SiteProNews |
- Has Article Marketing Gone the Way of the DoDo Bird?
- Suitable Content for Membership Sites
- Social CRM: What Is It And Why Should You Care?
- 12 Things You Should Know About Hiring Someone From Elance
- 5 SEO Things to do in the First Year of Your Site’s Life – A SPN Exclusive Article
| Has Article Marketing Gone the Way of the DoDo Bird? Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:57 AM PDT 
Article marketing has always been one of my most basic and solid online marketing techniques. One which has brought in sales, traffic and those all important one-way quality backlinks to my content. Then came the Google Panda Update and changed everything. We have had countless major Google Algorithm updates before, but Panda was different, mainly because instead of examining just one page on your site, it looked at the quality of your WHOLE site and ranked it accordingly. Supposedly, those sites with perceived “poor quality” or not enough “original” content got lowered in the Google Index and rankings – not a good thing to happen to any site. Unfortunately, like all these updates, some innocent high quality sites were hit and their rankings and search traffic dropped significantly. And then as they say, all hell broke loose. Panic quickly followed and many webmasters with lucrative high ranking keywords in Google, not only took notice, but started making changes on their own sites. This panic or alarm was so great, we had thousands if not millions, of webmasters dropping content which was not original or/and changing many of their outgoing links to “no follow” on their sites. It seemed like everyone had collectively closed shop and drawn a protective barrier around their sites; making doubly sure they would not get penalized by Google for having too much non-original content or a poor quality site. I believe article marketing was the greatest victim of the Panda Update and fallout. Not only were the article directories like Ezinearticles hit hard, but more significantly, the perceived effectiveness of article marketing itself, took a direct hit by this update. Sometimes perception is everything, especially on the web. If webmasters believed having a non-unique article on their site, no matter if the article is well written and of top-notch quality, would lower their site’s rankings in the eyes of Google, then the article must go or be deleted. While it is sometimes foolhardy to draw general conclusions from your own limited experiences, I have seen my traffic and sales, from the different article directories fall dramatically. My traffic from Ezinearticles, which was my biggest source, has fallen to a trickle. More alarmingly, my articles don’t get picked up and displayed on other sites like they did in the past. Again, it should be emphasized, these are only my findings… other authors may have different outcomes and I do know of a few marketers who have seen their traffic increase from Ezinearticles, mostly with unique articles displayed on that site. After Panda, it seems Google is trying to list or rank the author’s site first in their rankings for any articles. After a slight drop in traffic immediately after the Panda Update, I have seen my traffic bounce back and this may be one of the reasons. In the past, I had placed many of my articles on my own sites as well as on the other sites and in the article directories. Going forward, I will write more unique articles for other sites and the directories, just to keep the “original content” factor/signal from popping up. Google’s Use of the Author Tag I was also very curious to see that Google has started supporting “authorship markup” or the “author” attribute tag in their search engine. According to a post by Othar Hansson, a software engineer at Google, “The markup uses existing standards such as HTML5 (rel=”author”) and XFN (rel=”me”) to enable search engines and other web services to identify works by the same author across the web.” If the content is on the same domain you use the rel=”author” tag and link it to your author’s page on that same domain. If your content is listed on a site where you don’t have an author’s page or profile, you can always link the content back to your own site’s author page by using the (rel=”me”) attribute tag. To learn exactly how the “author” tag works visit Google’s help page here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1229920 However, getting back to our initial question concerning the apparent extinction of article marketing? There is no denying that article marketing has become less effective after the Panda Update and the follow-up changes made by Google. Some webmasters/marketers are solving this problem by using software programs to “spin” articles in order to produce countless unique versions of an article. Quite frankly, I have never been satisfied with any “spun” version of an article – it simply sounds awkward or doesn’t have the right flow to it. However, it may fool the search engines, and many unscrupulous marketers are seeing good results from this type of article marketing because all the articles appear unique. Obviously, this is another headache for Google, because these inferior “spun” articles may become much more prevalent on the web after Panda, lowering the overall quality of content on the web and in their index, rather than increasing it. Personally, while I am losing X amount of dollars, I just can’t bring myself to use this sort of “software” to produce countless inferior versions of my articles. Instead, I have started to write unique articles and submit them to only one site. And for what it’s worth, I will still continue to write other viral articles which will hopefully get placed on numerous sites. And while they still bring targeted traffic back to my sites, my returns on these viral articles seems to be less and less, as many major sites have stopped taking these “non-unique” types of articles after the Panda Update. In my honest opinion, while article marketing is not quite dead, its glory days have long since passed. Titus Hoskins is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: http://www.bizwaremagic.com . If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: http://www.marketingtoolguide.com . This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Suitable Content for Membership Sites Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:42 AM PDT 
Such content is not always easy to find or to generate, so how do you achieve that and keep your site fresh, month after month after month? Here are some ideas. Membership Sites: Permanent Content You membership site should contain both permanent content and content that changes monthly. The permanent content can include training files – written or video – on how to make the best of the membership. They should explain what the member gets from being a member, and how to use the site to their best advantage. For example, if your site is a fishing niche, you could video yourself tying certain types of fly, and explain what fish they are designed to attract. Or maybe video your local lake and show the areas where your members are mostly likely to find carp. Perhaps write a short report on the best coarse fish for eating, and which are best for sport. Articles You could also include a number of informative articles. Each article you write can be added to the article folder – it won’t be long before you have a good number of useful articles on the site for your members to read through. There is no need to delete content unless it is time-dependent, but simply add to it, building up a large portfolio of information that will keep members happy. You could also search the internet for useful software – offer a mixture of free and commercial software, but make sure you have affiliate links for everything you sell on your site. Every cent your members spend on your subscription websites should bring you some income, whether it is their monthly membership payment or an affiliate commission. Video courses are always handy, and it’s not difficult to make your videos these days. A webcam is all you need, and most digital cameras offer excellent video quality. Cell phone videos are OK, but tend to lack professionalism. There is also good video software online that capture your screen and vocals as you show how to build websites, set up blogs and carry out many of the tasks involved in general internet marketing. Such videos are always useful, as are those dealing with specific niches if your membership sites are niche-oriented. Temporary Content Among the temporary content that gets changed every now and again are news items on the niche, perhaps RSS feeds that renew themselves, links to YouTube videos that your members might find interesting, and anything else you believe should be changed on a regular basis. Some products may also be offered on a temporary basis – discussed below. Membership Sites: Products In addition to the monthly membership fees, you can also make money selling products from your subscription sites. Some member site packages offer you products to sell which are regularly changed – generally picked from the most popular on Clickbank. However, these tend to focus on marketing products, but it’s not difficult to check out Clickbank for the newest and more popular of products on offer for your specific niche. By offering good products relevant to your niche, your members will believe you to be offering them a good service. You should not continually push products, but have them available if your members want them. You can mention specific products in your on-site articles and offer a link but your site is not a sales site but an information hub for your members where they can also find help with any problems they have. You should give them confidence in your ability to help them out, and not just continually bombard them with requests to purchase products. Membership Sites: Social Interaction Good member site packages will enable you to run a blog or even a forum from your site. This is the type of social interaction with peers with the same interest that can make a membership site buzz. Although Wordpress can be used to a run a membership site of a sort, you are better to use a professional subscription site package, and include a link to your Wordpress blog on the site. There are a few cheap or even free forum software packages available online, and if you can’t install it yourself your member site provider should be able to do it for you. A forum allows members to communicate with each other either on the forum itself or by private messaging. You could also include a ‘Support’ link so that members know that help is available if they need it. If you include all, or even most of the above suggestions on your site, and work towards generating a different subscription site for each good niche you can find, then the income from your membership sites will rapidly increase and you may even be able to make money online sufficient for you to pack in the day job. Article by Margaret Winfrey. Without good content your membership websites will fail to retain its members. Check out Member Desk online at http://www.memberdesk.com for a subscription site package that allows complete customization and use of any content of your choosing. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| Social CRM: What Is It And Why Should You Care? Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:17 AM PDT 
With social CRM (SCRM) businesses can use social media to build long lasting relationships with customers through meaningful, two-way conversations. That’s what makes SCRM “information rich.” But the relationships come first. Without them, your customers will feel less affinity with – and loyalty to – your business. SCRM: A Strategy Not A Product Social CRM is not a process or a product; it’s a strategy that can encompass several technology platforms and tools, including a traditional CRM (customer relationship management) system. Traditional CRM is the foundation of SCRM. This is a useful definition of SCRM, which was crowdsourced and assembled by Paul Greenberg: “Social CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” Note that this definition says nothing about what you need to buy, how many people to hire, what processes to use, or how to measure ROI. SCRM is about interacting with the people or groups of people who you know as customers and who have individual traits, desires, and styles of communication. Through social media, SCRM extends the reach of what you already do in the brick-and-mortar world to relate to the individual qualities of your customers. Social media comprises the various online technologies that enable people to communicate easily via the Internet to share text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications. We can all readily name the large social media channels: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. There are also other forms of social media, like blogs, discussion groups and photo sharing sites. Any of these channels may be a place where your customers gather to talk about you. A conversation that takes place through these channels has a wider reach than one that takes place in a physical location. Complaints or praise made on Facebook will reach more people than comments made to friends over coffee. Social media has given your customers the ability to “broadcast” their opinions. 1. One-To-Many This is the sort of post you see on Facebook, Twitter, or any message board-style social media resource. Announcements, observations, jokes, and questions are common examples; blogs also qualify as one-to-many conversations. 2. One-To-One Sometimes, a conversation changes from one-to-many to one-to-one. For example, if a customer voices complaints about your business on Google+, you might invite him to a channel run by your company or engage him via e-mail because it’s a more direct way of resolving his problem. It’s also a way to avoid working through the problem in public. Or if a customer needs specific technical help, the details of the fix would be very important to the customer, but might not be to everyone else. On the other hand, if the community tends to be highly technical, showing your technical acumen could be worthwhile. 3. One-To-One-To-Many This is a one-to-one discussion conducted in full view of other members of a social media channel. It starts out as one-to-one, but others will almost certainly participate and expand the scope of the discussion. This is very common in social media. Let’s take a hypothetical service user group run by a sporting goods store. A thread starts with a customer’s query about tent stakes. The store responds with a message about replacements for missing stakes. Another customer points out that the extra tent pole in the model under discussion could double as an emergency stake. More suggestions follow about how an extra tent pole could be used. The company would chime in if a suggestion was potentially dangerous or damaging to the tent pole. From a single question, different threads emerge with new pieces of information. From this type of conversation, you can establish yourself as a trusted peer while learning: 1. Who your power users are 2. Who your detractors are 3. Who is eager to help other customers 4. Alternate uses for your products You may need to adjust the tone and wording of a conversation when it goes from one-to-one to one-to-one-to-many. The Myth Of SCRM Best Practices Business leaders love best practices – a set of rules that can be applied uniformly and that work almost universally. Best practices most often apply to the interaction of people with a system. In SCRM, the primary interaction is person to person, with some intermediary technology to connect them. On one side of the SCRM equation is your company and on the other, your customers and potential customers. The customers and potential customers represent a set of preferences, motivations, and behaviors that differentiate them from another group of customers. Even within a vertical market, customer groups are different. For example, Land’s End and Busted Tees are in the apparel industry. But the practices upscale, stylish Land’s End uses to engage its customers would fail with the ironic, irreverent customers of Busted Tees. Likewise Threadless, which sells products similar to Busted Tees, has customers that vary in important demographic and behavioral ways. Attempting to transplant one company’s social CRM ideas to the other would fail. You can’t apply a generic set of best practices to your customers that were built from the “average” behavior of many groups of customers. Each business needs to develop SCRM best practices based on its customers’ behaviors and motivations – where do they congregate in social media, how do they respond to contact in social channels, and what is needed to connect with them in a peer-to-peer manner? Before becoming editor in chief of CRM Outsiders, Chris Bucholtz was the founding editor of both InsideCRM and Forecasting Clouds. He’s a recognized thought leader in customer relationship management. To discover more about how to empower your employees with Mobile CRM please visit http://www.sugarcrm.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| 12 Things You Should Know About Hiring Someone From Elance Posted: 30 Sep 2011 09:05 AM PDT 
Personally, I wouldn’t look for freelancers anywhere else – despite there being a myriad of options including Fiverr, Craigslist or forums such as Digital Point or Warrior Forum. Coming from a developed country I morally object to getting someone to perform any professional task for $5 (it’s called exploitation) – that and with all these options you never really know what you’ll get, or in worse case scenarios if you’ll get anything at all. Though from what I’ve read some people can also have trouble getting the right results from providers at Elance – which is why I’ve put together this list of best practices. 1. Title Your Project Effectively Your title is what appears in the search results when freelancers are browsing for jobs. For that reason it’s best you make it as detailed as possible. Rather than “I need 20 articles written” I would suggest “20x 400 Word Articles On Thailand Travel” (or whatever your topic is) because the provider can instantly see what the project requires. 2. Provide A Detailed Outline For what your title doesn’t convey to potential applicants, you should include in the description you post with your project. This will save time going back and forth once the job is awarded and will ensure providers are able to give you the most relevant bid. Above all, include specific topics along with target keywords for the articles you want (assuming you’re hiring writing talent) and what information should be contained within them – this will ensure you get exactly the content you’re looking for, without the provider trying to guess what you want. As a former freelancer I can tell you the clients who are the most vague are the hardest to deal with, and you generally try to avoid them whenever possible. 3. Be Realistic With Your Budget If you’re expecting to get 100 articles written for $50 then go somewhere else. Providers on Elance are generally professionals who perform their chosen craft for a living, and as such cannot afford to offer services at such a ridiculously low price. You will always pay more than anywhere else, but generally I find you do get what you pay for. 4. Get Your Listing Featured I have never needed to pay the $25 fee to get my listing featured, but if you’re struggling to attract the right providers then you may need to. In Elance’s words it “shows providers you’re serious” but if you post an effective title and project outline then it usually works just the same. Keep in mind, providers usually get the latest jobs posted to them by email, so if your post catches their eye then there’s a good chance they’ll bid on it. 5. Be Wary Of Provider Location In most cases it’s safest to go with someone from a native-English country if you’re hiring writing talent, but on others I’ve found people who live elsewhere can provide a result that’s just as good. Other problems can arise, however. The most common is communication difficulties with providers being located in a different part of the world, and in extreme cases it’s possible to not hear from someone for several weeks due to limited access to the Internet in a less-developed country. 6. Avoid The Lowest Price While it may be tempting to go with someone who offers to work for next to nothing, it’s best to avoid them for a number of reasons. First, they usually have limited experience or skill and the result will be less than pretty. Second, they plan to copy and paste someone else’s work or spin a bunch of PLR articles that will do you no good. By offering a lower price a provider is always trying to compensate for something – just be mindful of that. 7. Individuals Over Companies Quite commonly you’ll see companies post a bid on your job. Personally, I try to avoid them because I prefer to deal with someone personally. Companies will always hire third-party personnel to work for them, which means the price is always needlessly higher to allow themselves a profit margin. That and you never really know if you’re talking to the person who is supposed to be doing the work, which can lead to a breakdown in communication in several cases. 8. View Most Relevant Samples A lot of the time you’ll post a job about a specific topic and you’ll get a bunch of proposals that include work samples that are loosely related, very closely related or not related at all. I give the most credence to samples that are the closest to the topic in question, unless another provider offers work that is generally of a higher quality. 9. What Experience They Have Providers that have been around for a number of years are generally more reliable. They have the experience to meet deadlines and generally their work is of a higher quality. Newer providers can be a bit of a risk, and though they may be talented, some can quite easily choose to disappear on you. That and they have a very small amount of feedback or a limited portfolio to help you decide what quality of work you’ll get. 10. Feedback From Other Clients At the end of every job clients will have the option to leave feedback for the provider. Usually, checking this is just extra peace of mind but sometimes it can reveal some worrying patterns. You might, for example, notice that several clients have said a provider is late in delivering work or they had to make extra edits on it themselves. If it’s obviously a problem with the provider, then you can choose to avoid them, but more often it’s one tricky client who is being extra critical or just had a bad experience. 11. Discard Automated Applications If a provider can’t put effort into writing a job application then how much effort will they put into the job? I know as a former freelancer it’s not uncommon to send out dozens of applications daily and not expect to get every job (or any of them). But I would at least show the client I had read their outline and show why my experience was relevant to that particular job. 12. Does The Provider Want The Job At the end of the day those who are most excited by the opportunity, who are most passionate about a topic and those who simply want the job more are those I pay the most attention to. You’ll get something of quality and the extra enthusiasm the provider brings means that will rub off on anyone who views the finished product. At least 90% of the time this is how I finally decide who to give the job to. Article by Brent McCoy. Millionaire Studio is an online entrepreneurship blog that features articles on online business, blogging, marketing and social media: http://millionairestudio.com/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
| 5 SEO Things to do in the First Year of Your Site’s Life – A SPN Exclusive Article Posted: 29 Sep 2011 10:00 PM PDT 
If you recently launched your site and are already looking into SEO, here are 5 things you should focus your time and energy on. Learn the Basics of SEO for Yourself There is no shortage of blogs, whitepapers, articles, reports, e-books, webinars, videos and more that can teach you the basics of SEO. It is imperative that you as the site owner arm yourself with as much SEO knowledge as possible during the first year of your site’s life. The more you know about SEO, the less likely you are to be conned by a black hat SEO company and the less likely you are to make black hat SEO decisions by accident. A good place to start is with the Bing and Google Webmaster Guidelines. Consider those two sources as your SEO line in the sand; what they say goes. Look for other reputable blogs and sites that can help you learn more about SEO and how others in your industry are using it to their advantage. By taking the time to teach yourself the basics of SEO (you could take an SEO course or spend time with a consultant as well), you’ll be better prepared to take your SEO to the next level after your site has aged a little and earned the trust of the search engines. Start a Blog Start blogging right away. Start with at least one blog post a week and see if you can work up to one a day within the first year of your blog’s life. That may seem like a huge ordeal now, but you’d be amazed at how easy it gets to write a 350-500 word blog post with practice. You’ll learn how to better formulate your thoughts, present a single idea and flush it out entirely with time. If you aren’t confident in your writing ability or are struggling to come up with topics, turn to your employees and co-workers for help. The worst thing you could do is launch a blog and then not routinely update it with fresh content. It takes a long time to hone your writing skills, find and develop your niche, build your reputation and attract loyal readers to your blog, so don’t expect to see major results fast. However, just like your site, as your blog ages it earns more trust from the search engines. Individual blog posts can start to rank for targeted keywords, increasing your online brand presence. Build Your Social Network If you are just getting onboard the social media marketing train, you’re in for a surprise! Social media marketing takes a lot more time than most companies realize, and it needs a solid strategy to run on. Don’t walk into social media blind and hope you’ll figure it out before something goes wrong. Take the first year of your site’s life to really develop your social profiles and connect with your target audience. What kind of content are they looking for from you? When is the best time to engage them? Which sites do they spend most of their time on? If you want your social media marketing efforts to be effective, you need to understand the behavior of your target audience so you can better reach them. Focus on On-Site Optimization The first year of your site’s life should really be spent focusing on the site itself. Don’t worry too much about developing a full blown link building strategy just yet; it’s more important to make sure your site is in the best shape it can be! Work on creating great webpage content, developing an internal linking structure that helps keep your visitor engaged, tweaking your landing pages to improve their conversion rate and so forth. Your website is going to be the hub of the rest of your Internet marketing. It doesn’t matter how great everything is off-site if your website doesn’t measure up. At the end of the day, it is your website that is going to convince visitors to act. Does it matter how many show up or how they got there if you website fails to convert? Develop an Editorial Calendar Content pretty much fuels all of your SEO and social media marketing. Without great content, you don’t give your target audience a real reason to check out your site, profile or blog. In addition to all the content you have to create for your own sites, you also need to start looking into 3rd party sites where you can publish guest content. Take the first year of your site’s life to build relationships with industry bloggers and other site owners that allow guest articles to be published on their site. Identify which popular industry blogs cater to your target audience and start laying the groundwork to get one of your articles published there. If you can create an editorial calendar for you to follow, you’ll be able to get a jumpstart on your content marketing. Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, a Boston search engine marketing and SEO consulting firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO articles to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and by publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers. Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or < ahref="mailto:nick@brickmarketing.com">nick@brickmarketing.com. Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources |
After the Google Panda Update, has article marketing become less effective? That’s a major question which many webmasters and online marketers seem to be asking these days. It has also brought up the whole notion that article marketing is, in fact, dead. Well, here’s my two cents on this whole issue.
Many people use membership sites to make money online, but just as many fail to make anything at all. That is because members expect something in return for their monthly membership, and if they don’t believe they are getting that then they will cancel. Your member site, also known as a subscription site, must offer content that is useful to your members and that not only solves problems for them but also helps them make money.
Customers are now providing voluntarily the sort of information about themselves that businesses have coveted for years – through social media “channels” like Facebook and Twitter. This information can make marketing more precise and boost the value of customer databases, while increasing sales and improving service.
If you’re unfamiliar with 
By now, most site owners realize the importance and value of SEO in the development and growth of their site. A properly optimized site is going to rank better in the search engines, see more targeted traffic being directed over, have a higher conversion rate and much more. However, SEO is incredibly long term and nothing can rush time. It takes time for a site to build a good trust factor with the search engines and until that happens, most of your off-site SEO efforts are going to produce minimal results.| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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Anchor text is perhaps one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization but it is also one of the least talked about.
Today’s technology allows us to connect with and form relationships with people all over the world right from our home or office. A webinar is a great way to do this because of all the tools and technology available to us. A webinar is just like a seminar only it is done online via your computer. Webinar is short for web-based seminar and they can be very instrumental in building your business.
Hi now for all of us in the Internet marketing or information publishing arena we will undoubtedly use pay per click advertising at some stage. Now for those just starting out, it can all be a bit confusing so here’s a real beginner’s guide to the main ones – who they are, what they are and what you can expect. But as I’ve identified many times before you really need once you’ve been through this brief outline to go off and have a go, there’s nothing like DIY, you need to see and understand the nuts and bolts of how PPC advertising works.
Oftentimes when marketing with articles, it’s easy to get the impression that you need to do something tricky or fancy to make your marketing efforts “work”.
Student-based marketing and some companies go hand-in-hand like a hungry co-ed and Taco Bell. Tech manufacturers, local eateries and apparel companies will all benefit from targeting students. Of course, there are the usual channels. Commercials, print ads and social media outlets can all be utilized in your quest to find students. These traditional ways produce incredible results. However, using location-based SEO tactics can step up your marketing game. 
Web videos have many purposes: they display, present, inform, educate, enlighten, and entertain; they also persuade, motivate, and sell.