We are in effect looking for a niche of a niche, which is termed a ‘micro niche’.

Auto Blogging: How to Find A Niche

You need to find a micro niche that has between 1,000 and 10,000 global searches per month, with a maximum of 100,000 competing web pages.

I recommend you take the following 6 steps;

Step # 1 – Go to Google’s Keyword Selector Tool
Go to the Google Keyword Selector Tool and enter a broad niche search term such as ‘digital photography’.

Make sure the ‘descriptive words or phrases option’ is selected, and leave the ‘synonyms’ box checked.

Step # 2 – Search for terms with less than 10,000 searches per month
In order to select a micro niche, we need to focus on terms with less than 10,000 searches per month.

These terms will have a much lower level of competing sites and thus will increase our chances of getting on the front page of Google.

Step # 3 – Search for Buyer Keywords
We now need to find keywords or phrases that are likely to be entered by those in a ‘buying’ frame of mind.

To take the digital photography example, one of the keywords returned is ‘canon digital camera’. This is obviously a buyer keyword phrase as people tying in this content are likely looking to purchase this product.

Step # 4 – Put that buyer keyword phrase back into the Keyword Tool
This ‘buyer’ search term is still very broad, so we need to feed it back into the ‘Google Keyword Selector tool’.

You should make a list of all the ‘buyer’ keywords generated in this search.

Step # 5 – Confirm these are buyer keyword phrases
You now need to make sure that these are buyer keyword phrases. Do this by feeding these keywords into Google and hitting the search button.

If there are several sites advertising in the Google Adwords column on the right hand margin in the search results, then these are buyer keywords as people are making enough money to justify paying for advertisements using these keywords.

We now have a list of possible niche markets. We need to qualify these micro niches by assessing the competitors.
Step # 6 – Determine the strength of the competiton

We now need to determine how strong the competition for these keyword phrases are. So enter the ‘buyer keyword phrase’ into Google and hit the search button.

Take note of the top 10 websites that appear in the organic listings (left hand side of the page).

You need to find out how many back links each of these sites have pointing back to their site. This is a key determining factor of getting to the top of the SERPs or search engine results.

Do this by typing the following into Google;

site:http://www.TheWebsiteName.com

For convenience you could use a Firefox plug in such as ‘SEO Quake’ of ‘Search Status’.

Create an Excel document and list the competition in the first column from 1 to 10. In the next column list their number of back links using the above technique.

The next step is to check the PR or Page Rank for each competitor site. Again the easiest way to check this is to use either “SEO Quake” or “Search Status”.

If all of the top 10 competitor sites have a PR greater than 2, then you should consider a different micro niche as this one will be difficult to break into.

A very powerful niche selection and keyword generation tool is Micro Niche Finder, it really does make finding a lucrative niche a breeze.

Auto blogging is certainly one of the easiest ways to make money online because it is virtually completely ‘set and forget’. Yes, you will need to work to drive traffic to your blogs, but that is the case with any type of internet business.  Selecting a ‘high profit, MID Traffic, Low Competition’ niche really is the most important element in making money with auto blogs. Follow these 6 steps and you will have an empire of auto blogs created in no time.

Auto Blogging Income

Auto Blog with WP Robot

As all bloggers know when it comes to making money blogging, ‘content is king’. The more often you update your blog, is the more often the search engine spider will visit your site and index new content. If you do not update your blog regularly then your blog will eventually ‘die’ from a monetary perspective.

Step in ‘auto blogs’. An auto blog is effectively a ‘hands off’, ‘set and forget’ money making machine. It is the ultimate business model for creating passive income online.

Auto blogging involves the following 5 step process

Step 1: Select a niche
This is one of the most important steps in establishing a profitable auto blog. You need to perform research in order to discover lucrative niches. I have found that my most successful auto blogs are once that address a problem that people are having. This people are ‘desperately’ in search of information, and so they are willing to spend money to find a cure.

Blogs in these types of niches include; weight loss, acne, back pain and anything else which involves ‘emotions’.

Step 2: Decide on how you are going to monetize your niche
There are many different ways to monetize your niche. You could go the PPC route by using Google Adsense and append contextual ads to your content. You will then get paid every time some clicks on your ad.

You could use the ‘affiliate’ business model and append affiliate links or affiliate banner ads to your content. This can be a very lucrative form of monetization. The best sites to visit to get started here are Clickbank.com and CJ.com.

CPA or Cost Per Action is a monetization option that is becoming very popular. Effectively you get paid when someone visits your blog and performs a particual action such as visiting a site and completing a questionnaire.

WP Robot is a very powerful word press plug in that will automatically monetize your content. It performs this by automatically plugging your affiliate links, Adsense Ads, Amazon or Ebay ads directly into your content. This really is hands off passive income.

Step 3: Set up your blog
I strongly recommend that you set up a WordPress blog as this type of blog platform comes with the most robust features and plug ins suited to auto blogging. On top of that WordPress Blogs are optimized for the search engine spiders, and Google loves them.
You need to select suitable themes and focus each blog on a very specific niche. One of the most important aspects of auto blogging is that you will build individual blogs around specific keywords.

For example if your niche is ‘traffic generation’ then set up 5 different blogs for;
 Video marketing
 Article marketing
 Social bookmarking
 Pay Per Click
 Social Media Optimization

Try and capture the keyword within the blogs url e.g. video-marketing-online.com.
Focus on keywords that have more than 1,000 searches monthly with less than 50,000 search results in Google. It is strongly advisable that you focus your auto blogs on long tail key phrases. This makes it much easier to get a good ranking. For example instead of ‘video marketing’ you could used ‘how to get traffic with video marketing’.

A very effective tool for finding high traffic / low competiton keywords is MicroNicheFinder.com.

Step 4: Install plug ins that automate everything
The core selling point for this ‘auto blogging’ business model is the fact it can be completely automated. This process is achieved by using ‘plug ins’ to pull content from various RSS feeds pertaining to your niche. As discussed some of the more powerful plugins will also monetize your content automatically.

I strongly recommend WP Robot as the #1 Plug for automatically turning your blog on complete auto pilot, and drip feeding it with fresh content at intervals specified by you. This amazing piece of software will suck content in from all over the web from resources that include; the article directories, Amazon, E-Bay, Yahoo Answers, YouTube and many more. It will instantly monetize the blog with your affiliate links, Google Adsense and more.

The posts will be fully targeted to any keyword you enter which greatly increases the keyword density on that blog. This will convince the search engine spider that your blog is an authority on this particular topic.

Step 5: Drive traffic to your blog
The final and crucial step is to drive traffic to your auto blog. The most effective methods for achieving this include; article marketing, video marketing, social bookmarking and social media optimization. All of these marketing activities will increase the number of backlinks pointing to your articles which boosts your search engine ranking.

Auto blogging is certainly one of the easiest ways to make money online because it is virtually completely ‘set and forget’. Yes, you will need to work to drive traffic to your blogs, but that is the case with any type of internet business.

Auto Blogging Income

SubmitYourArticle.com is an online automated article submission service that has been called the ‘Rolls Royce’ of article submission sites.

SubmitYourArticle.com Review

I commenced my article submission career, manually submitting to the top 3 article directories; Ezinearticles.com, Articlebase.com and ArticleDashboard.com.

Realizing that I could leverage my time better using an automated article submission service, I started using Article Post Robot because it ticked a lot of boxes;

1. It was fully automated – once you entered the details once it automatically uploaded the article to multiple sites.
2. Pure Leverage – Article Post Robot submits your articles to 500+ article directories. This creates a huge number of back links very rapidly.
3. It mitigated the effects of duplicate content penalties by spinning articles and thus posting a unique version to each directory.
4. APR is a one time payment, which keeps costs down.

Having used several desktop based article submission software, I can certainly state that Article Post Robot is the best desktop based software.

The only weakness of this type of software are;
1. You can’t set up a timed submission. If you are using APR it will only submit your articles in one bulk submission. This can work against you if Google suddenly notices 500 back links pointing to your site in the space of a few hours. It would be a lot more natural if you could drip feed this content over a more pro longed period.

2. Convenience. With APR you need to set up each submission task each time. With an online service like SubmitYourArticle.com you can load article submissions months in advance and they will occur automatically.

SubmitYourArticle.com eliminates virtually all of the weaknesses associated with desktop article submission sites such as Article Post Robot.

The advantages of SubmitYourArticle.com include;
1. Timed submissions. You can use the services ‘Article Trickle’ system to trickle your articles out over an extended period of time. This mean you can load your articles to be submitted for the next 3 months into submityourarticle.com and it will submit them automatically over that time. This will look more natural to the search engines.

2. Spinned submissions. You can use the services “Article Leverage” system to ‘spin’ different lines within the article. This means that a unique version of your article is submitted each time this mitigating duplicate content penalties.

3. Review. A team of editors review your article prior to submission to the article directories. This eliminates grammatical and spelling errors which increase the professionalism of your articles.

4. Reach. SubmitYourArticle.com has an extensive network of website publishers who receive notification through SYAs RSS feed. Effectively they select various nodes such that they can access topics directly relevant to their sites. This means that your content will be placed on highly relevant sites in front of your target market.

5. Convenience. The fact that SYA is a hosted solution, all the ‘heavy lifting’ is done by SYA’s servers. This means that there is no desktop based application taking up bandwidth on your own PC.

Disadvantage of SubmitYourArticle.com

1. Lack of transparency. There is no statistics system that indicates how many article directories have received your article or how many sites within their extensive network have published it.

2. Limited timed submissions. As of writing this review SYA will prevent you from pre-loading article for submission beyond 3 months into the future. This is annoying for those who want to load articles 3+ months in advance.

If you want to use a desktop based article submission software then I strongly recommend Article Post Robot. If you want a more advanced service and are a willing to pay a monthly fee, then SubmitYourArticle.com is certainly the premier service online.

Top 10 Video Marketing Tips

In fact it is a perfect companion to article marketing and both combined will drive perpetual traffic once they have been created and distributed.

Many marketers shy away from video marketing because they feel they lack the technical competencies, software or dislike appearing on video.  This is a bad idea because YouTube.com is now the worlds second largest search engine having more views daily than either Yahoo or bing.

Search engines also love video so it is not that difficult to get to the #1 position in Google with a well optimized video.

Implement the following 10 steps and you will notice a spike in your internet marketing traffic.

Step #1: Pick a ‘hot topic’.

You need to find a topic that is regularly searched on Google.  This will enable you to create a video that will get substantial web traffic.  The following tools are effective for finding ‘hot topics’

• Yahoo Answers – Visit http://answers.yahoo.com and type your primary keyword phrase into the search box.  Record the more popular questions asked pertaining to your topic and base your video on those answering those questions.
• Google’s Keyword Tool – Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter your primary keyword phrases record topics with high search volumes and consider writing on these topics.
• Google Trends – Visit http://www.google.com/trends and explore the current hottest trends on the internet.

Step #2: Perform detailed keyword research

Now that you have selected a ‘hot topic’ pertaining to your niche, the next step is to perform detailed keyword research.  Use tools such as Keyword Elite to generate a list of keyword phrases.  This is a key step that will form the back bone for attracting views to your article.

Step #3: Decide on a theme for your video

You need to pick a theme that is suitable to your topic yet geared towards maximizing your video views.  Some of the most successful themes on YouTube include; sex, humor, weird, spectacular, celebrity, shocking, mysterious.  Obviously if your video is about a serious matter such as ‘cancer’, you can’t use a theme like sex or humor.  But you could use a theme such as ‘shocking’.  Matching theme with content is an important step as it will greatly affect the videos chances of going viral.

Step #4: Write the script

Every video needs a good script.  Spend some time creating an outline of what your video will discuss.  Write a script that blends the topic with the theme.  Make certain that your video is not a commercial nor delivered in a boring, monotone style lecture.

Step #5: Create the video
There are several different options for video creation;

• You could use Camtasia to turn a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation into a video.
• You could use Camtasia to do a screen capture video that records what you are doing on screen (perfect for software demo)
• You could use Article Video Robot to turn your article into video at the click of a button with automated graphics and voice over. (very powerful software)
• You could use the slide show creator in Traffic Geyser.
• You could use your web cam to create a Vlog starring you.
• You could use software such as Cyberlink Power Director to take a video from your camcorder and add professional transitions and effect.

Which ever option you choose take time and make it look professional.  You should also include a short ‘intro’ and ‘exit’ clip at the beginning and end of the video that states your website address and what your website is about.  Try and hook the viewer with something interesting such as offering them a free, related product.

Step #6: Write a key word rich headline
You now need to refer back to the key word list you generated in step 2.  Select some of the more popular keyword searches and create a title by combining these keywords.  Ensure that your more popular keywords are close to the beginning of the title.  The closer to the beginning the greater the weight given by the search engines.

Step #7: Write a key word description

You description should always begin with a live link to your website.  This is important for several reasons;

• Building back links which are essential for improving your search engine ranking
• Many YouTube viewers automatically look in the description box for a link to conveniently click through to the website pertaining to the video.

Keyword rich descriptions increase the keyword density of your video and further improve ranking in the search engines.  So embed your major keyword phrases in the description.  Do not spam the description box however; ensure the text reads fluid with a human reader in mind.

Step #8: Insert major key words in the tags field

You need to go back to step 2 and select the most popular keywords pertaining to your video.  Insert the keywords in this tag field separated by a comma.  Do not insert more than 8 keyword phrases as to do so may be interpreted as spamming.

Also ensure you select the most appropriate video category.

Step #9: Mass distribute your video.
If you can afford the $47 per month fee, I would strongly recommend using a service called Traffic Geyser.  I personally use this service and it really is a powerful online video marketing weapon.  It enables me to distribute my video to 23 + video sharing sites at the click of a button.  It will also strip the audio from the video and upload it to a huge number of pod casting directories.  Furthermore it will send many of these newly created links to social book marking sites for further website traffic and exposure.

If you are not willing to spend $47 per month then a free alternative would be Tube Mogul.  This service doesn’t offer the automated video creation, pod casting or social book marking offered by Traffic Geyser but it is a viable free alternative.

Step #10: Market Your Videos

You now need to market your video within the video sharing sites and external. You can do this by posting links to your video on related; forum posts, Blog posts, and Yahoo Answers.  You should use a tool like Bookmarking Demon to social book mark your sites and drive instant targeted traffic.

This is a huge area so I strongly recommend you checkout Video Marketing Devastation for more information.

I trust you found this post insightful.  Video Marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing online today.  As you can see if you follow the previous 10 steps it is not that difficult to master.  So embrace it, take the necessary steps and benefit from this supremely lucrative medium.

Traffic Geyser Review

As you well know I am a great exponent of video marketing, article marketing and social media optimization. These marketing strategies are supremely powerful because once the work is done once; they will continue to generate passive traffic for ever more.

You can thus imagine how excited I was when I discovered that there was a tool that existed online that automated the submission of video, articles, podcasts, Blog entries and then submits a link to each of these submissions to multiple social book marking sites. This creates powerful back links that will boost your sites PR and search engine ranking.

The great pain with video submission has always been the length of time it takes to upload the video to the video sharing sites. If you have a 4 / 5 minute video then it can take 15 minutes or more depending on the speed of your internet connection.

That is a painstaking manual submission to just one video sharing site. If you were to submit that same video to 30 different video sharing sites, it would take you approximately 8 hours to make the manual submissions. I’m sure you will agree that is a process you are not likely to repeat. And that would be to your detriment. As I have outlined in my e-Book Video Marketing Devastation, video marketing is one of the fastest methods to get your website to a top 10 position on Google. I have uploaded videos and seen them hit the #1 spot in Google in as little as 30 minutes, it is that powerful.

You are most likely reading this review because you are either a. skeptical that such results are achievable or b. considering to invest in Traffic Geyser, but need confirmation that it is a wise investment. The short answer to this question is, YES Traffic Geyser is well worth the investment. The long answer follows here under…

What is Traffic Geyser?
Traffic Geyser is a hosted service that enables members to attain prominent positions on Google and other search engines by blasting ‘keyword rich’ content all over the internet, automatically. The term ‘automatically’ is critical because this is the ‘unique selling proposition’ of Traffic Geyser.

As the great old adage goes “Time is Money”, so if you are saving 30 hours submission time for every video you produce, then that is a significant time saving.

How does Traffic Geyser get your websites to the top of the search engines?
Well to understand how this works, I need to give you a brief history lesson. In March 2006 search engine giants ‘Google’ revolutionized the search engine industry by rolling out what it called Google ‘Universal Search’. Effectively universal search blended vertical categories into its search results. Vertical What? Ok a ‘vertical’ refers to the search filters that all search engines provide. Popular vertical include;

• Web
• Images
• Video
• Blog
• News

Before universal search, Google and the other search engines only returned HTML web pages i.e. the web vertical. If you wanted to get ‘video’ results or ‘images’ results you would have to click on the appropriate filter radio button.

However Google caused a paradigm shift when they launched ‘Universal Search’ because it blended together many of the verticals in the search results. Consider the following search for ‘Tiger Woods’. I know I picked a ‘hot topic’ at the moment, but this example eloquently illustrates the power of universal search.

Traffic Geyser Review

As you can see from the screen shot above, the SERPs for Tiger Woods contains a mixture of web pages, images, video, news and Blog entries i.e. all the verticals. An important point here to note is that most often ‘video’ get the #1 position, but it varies from subject to subject. For example look at the following search for ‘tiger woods swing’ and you will see videos dominate the top results;

Traffic Geyser Review

Ok so now you can see how search engines render results for multiple verticals, I’m sure you can appreciate that if you are only marketing web pages and not creating videos, Blog entries or podcasts then you are limiting your chances of appearing on Google’s front pages. That is where Traffic Geyser comes in.

Features and Benefits of Traffic Geyser

Traffic Geyser will help you to produce and submit content that feeds several different verticals. In the case of the keyword ‘tiger woods’, if you only marketed html web pages you could appear in only 7 of the top 12 positions. And lets be realistic that is really 5 of the top 12 positions because you are unlikely to beat the primary domain http://www.tigerwoods.com or the mighty Wikipedia.

By using traffic geyser you will have automatically ranked for video, Blog entries, social media and pod casting sites. This will enable you to dominate the SERPs if you have performed adequate keyword research.

Traffic Geyser Trial

The benefits and features of Traffic Geyser include;

The Competition

Traffic Geyser vs. Content Buzz

I actually began my online video submission career using a tool called ‘Content Buzz’.  It was a supremely powerful tool also that enables the submission of content to;

• 50+ Video Hosting Sites
• 11 Additional Specialist “How-to” Video Sites
• 25 Top Social Bookmarking Sites
• 15 Social News Sites (some require Captchas)
• Twitter + 10 Micro-blogging Platforms
• 25 Photo Sharing/Blogging Platforms
• 10 Podcasting (Audio and Video) Directories
• 10 Top RSS Aggregators
• 25 Top Ping Services (Blog and RSS Search Engines)
• 7 Extremely High PR Blog Platforms (Blogger etc)

The costs associated with content buzz were $29.97 per month.  When you consider that Traffic Geyser costs $47 per month for its most basic package, then you might be tempted to use Content Buzz.

Personally I switched from Content Buzz to Traffic Geyser for a few reasons.  These included;

Hosted V’s Desktop Application

It’s a desktop application as opposed to Traffic Geyser which is hosted.  On the surface, this doesn’t seem to matter but in practice it makes a huge difference.  When I used Content Buzz to submit video to 50+ sites, that video had to be uploaded individually each time from my machine.  This took up a lot of my CPU processing power.

It also caused an annoying pop up window which ‘popped up’ every time It started a new upload to a different video sharing site.  This meant that it kept interrupting me when I was working on other tasks.

I eventually only switched it on when I went to bed at night.

Traffic Geyser by comparison is a hosted solution.  This means that they use a suite of their own powerful servers to submit all the videos.  This potentially means that you can set the submissions to happened all at once and they video will be sent to all those sites in minutes without any impact on your own PC or work flow.

Timed vs. instant submission

Traffic Geyser enables you to set timed submissions.  This results in a ‘trickle’ of content to the various sites over a number of days.  This appears more natural to the search engines and is unlikely to raise any flags.  Content Buzz by comparison doesn’t offer this feature and thus it could attract Google’s attention that all of a sudden there are hundred of links pointing to your domain.

Video Creation

Traffic Geyser’s video creation tools enable an absolute novice to create a professional video with simple ‘point and click’ ease.  Content Buzz does not offer this feature.  You thus need to create your video using other software.

Automated creation of Podcasts

Traffic Geyser automatically strips the audio from your videos and submits it to 10+ podcasting sites including iTunes.  With content buzz you are advised to download the free ‘Audacity’ open source software to make your audio and submit it separately.  Traffic Geyser is thus a much faster solution.  I found I never used the podcasting submission tool with Content Buzz as it required too much effort.  With traffic Geyser it happens automatically.

Integration

What I really like about Traffic Geyser is the integration of its submissions.  When you are doing a submit it will send out content to all the video sites, podcasting sites, article sites, blogs and social bookmarking sites in one submission.

With Content Buzz you have to do each submission manually, one at a time.

The decision really is up to you.  But from personal experience, having used both services I think Traffic Geyser is more superior despite the fact it supports less sites.  Ironically that can be an advantage, as I have noted that with Content Buzz I got failed uploads for multiple sites because it so difficult to support so many sites.

Traffic Geyser vs. Tube Mogul

If you do not have the $47 per month for Traffic Geyser or the $29.97 per month for Content Buzz, then there is a pretty good free alternative.  Tube Mogul, is not doubt a service you have come across if you are researching this space.

I know many online bloggers have chosen Tube Mogul and were quite happy with it.  Whether or not it suits you will depend on several factors.

1. How many video uploads will you do per month?

The free account with TubeMogul restricts you to 500 video deployments per month.  You have to pay if you want to send upload any more video.

With Traffic Geyser your submissions are based on your membership level and it ranges from 375 to 35,000.  Content Buzz offers unlimited video submissions.

2. Do you want to submit just video or to other verticals?

Tube Mogul focuses exclusively on video submission.  So if your core focus is video submission this might suit you.

Traffic Geyser by comparison enables submission to; video sites, podcasting directories, social book marking sites, articles directories and unlimited blogs.

3. Are you proficient at making videos?

Neither Tube Mogul nor Content Buzz provide tools that enable novices to create professional videos.  Traffic Geyser by comparison provides a slide show creator that enables the creation of professional videos.

Conclusion

I trust you found this Traffic Geyser review insightful.  In essence the decision you make will come down to the answers you gave to the last three questions.  If you are willing to invest in a system that will save you considerable time and help you achieve optimum search engine ranking, then I strongly recommendTraffic Geyser.  I wouldn’t use it if I didn’t believe in it.

If you are not willing to spend $47+ monthly on this type of service then pop over to Tube Mogul and set up a free account.  Yes restrictions apply, and yes you will have to create your videos elsewhere.  But it may be a good place for you to get your ‘feet wet’ with online video.

If anyone has tried other video submission software, then I welcome your comments below.

For more information on Traffic Geyser click here

For a FREE TubeMogul account click here

For a FREE 7 day Content Buzz Trial click here

Article Marketing: 5 Tips on How to Structure an Article

Every effective article contains a structure as follows;

1. An attention grabbing title
2. An opening paragraph that invokes curiosity
3. A main body which delivers the meat of the articles ‘value added’ information
4. A powerful conclusion which summarizes the key points
5. A resource box which offer a free download related to the articles niche

If you can combine these elements with sufficient emotive language, then your article will attract serious attention.

1. An attention grabbing title
The title is one of the most important factors for driving traffic to your article.  It must invoke emotion and promise an exciting benefit to the reader.  For example instead of an article entitled “Article Marketing Tips” you could use “Revealed: How to get 500 site visitors per day using article marketing”.

The use of the keyword ‘Revealed’ indicates it’s an ‘insider secret’ and the quantity of ‘500 members per day’ is exciting. This is guaranteed to increase article views.

You should use an effective writing template for both your title and body copy.  An example of this is; “10 ways to….”, “How to……” and many more.

2. An opening paragraph that invokes curiosity
The opening paragraph must grab the readers attention and give them a compelling reason to read right to the end.  State the most exciting benefits of reading your article and this should be a sufficient hook to retain reader attention, and get them reading.

3. A main body which delivers the meat of the articles ‘value added’ information

The body of the article should contain 3 to 5 paragraphs that reveal the core benefits or tips that you outlined in the opening paragraph. You should focus on making one key point per paragraph.  This makes the article more digestible and easier for the reader to understand.

You need to ensure that your article is delivered in bite size chunks and use plenty of white space.  Never have more than 3 or 4 lines per paragraph.  Use ‘bulleted’ or ‘numbered’ lists to improve your readers reading experience.

4. A powerful conclusion which blends into the resource box
Many inexperienced article marketers overlook the important of the conclusion.  It is an essential element in increasing the number of click throughs via your resource box.  A good article write will lead the reader to ‘click on’ the link in their resource box by making subtle suggestions in the conclusion.  This takes a little practice as an explicit mention of your site in the conclusion may get your article rejected.

An excellent tip is to imagine your conclusion as two paragraphs long.  The first paragraph is your actual conclusion, while the second is your resource box.

This enables you to synthesize the continuity between your conclusion and resource box and naturally lead the reader to clicking on the link in your resource box.

So you need to make your resource box feel more like a continuation of your conclusion and then subtly blend your link into this paragraph as a source for a free download that will deliver further great benefits to the reader.

5. A resource box which offer a free download related to the articles niche

A ‘Resource Box’ is often referred to as a biography box and ironically the secret to writing a good resource box is to not treat is as a ‘biography box’.

If you write a ‘biography box’ that focuses totally on you, your click throughs will be low because your readers are not interested in you, they are interested in ‘information’ pertaining to your niche.

Instead of saying;

“Mao Flynn is a free lance journalist with 30 years writing experience.  He has an MBA from Harvard, and extensive knowledge on the effective article writing technique.  Visit his site www.articlemarketingdevastation.com for article writing tips.”

Say the following two part conclusion (conclusion + resource box);

Conclusion
“There are a variety of powerful article writing resource on the internet that enable article writing newbie’s to write like the pros virtually straight away.  These resources include writing templates, proven tried and tested principles as well as article writing software.

Resource Box
If you would like to download FREE article writing software that enables you to write multiple unique articles at the click of a button then click here.  Mao Flynn is a professional article marketer who has devised unique software and article writing tools that are guaranteed to increase your article writing success.  Click on the following link and benefit from his 30+ years experience in article marketing.”

Implement these 5 key article writing tips and you will not only attract more article views, but your resource box click throughs will soar and your sales will rise exponentially.

It is important however that you perform adequate research to fill your article with interesting facts, statistics, and value added content.

Article Writing Content

The following 10 sources are powerful resources for creating compelling articles that add real value to the reader’s lives.

1. Articles
2. Forums – Blogs
3. Communities
4. Copernic Agent
5. Search Engines
6. Wikihow
7. Yahoo Answers
8. Wikipedia
9. Authority Sites
10. E-Books

1. Articles
Quality article directories such as EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com, are a source of quality content.
These directories have editorial staff that filer all article submissions and only accept high quality articles.

This will save an article write a lot of time, because if they were relying totally on search engines they would spend a lot of time sorting the ‘quality’ from the ‘junk’.

Use the ‘search’ feature in these article directories to find content pertaining to the article topic you wish to write.  Read several articles and take note of any interesting points, statistics or resources.

2. Forums and Blogs
You need to ‘hang out’ in online locations where people knowledgeable on your topic congregate.  Use Google’s search filters to pinpoint relevant blogs and forums.
Google “Blog + your topic” and “forum + your topic”, to return highly relevant results.  Be sure to include the inverted commas.

If you are an internet marketer be sure to checkout the warrior forum.

3. Communities
There are myriad online communities for virtually every niche on the internet.  Sites like ‘ning’ even enable experts to set up social networks around their expert topic.  Hubpages.com and Squidoo.com are also highly specialized communities that contain valuable content on virtually every niche.

4. Copernic Agent
This search tool is a favorite with many top copy writers.  It is a powerful source of ‘interesting facts’ that will fill your article with riveting content.  Google ‘Copernic Agent’ and download their FREE tool bar. It will simultaneously search all the major search engines as well as authority sites, to provide quality search results.

5. Search Engines
Search engines are obviously an invaluable tool for researching article content.  As stated previously use search qualifiers such as “blog + your topic” to gain precise results.  Google ‘google advanced search tips” to see keywords and symbols that you can use in your search that greatly increases the accuracy of your results, this will save you a lot of time.

Check out the new search engine ‘cuil.com’.  This is a powerful new search engine that claims to return even more accurate, quality results than Google.

6. Wikihow
Wikihow is a wonderful resource of ‘how to’ information, written by experts knowledgeable on specific topics.  Considering that ‘how to’ articles are some of the most read online, this is a great resources for the article marketer.

7. Yahoo Answers
Sites such as Yahoo Answers and Askville.com are powerful platforms for connecting purveyors of information with those seeking answers.  Linger in one of these sites and search for answers pertaining to your topic.  You will gain some very useful information from authors knowledgeable on your topic.

8. Wikipedia
Wikipedia often takes the # 1 spot on Google for many search terms and rightly so.  It has become the single greatest resource of quality information online.  It is in effect the largest ‘up to date’ encyclopedia in the world.  Use this site when you are looking for up to date quality content.

9. Authority Sites
Authority sites are sites where experts for any given niche, frequent and share valuable information.  You need to discover where the expert in your niche ‘hang out’ and join them in the ‘virtual lobby’ to ask them questions and share information.

10. E-books
There are thousand of FREE quality e-books available online in virtually every niche.  You could even buy the PLR or MRR rights for many of these e-Books and thus be licensed to use their content.

I trust this has been an insightful article that reveals all the major sources of information that you should explore when formulating your articles.  Use a variety of them to supplement your own ideas, and you will be churning out quality articles in no time at all.

Sales Conversions

Like an business you have cost of sales such as Google Adwords.  If your Google Adwords spend is $500 a month, then you need to make $500 just to break even.

You need to ensure that you are squeezing the maximum possible sales out of every visitor to your website.

The following 5 techniques will seriously boost your sales conversions;

1. The One-Time- Offer
2. The Full Money Back Guarantee
3. The Testimonial
4. The Signature
5. The Photograph

1. The One-Time- Offer

The One-Time-Offer is arguably the most powerful method for increasing sales conversions.  Simply stated it involves enticing the prospect to sign up to your list by giving away a free e-Book or piece of software.

When they click on the ‘confirm’ link in their email, they are re-directed to a ‘One Time Offer’ webpage that presents your primary product with a big discount and several ‘mouth watering’ bonuses.

The offer needs to be so compelling that it is a no-brainer for the prospect to make the purchase.  They need to be warned that they will never ever see this offer again, and if they leave that page they will have to pay the full price for the product in future less the additional bonuses also.

Add scarcity by including a count down script that shows your stock of special limited edition offer is depleting rapidly.  Add a visible count down timer which gives the prospect limited time (mere minutes) to make up their minds.

This is a powerful formula for increasing conversions because the prospect indicated their interest in your product by downloading a related freebie.  The fear that they would miss out on the special offer, coupled with the scarcity tactic and ‘time count down’ literally uses the power of human emotion to guarantee the sale.

You can also insert an ‘exit’ script so that if a prospect attempt to exit your page they receive a pop up box, reinstating the fact that once they leave the offer is gone for good.  You can also include a link at the bottom of the page that states “No thanks, I have to pass on this great offer”.  This will then link to a lower priced offer (perhaps with fewer bonuses) so that your product offering appeals to customers on all price points.

Click here to download an excellent script for achieving all of these tasks.

2. The Full Money Back Guarantee

When a prospect hits your sales page they will naturally have a ‘high resistance’ to buying.  If they see a ‘hint’ of a sales pitch initially, many will leave the page.  It’s best to create an editorial style page that provides useful information at the beginning that blends into a pitch for your product as a solution to a problem you have stated over the earlier part of the article.

You must offer a ‘Full No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee’.  This will remove all the risk for the buyer and greatly increase your sales.  The prospect doesn’t know you so you need to make this offer to gain trust and give them the confidence to complete the purchase.

3. The Testimonial

It is essential that you include customer testimonials on your sales page, especially in the paragraph just before the ‘Buy Now’ button.  Customers need reassurance that your product does what it says it will do.

Nothing lowers resistance more than testimonials from other customers.  If you really intend on maximizing conversions then include a photograph, name and website address in each testimonial.  This further reinforces the fact that this is a real genuine testimonial.

If you want to take the sales conversions to an even higher level, then include video testimonials.  You can use a powerful tool such as; Testimonials Generator to generate professional testimonials.

4. The Signature

It has been scientifically proven that a ‘signature’ is a psychological trigger for gaining instant trust.  It comes down to the fact that when somebody physically signs something, it is the highest form of personal verification.

Use this to your advantage when in engaged in online selling.  Get out a white sheet of paper and write your hand written signature.  Get any good camera, switch it on ‘macro mode’ and take a photo of your signature.  Upload this to your website instead of your typed name.

Split test and be surprised when you see your sales conversions have increased for very little extra effort.

5. The Photograph

The web is a pretty impersonal medium.  With software spider and bots trawling every site ever day, it can seem mechanical as opposed to human.  This makes it difficult  to build a relationship with a prospect.

By including your photograph on every sales page, it reinforces the fact you are a genuine human being. It also helps to build a relationship, trust and rapport with a prospect.  Under split testing this has been proven to have a positive impact on sales conversions.

So there you have it, 5 powerful techniques that are guaranteed to send your sales conversions soaring.  Implement them today and start profiting straight away.

Viral Marketing

For a viral marketing campaign to gather momentum, it is essential that the message being transmitted does not appear to be blatantly commercial.  Famous viral marketing campaigns include Hotmail’s appendage of a subtle marketing message at the end of their users email.  Every time a hotmail user sent an email, there was an invitation to the recipient to ‘Join Hotmail’ in the footer.  The sender didn’t mind because they were getting FREE email, and the recipient was implicitly compelled to sign up.  Apple are using a similar viral marketing process with the iPhone.  Every time an iPhone owner sends an email from their iPhone, the message “Sent from my iPhone” is appended to the end of the email.

Viral marketing as a concept is extremely powerful, and can often take on a mind of its own and promulgate a marketing message to an obscene quantity of people in a relatively short period of time.  Consider the ‘Will it Blend?’ infomercials on YouTube by American company Blendtec.   They have generated millions of views for their infomercials whereby they showcase the power of their blenders for blending such items as iPhones or golf balls.

You may be thinking; “Well I don’t have the marketing budget of an Apple Inc of Hotmail, so how can viral marketing work for me?”.  Well there are many different ways in which an average Internet marketer can leverage the power of viral marketing.

5 excellent methods to create a viral marketing campaign are;

1. Viral e-Books
2. Viral Software
3. Free Templates
4. Tell A Friend Links
5. Viral Video

1. Viral eBooks

A viral eBook consists of the creation of an eBook that provides value added content, that a focused target market will find extremely useful.  The author will usually give these viral e-Books away for FREE and encourage recipients to forward the e-Book to their list or distribute it by other means including ‘word of mouth’.  Viral e-Book are a powerful medium to build credibility and trust online.  When a customer first downloads your viral e-Book they most likely don’t know who you are and are thus unsure if you are a credible source of information.

Having read your FREE e-Book they will feel you are an expert in your niche and be more likely to purchase from you.  They will also pass your e-Book onto their list if they feel it contains value added information that their list will find useful.  You need to ensure that your e-Book contains multiple links back to your website.  Again individual ‘love learning, but hate being sold to’.  Therefore DO NOT include affiliate links in your viral e-Book.  Just provide expert, useable ‘how to’ information with sufficient links back to your website.  Advise readers to pass the e-Book on their list and let the viral process propagate organically.

Three ways to distribute your e-Book are;

• Sell or give away the master resale rights. You want to incentivise people to pass on your e-Book so give them permission to sell your e-Book or give it away as bonus or freebie.  Indicate that the resource will help them by; profiting from the sale of the book, including the book as an attractive bonus to help stimulate the sale of their own product, or as a means to attract people to join their list.

• Submit to FREE e-Book Directories. Submit your e-Book to the following e-Book directories and initiate the viral process; – Warrior Forum
  FREE Download, SureFireWealth.com, FREE-ebooks.net, THe FREE Site, Authors Den, EbookBroadcast, BookLocke.

• Give the e-Book away to your affiliates. Include the e-Book with the sales materials on your Affiliate promotional material page.  Encourage them to insert their affiliate link and use the e-Book to drive traffic to your site.  If someone buys, they get the commission.

2. Viral Software

Software has high perceived added value.  It is the most downloadable product on the Internet.  If you are a software developer, develop mini applications and embed your marketing message, banner or upsell products.  An effective strategy is to give away a lite version with limited functionality and they encourage the user to upgrade.  Enable affiliates to include their affiliate links and they will distribute your software far and wide.  Distribute your software through FREE software / download sites, and participate in giveaways.

FREE Software directories suited to distributing your software through include; Upload.com, Tucows.com, Promosoft, Warrior Forums FREE Downloads, SurefireWealth.com.

Give people the give away rights and allow them to sell your software and keep 100% of the profits.  Ensure your software contains embedded links back to your site.  Even if you are not a developer you can get simple cost effective applications developed using sites such as Elance.com.

3. Templates

Simply give away free templates that contain your domain name.  Send them to your affiliates and through FREE download sites. You can buy the master resale rights to templates and then insert your brand name / domain name using a program such as Photoshop.  Alternatively hire a graphic designer on sites such as Elance.com.

Another powerful viral medium is to give away WordPress themes.  THe best sites to distribute FREE wordpress themes include; WPSkins, ThemeBoss, FREE WP Themes, WPThemesFREE, Themes WP, Bloggeries, SureFireWealth.com.

4. Tell A Friend

Encourage users to ‘tell a friend’.  Sometime just stating those 3 words will be sufficient.  To encourage the process incentivise the individual.  Offer freebies, upgraded accounts, free membership or special discounts.

5. Create a Viral Video
Video is one of the most powerful mediums for viral marketing.  If you can embed your video with extreme entertainment qualities or reveal exceptionally useful ‘how to’  information it could go viral.  Use the strategies detailed in Video Marketing Devastation to give your video the maximum chance of going viral.

You now have sufficient information on what it takes to start a viral marketing campaign.  I would advise you ‘get your feet wet’ using all of the above methods for maximum effect.  You could be only one step away from several million visits to your website, so start today and ‘give away’.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of traffic to a website, by obtaining a prominent position in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

top-10-search-engine-optimization-SEO-tips

SEO refers to securing optimal placement in the organic search results for certain keywords or phrases, as opposed to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which involves paid inclusion such as Google Adwords.

A highly optimized website will drive high volumes of targeted traffic to a website for FREE.  The best part of the process is that the ‘searcher’ is actively seeking the information, so they are more likely to make a purchase at that website as opposed to when they are suddenly presented with a banner ad / pop up which is a form of ‘interruption marketing’.

The Statistics

Recent data from Internet World Stats reveals that there are over1.1 Billion Web users worldwide conducting over 210 billion searches per day across the search engines.

Crucial scientific studies have revealed that the vast majority of web surfers never look beyond the first two pages of search results.

In fact, search marketing firm iProspect revealed that more than 40% of web surfers stop reading after the first 10 results, and only 8% will bother searching past the top 30 results.

This information means that it is essential that your website is prominently positioned inside the top 20 results, preferably the top 10 results.

How do Search Engines Work?

Search Engines such as Google send out spiders to crawl the web and index the content of each page they find.  “Googlebot”, Google’s spider, indexes over 100 webpages per second.

The spiders use such factors as the keyword density on a webpage to determine what a website is about, and they then store that webpage in their vast database under those keywords.  Whenever a searcher searches for those keywords or phrases, that web page is returned to them.

The difficult part is getting your website to the top of the search engine results.  Individual search engines have their own ranking system which uses algorithms to determine which web pages are most relevant to the search keyword or phrase.  They then present the results in descending order of relevance on their SERPs.

Search Engines such as Google and Yahoo are in constant competition with each other to fine tune their algorithms and present web users with the most accurate results.  Their core customer is the searcher so their algorithms are constantly in a state of flux.  If you the business owner knew their algorithm you could manipulate the SERPs and gain a top position.  That is why they ensure web masters have limited insights into the algorithm.

There are however certain steps that you can take which have been proven to maximize your chances of appearing inside the top 20 results.  These top 10 tips should be implemented immediately.  Remember it can take months before the search engine spider revisits your website, so be patient.

Tip # 1: Submit Your Website URL to the Search Engines

If your website does not have any inbound links from external websites, then the search engine spiders will not be able to find your website and it will not get listed.  We will talk about back links later as they are arguably the single most important factor for achieving top ranking.

SEO-Google-Add-URL

However, the very first step you need to take with SEO is to submit your website to the search engines.  This will simply ping the search engine spiders and say “hey come here and index my new web page”.

So submit to your URL to each of the major search engines by visiting the following links;

• Google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
• Yahoo: http://submit.search.yahoo.com
• Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

WARNING: Do NOT send your link to the search engines more than once.  It will have no impact on your listing and may even mark you as a spammer.

Tip # 2: Capture Your Keywords in your URL where possible

One of the first places a search engine spider will look to determine what your website is about, is your URL.  If at all possible you should place your primary keyword phrase in your URL.

Search engines place more weight on web sites that have the primary keyword placed within the root of the domain – between the “www.” and the “.com” like:

www.{YOURKEYWORD}.com

I always exercise this rule where possible with my products e.g.

http://www.ArticleMarketingDevastation.com – Keywords: Article Marketing

http://www.VideoMarketingDevastation.com – Keywords: Video Marketing

If your website is already established or the keyword phrase is too long to reasonably embed in the root of the URL, then you could do the following.

Include them as a Sub domain

You could include them as a sub domain e.g.
http://{YOURKEYWORD}.domainname.com
Include them as a sub directory

You could include them as a sub directory e.g.

http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/{YOURKEYWORDS}

If you own a Blog you should ensure that the URL uses this sub directory style using the ‘permalink’ option.

So to summarize; a powerful SEO tactic is to embed your keywords within the URL.  You have three methods for achieving this;

1. Within the root of domain (most powerful method)
2. Within the sub domain (necessary if root is not possible)
3. Within the sub directory (least powerful method, necessary for Blog posts)

Tip # 3: Place your major keywords inside your title tag

Your title tags refer to a simple piece of HTML code placed within the source of your webpage.

Inside the source of your title page it looks like this;

<title> Insert keyword rich description here</title>

This is the second most powerful position for keyword phrases behind the URL.  It is important for both the indexing of your webpage by the search engines, and to give web surfers and indication of what your site is about.

What ever text you place inside the title tags will appear on the top blue horizontal line at the very top of your webpage.  It will also appear as the headline in your search engine results description.

This means your title tag is one of the best places to attract both human searchers and search engine spiders to your website.

Warning: Do NOT engage in keyword stuffing

Many internet marketers think the title tag should be ‘stuffed’ with a list of keywords.

For example if your webpage is about article marketing, do not engage in ‘keyword stuffing’ as follows;

<title>article marketing, article marketing tips, article marketing software, article marketing tactics, article marketing strategies</title>

This will look unprofessional to web surfers in the SERPs, likely confuse them and lead them to click on a competitor who provides an accurate description.

Instead write a descriptive piece of text that contains your primary keywords in a manner that makes sense to a human reader.  For example;

<title> Video Marketing Devastation: Discover Video Marketing Strategies That Get #1 Position in Google</title>

This offers readers an alluring benefit and it contains several keywords to be indexed by the search engine spiders.

Bear in mind that there are character limits to your title tags.  Google allows only 70 characters in title tags and will cut off the text after the last whole word.  Yahoo will cut off the title at the 115^th character even if it’s in the middle of a word.

Tip # 4: Place your major keywords inside your keyword meta tags

In the early days of search engine optimization, marketers used to stuff their keyword meta tags with keywords.  It was the most important place to put keyword, as it was one of the main areas used by the spider for indexing.

However, many scrupulous marketers started placing keywords in their keyword meta tags that had little if anything to do with the actual content on their site.

This was a means to attract additional traffic, albeit non targeted.  Many ‘adult’ sites were guilty of this practice, as they targeted other things that they knew their target market would be searching for e.g. ‘sports cars’, ‘Ferrari’, ‘BMW’ etc.

As a result the search engines changed their algorithm such that it greatly reduced the importance of keyword meta tags for indexing purposes.

However, consider it is a placeholder within your source code that is designed specifically for optimized keywords; you might as well use it.  Certainly some of the lesser search engines, still place some degree of relevance on these meta keywords. So it won’t hurt you to make use of same.

Keyword meta tags look like this;

<meta name=”keyword” content=”{PLACE YOUR PRIMARY KEYWORD HERE}”>

3 important guidelines for writing spider friendly keywords are;

1. List your top 3 / 4 keyword phrases in descending order of importance, commencing with your most important.
2. Separate each phrase with a comma and a space.  Do not use ‘qualifiers’ such as ‘and’ / ‘or’ as these are ignored by search engine spiders.
3. Do NOT engage in mass keyword spamming, 3 / 4 phrases are sufficient.

Tip # 5: Write a compelling phrase that incorporates your keywords inside your meta description

The meta description describes the purpose of your webpage.  It has greater importance than the meta keywords because the content is printed as a description of your website in the search engine results.

For that reason the search engine spider realizes you will make an accurate description, because it is in your best interests given that it is what web surfers will see in the search engine results.

An example of a meta description is as follows;

<meta name=”description” content=”Discover how the top article marketers use article marketing to drive hordes of targeted buyers to their websites”>

This includes a meaningful description of what the site is about, it stirs the reader’s interest and encourages them to click on the link the visit your site.  From an SEO perspective it includes the primary keywords: “article marketing”.

Tip # 6: Place your primary keyword towards the beginning or each paragraph

The actual content on your webpage itself is vital aspect of your SEO efforts.  Search engine spiders crawl every element on your webpage in order to determine its keyword density and determine what your webpage is really about.

You should ensure that the following elements are peppered with your primary keywords;

1. 1 – 3 times in the first paragraph of your content.  Ensuring one time as near to the beginning of the paragraph as possible.
2. 1 – 3 time sin the last paragraph of your content.  Again nearer to the beginning of the paragraph is preferable.
3. Several mentions throughout the main body copy.

Again avoid keyword spamming.  Too many marketers focus on a strategy called ‘keyword density’ i.e. the number of times your keyword appears on a page relative to all the other keywords on the page.

So if your keyword is ‘golf’ and your entire webpage repeats the line “I love playing golf”, then your keyword density will be 25%.

{Keyword Density = One instance of “golf”, divided by 4 words, multiplied by 100 = 25%}

A simple tip is to write your content like you were having a conversation with a person.  If the content reads like a certain word is mentioned far too often, then the search engine spiders will realize what you are doing and you will be penalized.

A good strategy is to use variations of your keywords to maximize your search engine traffic.  For example use “article marketing tips”, “article marketing advice”, “article marketing tactics” interchangeably.

Tip # 7: Place your primary keywords at the beginning of each title and sub title

Title and sub titles within your content will have more SEO weight than regular content.

The heading tags contained within your source code look like the following;

<h1> This will make content your main title </h1>

<h2> This will make content your main sub-title </h2>

<h3> This will make content your main sub-sub-title </h3>

The smaller the number before the h the larger the title size e.g. <h1> is the largest title size and are used for the main title.  By comparison <h2> would represent a sub title and <h3> a sub-sub title.

You can increase the weight even further by emphasizing the title i.e. by using; Bold, Italics or Underline.

<b>This will make your title bold</b>

<i> This will make your title italicized </i>

<u> This will make your title underlined</u>

This is understood to give your title even more Google juice.  In fact making primary keyword bold / underlined throughout the content will add more importance to those keywords from a SEO perspective.

Tip # 8: Upload images to your site that are named using your keywords

Many marketers upload images and web graphic to their websites without giving any though to the naming convention of those images.  For example their main product image might be; 00001.jpg.  Their header graphic might be; abc.jpg etc.

This is a terrible waste of prime keyword real estate.  What many searchers forget is that search engines enable web surfers to search by ‘images’.  Therefore Google and the other search engines index images on websites.

I ensure every single graphic on my webpage is named using one or more of my keywords.

It is important to use the following naming convention when uploading your images to your server.

Keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4.jpg

So separate each keyword with a hyphen.  Do not leave spaces between the keywords.  Start with your most important keywords first i.e. in the above formula keyword1 is more important than keyword 3.

No only will this boost your SEO, but it will drive additional traffic to your website when web surfers search e.g. Google images.

Tip # 9: Develop a well organized site map

Search engine spiders will only index the pages that they can find for your website.  If for example you have submitted your url to the search engines (see Tip # 1) and have multiple backlink pointing to your home page, then that page will get indexed.

If however you have no links pointing to your other web pages, they will not get indexed.

The best way to get all your webpages indexed is to create a sitemap that links all the pages of your website back to your homepage.  Place this site map at the bottom of every page and you are virtually guaranteed that all your pages will be indexed.

The best tool for building a site map is found by visiting the following Google Sitemap Generator;

http://www.google.ocm/webmasters/sitemaps.

You simply enter the URL of your website and Google will send a spider to crawl and index it, automatically creating a site map for you.

Tip # 10: Increase your backlinks

As of December 2009, Google has 68% of the worldwide market share for search, with 87.8 billion searches.  Yahoo with 7% comes in at a distant second.

It is thus worth your while focusing your SEO efforts on what is necessary to get a dominant position on Google.

The cornerstone of Google algorithm is a concept called Page Rank or PR.  It refer to the democratic nature of the internet i.e. Google sees a link from website b to website a as a vote for website a.  If there are thousand of websites linking to website a, then Google will view that website as an authority site for the keywords relevant to that site and thus give it a high PR.  The higher the PR the more prominent the position in Google.

PR values range from 0 – 10, with 10 being the maximum possible mark.  If you have a PR 10 website then you will rule Google.

The higher the PR of the websites linking to you, the greater the importance of your website.  However this does not mean that have hundred of PR 1 sites linking to you is a bad thing, quite the opposite.  100 PR 1 sites are just as important as several PR 7 sites.

It is thus in your best interest to gain as many quality back links to your website as possible.

There is a tactic called ‘reciprocal links’ whereby website ‘a’ and website’ b’ agree to swap links with each othe

In order to create a massive number of inbound links I recommend the following;

1. Article Marketing – Write an article every day and submit it to 500+ sites at the click of a button using such software as Article Post Robot or SubmitYourArticle.  This will create thousands of one way links over the course of a year.
   
2. Video Marketing – Visit Video Marketing Devastation and discover how you can create thousand of in bound links using video marketing.  You can use a program such as Content Buzz to submit your video to 50+ video sharing sites at the click of a button.
   
3. Photo Marketing – Name your images using your primary keywords and submit them to the top video sharing sites such as Flickr, photobucket and others.  Having keyword rich images on your site will equate to traffic from people finding your images on Google.
   
4. Social Bookmarking – Join high PR communities such as digg and stumbleupon, and link to your content.  Be warned these are communities so you need to share other valuable content outside of your own.  Otherwise you will have your website banned form these communities.  Also certain of these sites have a ‘no follow’ policy, which means they are invisible to the search engine spiders and thus not useful for indexing.
   
5. Press Release Sites – Send regular press releases to sites such as PRlog.com  This is a great way to get quality high PR back links.
6. Forum Posts – Visit forums in your niche and post links back to your content.  DO NOT SPAM these forums.  Read their community guidelines first.  Many will allow you to place a link to your website in your signature which is appended to every comment you post on the forum.  This is usually the only acceptable form of posting links on forms.  Do not abuse this.
7. Blog Comments – Use my FREE software application “Blog Whiz” to discover a list of high PR blogs that do not have a ‘no follow’ policy.  Leave value added comments in these blogs that add value to what the blogger is blogging about.  These will be very powerful sources for quality one way back links.

An important element to bear in mind when building back links is the concept of ‘anchor text’  This simply means turning your primary keywords into active links back to your website.

It is a very powerful technique because it links your keywords to your website URL.  To create anchor text use the following html code.

<a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>Your Anchor Link Text Goes Here</a>

This was a pretty long article, but it certainly drives home the major components in an effective SEO strategy.  If you take the time to use each of these tips, you will almost certainly steal a top 10 ranking on Google and the other search engines.