Archive for December, 2005
Sunday, December 11th, 2005
It seems like a funny question to me, but it gets asked a lot. “Where should the SEO copy go on my Web page?” That question gets asked so much because there are several pieces of out-of-date information, rumors and myths with regard to text placement, when writing SEO copy.
For instance, many absolutely swear that the copy has to be as high up on the page as possible for the search engines to find it. Not true. The spiders will find the text regardless of where it is on your page. Others say all your text has to be in one block. Also not true. The spiders will find the text regardless of where it is on your page.
Other statements I’ve heard regarding text placement include:
- Your headline must appear at the very top of the page.
- Copy placed inside tables throws the search engines off.
- Copy must be positioned above the fold to be found by thespiders.
None of these are true. The spiders will find the text regardless of where it is on your page. (Or did I already say that
twice?) This is true in 99.9% of the cases, with only some very rare exceptions.
So where is the best place to put SEO copy on your Web page? Wherever it makes sense to the site visitor!
Spiders will find your text regardless of where it falls on the page. Want proof? Here’s a test. Go to Google and type in any working URL. When the result comes up for that site, click on:”Show Google’s Cache of
” In the box that appears at the top of the next page, click on this option: “This cached page may reference images which are no longer available. Click here for the cached text only.” What do you see?
You see exactly what the search engine sees. If the text appears in this text-only cache, that means Google’s spider can read it and index it.
Put Copy Where It Is Most Beneficial to Your Visitors
Since the engines will find your text regardless of where it falls on the page, your focus should be placed on the site visitor. This is where your focus should always be. The people who have the money come first; the search engines come second. 
If it makes sense for your visitors to see your headline as the first thing on the page, then put it first. If a graphic design element makes more sense, then put that first. If you use photos or other images, include captions so your visitors understand what these photos mean and how they relate to the sales message.
If you have an ecommerce site, create pages for each category of products you offer in order to help guide the visitors’ steps. Then add short copy segments that quickly describe what is offered for each specific product. Even though the copy is scattered all about the page, the engines WILL find it.
When it comes to copy placement on your Web pages, don’t agonize over what the engines want you to do. Give 100% of your consideration to what would be most useful for your visitors and place your copy in those areas. The spiders will find it with no trouble at all.
Karon Thackston is author of “The Step by Step Copywriting Course” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com and How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy).Discover the secrets to creating SEO copy with a perfect balance between keywords and natural language.http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
It is more important to be honest and earnest with your potential customers and clients. They want to know what’s in it for them - not how well you can rhyme words for a clever headline or that you have a witty style of writing. No one cares. They want to know they are doing business with an honest professional who will deliver the product or services he or she sells. That’s it. Period. The end.
But can’t these readers overlook an occasional attempt at a clever headline or witty lead in online copywriting?
Why should they?
Their time is valuable. If they feel like you are wasting their valuable time, they will move on and not ever look back. Remember, your potential online customer is always only one click away from leaving your site, never to return. So, keep your online copywriting focused on the business at hand.
Leaving humor out shows your reader you are willing to give them the respect they deserve as discerning shoppers. It also shows you can be serious about the nature of your product or service. And if you cannot be serious about it, who can be?
Remember that there’s a big difference between humor and catchy, powerful copywriting.
If you insist on using humor in your online copywriting, carefully restrict it. Perhaps you are planning to present subscribers or customers with a monthly newsletter. If your wit is just bursting to get out, reserve yourself a column each week or month just for that purpose. Make sure it’s marked as a column by giving it a header like, “On the Editor’s Mind” or “A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Web Site….” Make it light hearted so your readers will know to expect to read article content that is also light hearted. But when you are writing for an area dealing with business, keep the tone very business like. By doing this, you will earn and keep the respect of your clients and customers.
This doesn’t mean that your online copywriting should be in stilted “corporate speak” or in the third person. No, online copywriting should be casual, informal, aimed directly at the reader, but still business like in nature.
Of course, there may be exceptions. If you’re marketing a clown’s costume designer, a clown joke may be in order. But the majority of shoppers are not looking for a joke to use in their next stand-up comedy routine - they’re looking for a quality product. Even clowns are serious when they’re searching for the next great costume.
In some types of management, humor is a tool recommended to help bond teams. However, when dealing with online copywriting for Internet marketing, you really can’t know much about the other participants. What might be funny to one person could well be offensive to a dozen others. It’s just too iffy to pull humor into your online copywriting both safely and effectively.
Thus, with online copywriting, don’t try to be too clever, or you may find that you are too clever for your own good.
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
* SEO is the process of making changes to the HTML code of your web pages to be content rich in your specific niche and key phrase. This would include such tasks like modifications to your keywords, description, title tags, comment tags, alt descriptions, and title descriptions of anchors and the actual text of your web page.
* SEM on the other had is the process of integrating a variety of methods to insure the SEO work is successful. These methods will include research for your business, competitor analysis, link exchanges, articles, news, newsletters, audience analysis, and ultimately the method employed to generate traffic to your website.
It is the same distinction between the words “marketing” and “advertising”.
* Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.
* Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.
There are two words that are feared in the SEM world: Patience and Change!
You will need ongoing commitment to making search-engine ranking a long-term investment in your website. You will need to give it time and energy - it isn’t a quick fix.
Considerations with search engine patience:
* Search engines often change their ranking formula.
* Each search engine has its own algorithm (formula) to determine site ranking.
* META tag keywords are not a magic bullet to improve your ranking.
* Search engines can take many months to index new information, so patience…patience.
Search engine spiders can be extremely slow to index new information, so be patient! It may take months to see your changes affect your search engine ranking. Remember, a website is a dynamic marketing tool that you are building over time. Treat it well, give it a little love and attention, and your long-term rewards will be well worth your efforts!
If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission software, drop this thought immediately. This brings us to the other feared word, “change”! It is inevitable for technological changes to take effect with search engine algorithms. Websites drop rankings from 8 to zero over night. Because things keep changing, search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends. Watch your page ranking, your website statistics, your Alexa traffic ranking. All of these tools will allow you to find out if there are any significant changes occurring on the web.
Posted in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
Traditional search engine optimization will continue to be part of your efforts excepting for our methodology will change. You will continue to work on link exchanges, keywords, descriptions, titles, headlines, image alt descriptions, comments, and content. Now you will focus your keywords to be very specific and watch you density. Your descriptions will not be as long, but concentrate on more concise descriptions. You will want to watch your HTML coding to make the process easier for the search engine spiders. Try using fewer tables and consider Cascading Style Sheets. The link exchanges will have to be more specific to your industry and with websites that are authoritative in nature. <-->
Authoritative websites is the direction to consider for 2006. Not only making your website an authority for your target market, but to exchange links with other websites that are authoritative for that same target market. What are authoritative websites to link with? Basically there are is a relatively small set of websites that can be trusted as authority, or expert websites. Government sites, university websites, well-recognized news sources, and recognized industry news sources are all examples of sites that can be considered as expert websites. These sites, unlike the average website on the Internet, can be trusted to link honestly.
Take the following example. I recently went to Google, MSN and Yahoo and searched on the term “internet marketing consultants” and the result on the first page for all three search engines were somewhat surprising. Instead of finding a page full of businesses that provide internet marketing services over 75% of the results were websites that were resources for internet marketing. A careful review of each of these websites revealed all of them to be content rich in their field of internet marketing. They did not provide any services other than information for others to use about internet marketing. For the purpose of this writing these results indicate (1) that making your site an authority for your field and industry is very important to achieve top ranking, and (2) you want to seek out these types of websites to create inbound links if possible and feasible. Otherwise engage a reciprocal link exchange.
Getting noticed by authority websites can be difficult, but with some creativity it can be done. If you make your business newsworthy, news outlets within your industry and without will pickup your news story and hopefully link over to your website. Traditional marketing and public relations requires you to make your company known as an authority within your industry. You should want your clients to know that you are the best source for whatever it is you sell, and that they should trust you. You gain this trust by being visible, not just through your website, but through the websites of other trusted sources such as news outlets. These types of marketing methods would include engaging in public relations, networking, attending trade shows, and talking to news sources both within your industry and outside of your industry.
Your website is a business. No different than a retail brick-and-mortar store you will spend as much time working your website as a regular any regular business. Do not believe that the comfort of your home or that you are working with computers and technology you are able to run your business any easier. The only thing that has changed is the venue, everything else is the same. You have to provide quality content, engage in activities that make your website known, and make your website the absolute best in your target market.
Posted in Linking and Publicity, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
Enter the world of company “B” where incremental innovation is ongoing. Company “B” knows the importance of incremental innovation and thereby makes it a part of the job description. When applied to sales and marketing the result is a system that converts more prospects and turn the competition into followers.
This is the approach company “B” uses to thrive and lead the market.
Professional marketers use incremental innovation all the time to increase conversion rate. An example would be testing which headline in a split test converts more prospects.
So how would you go about getting your employees in sales and marketing to commit to your incremental innovation program? Remember, incremental innovation occurs by making a small change then conducting a test against the control then making another change and conducting another test then repeat until you have a well optimized process.
First, your employees need to know how to use their imaginations. Without the use of their imaginations breakthroughs aren’t possible. It is the thinking tool that makes innovation possible. It’s the most potent tool everyone has at their disposal. It’s not money or even superior products.
Second, they need to know how to ask the most appropriate question at each step. Using your imagination is all about asking the right questions at each step of the way which naturally leads to small breakthroughs. Each of these small breakthroughs gives you greater insights into your prospects mind which leads to better marketing and increases in sales.
Third, the incentive for following the innovation program should be one that motivates the staff to act in the way you want them to.
One might ask, why doesn’t company “A” implement the incremental innovation approach? There are several reasons, such as ignorance of the alternatives and ignorance of the ease with which any alternative can be implemented.
A marketing manager from company “A” might state, I know it’s important to innovate but how do I get my employees to innovate and how much will it cost in time and real dollars? Other obstacles include employees who are reluctant to committing themselves to an innovation program. However, if the right incentives are in place few would object.
Imagine if the sales manager had to lay off a few workers in a short while and were to say to them, if you can find a unique way to improve sales, then the additional revenues would help to justify to the higher-ups to keep everyone. In fact, this example was used in Ray Giles book “Turn Your Imagination Into Money”, one of the best books on the use of the imagination in incremental innovation. It’s available at http://www.ImaginationBook.com. Giles shows in an example how quickly sales rose by 20% when one sales manager tried this approach. And best of all it didn’t cost much - no money, only a little time. This is the kind of virtually-cost-free innovation that causes company “B” to excel.
Company “B” excels because it’s committed to an incremental innovations program and your people will take innovation seriously if they realize that as innovation increases so do sales, their commissions and bonuses.
So company “B” has a successful feedback mechanism where everyone wins. The company wins with additional revenues, the marketing manager wins with a bigger bonus, less headache and less pep talk and the sales force wins with greater commissions.
Over time, company “B” will have well tested and highly optimized marketing and sales processes that yield great results. Aren’t these the processes that every company wants? They can be implemented and best of all they are cost-free.
Posted in Advertising | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
No, they have a swipe file of past successful ideas and sales letters that have pulled in millions of dollars. They simply ’steal’ and recycle successful sales literature and some of them charge a fortune for it!
But they know that they are more likely to create a money creating a sales letter this way rather than wasting precious time and resources on creating a brand new piece that has a higher possibility of failure.
So that means even the best marketers and copywriters create copy that fails. It just proves that failure happens to us all at some time. Thus copywriters are intelligent enough to borrow from past successes to make future successes more likely.
So how would you implement this in your web copy?
I’d better make it clear I’m not telling you to copy other people’s sales literature word-for-word thats plagiarism, illegal and we don’t want to go there. ‘Steal’ in this sense means ‘model’. Model your site on past successes.
Okay, so how do you find the top successes in your niche?
Go to your favorite popular search engine like Yahoo.com or Google.com and do a search on the product or service you’re selling.
Example: If you are selling a dog training manual, search through the top ranking sites and look at them. You need to study the layout, format and copy. Then you can rewrite your website copy based on these existing successful websites.
Its best to take a combination of sites and take bits from each of them, rather than just rewriting ideas from just one source.
To ensure that a particular site is successful, pick websites with well known names, as you can safely assume that site has good copy.
Or if you are not sure that a particular sales letter is worth modeling your site on read it. If you read the page and it convinces you to buy the product or at least consider it, you can be sure thats its good copy.
This is not only a fast way to create your sales letter but you also have a better chance at success as modeling successful websites means you should have similar levels of prosperity.
Even if you just remodel your headline from a successful site for a product like yours, you could double your sales overnight! This headline would be already tested from the original site so you know in advance that it works.
If a headline doubles your sales, just imagine what a few other changes based on a successful tested website could do. Best of all the changes would only take a few minutes.
This strategy works for the best marketers and copywriters and there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for you. Its easy, its simple and rolls in the profits. Why work too hard and suffer too many trials and errors when this strategy is at your finger tips.
You can use this strategy for writing adverts, articles, emails and practically all you marketing literature. Remember it and use it well.
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2005
The Link Exchange Process
There are four steps in the link exchange process. This assumes you are not using link farms or other short-cut methods of link exchanges. If you do not use short-cut link exchange methods you will reap the triple-rewards we discuss in this writing, rewards that short-cut link exchange methods will not provide you.
1. The first step in the link exchange process is to ask the destination website if they wish to exchange links with you. You do not want to add their link information to your site at this time since you do not know if they would like to exchange links. You may have a lower ranking, you may not be in the same industry, and/or there may be a certain level of competition.
2. If they accept, then you would add their URL, title and description, provided by them, to your website.
3. Next, you inform them of their link on your website and request they add your link information to their website. You would now provide them your URL, title and description.
4. Once they have added your link information to their website they would then notify you of the completed process.
For purposes of this article, we will not discuss other details of the link exchange process in this writing. Details of the link exchange process can be found in abundance on the web covering details of maintaining email addresses, link urls, monitoring methods, etc.
The Quad-Exchange
If you take a look at the four steps above you may notice in at least two of the steps above the destination website will visit your website. Once to determine if they wish to exchange links with you and the other to confirm their link is on your website. How do we benefit from this process?
1st Exchange Value
The most obvious is that you are indeed completing a link exchange, thus increasing your link popularity on the web and helping your page ranking.
2nd Exchange Value
You are generating traffic for each link exchange you request to your website. The traffic is creating unique visitors and from a variety of locations.
3rd Exchange Value
The product or service you are selling is of value to the destination website. They may likely become a customer or a business partner to refer business to you. Seek out your link exchanges that have this type of potential.
4th Exchange Value
How about creating credits for traffic exchange services? Lets take, for instance:
Exit Exchange You can open an account with them at their website: here
They will provide you a code that you can add to all of your link pages. As visitors come to your link pages a pop-under will appear creating traffic for you on the Exit Exchange network of 80,000 websites.
Can we benefit further from this in a subtle way without making our link exchange partners frustrated by bombarding advertising? Certainly. Traffic Swarm provides a subtle method of setting up both referrals and traffic. You can visit them at here.
By now you are probably thinking of a variety of other methods to consider for gaining the best value from your link exchange process. Certainly there are many other similar ideas you can employ. Make your link exchange page useful to your link partners. They could be seeking other marketing methods and would certainly try any recommendations you have on your website.
Please be considerate when employing these methods on your website. If you do too much and the link partner is annoyed then they may very easily decide to not engage in the link exchange process. One pop-under everyone is willing to endure. More than that and you will drive traffic away, not to, your website. Instead, use some of the real estate on your link pages to recommend other services.
We hope we have given you something new to think about regarding the link exchange process and certainly recommend that you visit us at SmartFinds to learn more about our Internet Marketing Strategies.
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2005
Before you submit your site, go through your entire site and ensure that there are no missing graphics, no links leading to empty or non-existent pages and no “Under construction” symbols. Also, check for typos and grammatical errors. Furthermore, your site must provide good content. If your site simply contains links to various affiliate programs, you will find it difficult to get through. The Open Directory does not mind sites containing links to affiliate programs, as long as you provide proper content.
You now need to select the two most important keywords for your site based on their popularity. If you don’t yet know the keywords which are applicable for your site, have a look at my article on “Choosing the correct keywords for your site”, available at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?3455_d&keywords.htm
In this article, I have mentioned that while selecting the keywords for your site, you should look at both the popularity of the keywords as well as their competitiveness. However, for the purpose of this article, don’t worry about the competitiveness - select keywords only on the basis of popularity.
We now discuss how you should write the Title and Description of your site’s listing in the Open Directory.
You don’t really have much choice regarding the Title as the Open Directory insists that the Title be the official name of your site. There is no way around it.
When you write the description, your aim should be to make the Open Directory editor’s job as easy as possible. You should not give the editor the feeling that he/she needs to edit your description in any way. The moment an editor starts to edit your description, you risk having your keywords removed from your description.
Your description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all about and contains the two keywords you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of the description. However, your description should not just be a list of keywords - the description that you use should be a proper sentence and should be grammatically correct.
Broadly, here are the rules that you should remember when forming the description:
i) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all about. Things like “Have a look at our site” or “Welcome to my site” does not tell a visitor what your site does.
ii) Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using ALL CAPS or exclamation marks. Phrases like “The best web site dealing with widgets!!” or “Offers the BEST QUALITY, CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere” are inappropriate.
iii) Don’t capitalize every word in your description - capitalize only the first word. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.
iv) Write the description in the third person. Don’t say “We offer financial planning and credit counseling services”, say “Offers financial planning and credit counseling services.”.
v) Don’t make your description too long - limit yourself to
15 words at the most. If you are lucky, you may be able to get accepted with a description longer than 15 words.
However, longer the description, higher the probability that the editor will want to edit it.
vi) Check your description for typos and grammatical mistakes.
vii) End your description with a period. If the editor has to add the period to the end of your description, she may also end up editing the description, which is not what you want. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact description that you had written in order to ensure that your keywords are not removed from the description.
Now, we come to how you can select the right category for your site. Go to the Open Directory, and search for the two keywords you have established. Does a particular category come up at the top for both the keywords? If so, go to that category, and see whether the sites present in the category are similar to yours. Also see whether that category has a Description and/or a FAQ. Read them and find out whether that category is applicable for your site. If so, this is the category you should submit your site to.
If different categories come up at the top for the two keywords, go through all the categories and find out which is the most appropriate category among the different categories.
For some keywords, you will find that the Open Directory does not display any categories. In this case, find out which category most of the top sites belong to and submit your site to that category, assuming it is applicable for your site.
Once you have selected the right category, click on the “add URL” link at the top. Type in the address of your site in the first text box, the official name of your site in the next text box, the description that you have earlier developed in the third text box and your email address in the fourth text box. Although the Open Directory says that including the email address is optional, I would recommend that you include it - if, for some reason, your site is not accepted, the Open Directory editor may want to tell you why your site has not been accepted.
What to do if your site is not accepted
After submitting your site, go to the category where you have submitted your site every day and see when your site gets listed. If you find that your site is not in that category, it may so happen that you have been placed in a different category. Type in your domain name in Open Directory’s search box and see whether your site comes up in the results. I have seen some sites getting accepted within 1 day and some sites in about 2-3 weeks.
If your site has not been listed after three weeks, then re-submit it to the same category and wait for another three weeks. If your site is still not accepted, then have a look at your site again. Does it contain any missing images or links, links to empty pages or under construction signs? Does it provide good content? Does it have any spelling or grammatical errors?
If you are absolutely convinced that your site is eligible for being accepted by the Open Directory, then the fact that your site is not being accepted may signify one of two
things:
i) The editor of that category is inactive, i.e. he/she has not been reviewing sites for a long time.
ii) He/she is your competitor, and does not want to list you.
In this case, the first step is to write to the editor of the category. Scroll down to the bottom of the category to which you are trying to submit your site and click on the name of the editor. If that category does not have an editor, go to the category above that in the hierarchy. For instance, suppose you are trying to submit to the
Computers: Consultants: Business Systems category. At the time of writing of this article, that category did not have an editor. In this case, you should go to the Computers:
Consultants category and click on one of the editors there.
Click on the “Send to editorname” link, and in the Comments field, write a very polite message to the editor. Tell her that you have been trying to submit your site to the Open Directory and you have been unsuccessful. Give her the complete details of your submission, i.e. the category to which you submitted, your URL, the Title and the Description that you used and the dates on which you submitted. Ask her as to whether there are any mistakes that you are making and whether she would be kind enough to point out the mistakes to you so that you can correct them.
If, after two weeks, you don’t get any reply from the editor and are not accepted into the Open Directory, then look for another category which is applicable for your site using the method outlined earlier and submit your site to this category.
Posted in Email Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, December 2nd, 2005
Want to increase your online sales? Make sure your offer is one they can’t pass up!
Any offer you make through your Internet copywriting needs to be worth the readers’ time. Time is valuable and there is no bigger waste of time - for you as the creator or for your reader - than a worthless offer.
A number of years ago, a newspaper advertising sales rep went to her boss, disgusted that her client would not buy the ad schedule she pitched. It turned out that the last time the client ran an ad - five years before - “I didn’t get a single result from my coupon” that he ran way back then. The coupon was for a free coffee refill… something that was already common practice at the restaurant. Honestly, who would bother?
“Go back and tell that man we’ll run his ad for free if he will live up to the offer we create,” was the ad manager’s response. From there, he proceeded to tell the young sales rep to tell the client that the coupon would read “Bring this in for $1.00 in cash.” So, she did.
The client naturally refused because he knew he would have too many takers. What he finally admitted to himself is that his advertising did not work because his offer was lousy. Keep this business owner’s woes in mind as you plan to create your own irresistible offers with your Internet copywriting.
Make the offer one that is worth the time it takes to respond. A “Free 60 day trial” is a pretty good offer for an online program. What kind of offers can your business make?
The key to getting readers to respond to your offers is to make them irresistible. Can you afford to knock several dollars off the fee for your product or service? Or maybe you can make a strong guarantee, making your product or service almost risk free. Transferring the risk from the customer to you will help remove resistance to your offer.
Whatever it is you decide to offer, honor the offer at all costs. Keep your word and potential customers will quickly fall into place as current customers spread the word.
If you have never done any Internet copywriting before, don’t worry about it. No one knows your product or service as well as you do. Because of your passion for the product or service you are selling, you know it better than even a professional copywriter. Let that passion lead your Internet copywriting as you work to create the perfect offer that your potential customers just cannot refuse!
If you need some help creating an irresistible offer for your Internet copywriting, ask yourself, “What would make me buy?” Think about your answer. Is it do-able? If so, let that be your irresistible offer.
You can always make it available for a limited time (another good way to get people to act quickly) in case you decide the offer is too good to be very profitable.
Add a sense of urgency to your offer to get people to act immediately. If they put it off, they are likely to forget about it and you end up losing the sale. Adding a sense of urgency can be done by limiting the quantity or time of the offer or both. For example, the special offer is good only for the next 100 people who order, or the offer expires in 48 hours. You can even use both to heighten the sense of urgency.
In summary, make your offer irresistible. Make it worth the effort to the customer to place the order. Transfer the risk from the customer to you and add a sense of urgency. Then be sure to live up to what you have written in you copy. If you do these thing, you’ll see your sales skyrocket!
Copyright 2005
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments »
Friday, December 2nd, 2005
What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to you.
A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.
In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I start with a method that you shouldn’t bother using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.
1) Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA) pages
A common misconception among many Internet marketers is that while FFA pages may not directly bring in traffic to your site, it will help to improve the link popularity of your site, and hence, will indirectly bring in traffic through the search engines.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Most FFA pages can contain only a certain number of links at a time. This means that when you submit your site to a FFA page, your site will be placed at the top of the page. However, as more and more people submit their sites to the FFA page, your site will be pushed down, and finally, when it reaches the bottom of the page, it will be removed.
Now, since you can bet that plenty of other people are also submitting their sites to the FFA pages, your site will remain in these pages for only a short span of time. Hence, in order to ensure that the search engines see your site if and when they come to spider the FFA page, you will need to ensure that you submit your site to these FFA pages on a regular basis - at least once a week.
Even if you used an automatic submission program to do it, can you imagine a worse way to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore, many search engines recognize these pages which only contains links to other sites as FFA pages and may completely ignore them. And while I haven’t yet seen any evidence that submitting to the FFA pages will actually penalize your site, there is every possibility that this might happen in the future.
Hence, when it comes to FFA pages, my advice is simple:
don’t even think about them.
2) Starting an Awards Program
A moderately effective method of improving the link popularity of your site is to start an awards program. You can have web sites which are related to yours apply for an award from your site. The sites which win the award get the chance to display the logo for your award. This logo is linked to your site, preferably to a page which contains more information on the award.
If you publish a newsletter, consider declaring the winners in your newsletter. You can also perform a review of the winners’ sites in your newsletter. This adds useful content to your newsletter and also gives more webmasters the incentive to apply for your award, since you may review their sites in your newsletter. This also gives them the incentive to subscribe to your newsletter to see if they win the award.
Make sure that you give awards to only those sites which deserve to win. If you give your award to sites which don’t deserve it, your award will have little credibility, which will, in turn, hurt the credibility of your company.
Furthermore, make sure that the logo you design for the award looks professional. If it doesn’t, not many webmasters will want to display it in their sites.
3) Giving testimonials
This may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials for products or services which you find useful can be another moderately effective way of improving the link popularity of your site. If you really like a product, simply write to the company and tell them why you liked the product so much and how it has helped you. Chances are, the company will write back to you to thank you for your comments and will ask you for permission to display your comments in their web site. Tell the company that you have no problems if they publish your comments, but request them to add a link to your site along with the testimonial. There is every possibility that the company will agree since publishing the URL of your web site gives more credibility to the testimonial.
Of course, please don’t go about giving testimonials to every company you can locate just because it will improve your link popularity
5) Starting a Link Contest
A good method of improving the link popularity of your site is to give away prizes to other webmasters if they link to you. The prizes that you give out should ideally be something which other webmasters will find valuable enough to want to link to you, but which do not cost you too much.
For instance, if you publish a newsletter, and have unsold ad inventory, you can give away some free advertisements in your newsletter to the winners. If you sell a software (or an ebook), you can give away a free copy of your software or ebook to the winners, since it doesn’t cost you anything to produce an additional copy of digital goods like software and ebooks.
Link contests work best if you run the contest on a continuous basis and if you declare new winners frequently.
If you run the contest for a few months, and then stop it, the webmasters who had linked to you will all remove their links. However, if you run it on a continuous basis, and declare new winners every month or so, the webmasters will have the incentive to keep their links to your site.
6) Writing articles and allowing them to be re-published
This is by far one of the best ways of improving the link popularity of your site, and one of my favorites. Whenever I write an article on search engine placement, I first publish it in my newsletter and then I publish the article in my site as a separate web page. I also submit it to the following article submission sites:
http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/submit.shtml
http://certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm
Many webmasters and ezine publishers frequent these article directories in search of articles. Submitting my articles to these directories gives them the opportunity of re-publishing my articles. While I have had some success with each of the above directories, by far the best among them is the ezinearticles.com directory.
Now, at the end of each article, I mention that people are free to re-publish the article as long as they include my resource box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article. I always include the URL of my site in the resource box. This means that whenever someone publishes one of my articles in his/her web site, I have another site linking to my site.
Also, many ezine publishers archive their ezines in their web sites. If they have re-published my article in a particular issue, I again get a link.
Writing articles is also an excellent viral marketing tool.
As some webmasters and ezine publishers publish my articles, other webmasters and ezine publishers will read my article. Some of them, in turn, will publish my article, which will again be read by other webmasters and ezine publishers, some of whom will publish it… and so on.
Also, since only web sites related to mine would be interested in publishing my articles, all these links tend to come from related sites, which, as I mentioned earlier, are more valuable than links from unrelated sites.
Writing articles, of course, has another very important benefit - if you write good articles, it makes you known as an expert in your field. This helps to improve your credibility, which makes people more comfortable about buying your products or services.
Some notes about writing articles:
i) I have learnt through experience that some webmasters will publish other people’s articles and will display the complete resource box but will not link to the URL mentioned in the resource box. In order to prevent this, you need to explicitly state that the article can be published only if the URL mentioned in the resource box is linked to your site.
ii) Your resource box should not be too long - it should be no more than 6 lines long, formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise, other webmasters and ezine publishers will hesitate to publish your article.
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