Archive for February, 2007
Well we are now entering into the final 6 days of the DirectoryContest.com competition. From this point on we will be publishing the results daily, up until the 6th day when we will post the preliminary winners. We say preliminary because it is down to Mike to make the final decision after he has reviewed the entries to ensure none of the cheaters get given prizes.
So today we start with a major shift in the results, trincas.org has been cast out of the top 30 leaving the competition wide open, below are the movers and shakers from the 559,000 results currently being returned for ‘directorycontest.com’ in Google. Read more… »
A lot of businesses for different reasons are using online advertising for promoting their products and services and to attract consumers to their websites. Among the various choices that businesses have for online advertising and by far the most popular is called “Pay Per Click”.
Pay per click advertising has been around ever since businesses started developing their websites. However, in its most recent form, this type of online advertising began around 1997 and has since become a hot favorite of different business models. It is generally considered to be the best advertising method where return on investment is concerned.
Pay per click more commonly known as PPC refers to an advertisement on the Internet wherein the advertiser does not pay anything to the website for carrying its advertisement until someone actually clicks on it and is directed to the advertisers website. A PPC advertisement basically consists of a title and a small promotional message or a small description of the companies’ services and products. Read more… »
5 Days remaining in the DirectoryContest.com and there has been some more movement since yesterdays results were published. Romow has managed to crawl back into the top 10 knocking out web1directory, below are the results as they stand today… Read more… »
The DirectoryContest.com has just 4 days remaining and on the 4th from last day there is yet again a little bit of movement as gii unseats ask-dir for the 2nd position, stuffdaily jumps biz-dir for 8th spot and last but not least, web1directory pushes itself back into the top 10 after being forced out yesterday by Romow. Read more… »
We have now entered into the last 3 days before Mike will announce the winner of the DirectoryContest.com, which today, for the first time has seen absolutly no movement in the top 10 positions what so ever. gii is now sitting pretty as the top and seems like the current favorite to grab the first prize. Read more… »
As discussed in Part 1 of this article, pay per click advertising or PPC means placing an advertisement on a website or search engine wherein an advertiser pays only when a visitor clicks on the advertisement. This kind of advertisement ensures a fair return on your investment and is thus regarded as one of the best forms of online advertising.
So, we were discussing how to prepare a pay per click ad campaign. After the initial step of deciding on the budget and the search engine / website on which you would like to see your ad, we now come to the second step in preparing the pay per click ad campaign.
The second step involves choosing the right keyword. This again is a very crucial step and can be the deciding factor in the success of your PPC ad campaign. A keyword is the word that a visitor would use to search in a search engine. So the keyword needs to be simple and something that people would commonly use to search for information relating to your ad. Read more… »
Well yes folks, this is indeed the last day before the winners of the DirectoryContest.com will be picked. The official time that this will occur is 10am PST on the 6th of February. I am sure there will be many contestants checking Google to see where they have been placed, for now, below are the results as they stand today with just one day remaining. Read more… »
Affiliate marketing is a way of promoting or selling products online in which affiliates get commission for every visitor and sale generated through their efforts. This is a form of Internet advertising that rewards the affiliates for driving traffic to the advertiser or for other transactions. But unlike advertising, it is a pay for performance model. The merchant does not pay to the affiliate unless results are realized.
The most common compensation models for the affiliates currently available are pay-per-click, pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale. In pay-per-click, the merchant or advertiser pays the affiliate a certain amount of money, every time a visitor clicks on his/her ad. Pay-per-lead is also called cost-per-action, in which the advertiser pays the affiliates a commission for every visitor that is referred by his/her website and performs a desired action, like filling out a form or creating an account. In pay-per-sale, the trader pays the affiliate a percentage of the order amount of the sale that is generated through the publisher. Read more… »
The competition has come to a close as the time ticks past the hour. After many weeks competing many will be glad this competition has come to an end, especially those who are sitting pretty in the top three places and will pick up some nice cash prizes.
Our preliminary results show that ask-dir.com has finished in the number one spot and will pick up the first prize of over $2100 plus various other bonuses when Mike decides to publicise what they actually are! Hint Hint!
First of all we would like to congratulate the owners of ask-dir.com, they have consistently been in the top of the search results for the past few weeks that we have been monitoring the competition and in our opinion are deserved winners of the competition. We are all extremely pleased that the top spot has gone to a real directory and not just one that has been created solely for the purpose of entering this contest. Read more… »
If you thought that it was just the keywords and the quality of content that mattered to the search engines, you are wrong. Quantity of content is also important for search engine optimization. In fact, search engines just love content.
Web pages with more content (and optimum keyword density) are better indexed than web pages that have much less content or web pages that are just stuffed with keywords. In fact, web pages that have just 100-200 words are given the least preference by the search engines and in most cases are not indexed at all. Any web page that you want indexed should have a minimum of 300 words. And there is no upper limit to it, the more content you have on your web page, the better it is. Web pages with larger amounts of content get better ranked by the search engines (considering all the other factors are constant in such a comparison). Read more… »
In two previous articles we have discussed how to prepare a PPC advertising campaign. But is all the hard work really worth it? Well that is exactly what we are going to discuss in this article. We intend to give you an in depth analysis of PPC ads; this should help you decide finally if PPC ads would prove beneficial for your business. We already know that PPC ads are cheap and the easiest way to rope in consumers. But besides this they have other plus points too.
Pay per click advertising gives you the opportunity to place your advertisement without spending thousands of dollars. Most importantly it is perhaps the only type of advertising which can generate traffic to your website straight away. If you have the dollars to spend you will end up getting top priority by the search engines and as a result your advertisement will be placed above all others. So you can almost be sure of getting the maximum for the dough that you spend. Read more… »
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting products or businesses online in which the trader gives commission to the affiliate for every visitor and sale generated through his / her websites. In affiliate marketing, the website is an important determinant of your business. If you are starting with online affiliate marketing, the following tips for designing the website can get your business buzzing and help you earn more in a short space of time: Read more… »
Since most SEO strategies are focused around the use of keywords, these tricks don’t seem to get exhausted. But before that, let me remind you (and I know that we have reminded you about this before too) that keyword over-stuffing is a big-big no. You should not have a keyword density of more than 2% on any page of your website. This is something so important that I can afford to be repetitive in telling you this again and again. Read more… »
Ok, so in the first part of this article you got to know that the quantity of content does matter to the search engines and that a minimum length of 300 words is a must in order to fancy the chances of your web page getting indexed by the search engines.
Taking the discussion further, let me also highlight the fact that a better organized website will generally (or just naturally) have content spread out evenly across each page and will also ensure that each concept / fact is discussed in good detail. In fact, you are better off writing theme based web pages i.e. each web page should discuss just one theme. For example you might have a summary web page (that elaborates what a person can expect on your website) and separate web pages for elaborate discussions on each of the sub topics. This will not only ensure that there is sufficient content on all your web pages but will also render a more clean and organized look to your website. Read more… »
After around a week and a half Mike has finally trawled through his inbox and sorted through all of the complaints regarding the cheating entries into the competition. It has taken him a while, purely to ensure that every request was looked into to ensure fairness.
A number of directories have been excluded from the competition for using tactics which broke the rules of the competition, but only one of those was from the original top 10 results which we posted on the 6th. Read more… »
Everybody wants to succeed in his or her life and efforts. However, the road to success is not so easy. Patience and determination are required in every step you move. In the case of affiliate marketing, you also need these qualities to succeed. Along with these qualities, there are a few other things (mentioned below) that you need to take up in order to avoid mistakes and become successful at affiliate marketing. We will cover these in this series of articles.
The first task is to “Check the background of the company whose products you want to sell as an affiliate”: Read more… »
In the first part of this article, we have seen that doing a background check on the company (whose products you wish to market as an affiliate) is the first and the most important step towards ensuring your success in the field of affiliate marketing. In part 2 we will discuss further steps / tasks that will ensure your success as an affiliate.
Research can help you achieve success as an affiliate. Before you start the marketing and selling activities (as an affiliate); read reviews, testimonials and articles about the products and the websites. You can even ask the suppliers to provide you literature / brochures and other material through which you can get more details about the products and that can also serve as ready made (and good quality) marketing material for your website. Gain knowledge about the trade and the secrets. Who are the competitors in the field, what is their worth and know whether you can compete with them. This will help you in building your marketing strategy wherein you can focus more on the positives and the differentiators (against the competition) and downplay the negatives. Read more… »
Over a period of time the number of users taking the benefits of the Internet for marketing their products has risen. If you are someone who wants to join the race then you should first get your basics clear. The chief reason for this is that while the Internet provides a way to earn a hefty income sitting at home, it also requires clarity of vision and hard work. While it provides the liberty to work according to your schedule, it still requires to be treated like a real business for it is a real business. This is the main reason as to why a lot of online businesses crash and burn in the initial stage itself. But if you are serious about your work then perhaps this is the best way to earn money and enjoy your life and all at your disposal. Read more… »
In the previous 2 articles we have seen that doing a background check on the companies, conducting research on the products and marketing / selling just a couple of products (rather that several products) is important if you want to succeed as an affiliate. Now, we will move on to discuss the next steps that you need to take in order to ensure your success in the field of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a business in its own earnest. And like any business, affiliate marketing too calls for proper planning and strategizing. We have already discussed that the initial research, which you do on the products, contributes in a big way towards helping you frame your marketing strategy. Proper planning and strategy formation, after research and product selection, will surely pave the path for your success. Think of all the different strategies in which you can market and sell the products. Prepare your marketing content to suit various strategies (or use the marketing material that you might have received from the product companies themselves). Drawing up a formal plan with targets and strategy implementation steps, can actually go a long way in ensuring your success. Read more… »
Software plays an important part in making an affiliate marketing business a success. Though affiliate tracking software is very complex to understand, you should make an effort to learn about it.
The affiliate software you select needs to perform a variety of roles such as affiliate link generation, commission calculation, setting cookies, affiliate reporting, payment processing, multi-tier calculations, banner and text link display, mailing functions and anti-fraud functions. If the software you use does not have any of these functions you may lose on one front or the other. For example, if it does not have anti-fraud protection, your business will be affected financially. Hence, a careful choice of software is important. Read more… »
With globalization, most companies want to expand beyond local boundaries and make consumers, from all across the globe, aware of their products so as to increase their sales. And the Internet is the best way of achieving this goal without spending a fortune. Moreover, a web presence has become a must have for almost every business – big or small. This is because most people today search for product options on the Internet before actually buying them. So, an Internet presence and Internet advertising have both become hugh markets.
Among various, different kinds of online advertising options one of the oldest options is banner advertising. Chances are that if you have been using the web for even so much as half an hour you would have come across a swarm of banner advertisements. Read more… »
So, we have seen that quality of content is important from search engine optimization point of view and we have also seen that quantity of content is equally important too. Now, here we talk about the presentation of your web pages and website.
Presentation and the look & feel of the website are equally important. A site that looks good and is well recognized will attach a sense of genuineness to the website. Such websites are generally more successful in attracting loyal traffic for themselves (of course, here we are assuming that the website or the website content does provide value to its visitors). More traffic would in turn translate into better page rankings for your web pages and hence help you attain your search engine optimization objective. Read more… »
Affiliate marketing is not free from fraud. The merchant can cheat an affiliate in paying compensation or the affiliate can cheat the advertiser in accumulating more compensation. There are hundreds of sites offering robots to cheat. However, there are ways by which you can track the fraud if there is any in the transaction. Read more… »
We have already seen (in part one) that banner advertisements are one of the oldest methods adopted for online advertising. Though most people would already know what a banner looks like, we have also included a bit of basic stuff on banners in the first part of this article. Here we will delve a bit deeper into banner ads.
Though there is no formal classification, banner ads are generally made in eight different sizes - based on their pixel dimensions (A pixel is the smallest unit of a color that is used in composing a picture on the computer or on our television sets). Eight different kind of banner ads are - 486×60 (popularly known as full banner size), 392×72 (this is full banner but with vertical navigation bar), 234×60 (half banner size), 120×240, 125×125 (a square banner), 120×90, 120×60 and 88×31. Read more… »
Internet advertising has been gaining popularity ever since the launch of the Internet. Being an easy way to reach an audience, it enables a company to extend its reach to potential buyers across the world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There are many different ways to advertise online. Depending on your aim, target audience and your online advertising budget you can opt for either one method of online advertising or a combination of several methods. Read more… »
As promised, here is the second part of this article. In this we will deviate a bit from the discussion that we were having in the first part of this article. Instead of discussing the “Face Value” of the website / web pages; here we will delve a bit into the technical part of it. However, it’s not going to be very technical.
Alright, so here we are going to discuss how the design of your website can actually contribute towards SEO (although in an indirect way).
The first thing that I must mention here is that search engine optimization is generally considered to be a very time consuming activity by most web masters. Moreover, the SEO strategies might need to be re-looked at and changed or re-oriented in order to keep getting the best results. Furthermore, a lot of search engine optimization strategies are developed through experimentation and experience. Read more… »
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