).

All you have to do is enter in a broad niche-relevant search term like "homeschooling," "organic gardening" or "golf." The tool will then offer you suggestions for related search terms which you can use to expand your list of keywords. In most cases, you’ll generate a list of hundreds if not thousands of possible keywords.

What you’re searching for are longtail keywords – these are phrases that are typically four or more words long. The key is that they have very little competition in the search engines, which means you can rank well for them.

Tip: Many keyword tools check the competition for you. For example, WordTracker offers a KEI (keyword effectiveness index) value, which looks at the number of searches against how many other websites are indexed for that keyword. The higher the KEI value, the better chance you have of ranking well. Look for words that have a KEI value of at least 100 – but the higher the better.

Step #2: Sprinkle

Once you’ve compiled a list of longtail keywords, your next step is to create content around these keywords. You can optimize each article for two keyword phrases if you like, but generally it’s easier to optimize for just one.

The key is to not stuff your article with your keywords, otherwise the search engines may rank it lower (rather than higher). As such, include your keyword in the title of your article as well as about two to three times for every 100 words of content.

Example: Let’s say your keyword is "hydroponic vegetable gardening indoors." Your article might look like this:

Title: "Tips and Tricks for Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors"
Intro: include keyword at least once.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #1: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #2: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #3: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Closing: Summarize the article and include keyword once more.

Step #3: Share

Once your article is complete, it’s time to share it by distributing it as widely as possible. Don’t worry about so-called "duplicate content." The search engines won’t punish you if they find your articles in more than one place. They only knock you down a bit if they find your content in more than one place within your own domain (i.e., not on other sites).

You do this by:

Posting the article on your blog
Offering it as a guest post on your JV partner’s blog (or newsletter)
Create a Squidoo.com or HubPages.com page around it
Post it on social networking sites like your MySpace.com blog or Facebook.com page
Submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleValley.com, GoArticles.com and Buzzle.com

That’s it. You too can get your articles to pull in search engine traffic for you when you use the Search, Sprinkle and Share system.

Your next step is easy — take action by searching for your keywords to find joint venture partners.

Just in case you stumbled on this post (and you haven’t signed up for the full, free course), sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

One Way to Build Traffic: Entrecard

Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 2:49 am

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As you no doubt know, generating traffic to your website is the most important thing you can do. This is NOT Field of Dreams, where, “If you build it, they will come.” No, if you build it, they may never know about it. So you have several objectives when it comes to getting visitors to your site:

Drive traffic
Get visitors to return to your site
Get them to buy what you’re selling

There is one way to drive traffic that I want to share with you today and that is using an advertising network to get the word out about your site. More specifically, I want to talk about a free network called Entrecard.

The idea behind Entrecard is really very simple. It’s an ad exchange of sorts that uses credits rather than currency for its transactions (you can buy and sell credits for money, though, but that’s not the main way to conduct the exchange). Sign up for your free account, customize your ad widget, and start “dropping” your Entrecards.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell. Once signed in, go to Entrecard’s site and click on the “Campaign” button at the top of the page. Then, click on a category and you’ll see a list of sites. Hover your cursor over each of the icons and select “site.” This will take you to the site. Find the site’s Entrecard widget and click on the “Drop” link. You’ve just dropped your Entrecard on that site and have earned one credit. You can drop up to 300 cards each day.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. There is a whole cult following of “reciprocal droppers.” That is, if you drop your card on a site, that site’s owner will drop his card back on your site. This amounts to an instant visitor.

Admittedly, these visitors may not be highly targeted, nor may they stay on your site any length of time, other than to find your widget and drop their card on it.

However, if your site is getting very little traffic, you can give yourself a boost by using Entrecard.

Plus, if you ever want to sell ad spots for your site, you can legitimately claim these as viable visitors.

Now, you can advertise on other sites within the network. There are two ways to do this. You can use your credits that you earned by dropping and getting dropped on, or you can buy credits. I have never bought credits, but it is another option for getting the word out on member sites.

Watch your Stats! You want to continue using those sites where you’re getting results, and drop those ads that don’t work. Try a variety of niches, too. Since the credits are free (if you drop and get drops), it’s easy and cheap to experiment.

Entrecard is a super-simple way of generating traffic to your blog. It may not be the most targeted traffic, but it is traffic. And when you’re just starting out, any traffic is better than none at all. By the way, there are some pretty substantial websites on the network.

I highly recommend Entrecard. It is one of the first things I install and put to work when I start a new blog.

Big Changes Coming for IMM

Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

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As you may have noticed, there are some new membership links on the pages of IMM. Yes, I am implementing a new membership model; it’ll be at least 3 tiers (basic, silver, and gold).

Basic = Lots of content, free.
Silver = More content, small recurring monthly fee. There will be a lot of stuff here that you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else (especially without paying a lot of money for each report and/or signing up for a LOT of lists). There will also be exclusive downloads available each month.
Gold = The most content, slightly higher monthly fee than silver. This will be some super stuff, including my own products that I normally sell for $27 dollars and up. You won’t find this stuff anywhere else for a cheaper monthly cost. Much of it will come with MRR or PLR licenses.

If you want to be a charter member, you can sign up to be notified once we go live. Charter members will get some really cool stuff, including some “lifetime” membership prices that won’t be offered anywhere else. FYI — I’m thinking a one-time $77 fee for the Silver and $97 for the Gold. This will obviously save you a ton of money PLUS you’ll get lifetime benefits for a single payment.

Use Ping.fm to Quickly Post to Social Networking Sites

Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 am

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I want to share with you two ideas on using Ping.fm for your internet marketing promotional efforts.

NOTE: This is NOT a “How-to use Ping.fm” post. You can google “how to use Ping.fm” if you want that.

First, I use Ping.fm for the bulk of my internet marketing promos. I “ping” twitter, Facebook, and MySpace whenever I add or update a page on any of my sites. There is a WordPress plugin (actually, a few) that posts to Ping.fm whenever you make a post, but I have yet to get them to work reliably (and you know I’m a fan of automation!); for now, I just use the ping.fm toolbar.

Second, and this one is key: I “ping” those blogs on which I make a comment! I make regular use of comments on blogs; if I happen to come across a blog post that I really like, and to which I can add a valuable comment, I make my comment. Then, using for aforementioned toolbar, I ping that post.

Not only am I helping out the publisher that wrote the piece that I thought was brilliant, but I am also indirectly promoting my own site through the automatic link that (most) blogs make when a reader makes a comment! If you are crafty, you make your “name” your website name, or a keyword-rich title of a post you want the reader to view, then input your email address and the link you want your “name” to link to.

You may get diredct traffic from the comment. You also will get a valuable backlink to your site (or post on your site) IF the blog is a “do follow” blog. There is evidence that “no follow” links get followed by the search engines, even though they aren’t supposed to, including google, which is the SE that instituted the whole “no follow” baloney in the first place!