Internet Marketing Blog

Social networking can make a huge difference in your success online but there is a bit of a fine line between marketing or networking and spamming.  Let’s look at some examples:

E-mail Marketing

Marketers build e-mail lists and market selectively. Spamming would include many tactics such as anonymous email blasts, ignoring those who try to opt out or selling lists. If you want to build an e-mail list, consider giving away something for free, having a valuable newsletter or doing something else to build a list of people who are likely going to be interested in what you’re selling.

Article Marketing

Valuable articles will give the reader some information and may direct them some place they can go to in order to find out more information. They don’t generally contain affiliate links and they do provide value. If you try to spam through article marketing you probably won’t get very far because most e-zine sites have requirements and terms of service that prohibit spam.

Blogging or Splogging

While it’s perfectly fine to do advertising on your blog, you want valuable information there as well otherwise it’s considered a splog (spam blog) and you won’t have too many repeat visitors. Visitors who do arrive probably won’t buy anything or return again. Give people value and you’ll have more chances of making sales and having them do some of your marketing for you through social bookmarking.

Social Media: Don’t Be One Sided

If you’re constantly asking people on social networking tools and forums to Digg or Stumble your entry but never do it in return and never participate in discussions in a reciprocal way, eventually everyone will just ignore you. Reciprocate a little in your online marketing efforts and you’ll find a bit difference in how people receive you.

(photo credit: www.sxc.hu)

When you’re guest blogging or doing article marketing, you’ve got around two or three lines where you can do several things. This is often known as a resource box and is essentially, your byline. In a few short sentences, you can create enough interest to get people visiting your website and you can link some keywords that also bring search engines around as well.

How Do You Write a Great Byline?

The byline should tell interested readers a bit about you and where they can find more information about you. If anchored keywords related to your niche are present, they’ll tell people about what you do and give them a place to link to in order to find out more about you. This can bring you further publicity.

Here are two examples:

Dana Prince is a writer and blogger who thrives on information about internet marketing. Read more of Dana’s blog posts at www.seanseo.com.

I tagged myself as a blogger and showed where people could read more of my blogs about internet marketing.

And:

Sean Rasmussen is an internet marketer and success communicator who has been helping people learn to be successful entrepreneurs for several years. 

I’ve linked to two places where Sean can be found that anchor words related to his topics. This can help people interested in either subject click through to learn more and helps the search engines index Sean for these targeted key phrases.

You can use the byline to generate interest, help you become perceived as a subject matter expert and get you human visitors and search engine spider visitors as well. Those spiders will help your website’s SEO significantly. Use the space at the bottom of your page on article directories and guest posts to your full advantage!

The Long Tail in SEO can help you reach your SEO efforts much more easily. What is this SEO term and how can you use it to your advantage? Those using more than one SEO approach are best equipped to survive changes to the secret Google SEO algorithms. Consider doing LSI silos as well as Long Tail, article marketing and social marketing as well.

Long Tail Illustration:

If you’re going to try to hit Google spot # 1 on the word computer, you’re in for a very challenging journey as there are going to be millions of hits on the word ‘computer.’ However, if you decide to target used computers, Houston you just might get the results you’re hoping for. If you do a check on the number of hits for each term and you’ll quickly see there are still a lot of hits on both terms but the Long Tail term is going to be much easier to get to the top of the totem pole with.

What Are Your Potential Customers Searching For?

Take your target customer and think about what they’ll be searching for. Not only do you have a better chance of them finding you when you optimize for their targeted keywords but you’ll have a bit less competition fighting for those words.

Fewer Competitors = More Sales

When you go looking for something, the keywords you use are probably quite specific because you understand that you need to do more than a single word search. Most people who want to buy something online and want more than just very generic information will search with more than a word or two in their phrase.

Use keywords tools online when doing your SEO prep work like the Google tilde operator and some common sense when deciding to go after Long Tail keywords.

Article marketing is a great way to do many things for your online business. It is like killing three birds with one stone because it can bring you people and it can help you with search engine traffic as well as help you encourage others to spread your message in a viral way.

Article directories like E-zine Articles will let you join for free and write an interesting article for submission to their site. This article has a resource box that will let you link the article back to your site.  This helps humans and search engines.

Human Visitors:

You can generate website traffic. People will read your well-written article that’s written with a slant to encourage them to visit your site. They could buy what you’re selling after visiting you.

Search Engines:

Search engines will see the sprinkling of relevant keywords in the article that point to your site and this will help you with your search engine optimization. The keywords you optimize for should be anchored text with html in your resource box and point to your site.

Guest Posting:

When you submit to these types of article websites you’re giving others free use of your article with the rule that they need to keep your article original and include your links. By writing an interesting article, you’ll get increased exposure because others will publish your article on their site.

There are many article submission sites available to choose from. Some have varying rules about links and content so read the terms of service and consider posting a few articles a week as part of your self promotion and SEO efforts.