Monday, April 14, 2008

How to boost sales by Internet Marketing

Day797
Internet Marketing, also known as Online Marketing, Online Advertising or Internet Advertising, is the promotion of products and services over the Internet. Internet Marketing, in fact, aims to create a better business opportunity for an organization by promoting its products or services using online media; hence, businesses - both online and off line - are increasingly making use of Internet Advertising as part of their marketing strategy.

Initially, Internet Marketing was all about building a website or putting up banner/display ads on other websites. A website with appropriate text content, image inclusions and audio/video features is indeed an excellent option of reaching out to global audience and informing them about a company's products/services, their features, et al. The website remains the basic building block of Internet Marketing even today; however, it is now being blended with key web site promotion techniques in order to achieve the advertising goals.

Internet Marketing Key Techniques

Search Engine Marketing Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the process of marketing or advertising a website via search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. Two totally different approaches are followed for Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization and Pay per click Advertising.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a web site promotion technique that improves the site's organic ranking in searches based on select keywords/phrases and attracts more web traffic. If you have an Internet Business, SEO is something you cannot simply do without.

Pay per click or PPC Advertising which appear as links next to the organic results on search engine result pages involves listing a website by bidding on keywords. PPC calls for methodical keyword selection/optimization so that the keywords match with the search terms used by target segment of users and capably increase web site traffic.

Pay for inclusion (PFI) listing in website directories is another popular SEM technique.

Email Marketing Email Marketing is the method of conveying information about a product or service through email. After the initial glitch (on account of spamming), email marketing has been effectively used for web site promotion. These days, of course, it is permission based email marketing that is being practiced and internet businesses are using the opt in lists, giving the customers the right to refuse further communication.

Mass mailing and e commerce newsletters are two popular e-mail marketing tools.
Banner Advertising Banner Advertising is an Internet business marketing technique, which revolves round placing dynamic graphic ad links in others sites. Users require clicking these links to open your website.

Online Promotion Techniques Different online promotion techniques or Social Media Marketing Methods, like posting blogs, comments and opinions as also press releases (related to the product or service) in a discussion forum are also effective Online Advertising processes. Article Marketing involves listing articles in article directories, article repositories and/or article banks.

Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is a rather innovative and interesting form of Internet Marketing, wherein marketers promote and sell other products/services as part of a program planned by the product manufacturers and/or service providers. The affiliate is either awarded a flat fee or receives a good percentage of the sale proceeds.

The Social bookmarking sites are a great help for people with affiliate marketing programs because such sites are a free and effective way to get back links and drive traffic to websites and blogs.

These are some of the most effective Internet Marketing techniques that work on a personal level to promote a website, increase web site traffic and add to the profitability of the Internet Business. Of course, one does not need to follow all the techniques or strategies for a successful Internet Marketing campaign; instead, it is careful planning and meticulous execution that help achieve the goals of Internet Marketing or Online Advertising

Author: Dipti Pathak is a freelance writer. She has been writing online articles on various topics since 2003. She provides SEO consultancy to SwamiSEO.

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Friday, April 04, 2008

7 Easy Ways to Romance the Google Bot!

Day787
This article by Natalie Revell (see her resource box at bottom) has a lot of great information in it, but I especially like the fun way it’s written!

For most of us, Google is a hard nut to crack. Efforts upon efforts are put forth to increase your site's SEO and while your efforts are working in other search engines, they just seem slow when it comes to Google. So what do you do? Try romance!

Yes, romance. Who isn’t looking for romance? Non-human bot or not, the Google Bot also wants it. It wants to be romanced and feel the love from your site. If it doesn't, oh, look out! Just like a scorned woman, you are going to pay. Come on, everyone knows what I mean. It's either "Penalty City" or "the silent treatment". It all depends on what you did or didn't do.

If you really screwed something up on your site, Google is going to make you pay. This is Penalty City. Google may even take a point away from your ranking or just entirely drop you from its index. Yikes! If you actually get dropped from the index, good
luck trying to get picked back up.

If you didn't screw up, but you're not really doing anything to get the Google Bot's attention, you are going to get the silent treatment. This is when Google acknowledges the existence of your site but pretty much gives you no communication or reaction at all and just goes on about its business.

Google is female!

Because of these two reactions described above, I'm absolutely convinced Google is female. And I can say that because I am female. So, what should you do to romance the Google Bot and get on the good side of this heavy weight engine? You should
make Google's job easier. It's just that simple.

There are several things you should do actually, but we're just going to focus on the major ones. For now though, let's think about the Google Bot's job in order to understand the Google Bot better. The better we understand the bot, the better chance we have of winning it over with our romance techniques.

The Google Bot's Job

Think about it. What a feat it is to have to go through a gazillion, trillion websites reading text and following links to make sure everything is not only properly indexed, but that it
is properly working. When things are not in order on your site, such as a broken link, this makes the Google Bot have to stop. This does not make the Google Bot happy. It wants a clean, safe path to travel as it has many places to go. It doesn't like to
be tripped. That's just not nice.

Once it has retrieved all of your site's information, it still has to take that information back to the Google database, then go back out to another site and do it again. Then it has to bring that information back to the database. Then go back out again, etc. You get the idea. And it has to visit each site every so often to keep the indexing updated. Let's just say the Google Bot's little feet are extremely tired all of the time. Especially considering this goes on 24/7, nonstop. The poor little Google Bot. We need to help it out. When we do help it out, it tends to like us.

7 Easy Ways to Romance the Google Bot

Remember the primary purpose of any search engine is to offer the best, most relevant websites to its searchers.

1) Remember also that Google is a META crawler search engine, so one thing you can do to offer up some romance to the Google Bot is to ensure all of your META tags are done properly. That is pretty much like a bouquet of roses right there. You can use this source to ensure your tags are properly done: http://webdesign.about.com/od/metatags/a/aa111600a.htm

2) Want to throw in a box of chocolates? Make sure all your links are working properly. This helps out your searcher too, by the way. If you want to run a searcher off, frustrate them to no end by letting them click on a broken link and see how fast they exit your site.

3) How about giving a bottle of perfume? Try adding a robots.txt file. The Google Bot loves these files. This is like an invitation to come index your site. Every site should
have one of these, but most don't. Those that do really stand out to Google. Just like anything else though, make sure it is done correctly. One wrong character in one of those codes can send you packing, my friend. You can create these files very simply in Notepad. To learn how to properly create a robots.txt file and where to place it (in your root directory of the home page), please see: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html.
Another good resource is: http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/ adv_tech/robots.htm

4) Now what could possibly be like giving the Google Bot a diamond necklace? How about a Google-Friendly Site Map. Knowing the job of the Google Bot, why not make the bot's job easier? I can hear the Google Bot now saying, "Thank goodness for this map. Finally, a site that gets me! I mean it...a site that finally gets it!"

A Google-Friendly Site map not only wins you favor with the Google Bot, it helps you out as well. To create a Google-friendly site map, see http://gsitecrawler.com/ , which is
also Yahoo-friendly:

* The SEO on your website will benefit as any correctly
designed Google-friendly Site Map will ensure all web pages
are found and properly indexed.

* If any pages are not indexing properly, the program will
advise you. This includes advisement on broken links,
blocked links, etc.

* You get an inside scoop as to how Google views your website
and you can cater your efforts accordingly.

* Google will tell you what it concludes your site is about
based on your content. If you don't have the proper message,
change it!

* Google gets notified when something on your site is new or
has changed.

5) Why stop now? Keep going with your romantic interlude and also present the Google Bot with champagne and strawberries by using bold, keyword rich headers on each of your web pages. Don't make the bot guess and have to dig to find out what the
page is about. Just tell it up front and then reconfirm your message throughout the rest of the content.

6) Add a day at the spa by keeping your content clean, relevant, an easy read, and keyword rich with properly placed keywords. There is a proper way to pepper in your keywords to make the content SEO-friendly without making your content choppy. Your
searcher must also be able to read the content in a good flowing manner, so be sure to write for the searcher also, not just the bot.

7) You can also add a day at the beach by not using Flash. Females usually like flashy things, but not this one. Not Flash technology anyway. Flash is built in frames and it stops the Google Bot dead in its tracks, confuses it, and then nothing gets indexed. Not good! If you are dying to have Flash, then try keeping it in your banner only. Home page banner only is even better, if you are carrying your banner to all inner pages as well. While Flash is very eye appealing if not over done, it is a big no-no for SEO.

Put these 7 romantic techniques into action and see what happens. What do you have to lose? Any results that come from proper use of these techniques beats a trip to Penalty City or getting the silent treatment any day.

Author Natalie Revell is the eMarketing Director/Owner of Write Ink Marketing, http://www.writeinkmarketing.com/ . WIM offers many services and continues to grow. Natalie is currently working on becoming a certified eMarketer. You can contact her at
natalie@writeinkmarketing.com, or by visiting the site and filling out the contact form.

This Article printed from SEO-News: http://www.seo-news.com

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Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Maternity T-shirts

When you work online so much you need to mix things up a little to avoid burnout! So I put a couple new maternity t-shirts on my store for fun.

I thought with my “Baby Bump” maternity tees celebrities could help the press out. There's always so much speculation about “Does she have a baby bump or just eat too much?” Now they’ll know!

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And I couldn’t resist, “Does this Baby Make Me Look Fat?”

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Maternity Section at givitup

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