One-Way Link Generation

The one-way link to your website from somebody else’s is one of the main factors for search engines in deciding whether or not your content is important. When other web users decide your content is worthwile, they create a link to it either on their own website or a social bookmarking site – or so goes the search engine logic.

With that said, here are a few proven strategies that you can use to begin generating links to your site in no time:

• Article marketing through sites like ezinearticles and other similar sites provides you not only with the ability to link to your site, but also a way for you to give people a preview of what sort of content you offer. If people read your articles and then decide to click over to your site, they will be highly relevant traffic.

• The AddThis and ShareThis buttons are small widgets that you can insert into your webpages. Visitors to your site can then use these widgets to submit your articles to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, etc. If you have regular content updates and readers who will click these widgets, then you can generate links without doing any actual work yourself.

• Link directories are kind of like the internet version of phone books, as they separate websites into different categories that you can submit your link to. Some are free to submit links and others require a payment. It’s a good idea to stick with the free ones at first, until you learn more about what kind of traffic you can potentially generate and what sort of descriptions and advertisement-like text you should enter. Once you have this refined, feel free to try out a paid site, or avoid them, if the free ones are having a good effect and spending extra money wouldn’t be worth it.

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Focus On Content

When the internet was young and web programming languages like JavaScript were first coming out, a flashy website was a big customer draw. Now, all those flashy graphics and design structures are passé. These days, internet users are far more sophisticated and are very skilled at finding the exact content that they are looking for. With that in mind, here’s a piece of advice: Forget flashiness, focus on content.

The term “bounce rate” refers to how many people dig into your site. If people link to one of your pages, but then immediately click out to another site, that is a bounce. If they look at one of your pages and then click through to another section of your website, that is a stick.

Which is more likely to cause people to stick around on your website, flashy graphics or compelling and informative content? If your content is well-written and engaging, and it provides the value of either information or entertainment to your audience, then people will stick around and spend time with your site.

Whether your website is designed to sell a certain product or makes its money from advertising, the longer a viewer stays on your site, the better. If the viewer immediately leaves, you won’t be able to charge top advertising rates on the site, and if they leave immediately, you never have a chance to sell them a product.

Compelling content is one of the most important, if not the most important, factor when it comes to creating a website that will be profitable.

Look at websites that attract you. How is the content delivered? Where are the big pieces of information located within that content? How easy is it to link from one piece of content to another interesting article or webpage? Apply the techniques that work for you to your own site.

Something I plan on doing in future is adding a training series via email for my members to opt-in to. try to deliver content in as many different ways as possible to appeal to all your readers prefered viewing and learning methods.

Author:
Colin Klinkert
What is Effective Forum Marketing?…

This is a follow-on from a post I recently made about blog commenting. Today we are looking at Effective Forum Marketing. You can watch an intro to this post:  http://viralnetworks.com/view/rVIwm

Forums are a great way to get in touch with potential customers.  There are various forums all across the internet that are devoted to an incredible range of topics.  That means that regardless of the type of product you are working with, there is likely a forum somewhere that is devoted to that field.  The people who frequent that forum are a highly targeted demographic  – they are ‘warm’ prospects, with high conversion potential.

Establish a Presence

But you need to work at establishing a presence.  Forum marketing is not about just posting a couple links and watching the sales come rolling in.  Forums have moderators and administrators who look out for marketing scams and immediately delete those posts and ban the user who posted them.

So how can you use forum marketing effectively?

Trading value for value.  The value that the forum users offer is their attention to your product and possibly buying it.  The value you provide is determined by the nature of the forum.

For example, if you are selling a how-to product that teaches people how to use Photoshop software, then look for forums for beginners to the software.  They will ask questions about how to do certain things, you find the answer and post it.  That is the value you give them.  When you post in a forum, you are usually allowed to have a link to a website either in your user profile or as a “signature” – text or images that appear automatically at the bottom of each of your posts.

Don’t Blatantly Sell

As long as you provide value to the other forum users and don’t blatantly try to sell your product, you will be allowed to stay.  And the people that you advise will often follow your link out of curiosity, or the need for more information. If they see that you have a product that solves their problem or enhances the reason they are in the forum, they are more likely to buy that product.

Forum marketing is being used more and more by internet marketers, and while it does take time to establish a credible preference in the forum, the benefits are great if it is one that is very finely targeted to your niche.

Have You Tried This Yet

Have You Used a Technique like this before or during your product launch? Maybe you have used it as an affiliate for other products… What Results have you seen from Forum traffic?

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Online Marketing Partnerships

The Power of Partnerships

So you’ve heard about online and affiliate marketing and have learned that they are a great way to make money online, but are you new to the process and don’t know where to begin?

If so it’s time to objectively take stock of your skills and learn what you need to in order to succeed.

At its most basic, online marketing breaks down into two principle parts:  search engine optimization (SEO) and sales copy.  The SEO will drive traffic to your sites, and good sales copy will convince those visitors to buy the product from you.  When you begin to get traffic and sales, you will have the basis of your own ‘list’ of clients. But what if you don’t know a lot about either?

Focus on one or the other to start with and once you have something to bring to the table, you can look for someone to partner with for a campaign.

Sales copy will likely prove to be the valuable skill, and as such is a great place to start.  Look for online resources, books from the local library about copywriting, anything you can get your hands on.  Also, read through the websites that other online marketers have produced.

For every person that wants to be an online marketer and has good sales copy skills, there is another person who is good at SEO but has problems stringing together words into compelling sentences.  Check with forums devoted to online marketing, and you can probably find somebody who is willing to team up with you.

Especially in your early stages of internet marketing, it is better to split all the profit generated than not make any profit at all.  Once you gain some experience, you can strike out on your own, or you may find that you like the partnership and continue with it.

Either way, by combining your skills and somebody else’s at the beginning of your online marketing career, you can start making sales faster.

Where To Find People

For Viralurl, Frank and I teamed up as we had skills that complimented eachother. Viralurl has been a big hit and we have plans to take it to the next level as well. I met Frank a while before we partnered through networking. A great new business social network that you can use to meet people to partner with is ViralNetworks! I am on ViralNetworks as well as 18,000 other marketers, so come join us and get networking! 🙂

Author:
Colin Klinkert