The Blogspot Blogger: August 2007

7 Reasons To Publish An Ezine

1. Publish A Free Ezine For Selling Products

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to promote your own or affiliate products, MLMs, etc. This is the most common format, and to work well requires quality — preferably original — content related to your business and products so that it stands out from the crowd.

2. Publish Free Ezine For Selling Advertising Space

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter to sell advertising spots and exclusive mailings to other businesses. Similar in format to the previous example, except that instead of using the ezine as a vehicle for promoting your own products, you use it to generate ad revenue. This approach is often favored by those new online and / or without their own product, using mainly contributed articles for content and combining the promotion of affiliate programs with ad sales.

3. Publish A Paid Subscription Ezine

You could charge a monthly or yearly subscription to your ezine or newsletter. Unless your annual subscription is fee is relatively little, you will probably make more money with a low monthly fee automatically charged to the subscriber’s credit card. Note that you need quality, highly targeted original to be successful selling ezine subscriptions like this.

4. Publish A Free Ezine As A Lead-In To One With More Value

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter as a “lite” version of paid subscription ezine that offers higher value content. You would simply provide a taste of each piece of content in your free ezine, with “full version” articles of greater depth that provide more details and specialized information, 100% original content, secrets of the trade, etc., available with a paid subscription.

Another variant on this model would be to charge a small subscription fee for an ad-free version of your publication. Some people don’t want to get advertisements in every issue and are willing to pay to get rid off them. Free subscribers would get ads and paid subscribers wouldn’t.

5. Publish A Free Ezine And Charge For The Archives

Yet another way to make money with an ezine is to charge a one time fee for lifetime access to your ezine archives. Obviously, for this to work you’ll need to have plenty of issues archived already, offering substantially original and/ or unique content. They also need to be searchable, which isn’t difficult these days using Google, or at the very least indexed by topic.

6. Publish A Free Ezine And Sell Reprint Rights

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter that has original content and promotes various related affiliate products. You could then package it up into a set with graphics and a sales page and sell it or charge people a subscription fee to reprint each issue and use it as their own ezine. They would just have to change the titles, contact info and affiliate link codes.

In a different twist, you could promote your own products in the ezine and give it away to your own affiliates as a promotional tool. Alternatively, you could still give away your ezine with free reprint rights, but require that certain links to your website or affiliate promotions are maintained for a semi-viral effect.

7. Publish A Free Ezine And Sell A Print Edition

You could publish a free ezine or newsletter and charge for a subscription for a print edition delivered every month. Put additional premium content in the print edition, similar to how you would do a subscription ezine. The added benefit of a doing a tangible print version is that you can charge more for it because the perceived value is higher, plus you can make a little extra on the shipping charges too.

About The Author

Online since 1997, Azam Corry Cuts Through The Hype To Help You Develop a Winning Web Marketing Strategy. Subscribe To His Blog For More Free Articles, Tools And Resources.

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articles@nowsell.com

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Blogging For SEO: How To Get Maximum Search Benefit From Your Small Business Blog

If you have a small business blog, or are thinking of starting one, you should be aware of the ways you can use your blog to drive traffic to your Website. It's simpler than you think.

The first thing to understand about your blog is that each entry is counted as one Web page. Even if you have your blog set to display 10 blog posts on the same page, each of them is counted as a separate Web page by the search engines. That's why it is important to treat each blog entry as an SEO tool. The following tips should be kept in mind for each blog entry in order to optimize them for the search engines and drive more traffic to your Website from your blog:

1. Optimize each blog post around a single keyword
2. Make sure your keyword is in your blog post title, preferably at the beginning
3. Use subheads with or tags that also use your keyword
4. Include 1-3 keyword links (anchor text) in your blog posts
5. Sign every blog post with a signature link that uses your keyword
6. Use bold and italics effectively to emphasize certain keywords and phrases
7. Be sure to ping the directories
8. Include tags for all of your blog entries
9. Use categories effectively
10. Make links appear natural by linking to internal pages of your Website

Because each blog entry is a separate Web page, the search engines will crawl them and index them just as they do your Web pages. Optimize each one heavily around a specific keyword related to your Website and that's an extra doorway into your Website for each page indexed at the search engines. Also, by adding anchor text to a couple of those keywords and pointing those links to relevant internal Web pages of your Website you are improving the SEO effect of your blog entry. A poll of top SEO experts by SEOmoz revealed that a majority of those SEO experts said these type of keyword links are among the top 10 most important SEO factors for ranking Web pages. Don't give up on keywords and anchor text.

You'll also want to include keyword tags with each blog entry. Those tags will be used by the search engines to index your pages appropriately for your keywords. Also, social bookmarkers will find it easier to tag your blog entry if they like it and this makes it easier to share among their social group.

Your blog category should indicate an important element of interest as well. Unlike tags, you should only choose one category for each blog post. Don't use "main" or "uncategorized." Those are too generic. Use a specific keyword-related category as that will make your blog posts more crawlable by the search engines.

There are more than 100 blog directories that you can ping to let them know you have updated your blog. I suggest you do this every time you update your blog. With WordPress, and several other blogging software platforms, you can input each directory into a field and the software will send out an automatic ping each time you update your blog. If you are not using WordPress you should go to Ping-o-Matic and use it to ping your blog for free.

Finally, if you sign your blog posts with a keyword-rich signature that points to a relevant internal page of your Website, this will make your Website more crawlable and give you another anchor text link. Use something like, "Find Out More About Keyword." Then add another link that points to your home page.

The important thing to remember about keywords and links, whether on your blog or your Website, is to make them appear natural. The benefits are enormous.

About The Author
Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating exciting marketing campaigns for some of the most successful companies in the world. She publishes the popular eZine, "Blue Chip Tips: The Secrets of Blue Chip Marketing...Revealed!" Learn more today at http://www.melberg.com.

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Search Engine Optimization And The Magic Fairy Dust

There is only one thing that all webmasters agree upon... They all want to be at the top of the search engine results for search terms that will drive traffic and consumers to their website.

The truth is that the search engines are like our childhood game of King Of The Hill. Only one person can be at the top of the hill and the top of the search results. Only ten websites can be on page one of the search results. When a new website moves into the top ten, another must be removed.

For any given search term at any given time, there are only ten web pages on page one of the search results, and there are millions of web pages that did not make page one, who may or may not catch a few stragglers from the search engines.

How Can A Website Break Into The Top Ten?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an industry that has sprung up around the concept of helping their clients improve their rankings in the search engine results.

When you talk to SEO professionals, they generally point to a two-pronged approach to search ranking optimization. A website owner needs to optimize their on-site real estate for the search engines, and they need to build inbound links to their website.

On-Site Search Optimization Challenges

The trick with on-site search optimization is that you must cater to multiple audiences on your website.

* You must provide simple navigation and an attractive interface to the human visitor;

* You must provide good sales copy to your human visitors, for the purpose of converting them from shoppers to buyers;

* You must provide text copy for the search engines to read; and

* You must optimize your content to help the search engines know what topics and keywords they should pay attention, so that they can give their users the right web page for the right search terms.

A web page that draws good search rankings is useless if the web page cannot convert the human visitor to a buyer. Many website owners get caught up in the process of optimizing a web page to get it to the top of the search results, and they forget that the human visitor knows where the Back Button is in his or her browser. Once your visitor has hit the Back Button, they will go to someone else's website and buy from them, instead of you.

Most website owners have the alternate problem. They consistently convert a significant number of visitors to buyers, but they have to rely on various forms of paid advertising to get visitors to their websites, since they do not rank in the search engines.

I recently spoke with an individual who spends ,000 per month on pay-per-click advertising to get targeted traffic to his website. He said he consistently earns back his money, but he was still looking for a better way to get ranked in the search engines, so he joined my client list.

On-Site Search Engine Optimization Basics

According to the search engine companies, there are more than one thousand calculations that determine how well a website will rank in their search engine result pages (SERPs).

The Google engineers are fond of saying that if you build your website for human beings instead of search engines, then your website should rank well in their algorithms. To a certain degree, this is a good strategy.

Think about how magazines are constructed:

The Table Of Contents shows story titles, brief descriptions, and page numbers telling you where you can find a story.

On the story page, the title will be in big, bold font. Sometimes, the magazine will include a brief blurb about the story, in italics or font that is a bit bigger than the story font.

Pictures support the story with captions that further develop the story, by describing the picture.

Major subsections of the story have their own subheadings. And, the primary body of the story is in regular plain text, with only an occasional bolded or italicized word or phrase.

By analyzing the title and other large text on the page, a person who is flipping through the pages of a magazine can quickly assess the story content and make the decision as to whether they want to read the full story.

In the most simplistic way, this is how the search engines analyze a websites' content to decide which web page will best serve their users' needs.

Off-Site Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Basics

Since the inception of Google, and with Yahoo and MSN recently, the number and quality of links pointing to a website play a significant role in determining how well a web page will rank in the search results.

I have heard people suggest that as much as 75% of the value given to a web page in the search results is based solely on the number and quality of links pointing to a web page. I tend to believe a more conservative number (50.1%) will apply.

Inbound Links Are More Important Than Page Content

To prove this point, type "click here" without the quotes into Google, Yahoo and MSN and check the Adobe pages that come up in the search results: #1 in Google, #2 in Yahoo, and #1 in MSN. When you pull up those pages, search the page to find the individual words "click" or "here" in the text of those pages. They are not there. This has happened because millions of people have linked to these Adobe pages with the embedded anchor text, "click here".

Next, let's analyze those specific web pages from the perspective of each of the search engines:

* Google's #1 result - Google PageRank 8. (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html) Links to this web page: according to Google (31); according to Yahoo (nearly 12 million); according to MSN (6,400).

* Yahoo's #2 result - Google PageRank 10. (www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer) Links to this web page: Google (15,200); Yahoo (700 thousand); MSN (32).

* MSN's #1 result - Google PageRank 8. (www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash) Links to this web page: Google (0); Yahoo (2.9 million); MSN (778).

On Google's top result, they show 31 inbound links total for that web page. But, Yahoo claims that there are more than 12 million links to this page. That is a huge difference.

On Yahoo's #2 result, MSN gives 32 links, Google gives 15,000 links, and Yahoo claims it has 700 thousand links! That is another huge difference between the link counts from the search engines.

On MSN's #1 result, MSN shows a strong link count, but still nowhere near Yahoo's 2.9 million links. But, how does a web page with zero links in Google get a PageRank 8?

What Do These Numbers Mean?

Google has always said that they will never show us all of the links that we have pointing to our websites, because anything we can see in the public search results, our competitors can see also. So, for me it really is no surprise that we cannot see all of the links that point to Adobe pages, or to the links we have created that point to our clients and ourselves, by querying the search engines.

Also, the sheer numbers of inbound links do not rule the roost. Google's #1 result (PR8) is actually shown in Google, before Yahoo's #2 (PR10) result.

The Proof For Link Building Is In The Search Engine Rankings

Recently, a fellow who works as a SEO "professional" told me that be believed my link building system was a sham.

I showed him that on the top 51 keyword phrases we use to market our original commercial website, we had 11 number one results, 31 top five results, 34 top ten results, 47 top thirty results, and 51 top 100 results within the Google search results. Additionally, it was shown that only three of those results competed with fewer than one million search results according to Google, with the remaining 48 pages competing with one million to 533 million pages.

Ole boy tore up Google trying to track how it was possible for me to have accomplished what I claimed. He finally concluded that since Google would not show HIM how I was able to rank so well in their search engine results, then I must have been lying.

According to Yahoo, we have over 12,000 links from third-party websites. According to our site statistics, we received traffic from more than 16,000 unique web pages during 2006. And Google still swears that we only have 42 inbound links to our website!

Magic Fairy Dust

My nemesis concluded that since HE could not prove through Google how I was successful in getting good search rankings, then I could not have accomplished such results by the methods I claimed.

Okay, I admit it.

I used the exact same method that Adobe used to get to the top of Google's search engine rankings. I have a pocket full of magic fairy dust. Whenever, I do not like how my websites rank in the search engines, I sprinkle my magic fairy dust on my modem.

If you don't like where you are ranked in the search engines, then I suggest you forego the search engine optimization companies altogether and instead run over to the corner store to get your own magic fairy dust. You might have to shop around a bit, but it is out there.

About The Author
Bill Platt has been involved with link building (http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/link-building.html) since 1999 for his own promotion and for search engine marketing purposes, and he has been doing it professionally for clients since 2001. Visit http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com to learn more. If you would like to talk to Bill in person, he can be reached at (405) 780-7745 between 9am and 6pm CST, Monday through Friday.

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Breathtaking Color Power!

Colors convey character, emotion and intention. You are what colors you choose. Thus, your choice of colors should reflect the message or feeling you to hope to convey to the viewer.

Red - Red is hot color. It is an established color of love, urgency, courage, danger, passion, blood, intensity, aggression, and competition. It is best used as an accent color. This color does not usually blend well with greens or purples of the same intensity, so if you use red with these colors, modify the brightness or intensity.

Blue - Blue is a color of peace, tranquility and wisdom. It also conveys honesty, truth, loyalty, power, coolness, health, harmony, and confidence. Blue is a safe choice for most uses, and goes well with the majority colors. Don't use blue if your site is food or drink related, since there are hardly any blue foods and drinks.

Beige and Gray - These are neutral colors. As neutrals, they can be combined with almost any color and still come across well. Both make for very readable backgrounds, but be sure to use glints of bright colors or the site will appear uninteresting. You can also accent beige or gray with dark colors. It will create an illustrious, professional look.

Black - Black entails death, seriousness, solid strength, elegance, sophistication, rebellion, evil, power, and mystery. It can be powerful, aloof and intimidating. However, black is very useful in separating things such as graphic images. Black can make colors explode!

Yellow - Yellow is the brightest of all colors and has the greatest illuminating power. It is a warm and cheerful color. In addition to cheerfulness, yellow can also convey caution, optimism, idealism, cowardice, and imagination. Too much yellow can be an eyesore. Be careful using yellow with greens and purples of the same intensity. It might tone down one or the other.

Green - Green connotes youth, fertility, ecology, nature, health, growth, money, safety, healing, and food. However, to other viewers, it may connote envy, insects, and reptiles. Green can be well suited as a secondary or accent color.

Brown - Brown implies simplicity, earthiness, comfort, durability, and stability. However, like the neutral grays and beiges, a site that is mostly brown can be very dull. However, a site that had a light brown/beige background, a rich brown secondary color, and bright or dark red accents can give the impression of being very professional.

When choosing colors for your web site. Choose wisely because colors have a larger impact on the viewers. To know its impact, try this test: Open your web site and write on a piece of paper as many words and images that you can think of. Now, have another person to do the same. After that, compare your notes. If you made correct color choices, the list should be almost impossible to tell apart.

About The Author

Maricon Williams

I love reading. Give me a book and I'll finish it in one sitting. Reading is the chance to be transported to a different world and so is writing. I'm more enthusiastic about writing however, since you can relay your ideas to someone else. I can only imagine that feeling when I hear a complete stranger talking about my ideas which read on an article somewhere. To relay my message to as many people is the same as touching people with music. Only mine's less harmonic. I try to make up for it with the color I bring with words. And most of the time, it’s more than enough.

For Inquiries and Comments about the article and for additional information about web designs, log - on to http://www.webdesignsprovider.com

maricon@rushprintingservices.com

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