Archive for Marketing Strategies
Tips For Doing Keyword Research
Posted by: | CommentsKeyword research is the all-important scaffold of any successful internet marketing campaign. If you have the right keywords, you’ll be able to get the right kind of person to your website. The wrong keywords will either be too competitive to realistically get traffic, or you’ll attract the wrong kind of person.
Here are a few keyword research tips to help find the optimal keywords for your business.
==> Know Your One to Two Year Keyword Targets
While it’s important to do your keyword research for what you want to target immediately, it’s even more crucial that you know what you want to be targeting six months, one year or two years from now.
The tough keywords don’t happen get ranked overnight. Instead, you need months and months of concerted effort to hit the top.
While you’re working on the easier keywords, also spend some time working on the harder ones. In time, long-term thinking pays off.
==> Research Different Base Keywords
Try to research as many different “base” keywords as possible. A base keyword is a keyword that has a unique set of words.
For example, if you’re in the weight loss industry, “lose weight” and “burn fat” are different base keywords. On the other hand, “burn fat quickly” or “burn belly fat” are subsets of the “burn fat” base keyword.
Try to research as many base keywords as possible. Especially try to dig up uncommon ones or overlooked ones. The competition within a base keyword, among its longtail keywords tends not to vary too much. However, the competition between base keywords can vary a lot.
There could be much, much more competition for “lose weight” than “look slimmer.” Try and find lower competition base keywords, rather than just drilling deep.
==> Competitive Research
Competitive research is a huge part of determining whether or not a keyword is worth pursuing. The goal of keyword research is to find keywords that have high enough volume to be worth it, without too much competition.
In SEO, assessing the competition involves gauging a number of factors. These include the number of backlinks your competitors have, their PageRank, when the site was founded, the number of pages on the site, how many exact match anchor texts are pointing back to their site and their current rankings.
In PPC, evaluating your competition involves using spy software like SpyFu or KeywordSpy to see what kind of keywords and ads they’re using, as well as what they’re likely paying.
If you start with your long-term keyword goals then work your way back, explore a wide array of different keyword bases and do your competitive research to figure out where you’re most likely to win, then you’ll have a very good chance of overtaking your competition.
Promote Your Business With Ezine Marketing
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Have you thought about using an ezine to market your business? If not, consider using an online magazine to gain interest and traffic. Here are a few tips to use as you craft your magazine.
People love to read magazines. They provide articles, ads and photos to view. You can use one as a way to market your business.
With magazines also come subscribers. It is one step closer to getting people to try your products and invest in your business. Here are some ways you can use your ezine to leverage your business position.
* Offer free subscription – Just for signing up and giving their name and email address, you can offer free subscriptions to your new online magazine.
* Write articles about your products – You can write articles related to your niche market, helpful ones that offer timely and expert advice to your reading audience. But, don’t forget to write pieces about your business products. Let people know that you are an expert and then tell them about what you do.
* Create a customer section – This is where customers can have their questions featured and answered by you. Include an email address where they can send them.
* Offer advertising for free or at a discount – This is one way to pay for your magazine efforts. Offer a free month of advertising in exchange for subscription. Also include the price for advertisements depending on where on the page their ad is located.
* Have guest writers – Ask customers to write articles. If their submission is accepted, then they can get a discount on their total product order on your site. And, you can give them a byline.
* Use directories – Ezine directories such as ezine-dir.com allow you to create a page to promote your magazine. Include links to your advertising page, your magazine site and your website. Even create a page that gives them a sample of the online magazine to read.
* Hold contests – Everyone loves contests. The prize could be a free item from your store (within a certain price). Second and third prizes could be discounts upon purchasing. Feature the names of the contest winners in the next edition after the contest ends.
* Send out mailings to your email list – To those that have opted in for contacts on your website, send them an email autoresponder with a link to where they can subscribe to your online magazine. You can advertise a free report as incentive to sign up.
* Promote it on social networks – Do you have a Facebook business page? Talk about your ezine there. Even create a magazine page where subscribers can give feedback on your work.
Ezines can be used to promote your business by providing vital information about your business to current and prospective customers.
Cool Ways to Promote Your Affiliate Marketing Website
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Once you’ve got yourself a fairly decent affiliate website up, the hard part comes – getting traffic to the site. There are a ton of different ways you can get traffic to an affiliate website, from the totally free to the high risk, high reward.
Here are a few smart ways of promoting your affiliate marketing website.
==> Pure Free SEO
If you don’t want to spend any money on marketing, you can still earn a very decent living through purely free SEO.
With this method, your goal is to identify several moderate traffic, low-competition terms to go after.
You build your pages around these terms, then get as many backlinks to your pages as possible. Use a myriad of free backlinking tactics like social bookmarking, directory submissions and article marketing to boost your rankings.
==> Accelerated SEO
Instead of just going for the low-hanging fruit, you can be more ambitious by using accelerated SEO techniques.
These techniques can help you net high PageRank, high authority links.
One common method of getting high rankings is to do paid blog posts. You pay other bloggers for the permission to write a blog that gets posted on their website. The link back to your site will be in-context and high in PageRank.
Another method of accelerating your SEO growth is to start outsourcing much of the work. By hand, you might only be able to do ten backlinks a day. For just $3 an hour, however, you can create your own mini army that goes out there creating these backlinks for you.
==> YouTube Traffic
Another method you can use to promote your affiliate marketing website is YouTube videos.
Put up innovative, informative and entertaining YouTube videos. Make sure the video is high enough quality that people will want to pass it to their friends.
Then put a link back to your affiliate website in the description box or in the captions.
==> Buying Up Related Sites
Go on Flippa.com and take a look at sites that are related to your industry. Buy them up and use the traffic to your advantage.
You can use the traffic to build an email list which funnels into your affiliate marketing list. You could put a banner ad for your site or an affiliate product on your list.
You could even just 301 redirect the entire site and its traffic to your primary site.
==> Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC advertising is quite difficult to master, especially when it comes to affiliate marketing. There are pitfalls when it comes to finding profitable ROI campaigns, as well as navigating the rules each PPC system has around affiliate marketing.
All that said, PPC is still one of the most lucrative ways of earning revenue through affiliate marketing.
These are some smart ways of promoting your affiliate marketing website, from the innovative to the proven.
Branding Yourself For Success
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Branding yourself solidifies you in your business niche.
It can establish you and your business as a name that can be trusted. Here are some tips to help you build brand success.
What is Branding Yourself About?
When you see the swoosh logo, what does it make you think of? And how about Coca-Cola?
You know the tagline, don’t you? And if we say “You’re in good hands with -” you can probably finish the sentence.
All of these show how a particular brand has influenced not only society but also our idea of what these certain products should be.
For instance, when it comes to photocopying, people use the term “Xeroxed.” Actually, Xerox is a brand name that has become synonymous with the act of photocopying. How is that for brand success?
Branding Yourself as the Brand
Who’s to say that you won’t become as big as Xerox one day? For any business, you start in the same place – building your brand.
Here are some tips to get the branding yourself ball rolling.
* Be real with your customers – Anyone can create a “smoke and mirrors” advertising campaign. You can promise the world and some will believe you. But, when you don’t deliver, your credibility is shot. One way to be real is to put a face on your business. Add your photo or a cartoon likeness. Speak plainly and in simple terms with your customers.
* Branding yourself by making good on your promises – The problem with many companies is poor customer service. If you promise to send a confirmation email after purchase or an answer to an information request, then do so in the time promised.
* Sell your product – Inspire customers to buy by giving them a reason to use your product or service. Describe how their life will benefit from having your product in it. Help the customer make an emotional connection to your product.
* Branding yourself by promoting your product in as many places as possible – When new products come out, do a press release. Promote it on your social networking site, your blog and your website. Create YouTube videos and also podcasts about your products to increase the talk. Don’t forget offline promotion as well.
* Be consistent with your brand – Whatever you decide that branding yourself will stand for, be true to that. Use people and ideas that are in line with your brand to help identify it for your audience.
* Target your customers – Now that you know your brand, you have to connect with the people who “need” what you offer. Use keywords such as Affiliate Marketing to draw your customers to you. Create a list of potentials and then stay in contact with them.
What does your product stand for? Take some time and create your brand. Then, provide quality products that connect with your customers so they almost sell themselves.
If you liked this article about branding yourself let me know by leaving a comment below, or you can like or tweet it if you want.
