e_Marketing

I am often asked: "How can I put my own video on my website?"

There are two distinct issues you have to address, and for the newbie both of them can be pretty overwhelming.

First, there is the little problem of actually creating the video. I don't want to get into production in this post. I'll save that for later. Right here I want to address the second issue...

How do I get my video on my website?

The first thing you have to do is choose whether you want to self-host (host it on your own site, or another site you have access to) or use one of the video sharing sites such as Youtube. (I will use "Youtube" as a short form for "Youtube or other video-sharing sites".)

The advantages of self-hosting are that you have full control over the way it will appear, what the thumbnail will look like, and a few other things. You will also not get the Youtube branding or accompanying ads that they are often putting with videos now.

Read the rest of Creating a Video to Put on Your Website...

SEO Strategy - Check out the new video offering tips and strategies for optimizing videos to get traffic and search engine exposure. It's all about titles, tags, descriptions and thumbnails.

Check out the video at SEO for Video, Part 2

Wow, it's been almost two months since my last post. I can't believe it. I've been busy developing a new service called Linknet Video.

Here's the video ad...

Linknet Video is not just another video sharing service. It is a video production and traffic generation service. We create regular videos on interesting features and then embed client video ads into them. For more information see Linknet Video.

Here's a great tool I use to speed up the task of posting to blogs. It's called w.bloggar As part of our service we have quite a few different blogs that we post to, and w.Bloggar can interface with (almost) all of them. This eliminates having to actually log in to each blog. You can do it all from one desktop program.

Here is a list of 24 "dofollow" bookmarking sites. (Note: some of these may have changed to "no follow" by now.)

That means if you open an account and bookmark sites using these bookmarking services, you will get some link value from your bookmarks. This can be very significant if you are trying to get some SEO value out of your bookmarking efforts.

You can also increase the link value of your public bookmark archives by providing some links to them. Here, for example, are two of mine:

Rick's Furl.net bookmark archive

Rick's Bibsonomy.org bookmark archive

According to a report at mashable.com, the board of directors at Yahoo is deeply split over the current Microsoft bid to buy the company. The old guard, if you can call them that, led by Yahoo co-creator Jerry Yang are trying to hang on against the evil Microsoft. But current chairman Roy Bostock is in favor of the bid and has the support of most of the board.

Isn't it obvious now that Yahoo is in play, this bid, or something like it, will inevitably go through. And doesn't Yahoo stand a better chance of retaining a certain amount of autonomy under Microsoft than they do under some other company that doesn't have MS's deep pockets?

Frankly, I say anything that challenges Google's dominance in the online advertising area is a good thing. All we care about are valuable, legitimate "clicks", right? And quite a few marketers find their ROI from both Yahoo and MS PPC ads better than from Google.

Here's a collection of photoshop videos that will be useful to anyone who uses or wants to use Photoshop. Check out the free photoshop videos here.

If you want to get involved in social networking for marketing purposes very quickly, check out the resources at Social Power Linking - and especially the ASC Buzz Group. The ASC Buzz Group is a group of marketers who are all committed to helping each other improve their exposure in social networking sites.

Stumbleupon is one of those Web 2.0 sites that can give you lots of semi-qualified traffic very quickly if you know how to work the system. And sometimes even if you don't know how to work it. It is still one of the biggest sources of traffic for one of my sites and I have basically been ignoring it since I first did a bit of dabbling about two months ago.

If you're like me and know very little about StumbleUpon, then this series of blog posts should help a lot. RobbDogg has written an ongoing series of posts about StumbleUpon where he describes how it works, how to get friends and fans, how to get involved and use that involvement to get exposure for your own stuff.

Check out Robb's StumbleUpon series here.

We use article marketing extensively to build links both for our own sites and for clients. Article marketing has two objectives:

1. To drive traffic to specific target pages, and

2. To build links to target pages and enhance the SEO focus of those target pages.

Here are some tips to increase the SEO impact of your article marketing efforts. Some of these things may seem obvious, but it is surprising how often they are not done by article writers.

1. Make sure your target page (the page you are linking to) is properly optimized for a specific keyword phrase.

2. Include that keyword phrase in the article title.

3. Use that keyword phrase in the link or links pointing to your target page (as anchor text).

4. If you are submitting your article in different versions - using a service such as the Content Spooling Network or Unique Article Wizard - include some variations in your anchor text. For instance, if the keyword phrase you are targeting is "golf swing improvement", use variations such as "golf swing tips", "golf swing advice", or even just "golf swing."

5. When distributing your article make sure you place it on the sites that Google considers the most influential - such as ezinearticles.com - Some distribution services will distribute your article to lots of lower tier sites but leave these better sites out. For a partial list of such sites see SEO and Article Marketing.

Here's a keyword tool from none other than Microsoft that will give you the same kind of data you get from Google Trends. It's called the adCenter Labs Keyword Forecast tool.

There are major differences between this Microsoft offering and Google Trends. First, the data used by MS (right now anyway) seems to be at least 6 months old. Google Trends gives you a more current trend line, but no actual search numbers. So you aren't given any idea how many searches are done for specific terms.

The MS tool will also let you graph two or three search terms together so you get an idea of the relative number of searches done for those terms.

Click on the image above to watch a short video about MS Keyword Forecast.

Here's a very useful list of 125 social bookmarking and networking sites.

The article by Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal also makes a note of some of the more influential sites, as well as some niche-oriented sites that might be especially effective in particular areas of interest.

Yesterday I was sifting through some of the recent emails I've received from marketing guys pitching the latest revolutionary product. I restrained my delete finger long enough to take a close look at Jack Humphrey's Social Power Linking.

This is a bunch of materials about using Web 2.0 sites for marketing and traffic generation, which were turned into a membership site. The site contains tons of reports, audios and videos as well as a members forum where you can share ideas and insights.

With all the materials available for downloading right off the bat you get your $29/mo back in about 5 minutes.

I haven't had time to absorb many of the materials, but I did take a look at the overview of StumbleUpon called "StumbleUpon Traffic Stampede". This is exactly what I needed to help me figure this site out without spending hours and hours to get going. It describes how SU works and what you should and should not do to get involved.

There are similar reviews for Digg, Delicious, Propeller, Squidoo and others.

As with all the Web 2.0 sites, it's all about content and participation, and these reports make that perfectly clear. They are not guides describing how to spam social networking sites. Quite the contrary. They describe how to network, make connections, get your own material noticed, and so on.

I highly recommend Jack Humphrey's Social Power Linking.

I've been experimenting with different ways to post to various bookmarking sites. Somehow I stumbled onto Bookmarker Demon and liked what I saw.

This little software program helps you overcome the two biggest problems with posting to bookmarking sites. First it helps you register for multiple sites. It makes a very tedious process about as simple as it could be.

Second it helps you post URLs. You just punch in a URL. The program goes and gets the meta-data right from the site you want to bookmark, including Title, Description, and Tags (keywords). You then add variations because it will randomize your titles and descriptions.

Then you click and away it goes.

Right now it posts to about 20 different sites, and has the potential to post to many more once I understand better how it works.

We expect to be bundling this service in with our website promotion services in the very near future.

Check out Bookmarker Demon.

As part of my initiation into various Web 2.0 marketing strategies I've started posting some of my previously recorded audios as "podcasts".

To tell you the truth, I've never really understood the whole podcast thing. It has always seemed to me that the concept of a downloadable audio file is actually a step backwards from the "play it live" idea where you just stick the file on your site and let people listen to it. It makes a lot more sense to me to put your audio message on your website or blog, and feed it through a simple streaming program like Wimpy. So rather than downloading the file and then listening to it on a dedicated device like an ipod or mp3 player, you just listen to it on your computer on the fly.

I'm sure this just shows my limited understanding of the "power of podcasting", and shows how deeply I am mired in Web 1.0 thinking where everything is just limited to my little corner of the online world.

But I'm trying hard to change. I can see that the first thing "podcasting" can do for you is take your little audio productions out of your basement or office and put them in a public environment where others can listen to them, download them, comment on them, etc.

I guess this is why podcasting as Web 2.0 is more than just making files available for people to listen to. It is putting them in an environment - the Web 2.0 environment - where you share them with specific communities of people. And that seems to be the whole thing with Web 2.0 - exposing yourself to others, sharing, participating.

On the suggestion of Clive at webel.biz I've created an account at podcastblaster.com and set up my first legitimate podcast. As I understand it, podcastblaster is primarily a searchable directory for podcasts - a place to list them where others can see them - including the search engines.

So that means you can get exposure, and you can also generate links that will have an influence on the search engines. So you get exposure from two directions at once - you're in the directory, and you're in the search engine indexes as a podcast publisher. Nothing other than listing yourself has actually changed. The files are still on your server, and when people listen to them they are getting them from you, not some third party podcast repository.

Podcastblaster also helps you create "feeds". In this case a feed is just an .xml file that contains information about your audio recordings. Once you generate the basic .xml file you can either go back to podcastblaster and modify every time you add content, or just manually edit it, since the .xml file resides on your own server.

All the .xml "feed" does is list your recordings, show information about who produced them, what they are about, where they can be listened to, etc. When you do new recordings you can add them to your .xml "feed" just by editing the .xml file.

Here's an example. This is my series of four recordings which I call "Building Effective Real Estate Websites", and the feed can be accessed by clicking on this button:

Building Effective Real Estate Websites

But modifying your .xml file will not update your listing on podcastblaster.com - to do that you have to log into your account and enter changes, additions, etc.... Here's what my listing looks like:

Building Effective Real Estate Websites

Here's a short video that explains SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is not that difficult. It is common sense, or so claims this guy (me).

This video is from Linknet Promotions - online promotion

I've started accumulating Web 2.0 information, ideas and techniques at another of my marketing blogs.

Here is a post where Ed Dale of the Thirty Day Challenge shows how he is using Facebook as a jumping off point for Web 2.0 posting.

I spent some time this evening reworking the affiliate program for Linknet Promotions. Have a look. We're especially targeting marketing consultants, web designers, etc. who provide services to clients but don't particularly want to get involved in link building or off page SEO.

We've assembled quite an assortment of products all aimed at building links, improving SERP positioning, and driving traffic, and they are ideally suited for web service and marketing people to resell or recommend to clients.

Sign up for our affiliate program here.

I've been busy applying some new SEO principles to a few of our more important sites. The most recent is our real estate promotion website.

Of course these are not "new" SEO principles. These are just new insights I have had since studying various things on the importance of narrowly focusing your sites on more specific rather than general keywords.

Frankly I have always assumed that a healthy does of PPC was necessary to get the right kind of traffic. But I am changing my mind. I now have some definite targets in mind for about 10 different websites and three or four different blogs that I have simply not had time enough to properly focus.

We'll see if the "new" principles work. You can see a fairly detailed description of these principles at my online promotion site.

I read recently that it helps to establish one's credibility as a blogger if you create an "About Me" page, and fill it with impressive sounding stuff. This is my About Me page...

I think of myself as part writer, part musician, part philosopher and part adman. But mostly adman.

My adman career began when a friend and I provided the ads between segments of a show our Grade 10 Class put on many years ago. It has continued in fits and starts ever since.

I studied philosophy in University - mostly political philosophy. But I felt especially attracted to the philosophy of education because it has always seemed to me that education has a lot in common with persuasion and propaganda and therefore with advertising.

I like advertising, think it is reasonably important, and also think far too many people are naively unware of how much their attitudes are influenced by it.

Many people think advertising is, by its very nature, manipulative, deceptive, and misleading. I don't agree.

I also don't agree with those who assume it is acceptable to mislead others as long as they don't tell out and out lies. Many people in internet marketing are like this. The claims they make are often nonsensical and completely indefensible and yet many of us think wholesale exaggeration of this sort is perfectly acceptable. Usually because we think it is not possible to distinguish between exaggeration that is informative, and exaggeration that misleads and deceives. I don't believe it is very difficult at all.

I also don't like it when people say "you are entitled to your opinion." What they mean is "I don't want to discuss this with you any further, and I am too lazy, undisciplined, or close-minded to think about this topic anymore. So you are entitled to your opinion."

Thanks. I really appreciate that.

But the truth is I do not subscribe to the theory that at some point "we must just disagree." I know most people these days believe this, but I am not one of them. This suggests that at some point dialogue must end because there is nothing we can talk about, or we are too unreasonable, too unimaginative, too lazy, or too fixated on some hidden agenda to continue talking. This is what leads to disputes and ultimately to war, and why some guys think it is better to fire missles at "implacable enemies" than to engage in dialogue with them.

Rick Hendershot,
November 25, 2007
Conestogo, Ontario, Canada

After reading the excellent materials from Jeremy Lawrence describing how you can generate traffic from craigslist.org I've been looking for an opportunity to do some testing.

I'm sure a lot of you know more about CL than I do, but the truth is I had never even looked at CL until about a month ago. I'm not a big fan of buying stuff from classified ads. But apparently millions of people are since there's an active craigslist site in virtually every significant ciy across North America - and a bunch in the rest of the world too.

My first "test", if you can call it that, was to try to get rid of an old claw foot bath tub we had taken out of commission in my dad's house near Fort Erie, Ontario. I placed an ad in the Toronto edition of the site: "Free Claw Foot Bath Tub". We just wanted someone to haul it away and have been told there are all kinds of people who cherish these old things. Toronto is roughly two hours from Fort Erie, so I figured only people who were seriously interested would call.

My brother is the contact in tub city, and even before I told him about the ad he had received two phone calls - within about two hours. The calls have continued to come (who can resist the allure of a "free claw foot bath tub"), but so far no takers.

After that limited success story (its traffic we're after here, right) I decided to try promoting some of our display graphics products. I placed five ads in cities across Canada, each with a toll free number and a link to one of our product sites.

Now these are narrowly targeted products with a limited appeal to what I assume are the typical craigslist readers: consumers looking for cheap stuff. But so far those ads have pulled in more hits than yahoo and msn. Of course Google is still the big traffic generator (relatively speaking) - but that is at least partially due to our Adwords campaign.

So clearly craigslist will generate hits. What the conversion rate for those hits will turn out to be is another question. But hey, the ads are free. So with a bit of work you can start generating traffic using craigslist.

Before jumping into CL I recommend you have a look at these two products:

Craigs List Videos - Where you should place your ads, how often, what you should say, and what you should not say. The CL folks don't like certain kinds of ads (affiliate links, for instance) and these short videos give you the inside scoop.

AdBomber - Once you are convinced you want to do ads in CL on a regular basis, have a look at this product. Adbomber automates (as much as possible) the process of placing multiple ads in Craigslist, Back Page, Google Base and Kijiji. The FAQ on the site also contains a lot of useful information about different strategies for placing ads.

It is interesting how many people get into online promotion without doing a proper keyword analysis. Every time we get a new client we analyze their keywords just so we can make intelligent suggestions and focus our article writing, blog posting and other marketing efforts on the correct terms.

Over the years we've use different tools for keyword analysis, but the one we like the best is Adword Analyzer. You can do a targeted analysis of keywords that shows you how many searches have been done in the last period, how many sites are competing for that keyword, and how many advertisers are paying for Adwords and Overture ads targeted at that keyword.

That kind of information is invaluable whether you're considering running an article marketing or PPC campaign. It shows you which keywords you can focus your content towards and dominate in the SEs.

With all the options available to marketers these days, this kind of tool is more important than ever.

This little button in the sidebar indicates that I respond to comments when they are meaningful and sincere. By "respond" I mean I will return a comment to your comment, and I will try my very best to visit your blog and post a comment on one of your posts.

I've also turned off the "nofollow" tag, which means that you will get some link value from your comment - assuming you leave a web address.

Of course spam comments are not welcome and will be deleted.

If you've been involved in website marketing or online promotion for more than two weeks you surely must have heard or read that "content is king."

It is easy to gloss over the significance of this... to just say, "Good good, I know and I believe" and then do nothing about it. Because we get caught up in the mad scramble to promote our websites by getting "traffic" or "links", and we forget that nobody will visit our site - or if they do, they won't stay long - if we don't have something helpful or useful for them to see, read, watch or hear.

This is the other side of the Search Engine Marketing problem that is too often misunderstood or its significance too often underestimated.

Generally speaking website promotion will be successful and web traffic will come your way because people are interested in what you have to offer. The search engines analyze your content, draw conclusions about it, and then reward you for what they take to be the value of what you are offering.

Many of us in the web promotion business see Page Rank as a direct reflection of this reward. But Page Rank is only an indirect indication of your site's "value" as determined by Google.

It is much more important to score high in the search engine results for your primary key terms. This will turn directly and almost immediately into traffic, will begin to attract links, and will in turn influence your Page Rank.

This is what we call a Content Oriented Approach to Search Engine Marketing. Here is a basic outline of how it works:

1. Do a detailed analysis of your primary keywords, and settle on specific keyword groups. Each keyword group should be targeted to just one fairly narrow niche.

2. Create "web properties" that you want to drive traffic to. This is normally your primary website, but should also include other supporting sites such as a tightly focused blog, and/or a Squidoo lense. In other words, each keyword group might have three or four focused web properties all of which are aimed at pulling traffic on that keyword group.

3. Build content for each of your web properties. This is critical. Make your website's home page tightly focused on your primary keyword. Employ standard SEO strategy. If your primary keyword is, for instance, "carpet cleaning Chicago", then use that keyword within the title, headline and in several places throughout the article. Add variations and related keywords drawn from your initial keyword analysis.

4. Consider putting a detailed article on your home page that focuses directly on your primary keyword. You can safely assume that if the search engines see a long detailed article about "carpet cleaning Chicago" on your page with lots of related terms such as "carpet cleaning techniques", "carpet cleaning FAQ", "tips for carpet cleaning", etc., they will assume this is useful information that potential readers will be interested in. Do not use garbage content. Do not spam. Just use quality text drawn from your expertise. If you need someone to help you write it, then hire someone to do it. You will not regret it.

5. Do the same with your secondary web properties - blog, Squidoo page, etc. Add content that focuses on your primary keywords and optimize accordingly.

6. Continue to add content to your blog and Squidoo page until you have a number of articles which are tightly focused on your primary keywords or closely related keywords that are part of this keyword group.

7. Do not use these secondary web properties just to create links to your primary website. View them as "traffic bait" - places to draw traffic that can then be redirected to other target URLs if need be.

8. Once your targeted web properties are in place start an intelligent link building program aimed at building traffic, and search engine exposure for each of them....

More on this link building aspect in the next post.

A couple of weeks ago I was checking over the backlinks of one of our clients. Apart from the promotional work we've done for this client over the last few months the client himself has been very active contributing to forums and adding comments to blogs.

All of this work seemed to be paying off quite well for him. His site was moving up in search rankings very quickly.

I noticed some odd looking links showing up in his backlink lists (as reported by Yahoo) and I checked a few of them out. One in particular caught my eye. He had left a comment a few months ago on a fairly obscure blog and the link was now showing up in several places in the backlink report.

So I left a comment too. And sure enough a week or so later there it was showing up in the backlink report for my own site - and not just once, but several times because that link was in the blog sidebar and was showing up on every page in the blog.

We're always looking for effective ways to build links and get traffic for our clients (and ourselves too!) This story illustrates a couple of important things.

First it shows that you can pick up links in some fairly unlikely places - in this case, by making comments on blogs.

Second, it suggests a strategy for finding productive link sources. If your niche is "carpet cleaning", then do a search for "carpet cleaning". Have a look at some of the high ranking sites and then take a look at their backlinks. You can use a tool like this one to check backlinks. Look for blogs and forums linking back to these high ranking sites where you can post comments. Make a list and systematically start visiting and posting comments. These will turn out to be some of the best performing links you can find.

This is just another little strategy or tool in the arsenal that I am adding to our Level 2 and Level 3 Link Building programs.

Level 2 already includes numerous blog posts and two unique articles every month. But we're going to be adding a limited number of other things to the program too - things like leaving comments on relevant blogs. We can't do much more than that because we've already packed a lot of labour intensive work into our Level 2 package.

But for Level 3 clients we will be pulling out all the stops - blog comments, Squidoo lenses, Craig's list postings, and even Youtube videos if it seems appropriate. But we'll have more on that in the very near future...

After doing just a tiny bit of research I discovered this list of blogs whose authors make a point of disabling the "nofollow" attribute and thereby give link value to visitors who leave comments.

The list is here Do Follow blog roll.

There must be about 400 blogs in the list. The fact that these bloggers have added their blogs to this list means they want you to visit and make comments. They view this as a way to generate traffic.

Here's an offer you can't pass up - You can get links from high Page Rank blogs by posting comments on them. I'm not talking about comment spam. I'm talking about the kind of comments that bloggers want you to make. (Go ahead, make a comment here and you'll get a free link.)

But a lot of bloggers use the "nofollow" attribute meaning that the search engines won't follow the links and give you credit for them. If it's link value you're after, then you want to post on blogs that don't use the "nofollow" attribute.

In this little $1 item you'll be shown how to find blogs that don't use the "no follow" attribute, and you'll also be given a list of many top ranking blogs that are happy to have your comments.

How To Find PageRank-Passing Wordpress Blogs

It is well known that a well written article distributed to the best sites on the web will get you a lot of attention and pull traffic to your site.

For expert advice and professional article marketing service see Linknet-Promotions. For examples of informative articles check out this article site.

Often the smartest advice you can get is to outsource your article marketing to an article marketing service where the impact of your article marketing efforts is fully utilized.

You should also make use of techniques that will help you avoid the duplicate content filter. This is a process used by the major search engines such as Yahoo, Google and MSN to determine if articles are just duplicates of each other. When they find hundreds of duplicates of your articles you will not get credit for the links on most of the articles and this will severely impact the effectiveness of your article marketing.

Here is a tool to help you outwit the duplicate content filter:

Unique Article Wizard - creates unique versions of your articles and distributes them to hundreds of sites.

Unique Article Wizard is one of the tools we use to get the most out of our Article Marketing Service.

We've just added some free SEO tools to the Linknet Marketing Forum. These tools help you analyze keywords, track backlinks, predict Page Rank and more.

Check out the Free SEO Tools at the Linknet Forum.

Free web hosting - As the name suggests, this service does not cost anything. People get a very limited amount of space on a web server and can create their own web pages. Usually the space is limited to one or two pages, and does not include other services such as databases, email or ftp. The pages usually are advertising-supported.

Super low cost web hosting - Just pay for what you need. Get the absolutely lowest cost web hosting available.

Shared web hosting service - Many web sites are placed on the same server, often with the same ip address. They each have a unique "virtual address". The total number on a given server will range from a few hundred to many thousands. Typically all domains share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM, CPU and hard drive storage space.

Reseller web hosting - With a reseller hosting plan clients of web hosting companies become web host resellers themselves. With a reseller plan a client purchases a set amount of space and data transfer volume, often associated with a specific ip address, and then can use this space to set up many domains. These domain spaces can be used for the reseller's own domains, or sold to other clients. Reseller accounts come with an interface that lets them set up packages, set pricing, and collect payments automatically.

There are more expensive web hosting packages available for more intensive operations which include Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS or VPS for "Virtual Private Servers), Dedicated servers and Colocation Hosting.