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Now more than ever, if you want to be a successful business owner, you need a successful business website. Which means you have to make nice with the search engines. And the long-standing rule of search engine friendliness is to create inbound links — links from other sites pointing to your site.

Ten-ish years ago, when Google started the shift away from code to content (including inbound links) as the preferred way of determining “relevance,” the world changed. Immediately, businesses owners started scrambling, and begging, for every link they could get. Thank goodness that’s not the case anymore! But inbound links are still important. In many ways they’re more vital than ever.

How then, does one go about getting those precious nuggets of hypertext anchor tagging? Social Media maven and “Chief Nut” Kevin Skarritt, our good friend and strategic ally at Acorn Creative, offered up these 10 strategies on his “Nuts and Bolts of Brand” blog. Good guy that he is, he gave us permission to share those key linking strategies with you here. Hit it!

1. BLOG COMMENTS

Go out of your way to read other people’s blogs. Your Mother always told you that reading is good for you. She was right! But, when you do so, be sure to productively interact with those bloggers. It makes them feel good. It validates what they’re writing about. It starts up a relationship between the two of you. AND, here’s the best part, it gives you an inbound link to your site.

2. BLOG TRACKBACKS

Start your own blog and refer to all of those blogs you’re reading in the form of a “trackback” in your posts. Don’t know what this means? Check out the entry for “trackback” on Wikipedia, or go deeper with a Wordpress.org tutorial. However you learn more about this linking strategy, please do, because it’s a smart, easy, and effective way to get your website lots of inbound links.

3. PAY PER CLICK ADVERTISING

Yes, PPC advertising is indeed an added marketing expense. However, it’s a controllable, predictable means to build ROI, and a great way to build inbound links where you have control over the text used in the link tag.

4. PARTICIPATE ON INDUSTRY FORUMS

Similar to blog comments and trackbacks, participating on industry forums will get you hooked up with other like-minded professionals, keep you abreast of current trends, and you get to build your own inbound links in the signature line of your posts.

5. BUILD OTHER PAGES

Some new social networking sites on the web allow you to create content and post it in their domain as new pages. One great example of this is Seth Godin’s Squidoo.com. By creating “lenses” that focus readers on a particular topic of interest, you get to engage readers and create more inbound links to your main site.

6. WIKIS

The concept of a wiki (like wikipedia.org) is that readers also become content contributors. Anyone who is registered can log in and change content. Understand that other readers of this information-rich content have zero tolerance for salesy/advertising tactics, so, be careful with this one. Be purely informative and helpful with your newly posted content. If the content survives peer scrutiny, you’ll have a nice little inbound link that’s potentially seen by millions.

7. SOCIAL NETWORKING

MySpace and FaceBook for sure, but there’s an explosion of social networking web sites out there. Dive in and start participating. Doing so allows you to interact with other professionals and, you guessed it, builds up inbound links.

8. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

Different than social networking, social bookmarking is similar to how you used to bookmark sites in your browser but, instead, you bookmark your favorite sites publicly, in sites like de.licio.us, ma.gnolia.com, spurl.com, rojo.com, Google bookmarks … the list goes on and on. The goal is to have people discover these bookmarks, and then your site. An added benefit to social bookmarking (and blog posts) is you get to “tag” your content with words and phrases that are relevant to the content. These tags are used to identify the content in the search process.

9. ORGANIZED SURFING SITES

This is a variation of social bookmarking. There are sites that organize how people surf the web in an effort to make the process of finding the right content faster and more focused. StumbleUpon.com (available as a Firefox plugin) is one of my favorites but others like Technorati (blog content), Digg (blogs, articles and news stories) and newcomer Trailfire (another Firefox plugin) allow users to power-surf, finding your site via inbound links.

10. LINK BEGGING

Don’t discount it just yet. Asking another site owner for a link sometimes still works. However, with all of the other options listed above, you’ll quickly learn that this tactic is largely time-consuming and unproductive.

Any good car salesman will recite the old adage, “plan your work and work your plan.” This especially holds true for your inbound link strategy. Whether you focus on one or set up a tactic to diversify, divide and conquer, don’t wait. The success of your website — and ultimately, your business — depends on it!

(c) 2007 Epiphanies, Inc. As the “Content Lovers” of Epiphanies Inc., Lani & Allen Voivod help lifestyle entrepreneurs and bold-thinking small businesses “A-Ha Themselves” in fun and profitable ways. If you’d like to see the FREE report that generated over six figures of additional client work in less than two months, you can check it out at http://www.GoNutsin2007.com!

Pagerank

What is Web 2.0…is it something I can see on my website? Does it make people find my website? Is it a program? When web solutions companies offer up Web 2.0 what does that mean I’ll get? These are questions I’ve heard business owners ask when they come across the term Web 2.0. I’ve attempted to explore the term and have found that I’ve heard the term Web 2.0 all too much lately, so I thought I’d share my curiosity with you.

What I’ve learned from my research on this term is that many people, even web experts, know when the term was created but don’t necessarily understand its meaning. Many sources attempt to define the term and many companies use it liberally in marketing their web services to clients, but few understand what all is involved in Web 2.0.

The most thorough source, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2, on Web 2.0 states that Web 2.0 is “an idea in people’s heads rather than a reality. It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download.”

So what I’ve taken from this quote is the single word: interactivity. Users want to interact when they go to a web site. The longer you can keep a visitor on your site, the richer their experience with learning your products, services, and/or information. You can improve your own web site by using the tools to encourage user interactivity. The list below will help you think of a few ways to get started:

Blogs
Forums
Videos (which gets into Web 3.0…more on that at a later date)
Surveys
Articles
Banner Ads
Calendsars
Google tools (map, search, language translator)
RSS feeds

Jenny Field
Account Director
Indy Media Group
jfield@indymediagroup.com
http://www.indymediagroup.com

Pagerank

People all across the internet have been asking about viral marketing. Their are ads everywhere saying that this can generate millions of hits to your site. But what is viral marketing and how do you go about implementing the service to your website or business?

Well first you need to understand the definition of viral marketing. This is the idea that you generate some form of buzz and then send the message out to someone who then sends it out to someone and ect. By doing this it will create exposure to your business and will lead to potential customers. This form or advertising is not really new it was first done with simple word of mouth. Now with the invention of the web, internet viral marketinghas hit the ground running.

So how does viral marketing work when it comes to promoting a website? It was first started with email. A person would first type up something that was news worthy then sent it out to other people hoping that it would catch on fire and spread like a wildfire across the web. If not it will die before it gets started So make sure that what you send is really shocking and eye opening.

Second, to be viral means the the person has to give out the information to others free of charge. If you are paying them to do so then it just paid advertising.

Third, there must be some type of call to action in your message and to the person that you are sending it to. Almost like a chain letter you have to let people know to pass on the message to others and offer to do the same with the person who you are sending it to if they have something to promote. Make sure you include a link back to your website.

Another viral marketing campaign would be to create a free ad template that can be duplicated and sent out to others. You can start your own or jump on someone elses ads. The way this works is that you get five or six, or so, other websites and you create a list of ads. Then send out to people telling them to look at each website for around 20 seconds or so then the next and so on. There will normally be like a counter that will be counting down the seconds so that the person will have to stay on that sight until the timer runs out or you will not get the credit or the code. Pretty much like a traffic exchange if you are familiar with them.

After that you will be given a code once you have looked at all the ads that will allow you to then type in your website ad with your ad being at the top. Then you are given a url that you can sent out to other people.

What happens is that everytime someone else signs up and send an ad your ad will go from first spot to second spot then third spot until you get to the end and then you ad will be gone.

Just thing, If you get ten people to view your ads then get those ten to create their own ads and send them out and they each manage to get ten to sign up and send ads outs and so on, your ad can easily be seen by millions of people giving your website a real work out. You might have to update your servers widthband usage to keep your website from being shut down.

Sure alot of those people who sign up will simply do so just so they can put their ad up but by doing this maybe you can get a fraction of those people who sign up interested in taking a full look later to see what you have to offer. That means you have to make sure that what they see for those 20 seconds, or how ever long you choice, is going to be compelling enough to make then take that second look at your website.

So you think that this is a good idea but there has to be a catch right? Well just with everything else there can be a disadvantage of viral marketing that might hurt your business. If you need some bad viral marketing examples then I can think of one that hurt a movie that was coming out. Remember the movie “Snakes on a Plane”? This movie got all kinds of viral marketing. People take about it for months, made up videos about it, blogged to all their friends and more about this movie. The problem came when the product became so saturated that by the time the movie came out people was over the buzz and had moved on to something else. The movie ended up not doing so well and went to dvd fast after that.

This can also happen to your website if it’s not up and running while the buzz is hot. Make sure that your website is complete and ready for business before you start. Let’s face it, unless your are creating the next better than “Iphone” product or making the latest “John Madden Football Game” you can’t afford to have your buzz waiting for you.

Most importantly, make sure that your website delivers what is promised. If not you will in return get bad viral marketing said about you hurting your websites reputation. You don’t what millions of people telling everyone that you or your product sucks because as you know bad buzz goes around faster than good.

There are lots of viral marketing products out their and they are free to join. All you need to do is look it up on the search engines of your choice. If your website is new or you are having trouble getting traffic to an existing website then give it a shot. It could be the jump start your website needs.

Author’s name is Ellis Jackson Jr who is a website owner who has been helping others build niche websites. If you are interested in finding products to start your own niche website or just need tracffic to your own website then see: Product Reviews.

For more information on niche websites then see: http://www.allproman.com

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Now, that you have someone’s attention, you might think it’s time to make your sales pitch. Hold on! The first product you have to sell on a social networking site is yourself. That means that these types of interactions will take a little longer upfront than conventional methods of marketing where you are trying to contact as many people as possible and then issuing a sales pitch in the hopes you get someone who is ready to buy. That’s a very quick way of alienating all your friends on Many social media sites and they probably won’t come back. Since your friends lend your online presence a degree of credibility and trust, once all your friends leave, you are basically bankrupt on a social network. You might as well leave and start a different profile (although Many social media sites only allows one profile per user) or a use a different site.

So, instead, focus on getting to know your friends a little better and finding out what about their identities has attracted them to you. Then, promote that part of your image more to gain more people from their network to join your own network. You should try to remain in your targeted niche for the products you are selling. So, if you are selling mail order office products, you shouldn’t try to promote an image of non-professionalism and get all your friends from the local pub to join.

Now, if you were selling sporting goods, the same crowd could yield great sales leads and buy a lot from you in the long run. So, do sell your traits, but gear them to your image and the identities of those people you are trying to attract. The more interesting you are to them, the more likely they will tell a friend about what you are doing on your Many social media sites account.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article writing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Writing

Do you want to learn how to build a big online subscriber list fast? Click here: Secrets of List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 9034 articles in print and 14 published ebooks.

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Anyone who is looking to make money online should consider joining some online affiliate programs. They give you the opportunity to create passive income that could still pay big money years after you quit. Here how it works, you promote someone elses product and earn a commission when you make a sale. All you have to do is learn to be an effective marketer.

There are several different ways to market an affiliate program. The most common way is pay per click. Have you ever noticed the sponsored listings at the top and right hand side of all the major search engines. Those listing are paid for by the click. Internet marketers bid on keywords to market affilliate products.

Another way is to build a website entirely focused on the product you are promoting. This is a bit more tedious but can pay serious long term dividends. If you browse the internet, especially pay per click ads when you do searches, you will come across several websites that have been designed exclusively to promote a certain product or group of products. Products of which they earn a high commission on.

Pay per click and website building are by far the most used ways to make money online with online affiliate programs. The problem with pay per click is that it takes alot of research and skill to succeed. It is not designed for the newbie. The upside of it is that you do not have to do as much work. Building a website provides more long term potential.

There are more ways to make money online than the two previous methods discussed. Another way to go about marketing a product is to write articles. Some articles sites allow links to affilliate products and some don’t. Hubpages is probaly the best website thatn you can use to make money. They give you total freedom over what you place in your articles. Another upside of hubpages is that there is no approval process.

If you are interested in writing articles to promote online affiliate programs you can try squidoo and helium. They are two high quality article websites that give you total freedom over what you place in the body. Personally I have had the most success with hubpages. I have made hundreds of dollars from writing articles with easy to use tools.

Although this is highly profitable to almost all people you can expect to start off slow. There is a definitive learning curve when it comes to internet marketing. Alot of people expect to join some online affiliate programs and make a million dollars the next day. It doesn’t happen like that. Every successful internet marketer will tell you that they started off slow at first.

The key to turning it into a big income stream is to stick with it. You will probaly lose money in the first couple weeks. The next couple weeks you will probaly do good to break even. After that everything is usually up. For a beginner I would recommend that you start bidding on keywords. That approach will probably yeild the most success in the beginning. As for the long term building a website would be the better of the two.

Justin is an expert in the field of e-commerce(internet business). If you liked this article perhaps you would like his personal website http://www.myincomespot.com It has the largest amount of free information to make money online. My Income Spot is useful for both beginners and advanced to learn to be successful on the internet.

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