Internet Marketing Articles

Lord & Taylor will re-launch their Internet storefront using the full e-commerce suite offered by iCongo. This includes streamlined order management and shipments, extensive content management capabilities, as well as sophisticated personalization and marketing tools. Lord & Taylor is an upscale specialty department store with 47 stores in nine states and the District of Columbia. Lord & Taylor has built a reputation for attentive customer service and high-quality merchandise focused on apparel and accessories. read more

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Depending on your link building and development strategy, finding the right link velocity (the rate in which you acquire or lose links) can determine how your pages rank respectively in search engines.

Although the title may sound like a jingle, all cliches aside, building the ideal quantity and type of links each month to maintain a stable search engine ranking is a unique formula for each site (which could be 20 links per page or 40 links per month per term for every competitive top 10 keyword).

Although link building is not the “magic bullet” for creating a high ranking position, it’s contribution to the process is undeniable. Finding the elusive number of links for each of your keywords is crucial for managing hang time in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

Here is a basic SEO technique you can use to quickly determine how competitive a keyword is. For example, if a keyword has 10,000 or less competing pages using the exact match form of the term “in quotes” in Google, then hitting the top 10 for a keyword like this would only require 15-20 quality inbound links & a few pages of great content.

If a keyword returns search results “in exact match” in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 result range, that is considered a competitive keyword.

Competitive keywords may require hundreds of links to impact them with an entire series of pages supporting the sites most relevant page via internal and external links. Each market has it’s own unique ranking criteria, but if you are working with a site that has acquired ranking power, acquiring terms under 50,000 results in Google is like picking the low hanging fruit.

To see how competitive some of your keywords are, try looking at your keywords in “exact match” form, just “type your keywords in the quotes instead” then see how many competing pages are targeting that keyword.

In the beginning building links with the throttle wide open and developing a plethora of links is typical. Then after you hit the top 40-50 results (with that page), then ease back and use finesse to climb the remaining positions into the top 10 search results.

Experimentation is the key, and each site reacts differently to different circumstances (so don’t rely too heavily on any one tactic). The key is finding the best line of SEO defense, which is to add a stream of fresh links as well as focusing on link quality above link quantity (all it takes is one from the right source).

Link velocity (the rate in which you gain or lose links) is an important component in maintaining how your pages will pass vital link juice and nourishment to the rest of your site. If you slack off, you lose your footing, or if you create a spike by building links too fast, you could invoke a penalty (and actually lose rankings).

Using deep links (linking to specific pages using optimal anchor text) has a profound impact on search engine placement. Deep linking capitalizes on the perfect marriage of content and strategic link building and hastens the development of authority for your site. As a result, you require less links (per keyword) over time to maintain and defend your position.

When initiating a link building campaign, aligning the fundamental aspects needed to acquire a high ranking position are rather elementary, what may not be so apparent is the amount of time it takes until all of the off-page and on-page criteria align and you gain access to the top 10.

Getting there is half the fun, but staying there requires a constant vigil as the demands for competitive phrases have a high churn rate (top 10 one day slipping 10 positions the next).

In closing, here is one of many methods for determining the best page to build links to with the highest occurrence of the keyword on that page.

Just use Google and add the following search command:

[keyword] site:domainname[dot]com in a search box & hit return (brackets around the keyword are not required and replace the word dot with a period). Then Google will return the page with the highest relevance for those keywords for the respective domain.

The value in this strategy is, the pages lower on the screen in the top 10 results returned are the ones with the least amount of relevance for that term, so you can either develop addition links to them (to build them up), or use the top 2-3 results to add more weight to those pages.

In either case, you entire site gains additional allinanchor relevance (the number and quality of the keywords in the anchor text/link) which is a major facet to defending your position as well as climbing higher up the rungs of the ladder in search engines.

Jeffrey L. Smith is the founder of SEO Design Solutions Online Marketing Company. For Link Building or Link Building Services, SEO Design Solutions provides effective one way link building services for businesses seeking organic search engine placement.

The world of search engine optimisation can be sometimes be seen as an industry that is part science, part art form. Not all realise the consequences of their actions and a certain amount of guesswork can be involved in the process. That said there are those in the optimisation industry that know exactly what they are doing; but for the lay reader, here are ten of the most common myths concerned with search engine optimisation.

The first myth is that when you are involved in the process of optimisation it is a necessity to submit your website URL directly to search engines. Whilst this had been true in the past, when the search engine technology was not very advanced; in the last five or so years it has rapidly become an outdated technique. Fundamentally, carrying out this task will be a waste of time and energy, not to mention money.

The second optimisation myth is that your site must have a Google sitemap. Whilst this may be partially advisable it is not an essential component of your site. A well constructed site that is spider friendly and welcomes the search engines with open arms should negate the need for a sitemap. It is not always a waste of time putting a site map in place however, it will not hurt to put one in place, but it will not however guarantee success.

Constant updating of websites has rapidly become fashionable in the search engine optimisation industry. While updating content regularly may increase the rate at which spiders crawl through your site, it does not always ensure higher rankings. Once again however this does not hurt your site, so if you feel you would like fresh content on a regular basis it is advisable to update frequently.

An ongoing myth in the optimisation industry is that a dedicated pay per click campaign will in fact harm your organic search listings. This is a common misconception amongst those who do not understand the optimisation process. Others even believe that the increased traffic from PPC will in fact benefit your rankings, unfortunately this is also untrue.

There is large amount of fear in the industry that your optimisation efforts should follow search engine guidelines to the letter. Whilst it will not harm your knowledge base to read the guidelines to get an idea of what is and is not allowed, there is no cast iron rule that says these regulations must be gospel. A general rule is that if you optimise a website in a way that benefits both the human user and the search engine spiders, success will be forthcoming. Try not to focus your efforts purely into attracting the spiders and penalties should not occur.

Link buying has long been viewed as a ‘black hat’ optimisation technique that should be avoided unless you want your website to be de-listed. There is little truth in this belief and while the engines do not approve of link buying it is in fact difficult for them to trace a bought link. To remain safe it is advisable not to buy links at all but if you do want to undertake the process, only link to sights that are related yours, otherwise they will simply not be counted by the spiders due to irrelevance.

Headers are becoming increasingly important within the industry. The header tag or H1 can bring good rankings but it is not necessarily foolproof. It is clearly possible to achieve good rankings without an H1 tag, but common practise is to include one anyway. If they are used correctly they will almost certainly benefit your sites’ rankings.

The keyword tag in the Meta information; it has been believed, should contain words used on the page. This is an increasingly obsolete perspective as optimisation specialists are realising that the importance of keywords tags is becoming less and less. While other Meta information is important, this particular tag is usually ignored anyway.

The amount of copy you need on your site does not have to be extremely lengthy; a common myth has been the importance of long paragraphs of content that provide information for both the search engines and human users. Shorter copy can work just as well however; just make sure it’s legible.

The use of long tail keywords is becoming increasingly outdated, especially in the copy of your site. While using these long tail keywords is still used in other optimisation techniques it should be practically ignored for certain aspects of design and optimisation.

These myths are of course conjecture until they have been proved. It is important in the world of SEO to learn on your own merits and not rely too heavily on the findings of others. As stated before it is just as much and art from as it is a science, so trial and error can be an extremely effective method to finding the right path.

Internet marketing expert Thomas Pretty looks at the common search engine optimisation myths and ways to achieve good rankings.

If you have found that the majority of your customers are coming from online sources, then you are going to want to focus the majority of your advertising to online sites. Remember that this can be tricky because if you don’t have a big budget you might believe that advertising is too expensive. However, there are some great ways that you can advertise online without costing yourself too much money, and you should be able to do this very easily.

The first step to making sure that you are able to do online advertising is that you know exactly who you are looking at for your customer base. Sure ,they are coming from online sources. But who are they? What ages are they and what else defines them as people? You want to be sure that you are able to get as much out of it as possible and that you have the best chance to do your advertising in a way that can help you make sure that you are able to get as much out of it as you can.

So, you want to be sure that you know who you are looking for. Then you can begin to target them. Remember that the best way to do online advertising is to have your name and company website and have it linked at another site. This will allow people who are at that site to take a look at your site as well. This is something that you have to be sure of so that you know what you are doing. Therefore, after you have decided who your customers are, you want to figure out where they go. There are lots of different places that will help you figure out where different people go online, so you should be able to use these sources to figure out where your customers are going too. This is something that you can do very easily as well.

After you know where they are going, you can find ways to put your website up there. Buying advertising space is one thing and it might be that you have a little bit of money so that you can do this. If you are going to buy space, be sure that you do so on the pages that have the greatest amounts of hits. Otherwise, you have to do your own advertising for free.

You can advertise your own site for free online in several ways. First of all, be sure that any lists of retailers that do what you do also includes yourself. You can put yourself in directories and make sure that people know you are there. You can also be sure that you have added your name and website to as many different lists as you can. There are lots of ways that you can do this, and it is something that you can do on your own.

Advertising online is something that might take awhile, but you can do it quite easily and you can do it on your own.

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Whether your business has a physical storefront or if your business is run entirely on the Internet, a well built website can make or break business success. There are some tips and guidelines that can assist you in creating a website that is sure to please. In order to achieve this, there are five areas that you want to focus on when creating your site. These areas include a site that is welcoming, clear, customer service, product details and affiliate links. In the next paragraph each of these areas will be discussed to provide a clear definition of each.

Inviting/Welcoming
When a customer enters your site the first impression is visual. You want the colors and print to offer an inviting feel. The first glimpse at your site can lead to further reading or a quick click of the back button. Make sure that you design your sites theme around your product or business. For example: if you have a website that offers children’s products you want a light feel. Colorful and carefree should be the tone of your site. You wouldn’t want monochromatic colors and not photos. You have to fit the feel of the site to the product as well as your target audience.

Clear and Understandable
This area is similar to the above example in the fact that you are once again basing your site set up on your target audience. If you have a business site, be it informational or service offer, it will be more professional and eloquent. If your site is for example a homework help site for teens you want it to appear less adult like but not childlike either. You wouldn’t want to use baby talk but you wouldn’t want to carry words on your site that a teen would have to pull out a dictionary for. Websites are all about suiting your customers likes and needs.

Customer Service
A customer service area should be included. Either a phone number or email address to send questions, suggestions or concerns to. If a customer feels that you want to cater to them they will be much more pleased with your site and become a return visitor. Be sure to set up an auto-responder with your email. This sends an immediate reply to your customers address assuring them that you have received their email, that you appreciate their time to contact you, and a time frame in which you will be able to provide a response to their message. This gives customers a sense of comfort. They see that you are a professional site and they will look forward to hearing from you.

Product or Service Details
The number one thing that will turn a customer away is if they feel that you are hiding or have simply left out information. If your product is appealing enough people will pay any price. If your product seems appealing but they are left with unanswered questions they are likely to visit another business site. If possible provide a product photo, size, shape, color etc. If you are selling a service be specific enough that a customer fully understands a product without rambling on unnecessarily. If they know what they are buying they will buy it.

Affiliate Links
Carrying affiliate links shows a customer that you are not just a ruthless sales person, but that you generally care that they find what they are looking for. If your site sells skin care products and there is a site that offers similar products that you do not carry, this link offers customer the chance to find exactly what they are looking for. They may not purchase a product the first time around, but if they remember your site was helpful they are likely to return. They may even spread news of your site through word of mouth. You just received yourself some free advertising.

If your site is appealing over all and it is truly designed with your target audience in mind than your site will be sure to be a success and create a rise in business profit.

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Owing to the new Google rules on Adwords, you need a website if you are to become a successful affiliate marketer. In the past, you could get away without one, using the direct linking technique. Direct linking means that the surfer is taken directly from your advert to the Merchant’s page.

Generally, it was necessary to use a cloaked link, such as you can get at tinyurl, but it could be done. There were better ways of linking, but they required a website.

Overheads of less than $100 a year

But now you need to bite bullet and get a website. There is no need to spend more than $7 a month for web hosting, and the domain name, which is the name of your website, costs about $10 a year. Not much of an overhead for a business is it? Just under $100 a year, compared with over $10,000 as a minimum for a tiny offline business.

To he fair, you really need an autoresponder, which costs $180-$360 a year, and if you want your website to be designed for you, you could spend $300 a year for hosting instead of $84. That could be good value. Even so, you would spend less than $700 all in.

Keep the website simple

What sort of website do you need? For affiliate website marketing you need a simple website, with the minimum of graphics. The only graphic you need is a header graphic, about 600 x 100 pixels to 750 x 100 pixels. The rest can be done by text. You can get a header logo done for about $25 online, or you can get some graphics software are make your own. It is probably best to buy one.

Get a memorable domain name

First, though, you need to select your domain name. This will need to be unique, so the obvious terms are no longer available, and haven’t been for years. A good solution is to combine your name with affiliate or affiliate dump or affiliates treasure or something like that. Remember that you are building a brand, so whizzbangaffiliate or harrysmith-affiliatenews is better than toptips-affiliatemarketing, which is rather easily forgotten.

With the domain name registered at namecheap or another top-line registrar, you can get the graphics done. After that you just need to write some articles about the products you are marketing. Reviews of products do well. You also need a few articles about the topic itself. Even if you do not know much about the subject you can easily find out by reading three or four pages in Google.

Overall, ten pages is enough, but this needs to include an ‘about us’ page and a ‘privacy policy’ page. The privacy policy page just needs to say that you hate spam and that you will not divulge email addresses to anyone else. Don’t forget the privacy page. You don’t need an ‘about us’ page, but it helps build credibility.

What about layout? Avoid sidebars in bright colours, and make sure that the main text is black on a white background. The whole idea is to draw the surfer to the text and to keep him or her reading. Remember that, learn a bit of copywriting and you will be well away.

For FREE reports and the latest reviews of affiliate marketing products and services go to www.reallyusefulmarketing.com - which is run by John Hartley.