Avoid Building Dead Links

Webmasters have been looking for more effective ways to link bait and build up their links profile in the recent years especially after Google has put their focuses on quality inbound links. The following illustrates some of the poor linking strategies employed by most Webmasters nowadays and discuss why these links are considered dead as they do nothing and may even harm the websites.

The biggest mistake in link building made by most Webmasters is that they tend to submit their websites to tons of directories for a hefty sum of money. This is not efficient because not all the links will be picked up by the search engines, in my experience, less than 40% of such links are indexed by the bots generally. Furthermore, they do not bring in any traffic for the site. The only directories that worth the submission are Yahoo and DMOZ. They bring in traffic for the listed websites.

Link exchange is another area that needs to be carefully assessed before any placement. It has been a trend for most Webmasters to set up a link page just to exchange links. This is certainly not recommended especially when the page becomes a Link Farm when it contains too many outgoing links.

Not all link exchanges are bad, links that lead to relevant and quality content is excellent both in attracting traffic and gaining page importance. For example, a link labeled as 'Webmasters Guidelines' is totally relevant when it appears in a website review post.

Most Webmasters forums allow signatures in the members' posting as it will attract traffic to their sites. These links tend to be misused by the new members by putting up their advertisement rather than providing useful information about their sites or personal profiles.

Most new Webmasters also tend to join the forums just to spam their website links all over the place. This is a very bad practice as other members will not only avoid the site listed but may also blacklist such sites. In this case, these spam links are worst than dead links.. they are classified as harmful links.

Forums are actually good places to build links if proper techniques were adopted, such as providing useful information and advices over time and members will start to visit your sites in your signature.

To conclude, a good link building strategy will not only increase the page importance but will also attract targeted traffic to the respective page. Placing dead links do not add value to the website and also waste valuable resources.

Why Do I Need SEO?

You've gone through the steps of setting up your business, getting all your licenses and insurance in place and you've designed your site or hired someone to design it for you…. Now, how do you get people to your site or to choose your site over one of the millions of others out there?

An effective working website is the most cost-effective advertising, marketing, informational and promotional medium available to businesses of any size. It's imperative, especially as a small business competing with larger businesses, to optimize your site for search engines using keywords or keyword phrases. Most people don't look past (at most!) the third page of search engine results when they're searching for something online. Using search engine optimization is the best way to get your site noticed by the search engines.

By using good search engine optimization techniques for your website, you can boost your rankings on search engines. There are many steps to optimizing your site:

1. Knowing your online competition


2. Picking out targeted keywords and phrases


3. Submitting your site to search engines


4. Rewriting and revising your content to make it the best it can be and using your keywords and phrases in it


5. Making sure you don't have any "unethical" SEO items on your site that may "blackball" your site from the search engines


6. Using meta tags properly


7. Making sure your site is properly designed and looking good


8. Keeping on top of your site rankings and freshening your content to bump your ratings even more

Now, you've researched where you want to be on search engines like Google and Yahoo, but you still have no idea where to start? Look into hiring an SEO guru to help you through the steps or do this part for you. Most SEO gurus will ask for a list of keywords that they will then optimize with keyword tools or help you research to make sure that those are the best keywords for you to use.

Working with someone to achieve higher search engine rankings may take up to several months. The initial part of the project will come in the form of search engine submissions and meta tag keywords, plus they will work with you for keyword-rich content on your sites. Then, over the next few weeks/months, they should help you to track your placement on the search engines and suggest other changes to bump your ratings higher.

Search engine optimization is not a quick project… It takes research and work. If your first try doesn't reap the benefits you were looking for, keep trying to redefine your niche/target keywords and phrases. But, optimizing your site does work and is worth it in the end.

Your Black Background May Be Hurting Your White Hat Efforts

Your black background may be destroying your white hat efforts Accidental Spamming by using tables in your web design

There are many concerns that you should have when you use tables in your web site design. One concern that is overlooked quite often by well-meaning designers who are trying very hard to use 'white-hat' methods is accidental spamming.

Accidental spamming occurs because tables allow you set a background for each cell. Many designers use this feature to set the cell's background color rather than setting the entire page's background color.

Lets use the example of a page with a typical white background color and a table. The designer sets the background color of one of the cells to red and then used white text for users to read.

While the site's visitors may have no problem reading the text in the cell, the text inside the cell is the same color as the main page background. A search engine's spider may consider it spamming because the designer is trying to use the same color text and page background. You have to remember that the spider is just a machine and may be coded to think that the designer is trying to hide the text! This may cause your site to be penalized pretty severely.

But I like the way my site looks! After taking a look at your site(s) you may find that you may be accidentally spamming the Search Engines. If you want to keep the same look and feel and avoid the possible penalty to your rankings, use CSS instead:

// let's define the class

.whitetext

{

Color:#ffffff;

}

… then when it comes to our text:

This technique, so far, works very well for keeping the formatting that you like without the spiders thinking you are spamming.

What Is RSS - The Difference Between RSS And A Blog III

Blogs are useful if you frequently update your website, and also for pinging the social bookmarking sites such as Furl and Blink, and blog search engines site such as Technorati. On the other hand there are some RSS directories such as Speedster and RSS Network. Technorati, incidentally, also accepts RSS feeds in the same way as they accept your blogs.

Using your RSS reader, you can also add RSS feeds to your site that are specifically selected for your niche. This is a great way to keep your content continually updated, which keeps the search engines happy. Doing this also keeps your visitors happy by providing them with continually updated information that is of use to them.

Some information sites offer RSS to users through simple copy and paste process, Medicinenet being a prime example. Using that you can select the type of medical or health care feeds that you want to display on your web site then copy the code provided and paste it to your web page. Hey presto! You have an RSS feed on your site without requiring a reader.

Carp is a good example of free software that allows you to display RSS on your website although there are many others. Rojo and Newsgator are good RSS readers but again there are others. The difference between RSS and a blog, then, is that RSS not only provides ever changing information of the content of your web site, without all the links and graphics, but also provides ever changing content to your website that is targeted to the theme of your web page. A blog, on the other hand, provides a record of your site that can be saved but is not as instant as RSS.

So, what is RSS? It's a way of keeping your customers supplied with ever changing content, and to help your search engine listings. Use both RSS and blogs and you have really solved not only your content problem, but also introduced advanced marketing and advertising to your site.

4 Steps to Master Search Engine Optimization

Learning how to optimize a site can be difficult if one started his/her learning journey on the wrong track. Many Webmasters do not realize how significant is the impact by utilizing black hat techniques on their sites by blindly following advices from some search engine companies or optimizers. This article illustrates four main points on how to begin earning and eventually, mastering Search Engine Optimization.

The first step is to understand what is advised by the search engines. It is highly recommended to read the Google Webmaster Guidelines for a set of basic requirements on how Webmasters should go about designing and optimizing their websites. This set of guidelines also include techniques that should be avoided by the Webmasters such as keyword stuffing or doorway pages.

It is not necessary to go through all the documentation from the search engines. Reading the guidelines from Google is enough as it is the current search engine that brings in most of the traffic. In addition, optimizing for Google is equivalent to doing the same thing for Yahoo and MSN.

The next important step is to read and learn more from expert Search Engine Optimizers. This can be achieved by reading articles or books written by them. Peter Kent, Dave Taylor and Aaron Wall are the experts in this domain and reading their books will certainly help to understand how to employ useful techniques in optimizing a site.

Gaining knowledge from reading books is slower than what is happening on the ground today. Therefore, the next major step is to participate in the online forums and interact with other Webmasters regarding Search Engine Optimization. One popular Webmaster forum is DigitalPoint, this forum always has a huge amount of Search Engine Optimizers online helping each other and sharing valuable latest information. Another benefit for joining such forums is that people can also learn from the mistakes made by others and thus, making the learning more efficient.

The last important step is to experience the whole optimization process ourselves. Search Engine often changes and updates their algorithm so as to pull out the most relevant results to the users. Thus, Webmasters have to keep monitoring their rankings and build incoming links. As incoming links are very important in search engine optimization, the Webmasters have to keep attracting links to their websites so as to achieve a high Search Engine Result Position (SERP).

To conclude, the above four steps are equally important to start off Search Engine Optimization. However, Webmasters should focus on creating interesting and useful content for the visitors and the links will come in no time.

Free Online URL Submission for Web Site Promotion

Many search engine marketing specializing companies offer free online URL submission for web site promotion into their list of services. This is a way to attract their prospects to engage a relationship with them thus trust is built. If a website owner trusts a certain search engine marketing firm, it is more likely that they will take advantage of every service that the S E M firm presents.

According to a credible source the big names in the search engine community reports more than 80 percent of the traffic a website obtains. Thus it is a must for site owners that they list their website into these search engines to get even a small percentage of that traffic.

Free online URL submission for web site promotion is a quick way to be queued in the list of search engine ranking. However, you cannot really rely on that kind of service. This is due to the fact that quality results often times require a price. Perhaps it is better if you will acquire a search engine marketing company and ask if they can give such bonus as free online URL submission for web site promotion as a part of the over all package. It will be an advantage on your part for the reason that you don,t have to pay for the registration fee on every search engine but you will pay for the whole package which contains search engine optimization, search engine marketing, free online URL submission for web site promotion and others.

Also don't forget (as I always remind you) to check out the background of the firms selected before hand on your lists. Examine the rate that they give compared to the services they provide. Even if they are giving away free online URL submission for web site promotion in their lists don,t instantly fall for it. Maybe it is just a sort of an advertisement to deceive their prospects in order to get their attention.

Look into the search engine affiliates that these companies that offer free online URL submission for web site promotion have. It is good if they are submitting into the giant search engines such as GOOGLE, Yahoo, M S N and A O L. A free online URL submission for web site promotion is useless if it does not pass your site to these giants.

So be observant particularly when you are just starting out in the Web community. Many scams are already been recorded with regards to this issue. Carefully choose the right search engine marketing firm that you will employ. Providing a free online URL submission for web site promotion is not enough proof if they are credible or not.

Search Engine Optimization Web Site Submission S E O Software

For a website to survive in the vast range of sites in the Internet community, it has to have paying customers that will continue to support it and ad campaigns that will help. That,s why search engine optimization, website submission, S E O software is vital to every site owner that desires to accomplish the above said purpose.

Let,s define the three phrases first before we go on. Search engine optimization is optimizing the overall impact of the site so that search engines will be attracted into it. Included in this is also making a website search engine friendly and customer friendly. It means that your site should have the content that the surfers needed. It should also pass the requirements required by the search engines in order to list it and rank it high. Your site should also possess important incoming or reciprocal links from known sites of the same category. The right salable and in demand keywords must be utilized properly in the site. Remember that the higher you are in search engine ranking, the higher is the chance that your potential prospects will know about it and click through it.

Website submission is presenting your site into various search engines so that they will be able to consider it into their list. Without this web site submission, how can the search engines recognize that the there is such site? So it is essential that after you optimize your site you should submit it into search engines. Make sure that you propose your website into the top search engines such as Yahoo!, GOOGLE, Ask, etc. These search engine are the ones that are most frequented by almost all internet users. So to submit your site into them is really a must.

S E O software is an assortment of soft wares that can assist you in your search engine optimization task. Examples of these are Dynamic Keyword, S E O Elite Software, Web CEO, W P G, Web Link S E O and many others. These soft ware will help you know the technical details needed to develop your site and monitor its progress.

Search engine optimization, website submission S E O software is a way for a website to boost its incoming traffic. And traffic is in fact important to a site. The number of traffic defines the probability of a certain site to endure the hardships of being in the Web community.

What Is Affiliate Niche Marketing?

Affiliate marketers should never forget that all of their success depends on visitors coming to and returning to their website. If your website has nothing to offer that people are actually interested in, then you will not see much traffic. Without traffic you have no one to sell to. For this reason, the vast majority of affiliate marketing is affiliate niche marketing.

Niche marketing is the trend of marketers to concentrate on very small and specific areas of a market or products and develop a loyal customer base by specializing in one or two specific areas of that market. The majority of affiliate niche marketing companies and websites realize that they cannot compete with large companies. Instead of trying to sell, for example, books in general, they concentrate on promoting books on a specific subject such as children's books, or books about dogs. By concentrating on a specific Niche Market they have a much greater chance of developing a level of success as a market leader for that niche.

There are some vital and profitable areas that large companies and business owners have failed to establish themselves in as yet. Many affiliate niche marketing websites are aware of this fact. Most of the large markets with mass appeal are dominated by large companies. For a small affiliate niche market to break into such an area will be very challenging.

This means that if the affiliate niche marketing strategy is able to recognize areas of the market that have real demand and the chance to develop revenue, but that the larger companies have not yet dominated, then they can put their effort into becoming a leader in this niche. The key to success in affiliate niche marketing is getting to the market first.

Anyone who has been involved in affiliate niche marketing will tell you that being the first to arrive on a specific market and develop customer loyalty has a huge advantage. Niche markets have a strong habit of being widely accepted and small niches are always the next big thing. Once they become big, they are no longer a niche. This will attract larger companies who have a lot more to invest in capturing the market and will attempt to take over the market place. If you manage to get to the market before the large companies, you stand a chance of competing with them and staying one step ahead before they come with their resources and promotion.

Therefore, if you are serious about being successful in affiliate niche marketing, then you should aim to identify a market that has not yet been developed and taken over by large companies.

Improve Your Website Design With These 7 Tips

It doesn't matter whether your website is of a personal nature with just a few pages or a larger e-commerce website, having a well-designed site is very important. Believe it or not, website design is something that matters to your visitors. It can make all the difference in whether they leave your site or bookmark it. Here are some tips to assist you in improving your website design.

1. Pages that load quickly. If your site does not load at least within ten or 15 seconds, chances are that most people will simply leave. You may have speedy Internet connection, but keep in mind that not all folks do. Remember, 56k modems do still exist.

2. Text on your pages should be easy to read. You will want the size of the text to be big enough, and a background color that does not obscure the text. To be on the safe side, it is recommended to use black text on a white background. If you would like to use a little more color, choose carefully, making sure that the page is still easy to read..

3. You will want your website to be easy to navigate. All text links and graphic elements such as buttons and tabs should be easy to read and use. Links found within your article should flow appropriately. You don%u2019t want your visitors leaving because they were not able to figure out how to get your Flash menu to work.

4. Both your website design and layout should be consistent with one another. If you were to switch from one style to another to often, you may confuse your visitors. It only makes sense that if the website design is suddenly too different people are bound to think that they are at another website altogether.

5. Stay away from music and sounds. Not many people like to suddenly be forced to listen to a certain type of music when they click on your site. They may already be listening to their own music. If you think that your site really does need music, turn it off by default and provide a button for visitors to click on if they want to listen.

6. Focus your web design on browser compatibility. For example, not all people use Internet Explorer. Be sure that your site can be viewed using Mozilla, Safari, Opera and Firefox. If at all possible, you may want to test your website on both a Mac and PC. Sites targeting markets such as technology should be careful, because these readers are more likely to use some of the newer browsers and gadgets.

7. Consider your website design for all screen resolutions. Chances are, you like to surf in 1240x1080 with your screen, but remember, some folks still use 800x600, or even 640x768! A website that looks great in high resolution may not be so easy to view correctly in 800x600.

If you have any doubts about your website design, test, test and test! You could ask for advice from friends or family if you want. They are not as familiar with your website design, and will likely be able to point out things that you overlooked.

Making A Living From The Affiliate Marketing

Is it possible to make a living from the internet? Yes, you can earn a lot of money just selling other people's stuff online, which known as affiliate marketing. A canadian woman named Rosalind Gardner earned over $400,000 in one year just writing a dating review site. However, becoming a successful online marketer takes time and effort, and there is no way to 'get rich quick'. The basic steps to make money from affiliate are:

1. Buy a domain and web hosting online.

2. Design your website and write a few keyword-rich contents.

3. Looking for a good affiliate program which related to your keywords.

4. Submit your site into all major search engine like yahoo and google.

5. Working hard on the SEO stuff to improve your search engine ranking in order to drive more traffic to your website. Most people will do some link exchanges with some similar website or submit their 'own words article' into article directory.

6. Searching over the internet everyday to check if someone steals your content.

7. If you think your website is having a lot of good content and believe some people will buy what you are selling after reading your website, you could pay google to advertise for you(google adwords).

8. After a few months, some people should get some sales and start earning money. The bad news is, most people don't.

These are the brief summaries to tell you how to make money from affiliate market. However, if you want to be successful, you need to do more. Just like the real world market, you need to know your competition, find out the profit-making weapons, and make some good investment.

Nowadays, you could easily find many software on the internet that can help you to make money from affiliate market. BUT BE CAREFUL, 99% of the program are scam. Don't invest on any program that claims you can earn six digits in one day unless some of your real-life friends has tried it before. However, if you find a software that works, you can save a lot of time to research the skills by investing under $100. If the software really works, you could probably get your investment back in a few days. So, if you are interested in making a living from the internet, start searching a good program throughout the internet.

10 Ways To Increase Your Targeted Web Site Traffic

In order to create a successful web site you must have
traffic or visitors to your site. Without traffic your
perfect site is useless; it might as well not even exist.

Moreover, because traffic is an essential element of any
successful site, many novice webmasters make the mistake
of believing all traffic is created equal.

Huge mistake.

For if traffic is King; targeted traffic is God. All
traffic is good, but there is a great distinction between
ordinary traffic and targeted traffic. Someone clicking on
a link to your site who is looking for the exact information
or product you have displayed is said to be a targeted visitor.
These are the kinds of visitors or traffic you must try to
obtain in your marketing and link building.

Why?

Because targeted traffic is often the key to building a
successful site on the web. Targeted traffic will greatly
increase your sales conversions, bring back repeat visitors
and help your site gain a prominent online presence.

So here are 10 targeted traffic building steps you can take:

1. Google Is God!

Only half-kidding but at least where targeted traffic is
concerned, Google is still the all important being you should
be worshipping online. Don't ignore the other two major demigods
Yahoo! and MSN, but Google will deliver most of your traffic.
Your website stats will point this out to you daily, so you must
optimize your site for Google.

As a general rule make your pages Google friendly by only using
one topic per page, include your keywords in the title, meta
description and url for that page. It would also be helpful
to have your main keywords in the first headline on the page
and most experienced webmasters try to place their keywords
in the first 90 words and in the last 25 words. Sprinkle your
keywords and variations throughout the copy but don't keyword
spam, just let the engines know this is what your page is about.

2. Target The Right Keywords

You must target the right keywords in order to get
useful traffic to your site. You must first check the
number of searches and amount of competition for your
chosen keywords. You can use software like Keyword Elite
or sites like www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
which will give you the Overture and WordTracker monthly
stats to help you pick the right keywords for your site.
Instead of picking highly competitive keywords, take
the middle road and milk the 'long tail keywords'!

Most webmasters create a master keyword list for their
site then branch off into sub-categories from this
master list. For example, if you have a site on laptops
your sub-keyword categories could be laptop accessories,
laptop batteries and so on. Similar, most webmasters
only develop their sites in a simple hierarchy with the
homepage as the center with their major keywords as separate
pages and then sub-categories branching out from these.
Your webpages should not be more than three clicks away
from your homepage as this will really displease the search
engine gods!

3. Have Relevant Content

Perhaps what will appease the SE gods the most is relevant
content. Your content has to be relevant to the topic of
your site. Keep everything on topic and within the scope
of your site.

Relevant, helpful content will also be the biggest magnet
for targeted traffic. Surfers are usually looking for
information, give them what they want and your site will
reap the rewards. Original high quality relevant content
will draw in targeted traffic to your site so make sure
your have some good content to satisfy your visitors and
the search engines.

4. Let The Search Engines Find You

Instead of submitting your site to the search engines,
let them find your site. One of the best ways to do
this is by placing your links on high traffic/spidered
sites: on online forums matching your site's content,
on social networks such as MySpace, YouTube, Squidoo...
and on articles directories like Ezinearticles, Goarticles,
and Ideamarketers. The search engines will follow these
links and index your site before you even know it.

5. Use Traffic Modules

One of the most effective ways to bring in targeted
traffic is to create traffic modules: whole areas of your
site devoted to one sub-topic. For example, if you have
a general site on cars, you could develop a whole
section on a car-buying guide. Another section could
be on car accessories, link all these pages together
into a neat traffic cluster on your site. The search
engines will love these closely grouped pages and reward
you with lots of targeted traffic.

6. Use Articles

Don't forget article marketing, just because it has
become extremely popular doesn't mean it has become
any less effective. Writing short helpful informative
articles on your site's topic is still one of the best
ways to get targeted traffic to your site. Place your
links with your targeted keyword anchor text in the
resource box.

Article marketing is an invaluable source not only of
targeted traffic but also one-way links to your site.
These links will help increase your rankings, especially
in Google which considers each link as a democratic vote
for your site and ranks each page with a PageRank PR 0-10.

Articles are also extremely important for pre-selling to
your potential customers. These articles warm or soften
up your prospective buyers to your sales pitch before they
even reach your site.

7. Build Opt-in Lists

Most marketers and webmasters use opt-in lists to bring
targeted visitors back to their sites. Instead of just
receiving that visitor once, you can get repeat visits
by using a simple follow-up system with an autoresponder.
Studies have consistently shown it might take 6 or 7
follow-ups before a potential customer buys.

Building a subscriber list will also be helpful in creating
a web community around your site. These community members
may become your most targeted of all your visitors. Likewise,
you should have a bookmark feature on all your pages, any
repeat visitor is a targeted visitor!

8. Have Blogs & RSS Feeds

Make sure you have a blog and RSS feed attached to your
site. This will not only bring in targeted traffic but
your visitors can also subscribe to your RSS feed. This
will bring targeted visitors back to your site. Use a
free site like Google's own www.blogger.com or better
yet create your own blog using free software such as
WordPress.

9. Use Social Media

Build links and contacts in all the important social
media networks such as MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.
These social networks are a great source of very
targeted traffic.

10. Use Multimedia

Perhaps the biggest opportunity to build targeted traffic
is using video and audio media on your site. These will
help personalize your message or content and build trust
with your visitors. Video clips also have a great viral
potential which will bring in traffic.

Sites such as YouTube, Google Video can help you get your
message or content in front of millions of eyes overnight.
Savvy marketers are already exploiting the traffic potential
of this new multimedia trend overtaking the web, why should
they have all the fun? You too, can take advantage of these
free media sites and pull in targeted traffic to your site.

Of course, there are many more ways of getting targeted
traffic to your site. But just using one or two of these
techniques should increase your targeted traffic in the
coming months. Appease the traffic gods by putting these
steps into practice and see for yourself.

Linkbait 2.0: The Soul of Linkbait

"In the same way that you can't catch a giant tuna with a bag of doritos - you're not going to get the attention of important bloggers, journalists, or other folks with some garbage content or news." Stuntdubl

"The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain. And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know ." Matthew Arnold, "The Buried Life"

This isn't a story about how to create good linkbait, but how I attempted to apply what I learned from linkbait masters like Todd Malicoat & Nick Wilson.

I find that many search engine marketing articles that I read are affirmations…they either affirm something I already know (but perhaps hadn´t thought about) or, if I don´t agree with the article, they affirm that I´m correct and the author isn´t. However, every so often, I read articles that cause me to reexamine how I practice SEM. Reading Todd & Nick caused me to think critically about how I had been creating content for the web.

Background

I've been writing search engine articles regularly for a couple years now and I´ve always been able to see the nexus between writing and inbound link generation. Until recently, I subconsciously had connected generating links with writing prolifically. I had thought that my best performing articles such as "How To Be A Blogging Idol Instead Of An Idle Blogger" likely did well because I hooked readers with a catchy title and was able to meld disparate elements of knowledge together in a way that readers liked and recommended to others.

So, in mid January, I consciously sat down and tried to write an article worthy of what I just learned. What I ended up writing had nothing to do with SEO…in fact; it was one of those "What Event Most Influenced the Course of Your Life" stories that tend to be extremely tiresome and self-indulgent. At first, I thought I had wasted my afternoon. Yet, I had a strong feeling that my article was not only by far the best thing I´d ever written but might have some level of universal appeal. Armed with the urgency of DIFY (not family safe) and quite a bit of WTF, I attempted to linkbait a very personal article.

There is a tradition of sharing personal stories in the SEM community. Michael Gray shared the story of the leopard-print bikini. Barry Schwartz proposed marriage via Ask.com and Rand Fishkin shared his Super Proposal (and Geraldine´s Response) with everyone. Like Rand, my personal story could reference a widely viewed internet video and I also had the advantage of being able to graft my story onto a piece of pop culture revered by many. You see, the story I wrote concerned my personal transcendence that occurred as I sat approximately 100 feet from Marvin Gaye while he sang the definitive version of the National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. With the 2007 NBA All-Star game scheduled for mid-February, I thought the timing of my story was pretty good for an All-Star linkbait.

What I Did

I first wrote a brief email arguing why my story was worthy of publication. Then, inspired by what Rand narrowly failed to do (get his commercial to run during the Super Bowl), I submitted my story to the biggest sports news outlets I could find: ESPN.com and TheSportingNews.com. Sportswriter email addresses are readily available, and I emailed my message & story to many folks that I read on a regular basis. At both websites, one of the basketball writers forwarded my story to the appropriate online editor…so I was able to successfully reach the decision-maker fairly quickly.

Both wrote me personal emails turning the story down. Both told me I had written the story one year too early (the Silver Anniversary of Marvin's Anthem is in 2008). The Sporting News editor liked the story but thought it a bit long for their format. The ESPN.com editor openly praised what I had written and we had a nice email exchange where he was quite helpful in giving me advice and suggestions on where else I could place the story.

I had also made contact with Duane Forrester aka Sportsguy who does SEM for a sports content provider in addition to being a SEMPO officer. He generously answered my unsolicited message and passed my story onto his editorial folks…unfortunately also without success. Similar attempts with other extremely large media companies also met the same fate and by then, the All-Star game had already occurred.

What I Learned

It would have been great if my story ran on ESPN.com. However, that was a totally unreasonable expectation. What I should have done and will do now is reach out to niche bloggers / content providers that are more accessible to me and are more likely to recognize my work. I will gradually build more links to the story over time, generating search engine strength and bringing the story more readers. I will also use my story as an opportunity to lose my social media virginity by exploring those currently unfamiliar channels and learn how they can compliment my other SEM efforts. Perhaps by the beginning of 2008, my story might have built a big enough mindshare that a major content provider like ESPN.com would be more likely to run it. Or, by then, it might not even matter to me.

Anyway, if you are curious about what I wrote, here's my brief Marvin Gaye Memoir...Me and Marvin: A Memoir of THE Anthem

3 Web Site Monitoring Tools That Increase Results

Wouldn't you like to know how your site is doing? Using web site monitoring services is a great way to increase your results and reach your marketing potential. Here's a look at several tools and how they can help your internet marketing strategies.

Are We Up And Running?

First off, it might be a good idea to hire somebody to check your site and make sure it's up and running. Even a few minutes when your site is crashed can cost you serious money.

There are several services available that monitor your site, including Site Up Time (www.siteuptime.com). For free, they'll check your website every half hour and let you know if it's having any problems. If you want more checks than that, for as low as $5 a month, they'll check every 5-15 minutes with three monitors. With their $5 Premium Plan and $10 Advanced Plan, there are more checks, more monitors watching, and more options.

Check Your Speed

There are other online services you can hire to periodically check how fast your connection is being made. If your site isn't running at full throttle, it will cost you profits.

You can download bandwidth monitoring software from sites like Bandwidth Monitor Pro (www.bandwidthmonitorpro.com) or Bandwidth Monitor 2.9 (www.bwmonitor.com). Neither of these downloads are free, but they are pretty reasonably priced. You can get the basic package from either one for around $20.

Look At Your Stats

Checking your statistics is important. You need to know who is looking at your site and what they're clicking. It's an essential marketing tool, and you can get a pretty good variety of services for absolutely free.

Google Analytics is a great way to look at your sites stats. You register your sites with Google Analytics, and then you can log in anytime and see your vital stats. You can see how many hits your site is getting everyday, and check its performance over time.

Among the things you can do with Google Analytics, you can...

* See the specific regions where people are visiting your site.

* Get stats for each page, including length of time spent on each one.

* Find out the most popular referral sources so that you can maximize your advertising. This can tell you which backlinks are most successful in directing traffic to your site.

* Find out which keywords are getting the most traffic.

And there's lots more. Google Analytics has pretty much everything you need to do all the marketing you need to do on your site. There are other sites out there that offer similar services, but Google Analytics is probably the most complete package that's free. You can check it out at www.google.com/analytics.

Using these tools to monitor your site has many advantages. They can help you with your marketing strategy, and they can save your site when it crashes, protecting your bottom line.