Top 40 SEO Myths You Should Know About – Part 2

The whole point of SEO is to gain traffic and get people to stay on your site so they can be entertained or buy your products and services. As such, SEO very much goes hand in hand with usability, because this is what will make a difference in whether or not someone stays on your site for long. If your site is hard to use or navigate, it is very easy for people to go to the next search result. Also, the search engines themselves will look at layout and usability. If your site is hard to navigate for your viewers, it will be hard for the crawler as well, and having bad usability can definitely affect your rankings.

Myth #16: The .edu and .gov Backlinks are the Best

It is true that most .edu and .gov sites are well ranked and have a high authority, because typically they are official sites that are well maintained and contain no spam. However, if you have a backlink from one of these sites, it will only be as good as the authority that site has. You gain nothing by the fact that it is an educational or government site. Having a backlink on an obscure .edu site will not help you any more than posting it on an obscure blog.

Myth #17: SEO is based on the Quantity of Links a Site Has

Believing that the success of a SEO campaign is based on having as many backlinks as possible is misunderstanding how ranking works. Any ranking algorithm, whether it is Google’s, Bing’s, Facebook’s, etc. will rank sites based on many different factors. To do successful SEO, you have to address all of these factors, and having a lot of links is just one small piece of the puzzle. Also, each link has its own quality value. Often, a single link from a popular news site talking about your product will be much more valuable than spamming hundreds of links to unknown blog sites.

Myth #18: Backlinks are More Important than Content

SEO usually costs time and money, and as such it is unrealistic to think you can do everything possible in every facet of online marketing. So often you have to make choices, and some may be tempted to focus on link building instead of content. However, the goal of SEO is to bring good traffic to your site. Quality is very important, not just quantity. Not having good content means your site has no value to anyone, and as such it will quickly lose any benefit that the extra links gave you. In fact, the most useful backlinks are usually not those you have direct access to. They are reviews from celebrities in your niche, news sites, and anyone who already is an authority talking about your product. By having good content, those links can actually come by themselves, simply through PR or word of mouth. But a bunch of backlinks on low authority blogs will not help you much at all, and the ranking you may get from them will not last long as those sites clean up those links. Instead, focus on your audience and try to know who you are writing for. By producing good content you are helping your site more over the long run.

Myth #19: Paid Links will get You Banned from Google

There are a number of ways to get links and some include some type of payment. Not all paid links are bad. It depends on how that payment occurs. For example, many sites, including Google, offer advertising services. You can buy an ad on Adwords, you could go to another ad network, and many sites offer their own ad services. While some of them will not give you any ranking, others might, and those are completely legitimate. Paying a site that focuses on your niche to have a link in a strategic location will likely not get you banned. However, you have to remember that there are methods that will. Buying low quality links in bulk is one of the best ways to get your site removed from Google’s index.

Myth #20: Good Content is All You Need

Just like building an army of links will not help you keep traffic for very long, having good content and nothing else is also not enough. Most people agree that good content is the cornerstone of having a successful site. By having engaging, useful posts for your visitors, you can ensure that they will want to visit your site and stay there for a long time. However, simply building it does not make it known. Even a very good site has to do some SEO in order to bring traffic. Branding is incredibly important for any site and getting your brand out there through SEO is the only way you will get those eyes onto that content. Your articles and posts have to be paired with good incoming signals, and that includes doing a lot of the typical SEO methods which can get you ranked in search engines so that people can find your content.

Myth #21: Google actively Penalizes Certain Sites

Anyone who has done some work in SEO has been puzzled at some point when seeing strange drops in ranking. It may seem as if you did nothing wrong. You increased all of your marketing efforts, yet somehow Google decided to rank you lower. It may be easy to think that your site was penalized in some way, but most often that is not the case. Google clearly states that they only penalize sites that break their terms of use by actively going after black hat methods like spamming users. In most cases, the problem is elsewhere. One potential cause may be things that other sites have done, and not you. For example, maybe your competitor received a large influx of links because they appeared on a popular TV show. Another reason might be that Google changed some part of their internal algorithm, which happens fairly often and can be disastrous for some sites. Many people remember the Panda update which changed the ranking of millions of sites. Unfortunately in these cases it can be very hard to find the root cause and fix it, and you may have to simply work harder at SEO in order to gain your ranking back. Resist the temptation to go to black hat methods or to blame Google for it.

Myth #22: Google AdWords will give You Preferential Treatment

Adwords is a very useful program by Google where you can place an ad on other sites to advertise your own. It should be part of any online marketing campaign. However, AdWords by itself does not help boost your rankings. Some think that because a company pays Google, Google will give them preferential treatment in organic search, but that is not the case. On any typical search page, you can easily see that organic results are separated from paid advertisements. A PPC ad campaign will give you a ranking in the sense that it will allow you to be seen on the ads side of the page, but it does not affect your ranking on the organic side in any way.

Myth #23: SEO is Something Done Once Only

A lot of sites make this mistake. When a site is new, the owners will invest in doing some SEO, and then think that everything is done. But just like marketing in the real world, SEO is not something you can do once and then forget. Instead, it is a continual process which has to be done over a long period of time, often the entire life of the site. This is because the web is not a written encyclopedia. It is a medium that changes constantly. New competitors appear, search engines change their algorithms, new opportunities for marketing appear, and links that used to be good can become stale and not that important anymore. By constantly keeping an eye on your SEO efforts you ensure that your ranking does not drop, and you can keep focusing on new techniques that may prove to work better.

Myth #24: SEO Companies can get Guaranteed Results

This is a very common yet completely bogus claim which some marketing firms like to use. They claim that by using their methods, your results will be guaranteed. But the truth is that no one can claim a certain method is foolproof for the same reason that SEO is not something you do once then forget. Everything changes online and you never know when something that used to work well will stop working. Some tactics are clearly better than others, but none is guaranteed. Also, if there was a magical way to get a high ranking, you can be sure that it would leak out at some point, and then everyone would be using that same tactic, making it worthless.

Myth #25: Placing too Many Links Per Page can Penalize You

Some people have been told that a certain number of links on a page can be bad for your rankings. For example, placing more than a hundred links on your landing page will be bad for Google and you will get penalized in some way. While it is true that spamming links on a page is something you should not do, and the Google bot has ways to detect when a page is link bait, you should not be afraid to create pages with lots of links. As long as they are relevant and part of the normal navigation of your site, then there will be no penalty. The worse that could happen in these cases is that Google may decide to ignore links past a hundred, but that’s all.

Myth #26: Internal Links don’t Matter for SEO

Many people think of linking only in terms of backlinks, and only focus on having other sites link to their own pages. But internal linking is also important, just like your site layout is important, because search crawlers try to act as much like a normal web viewer as possible. If your site has bad internal navigation, Google will be able to detect that, and this could penalize you. Take the time needed to create good internal links and an easy to use navigation system for your site. This is something that is easy to do and should not be overlooked.

Myth #27: Facebook Likes or Tweets are the Number One Factor in SEO

Social media has taken a central role in how people find information on the web today, and the signals sent by these sites are fed into search engines in real time. No modern business should ignore social media, simply because of the amount of time people spend on Facebook or Twitter. However, no one social site is the holy grail of SEO. Even if getting Facebook likes is important, it is not any more so than the many other techniques that can be used. Also, there are arguments that point to the fact that while many people spend a lot of time on social networking sites, they do so to talk to friends, not to buy products, so the benefit of a like is still not as understood as the benefit of ranking well on Google. You should not ignore traditional SEO to focus solely on social media.

Myth #28: Keywords are no Longer Relevant

Sites used to be created with a paragraph at the bottom filled with keywords in order to attract more traffic using something called keyword stuffing. In recent years, knowledgable marketers have realized that this is no longer needed. In fact, it is a practice that is heavily discouraged by search engines. However, this does not mean that keywords are not still very important. While you should not do keyword stuffing on a page, getting a good percentage of your keywords in your actual text is still crucial. When someone looks for a specific term on Google, the number of times a keyword comes up on your page still weighs heavily in the search results.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/06/top-40-seo-myths-you-should-know-about-part-2/

Google+ and Facebook With Author Rank Breeds Success

SEO Firm
Google+ and Facebook can nab you a high Google ranking. Add author rank and you have a powerful combination.
You must first have Google+ and Facebook accounts, but these are easy enough to get. All you have to do is to use Google as your web browser, and also know how to create a Facebook Business Page, rather than simply use your Home Page and Facebook Wall.
We shall assume you are already using Google+ and Facebook. On Google, click on the +YourName link at the left side of the black Google menu bar. If you don’t already have an account, go to the Google search engine page and click on +you link on the same bar. You can then create an account by clicking on the red rectangle at top right.

Google+ Pages

Once you have joined Google, and are on your Google+ page, scroll down the left hand navigation bar until you come to ‘more.’ Click on that and then ‘pages’ — you will find instructions on setting up your first Google+ Page.
Google+ enables you to create groups of people known as Circles. The defaults of ‘friends,’ ‘family,’ acquaintances,’ and ‘followers’ explain what Circles are about. You can also create a circle of people with similar expertise or interests.
So how do you use Google+ to help your Google ranking?
Google gives more weight to links to and from its own social networking applications. A Google+ +1 vote is worth more to Google than a Facebook ‘like’ — but you can still make use of both. You can create a link from one to the other and back again. Then, when you post either to your Facebook business page or to your Google+ page, the link will be visible on each publication.
By the simple expediency of including a link to a page on your website or blog, you will have generated a powerful link network that is extremely friendly to Google Panda and the Penguin update. You can increase that effect by maintaining a regular website and also a blog as a subdomain on the same main domain. You can then expect to receive multiple listings on the search engines, particularly Google, for each of these publications.

Google Webmaster Tools and XML Sitemaps

To maximize your ranking, you must register your main site with Google Webmaster Tools. Then verify ownership by means of one of the options that Google will give you, and submit an XML sitemap. If you have a WordPress blog, then there are excellent plugins available that will do this
automatically. If you have a regular site, you will find sitemap generating tools available online. They are free for a one-time use, which is all that you need.
You can make the best use of Google+ by including a +1 link on your website — in fact include one on each page.
The Google+ chicklet is known as a +1, and it works in much the same way as a Facebook ‘like.’ Each vote is known as a +1, and the more you accumulate the better. It is assumed that your ranking is partially influenced by the +1 votes you accumulate.

Authorship and Author Rank

When you are able to claim authorship of the content you write and articles you publish, your name and profile will be published in the search listing for each of your web pages. Your photograph might also be published if you have submitted one to Google+. This is an excellent way of being recognized as an expert in your business or niche. In effect, Google is endorsing your content.
Make sure that you have linked the website containing the content to Google+ by means of an official e-mail address belonging to and listed on the site, or by adding a few lines of code to your site. Then you can claim authorship for all content on your site. Webmaster Tools explains how to do this. Author rank is a measure of your authority in your niche.
Each time you publish content away from your linked website, simply write ‘Author=yourname’ to get author ranking for the content. ‘Yourname’ is your username for Google+ or any other name associated with the account.
Article directories do this for you when they publish your articles, but you can do it yourself for blog posts and when guest blogging.

Social Media Integration and Google PageRank

By using Facebook ‘likes,’ Google +1 and authorship, you can make a significant impact on your Google ranking. It is important you take the time to learn how each of these work, and how they can be integrated to your advantage.
There are many other social networking sites that can be integrated in this way.
It is likely that author rank and +1s will supersede Google PageRank as a major factor in page ranking positions on the Google search engine. Algorithm updates over the past couple of years appear to be trending toward social media and author rank rather than PageRank calculated from conventional links between Web pages. Take the time to learn how Google+ and Facebook can be integrated to rank well in Google.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/03/google-and-facebook-with-author-rank-breeds-success/

Top 40 SEO Myths You Should Know About – Part 1

Myth #1: Only the First Rank Matters

Many ebooks and other resources that business owners use will place an important emphasis on the need to be at the top of search results, whether that be on Google Search, other engines, or even in places like social media. But surveys have shown that people quite often will look at other results and they will scroll down through the page. Being on top of a second page, for example, can be quite beneficial for traffic. Also, search ranking is only one part of the puzzle. Now Google places other results on the page like social recommendations and local results as well, which means there are many more avenues open to you, and being in first place is no longer as crucial as it once was.

Myth #2: You can do SEO Without Outside Help

Doing SEO simply means that you follow a set of techniques and procedures to improve the chance that web users will go to your site. It is true that anybody can learn these techniques, and, if you are a web site owner and you want to do your own SEO, then you can spend the time to learn and apply those techniques. But SEO can be complex and touches many areas such as marketing online, coding, technical aspects and PR skills. Most business owners simply do not have everything required to do a great job at SEO, and that is why so many agencies exist that offer help. An IT worker or online marketer is often not enough if you want truly good results.

Myth #3: META Tags are Very Important

It used to be that every page on your site needed Meta tags in order to rank well. Those are small pieces of code that would give Google a list of keywords and a description. The search engine would use those to find out what your web site was about. Now however, those do not affect your ranking at all. Both Google and Bing stopped caring about META tags awhile back. However, Meta tags are not useless. For example, the description tag is the text that often appears next to the link that shows up in the search results, so it still serves a useful function.

Myth #4: Keyword-Rich Domain Names are Ranked Higher

Back in the dotcom days, it used to be that the URL you used was very important. Google placed a lot of importance on the domain name, and if you could get a name that had your keyword in it, you would gain a big advantage over other sites. This is why a lot of companies in the late 90′s bought domain names for a lot of money. But now, the indexing process only looks at the actual content of your pages, and not the domain name. The domain name is still important, because people still get to see it, but it will not give you a higher rank.

Myth #5: You have to Submit Your Site to Google or Other Search Engines

All search engines used to have URL submission forms where you could send your site to Google and others. In fact, they still do, but that process is unnecessary. The crawlers that these engines use now are sophisticated enough that any new site will be found in a matter of days, if not hours. The only time you would have to worry about submitting your site is if for some reason it was not indexed automatically after a couple of days.

Myth #6: Submitting a Sitemap will Boost Your Rankings

Google offers a webmaster interface and from there, you can submit a sitemap, which is a XML file containing links to every page on your site. Some site owners take the time to submit such a file every time they make a change, but that is not necessary. Submitting a sitemap does not change your rankings. All it does is add pages which may not have been indexed already. If your site is typical and has links to all your pages, then it is not needed.

Myth #7: SEO has Nothing to do with Social Media

Before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, SEO was the one and only technique to get traffic in an organic way. But now, social media is everywhere, and the line is quickly blurring between the two. While some marketers still consider SEO and social media to be different beasts, the truth is that they are very closely linked. For example, Google now places their own social network, Google Plus, into its search results. If you can get enough influential people to talk about your product and link to your site, then their recommendations will show up in any Google search result that their friends do. This clearly affects SEO. On the flip side, Facebook has also entered search, by recently introducing their Open Graph engine, which searches based on friends and interests. So the two spheres are closely linked, and they are becoming closer all the time.

Myth #8: Google does not read CSS Files

The Google bot used to be fairly primitive and only saw text, which is why many people concentrated on the text part of their web site. But now that engine is very sophisticated and reads JavaScript, CSS, and more. The crawler can definitely see whether your site’s presentation is appealing to users or not. For example, if someone searches on a mobile device and you have no mobile layout on your site, you may be missing out.

Myth #9: You Need to Update Your Home Page All the Time

Some people think that by updating their home page content all the time they will rank higher, or by not updating it their ranking will drop. In most cases that is not the case, because if you have a sales page that offers a product, then there would be no reason to update that page unless something about the product changes, and Google expects that.

Myth #10: The H1 Header has Greater Value than the Rest of Your Text

The structure of your page is seen by Google and other engines, but you have to realize that many sites are structured very differently. As such, no one specific tag has more value than another. An H1 tag is simply a header that corresponds to a CSS entry in order for the user to see your page a certain way. It does not make Google rank your page any differently if you use H2 tags instead, or if your keywords are mostly in the text and not in a specific CSS tag.

Myth #11: Linking to Other Highly Ranked Sites Helps Your Ranking

Some sites try to link to many other high authority sites in order to help their rankings, but that does not help at all. Google uses PageRank to decide how your site will rank, and that algorithm is based on how useful your site is to others, and as such it will only look at how many other people link to you. Whether you link back to them is of no importance. Otherwise, any site could rise to the top simply by linking to millions of sites, which is simply not the case.

Myth #12: Using Automated SEO Methods is Always Spam

Many people use automated SEO methods that do not fall into the spam area. Many companies have very big sites and they use automated scripts to do a lot of the grunt work of SEO. Whether or not a method is spammy is based on what the result is, not on how automated it is.

Myth #13: PageRank is the Only Factor that Matters

The algorithm that Google uses to rank sites is PageRank, which determines how useful a site is to others. But according to Google, search result rankings are also affected by hundreds of other inputs. Some of these inputs are easy to see, like having your site being recommended by others on Google Plus. This proves that not only PageRank matters. The company is staying tight-lipped on how many inputs there are and how important each is, but it is clear that there is more going on than just PageRank. With that said however, it is still widely believed that PageRank is the most important factor, and a PR10 page is always better than a PR3 page.

Myth #14: The Title Tag is Hidden from Search Engines

Most of what Google sees on your site is the text that is visible to users, such as what appears on the screen and is rendered in a web browser. As such, it would be easy to think that the title is not picked up. However, your title is very important for SEO, because it is the text that appears on the link people will click on. Not only is Google using it to help your ranking, but people will also see it when they go to click on your site.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/24/top-40-seo-myths-you-should-know-about-part-1/

Photography and Social Media — a Successful Partnership

Photos and social media are ideal mates and are great for use in online marketing campaigns,
Photos share well on social media and you can put your logo on them as a watermark to increase exposure for your website.
If you go to an event that fits in with your business take your camera and be on the lookout for photo opportunities to use in your campaign.
Here are my tips:

• Having a good camera and flash helps, but that is far from the end of it. Having a good camera helps you to capture the imagine, even in low-light settings. Having a big camera makes people take you seriously (I know….).
• Having a good lens can make a good camera take great pictures.  If you are just starting, you may consider a lens that offers some amount of zoom and as large of an aperture as you can afford.  Prime lenses (one’s with no zoom) are typically a bit sharper, but not quite as versatile as a zoom lenses.  Once you’ve warmed to your camera, you will probably start thinking about expanding your lens collection.
• A large part of taking good photos is about your attitude. You do not want to get in the way, but you need to have the confidence to ask to take people’s photos, and do so confidently so they are put at ease and are good subjects.
• Framing the right shot so you make your subjects look good in the photo also matters. Make sure you get just the right amount of room around them and check what is in the background.
• Use Photoshop. Changing the levels and colors in the photos after you have shot them can make OK photos look stunning.
• Photos of beautiful people get a lot of attention and a lot of likes on Facebook. So try and find some attractive people at the event.
• Posting your event photos on Facebook during or just after the event is far better then posting days or weeks later.
• Take a photo of the event organizer and tag him or her, so people will find your photos. If you make the organizer look good, he or she will invite you to future events.
• Group photos work well because if one person is tagged, their friends can find it.
• If you make someone look great, they will promote your photos for you.

Shooting professional-level photography is easier and less expensive than it was in the past. Cameras now have more features at a lower price.  Even high-end consumer models can take professional looking photos.  Now is a great time to become a photographer, whether it’s just a hobby, or something you want to do promote your business.
resource: http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/16/photography-and-social-media-a-successful-partnership/

Do You Really Understand How To Make the Most Of Social Media?

Much has been written about how to use social media to get the most out of it for your business, yet it seems many people still do not understand what social media is all about.
There are many definitions of what social media is — my favorites include: SEO Zodiac’s description, which says “social media is simply people having conversations online” and Health Social’s take on it: “social media is the meeting place between people and technology.”
In other words, social media is not a one-way street, where you talk at your audience.  Rather, it is a way for you to communicate with them, to help them and to listen to them.
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are the most popular websites on the Internet because they allow people to connect on a very personal level, whether it be through posts, pictures or videos.
With so many people working from home, we have become somewhat isolated and crave the human interaction we’ve lost.  As much as the Internet and Smartphones make connecting to others easier, these tools have also made us hide behind our monitors.
If you take nothing else from this article, the main point you need to remember is, if you want to succeed through social media, you need to touch people’s hearts.  Find out what is important to them, what problems they are facing, what makes them laugh, what upsets them.  Then interact with them in a way that makes it easy for them to relate to you.  Don’t talk at them. Don’t try to sell them anything. Have a conversation with them — be interested in their problems and guide them to solutions.
I recently had the privilege of being part of a social media campaign run by the Australian Capital Territory Tourism, called ‘The Human Brochure.’  It is a brilliant strategy put together by one of Sydney’s great creative agencies, The Works.
The concept was to show both Australians and the rest of the world what Canberra (Australia’s capital city) is all about through the eyes of people who visit it.  ACT Tourism hosted 500 people from all walks of life for a weekend of fun and discovery on two different occasions.  There were four different streams to accommodate every type of traveller: Adventure, family fun, food and wine and arts and culture.
As we visited each venue, whether it was Questacon Science Museum, the Australian War Memorial or local restaurants, we got to share our adventures by posting photos, comments and videos on our social networks.  Family members, friends, colleagues, business partners and acquaintances then also saw all the exciting places there are in Canberra through our experiences.  And, since trust is such a big part of what social media is about, the added bonus to ACT Tourism was that we reached people on a very personal level and often with a humorous twist.
The human brochure is a social media campaign on a grand scale and not possible for every business to execute.  However, there are many other ways you can use the concept of human interaction, which demonstrate how the little things are really the big things.
One of the “big” stories circulating around while we were travelling through Canberra was that of a little girl who was part of the family fun group.  The child had left her bunny behind at one of the stops and couldn’t remember where.  So the search for bunny began … the bus drivers were alerted, as was the hotel staff.  To her parents’ relief the bunny was found in the hotel, so all ended well.  As a bonus the hotel staff member had left a cupcake for the bunny to enjoy until the little girl returned.
People talked and wrote about it and you can imagine what a great credibility booster this was for the hotel involved.  The simple gesture of leaving a cupcake for a bunny who meant so much to a little girl, cost the hotel $1, but will remain with those of us who have children for a very long time.
You can find out more about The Human Brochure here.

On a smaller scale, I saw a local ice creamery use social media to boost their sales.  The Chill Bar partnered up with Schibello coffee and Sydney Football club and organized an afternoon, during which members of the soccer club would serve ice cream and coffee to those who stopped by.
As a bonus, if you took a photo holding the coffee and posted it on Facebook, you got a chance to play a friendly game with the popular football players.
Needless to say lots of parents gladly brought their budding soccer players to meet their heroes, get their autograph, enjoy great coffee and gelato and, as a bonus, play a game with Sydney’s great soccer players.
Both the Human Brochure and Chill Bar demonstrated their understanding of what social media is about — taking what is important to people, making it fun and encouraging them to share it.  Not once did I hear a sales pitch — both campaigns were geared toward people enjoying what they were doing and giving them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/04/03/do-you-really-understand-how-to-make-the-most-of-social-media/

The Five Worst Copywriting Mistakes on the Web

Turn on the TV around 3 a.m., and you’re sure to see some cheesy infomercial with a sales pitch that makes you cringe.  The cheese-factor isn’t limited to late-night TV, though.  Thanks to a variety of copywriting mistakes, the World Wide Web has turned into a 24/7 cheese-fest.
So, what kinds of mistakes are Web copywriters making these days?  And, more importantly, has your sales copy fallen victim to any of them?

1.  Too much hype

This gets the No. 1 spot on the list because hype has spread through Web copy like some kind of flesh-eating virus. That’s because most of the copywriters out there mistake hype for excitement.  Instead of big, bold, red text and a million exclamation points, your sales copy should get readers excited about the product itself.
Unfortunately, lots of the Web sales copy you see is designed to create a giant diversion away from the product.  Instead of having a reasonable discussion about the product — and creating excitement about what it can actually do — copywriters try to stick a giant elephant in the middle of the page.  In the end, the sales copy is what people remember, instead of the product itself.

2.  Ridiculous promises

Yes, this is a type of hype, but it’s such a big mistake that it deserves its own spot on the list.
Here’s what you need to remember the next time you sit down to write some sales copy (or approve what someone else has written for you) — your target audience is full of intelligent people who are going to see right through ridiculous promises.  If you make these promises with the hopes that people will believe them, you’re treating your audience like it’s stupid.  That’s a great way to make people dislike you.  And if they don’t like you, they’ll never buy from you.
What kinds of ridiculous promises are floating around out there?

• How about the trading program that promises to make you rich after just 10 minutes of work per week?  (Is there really anything that can make you rich in 10 minutes per week short of driving to the nearest gas station and buying a lottery ticket?)
• Then, there’s the SEO Company that promises to give you a Top 5 Google ranking for any keyword, in less than three months.  (If you know anything about how Google operates these days, you know that’s an impossible promise to keep.)
• And then, there’s my personal favorite — the cookies that promise to give you a bigger bust. (Anyone who has even a little bit of common sense knows that this is absolutely ridiculous!)

3.  Not enough emotion

Most people are going to buy your product because of how it makes them feel.  Good sales copy will either show people how much easier life will be once they’ve got your product, or it will show them how scary life will be if they don’t buy your product.
If your Web copy doesn’t create one of these two emotions, the odds of you making any sales are slim.  After all, most people are looking for reasons not to spend money.  If you take emotion out of the equation, they’ll be able to talk themselves right out of making a purchase.
Think of it in terms of trying to give ice cream to someone on a diet.  If you offer them boring vanilla, they’re going to turn it down.  But if you offer them exciting rocky road, they’re going to ignore their diet, just this once.

4.  Giant paragraphs

Web readers are notorious scanners, and they’re especially scan-happy when you plunk some sales copy down in front of them. Give them paragraphs that could dwarf the State of the Union Address, and you’ll see their eyes glaze over — and your profits will go out the window.
Instead, make sure your Web copy is easy to scan.  That means coming up with bullet-point lists and bite-sized paragraphs that won’t look intimidating to someone who’s trying to get the facts in a hurry.

5.  Leaving unanswered questions

Even though you’re not writing a news story, you still need to attack your Web copy like a journalist would — by making sure you give the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” details.  Remember, people are looking for reasons to keep their credit cards in their wallets.  Not knowing all of the facts or feeling fuzzy on the details is the perfect excuse.
Bottom line — the more questions people have when they get to the end of your copy, the lower your chances of making any sales.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/03/29/the-five-worst-copywriting-mistakes-on-the-web/

Twitter Launches New Advertising Options for Small Businesses

Internet Marketing
Small businesses and large enterprises are now created equal – at least when it comes to advertising on Twitter.
Twitter announced its new advanced advertising interface for small businesses and other self-service advertisers recently. It doesn’t matter if you’re operating a small online store or are the webmaster of a local car dealership, if you currently use Twitter Ads or have been invited to join, you now have an all access pass to powerful targeting and reporting tools. Prior to the announcement, these advanced options and reports were only available to big brands and big spenders by Internet Marketing.
The advertising platform has been available by invitation only since last March and these recent adjustments have been made based on user experience. As feedback rolled in over the past year, Product Manager Ravi Narasimhan explained in the announcement’s blog post that “two requests kept coming up: marketers wanted access to more robust targeting tools, as well as a pathway to all the bells and whistles of our advanced interface if they desired it.”

This slow but steady roll out of Twitter’s advertising platform and its subsequent updates is part of the network’s effort to monetize the site. So to attract more businesses of all sizes, the Twitter Ads team has launched several new ad features, including audience targeting, advanced campaign controls and expanded reporting and analytics, that smaller businesses and webmasters weren’t previously able to access.

Reach the Right Tweeter by Interest, Device and Gender

I think we can all agree that communicating a message to a relevant and specific audience is imperative to advertising success. So whether you’re promoting an individual tweet or your actual user account, Twitter has now given you the power to select your audience by interest, device and gender.
Interests can be targeted using two different methods. The first method uses @usernames, which will select users that have the same interests as the followers of the selected user. For example, if you operate an ecommerce store which sells mostly shoes, you might consider targeting users with the same interests as the followers of the @shoesdotcom account.
Hundreds of interest categories are also available to use separately or in conjunction with the @usernames interests. You can select very broad categories, like beauty, education, gaming, music and style or very specific subcategories like hair care, college life, online gaming, jazz and women’s shoes.
The appearance of your Promoted Tweets can also be limited based on a user’s specific device and platform. Several choices are available including desktop/laptop computers, iOS, Android and BlackBerry.
Targeting tweets by device can help you drive users to optimized content on your website. And if you’re tweeting about your new mobile app for a specific mobile device or tablet, it can also help you increase app downloads.
Products, websites and apps can also be gender specific, so Twitter has also enabled the option to segment your target audience by women only, men only or all genders. You might wonder how this is possible since Twitter doesn’t even ask users to specify their gender in their user profiles. The site uses an algorithm to identity a user’s gender by signals like account name, real name, and followed accounts.

Advanced Campaign Controls and Reporting

All new and existing Twitter Ads users have the option to convert to the new advanced campaign dashboard. If you’re interested in deeper campaign controls, multi-campaign optimization and more detailed reports and analytics, you should definitely consider making the switch. However, it’s important to remember that this is a permanent decision – once you go advanced, Twitter claims that you can never go back.
The deeper controls include scheduling start and end dates for your campaigns. Currently, basic dashboard users are only able to manually start and stop campaigns. This feature can be helpful especially if you’re using Twitter to promote time sensitive material like sales promotions and online and offline company events.
Expanded reports can now be generated to analyze how targeted audiences interact with your Promoted Tweets and Promote Accounts. These campaign analytics can also be drilled down by device, location, gender and interests.
In a recent blog post, Twitter Product Manager Christopher Golda, explained that these reports include all engagements that Promoted Tweets receive, including earned media. These further insights will give you a more complete view of the impact your ad campaign has on encouraging engagement and increasing brand visibility.

Ready to Get Targeting? Not So Fast.

Unfortunately just because you own a smaller business or website doesn’t mean you can use these new features immediately. Access to Twitter Ads is still by invitation only, so if you’re not currently signed up, double-check the email connected to your Twitter account for an invitation. If you’re like me, you might have missed (or ignored) the email when it hit your inbox.
resource:http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/03/29/twitter-launches-new-advertising-options-for-small-businesses/

Top 5 Link Building Strategies For Best SEO

SEO India
Link building is a great tactic for increasing your website’s rankings in search. Adding links to popular or authoritative sites that point back to you is a great way to gain positive attention from Google and other search engines.
This can result in new visitors, increased Web authority, and higher search engine rankings. In addition to standard online marketing practices, such as quality content, good web design and engagement, link building can be instrumental in making your website a success.
There are hundreds of strategies for link building, but try these five tried-and-true methods for getting your website the attention and traffic it deserves.
Internal Links
The easiest way to build links to your site is to simply point links back to your site in your in-house blog posts. This can help direct your readers to related/archived posts and a wider-range of information about that particular topic. Not only does this bring archived articles to the forefront, it helps Google bots get a better idea of what your site is all about. Make sure the links look seamless and natural, not awkward and don’t add too many links per post.
Guest Blogging
Increase your authority by fostering relationships with other blogs and sites. Guest posting on authoritative sites that link back to your website also makes you look authoritative.
Offer to trade guest-posting privileges with other blogs to increase both your online profiles.
Comments
You can forge connections with other blogs by commenting on their posts. This is an easy way to create back links to your site. Leaving thoughtful or interesting comments can also invite new readers to your view your website or blog.
Social Media
Set up online profiles at popular social media sites and keep them populated with links to your website as well as relevant or interesting content. And don’t forget to post links to your site on other pages within your personal social networks.
Directories
Posting your website’s profile in online directories can help new readers find you, but be picky about which directories you use. Some can come across as looking like spam.
• Be sure to post in your blog’s appropriate niche. A site about motorcycles does not belong in a home furnishings directory.
• Post in directories that have a high page rank and good reviews.
Link building is a great strategy for increasing your rank in search engines, gaining a wider audience of fans and increasing your authority on the Web. Creating back links successfully is an ongoing process that should be approached strategically. While there are hundreds of ways to create these, the five strategies outlined above, in conjunction with other SEO tactics, can greatly benefit your online presence.
resource:http://www.seo-news.com/top-5-link-building-strategies/

How to Advertise Online - 3 Steps to Posting a Great Online Classified Ad

Learning how to advertise online using online classified sites is actually not difficult. However, many people don't seem to get visitors to click through to their ads no matter how hard they try.
The truth is, knowing how to advertise online by posting online classified ads can bring great results when you follow a proven method of posting your ad.
And here are the 3 steps that have always helped me to post a killer ad.

Step 1 - Know What You Want to Advertise
It's ridiculous but true. There are people who want to learn how to advertise online, but they don't even know what they want to sell or offer once they know the ropes to posting ads on online classifieds.
Don't let that happen to you. If you really want your posted classified ads to do well, then you'll need to know what you want to advertise or offer first.
Think about it. If you don't know exactly what you want to offer or sell, you'll never even be able to write a proper ad to get customers to spend money to get your products or services, even if you get good click through rates.
So get this step right first before going on.

Step 2 - Put Yourself in Your Customer's Shoes
This step enables to you know the inner most needs of your customers, so that you'll be able to address their needs in your ad and attract them to take up your offer and service.
Do not rush this. That's part and parcel of learning how to advertise online. You'll need to know your customers in order to do that.
Take the time to really think about what you customers need, and jot that down. Then use those points to craft your ad.

Step 3 - Craft Your Ad With Simple English
Yes, it's time to craft your ad, and here's another thing you need to know to learn how to advertise online... use simple English.
One of the most major mistakes that people make when they post online ads is that they use bombastic language to word their ad, thinking that makes them sound important and professional enough to attract visitors.
However, nothing could be further from the truth.
It's true you need to sound professional, but that doesn't mean you need to use bombastic language.
Word your ad with simple English, and you'll be surprised that people will still take you up on your offer.
So if you have been having difficulties getting your online classified ads to convert, try the steps above. You'll be surprised by the improvement once you start using the steps above that teach you how to advertise online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6995559