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Top 3 Must have iPhone Applications

The applications that make an iPhone come to life with major technologically advanced applications are not always the easiest to find. Often, you’ll run into many useless applications that take up much of your devices hard drive space.

The applications that make an iPhone so entertaining include  game, social networking, and even television! But, what applications make the iPhone truly stand out against competing models such as the Android or even the Windows 7 smart phone series?

A fulfilling happiness will plunge deep within your iPhone’s electrical current and a new pulse of energy will be born once these applications make their way on to your iPhone.

Essential iPhone Applications – #1

Tweeting with Tweetie 2

Tweeting has went rampart on the social networking scale and is surpassing the highest limit. The application you should have on your iPhone right now is known as Tweetie 2. Since the first installment of Tweetie made its way onto the scene it has received a significant update of usability. The new revamped model of Tweetie includes the availability to add multiple Twitter accounts, the translation of foreign Tweets and it can add your address book contacts automatically! All in all, Tweetie 2 works like a charm and can have you Tweeting more efficiently compared to the use of your own home PC. Tweetie 2 deserves the number one spot on the spectrum scale.

Essential iPhone Applications – #2

The Bing Revolution

Search engine adequacy is on a movement that may change the whole search engine game forever! Bing is this so called revolution and iPhone is its personal home. The Bing application allows a sort of 2.0 way of getting search results. It completes this feel with the scrolling of photos in search, voice search, and even local shopping searches! Staying on top of your local community isn’t so hard using Bing’s social tool that allows you to connect to Facebook. This tool allows you to share a lot more than your “current status.” The Bing search engine application provides a new way to look at search engines and helps provide you with extraordinary results.

Essential iPhone Applications – #3

Gaming with Doodle Jump

An iPhone just isn’t an iPhone without an installed game application. But, when there are thousands of different game applications available, where do you start? Doodle Jump earns its way to the number 3 spot with ultra-addictive game play that is easy to learn as Super Mario was when you were a kid! Though, this just may be more entertaining. Jump Doodle provides so many different levels and scenarios that are out of this world it’ll be a never ending story to your wife on why you just can’t put it down.

Ease and Value of free and paid iphone applications

Getting free iPhone applications isn’t to difficult of a task to complete to say the least. But, when you want advanced software programs known as “apps” in you’re iPhone, paying for them may just be your next best option. Purchasing  iPhone applications is tremendously easy and usually just as inexpensive! Installing any of the listed applications on your phone will be a fun and enjoyable experience.

Isaac writes for WKD Mobiles a blog which look at the latest mobile phones and industry news. For mobile phone reviews UK check out WKD Mobiles today and find awesome write ups on phones such as the Samsung Monte Slide Review as well as others!

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Online Marketing Training Homepage

iPhone Application Info Resourses

If you enjoyed this information about the top 3 must have iphone applications, share it with your online buddies! Leave your comment below in the comment form and tell us what you think and what kind of iphone applications do you find that are the most useful ones, your feedback will be more than appreciated

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Knowing how to get your resume noticed will give you a better chance of landing an interview and, eventually, your dream job.

Make the First Cut

Headhunters often see hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of resumes for a single position.

Since they can only pass along about 6-12 of these resumes to the hiring company, it is important to help yourself stand out from the crowd with a resume that works. You may already know that recruiters use software to sort and classify resumes according to specific keywords and criteria. Make sure that you match your resume as closely as you can to the job description to make it past this preliminary screening.

Other Tips for Standing Out

This preliminary screening isn’t the only test that you need to pass, however. Getting chosen by recruiters usually means cultivating relationships with them and showing your enthusiasm for the job.

Professional headhunters are often just as enthusiastic about placing their top talent in positions as their top talent is to accept these positions (matching candidates with the right companies is how they get paid, after all), but you have to show them that you belong on their list of top talent.

In order to place yourself well in a headhunter’s mind, you need to have contact with him or her on a consistent basis. Do not wait for a response from a recruiter—instead, work with them to get you placed. Be willing to customize your resume quickly and as needed and be responsive if they try to contact you.

Recruiters are much more willing to work with candidates that are positive and provide valuable information. Be willing to be open about companies that you are interviewing with and share when you have important developments like a change in job status or title.

Prepare Well for The Interview Experience with the Professional Hunter

Landing the Perfect Job

Getting noticed by a recruiter is only half the battle, however. If you’re resume has been sent onto a hiring company and you are selected to interview, you need to prepare yourself carefully for this experience. No matter how great you are on paper, if you can’t sell yourself in person, you won’t be able to get into the field you want.

Preparing for the interview usually means learning as much as you can about the company. The headhunter who landed you the interview is usually helpful in this process, too—ask him or her for any information or insights they may have, but be prepared to do most of your own research.

Can You Solve Problems?

The hiring manager at the company you are interviewing with usually has one question in mind: can this candidate solve our problems? If you can successfully articulate how you would be a good match for the position and the company, you will be looked at more favorably.

Taking a proactive approach to working with headhunters can help you land a better job faster. What have been your experiences in working with a headhunter? How do you make yourself stand out when on the job search?

About the Author

Jerry Smith is a writer for proHR headhunter services. When he’s not writing he enjoys spending time with his family and outdoors.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Top Commentators Widget

I installed the Top Commentators Plugin which shows the avatar of my most regular and frequent commentators that leave their feedback on each of my blog posts. The great thing is that this widget besides displaying your avatar, it links back to your blog home page or post page that you included in the form during your comment submission.

KeywordLuv and CommentLuv Plugins Are ON

After quite a lot of thinking on if I should or not make my blog do follow or no follow, I decided the latter. Read this post next and after you are done with it act wisely on your own blog: Why Not To Make Your Blog  Do Follow

Though KeywordLuv and CommentLuv Plugins are enabled on my online marketing training blog and that gives you the opportunity to include 2 links back to your blog, one that you will link back to your website with your chosen keyword that you wish to rank higher on the search engines and another one that will link back to your most recent post. Make sure you fill in the information in your name box in the following format: “Your Name” @ “Your Keyword” as I will not accept just keywords.

Use this information on your behalf and come back to leave your comment about any of this tools for our wordpress blog sites.

Have a holy day!

Jo

Updatres on this blogpost: Premium KeywordLuv Plugin is Activated!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Working for a boss who makes difficult-to-meet demands can present a challenge and make your time on the job more mentally and emotionally taxing. Because your boss largely sets the tone within the workplace, the attitude of the higher-up for whom you directly work can have a palpable impact on your daily on-the-job life.

While, unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to adjust the attitude of a boss who isn’t as supportive and jovial as you would like, there are some simple tactics you can use to potentially improve your standing with your boss and, in doing so, perhaps modify the way she treats you.

Put in Extra Effort

Some bosses make it a point to give new hires a hard time; for some reason, they see this as a trial of sorts. Instead of allowing a difficult boss to get you down, use this challenge as a motivating factor. Work to better yourself and, by doing so, show your boss you’re an asset to the business.

On your quest for self-improvement, involve yourself in the business community as regularly as you can, and take part in extracurriculars like charity events. Also, work to build your value as an employee by seeking more education, perhaps earning a new credential in a field related to the industry in which you work.

For example, show your boss you’re serious about your own success by picking up a business administration degree through an online education program at night while working your days away for him.

Get to Know Your Boss

When working with a difficult boss, you’ll likely find yourself less than eager to spend any more time with your supervisor than absolutely necessary. However, spending this extra time could make all the difference in your level of job satisfaction.

Instead of fleeing meeting rooms the second your boss stops speaking or venturing to his office only when he demands your presence, hang around him a little more than you have to and, while doing so, work to build a relationship. Though you may never be friends with your boss, becoming friendly with him could make your workplace a more comfortable environment in which to spend your days and make your boss a more agreeable individual to spend time with.

Say Yes as Often as Possible

While you don’t want to allow your boss to walk all over you, you can endear yourself to your supervisor and potentially make your workplace more comfortable by making yes your go-to word. All bosses love to hear an emphatic “Sure!” when they make requests of their employees.

If you can answer in the affirmative when your boss asks you to do something, you not only make his job easier, but also show that you respect him and recognize his authority. As his appreciation for you as a worker increases, he may become less of a bear to deal with.

Alert a Higher-Up

Going above your boss’ head and speaking to her superior should never be your first plan of action when trying to handle a supervisor with whom you simply don’t get along; however, sometimes this is the only feasible option. If you simply have a personality conflict with your boss, don’t alert a higher-up to this as it will likely reflect negatively on you; such a complaint could be seen as a testament to your inability to get along with others.

If, on the other hand, your boss is engaging in illegal, immoral or unethical behavior, it’s your duty to report it. To ensure that you submit this report in the proper manner, visit your company’s HR department and inquire about how to file a grievance. The last thing you want to do is to simply corner your boss’ boss to confront her with this information.

Though the attitude your boss displays on a day-to-day basis can have an impact on your work life, it’s important to remember that you’re still in control of your own attitude. Even if your attempts to get into the good graces of a difficult boss are met with failure, keep displaying a positive attitude and remain cooperative and productive.

Ultimately, you’ll find your way out from under the wing of the tyrant you currently call boss and your hard work will be recognized and appreciated.

About the author: Melissa Crossman writes about personal and professional development on behalf of AIU.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

There is no single defining denominator that all successful e-commerce businesses share. Instead, there are several key components that combine into a solid foundation for a successful business regardless of what product or service is being sold.

Most of these factors deal with creating a customer experience and brand that makes a business memorable and that leaves consumers with a favorable impression of the transaction that will generate repeat business over time.

Ease of Use

Successful e-commerce businesses sell their products and services through websites or online portals that are easy to use. Customers who cannot figure out how to navigate a website might never find the product they want to purchase and might never make it to check out.

Flashy and innovative graphics or navigation elements on a page might look nice but can make the site difficult for average customers to use. Websites that are simple to use will load quickly and can be seen on a variety of devices making it easier to customers to make purchases.

Reliability

E-commerce businesses are largely successful because customers return to the site repeatedly for services or merchandise. One key to maintaining repeat business is for a company to be reliable. Customers should be able to trust what a website says and be certain about the results that will follow.

This can be true of processing times, shipping times and inventory levels. If a customer receives merchandise reliably from a company, then they know they can rely on that service. Customers who are happy with the reliability of a company are more likely to recommend the business to others.

Consistency

One mistake that some e-commerce businesses make is to abandon any consistency in website design. It is important to carry common styles across all of the pages of a website so that customers are able to find the information they need quickly.

Changing fonts, colors and layouts from one page to the next is very confusing and can make customers believe they have navigated to another website. Consistency in design also makes adding and changing items easier on the website because there are established templates that can be used.

Customer Service

No matter how well planned the order and delivery process might be there are always situations where direct customer service will be necessary. The most successful e-commerce companies make customer service part of the basic business plan and do not leave it as an afterthought.

Problems should be responded to quickly and policies about returns and refunds should be spelled out explicitly on the website. A responsive customer service staff can increase the level of trust between a customer and the business.

Flexibility and Options

A successful e-commerce company has a flexible internal structure that can change to meet the evolving needs of customers. As new technologies, products and payment methods are developed the company should be able to seamlessly integrate the new items into the existing framework.

This also gives customers more options when shopping and allows for a more diverse customer base. Express shipping, electronic checks and personalized gifts are all examples of services that provide flexibility and options to customers.

Testing

A successful e-commerce website will have an extensive testing process before publishing new pages or changing features of a payment gateway. Implementing responsible testing across different systems can save a great amount work later if a glitch is discovered.

The same idea should be applied to emerging marketing campaigns. Testing new promotions on a small segment of the customer base before sending it to a wider audience can help to smooth out problems with the copy and isolate any technical glitches before they can become costly mistakes.

About the Author

The above article is composed and edited by Matt B., a freelance writer for FastMoney.com.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

We all know by now that not all links are good links. How do we measure and count the value of a link?

There are many metrics that can give an answer to when a link is considered valuable and when a link simply has no value to offer to the webmaster’s website authority.

A link evaluation survey result from 500 individual participants shows that SEO professionals look for the following in a link partner: 

You may also want to take a look at the crowdsourcing infographic and this guest post on some starters infographic marketing tips.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Android

Using Free To Captivate The Masses

If you have wondered how Google Android came out of nowhere to be a challenger to Apple, you are not alone. The people at Google like to hand out free stuff. They use this free stuff to track and analyze as well as to advertise. This method of business has gotten them first place as an advertising giant. It also makes their free mobile operating system popular with cell carriers. They are reporting 700,000 new daily activations of Android devices. All of them have connections with gmail, of course.

A Video Company Provides The Statistics

The company that is responsible for providing data for the popularity statistics is Vid.ly. This is a company that provides video conversions. They have a large customer base and show one million video views per month. Therefore they, like Google, are a good point of tracking users. At the beginning of last year Apple products were the dominating force on their site.

The iPhone and ipad viewers took up 87 percent of the views. Android only had five percent. Now, just last month Apple products have dropped to 52 percent and Android has 32 percent. Statistical numbers can be faked, but this is a clear indicator that Android is coming from behind in a big way.

The Inconvenient Truth

Google provides its own activation numbers to the world. They do it on their own without them being approved by an intermediate. The 700,000 activations per day may be an exaggeration because no one but them really knows. What that number does not show is the number of returns taking place. Something called “buyer’s remorse” is also a factor. Not everyone is happy with an Android purchase.

In fact, Techcrunch says up to 40 percent of some Android devices are returned. When you compare that number with the 1.7 percent return rate for the Apple iPhone, it makes the activation number look less important. Return rates matter because returned smartphones are not phones that are being used.

Who Is Going To Get The Growth This Year?

The news is proclaiming that developers are clamoring to work for Google Android this year. Last year it was Apple. The mobile world is faithful only to the flow of money, so look for this trend to continue for 2012.

About the Author

The writer, Denis Richards also contributes to How To Trade Commodities.co.uk where you can get some useful resources when it comes to planning your investment strategy.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Educating yourself in the area of online business ownership can be a confusing and stressful undertaking. Many entrepreneurship websites offer free educational webinars, which can provide you with as much information on any business-related topic as a college business class or textbook.

While some webinars briefly summarize the basics of online business ownership, others are available that offer extensive guides and tips to help you succeed in your own online business. You can also find webinars that cover more specific aspects of business ownership and improvement, such as accounting, budgeting or marketing.

While some sites host webinars created by individuals without enough experience or knowledge to of much value, many are professionally created, featuring qualified entrepreneurs, CPAs and attorneys.

NFIB Webinar Host

The National Federation of Independent Business actually offers many different specifically targeted smaller webinars, rather than one broad webinar. The organization’s website, NFIB.com features hundreds of webinars on nearly any topic relating to entrepreneurship.

The NFIB gives you the option of watching a previously-recorded webinar or of registering for an upcoming live webinar. During the live webinars, you often have the option of calling in and asking your own questions on the topic being discussed. In the recorded webinars, you still have the opportunity to hear the answers to questions asked when that webinar was being aired.

The site is also specific to your geographical location. By selecting your state on the front-page map, you can find a category of webinars concerning business, economy and politics in your area.

The site also features constantly-updated news articles, polls and interviews with business professionals. These resources can help you better educate yourself on a certain political or economic issue, such as health care or unemployment.

Netblazon Webinar Hosting

Another well-known webinar-hosting site is Netblazon.com. This website features live business seminars on a range of topics, such as “Recession Proofing your Business,” “Online Marketing,” “Product Merchandising” and “Brand Marketing.” Each seminar is recorded and posted on the website as a webinar, in case you were unable to watch the live presentation.

The webinars are available only to Premium E-learning subscribers. To subscribe, select the Inquiry button at the bottom of the front page, and send a subscription request to the website. In addition to the free webinars, Netblazon.com offers many software programs, website templates, tax calculators, directories, etc. available for purchase on the website.

Many of these resources are useful in book keeping, organizing and budgeting, which will help you to expand and improve your business in the long run. These products and many other features — newsletters, case studies, e-magazines, website health checks and so on — are available only if you are a Premium E-learning subscriber.

The webinars offered on NFIB.com and Netblazon.com feature professionals in nearly any area of business.

Webinar Hosting with Modernanalyst

Another popular webinar site, Modernanalyst.com, differs from these two sites in that the professionals involved in their webinars are all professional business analysts.

Free Webinars for Business Start-Ups and Ownership

This site is also more personalized than others, allowing you to submit business-related questions, interact in forums and request more information on a particular topic. All of the webinars are free, and cover topics not only relating to business startup and ownership, but also in expanding and improving your existing business.

The webinars and other resources available on the website are created by business analysts, giving you access to the advice and opinions of individuals who have seen firsthand what makes a business succeed or fail.

In addition to the webinars, the site features analyst diaries – an interview with each of the website’s business analysts, and his biography – analyst blogs, events, webinar schedules, job opportunities and news updates.

NFIB.com, Netblazon.com and Modernanalyst.com are only a few of the professional webinar-hosting sites available.

While some free webinar sites are unqualified and unprofessional, these have been proven reliable, and are created only by those experienced enough to offer valuable advice on the startup and improvement of your business.

Taking advantage of the webinar and other resources available on these websites is like receiving personal advice from an experienced professional, or taking a business class from a successful entrepreneur, CPA, attorney or business analyst. It can only increase your odds of successfully launching your business.

About the Author

Carla Gregson is our featured guest author today. Carla regularly writes for  Hanapin Marketing – A results providing driven PPC services company.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Avoid These Link Building Techniques

Here are a few tips on what to avoid when your link building:

1.      Low Quality Links

By linking to low quality sites you risk those sites disappearing into thin air one day, not to mention Google favors high quality links over low ones. Having a lot of links is important, but having a lot of high quality links is even more important.

2.      Speedy link building

Google looks down on links that have just exploded overnight, so be sure to slowly and gradually build them up instead of going crazy with link building all at once. Remember, like most things in life link building is a marathon, not a sprint.

3.      Using Independent Backlink Networks

Using Independent Backlink Networks (IBLN) is one way that can end up getting you banned or blacklisted by Google, so avoid them. Not to mention, they can be pretty pricey. Instead, focus on networking organically, a tactic that will be much more successful and safer in the end.

4.      Linking to the wrong anchor text

Be careful where you’re putting your links – you want to make sure you’re linking to the right words otherwise you could end up ranking for the wrong search terms. And avoid linking to words like “click here”, instead use links on words that describe where you want to rank.

5.      Having one website link repeatedly

While you do want links, you want them to be dispersed around the web to prove you’re a credible website that deserves to rank. Having only one website link to you repeatedly just shows that one website thinks you’re important.

Link building for seo is a long, arduous task, but a useful one when done right. Try to move too quickly and you could end up shooting yourself in the foot. By slowly building up your website you’ll slowly rise through the ranks and create a lasting impression.

Author Bio

Christine Kane works for the internet providers and she she has studied Journalism & Communication. She likes to guest post  around a great variety of subjects on several niche blogs. Her email address is Christi.Kane00 @ gmail.com.

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Did you enjoy these link building techniques to avoid? Let us know what you think!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization

Still another flood of excitement rushed over you when you got your first totally unsolicited follower (the first person who liked your blog and your content enough to subscribe to you without any cajoling from your end); and you probably got yet another wave of happiness when you got your first comments.

These are all common milestones in blogging.  And after you’ve reached them, it will be time to start thinking about search engine optimization.  You’ve probably heard those words or their abbreviation (SEO) thrown around quite a bit since you started your blog, and maybe have even researched it a little and started the process.

For all the bloggers who want to take their blog to the next level, really start receiving more traffic, and get the most out of the ads on their page, here is a brief introductory guide to SEO:

Step One: Research

Before you begin your SEO initiative, it’s important to know what the most popular pages on your blog are, and what types of blog posts receive the most traffic.  In so doing you will be able to increase the ranking of those pages more and thus make your page more searchable.

To do this you can use a service like Google Analytics, which will report traffic patterns and other useful information and keep track of it over time.

Step Two: Action

Knowing which pages receive the most traffic also helps you decide on what keywords to choose, and where to concentrate them on your site.  If, for example, one of your pages has thousands more hits than another of your pages, you will want to saturate that page with as many keywords as you can while still sounding natural.

Actions you can take based on Google Analytics results are:
•    Adding more keywords to heavily visited pages
•    Including keywords in heading and image tags
•    Creating more linkage to the popular pages, both from within your website and outside it
•    Adding tabs to or highlighting popular pages in your sidebar
•    Generating more content similar to popular posts
•    Visiting forums to find out what topics are hot at the moment
•    Downloading other traffic analysis programs to help specify what keywords users are using to search for your blog

Step Three: Blog!

Don’t stop blogging after you’ve implemented these SEO tricks.  In fact, don’t stop creating quality content, period.  Your readers will appreciate your consistent effort, and, to some extent, you will continue to grow in popularity just based on the quality of your work.

Author Info:

Our guest author today is Katheryn Rivas. Katheryn is a writer for online universities blog.  She accepts inquiries via email at  katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today, bloggers are everywhere. If you need information about how to perfect your golf swing or how to get your baby to sleep through the night – you are sure to find a blog that will tell you everything you need to know about either (and everything in between).

Yet starting your own blog and making it profitable are not such easy ventures. In order to find a blogging niche and make it profitable, you will have to do a little research. Many people believe that all they need is passion for their niche subject. However, niche subjects are not created equal, and while your passion is a good place to start looking for subject matter – you may have to get a little creative. Here are some tips.

Mapping out your blogging niche options

First and foremost, come up with several subjects that you feel confident blogging about. It’s easier to write in niche subjects where you have some knowledge and interest. If you are a new mother for instance, you can sign into Adwords and check out how many searches there are for ‘new mothers.’ The problem is you will then have to take things a step further, and look for sub-niches within your main subject in order to make your blog competitive.

Even though you will still be writing about ‘new mothers,’ you will also be specializing in something specific such as ‘new mothers looking for strollers.’ This doesn’t mean that each and every blog has to be written about strollers, but more that you will utilize that ‘keyword’ to draw traffic in. In other words, find a main blogging niche and then choose several ‘micro-niches’ within your topic area that you can write about and gain traffic to your site from utilizing.

Adding new content and spreading the word out

One of the biggest internet blogging rules is (besides knowing your audience) adding consistent content to your blog. The first step in making any sort of money is getting traffic. You should advertise your blog and register it with blog registries as well as use links within the text, and keywords. Don’t be afraid to self-promote your blog on social networks and on other blogs from within your niche market. Guest blogging is another way to help get free traffic and link backs. These tricks will enable people to find your blog when they are searching and gives you a better web presence all around.

Building real relationships with followers

Additionally, rather than focus on monetizing your blog FIRST, be true to your readers and build a community. Make sure that your blog has features such as ‘follow me,’ and other simple ways to ‘share’ built in so that newcomers will be able to stay in touch with your blog and pass it around to their friends and connections online. As you build traffic and gain a following, you will be have better luck finding advertisers, and you can then start selling products such as E-Books, seminars, workbooks etc. right from the blog.

Monetizing your blogging niche

Many people start off with Good Ad Sense with their blog right from the beginning. This is a good way to get started, but likely wont prove highly profitable in the long run. What you need to find are private advertisers, but before they will be interested in your site – you will need to get traffic. Don’t be afraid to contact advertisers directly and always remain vigilant in finding new advertising potential from within your micro-niches.

When you have put the wheels in motion, and have built a community that trusts you – you can then begin seeing your profits. It definitely won’t happen over night, regardless of whether you pay someone for a complete CMS system or do it yourself. Just remember that remaining true to your blogging niche and staying passionate about your content is the most important aspect of monetizing niche blogging.

About the Author

Frank Anderson is a technology blogger who also finds an interest in virtual web hosting and other cloud-focused work in his spare time.

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We would love to hear how you go about finding the perfect blogging niche for you and how does it turn out? Let us know in the comments form and share the wealth with your online friends!

Related posts–  7 Business Blogging Tips by Jedha Dening and few more Choosing The Right Blogging Niche Tips by Mariana Ashley

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Starting an online business suggestions

Register your Business Name (Price: $50)

Coming up with a name for your business is important before anything else. After deciding the name of your business, it is important to have it registered in order to find out if there are other businesses in your location that already have the same name as yours. This will prevent confusion to customers.

Look for an Affordable yet Profitable Web Hosting Services (Price: $5)

There are about dozens of web hosting services that offer almost the same features like 2 terabytes of data transfer monthly, support for publishing systems and common databases, and unlimited storage space. So how do you separate gold from copper?

Find out how these products works based on reviews from its recent users. Pay particular attention on how these hosting services resolves problems and how often it undergoes system downtime.

Another important thing to consider is if whether the web hosting site can handle the enormous amount of traffic that you’re expecting in your site.  A pretty decent web hosting services can cost you around $5 – $15 dollar with a one to two year contract.

Promote your Brand using Free Logo Maker (Price: $30)

Logo Ease and LogoMaker are some of the websites that lets you create a company logo based on the choices in front of you. When creating a logo, bear in mind that this will represent your brand. So might as well create something that is catchy, wholesome and suitable for printing on mugs, shirts, and other personal items.

The only disadvantage in using free logo generators is it gives you limited options, and sometimes you can also have a look alike in other small struggling company like you. So if you want a personalized logo where you can input your brilliant ideas, you can hire a freelance independent designer to do the work for you for no more than $50.

Economical E-Commerce Site (Price: $15)

The main aim of people exploring the world of online business is to sell products and services which are not that easy as it seems. It requires lots of e-commerce to deal with transactions, processing of payment, and providing security for both consumers and business owners.

Configuring all these in your server can be a time wasting, risky, and expensive. The best way to avoid all that hassles is by taking advantage of e-commerce sites like Merchant Solutions ($40/month) and Netfirms ($15/month).

Social Media Online Advertising Free Option

Advertise for Free (Price: $0)

There are business listing websites that offers advertisement for FREE. Another way to effectively advertise is by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

For now, those are the basic areas and investments you have to focus on. By the time your business expands, you will meet struggles along the way such as receiving lots of phone calls, shipping your goods, and the need for hiring an additional manpower to cater the growing number of customers. Eventually when that moment comes, you’ll have more than $100 dollar in your pocket to keep up with the expenses of your rising business.

Author Bio:
Sarah is part of a group that promotes health and safety in work places. When not working, Sarah blogs about leadership, occupational health, and safety training. She is also a regular contributor at TheNextWoman.com, a site dedicated to women entrepreneurs.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Getting Started in E-Commerce

More and more people are starting small businesses online – from small scale operations such as selling items on eBay or Etsy, to more organized cottage industries involving traditional e-commerce channels, the first experience of many entrepreneurs is now e-commerce.

However, one thing that gets overlooked when starting those businesses is the actual delivery of the product. When you’re just looking at a few orders, hand-stuffing the boxes and shipping them via the post office is fine, but if business takes off then it might be time to investigate contract packing and mailing fulfilment services that will handle the load for you.

If you want your customers to return time after time, then the professional image offered by contract packing companies is invaluable. Many mailing fulfilment services do more than just fill boxes for you – they print invoices, add compliments slips, use couriers rather than Royal Mail, send out tracking numbers, and handle returns. It’s those little touches that make your business stand out as a professional outfit, rather than just a backroom eBay seller that sticks their products in Jiffy Bags with a first class stamp.

For some small businesses, the thought of outsourcing can be intimidating, but there are contract packing services that even small businesses can afford. When you’re just getting started, you can buy mailing fulfilment on an as-needed basis. While this can work out more expensive than a flat fee in the long term, it’s good if you have unpredictable (but low) demand. Once your business takes off, you can investigate other pricing options.

Outsourcing packing and delivery does not suit every business – if you specialise in bespoke designs and handle only a low volume of orders, then it’s probably a waste of time, but if you handle a lot of products, or they require special storage and packaging, then letting someone else do that work for you could save you a lot of time and money. The time you save on worrying about storage, packaging, labelling, and returns could be used to improve other areas of your business – perhaps upgrading your website, working on customer support, or just advertising your company. Or, you could simply enjoy the extra free time that you’ve gained – after all, isn’t one of the perks of being your own boss the chance to set your own hours and work to your own timetable and demands? The choice is yours!

The biggest benefits of contract packing will come when your business grows. Imagine if you ran a promotion, and it got picked up by a major website or magazine – would you be able to handle a flood of orders? If you are using a reputable mailing fulfilment company, then you could take advantage of this free advertising to pick up a lot of sales, and hopefully a good reputation and several new customers. If you were still operating out of your spare room, then you’d either be faced with a lot of late nights, or a lot of dissatisfied customers.

Author Information

This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Hallmark Consumer Services. James writes on subjects relating to business.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Does where you place ads on your website affect your SEO?

These users are not alone because not too long ago, Google with Google Panda Update revealed that it carries the same disdain for the overabundance of ads on your typical web page. The search giant’s true feelings were confirmed in a recent update aimed at putting website ads in check.

Ad Placement Matters

Google just rolled out an algorithm change that not only impacts the number of ads on your web page, but where you place them as well. This was announced last fall, but apparently didn’t come to fruition until mid-January.

Now that the update has gone live, websites that do not fall in line with its new stance on ad placement will take a big hit in SEO value. In simple English – if Google thinks your page has too many ads or ads that have been posted in the wrong place, you will rank considerably lower than you would had that content not been an issue.

• Your Content Above the Fold

Advertising provides a steady stream of revenue for many websites, but thanks to Google and its ever changing algorithm, publishers have to be more careful than ever with positioning. All the recent Google algorithm changes have focused on creating a better experience for the internet searcher, and this one is no different in that regard.

So if you have been loading up ads above the fold of your homepage or landing page, now is the time to adopt a new strategy.  The above the fold section on your web page is what the visitor sees first, and in the eyes of Google, they should be greeted by relevant content, rather than have to scroll the page for it.

• How Many is Too Many?

Unfortunately, Google did not provide any specifics in regard to the number of ads it would, or would not like to see on a web page. This is not surprising, but the lack of details is usually one of the more frustrating aspects of keeping up with the search algorithm. According to the original announcement, the change will have no impact on sites that display ads to a “normal degree”.

Sites that need to worry are those that display so many advertisements that visitors (and probably search spiders) have a difficult time navigating the page. This leads us to believe that pages with one or two strategically placed ads above the fold should be safe.

Follow UP with SEO Rapid Changes

SEO is changing rapidly, and though we have seen some major modifications in recent times, players like Google are ultimately making things simpler for site owners and visitors alike.

While ads drive revenue, they can be very intrusive, so keep this in mind when plotting your implementation strategy. It is paying attention to the finer details that will give you the power to be an SEO superstar!

About the Author

Francis Santos is from LA and writes for Benchmark Email. He is a Cal State Long Beach graduate and a Journalist. Furthermore, he is a technology advocate of this email marketing software.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Although it is very likely for the title to sound weird, it’s a true fact that flipping websites online for fast or long term profits is one of the most lucrative online business models today.

All it is required is being  “in-the-know” of how to set up your own website or blog, host it and promote it online until it gains value in terms of traffic increase, adsense or affiliate revenue, top google page listings for your site’s targeting (and important for your market) keywords, high Google page rank and more. Sounds like too much work? Well, I won’t lie to you, it definitely is and mastering it requires your undivided focus and commitment.

How Can You Flip a Website?

So, what is website flipping exactly and how does it work? Another term for flipping websites on the internet is “virtual real estate”. As a common real estate professional builds from scratch or buys low value houses and works on their improvement, decoration and renovation the same thing a website flipper does with his website (online property).

Websites are like houses and neighborhoods are like the niche markets a website represents.

“Flip a Website” Steps

Learn how to do the right keyword research first.

Then set up a wordpress blog site and find a reliable hosting company like Hostgator. Apply basic search engine optimization tricks on your blog’s pages and posts to make them rank high on the search engines. Set up a strong and powerful online marketing plan that will help you start generating backlinks. Inbound links will help your page increase, the more of those good links you have, the higher the value will be and you will be able to raise the price when you to flip a website.

The buyer of your site will probably be someone that does not know how to or does not have time to do all the “dirty” work a website needs to gain added value. So make sure the dirty work you do prior you go to flip a website is good enough so you get a great price for it.

Flipping websites online is an art that you can learn without being born an artist. Personally when I started my online marketing training, it took me 1,5 year to run into information that explained how I can make some extra cash via flipping websites online. And I followed this information and moved on with it. I built some sites in different niches, I ranked those with online marketing and some basic search engine optimization strategies and made some sales on sites lite WebsiteBroker.com and Flippa.com besides my offline projects.

There is a tremendous amount of online resources which teach you or suggest to you way and techniques you can use to make money with your website. There are so  many online business models out there one can choose from that most of the times people get overwhelmed and quit before they smell success.

If you are serious about making money with “virtual real estate” business model check out this starters guide for flipping websites by Ryan T Malone and his partners – masters of this online business model.

Flip a website and have fun doing it!

What you really need in order to succeed with website flipping model is determination and serious focus on your online marketing training. Make your “dirty and tedious”  work matter in terms of money. Then you will be ready to list your site for sale and expect some nice offers.

My inspiration for this new site came from my high self motivation that has helped me reach here where I am today. I never liked not knowing how things work or depending on others. I realized that there are categories of entrepreneurs. Those who have strong self believe and consider themselves trustworthy to “do-it-themselves” and others who are not so enthusiastic in acquiring expertise, instead they want to just sit back and wait for others to do the dirty work so they get the rewards with no self effort. Of course this requires a great deal of money and we would be talking here about outsourcing the whole online marketing business plan.

Great choice for not “do-it-yourself” oriented entrepreneurs – online business investors.

Alternatively to WordPress, if you are eligible to invest less than 1 dollar per day you can try Site Build It guys which are top web business building and services providers. They literally take you by the hand and build profitable web businesses targeting your chosen markets and providing a great training and resources to make them profitable in an ongoing basis. They also offer 90 days money back guarantee so you can understand how confident they are about the value they offer. See more details in the video below in case you like this option better than mastering WordPress on your own.

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Good luck if you go ahead and flip a website for a first time as there is a first time for everything

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

With social media marketing, the concept of building a strong following is essential, especially if you are building an online business. There are many ways to build your web presence on popular social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Some of these ways are free and others are not. What you want to do is to find ways that are free and at the same time easy, allowing you to maximize your time and efforts.

Gaining a Following on Twitter

To gain a significant following on Twitter for the promotion of your products and/or services, there is the old-fashioned way of looking up people by their interests and simply requesting to follow them. There is also the task of unfollowing those who choose not to follow you.

This can be quite tedious and often takes useless hours that could be better spent creating new products and making sales. One website that is quite useful for Twitter users is Twiends. Twiends is free and it takes a few minutes to log in with your Twitter account.

Once you are logged in, you can look up members according to your interests or country. With Twiends, you offer a set amount of seeds to prospective followers and in turn, you gain a fantastic audience who may be eager to buy your products or services.

With Twiends, you can expect to get new followers, often within minutes of signing up, as thousands of members are constantly on the site looking for new people to follow. If you are looking for a great way to build your Twitter fan base and business, then Twiends is the best route to go. The best thing is that it is totally free.

Building your Online Business with Facebook

On Facebook, you can have a separate page for your business and build your customer base. You can even promote a store by using applications, some of which are free, such as Vendio and Miiduu. With these user-friendly applications, you can create shopping carts, put up pictures, and market to consumers who may be interested in your products.

On Facebook, you can even promote on Marketplace, powered by Oodle, and list products and services you have available. These services are all free and are fantastic ways to build your online business on Facebook.

Did you know that the average person on Facebook is between 25-45 years old? This is definitely a market that you do not want to ignore. While on Facebook, you can do a search for people who might be interested in products or services you have on offer.

You can invite them to check out your listings and offer them a discount when they ‘like’ your page. This is another feature that can be obtained through many of the free store applications. With Facebook, the more people like your page, the more traffic you will be driving to your store and website.

If your business is not using these powerful social media marketing tools, you are missing a huge commercial opportunity.

About the Author

Steve Saunders is a technology enthusiast and a blogger with many interests. He writes for several resources including Degree Jungle. He also has the passion of helping online businesses to leverage social media for customer relationship building and business growth.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Online Marketing Training is a non-ending process. It is a crowd mountain of new information that change rapidly. That does not go only for a newcomer in the online business world but also for the intermediate and senior internet marketers. Considering the rapid changes that happen daily on the internet and google’s algorithms any person that aspires to be successful online must keep themselves updated constantly.

You can never learn enough with online marketing no matter how many years of experience you carry on your back and how many online marketing training programs you have bought and applied.

So, if you are really interested to improve your online business you should always keep an eye on the best ways to get your hands on every useful piece of online marketing training resources your run into.

Crowd Mountain Review Follows…

During my intermediate online marketing experienced days I remain eager to add-on to my knowledge and apply new strategies and techniques on my websites and measure the improvements. This is how I run into Crowd Mountain course.

About a month ago, I subscribed to a new site which is what one would call:

“The Groupon Site For Online Marketers “: Successetc.com
Yes it’s exactly how I write it. There you have the opportunity to access high end online marketing training courses and get them on a crazy discount. I recently grabbed the opportunity to buy Michelle MacPhearson’s Crowd Mountain online marketing training course which is for people who start a business through their own self-hosted wordpress blog. I am on Michelle’s list and I was informed that she offered her course for only 27$ instead of the normal price of 300$.

Michelle is one of my “secret mentors” through the past years and I have learned a lot from the resources and tips she shares and always follow her updates. She is a professional that I highly respect. One of the few.

The fact that I already know how to start up, set up and promote an online business model through wordpress did not stop me from getting into this course. I like Michelle lots and I knew that I would get some additional value from this course. I went to check and as we speak this course has closed its doors for now, so.. Lucky me to be in Michelle’s list and got informed in time for this great offer.

Next step was for me to share my point of view and write my own Crowd Mountain Review.

So here it is:

Crowd Mountain Course is Divided into 6 Parts/Modules

1. “Niche the Niche“

In module number one Michelle is taking you by the hand and walks you through the first but most important online marketing task which is choosing the right niche to enter and the target the best keyword phrase for your domain, so you have the best chance to rank for them on the search engines. She uses 2 niche examples: 1) Cleanse/Detox and 2) Credit Repair. The keyword research tool she uses is “Market Samurai”. Although I don’t use this tool, I have read very good reviews about it.

2) “Optimize For Size“

Here you are walked through to a list of Michelle’s recommended wordpress plugins that you are able to upload on your blog. The functionality of each plugin is thoroughly explained. Simple and neat

3) “Content Architecture“

Here in this module you are presented with options and ways you you can use to populate your blog with content as you must already know that a blog should be updated pretty often to sustain traffic and bring new visitors as well as gaining the vote from google that it has fresh content as they love it.

4) “Monetization Station“

Here you are presented different options that you may incorporate to your wordpress blog in order to start monetizing it. Very interesting module as you have to try and tweak several monetization methods until you stay with the ones that convert best for your niche.

5) “Search Engine Assault””

Here you get access to a multitude of strategies on how to make the search engines notice that you are present and gain their credits. You will learn how to build links coming back to your sites which is what all offsite search engine optimization is all about. A very important aspect for your online business in addition to the onsite seo tips which are covered in module two. Great stuff and learned some strategies that I did not know off.

6) “Power Networking“

Here Michelle shares resources on how to select and use social networking sites as well as when you should and shouldn’t use social networking to promote your sites. And more

In the end of each module there is a recording live audio of Michelle answering attendees questions and the training material is available to download in pdf’s and transcripts.

Crowd Mountain Bonus Tool 1

I also got access on some pretty neat research tools like Crowd Mountain Snooper that gives you real time suggestions on where you must go and build links at any given time for your blog according to the way Google considers which sites are the most important at the time. That’s really cool

Crowd mountain Bonus Tool 2

Also I got access to another tool that helps build 29-30 high Google page rank dynamic backlinks for my “2 weeks and over old” sites through an automated and dead simply to use software: Crowd Mountain Spider Snare

I hope you enjoyed my  Crowd Mountain review.

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Article Update at 6th of August 2011

Hola! I wanted to add to this review my results after few months of applying the steps and strategies of Crowd Mountain SEO and online marketing course. My Alexa is currently at ~194K and I am already on top page of Google for my main keyword online marketing training. I also got a bunch of backlinks on Alexa and have gained PageRank 3 after the recent Google Panda Update.

I guess it worked out very well for me after all and that makes me very happy with my decision for Crowd Mountain online marketing course .

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Search Engine Optimization

If you have just entered online marketing business industry you have likely felt that search engine optimization (SEO) is somehow difficult to understand or define. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website content on all pages and posts but not only. It can be applied via many ways off the site itself. Keyword research and SEO aims to get your webpages and posts on the top page of google’s organic results for your chosen keyword terms and phrases.

Next we will see what do these 2 categories of SEO entail: Onsite and Offsite.

Onsite Search Engine Optimization Internet Marketing Techniques

In order to have a good chance to rank on top page for your post you need to apply on your post the next search engine optimization steps:

• Having your keyword density ~3%
• Set your keywords meta tags with your main keyword and related ones
• Include your main keyword and related ones in the meta description tag
• Include your main keyword in the title
• Include your main keyword on your h1, h2 and h3 tags
• Underline, Italic and Bold your main keyword

Not all online business entrepreneurs use search engine optimization techniques to drive more free traffic to their websites and posts. That means that you can take great advantage of this fact and start incorporating this procedures to your regular online marketing plan.

Offsite Search Engine Optimization Strategies

There is a multitude of search engine optimization techniques that most of the successful online business managers use regularly. Off site SEO is the process of creating an increasing number of high quality one way back links to our sites that will help us rank higher on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others.

These strategies include the following actions:

1) Writing and publishing unique articles on the top article marketing sites – directories

2) writing and publishing Press releases on press releases sites

3) finding relevant blogs in your niche and leave comments on their posts (wherever is allowed include your main keyword phrase in the name i.e when the blog uses keyword/comment|LUV)

4) Creating videos and uploading the on the top video sites like Youtube, Metacafe including your URL in the description

5) Creating profiles on niche forums and start engaging with similar interests people, reply to their questions or ask a question. Include in your signature your anchor text which will be nothing else but your main keyword linking back to your website

6) Bookmark your content on Bookmarking sites like Digg, technorati

7) Add your blog’s RSS Feed to feed aggregator sites that will create deep backlinks for every single update you make on your blog.

Search Engine Optimization Tools

There are many online marketing tools that help your SEO. If you run a wordpress blog there are plugins you can upload to your site that will take care a great part of your blog’s search engine optimization needs. The two that I use and that I plan to keep using are these:

1) “All in One SEO”

All in One SEO plugin that allows you to set the metadata for you main URL and all your pages and posts. It is also free.

2) SEO PRESSOR

SeoPressor is an advanced and not free plugin that does wonderful work when it comes to help you provide content that is already very appropriate and eligible to rank very high on Google. After installing the plugin on your blog and while you are composing your post and saving the draft versions, the plugin will give you real time suggestions on what you need to do in order to achieve the highest success level (%) of SEO for your specific post.

In more detail it tells you that you have to include your targeting keyword in your hi,h2,h3 tags, it will italic, bold and underline your keyword for you and it will remind you to include your keyword as an ALT text in the picture that you will upload. It will also remind you that you need to link to one of your other pages or posts on your blog and it will show you what is your keyword’s density so you are 3%.

Well it does not get any easier than that, I have it installed here on my new blog and I am getting organic traffic from Google and other search engines for all my published posts already. My posts are being found by people who type my chosen keyword phrase on google search and they land on my website   This is great news for a newly launched site.

You can take a peek at this search engine optimization dominating SEOPressor Plugin HERE. After examining how important is the search engine optimization online marketing aspect for your business you can decide if this tool is worth your one time investment.

The truth is that every website owner dreams to increase their free organic traffic from google and stop buying traffic but not all make it finally. What do you think they miss…?

Search engine Optimization Attracts Free Organic Traffic

Either you hire an SEO Company or do the seo for your site by yourself one thing is a fact: By doing correct initial keyword research and applying the right onsite and offsite seo procedures as mentioned above you will get lots of free organic traffic to your sites and I have a feeling that you will love it. Who wouldn’t anyway ?

Let me know about what search engine optimization strategies you use and how do these work for you so far!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Optimizing Your Online Marketing Efforts

Building an effective online marketing strategy can be challenging, and requires more than just signing up for a few social media accounts. For many people, the best strategy is to hire an online marketing company or a social media agency that can do the work for you.

Why hire an online marketing company?

A good online marketing company can save you a lot of time, effort, and money. They have a lot of experience when it comes to handling social media accounts, and are therefore able to avoid many of the common mistakes that new social marketers make. A social media agency has already done the research (and the experience based learning!) for you.

The remit of an online marketing company does not stop at just sorting out your accounts. You could, of course, hire a social media agency to set up your Facebook page and create a couple of viral campaigns for YouTube if you wanted, but you would see much better results if you went beyond that and allowed the company to manage your online presence long term.

One mistake that many people make is to spread their online marketing efforts too thin. They create a presence on every site out there, and then leave half of those sites to sit around un-used. This is a waste of time and effort, and can actually damage your brand, because it means that the people who see your presence on those sites get a poor impression of your company. They will wonder why you can’t be bothered to update your online presence.

A good online marketing company will help you to choose which sites to focus on. If you’re selling women’s fashion, you probably want to target a different audience than you would for martial arts wear, for example. Once your social media agency has helped you figure that out, then they will work with you to decide what message you want to promote, and who you want to promote it to. From there, they will manage your interactions with the community, presenting a carefully chosen mix of promotion, articles, and chatter.

Social media often becomes an avenue for customer support, feedback, and information requests. If you’re going to get in to offering support online, then that’s something that you will have to do carefully. If you were to choose to respond to some people, but not others, then this could damage your brand more than not responding at all.

A good social media agency will guide you through this minefield, and either manage your communications for you, or help you to put in place the correct procedures to do it yourself. The early days of setting up a social media presence can be confusing, but the effort will be worth it in the end, and when your brand becomes better known you will be glad that you have channels beyond the usual website and mailing list to use to reach your customers.

About the Author

This post was written by Crispin Jones on behalf of Boom Online Marketing. Crispin is an SEO professional who works on a variety of projects and enjoys writing about social media.

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Online Marketing Strategy | Hiring an online marketing company to do the work for you

If you enjoyed Crispin’s article on how to make the most out of your online marketing efforts and apply the best online marketing strategies give it a share to you online buddies and let us know what online marketing techniques you use to optimize your campaigns and grow your business.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Being on Pinterest lately I understand why so many internet users become addicted to this image and inspiration sharing network.

Pinterest Surpassed LinkedIn

No wonder why Pinterest is Now the No. 3 US Social Network Surpassing LinkedIn.

If you have not already registered your free account then go ahead and do so!

You can use Pinterest for fun, friendship and for business promotional reasons.

Learn your way around Pinterest

Before you do, read the basics of learning your way around this network by downloading this free pdf Pinterest Guide next.

Click on the RED PINTEREST button above to Download your Free Guide offered by BrainHost and ENJOY!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Are Your Ruining Your Blog?

As a blogger, you want the best blog you can have. A good blog will mean more visitors and repeat readers, a lot of shares and more revenue. Even though you want your blog to be amazing, there could be things that you are doing that actually are hurting or even ruining your blog.

Some things that you may be doing to the detriment of your blog (and your income) are more obvious. Some of these things are more harmful. No matter what ruinous thing you are doing, you need to stop it…now! If the following things sound like you, stop ruining your blog!

Do you use the wrong keywords?

The wrong keywords are high competition, short keywords. These are common words and phrases that people use every day. Sure the search engine crawler may notice these words in your blog posts, but you will be left near the bottom of the search results after all of the more popular sites.

Don’t use things like “SEO tips” – too common. Go bigger and more specific like “SEO small business tips for blogs.” Use Google’s SEO tool to find low completion keywords that real people search for to help drive traffic to your site.

Are your URLs yucky?

Your URLs should reflect what your blog and your posts are about. A URL like www.myblogposts.com/page35 doesn’t tell potential visitors or search engines anything about what will be found in your post.

You should use a format where your URLs reflect the post title. You don’t need the date or any other additional data; keep it short at sweet to help get the most out of search results.

Have you gone crazy with the keywords?

Keywords keep coming up because it is a major component of search engine optimization, and you surely know that SEO is a big deal. It is easy to make sure that you have as many keywords as possible to boost your rankings; this means you may even be hiding them in the background!

This is called keyword stuffing. Without getting too technical, it is just something that you should not do! Your keywords should be sprinkled throughout the text of your article just enough so that search engines and readers know for sure what you are writing about. If you stuff, your visitors will have trouble actually reading your posts, and the search engines may blacklist you as this isn’t considered an acceptable SEO technique.

Do you link up a lot?

You may have heard that other sites linking to your site can boost your SEO. This is true, so many people may tend to get links into their blog anywhere and everywhere. Have you traded links with sketchy sites or sub-par blogs? Did you unleash a comment bomb on other blogs, related to your niche or not?

If any of these sounded like you, you are doing linking all wrong. This SEO faux pas probably won’t get you skipped over in search results, but it may not do you a lot of good. When it comes to inbound links, it is quality over quantity – all of those links from low ranking blogs filled with content farm garbage won’t get you any more visitors.

Are you posting regularly, even if you have nothing to say?

Again, with the SEO! It is true that your search results can get better if you add new content often. This means that some top blogs post multiple times a day, and this could mean that you do it too. But what do you post?

A lot of average bloggers can’t think of that much interesting, valuable new things to say that often, so they end up posting drivel. Readers find these low quality posts, and they decide not to come back! Yikes! Make sure each post is a good, quality post; if you really don’t have the time or the ideas, it may be a better strategy to go silent for a bit.

About the Author

Author of today’s article is Kevin Moor. Kevin regularly writes for a site that hosts reviews on Trojan related information.

Did you like our blogging mistakes to avoid post?

Let us hear your voice with a comment!

Check Blogging tips for beginners post to get more info on how to blog better .

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

The Importance of the About Us Page on Your Company Website

When it comes to business websites it is very easy to get it wrong. Anybody who works in design or marketing will be able to tell you almost instantly whether your website will be a success or not.

One of the main problems in recent years has been the rush to concentrate on SEO at the expense of good old-fashioned content and design. In addition, many website owners have been so convinced that SEO is the answer to their prayers that they have forgotten some of the basic rules of marketing and sales.

Your About Us Page content and other webpages is as important as seo

Consequently they put all their effort into keywords and forget to then write intriguing and actionable page titles. They spend hours building backlinks to their product pages and then don’t put any effort into selling the products themselves with well written content. In fact, many site owners forget that once you’ve got the traffic to the site, you need to keep it there.

Your About Us Page helps the start of building relationships with your customers

One of the most important elements of keeping traffic and converting it to customers is to build a relationship with them. This means making sure they can contact you easily. It doesn’t matter that internet sales are growing larger than the high street month on month and that it is a common way of shopping now – people still like to feel that there is a human being they can talk to or contact if need be. That’s why you need to make sure your phone number is prominent on every page (as well as your social media profiles) and that’s why your About Us page is so important.

How do you treat you About Us page?

Most people treat the About Us page as an afterthought, or just as bad, a place to stuff with keywords for the search engines. While there’s no harm in including keywords in every page, if you don’t write your About Us page to the best of your ability you face the very real possibility of losing potential customers. People still like to know who they are buying from and a well written About Us page will give your site credibility and will start to build a relationship of trust between you and your customers.

There are two ways to go about writing the About Us page for your company website/blog

How To Write an About Us Page | Option #1

The first is to write in the third person about your company. Let’s say you buy and sell vintage teddy bears. If you wanted to write about your company in a way that would appeal to other vintage teddy bear collectors you would begin with something personal like:

Esther started collecting vintage teddy bears at the age of eighteen when she decided she couldn’t get rid of a rather battered old bear she had inherited from her grandmother. Within a few years she was a collector and was hooked. Nowadays she’s lucky enough to spend her time working in an area she is passionate about and helping other collectors to come together and trade old vintage bears…

You could then go on to talk a bit about the company and website, how long you have been in business etc. The whole point about such an introduction is to give the reader a relationship with your company, and to let them know that you are just like them – passionate about bears or stamps, iguanas or dark chocolate.

How To Write an About Us Page | Option #2

The second way of writing it is to make it even more personal, as if you are having a conversation with the customer.

This can be achieved by starting the paragraph with a question such as:

Are you mad about vintage teddy bears and looking to add more to your collection? Are you wondering if there are other people out there also collecting old teddy bears?

And then you can forge a link with them:

I used to think I was the only person with this strange compulsion to collect …

And instantly you have a connection with your customer.

Next step in constructing your About Us Page

Once you have done this, whether using the first method or the second, it remains to you to introduce your website and your business or products. Explain what the business is and how it works on the website. Talk about other satisfied users / customers / collectors and the community on the site. And lastly, give them that all-important call to action that will take them to your products. Make it strong and direct, as well as intriguing so that they have no choice but to click through.

About The Author

Alex Simmonds is journalist and financial blogger. He currently writes about the small business and freelance sector where he covers everything from marketing to finance to umbrella companies.

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Will you follow these tips while creating your next About Us Page content for your business website?

If you liked this post share it away with your twitter and facebook friends! Subscribe with your email below to receive our next post directly to your email! If you also have an opinion to share or experience in constructing an About Us page for company websites, be my guest and submit your comment via the comment form below!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

5 Ways to Become Indispensable in your Work Team

Ask for Help: Employees often have a sense that if they ask for help, they will be viewed as an employee incapable of performing a task. This is not true; your employer is there to help guide you through your career. Asking for help or asking questions does not weaken your ability to get the job done. So next time a curve ball is thrown at you, ask for help.

Ask to Help: Asking for help and asking to help go hand in hand. You may ask for help but don’t forget to reciprocate the good deed. Asking a fellow co-worker or your employer to be an extra set of hands is a great way to show that you are willing to work and be part of something bigger.

Team Player: You have heard it since you were a child, to always ‘play nice’ and be part of ‘the team’. That mantra still applies to adulthood and the work place. You have asked for help and you have offered to help, being a team player will get you far in your company as well as showing your boss your work ethic. An added bonus to being a team player: it will help with your stress and work load!

Keep positive: We are all human and have our bad days, whether we are sick, stressed or just plain tired. Whatever may be bringing you down, try not to bring it to the workplace. Positivity is contagious and your work environment picks up on this.  Being negative is a quick way for others not to want you around. So smile and keep the personal problems at home.

Speak up: Speaking up at work doesn’t mean the loudest voice is the strongest voice. If you have a great idea that you think will benefit the company, speak up. Don’t be afraid to tell your employer your thoughts. Now this is a fine line, this doesn’t mean you walk into your boss’s office and tell them you think they are doing a crummy job. Voice your positive and helpful ideas only.

About the Author

Jenny Ellis is our guest author for today and regularly contributes for aupair jobs. You may contact her at: ellisjenny728 @ gmail.com.

If you enjoyed this post check out the following too:

• How to Get the Promotion of Your Dreams
• 3 Job Interview Tips
• Should You Go Back to School or Not?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

If you are about to launch a blog there are some steps, blogging tips and courses of action that you should follow through and accept before you see your aspirations becoming reality. As far as the technical part of getting a new blog up and running, if you are not familiar on how to do it, read this post and the included blogging tips on How To Start Your Own Self Hosted WordPress Blog.

Learning search engine optimization is essential if you start a blog as it will make you visible on the top page of Google and will bring targeted free traffic on your site. Read a post about Google Page Rank and how it relates to the search engine optimization that your blog needs.

Inevitably, you start small. You are always allowed to think big. Day by day you apply solid blogging tips and take actions to grow your traffic, offer great content, gain authority, improve your rankings, build links and enlarge your audience. You start by telling everyone you know about your new theme blog and offer many options for your content to spread virally between friends of friends etc.

Having little traffic is reasonable in the start and it all comes up to what are we bloggers willing to do about it in order to change that. I am sharing some blogging tips with you next. First you set priorities and then you set up a plan which you religiously follow and improve at times, wherever is needed and the situation requires. There is always something we can be better at! The more the blogging tips you expose yourself to the more possible it is to filter the information you need to initiate your online marketing plan!

Blogging Tips For Beginners

1. Choose a niche that you are interested in plus there is enough demand on the market for information

Ask yourself: Would people pay to get the information you plan to offer?

There are unlimited areas of interests that you can get involved in. Some niches are already very saturated and highly competitive. There are already many expert authors, writers and gurus that already offer resourceful and problem solving information to a global internet audience that trusts them, reads them and follows their updates. If you are asking yourself if you should consider not entering a niche like that the answer will be given by you if you reply to the questions:

• How Badly Do I Want To Succeed in This Niche
• Will I Have a Distinctive Voice To Offer To My Audience that will make me visible and trusted enough to outrank the big gurus in the industry

How you will employ these blogging tips, depends on the way you see things, if you thing big and have great self confidence, passion, eagerness and expertise that others will appreciate then GO FOR IT! Do not let anyone tell you that it is impossible to do it on your own!

As a starter I was told that it is impossible to get my website on top page of Google and that only the big guys that pay the big bucks can see themselves there. I even paid a company to take charge of the SEO part of my website. They weren’t exactly delivering the results they claimed though….

2. Keep Up With Your Niche’s Developments Thoroughly

Stay focused on the niche you are targeting and keep track of the latest news and developments that are occurring, craft you own way of offering these with your own words in a matter that others will find value in and will make them want to come back for more on your blog. It is a fact that you don’t need to know everything about anything.

Nevertheless, for the specific niche you have chosen to launch your blog for you should do your best to know as more as you can and keep educating yourself everyday. Transform the new knowledge into readable information providing solutions to specific questions. Next blogging tips are about frequency and consistency of your posts.

Some more blogging tips…

3. Take Your Blog Seriously and Create Content For Your Readers at Least Twice a Week

One of the major blogging tips to absorb!
A blog that is not updated regularly is a dead blog, because people lose interest if they are not regularly kept up to date. They forget about you as they are really so many other resources available for them to go and find what they ask for at any given time. Share what you learn, via applying several blogging tips on your own sites.

4. Grab The Feeds of Leading Blogs in Your Niche and Join Their Newsletters

Find the leading blogs in your niche and get your hands on their news updates. It is amazing how much information, amazing blogging tips and knowledge you can find in one article and material for your next blog post or WEB 2.0 entry. Your content if nicely and pleasantly written will be picked by other people and will generate back links to your blog. This will add up in time as long as you do this regularly.

Social Blogging Tips

5. Get Social on The Web

After the Panda update on Google’s algorithm social media engagement concerning your content has become a very important ranking factor for your blog. That said, even if you do not consider yourself such a social person it’s definitely time to negotiate with yourself to get social out there. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn social networks offer great flexibility for you to connect with people that are interest in your niche and on top of that it will help your professional reputation and improve your search engine visibility.

Purpose Blogging Tips

6. Know Where You Want To Reach

Start small and build your way up to the point you want to see your blog at. How long this will take? It is up to each one of you.

Have a crystal clear plan and avoid skipping through the hard parts. Trial and error, tweak your blog, improve your writing and communication skills, read, learn, be happy with what you are doing so you ensure you stay strong whilst you are growing your business blog.

So what do you think so far? What blogging tips work best for you until now?

If you have any blogging tips more to add here from your personal experience, be my guest!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

When starting your own small business, you’ll hear that over and over from people. It may sound scary, but there are a few key things you can do to help improve your odds of success when starting your own business.

One of these things is money management.

Money Management Tips

includes both incoming money (from sales, billing, accounts receivable, etc.) as well as outgoing money (from expenses, supplies, inventory, etc.). You should know where every dollar comes from and where it goes.

Money going out

Tracking your outgoing money is crucial for two reasons. First, you can see what is costing you money, and where you can improve that spending. When setting up your business, many expenses may have been projections, and getting solid number will help improve those projections and let your company focus on the most profitable endeavors.

Second, tracking your money is important for tax purposes. If you want to write off your various business expenses (and why wouldn’t you?), you need accurate records for the IRS. Consulting with your CPA or other tax professional ahead of time can help you know what expenses you are able to deduct, so you can pull those out from your tracked expenses to save on taxes.

Tracking incoming and outcoming money

There are many tools that can help you track your money; from online websites like mint.com or computer-based programs like Quicken, these tools will make it much faster and easier to keep the company books up to date and accurate.

Money coming in

Tracking your incoming money is also important. First, you don’t want to miss out on any money owed to you. Many small businesses are someone going “on their own” and offering consulting services in their field of expertise. One problem these professionals have, however, is not keeping up with billing. Being more interested in their job than the numbers and paperwork that goes with it, they neglect to properly track their hours and bill their clients, and are missing out on money that they should be earning (and are earning, just not getting paid for).

Second, tracking your incoming money again helps you improve your business projections. By seeing where the business is most successful, you can hone in on that and really focus your efforts there.

Comparing the incoming and outgoing money here is crucial. If you track your incoming money and see a surge of clients after running a particular advertising campaign (noticed from tracking your outgoing money), you can repeat that to improve your revenues. If you notice a product you are selling is costing you more than it is bringing in, you can cut that from your product line.

Basic Money Management Skills

There are many hurdles you will have to overcome to have a successful small business. Do yourself a favor and use basic money management skills and track your money – both incoming and outgoing – to give your business the best efforts you can to help it succeed.

About the Author

Author Thomas Hathaway is a financial consultant and content contributor to paydayloans.org.uk, a site providing information and advances when you may need an advance to your regular paycheck.

If you enjoyed this article with these basic tips on how to manage your money do let us know in the comments form!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Infographic on 5 Top Web Hosting Companies Statistics

This blog uses Hostgator web hosting.

Web Hosting Experiences

If you happen to have a personal experience with the above mentioned web hosts, be our guests and share with us in the comments form!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Common Posting Strategies in the Blogosphere

1. Once a week (or fewer). By and large, these are the personal or hobby blogs that generally don’t grow in traffic or loyal readership. If you want your blog to steadily gain traffic, you’ll need to post more often.
2. Three times a week (plus or minus weekends). This is a great posting strategy for beginners or blogs with research or time-heavy subject matter.
3. Once a day. This is an ideal strategy for serious bloggers with lengthier blog posts or an extremely loyal readership.
4. Several times a day. This strategy is largely reserved for the mega-blogs or the blogs with multi-person writing teams. If your post material is reasonably short (news blurbs, event postings, etc.), you can pull off multiple daily postings as a solo blogger.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Choosing a Posting Strategy

1. Which strategy is best suited for my content material?
   If you’re posting tutorials on a craft blog, your posts are going to be much more time-intensive than a blogger posting upcoming events in their hometown. If your material is time-sensitive (news, politics, etc.), you’ll need to post more frequently than lifestyle or leisure blogs.
2. What can I handle?
   You can always increase posting frequency if you feel you can handle it. Less content is always better than no content due to blogger burnout.
3. Where does my traffic come from?
   If most of your traffic comes from search engines, you can get away with a lot more daily postings than a blog with a steady RSS audience. Subscribers generally can’t handle multiple lengthy posts in one day. Just like we’ve all unfollowed that one Twitter account who over-tweets, your blog readers may unsubscribe if you post too often.
4. How important are comments to my blog?
   Blogs on writing, blogging, SEO copywriting, or freelancing tend to attract more loyal comment discussions than other specialities. The more you post, the more outside traffic you’ll receive…but the less you post, the more comments your posts receive. If you’ve got a steady discussion going in your blog comments, posting more may damage this interaction.
5. What’s worked for my blog in the past?
   Take a look at your past traffic statistics. Have you had steady growth with three postings a week? Did your traffic explode the week you posted seven times? Do you have trouble coming up with ideas when you try to post more than five times a week?
6. Do more posts equal more traffic on my blog?
   Try posting more often for a month. Does your traffic significantly increase? If your numbers stay the same, it’s not worth putting in the extra effort.

Find What Works for You and Your Blog

Quality and consistency are the most important things to remember when picking a posting strategy. No matter what blogging strategy you choose, make sure it’s a strategy that will allow for regular quality postings. Now pick a strategy and stick to it!

About the Author

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

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If a FB business page has 1000′s of likes what does this signal? On the face of it, it appears that business is doing pretty good. After all people in excess of 10k can’t be wrong. Or, what about a twitter account with thousands of followers? Must be a celebrity or well-liked figure? Even though these assumptions can be right, but there’s another explanation as well i.e. chances are, that they have purchased the likes or the followers.

In case, the businesses have accumulated all those likes or followers genuinely, the trust and popularity is worth thousands of dollars, but when it comes to buying likes or followers, 10k likes are worth hardly 3 – 4 hundred dollars. So, you should opt for the easy way and purchase likes, followers, or plus ones? Instead of spending lots of time on the content, marketing, and interacting with customers to make them click on the like button? The answer is a big No; keep on reading to have a detailed answer.

Ruined the very purpose of Social Media:

It will be a long debate if we were to talk about the legality or morality of buying or selling likes or followers. Needless to say, Social media websites like Facebook or Twitter don’t approve of such practices in their TOS, but those who are involved in this practice will present many arguments to prove how it is perfectly fine, but the legality is not the point.

Because even if there’s nothing wrong in buying FB likes or Google +1’s, it actually spoils the very purpose of having the fans or friends. It’s like, instead of making real friend, you go out and list hundreds of fake names in your friend’s list, but when the need arise, hardly any of them will arrive to help.

Do you need lots of fake “likes” to get real ones on board?

Some buy these likes or followers while believing in the notion of “fake likes will encourage more and more real people to like”. I often see people presenting the argument that having 5 – 10 likes is a turn off for people who visit your page, and they are more likely to click on “like” button if they can see thousands of people liking that page.

I don’t know about others, but I have never liked or disliked a page on the basis of the number of “likes”. People like a page because of its content, and not because they are looking to become a part of the crowd. Besides, if your FB page has got just 5 – 10 likes after months of efforts, you are probably missing the boat in one way or another and you need to revise your social media marketing strategy.

Likes are just the tip of the iceberg:

Suppose, the abovementioned arguments doesn’t convince, and you decide to go and purchase those “likes” or “plus one” packages, what’s next? Sorry to break it to you, but that’s just about it. You will hardly be able to get anything out of these dummy contacts. They’ll hardly give a visit to your website, let alone purchasing anything from you.

I have been in charge of marketing many websites, and I’ll take 100 genuine guys liking my page over 10,000 purchased ones any day, knowing that I’ve got a chance to convert some of those 100 people, whereas the chances of getting anything out of those dummy ones are almost impossible.

The right approach:

If you are really interested in increasing your likes or Plus Ones, and you are ready to invest some time and money, there are much better ways to do that. The best method is to start some sort of a competition or sweepstakes? Or, you can simply offer the people discounts like “123 inkjets coupons” or “4ikjets discount” as a reward for liking your page.

Rest assured, these users are more likely to stay and make repetitive purchases, especially if you can focus on making a relationship, rather than looking and fretting upon the numbers.

Author’s Bio

Arba Hana writes on topics related to SEO, Social Media Optimization, and Internet Marketing tips. She works for a coupon code website, where you will find all types of discounts and voucher codes. Feel free to use some of these discounts by visiting 123 inkjets coupons and coupons for 4inkjets pages.

Related posts:

5 Social Media Marketing Tips

LinkedIn VS Facebook or Vice Versa

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

The giant internet search engine known as Google recently launched a new social networking site: Google Plus, or simply Google+. Google+ is a social platform that is designed to take web browsing, social networking and linking interests to a new level of interactivity.

Flexibility to Connect with people of alike interests on Google Plus

It works by allowing its subscribers to select which interests, groups and friends that they would like to add to their “circles”.

These circles are similar to the privacy features that Facebook offers its users, but these are more concise. For instance, if you have several friends and family members that you do not want to see something that you post, you can simply deselect their circle when posting that content. This feature is also implemented in the business pages of Google+.

Some industry experts believe that this concept can allow businesses to employ a more friendly and unobtrusive — and therefore effective — form of marketing than has yet appeared in the world of social media.

Benefits of Using Google Plus (Google+) Network

Facebook famously stated that they view their users as customers; that knowing what their users like tells Facebook what to advertise to them. The goal of Google+, of course, is still to earn money from advertising; however, it does so by simply letting its users select their advertisers and their associated groups.

When Google+ users are creating their profiles, they are selecting what people, groups, and businesses they like; these will be the only people that are able to view certain content. This allows the selected groups and businesses to display information regarding future deals, events or announcements that are actually of interest to the user.

Google+ attempts to bridge the gap between socialization and advertising that has existed for users of social media sites for the past several years.

Implementation

This is not to say that marketing on Google+ will necessarily be more effective than it would be on Facebook, or that Facebook is not trying to implement similar forms of advertising into their interface. It simply means that so far Google+ is doing a better and more effective job of accomplishing the removal of this gray area.

Google marketing director Rikard Steiber recently pointed out in a new video on Google+ for businesses that Google+ is more of a layer of social networking that is added to what people are already doing on Google, YouTube and similar sites every day.

Steiber says this unique social aspect of the site makes advertising more relevant for their private users and more effective for their business users.

Application

Steiber uses the example of Nike being able to share information about their shoes with runners who have added them to their circles. Because you as a business owner can use this strategy to communicate with individuals who are already interested in your company, this can be a particularly effective means of advertising.

This too is a factor in Google’s near online omnipresence, since if a friend +1’s something (roughly equivalent to liking something on Facebook), then the pages the friend liked coupled with a picture of that friend will be shown at the top of Google search results.

This development of the social media advertising concept that Facebook pioneered can yield intriguing results for business that properly employ it.

About the Author

Beth Cooper is the contributor of this post and works for DesignContest.com, a crowd sourcing related company that employs Logo Design Contests to offer unique designs in friendly prices.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Read more here: Search Engine Optimization  Tips for WordPress Bloggers

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

The Skills that Every Internet Marketer Must Have

Internet marketing can be a real lucrative venture. You can establish an entire business and earn a full-time revenue just by working with your laptop. No need for commuting or dealing with difficult bosses or coworkers. However, this is not to say that online marketing is easy. On the contrary, there is a steep learning process and a lot of trial and error.

The Basics that Every Internet Marketer Must Know

Image Credit: renjith krishnan

There are a lot of aspects to online marketing. It is best to learn the fundamentals before learning anything else. Once you have a good grasp of the basics, then you could learn other useful marketing components.

•  Learn SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the most basic of online marketing.  SEO is the process of selecting keywords to get ranked in the search engine. Learning how to properly research keywords is a must. If you do not learn this step correctly, you will end up trying to rank for keywords that are too competitive. Learn how to look for keywords that get a lot of searches but have little competition.

• Learn the process of link building: This is a component of SEO. This means adding backlinks on forums and blogs using your keywords as the anchor text. Article directories and social bookmarking sites are other places to drop off a link. Learning how to gradually build links over time will help your rankings in the long term. Do not make the mistake of building too many links at one time. This will make Google suspicious.

• Learn how to improve your conversion rate: This is the ratio of site visitors to those that become clients or paying customers. Adding special designs and a convincing sales pitch are some ways to increase conversions. Email marketing is another method for increased conversions. Simply add a sign up box to your site. Those who sign up will become subscribers and receive periodic newsletters you send out.

• Establish a connection with potential clients. Visitors to your site have to trust you as a legitimate and knowledgeable figure within your niche. To build trust, you should include a photo and bio about yourself. Let visitors see that there is a face to the business being promoted. You should also provide relevant information and refrain from going into sales mode. Responding promptly to emails and answering questions will also build trust.

• Learn other approaches. When it comes to traffic, do not be a one trick pony. Take the time to learn other avenue of approaches. This includes pay per click, video marketing and social networks.

Putting it All Together

Following the points above will set the stepping stones for a successful Internet marketing career. Learning the steps will take time and your patience will be tested. As long as you set realistic goals and do not expect instant results, you will do just fine.

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This post is written by Maggie Jones who is a writer at privatestudentloan.org

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Internet Marketing Skills Feedback

Did you enjoy Maggie’s post? Share away! What are your best internet marketing skills and what are the ones that you need to work on more? Feel free to add your opinion below in the comments form about what skills are more rewarding for you as an internet marketer.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Money at Hand by Don Hankins

Turn your website into a source of income

If you have a website, you know how much time and effort goes into keeping it up and running. As you’re uploading pictures, writing blog entries, and fiddling with the layout, you have to wonder if you should be making money from this. The truth is, you can easily turn your website into an income stream, as long as you follow a couple of guidelines.

Write engaging content

Why do people want to read your website? For enthralling tales about how much you love the leather wallet you got for your birthday? Unless you are a celebrity, save the navel gazing for your diary. People won’t read your site if it doesn’t interest them, and you need people reading your site if you want to make an income from it.

If you want to make money from your site you have to give the readers something that benefits them. If you really love your wallet, for example, you can help other people buy the same wallet. Or maybe have a list of the best leather wallets. Or explain the history of the brand that created the wallet. Give your readers a reason to keep coming to your site by offering them information they can use.

Increase your traffic

You could have the greatest site ever, but if no one is reading it, you’re going to have a problem. Publicize your site by mentioning it everywhere you can. Comment on similar, more popular blogs with links back to your page. If you post in forums, put a link to your site in your signature space. Put links to your site on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and bookmark it on sites like Digg and Reddit. You can even buy ads to get people to look at your site.

Once you’ve gotten consistent, useful information and gotten people to read it, you need to actually have ways to get this site to make you money. There are several different ways to make money from your website, and if you’ve got the content and the readership, you should be able to create a decent source of income.

1. Ads

There are a number of ways to go about this. You can start very easily with text ads such as Google Adsense, which display ads based on your content. You can also join ad networks that help you to put banner ads on your sites. You earn money whenever a reader clicks on the ad.

You can also sell ad space to other site owners and set a price you like, but for this you might want to wait until you can prove that you have the traffic to justify the cost.

2. Sell your own product

If you’ve chosen a topic you enjoy, you probably have a lot of information you can assemble into a short e-book or video. Don’t worry about being an expert–there is an excellent chance that you know more than someone else. Selling your own products is great because you set the price and get all the proceeds. And once you sell one product, you can sell as many as you want. There are many people who have made a full-time job out of selling information products they’ve created.

3. Affiliate programs

If you don’t want to create your own products, don’t give up. There are others who have written e-books who are more than happy to share their profits with you–really! All you have to do is sign up as an affiliate, which is someone who promotes a product in return for a portion of the proceeds. Many affiliate programs offer affiliates 50-75% of the sale price, and sometimes the commission goes to 100%.

In addition to affiliate programs for other folks’ products, you can also be an affiliate for some of the most well known companies in the world; Wal-mart, Amazon.com, and eBay all have affiliate programs website owners can join.

Making money from a website can be challenging, but it can also be rewarding and fun. If you’ve taken the time to start a website in the first place, why not take the chance and try to make it into an source of income? You might even be able to make it your full-time career.

 About the Author

Cyndi Peterson is a web designer, a personal finance consultant, and a content contributor for companies offering bad credit credit cards for many folks who have lost their businesses and are trying to create new businesses online.

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Did you like these tips on how to turn your website into a source of income and make money from your web assets? If you did, we would appreciate if you shared the love. Your feedback is valuable as well via the comments form.

Back to online marketing training.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

You probably already know that every online business start up is based on extensive and careful keyword research in order to decide up on the choosing the domain name that will represent your business, both offline and online.

Either you use free tools to make this decision like Google Adwords Keyword Tools or advanced software for keyword research, there are some things you need to understand prior registering a domain name for your business. Today’s post is from my guest author Olivia Jones. Thank you Olivia for your contribution.

What’s in a Domain Name? Understanding How Your Domain Name Impacts Your Business
Choosing a domain name is not just a matter of going for something fancy or that sounds “nice.” If you are serious about your business, then you must think about the name you select carefully. This is going to be the online home of your valued business, so don’t jump into this decision blindly. Before making a selection, you might want to consider some of these pertinent points that will impact your business.

SEO Considerations

Think of the top keywords your targeted customers tend to use when you want to come up with a good domain name. Play around with these same keywords to get a perfectly matching name. This will make it easier for your targeted audience to access your website even if they did not know about it. If you have a travel site, for example you can look at available travel domains by category.

The name should preferably be the name of your business too to make it easier for people to associate the two. People can easily end up in a competitor’s website when they type your business name while your domain name is different. The lost sales add up fast. As far as SEO goes, having your keywords in the domain name can help you place high for those terms in search listings, once again making your site easily accessible for those looking for your product or service.

Memorable and Unique Domain Name

You do not want people to confuse your business with an already established one. Come up with a domain name that will make your business stand out and that is original. In addition to being unique, the name must be easy to remember and type. Do not put off clients by using too long a name. On the other hand, do not make it vague by using acronyms meant for the initiated only.

Hyphenations

Although you can combine your keywords by hyphenating them, which also makes it easier for search engines to categorize the keywords, it actually makes it more confusing to people. When people tell others about your website, they will rarely speak of the hyphenations – yet leaving them out can easily lead to a different website!

Register Your Domain Name Under Your Name

It is better to register your domain name yourself to ensure it is under your name. Ensure it’s under your name even if another company registers it on your behalf. You don’t want to risk losing the name after working hard to make it popular!

Domain Name Timelessness

Do not use a trendy name that will fade out as trends change.

Tax Issues

Few people realize the tax implications of their domain names. The IRS considers domain names as assets that can have a positive impact on your tax returns. To do this, your domain name must be appraised by an independent and reputable domain name appraisal firm. Therefore, your domain name can significantly influence your net worth.

About the Author

Olivia Jones is a  health, fitness and Internet marketing blogger.

Choosing domain name feedback

If you enjoyed Olivia’s tips we would appreciate if you shared the article on your favorite social network with your buddies! Also if you have any experience that has to do with choosing domain name for your business please feel free to share it with us here below via the comments form, feedback is always valued!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

It is a tough time for those of us who are seeking work at this current moment in time. There are a record number of students coming out of university that are going on to be unemployed and there are fewer jobs on offer due to the down turn in the financial markets. For this reason it is vitally important that you take advantage of all the information available to you when you do get asked to attend a job interview.

Thorough research will show your prospective employer that you are keen to work within their organisation. More importantly it will also give you the opportunity to fully understand what exactly it is that the company are looking for in their recruits, enabling you to perfectly match your application to their requirements, culture and working style.

Study the position

Doing some thorough research on what the job entails is the obvious starting point however it is also the one that many people do not take full advantage of. When reviewing a job description you should take in what the role entails and see if you have any experience doing anything similar within a work environment.

If you do not despair, most job descriptions will include a list of personal skills that are desired. Use these to match your experiences in life to what is required in the job. An example of this would be someone that has played a lot of team sports as a captain being a good natural leader.

If the job specification is a little short and vague do not be scared of giving the recruiter or the human resources personnel a call to discuss any questions you may have in further detail.

More often than not a quick call will get you directly in contact with one of the people who will be interviewing you so you can use this to not only get some more information on the job itself but also to make first contact and break the ice so to speak.

Familiarise yourself with the company

Knowing the companies goals and aims along with their mission statement will really help you to answer questions like “Tell us what you know about our organisation?” & “Can you tell us why you want to work for the company?”. One of the best places to do this background research is on the corporate section of the firm’s website.

Within these documents you will usually be able to find out most of the key messages and ideologies that the company would like to follow over the coming years of trading. Being able to confidently answer questions like those mentioned above will also demonstrate to the prospective employer that you are a great researcher too.

Social networks: Use them to your advantage

Damaging personal opinions and also personal information being leaked into the work domain are often a cause for concern for employees, but social networks can be used positively for those looking to gain an advantage when applying for jobs.

LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for sharing and connecting with other professionals, exploring the hiring patterns of companies and also for looking at the career progressions of those that have taken positions at the company before you. Using this information it is easy to put together a really solid answer for questions like “Where do you think you will be in 5 years time?”

What Are They Really Like is another good social network that enables employees to upload unbiased opinions and insights as to what it is like to work at a company. These types of site are a great resource for looking at things like salaries and also for getting and understanding of what a companies working culture is like.

About the Author

Louise works within the legal recruitment sector. Within her job she provides assistance to graduates and helps them to find their ideal careers and legal jobs.

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Related post on how to get the promotion you long for and resume writing tips.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Website optimization for search engines is one of the most important ways to maximize traffic and increase popularity without spending a fortune on it. Many SEO strategies have been perfected, giving website owners a chance to rank among the top results for specific searches.

Various SEO technologies are available for the needs of everyone. Some of them focus on content, others involve the website’s code. Still other strategies are dealing with link building and the provision of the so-called link juice.

Sometimes you have to change website URL’s, due to changes in the site’s structure, domain, or content management system. Most SEO experts believe that a 301 redirect is useful in terms of SEO and passing on link juice. Is this really so?

What is a 301 Redirect?

For starters, what does a 301 redirect really mean?

The 301 redirect is a method in which a website tells search engines and browsers that a web page has moved permanently to another location. This is the simplest and shortest way to explain the technical term. A 301 redirect is often used when a website owner wants an old web page to take website visitors to a new one.

When a 301 redirect is used, website visitors will automatically be taken from the old page to the new one. This technique is very useful and simple, but does it do any good in terms of search engine optimization?

301 Redirects and SEO

Most website owners are scared of changing domains or modifying URLs because it is possible to experience lower search engine rankings. A common fear is that changing domain names may result in lower Page Rank and diminished search engine traffic.

The old URL and the old website have already managed to achieve some search engine status. According to some experts, a 301 redirect will pass all the link reputation from the old website to the new one. This way, a new URL will quickly gain the popularity and the Google PageRank of the old one.

Web-based experiments show that 301 redirects tend to pass a lot of link juice from the old page to the new one. Many websites that move from one address to another tend to perform well, some of them even experiencing an increase in traffic after the change.

Studies performed by various SEO research companies show that Google tends to value 301 redirects well. Though there may have been a problem in the past connected to the domain and its age, the situation has started to change. 301 redirects can be used safely to pass link juice and to quickly establish the search engine ranking of a new URL.

Tips and Tricks when applying 301 Redirects

To make a 301 redirect more effective, you may consider following some of these tips.

Set up 301 redirects to the new domain only after the pages on the new domain is set up. Do not try to redirect pages to new pages that are not relevant. If a page contains significant link reputation, but there is no comparable page on the new domain, then write a new page to redirect it to instead of just redirecting to the home page.

Keep the old domain and all of the files in place for several weeks. This will be necessary for all search engines to reflect on the changes and to give the new domain a chance to quickly improve its search engine positioning.

Always test! Make sure that the 301 redirect functions smoothly. You may otherwise lose some of your website visitors.

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Author Info: Jamie Highland writes for My Baby Shower Favors, a website selling baby shower favors and other baby shower games and supplies. Jamie also works on SEO related tasks and in this article explained 301 redirects and if you should use them.

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Thank you Jamie for you contribution.

Link Building Tips for SEO

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

It happens many times that webmasters want to rank high on the search engines for some local/regional keyword terms and lack the insights on how to pursue top rankings and beat their small or big competition.

If you are one of those webmasters and you want to apply SEO strategies that will help you gain top rankings for your region targeted keyword phrases read the following tips and make sure you put all of them in use in the very near future

1. Do Keyword Research with Google Adwords Free Keyword Tool

Go to Google’s Free Keyword Tool here  or other keyword research software tools and see what keyword terms most people use including the name of the region you want to rank for. If you don’t have a website then find a search term of high demand and not outrageous competition and include this in your new domain.

If you already have a website, gather a list of some main keywords and variations of those to include in your pages content and meta tags with most important being the Title, Description, and H1 tags.

2. Create a Different Page with Unique Content for Each Location You Promote

If you want to rank for more than one locations then you should create a distinguished page for each location and include your Business name, the type of business and the location in the next SEO areas:

• Title tag
• H1 tag
• Content body
• Description tag
• Image Alt tag
• Anchor text of inbound links

Every page must have the above elements unique on each page. The home page should contain the main location’s information.

For example if you want to rank for the keyword seo malta, you can have the following title on your target page:

“SEO Malta Expert – SEO Consulting Services”

3. Host Your Website to a Local Host

Having a local host for your website is going to help your rankings if you do right SEO and online marketing.

4. List Your Business on Google Maps and Bing Maps

Go to Google and Bing Maps and submit your business information. This way you will claim high listings on Google’s local search vertical as well as enhance your natural listings potential to rank higher. Google and Bing offer comfortable phone and fax validation methods.

5. Ask Your Clients To Rate You – Get Reviews From Happy Clients

Good reviews never hurt anyone. Upload a YELP or an ALEXA widget on your site and ask people to rate you. Keep it natural as the search engines have ways to discover fake reviews. These reviews will help your rankings on Google maps.

6. Approach Other Local Businesses – Ask For a Link!

Do you have friends, family, acquaintances and good relations with small business people that run websites in your region? This is the time to approach them and ask for a link in exchange of a free offer or gift from you to them

The businesses can be related YES but not directly competitive to yours. Ask for a link pointing at your website with your main targeting keyword phrase as the anchor text.

7. Submit your business information on all your local directories besides Google Places

Find as many local directories and submit your listing information and include your main targeting keywords there as well for the search engines to start picking them up and relate those to what your website is about .

8. Display Your Address on ALL Pages of Your Site

This is pretty much self explanatory. Display your address either in your footer or header.

9. Create a Blog for Your Main Website

Add a blog to your website and offer newsletter and email updates to your customers. Run promotions through email marketing and offers. Grow your audience by providing valuable information and update it frequently so you keep your customers interest. Google loves fresh content and blogs and they reward it accordingly.

10. Create and Run Social Media Accounts – Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn

There is no doubt on how important it is to be social these days if you have serious financial expectations from your website for your business. All these networks require time and energy, but if used right, they can bring you tons of free traffic and new customers. Engage with regional social groups on these networks.

11. Optimize Your Images on Site For Google

Include gorgeous pictures of your business and equip them correctly. Include your local main keyword phrase in the image’s file name, in the image title, in the title description, in the caption  and in the alt tag. Choose slight variations of your main keyword phrases for each one from your initial research you conducted with Google’s Free Keyword Tool.

12. Build Many and Diversified Links Back to Your Pages

Once you have used previous tips and you have done a basic on-site optimization you are ready to start building links. Upload videos of yourself or your employees on YouTube, include your home page link in the start of the description. Comment on related to your niche blogs, write a press release and THEN SOME!

Happy walking the talking

Cheers,

Joanna Vaiou

End of Local SEO Tips and Strategies article.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Are you taking advantage of the plus one feature from Google yet? You really should be, ya know. The new plus one from Google is the newest way to share website content among social networks. It is a way to filter the content and search results that you see based on what your contacts recommend, or what they + 1. The goal is that the user ends up with the most relevant, useful content.

Google’s + 1 is similar to the Google Buzz feature that used to be in place. But, the goal of a + 1 is not to really start a conversation or discuss the content. It is simply a method of giving a vote for content. Sites that have many + 1s are seen as being relevant, which is something that anyone concerned with SEO will appreciate.

A user would not only see information about their social connections’ activities online and the websites they like, they are also able to see the number of people who hit the + 1 on a website. You know that when a lot of people + 1 a site, it has good information that you will want to read.

The potential of the + 1 is enormous. People can + 1 whatever they like: articles, websites, advertisements, and even results in a search engine. You do need an account with Google in order to partake in the + 1ing, however.

As you can guess, a site that has a lot of + 1s can end up with an increase in website ranking. You can use this to your advantage if you are a website owner. With simple code released by Google, you can install the + 1 button on a site so that users can help promote you. When they click on the + 1, it turns blue so they already know when they’ve + 1ed a site.

You are able to see how many people have clicked a +1 on a site as well as some of the names and profiles of people who have + 1ed a site. This ability really depends on the security settings of the user. Some users will not make this information publicly available.

A Dutch company which conducted research on whether + 1s had an effect on raking drew the following conclusions.

They saw an increase in conversions and rankings by 20%. They also thought that the + 1 must have had a positive effect on their visibility in search engines because of the increase in traffic they received. They noticed that Google must either reset their data or the influence of a + 1 might deteriorate eventually. They also noticed that if a site that had Google + 1s that would then be redirected to another site, the + 1s did not transfer.

For those interested in SEO, Google + 1 has some positive implications. Instead of only focusing on building backlinks to a site, you might want to consider getting + 1s. You should, at the very minimum, place a + 1 on your site for people to click on.

There are also sites where you can register to exchange + 1s with other website owners.

There are sure to be other ways to gain + 1s for your site. However, don’t ignore it. Google plus seems to be the next big trend so don’t let the opportunity pass you by.

About the Author

by Nirra

Nirra is a wife, mother, and freelance writer who writes for a top seo agency. She enjoys blogging about coupons and mystery shopping.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today we feature John Lewis article closely related to parents who homeschool their children and their interactions with the online social media platforms. Feel free to read our guest posting requirements and submit your own article for review and publication on our blog.

Enjoy John’s post and let us know what you think via the comments form.

Homeschooling is becoming more and more popular for a number of different reasons and one of the biggest challenges faced by any parents who decide to homeschool their children is to provide a healthy degree of socialization for their children.

One method for accomplishing this is to utilize the tools which are so readily at their disposal these days, including social media.

Social Registers for Parents

It’s not only the children who participate in homeschooling that need social connections. Parents who homeschool their kids need those social outlets as well, and social media platforms can be one means of achieving those essential connections.

Kids at home and social media on fire.. OK

Parents have the ability to bounce ideas about homeschooling methods and products with one another. They also get essential personal connections through social networking. Being a work at home parent or a homemaker and educator can leave one feeling disconnected, without the same kinds of social connections that others who leave the home each and every day to go to a worksite may have.

Social media can be a means of making those kinds of connections for parents who homeschool their kids.

Many individuals even find local connections with whom they can plan social outings that include the kids.

Homeschooled children can even take field trips together and participate in other educational related activities together, giving the kids and the parents the ability to interact with others on a fairly regular basis and still achieve their more focused and individualized education goals.

Social Interaction for Students

One of the big things that children gain through attendance of school in public and private facilities is socialization skills. They learn to communicate and interact with other kids, teachers, administrators, coaches and others. Providing such opportunities for homeschooled kids is one of the biggest challenges that parents face. Social media can provide answers.

Not only do kids have the ability to interact with other kids online but they can develop connections through parent-approved social networks to make local connections with other homeschooled kids. Children then have the chance to interact with one another in the real world, off line in recreational and educational activities.

Homeschooling parents can make connections where they actually co-educate their kids. They may meet up once or twice a week at different homes in order to conduct classes, science labs and other group learning activities. They can also set up monthly field trips or arrange outings that take place periodically throughout the year. The manner in which parents and kids utilize social media for homeschooling is entirely up to the individual parents, but there really are no limits to how it can be of benefit.

Social Media Options for Homeschooling

The best social media platforms for homeschooling are those which are actually designed with parents and homeschooled kids in mind. Sites like the Home School Register at http://www.homeschoolmedia.net/register, for example, provide kids and parents the ability to communicate online with others in similar situations around the globe.

These kids of sites also offer other interesting tools and resources, like the ability to start a school newspaper online which can be just another collaborative learning experience for homeschooled kids that give them the same kinds of benefits and opportunities that kids in traditional schools have exposure to.

About the Author

This post is a guest article written by John Lewis. John works at PriceCollate.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

This post is short and sweet. Today, Jay Druba shares with us some reasons why “guest posting/guest blogging” marketing and seo technique is very important to apply and include in your website marketing plan. If you like the article let us know what you think and how you go about guest posting on other blogs as well so far. Do you accept guest blogging inquiries on your blog? After reading this post, hopefully you ‘ll have a better view of how you will use this wonderful search engine optimization and marketing technique.

Good day from me. Thank you Jay for your contribution on my online marketing training blog.

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Guest Posting | A Win-Win Game

Guest posting is a common practice among bloggers—but what does it really do for you and your site?

• Increased Traffic

Guest Posting is a two-way street and can increase traffic in both directions. When you guest post on another blog, your readers will likely go there to read it (as long as you promote the post on your own blog). In return, if the readers of the other blog like your article, you may gain new readers and increase your audience.

• Fresh Content

Keeping up with a blog can be hard. Sometimes letting a guest write on your blog can create a change of pace, or spark a new topic of discussion, as well as providing content for your readers that offers a different perspective. Google gives the advantage to pages with regularly updated material; so don’t let your site become stale. Rather than trying to get people to link to your old content, make content that people want to link to.

• Backlinks

Most bloggers will let you include a link or two when you write for their site. By putting a link with an important keyword on the other blog (which, hopefully, has good ranking), you can improve your ranking for that keyword. Google recognizes the value of gaining links from a variety of places, so guest post on multiple sites, and your site’s ranking will go up.

• Building Relationships

Though SEO tactics are constantly changing, one thing is certain; forming mutually beneficial relationships with other bloggers in your niche will always prove to be valuable. By offering guest posts, you not only gain a link, but a resource. By building relationships, you establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and the links will soon start to come naturally.

While guest posting shouldn’t be your only SEO practice, it’s an excellent place to start. Use Google’s blog search tool to find blogs that fit your interests and get started. Many blogs have information on how to submit guest posts; otherwise, getting in touch with the blog owner via a “Contact” page is a good place to start.

Jay Druba is an SEO specialist and content writer for TravelProducts.com. When he’s not writing about travel accessories, he’s keeping up with the latest trends in SEO and marketing or reading up on the latest social media.

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Did you like Jay’s Guest Posting Benefits article?

How do you handle guest posting inquiries if any and how often do you draft posts for other blogs? If still you haven’t done anything concerning guest blogging, let us know via the comments form, how soon do you plan to include this strategy in your online marketing business plan?

If feeling ready, feel free to submit your guest post for this blog,  via my site’s contact form. You can read next about what my guest blogging requirements are, thanks!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

3 Techniques for Designing a Successful Landing Page

You’ve spent the time, money, and energy on attracting people to your website, now it’s time to convert them into a customer. Designing a successful landing page – the first page a visitor sees when he reaches your site – is crucial to the success of any website. Every good website has multiple landing pages, so keep these three tips in mind while you develop each of yours.

1. Keep Introductions Brief

Studies show that the majority of web surfers scan content for the information they feel is most important, so if a customer can’t find what he’s looking for without too much effort he’s more likely to wander away. Make sure that your most important content is “above the fold” – that is, make sure it is visible on your web page without having to scroll down to find it. Remember customers now access the web from a variety of devices, each with a different screen resolution, so plan for the lowest common denominator. Your attention-grabbing content should be viewable within the top 300 pixels of your web page.

2. Calls to Action

Also within the first 300 pixels of your site’s layout should be your first “call to action.” A call to action is any message that tells customers, in no uncertain terms, what you want them to do; “subscribe today,” “buy now,” “contact us for a quote,” and “continue reading to learn more,” are all examples of calls to action. If you have to provide more information than you can fit into the top portion of your page, use a call to action to keep users interested and let them know that you have more to offer if they continue reading. Don’t forget to sprinkle additional calls to action throughout the body of your page at any time when it would be appropriate to persuade the user to act.

3. Break Text Into Pieces

We have already established that web surfers prefer to scan text, so give them what they want. Structure your content in a way that is easy to read and manage so they don’t have to sift through a “wall of text” to find the information they are looking for. Use bold paragraph headers, bulleted or numbered lists, and short paragraphs to help the scanning process. If you can pique the reader’s interest by grabbing their attention with a bold headline or two, they will be enticed to continue reading the paragraph.

These important tips should get you to start thinking about your own website’s landing pages. It is also a great idea to visit your competitors’ websites and take a look at what they are doing. Ask yourself what is working for them and emulate it, then ask yourself what isn’t working for them and make sure you avoid the same mistakes.

Remember that the key to any successful website is not just attracting visitors, but enticing visitors to take action. Presenting those customers with a strong landing page is the best way to ensure your website’s continued growth and success.

About the Author

Eric Wyatt writes on internet marketing and social media. He particularly focuses on conversion rate optimization and landing page design.

Did you like Eric’s post about how to design a successful landing page for your website?

If yes, please share the wealth with your social friends on twitter and facebook! Let us know what your thoughts are and what techniques do you apply when designing your own landing page on your website.

Online Marketing Training

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today’s post is proudly offered by Kathy, one of our guest authors. Sweet and to the point, I hope you enjoy as well and tell us what you think and how you use social media marketing for your business growth and visibility. Thanks Kathy.

Social media marketing involves the use of social media sites to generate traffic to websites and generate interest and excitement about a business. The more people see a business as friendly and social, with interesting activities and information that can tell their friends about, often the more likely they are to want to visit a company’s website and purchase, or at least consider, the goods and services they have to offer. This being the case it behooves any business that understands the advantages to be gained by social media marketing to try using social media to generate web traffic.

The following are 5 tips regarding doing that:

1. Plan a Social Media Campaign

The first thing to bear in mind is that you need a good online marketing plan before you begin your campaign. As with anything else, being successful using social media marketing takes good preparation and planning. You should go over such items as

• Which sites you will use for social media campaigns? You can consider prominent sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube along with any others you think would be helpful. Each of these sites has their own perks and popular activities so work these into your plan. For instance if you are a car insurance company and you are using Facebook you might want to announce various in house events and if you are using YouTube you could plan a short video introducing your company.
• What types of content you will have on the site? This may include information, graphics, and even audio or video. You should plan out how you are going to use this content to get viewers’ attention and really get them interested in products and services your site has to offer. Think fun and social interaction.
• Are there any budgetary concerns? If there are any monetary concerns such as paying developers, video production costs, purchase of promotional items, and so on, these should be factored into your plan.

2. Offer Interesting Activities

The activities that you plan are some of the most important parts of the social media campaign. People expect not only marketing messages and information but something more lively. Ideas like contests, free giveaways, and blowout sale days at your business generate a lot of buzz and people will often tell their friends about them.

To use the car insurance example, you might offer an introductory sale day in which people are invited to come in (or visit the website) and check out the services that your agency has to offer, receiving reduced rates for doing so.

Or you may offer a contest to see who can discover a certain act about car insurance, with the winner getting a few months of free coverage or a reduced premium.

3. Use Metrics to Track Progress

What are known as metrics are processes for tracking the performance of a social media or other site in various ways. It is important to access this service as it will give you a gauge of how well a campaign is doing. You need real statistical facts rather than vague impressions in order to know whether to adjust certain items in your social media campaign.
It is possible to get quite a bit of information from metrics. You can, for instance, track the source of visitors to your social media site or to your website.

You will thus be able to see both who is visiting your social media page and how many site visitors are continuing on to your sales page. There are also often many tools to track bounce rate. This is the number of people who show up on your site and then leave soon. You can even track how many times your brand name is mentioned in a certain social media network.

Read some excellent resources next on social media – google analytics and conversions.

4. Focus on a Few Sites

Given the plethora of social media sites available, you may be tempted to set up pages on a great many of them. This is probably ill advised. It requires a certain amount of focus to run a social media campaign, and thus 2 or 3 sites should be about the maximum. If you are offering car insurance, you will likely be fielding many questions and possibly some customer complaints. Handling these interactions thoroughly and courteously makes your business look good. Having only a few social media campaigns going allows you to interact with customers effectively and keeps you from getting overworked.

5. Avoid too Much Automation

The whole point of social media is the personal and friendly feel it creates. This type of marketing is part of a larger strategy called social selling. It emphasizes cultivating a friendship type relationship with customers rather than seeing them merely as potential sales. Though you can perhaps use some automated communication – i.e. automated messages sent out to people in the social media network and so on – you are much better off emphasizing direct personal communication. This goes along with the sociable and personal feel and will thus prove more effective.

Social media can be a real blockbuster sales wise. But it needs to be approached right. Good planning, a personable attitude, and an understanding of the way social media works are the best ways to insure successful campaigns.

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Social Media Marketing Post Feedback

So how did you find Kathy’s social media marketing tips? Let hear your voice below in the comments form! What are the social media marketing strategies that you have used so far and have given you the desired results for your campaigns?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

One step further from outsourcing is Crowdsourcing and utilizing Crowd Powered Businesses. In every major from R & D, marketing, advertising, management and fundraising, crowdsourcing is being used by an increasing number of organizations and governments.

To name few organizations that used crowdsourcing we have  Odesk, Trada, ChallengePost, DesignContest and more..

Check the following infographic for the usage and benefits of crowdsourcing for your business.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

One can’t stress the importance of link building for SEO purposes and to increase your presence on the internet. Offering to guest post on a blog or website is becoming a popular way to generate links and build anchor text on various domains. If you are an SEO, you have learned that this task is easier said than done. Many blog owners and web masters are confusing SEOs with spammers and a lot of email requests for guest post are sent to a separate folder that is rarely gone through.

When reaching out to bloggers to guest post on their blog, here are a few tips to help make sure that your outreach emails don’t end up in the trash:

1. Have a catchy subject line- A subject line is like a first impression, so make it count

Don’t mention anything related to link building, link exchange, or guest posting. Reference an article on their site or offer a comment on a topic they discussed.

2. Read their site- Bloggers put in a lot of time into maintaining their blog and putting out quality work, so take the time to read an article or two

By referencing it in your introduction, you show the blogger you took the time to read their work and they will appreciate that.

3. Signatures- If you include a signature, either remove the title or put something generic such as writer as your position

Bloggers get suspicious when they see titles that include SEO or Internet Marketing.

Another option for generating links is to create great content that others will want to link to. Infographics are becoming very popular; a picture truly speaks a thousand words. If done well, bloggers and website owners will want to include the info graphic on their blog or website assuming it is relevant. Creating great videos, images, and widgets are also great ways to generate links. However, with so many images, videos, widgets, info graphics, and everything else on the web, it’s important to make sure your content sticks out.

The best thing to do is focus on a niche and create content that will add value to those in that particular niche. First, you need to research the niche and understand why the readers go to the blog. If it’s for information, create content that will provide information in a creative, interesting way. If people go to sites for entertainment, consider using humor when creating your content.

Before you start making your info graphic or video, make sure that there isn’t something similar on most of the blogs and websites you are targeting. Bloggers want original, unique content. It never hurts to ask them for their input. You can ask them questions about your content in an email (follow the tips above for outreach email).

All of this input should help you create unique, creative content that bloggers will WANT to post on their site. When they do, they create a link back to your site and will pass along the coveted link juice. The key thing to remember is that you need to make sure you are creating content bloggers want to have. Don’t try to create something and push it onto them; that is spam, not SEO!

About the Author

Adam Bruk is a marketing strategist for an online sunglasses company. When he isn’t busy analyzing retail trends in mens sunglasses, he enjoys golfing, cooking, and traveling.

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“Link Building for SEO Tips” feedback

If you enjoyed Adam’s link building tips for seo purposes we would appreciate if you shared away! You are most welcome to add your unique point of view when it comes to building links back to your sites, right below in the comments form!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Stress isn’t a foreign concept to anyone. In fact, stress is so common that there are thousands of products, drinks, foods and books on how to reduce stress. Stress comes from allowing yourself to get overwhelmed by an unfavorable situation or problem in our life. You are not alone; many people get stressed from work. You spend majority of your day trying your best to earn that paycheck each month. Here are a few ways to get you through your day.

 Morning Stress Reducing Tips

In the mornings: The mornings are tough to begin with. You find yourself dragging and not having a lot of motivation or focus you need to get through your tasks. Things seem to pile up on your desk and your amount of stress is piling up as well.

Try these two techniques:

• Coffee Break: If you have the ability and the time to run to the local coffee shop down the street, then go. Spending 15 minutes outside of work can help you clear your head. If you prefer to stay within the work campus, make yourself a cup of coffee and walk down to the lobby. Taking 10-15 minutes for a break is good for your mental state.

• Breathing: The moment you feel yourself getting worked up, stop and shut everything off and put it on pause. Mute the phone, turn the computer screen around and shut your door. Close your eyes and take 10 deep breaths. You will be surprised with how much this will relax you.

 Reduce Stress during Lunch Break

On Your Lunch Break: Finally! Freedom. Time to refuel and clear your mind. Here are two different options for your lunch break:

• Exercise: If you company has a gym, use it. Bring extra clothes to change into and jump on a treadmill for thirty minutes. If you do not have a gym, grab your tennis shoes and head outdoors. Walk the local neighborhood and get a breath of fresh air. The endorphins you release when you get your heart rate up are very beneficial in your stress relief.

• Go out for lunch: A common mistake employees make to reduce stress- they go to lunch with their coworkers. Take this lunch to be alone or with someone that is not work related. You need a break from the work talk.

Afternoon: It’s nearing the end of the day and you may have trouble seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but no worries try this out to get you through to 5 o’clock:

• Stress Balls and other relief toys: You may think it’s funny and weird that your coworker has a stress ball. But believe it or not, these toys work! Focus on the fact it is close to the end of the day and just start squeezing. There are also desk games and toys you can get for your desk that will help you with your stress.

The main goal of relieving stress at work is to get your mind off of things. If you are feeling overwhelmed, try asking for help on projects. Lightening your load can help you in the stress department. Remember a saying that is really popular and useful: this too shall pass. So take a deep breath and take it easy.

Author Bio:

Laura Backes is the guest author of this post. She writes about business related and self-improvement subjects and works for DSL  internet service providers.  Her email address is: laurabackes8 @ gmail.com.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Office by Chris Meller

Every business needs to watch overhead expenses continually, because unnecessary overhead comes right off the bottom line and costs you profit. Especially with the difficult economy, saving every penny is incredibly important. If you can manage to cut your overhead costs to the bare minimum, you have competitive advantage gained and can make your business much more viable.

Ideas on how to lower the overhead business costs

Cutting employees

The unfortunate fact is, the easiest way to cut overhead is the most painful. Most small businesses have at least a couple of employees, and every person working for your business costs you much more than their salary. People use the phone, they need office space, lighting, and company benefits. The fastest way to cut overhead is to cut people.

In today’s economic climate, most business owners have had enough pain cutting personnel. Are you sure that everyone on the payroll is a direct expense? Are they directly involved in producing products you sell or delivering services that your company provides? If they are not, is their position one of extreme importance? These types of questions will help you decide if you need to get rid of the position, ask your employee to go part-time or commission-based, or leave the position alone entirely.

Office space

Is the cost of your office space too high? Perhaps you have the correct price per square foot but have more space than you need. Look into the costs of moving into a different location; it may save you much more than you expect if you are willing to pack up and relocate (but make sure you factor in all the costs of moving your stuff and changing your address on everything before you make any drastic decisions).

if you are renting office equipment, such as desks and copy machines, you might find suitable replacements for them that are very inexpensive if you know of a business that is closing down. Finding cheaper alternatives could help keep your company afloat while others continue to sink, so take some time to look at these expenses to see if there’s any wasted money.

Energy costs

You can save quite a bit of money simply by completely turning off any equipment not in use. That means no vampire lights on. Find a way to utilize free natural lighting, and replace your old bulbs with more efficient lights. Turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees during the day and set it to drop low when everyone leaves. There are many ways to cut energy costs, so get your employees involved and work together to save electricity.

Inventory

If your business needs to keep inventory on hand, make sure your inventory control is tight and you keep only current inventory on hand and in use. Inventory cost creep catches almost every business at one time or another.Excess inventory laying around can get outdated, broken, or forgotten if you’re not careful.

Vehicles

If your company uses vehicles in providing services, such as delivery, there are ways to reduce your vehicle insurance costs. It might be time to have your policies reviewed in order to get premiums at lower rates. Compare prices with multiple companies to ensure you are getting the best price you can for the coverage you need. There are other ways to cut your vehicle insurance expense too. Make sure all your drivers have excellent driving records with no serious problems like a DUI on their record. Insurance companies frequently give discounts for good drivers.

If you look carefully through your expenses and take some time to institute a few changes, you will find that there are many ways to save a little cash here and there, which adds up to a surprising amount. The more your business saves, the more competitive you can be and the better chance you have of surviving.

About the Author

Tom Blanchard is a financial advisor. He helps people living on tight budgets keep their expenses in check. He refers many of his readers to Coupon Croc for coupons on Amazon products and many more top name brands.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Photo credit: Home office by Sean MacEntee/flickr

Running a small business from home can be an incredibly smart choice; after all, you don’t have to pay extra to rent the area, you can work in your pajamas, and you work completely around your own schedule. However, if you’re not careful the opportunity to work at home can cause your business to stall and you to become lazy and disorganized, which can lose you a lot of money.

Make a work zone

If you’re working from home, you’ll need someplace to do your work. While sitting on your couch with your phone and laptop seems like a great idea at first, chances are you will be much less productive in this kind of setting, and it can also hurt your body, through poor posture and non-ergonomic typing.

Without an area used specifically for work tasks, you are less likely to get yourself in “work mode” and will waste time on non-work things. The simple act of sitting in your “work chair” at a desk can help you be more productive and get more done during the day, which is crucial when you’re trying to keep a small business afloat in this economy.

Keep set hours

As nice as it sounds to work whenever you feel like it, the problem is that most people tend to procrastinate if they don’t have a set time to do something. Help yourself avoid this trap by having set times during which you work; even if it’s from 8pm to midnight, set hours are much better than just saying you’ll get to it at some point during the day.

Having hours you’re working, especially during the day, can also help when you are working with other people, like repeat customers and vendors, because you will seem more reliable and they will know when they can reach you. Quick and consistent responses will help foster good working relationships that will help your business run smoothly.

Keep business expenses separate

When you’re working from home, business and home expenses can start to blend together. You pick up your kid on the way back from a business meeting, or you buy some equipment that is used occasionally for work. With all this going on, it can be difficult to know what is a business expense and what’s personal, but be sure to log and track anything you do that might count as a business expense, as this will be useful when it comes time to do your taxes.

Trying to recreate what you spent for the year and what you spent on purely home stuff can become a stressful chore, especially if you let them get too intertwined. Speak with your accountant to find out what counts as business expenses, and keep notes and receipts so that you’re ready come tax season.

While working from home can save you money and make you a happier person, it’s important to be wary of pitfalls that can occur when you’re trying to get stuff done in the comfort of your own home. With a little planning, you can trick yourself into being as proactive, productive, and organized as you would be in a professional office setting, all while living the good life in your own home.

Author Lara Nelson recommends mortgage protection insurance for her clients, especially those running businesses out of their homes. When considering buying a home, it is a good idea to research your MPPI options.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Hello all, this post is from Darren, my today’s guest author and it has to do with a new social network “Plenty of Fish“, or Fish Dating Network which is more like a dating site (kinda like Facebook for some people)  but with some differences when it comes to advertising opportunities online. It is supposed to grab affiliate marketing business people’s attention that want to keep up with the latest advertising trends. I would love to hear your opinion on this through the comment form. Do you agree with the shared opinion? Do you have an experience with it Thank you Darren for your contribution.

Affiliate Marketing Opportunity at “Plenty Of Fish”

The affiliate marketing game is becoming more and more saturated as many people are turning to the internet as the last home-grown job opportunity in a failing economy. Therefore, successful affiliate marketers need to keep on the cusp of trends for advertising as a means to capitalize on reaching the most target markets on the cheap.

This is part of what created the phenomena of social media advertising, since demographics are readily available and displayed. Facebook is the premier of this market, but it is also expensive and complex.

As an alternative, many affiliates are turning the Plenty of Fish (POF). This free dating site has seen a massive increase in its user numbers over the past few years. In addition, the amount of demographic data and tools offered on POF lead to unprecedented advertising opportunities.

Consider the following three tips for beginning your own affiliate ad campaign on POF:

Pay Attention to the Guidelines

Fish Dating Network has a very simple ad platform and their reviewers are far more lenient than Facebook’s. However, you should still familiarize yourself with the system before you invest too much time in ad creation to save yourself headaches down the road.

Figure Out Your Demographics

It goes without saying that advertising is completely useless if it is directed to the wrong audience. One of the best benefits of advertising with POF is the demographic analysis tool that they offer. By entering keywords from your niche you can find out the groups most likely to respond to your advertising based on expressed interest.

This is an especially helpful platform for affiliates trying to branch out into the female market – affiliate marketing overwhelmingly targets males. The POF tool will help you do a real-time analysis for their site that you can also use for other statistical purposes.

Use Attention-Grabbing Headlines

The click through rates (CTR) for most social networking sites are really fast, which give advertisers a really limited time to reach their target audiences before they move on. Unfortunately, one of the downsides to POF is that their CTR is lower than that of Facebook and many other platforms.

However, the flip side to this is that their pages generally feature only one ad at a time, making it far more likely you will be noticed. Using buzz phrases like “Act Now,” “One Time Only,” and “Blowout Sale” will help draw the necessary attention to your ad, as will appropriate graphics.

Opportunity Awaits

The advertising possibilities on POF are really promising to all affiliate marketers. By using the tools and guidelines that the site offers, along with basic ad structure and marketing techniques, you can generate a great business through POF.

Experts say that the key to making money on the internet comes down to one word: TRAFFIC. Plenty of Fish is gaining more attention these days. You can learn the bit by bit ramp up guide for getting the most out of Plenty of Fish if you search people who are into online marketing.

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POF Affiliate Marketing Article | Feedback Request

Feel free to share this article if you enjoyed it and let us know what your views are below in the comments, thanks! What’s your experience with POF advertising online dating network if any?

Share your own Plenty of fish tips next with us via the comments form!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

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1. Know your needs/wants & your timeline for completion

I’m not expecting you to know it all, but you need to do your research!

• Know what pages you need
• Know when you want the project completed
• Find your competition, know you audience

A guy calls one day and wanted me to basically develop a website exactly like Monster.com. Do your RESEARCH, find out what competition exists and know what you ultimately want your website to do, whether that’s
selling items, educating visitors or providing services.

2. Decide how you want to handle email

Email can be one of the biggest headaches for a web designer or hosting company.

• Do you need large mailbox sizes?
• Do you want mailboxes or just forwards?
• What are your Spam filtering needs?

Do you have a company with 30 email accounts that need to be able to send large attachments? Services such as GMail & YahooMail are dramatically increasing their mailbox sizes. GMail gives it’s Standard and Education Edition storage 2GB’s and it’s Premier Edition users get a whopping 25 GB (up from 10 GB)! That makes it really hard
for small design & hosting companies to compete. These are all
things to keep in mind.

3. Get yourself a logo & examples of other websites you like or dislike

Feedback is king! And a logo is one of the most important parts of
your marketing & branding, make sure it’s in vector format.

• Note: In some cases your logo will greatly influence the color scheme of your website.
• Know what colors you think you want, dark or light, I hate red, etc.
• Find examples of web sites that you like or dislike.

Maybe you like the navigation of one and the color of the sidebar on another. All this will help your designer when it comes to the creative process!

4. Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization, Do you need it?

Whether or not you need Marketing and Search Engine Optimization depends on your target market and your budget.

• What’s your target market?
• Are you selling products nationwide or just making a site for the local gun club?
• There are plenty of ways to market your website that are free like Facebook, Twitter & Blogging but they all take YOUR TIME.

Ask yourself, do you have 5 hours a week to devote to marketing your website? Keep in mind; marketing your site on a local level is much easier than nationwide because you just don’t have as many competitors!

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So what’s your opinion about the above mentioned website marketing starting tips? Share it with us and if you liked it share away! Enjoy your day!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

The Internet has become a much more social place in recent years and many webmasters and bloggers are just now figuring out how to take full advantage of this phenomenon. When you are trying to promote a business or website, there are a number of social marketing tools that you can use to improve your chances of success.

By using these strategies, you can sometimes engage in marketing without spending much money. It can also improve the effectiveness of your existing marketing campaigns.

Build Relationships Through Networking

With so many social networking sites available today, it is possible for you and your business to develop relationships with potential customers. By creating profiles on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, you can market your products and services without spending a dime.

Once you develop contacts on these sites, you can then send out messages about your products and services without much effort. Using LinkedIn can be especially valuable tool in the business world because it allows you to network with others in related industries and who may benefit from what you have to offer.

When using this type of marketing strategy, you need to be careful that you do not sound too commercial all the time. While your contacts will expect you to promote your business on some level, they do not want to receive constant marketing messages from you. Try to mix in some worthy content and regular conversation with the marketing messages.

Encourage Participation

When building your web presence, it is also important to encourage participation from your customers and potential customers. For example, if you have a website or blog, consider adding a section that allows visitors to add their own content to the site.

By doing this, you encourage people to come up with their own content that is related to your business or niche. This helps develop the community aspect of your blog or site and it helps develop relationships even further. If people are able to express their opinions or share information about your products or services, they will feel valued.

When people feel valued, they are much more likely to work with you when they need something that you have to offer.

Sharing Content

Social bookmarking is a process that involves sharing content with others. With this strategy, you bookmark content that you have read and want to share with others. Then other users of the social bookmarking service can see what you recommend. When using social bookmarking, it is important to give people what they really want.

Try to share content that is funny, engaging or useful. If you continually share content that no one wants to read, users will eventually stop listening to what you recommend. If you develop a reputation as someone who recommends good content, people will start paying attention to what you share.

By doing this, you can share some content that helps promote your own business or brand from time to time. Just be sure to share content that adds value and is of interest to a large number of people.

Invest the Time

If you want to develop relationships with Potential customers and website visitors, you’re going to have to invest some time. This will either require you to invest the time yourself or pay someone to do it for you.

If you want to truly create a community of visitors who are actively engaged in your brand, you will need to invest time and effort into the community. This could come in the form of writing regular blog posts, commenting on other people’s content or recommending the occasional funny video.

People like to interact with other real people. If they feel that you are putting in a real effort, they will be much more likely to interact with you in the future.

Considerations

Do your best to keep it real in your social marketing efforts. Don’t overdo it with your contacts and make them feel like they are simply part of a numbers game.

If you treat every contact like you would a friend, you are much more likely to be successful in your social marketing strategies. This can help your business increase sales and be much more effective in the long-term.

About the Author

Sarah Tharp, our guest author works for BrainHost, an leading hosting brand that offers unlimited shared hosting and more.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Why work from home?

It’s the ultimate Catch-22: you escape the cubicle, only to start working from your home “office.” Why trade one set of chains for another? Is it merely a question of choosing the lesser of two evils, or do people actually enjoy working from home?

Apparently, they do.

Here’s a shocking statistic: according to the WorldatWork Telework Trendlines, almost 9/10 of telecommuters work from home.

But as someone who’s worked online for several years, I think that’s crazy. So here are five reasons why you should consider taking your business (or career) on the road…

Reason #1: You Learn More…

… about yourself, the world and business in general. For example, you’ll probably learn a new language (depending on where you visit) which opens the world up in new and exciting ways. You’ll probably learn a lot about a new culture, eat (and hopefully learn to cook) new foods and experience a different way of life.

You’ll learn more about business by seeing small markets every day. For example, my wife and I have traveled extensively through Southeast Asia and it’s always a pleasure watching the food markets. It’s like a crash course in economics.

You also learn a lot about supply and demand. How it’s really the single most important aspect to building a profitable business. You’ll stop wanting to create websites because you want to, and start thinking more about what your customers will want.

Reason #2 You Save Money…

There are many places in the world where you can live cheaply. Southeast Asia, Central and South America, Southern Africa… heck, even juts moving out of a big city will save you money.

Here’s a few example budgets for two people:

• Nicaragua: small apartment on the beach: $600 per month; $1,200 total expenses
• Thailand: small apartment on the beach: $500 per month; $1,100 total expenses
• Malaysia: small apartment in Cameron Highlands: $800; $1,400 total expenses

I’ll bet those numbers are significantly less than what you’re currently paying, right? And it gets even better because…

Reason #3: You (Might) Pay Less in Taxes

There are two reasons why.

First, you probably won’t have to pay sales tax (I’m originally from California, where the sales tax is a whopping 7.25%), though this depends on where you go.

Second, if you’re off US soil for more than 330 days in a single year,  this tax form can help you avoid paying income tax. I’m not a lawyer, so check with your accountant to make sure.

According to the Tax Foundation, Americans work for the government until April 12th; after that, they finally start making money for themselves. As you can see, moving abroad can have significant financial benefits…

Reason #4: You Have Greater Focus

When working from home, it’s easy to get distracted. Errands, housecleaning, phone calls from friends and family, etc. all dramatically lower your efficiency.

But if you work abroad, you can sit and work without these distractions. For example, we rented an apartment in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for $580 per month. Twice a week the housekeeper cleaned the place, we’d often dine out (after work of course!) which took less time than shopping/cooking it ourselves, and – most importantly – we had no real obligations other than to finish our work.

So not only do you save more money, you also have more time to enjoy it!

About the Author

Adam Costa is the author of Business In A Backpack, which explains how to run online marketing campaigns while on the road. He is a business consultant who helps small and midsize firms create high quality marketing materials, from sell sheets to brochures.

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Online Marketing Blog

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

For several years now the laptop has been the tool of choice for people who want
to stay productive on the move, as well as having a mobile solution for their
computing needs around the home. And, in more recent times, the humble laptop
has certainly become a lot more affordable too, with models that come with an
array of technical specifications and price tags to meet any kind of budget.

Adding to the appeal of mobile computing is the growing range of netbooks too,
which are essentially smaller versions of the traditional laptop. It’s now also
possible to buy an even more slimline device called an ultrabook, which takes
mobile computing on the move to even more impressive and compact levels.

A new way forward

However, alongside the many and varied laptops and netbooks that are out
there, there is now the tablet – a device that has produced an explosion of new
products ever since Apple released its iPad a couple of years or so ago. With a
third edition currently hitting the stores, the demand for this device and others
like it has gone through the roof.

So if you’re a business professional who’s thinking of moving into the world of
mobile computing, or are already enjoying it but want to upgrade to something
new, then what’s best to buy? Well, there’s no doubt that some current laptops,
with their beefy technical specifications, make an ideal companion when you’re
on the go. These come armed with everything you need to stay productive and
can run any kind of software that you need to get the job done.

Take a tablet

Nevertheless, it’s also hard to resist the temptation of the tablet device too. The
great thing about these products is that they are small, lightweight and generally
have excellent battery life, all of which means you can keep working in less
than ideal situations, such as on cramped trains, planes or in remote locations.
Adding to this is the fact that some come with both Wi-Fi connectivity and 3G
compatibility, meaning that you can tap into mobile networks where there’s an
available signal.

Then there is the area of apps, the small software programs that run on tablets
and come in thousands of different incarnations. While regular laptops tend to
have to utilise standard software programs, the tablet can make use of apps that
cover the whole spectrum of computing chores, as well as offering some rest and
relaxation via games, puzzles, eBooks and magazines.

Price magic

Perhaps the best thing about the laptop is the fact that it has effectively dropped
in price over the years since it has become more popular. Meanwhile, tablet
devices are seen are rather extravagant pieces of kit, but they have the benefit of
looking super cool and you can actually get cheaper alternatives to the iPad that
might not boast quite the style and specification, but are more than serviceable
for most needs.

So, if you’re in business then the laptop will probably be the first port of call, but
some careful investigation of what you can really do with a tablet once you’ve
explored it’s considerable charms might push you in that direction instead.
There’s no doubting that the delicious new iPad is a hard act to follow…

Joe Linford blogs on behalf of Broadband Genie. Follow this link to compare the best laptops for 2012

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

With Google’s ever-evolving search engine optimization rules and algorithms, content really is king.  Keywords and other kinds of fluffy SEO tricks are less and less effective when it comes to attracting new viewers to your website via search results.

Many webmasters have wisely altered their marketing strategies to account for SEO content updates, and as content continues to become more important, marketing campaigns are including infographics to represent their unique content.  Infograhics are a great way to liven up your content, but—no matter how great the content, and no matter how clever the graphic—content does not speak for itself.

If you are thinking of investing, or have already invested in an infographic content marketing campaign for your website, don’t make the mistake of not supplementing that campaign with a promotional scheme.  Too many people have great designs on their websites with no one to view them because they didn’t advertise themselves on the web.

To prevent your website from suffering that fate, here are some ideas for promoting your infographics on the web:

• When you are collecting data for your content, don’t settle for run-of-the-mill sources.  If you cite credible sources during the content generation phase, you can ask those same sources to partner with you in promoting the graphic after it is finished.  You might even be surprised at how well this works, primarily because it is a symbiotic relationship, where both parties benefit.
• After the infographic is complete, write up a blog post, and include it—heck, write a blog post about the infographic.  People will probably be interested to know what you did to create it (especially if it’s any good), and you have the advantage of using the social media networks linked to blogs to promote the infographic.  Free advertising!
• If you use Twitter (and you should because, again, free marketing) tweet some content from the infographic with a link back to it in its full splendor.   Sometimes giving just a preview really peaks interest, and if you give several previews, with different bits of content all linking back to the same infographic, you never know how many new viewers you might get.
• There are a lot of infographic directoriesand aggregators that store your images, to which you can submit your own graphic.  A few of them are:
  • DailyInfographic
  • CoolInfographics
  • InfographicsShowcase
  • SubmitInfographics
  • InfographicsArchive

In addition to these strategies, tagging your infographic with relevant keywords, and making sure the file name includes some of the same text you use to talk about the graphic on your web page.  Give your viewers the option to like and share the infographic via social networking sites, and make sure that the corresponding buttons are in plain sight, and so easy a five-year-old could use them.  These tips should help you on your way to creating a new, compelling, content-based website that is viewed by millions of people across the globe.

About the Author

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com.

Infographic Marketing Tips

A question for you: … Did you enjoy Alvina’s guest post? If you did share it with your online friends and let us know what you think in the comments form below. What tips do you follow when creating your own infographic marketing campaigns?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Photo credit: Hampton University by Kevin Coles/flickr

Going back to school is a decision that can affect your career path for the short term as well as the long term. When you are starting your own business, this choice can have many consequences. Making this big decision should be done weighing the pros and cons before making any moves.

The Pros

Business courses could be valuable

If you are pursuing your own business because you have a good idea and want to see it through, going to school can be a valuable experience. An owner needs to know how to use the tools available to him or her effectively so you can make more profits and your business can be more successful in the long run.

Having a business background makes it easier to come up with marketing strategies and how to identify new customers. This might sound fairly simple, but it’s a completely different way of thinking if you’ve worked for someone else most of your life. You have to understand how people think and what will convince them to buy your product, and understand what types of marketing translate into new sales.

Education gives you credibility

Credibility is important in the business world, especially if you’re just starting out. Going to school and getting a higher degree, or another title beside your name can draw in new customers. Having a degree as a CPA will allow you to demand more money for financial consulting as opposed to just having a minor in finance. A degree in journalism can make you a more credible writer when you apply for jobs, or advertise your services to others.

The Cons

It’s going to cost you money

On the other hand, going to school can be just another cost on top of starting your business, which is difficult to handle for most business owners. This could slow down your progress, or possibly even kill your idea before you can get it up and running because you’ll need to find a way to make enough money for living expenses and whatever classes your taking, all while you have less time because of school.

If money is an issue, you may not be able to get the level of education you were hoping for. A business owner who is cash-strapped might only be able to go to a community college for night classes as opposed to going for an MBA. While a community college course isn’t always an inferior option, it does limit where you can go and who can teach you. It might also limit the opportunities you have to network with others in your field or hear prominent business leaders speak through your courses.

Going to school can affect your credit

If you have to get student loans, it can impact your ability to get a business loan. Most small businesses obtain capital using personal credit. If you have a student loan on top of other personal loans, the bank may see that you are stretched too thin and could deny you the money.

So, should you go back to school? It all depends on what you want to accomplish and what your goals are. If you feel that the knowledge will help you and you have the money to do so, it could make your business turn into something long-standing with high profits. However, if school is simply too expensive and the payments could damage your business, it might be worth it to hold off, or even just try learning on your own. It really depends on your own personal situation.

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Jenny Masterson, is a career advisor and writes for thebestcolleges.org, a resourceful website presenting  the best colleges options, such as the specialized online Christian colleges.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

How LinkedIn can bring more leads to your business than Facebook

Facebook and LinkedIn are actually two different types of websites, but because both of them are used primarily for networking, there’s bound to be a comparison, especially when the businesses are trying to choose the “one” that they can focus on. Facebook is by far the bigger one, the more accomplished one, and the more talked-about one, but is it necessarily the better one for businesses? I am sure many would second me when I answer this question with a big ‘No’.

The truth is, if you are looking for business networking, LinkedIn is a far more efficient and productive place as compared to the Facebook. In spite of the fact that Facebook has got far bigger user-base as compared to LinkedIn, the later can boost about the quality and intent of professionals using the LinkedIn (besides, a user base consisting of more than 102 million members is not small by any definition).

Still, if you’re not sure about the efficacy of LinkedIn, let’s take a look at the following points.

A public place vs. a place where professionals reside:

LinkedIn is a much better option, especially if you are dealing in a B2B realm, while Facebook will prove to be a better option if you are looking for B2C communication. Being on Facebook sounds convincing to more businesses just because it seems to be getting the buzz, and people seem more active at Facebook as compared to LinkedIn. But we must not forget that people (FB users mostly consisting of teenagers) are there on Facebook just for the sake of fun, and not many people make some buying or business decisions while having fun. LinkedIn on the other hand, have more professionals and more importantly, a business like environment, so you are likely to get more serious response, and leads from LinkedIn.

Focus:

Facebook was, it is, and it will continue to be a community focused primarily on getting the young people on board, and given the size of their community, they can’t take the risk of changing their focus, which means that each and every product or feature introduced by Facebook has to carry an element of fun. LinkedIn on the other hand has a very professional outlook, and its business model allows it to focus entirely on businesses and professionals while introducing new features and services.

Facebook Profile vs. LinkedIn Profile

In order to socialize at Facebook, you have got to adapt the FB culture, and mold each and everything from your content to your page design, and competitions in a way that syncs with the culture of Facebook. Sometimes it is quite opposite to the message that you’d like to be linked with your brand.

On the other hand, LinkedIn allows you to have a straightforward business profile, without having the need of being overly “entertaining”, or “engaging”. In fact LinkedIn profiles are so professional that some people don’t mind using them as their resume. Can you imagine someone using their Facebook profile as a resume?

No Distraction, whatsoever:

At any given time, there is so much going on Facebook, having very little to do with your business, proving to be a big, big distraction, nothing like that on LinkedIn, which is all business at any given time. You don’t need to be distracted by all sorts of happenings going around, and you can focus on the job you are supposed to do i.e. business networking.

About the Author

Roberto is an Internet Marketer, semi-geek, and spends more time in the cyber world as compared to the real world. Currently, he’s working for www.internetproviders.org and internet provider.

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Online Marketing Training Blog

Did you enjoy this post about Linkedin VS Facebook tips? Give us a share if you did and let us know what your opinion is and how you use Linkedin and Facebook for your personal or professional plans. Thanks for dropping by!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

If you are ready to take your online business plans seriously into account you will have to go through a learning curve as far as how to start your own self hosted WordPress blog.

As you may know by now, there is also a free option with Blogger.com and WordPress.com  blogging platforms for you to start with but its mostly for amateurs.

The greatest cons of these services are the facts that:

1. You have limited configuration options as far as the plugins and the blog’s set up is concerned
2. You never own the blog where you put in all the work
3. You may lose your blog and work anytime if it’s considered inappropriate

Here we will talk about some very important terms and essential technical web functions you need to understand and learn how to use them in order to equip your own self hosted wordpress blog. It is definitely not a rocket science but neither you could say that it is like a walk in the park. So pay attention to the explanations next in this post and follow this guide when you decide to build your first blog.

Step 1

Acquiring and Registering a Domain Name for Your WP blog

First of all you will need to decide on what domain you will build your online business on. One service that I use for that part is Godaddy.com. Follow the simple instruction in the video next to register your preferred domain that will represent your new wordpress blog. I use a Premium Keyword Research Tool to get search engine optimized domain name suggestions but you can research on Google the free way via their Adwords keyword tool.

Step 2

Choosing a Reliable Web Hosting Service To Trust

The host I have been using from the time I started building blogs online is Hostgator. So far I cannot say that I have any complaints with this service except once that there was a database confusion that happened for two of my blogs that I hosted under the same account. One of the websites belonged to one of my clients that I sold it to and we ended up having the same database on our wordpress blogs. We resolved this issue quickly with live chat support and email support which is one of the reasons why Hostgator is popular for.

Go to Hostgator.Com Web Host service and follow the next steps in the video 1) How To Set up Your Hosting Account for your bought domain from Godaddy, 2) Change the (DNS) domain name servers on Godaddy with the ones that Hostgator will provide you along with your registration with them and 3) How to install the Worpress Script on your domain via Hostgator’s crazy and brain dead simple application named “Fantastico DELUXE“:

Step3

After your successfully install WordPress script on your domain name via Hostgator and the one click installation you need to start configuring your wordpress blog. The URL that you will always use to log in your wp blog’s admin area is this one:  http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Upload a Theme Video

There are plenty of free WordPress Themes you can get online. The trouble is that these aren’t so good for your seo and usually hide some bad codes that will disallow your blog to gain great rankings on Google.

You can find very affordable and seo friendly Elegant WordPress Themes HERE.

Step 4

Uploading Plugins for Your New WordPress Blog

After you have uploaded your theme you need to start equipping your wordpress blog with plugins that will add powerful functions to your blog in terms of monetization, search engine optimization, spam and copyright protection and your wordpress blog’s overall options. Watch the video next to see how easily you can add these powerful wordpress plugins on your wp blog and start building it dynamically.

Any questions about your initial settings and procedures with your wordpress blog?

Feel free to drop a comment!

You don’t like WordPress or feel comfortable with maintaining a WordPress Blog constantly?

In case you want to build a web business step by step by literally being taken by the hand for less than 1$ Per Day, you can always check out the WordPress Blog alternative solution ==>  “Site Build It” service. “SITE BUILD IT” is TOP in its field and there is a very good reason for it. See video next for more info and decide wisely.

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This was a “how to set up a wordpress blog” free tutorial

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Good day! If you are keeping up to date with the online marketing global developments you have probably heard about Google Panda Update. Google Panda Update consists of some important changes Google made concerning their ranking algorithm when it comes to evaluating websites.

Fortunately I did not experience a loss of my rankings for the websites I own after Google Panda update, but it is a fact that lot of great websites have and many people that worked for web companies that were promoting sites ended up losing their jobs.

You are probably here because you have a website already or are in the process of getting one. If you haven’t got a site yet, read next how you can start your own self hosted wordpress blog.

What do you know about Google Panda Update?

Maybe you have heard of the Google Panda Update “tornado” but you did not find the chance to take a deeper look. This information should be of interest to you, provided that you want to launch successful seo and online marketing campaigns for your website. Certain search engine optimization methods that worked well in the past will not render the same results like i.e posting articles to EzineArticles.com, the largest article marketing directory globally.

In this article, I am sharing what I have learned after researching thoroughly about how to get along with this leader search engine after Google Panda Update.

Google Panda Update Rules

Adhere to the new changes, otherwise you will be ignored if you are a new website owner and if you own an established high ranked website you will probably lose your already established valuable rankings and authority. Google Panda update is here and has set higher standards to enhance users browsing and educational experience.

Important Ranking Factors after Google Panda Update

1. The uniqueness of your content is extra important now according to Google Panda Update

How unique your content is still remains as one of the most important factors for your rankings after Google Panda Update. Your content, articles and posts should not only be a 100% unique (no spanned content) but on top of that contain great quality.

If you already have pages on your blog – website that contain duplicate content it would be advisable to edit those and add improved unique information, rather than deleting those. This act is not so search engine friendly to say the least so avoid that. Google Panda Update emphasizes on that one.

2. Google Panda Update is very fond of LARGE RESOURCEFUL informative articles

Google Panda Update has set the bar standards higher too when it comes to how big the content you offer is. Google really appreciates not only quality but quantity as well. Make sure you include in your blogging routine to write more informative and large posts of at least 1000+ word count.

Make sure you use several keyword based sub-sections (sub-headlines) and of course include your keywords in the casual hi, h2 and h3 tags for your search engine optimization needs.

Before Google Panda Update established simple maintenance of a blog was achieved with short articles.

While there are many websites on the internet that regularly post quality content but in smaller size word count, making your website full of large posts that contain updated and killer content can grand you the authority you crave for your business to gain pretty much sooner. If you want things to happen soon enough you will have to work a little “harder” at first. Though, when you really love what you do you feel that it is more fun than it is “work”. Read here some blogging tips and ideas for beginners. Google Panda Update appreciates long content entries! Do you…?

Another great advantage of larger posts is that they contain more long tailed keyword phrases that your post can rank at the top page easier for. Large informative posts also rightfully gain more attention, more interest by eager people in your niche to learn, more social shares and as a result MORE BACKLINKS. Major factor for your site’s rankings even after Google Panda Update.

3. Google Panda Update checks the overall structure and look of your blog posts for similarity (pattern)

In order to simply maintain your blog you can regularly post 300 word articles. Google checks if there is a specific pattern that you regularly apply on your posts and it seems well… Not so natural. Vary your word count in each posts, act natural, be spontaneous and create diversity! This way you avoid leaving footprints that Google dislikes. Google Panda Update is very observing…

4. The number of your Google indexed pages matters even more

Especially after Google Panda Update – the number of indexed pages is an AUTHORITY indicator for professional websites in a specific niche.

You can always see how many pages of your site are indexed on Google via this using this format site:domain.com

Keep an eye on your top Google page niche competitors results too, as a measure of improvement for your business plan.

5. Sites that update their content frequently are favored by Google

According to the new Google Panda Update, not only you should offer quality content to your readers and to the Panda but you need to do it as frequently and as regularly as possible. Define your content publishing plan on your blog and stick to it religiously. Decide on an amount of posts that you want to deliver within a deadline that you feel comfortable when it comes to follow through it.

6. The content and amount of ads you have at the top visible part of your front page with full screen resolution

Google Panda Update is mostly about improving users experience. The content you have on your website “above the fold” (meaning above the portion of the page that is visible when the browser is up to full screen resolution), as well as the amount of ads/advertising offers up there, play significant role to how your site gets evaluation votes.

In that part of the landing page Google wants to see relevant content with the term that was used to find your blog. Ensure your blog’s design is looking clean and professional too.

Try to display your main content on more than the 50% part of your “above the fold” webpage. As previously mentioned it is all about improving users experience and Google Panda Update had a great point here.

Also make sure to be careful when it comes to your ad placement. Don’t overdo it with banner ads and huge adsense blocks all over the place. It is not so user friendly to bombard your visitors. You can scatter the ads in a way that is not offensive to your readers. Most readers either have become ad blinded or just dislike seeing a bunch of ads as soon as they visit your blog. Google Panda Update has made things a little harder for ad showing addicts.

7. Use Pretty Links plugin to cloak your affiliate links

Google Panda Update dislikes raw affiliate links even more…

The raw affiliate links that you are assigned as soon as you sign up as an affiliate for a product are “cheesy” and ugly. Both search engines and your readers are repelled by those.

A raw affiliate link looks like..

http://whatever-merchant-you-sign-up-for.com/amember/go.php?r=63266&i=l2

when at the same time

A cloaked search engine/user friendly affiliate link looks like..

http://yourdomain.com/keywordoptimizedproductname

Which one would you be attracted to more?

You can use several plugins to cloak you affiliate links like Pretty Link that I use as this will also help you when search engine optimization for your site is concerned.

8. Use the No-Follow attribute for your outgoing links (Paid Ones) on your site

This is not exactly breaking news. A do-follow outbound link on your blog passes link juice (page rank) to the site you link out to. So Google dislikes the “selling” activity of their page rank. They prefer the more natural ways for a site to build page rank that ensures that it is rightfully deserved and not “forced”. Read a guide post next about GOOGLE PAGE RANK to get the whole idea about page rank and seo.

Also, add the do-follow tag to one or two outbound links inside every second post you make as this will create some diversity and Google likes that.

Google Panda Update appreciates the no-follow tag on paid outbound links and the do-follow tag to quality and resourceful authoritative outbound links!

Not all your outbound links should be no-follow. You will also be seen as respectful and engaging blogger if you link out to authoritative sites with a do follow tag, not to mention it help your overall search engine optimization efforts. It shows to Google that you respect other business people work and that you are not selfish or trying to manipulate Google or keep the traffic only to yourself.. If you read a post from where you are inspired to craft a new post on your blog it is always great to mention the resource that inspired you. It’s a fair game in the eyes of Google.

Lately I have gotten great new tips from a site named SITE PRO NEWS and I am more than happy to link out to these professionals and express my appreciation for the quality of work they do and resources they offer. I guess I am on the right side of Google Panda update

9. Mandatory pages to have on your site

Not breaking news either, in order to have an authority website you need to include an ABOUT US, PRIVACY POLICY, TERMS OF AGREEMENT, EARNING DISCLAIMERS, and CONTACT US page.

10. After Google Panda Update The Age of a Site is Less Important as a Top Ranking Factor

Before Google Panda Update the age of a site was a substantial ranking factor for top google listings. Niche established sites that ranked at the top google page regularly, put in very little or no efforts to keep up with their competition yet they kept their rankings religiously. Now things are different. Established sites need work to maintain their positions, not less than new sites do. Fact!

Also the act of getting links form .gov and .edu sites does not carry the same positive gravity after Google Panda Update.

On the contrary, what has gained increased value and importance is the act of getting quality links from similar niche sites. Other sites, blogs that provide relevant content with what you offer on yours. Forget about irrelevant back links to your blog. They did not matter a lot before and after the Google Panda Update they are even more depreciated.

11. With Google Panda Update Content Syndication and Share Volume on Social Media is HUGE

In nowadays an online business owner does not have a choice but to go social. Yeap it is a fact. Google ranks higher the posts and the sites which are most syndicated on the social web and get more shares on twitter, facebook, and many grande social bookmarking sites.

Search engine optimization and Google’s algorithm are evolving and change regularly, Google is becoming smarter and smarter and manipulating the search engine results is becoming more and more unlikely. All online entrepreneurs should follow the changes that occur regularly! Follow these Google Panda Update trends. As known, if you don’t grow along with your global business developments you go backwards. Here there is only one path to look at and that is the FORWARD Path! Play fair by the rules and watch the magic as it happens!

What is your personal experience if any with this subject?

If you liked this post share it with your friends and drop us a comment here to let us know if Google Panda Update has treated you well till now.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Camera Guy by Laffy4k

Happy Tuesday! Today’s post: “How to pick pics that intrigue” is a guest post by Michael Steven. Let’s read what he Michael has to share with us from his photography and blogging experience. Thanks Michael!

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While the content of your blog is incredibly important, there is more to a suitable and attractive site than carefully chosen words. It is also important to think about any and all images that will be used. They need to catch the attention of visitors that come along, and they should also convey a certain message that matches the text of the site.

Demonstrate instead of show

If you are trying to describe a product, either because you are looking to sell it or are simply reviewing it, it helps to have an image that shows the reader how it is used. For example, if you are talking about clothing for children, simply posting a picture of the clothing is not enough. While it is acceptable, it does not grab people the way you want it to. Instead, find a picture of a child modeling the clothing. People will have a better idea of how it looks on somebody. Choose a picture that models what you are talking about.

Stick to the theme

Images that you choose to put on the site should fit in with the theme that you are focusing on. If your website or particular blog entry is about making simple meals for children, a picture of a boat or animal is not going to help you bring out your message. If you are writing instructions, any images should help make a certain step clearer. If this is not done, the images will be pointless and readers will be confused.

Look for creativity

Anybody can put pictures on their website and call it a day. However, it takes a special level of thought in order to have really nice visuals. When you are seeking out images for your website, look for something that makes them less than ordinary. Is the camera focusing on something unusual? Is there something that could easily and quickly grab the attention of any readers? The pictures should be creative, but at the same time, they should not be so strange that a visitor sees no point to them.

Stick with agreeable colors

If you should decide to use images that use a dominating array of very bright colors, such as neon yellow, it will be so distracting that you will not get the results that you want. Readers will be so busy looking at the images that they will not appreciate your text content. They may also not like looking at colors that hurt their eyes, especially at night. Use caution when looking for images, and do not go overboard, no matter how badly you might desire attention.

Putting together a website that maintains usefulness and relevance is important, especially when it comes to the images that you use. By keeping the tips above in mind, you can find images that intrigue and work well with your text content and layout.

 About the Author

Michael Stevens is an amateur photographer. He is also a blog writer and content contributor for companies offering cheap unsecured loans. He works to help customers find cheap loans despite low credit scores.

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Online Marketing Training Blog

How are you picking blog pictures?

Let us know via the comment form.

If you liked Michael’s tips on picking blog pictures that intrigue, share his article with your online friends!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Are you going crazy about getting a promotion in your work? Be sure.. You are not the first one, neither the last one. The way to actually get a promotion you desire is actually a little bit trickier and acquires your attention. Focus on being the most competent and compatible candidate for the position you want and promotion will come to you..

Enjoy a wonderful, simple and real action and mind plan to follow in order to get the promotion you dream of by our today’s guest – Carolyn.

Tips on How  to Improve Your Professional Life and Get Promoted

.. choose to improve your skills instead of "chasing" the promotion...

It seems like everyone these days is looking for a way to get ahead.

Some people will stop at nothing to climb the corporate ladder and it turns many people into ruthless sociopaths.

The fact is, there are ways of getting ahead that won’t force you to sacrifice your principles or cause you to step on anyone. It’s certainly not easy getting ahead, in fact, the only way to really do it is to put in a lot of hard work.

Once you can accept that the corporate ladder is less of a ladder and more a gradual incline, you’ll be ready to start working your way up.

• Understand How To Get The Promotion

If you set your mind to gaining a promotion, that’s great, but it probably won’t be as effective as if you focus on becoming a better worker. It’s like learning to play the piano. You can concentrate on learning Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, but it will probably do you more good to learn the scales first.

Once you practice your scales, you will find that learning the tougher pieces, like Beethoven, will be much easier. Gaining a promotion isn’t about showing off in front of your bosses. It’s about putting in the hard work and mastering the tasks that your job requires of you.

• Make Yourself Visible

How are you going to get a promotion if your boss doesn’t know you exist? Speak up during meetings and voice your opinions. This takes courage, but so does being a manager. If you regularly throw your voice into the conversation, you will make yourself more visible when promotion time comes. Make sure that you’re not just talking for the sake of talking. Develop intelligent opinions on issues and voice those at the right time.

• Lunch Date

Offer to take your boss out for lunch. This could be seen as brown-nosing but there is some level of that that is necessary in the journey toward a promotion. When you take them out, ask them questions about how they got to where they are, what lessons they have learned, things they would do differently and ways you can follow their path. The benefits of this will be three-fold. First, you’re flattering them.

An appeal to pride will go a long way toward helping you gain that promotion. Second, you’re making yourself recognizable to your boss. This goes back to the previous point about making yourself visible. Lastly, you’re stating your intention that you are serious about the company and are interested in a promotion.

• Take on New Responsibilities

Volunteering for new responsibilities shows your boss that you have your current position mastered and you are ready for more. It shows that you are a go-getter and can be depended on. If an opportunity for new training comes up, always take it. This will make you more indispensable to the company.

Working your way up the corporate chain is no easy task. Don’t drive yourself crazy about getting the promotion, but if you look at as more of a journey than a destination, you will be well on your way.

 About the Author

Carolyn is a guest blogger who writes about BigCommerce and other software solutions to help businesses and business owners get ahead.

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Good luck with following the steps on how to get the promotion you long for and enjoy the journey until the end of the road.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today I will share with you an article writen by Shelly Towns. Remember the post I made with that cracking-up – unreal epic cover letter? The topic is not exactly related to my online marketing training themed articles but yet it made great impression to me so I shared it. Not to mention the laugh I had while reading it. Since then I have received some guest blogging inquiries related to my theme which is wide on its own and one more that shares 5 resume writing tips. I decided to create a new category on the blog named professional growth that will include articles like the current one.

Hope you enjoy it the same way I did! Thank you Shelly for your contribution.

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5 High Octane Resume Boosters

When unemployment rates are high, and getting higher a number of interesting situations occur simultaneously. Many of these scenarios end up requiring people to either pull out an old resume, or create something new. Even if being out of work isn’t the challenge, there are opportunities where producing a resume quick can bring about positive change in ones life.

Hard economic times affects folks in various ways. Many people simply get laid off because their employers are no longer generating the income required to make the payroll. Once their job is lost, those unemployed folks need to find something new. Unemployment insurance only lasts for so long, and depending upon the state one lives in, those benefits are being shortened every day.

Perhaps losing a job doesn’t happen, but hours are cut back. Most people already have more month after the end of their pay check, so even fewer hours means stretching finances even further.

Those a bit more optimistic might look at job loss and under employment as an opportunity to increase their own work situation. While competition can be stiffer than in more flush times, the process of procuring a new position in any of the above scenarios all have one thing in common: application and submission of ones resume.

5 Tips For Resume Excellence

1. Personalize It: Given there are only a few word processing programs which most resumes are created with, the number of pre-built templates are relatively small. When attempting to create something memorable, that will stand out from all those other resumes, consider taking the time to learn the ins and outs of the software program. Then change things up and add some personality and flair. Keep the resume professional and appropriate, but making it ones own should have positive effects on potential employers.
2. Remember the Employer: The industry and specific company one submits resumes to should be the overriding force when it comes to just how much personality one should allow to appear on the page. More conservative employers may not take lightly to fluorescent inks on dark, glossy paper stock. If this is how one wishes to express themselves, just be sure to send that awesome resume to a company that will appreciate it.
3. Enjoy the Process: If the thought of updating or creating a resume fills one with dread, the final product is very likely to reflect those negative emotions. Why not have a little fun with the process (see tip 1 & 2 above!) At the same time, too much fun could make a job applicant seem unreliable and less than professional, so a little balancing act is likely warranted.
4. Seek Feedback Early & Often: No one knows everything about resume supremacy. Ask ten hiring professionals and chances are good one will get ten differing opinions about the specifics looked for in a resume. But this can be a good thing. Sharing ones resume during and after the process of rejuvenating it should provide the feedback necessary to make some informed decisions. At the end of the day, however, decide on the choices which make the most sense.
5. Weed Out the Constructive Criticism: The highly opinionated critiques of ones resume will only serve to cause one concern and stress. Thank those individuals and politely forget whatever they’ve had to say about your CV. Instead, focus ones energy and attention where the criticism is intelligent and seems to make sense for ones goals and objectives. Try not to get caught up in applying everything one hears regarding improving their resume, but at the same time, be willing to make changes when more than one respondent makes similar observations.

About the Author

Shelly Towns is an avid writer who is working on her masters in finance online, while juggling the day to day life of being a mom.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

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Garcia en Web Design Served by Liliana Ospina

When you surf the internet and look through all the different web sites, you will notice that some pop out from the rest. A website’s design is much like how you package or present a product. If you present your products well, you will earn more money and have more customers. In the same way, if your website is well-designed, you can make a living out of your site contents or products and acquire a larger client base as well.

When you want to make a mark and make your site stand out, your website design plays one of the roles in helping you achieve this goal.

Finding your Purpose

You have to be clear on what you want to present to the public. Why do you want to make a website in the first place? Is it to sell clothes, trinkets, software and other stuff? Is it to promote a book or a movie? This will determine the focus of your website and its design. If you are not clear about this, you will probably have bits and pieces of irrelevant information which can drive people away.

Ideas and inspiration

After you have decided on the main purpose of your site, you can now try to come up with ideas on how to present the site. If you are not as inspired or if you have no idea at all, you can look around the internet and see how other sites advertise. Think from a customer’s perspective. What do you want a great site to have? Do not just look at sites that have the same content or products as yours; you do not want to limit yourself when it comes to getting ideas and inspiration.

Colors and Images

If you have done your homework and researched on some of the best-designed sites, you will notice that such sites are creative and yet their colors are simplistic. They’re not all drab or in pure black and white, but the creator understands that not all colors go together, and making your site stand out by putting a mishmash of colors is not the way to go. Think minimalism. As for images, you can throw in several appealing photos.

The important thing to remember about colors and images is that they have to support your site’s purpose. If your site promotes tropical destinations, then summer colors and beach photos can be a great choice. You always have to relate to what you are promoting or selling.

Text

Having great colors and images are useless if people can’t read your main content because  it comes in a hard-to-read font. Visual appeal entices your customers to look at your site, but it does not stop there. You want to get people’s attention essentially for them to stay at your site and continue reading and browsing through your site’s pages.

Updates

In the end, what matters is maintaining your site. You may have the most beautifully designed website on the web, but if you do not maintain and update your site regularly, there is no point in creating it in the first place. You want to keep your site fresh and updated to earn your customers’ trust, and you want people to keep coming back to your site. You can attach an RSS feed button so your customers can be updated on the latest news and product info on your site.

A site’s design is fan important aspect that helps you get and maintain readers, so be sure that your site is well-designed and easy to navigate. If your customers enjoy going to your site because it is visually appealing, you will be successful and your site will continue to grow.

About the Author

Troy Hansen works with financial bloggers and in his spare time works on web design. He also contributes content for online companies which provide purchase order loans. He works with companies that need PO funding Canada contracts through the website purchaseorderfinancing.com.

Online Marketing Training

Did you like this post and the web design tips from our guest author? We would appreciate if you share it with your online buddies and let us know what you think in the comments form next!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Hello! Today I am sharing with you a post by my guest author Kieron Casey. Kieron presents the advantages of using payroll software instead of outsourcing the task to a company as a money saving parameter. Let’s read what our author has to say in detail. Many thanks!

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Using Payroll Software To Save Your Company Money

Is having your own payroll company costing you too much money? Have you considered outsourcing the department, only to find that doing so will also cost you more than you are willing to spend? All companies come up against this problem at one time or another. It is too expensive to hire an expert to do the job, but you cannot just give the task to someone who does not understand what they are doing. That is too large of a risk for you to take. There is only one solution that will really help you to solve both of these problems at one time.

Using Payroll Software Instead

What you need to do is to consider using payroll software to assist your staff in accomplishing everything that a professional payroll office needs to accomplish. You can get a program and install it on your company computers. Not only will it contain all of the information that your employees need to make up for their lack of experience, but it will also provide them with direct assistance. They will be able to learn how to do everything the way that it is meant to be done so that your employees can be paid the right amount of money, at the right time.

No Need For More Employees

While you will have to spend some money on the program itself, you will save a lot in the long run. You will not need to hire more employees to form a payroll department. You will not have to outsource the job and pay someone else to do it for you. Instead, you can just assign the tasks to the office employees that you already have. You may have to move their schedules around a little bit to make all of this work, but it should not be hard to free up enough time for them to work with the payroll software.

Compatible On All Systems

Another nice thing about using payroll software is that you can find programs that are compatible on all computer systems. It does not matter if your company is using brand new computers or older computers that will soon be replaced. The manufacturer of those computers is also not important. As long as you have some sort of a system, you will be able to install and run the software that you need right inside of your own offices.

Saving Money and Streamlining Business

As you can see, payroll software is a great investment because it can save you a lot of time and money. It can streamline your work so that you get more things done in a shorter period of time and so that you make less mistakes. Your own employees will be able to do the work, but they will have all of the professional assistance that they need. This is the perfect balance for companies of any size. You should really consider using software today if you want to solve your payroll problems for a low price.

About the Author

Kieron Casey blogs regularly on a number of subjects including small business advice, payroll software and finances.

Payroll Software Feedback

Did you like this article from our author? If you did please show your appreciation by sharing this article with your online friends and leave us your feedback in the comments form below! If you own a company or work for a company, how do you handle with your payroll needs? Would you consider using payroll software instead of assigning the job to an external company?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Social media makes it easier to stay in touch with customers. They can engage with your brand and you can talk to them directly, ensuring your message gets across clearly. Yet when expanding your brand into international markets, social media needs to be managed carefully to ensure the right people are being targeted and that they are being spoken to appropriately.

Define Your Audience Using  Social Media

Defining your target market is the first step of any communications plan, into which any social media marketing activity falls. If you are expanding into a new international market it’s important first to know the market.

For example if Russia is one of your target markets it is worth knowing the reason Facebook grew by 376% in the first four months after its launch in 2010 is because of a desire amongst younger generations to engage with global communities and brands.

Social media becomes a reflection of our culture therefore before we start interacting we should measure how the audience behaves, how they talk to brands; do they just engage in polls? Are video the key way to share news and ideas?

How to Choose a Platform

Facebook is the biggest social platform in the world, but it’s not the only one. Increasingly Twitter is becoming important in emerging economies in Latin America.

The significance of the micro-blogging website was clearly seen in the Middle East during the Arab Spring. In China RenRen and Ozone are the major social media networks.

Like BlackBerry in the UK, Ozone has its own social networking messenger service called QQ which is frequently used. Along with Facebook Yandex is popular in Russia along with Vkontakte.

Once target markets have been identified the next step is researching and understanding how users in each market engage via social media. Setting up an account on the most popular platforms helps develop a brand’s identify on social media and thus get in front of the right people.

Building Relationships

Different social networks build on different ways of engaging through different media: It might be a poll, a video, a quiz, a competition question – each method should be determined based on what your target market is doing already.

Yet to join the conversation you have to speak the language. Sites like Google Translate or Yahoo BabelFish can help translate a simple phrase. While this is a simple and effective way of building relationships online it is not fool-proof.

The strength of social media is that it has given consumers the chance to talk about brands in their own vernacular. Online translation sites do not understand these nuances of language, which could alienate readers and users.

More expensive yet a better option is to employ a native speaker who can manage the social media outlets. Responding to questions in a native tongue, understanding the cultural contexts, trends, local news and influences will help a brand engage much easier with its followers and build a more trustworthy relationship.

Keeping Social Media Networking Profiles Up to Date

The key to social media is to view it as an on-going commitment. Monitoring social networks is important. Platforms like SocialMention and Sysomos track mentions of brands and comments through social networks and blogs.

Understanding the target marketplace and knowing the way to interact with customers is a prerequisite for a company to be successful with an international business targeting audience. Social media offers an effective tool for connecting with emerging economies and raising profile. Putting a social media strategy in place may seem to be time-consuming but it is time well spent and will have a positive impact.

About the author

Christian Arno has founded “Lingo24″, a top translation service in the USA. Lingo24 launched in 2010 and at the time you read this article; has over 150 employees and international clients more than 60 countries. During the last year, the amount of words translated reaches 40 millions for businesses in all industries and sectors, alike MTV, World Bank and American Express. On Twitter you can follow up with the company’s updates @Lingo24.

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Many thanks to Christian Arno for his awesome post about tailoring social media campaigns internationally.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Reflection or hindsight to improve project success is, for me, all about an organisation’s ability to learn lessons. I have cunningly sub-titled it: “Blake’s Heaven”.

Project Success

Is William Blake’s proverb ‘the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ the message organisations need to heed in order to learn lessons in programme and project management, or is it something more, fundamental, and simply Darwin’s theory of Survival of the fittest – that is, those organisations who learn lessons are more likely to ‘survive’ in challenging economic times?

Efficacy

Starting with William Blake, do organisations waste resources when running projects? Can projects be better managed so as to optimise planning and resource loading? In my experience, the execution of projects can often be ‘the road of excess’ whereby ineffective planning, bureaucratic decision making, poor quality control, for example, leads to the introduction of ‘excess’ resources in order to deliver the agreed objectives. If organisations can learn from these experiences, will they find themselves in the ‘palace of wisdom’ and, ultimately, deliver projects with greater efficacy?

Learning Lessons

Is the argument above over-analytical and learning lessons on project management is simply down to those that do will prosper and those that don’t will struggle? I would argue that learning lessons as a survival mechanism is a basic human motivator (cue Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) and that it is essential to the longevity of organisations.

Whatever your viewpoint, one thing can be said for certain – that the ability of organisations to learn lessons is inherently linked with project management maturity. If organisations do not possess the maturity of project management process/methodology (e.g. PRINCE2), then they will not learn the essential lessons they need to.

If they do, then they will be in ‘Blake’s Heaven’!

Project Management Success Tips article is a guest post proudly offered by a new author to our blog. Mr Clarkson.

Author Bio

Dr. Ian Clarkson is an accomplished lecturer, author and consultant. He is also a public speaker having delivered programmes and projects in a variation of industry divisions. He is also the Head of Project and Programme Management Product Development at QA. QA are the top providers of Prince2 training. His position is to deliver business direction and ownership of QA’s portfolio

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today, Richard Fisher is guest authoring with an article about some basic unwritten rules and tips on what e-commerce and website owners should not do while there are trying to sell their products online. A basic part of an online marketing training program is to show entrepreneurs what they should avoid doing in order to attract sales, leads, registrations or whatever the purpose of a site’s is ultimately. When starting it is possible to get carried away and fall into the next “4 traps”. This may happen due to the starter’s enthusiasm or little knowledge (ignorance) in how the online marketing business industry works. It does not matter, what matters is to keep these tips in mind and simply avoid those. Hope you enjoy . Thank you Richard.

What not to do when selling your products online

When talking about business, mistakes should be far and few. There are always a set of must dos and don’ts which you must follow in order to be on the right path. You should always plan every move before you go ahead, study the benefits and the losses that come with it. Starting an online business seems very easy to most people, but they do not know the difficulties they have to face.

Having success in one business is not just about getting the right things but it is also necessary that you avoid the wrong things as well.

There are certain things that you should keep in mind when you are selling online. Also keep in mind that the first impression is the most important one; people will always judge you on it. The following are some things which you should never do when selling your products online.

Overselling

Overselling can be called “extra” marketing. This means that you focus solely on the promotion of your products. Everywhere you place your ad, you display the item and its costs. This is usually mistaken to be an effective marketing strategy, as you are spreading the name you expect that everyone who will get it would come to you. Come on, that is never going to happen. You have to show them something worthwhile to attract them. When you are marketing your website or products you should put some deals or discounts in the message. You should offer any sort of incentive for the customer to pull them towards you.  Overselling is usually a turn off so you should refrain from it.

Boast

You should be as honest to your clients as you possibly can. Never think that your clients are fools, as they can just Google and find that the information provided by you is false. And if this happens and becomes popular, believe me you are not going anywhere with the store. You should always be true to your knowledge, search thoroughly before you place an item. Do not make false claims such as we have the best xyz in the world or we offer the best rates. These claims do lure customers, but when they learn you are not delivering your word, they will definitely back off even if they like the service. Honesty is the best policy, even in business.

Spam

Your website should not contain any material that would suggest that you are a spam website. You should have complete company information and contact details to satisfy your clients. Furthermore, you should install a security certificate to keep your clients safe. Get your website designed from a professional web designer to make it look legit.

Irrelevant Links

You should avoid putting your links on irrelevant websites. This is usually a worthless, money-wasting market strategy that doesn’t pay off. You are also misinformed as the traffic that might be coming from such pages would not be of any use to you. You should target more relevant sites to place your ads.

About the Author

Richard Fisher has been working as a Magento ecommerce development specialist for the last 5 years. As part of his role, he advises businesses on the best strategies to maximize their sales online.

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Selling Products Online Article Feedback Request

Did you like what Richard shared with us above about things not doing while marketing your products on the internet and while expecting to sell your products online? Share with us your experience with selling your own products online if any and let us know what works or doesn’t work for you in the comments form.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy David’s tips. If you agree or disagree or you have something to add, be my guest. Would love to hear your voice on this matter. Have fun and share away! .

21 Things You can Do for Converting Visitors Into Customers

Do you own an e-commerce site? Do you invest a lot of money into customer acquisition? Each person who visits your site is a potential customer for you. If you know how to convert these visitors into customers, then you can cut back on your customer acquisition costs. Here are a few useful tips on how to convert your website visitors to customers.

1. Deliver Your Message Quickly And Concisely

Keep your offering simple; grab your visitor’s attention and get them hooked within the first few seconds. Divide your landing page into sections. If your offering needs more explaining, put that info in sub-sections of the landing page.

2. Make The Purchase Process Simple

Evaluate your site. Does it take a lengthy process to purchase items and go to checkout? Or can you make the process easier by allowing visitors to buy something from the landing page itself?

3. Learn From Bricks-And-Mortar Retailers

Have you seen the end cap displays at stores and malls? Put up a great looking picture of your offering on your landing page’s sidebar. Put import information in the middle of the landing page, not in some random corner.

4. Jazz Up Your Website

Make sure that your site provides a pleasant, hassle free browsing experience, user-friendly tabs and navigation and cheerful graphics; you will show an increase in the visitor-to-buyer conversion rate.

5. Design Your Site According To Your Target Demographic

Is your site aimed at kids? Then you can use cartoons and colorful images, and very less text. Is your site aimed at senior citizens? Stay away from clashing colors and too many graphics; most seniors have visual problems.

6. Keep The Text Simple

Long words and long sentences are unacceptable. Use an easy to read font style and size. Don’t use heavily contrasting background colors. Set your font size according to the text; large size for banners and attention grabbing text.

7. Keep Your Site Easy To Navigate

A cluttered site with confusing directions is a put off. Keep your site easy to navigate; get your site tested at intervals by a sample audience and take their feedback into account.

8. Provide A Site Map

If you have multiple links on the landing page, it’s good to provide a site map. Implementing assorted drill-down screens without providing a site map is not very user-friendly.

9. Provide A Secure Checkout

Even after deciding to buy something, your visitor will make a purchase only if they are convinced the checkout is secure. Provide an encrypted, safe and secure checkout process. Make sure you write a page about the checkout process and link it to the landing page.

10. Give Something For Free

Who can say no to a freebie? Even if a visitor does not make a decision to purchase immediately, he or she will refer your site or come back for more later.

11. Use Auto-Responders

Make it easy for visitors to opt-in for your newsletter. You can do this by offering something free. Use auto responders to keep your business and its offerings in front of customers at all times.

12. Don’t Brag About Your Business

When it comes to e-commerce, the visitor is the king. Don’t waste his time with unnecessary statements about how good your company is. Your visitor wants to know more about your product than about you.

13. Establish High Google Rankings

Make sure that the right page has the highest ranking. Even if you have high ranking, your visitors will abandon your information comes in a downloadable PDF, or you have news about how successful your product is and if there’s too much text.

14. Make All Your Pages Rank High

Never forget to SEO enhance your entire site. Your site may be ranked high but if you want users to access all your important pages, get them ranked high as well.

15. Place Relevant Links On Your Landing Page

Make sure that visitors can access all relevant pages from your landing page. This means user testimonials, secure payment gateway details, product testimonials, business testimonials and additional product information.

16. Gather Eyeballs Using A PMM

Write a Primary Marketing Message (PMM) that delivers the objective of your blog. Make sure your PMM is everywhere; in your blog articles, when guest posting on other blogs, your signature and so on. Your PMM should be SEO enhanced and be memorable.

17. Don’t Put In Foreign Labels

People want to know that they can buy what they want from local e-commerce companies. If you are a US-based company, don’t mention that your products are of European technology. You don’t want to lose visitors.

18. Don’t Waste Space In Explanation

Don’t explain why the visitor needs the product. Just let the visitor know what the product does. The visitor is at your site because he or she already knows what they want.

19. Don’t Waste Visitor’s Time

Don’t put your company news and status on the landing page. A visitor will not be impressed. Do you know when a visitor thinks your company is great? When he or she finds exactly what they’re looking for in a few seconds.

20. Let Visitors Know What Others Think Of Your Offering

Put up user testimonials and positive offering reviews prominently. People tend to place their trust in businesses that others trust.

21. Inspire People To Buy Your Offering

Appeal to people’s pain points through an inspiring statement. Get them excited enough to break out of their apathy and upload their credit card information. People need to know that your offering is more valuable than the price you’re asking for it.

About the Author

David has written this article for conversion optimization Company that helps business in increasing their conversion rate and improving performance of their online marketing campaigns.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

(Picture taken from a post on Huffingtonpost.com) Epic Cover Letter: “How To Get Hired For Your Dream Job”.

This post could have an alternative title: “Resume Writing Tips NOT TO FOLLOW” but read next what I run into.

Hi guys. This post is not about online marketing training. It is about an entry that I read that literally made me laugh so much that I could not help myself not sharing it as I am very curious to see the level and kind of humor that me and you have; the guys and girls that read me on this new site of mine. If you haven’t already heard it or read about it, it is a cover letter of an applicant named Roanald, who tried his luck to apply for the job of his dreams.

I don’t know about you but I think that it is one of the funniest things I have ever read online. The great thing is that it is said Roanald was hired for this job. The human resources guys in this company probably had a peculiar sense of humor.

So be my guest and dive into the picture below. Let me know how you feel about it. Would you contact this guy for an interview if you were an employer? …

So what do you think? Share your thoughts about it.

Isn’t this an epic cover letter or what?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Social media marketing has become so popular and effective that, for many businesses, new campaign initiatives are incomplete without at least a Facebook page or Twitter handle.  Given that only ten years ago neither of these marketing platforms existed, it is astounding to think how powerful and influential they have become in the world of marketing.

And it hasn’t stopped there.  With so many social media outlets, you’d think that the trend would have reached a kind of critical mass and simply disappeared the way it arrived — instead, there is yet another social media channel that has become popular more quickly than Facebook did, with a recorded 7 million unique visitors in December, 2011: Pinterest.

Pinterest Image Sharing Social Platform

Pinterest, as you probably know, is one of the newest social media platforms, and works, as popular blogger Chris Brogan said, as a kind of “visual bookmarking” and sharing site.

Members create “pinboards” to which they can post pictures, recipes, quotes — anything that suits their fancy.  Other members visit these pinterest pinboards and can re-pin posts they like to their own pinboards.  It’s easy, instant, and best of all, extremely intuitive and visually appealing.

Pinterest in Relation to Internet Marketing

What does this have to do with internet marketing?

Everything…

Business owners, after witnessing how popular Pinterest was becoming, quickly realized a promotional opportunity within the pinboard framework.  By posting images of their own products on a company pinbaord (think of it like an online product catalog), they could direct customers to their sites.  Voila!  A new breed of social media marketing was born.  According to a report from Shareaholic, a MA based content sharing site, Pinterest is “driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined.”

However, users can sniff out phony or overly self-promotional Pinterest pinboards the same way Facebookers can immediately recognize a bot profile.  To sidestep this, Pinterest marketers create boards that other members will find useful, beautiful, or inspiring, sprinkling in occasional product pins amid an array of other pins not associated with the company.

Pinterest Pinboards

Say, for example’s sake, that you run a nail polish business.  You could start a pinboard that focused on creative nail designs or useful nail products and fill the board with pictures of nails that you snag from the internet or snap yourself with a camera.  In addition to these design inspiration pictures, include some images of polish you sell that users could purchases to create one of the designs on their own hands.  It’s like posting a picture of a cake, and then posting links to all the ingredients someone would need to bake it.

When someone sees something they like on your board, they can re-pin it on someone else’s.  Re-pinning is the Pinterest equivalent of a personal referral, which — as any marketer will know — is probably the most powerful form of marketing.

Following Others Like on Twitter

Following other users is also an important strategy.  Interaction is critical on all social media sites, and Pinterest is no exception.  Browse through some related boards and pin something.  Follow other users.  Once you’ve done this for a while, create a new board that all your followers will see.

Another great marketing tool is pinning coupons on your board that users can redeem at your website, or hosting contests to see who can share your content the most in 24 hours, with a product of yours as a prize.

Brogan said it best when he said that pins on a Pinterest pinboard act as “reminders of commerce.”  They aren’t ads in and of themselves, but rather a mechanism to bring people back to your product after sharing it.  As a marketer, it’s best to build boards full of things you think would be interesting to get for someone else.  Chances are, other people will think so, too, and they might buy something of yours if you include a pin.  Pinterest has limits, but is definitely worth trying for any new small business.

About the Author

This post is offered by Nadia Jones. Nadia writes for accredited online colleges on related subjects to college, education, teaching, financial management, movies and more. She can be contacted at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Increasing Blog Popularity

Blogging is no longer just an activity that helps people share their expertise, thoughts, opinions and suggestions with the world at large. A blog has also emerged as an important tool, used by businesses to promote their products and services, indirectly. Whatever the nature and objective of the blog, personal or professional, it needs to be marketed well, in order to reach a wider audience.

Today, even personal blogs need to be marketed well in order to attract readership. There is a problem of plenty that is facing both bloggers and blog visitors alike. With so many options, bloggers are hard-pressed to get their blog noticed, while readers are flooded with a plethora of blog choices, all of them catering to their specific needs and requirements. ‘Blog Marketing’ is that fine thread, which seeks to connect a blog with its readers and vice versa.

Let’s take a look at some of the more effective blog marketing tips that are helping individual bloggers and businesses make their blogs popular.

Never Forego Logo

Yes, you need a logo for your blog! If you are serious about your blog and its popularity, you need to understand that it needs to have its very own marketing identity. A logo will act like a visual representation of your blog. It is your logo that will be your branding tool and will help your blog. A lot of bloggers can be accused of criminal negligence because they don’t give the logo its due. They ignore its promotional value and create a blog that has no identity to speak of. A blog is defined by its personality and character and it’s the blog’s logo that will be an embodiment of both these aspects. It’s your blog logo, rather than your blog name, that will have recall value.

So, don’t pass up on the logo. It doesn’t necessarily need to stand out, but it needs to be there. Its presence sets the ball rolling for your blog to be marketed.

Leverage Social Media

Creating your profile on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc and using this profile as a marketing platform are great ways of going viral with your blog. By sharing your links with the people on your social network, you are giving your blog a chance to keep reaching new people with very little or no effort. There is yet another way that you can leverage the power of social media for marketing your blog. You can integrate social media buttons on your blog. This allows your readers to share your blog content with their friends.

Social media will help your blog flourish in an environment that has been especially developed for sharing and the promotion of ideas and connecting with people at more personal level – The kind of environment perfectly suited for blog promotion.

Focus on Forums

Your blog and its content will, more often than not, cater to the needs of a specific niche. So, start becoming a part of various forums that center on your particular niche. Talk to people who are contributing to the various threads of such forums and share your blog links with them. What you need to focus upon, while participating in forum discussions is talking sense and making constructive contributions. Your blog’s popularity and reputation depend on it.

Unlike many other blog marketing tips that make for instant blog popularity, but of a temporary nature, these blog marketing tips will be a far more effective way of ensuring an enduring popularity.

Author Bio

Philip Donald has years of experience in various domains like Web Designing, Development, Project Management, Internet Marketing and more. He currently works for PLAVEB, which is a leading Custom Software Development and Web Design Company based in Los Angeles, California.

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This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Viral Video Marketing | 5 Things to Consider

Viral videos—just like the name suggests, are online videos designed to infect your target audience’s homes via the computer and influence their buying habits. They are more or less a spin-off of the traditional word-of-mouth marketing technique and started gaining popularity with the creation of the infamous YouTube.

They are certainly a creative and usually inexpensive way to promote products/services and establish brand recognition and boost sales for clients. While viral videos are effective ways to grab your target audience’s attention, if done incorrectly, they can end up going no-where. That said, when constructing your own viral video it’s important that you consider these following questions.

1. Is the Subject Matter “Sharing” Worthy? What makes viral videos such a success is the fact that consumers want to share the videos with friends and family because the subject material is something cool, unusual or as demonstrated with the success of Dos Equis‘ and Old Spice’s viral video campaigns for example, something incredibly funny. In fact, “funny” is usually the go-to-choice since it encourages mock-videos, spoofs and tributes thus blowing up the viral video even more. What consumers don’t like to share on the other hand is something depressing, boring or something passé.

That said, when brainstorming ideas in the conceptual stages try not to do make the subject matter too dark or daunting.

2. Is it of a High Quality? If you have limited funds, then shooting with an HD camera may be out of question. While your video doesn’t have to be entirely pixel-free for it to gain momentum in the online world, you do want to make sure that the video doesn’t look too amateur. Homemade-looking viral videos (unless that’s the effect you’re trying to achieve) is not a good look. For example, using the wrong lens, having an unsteady hand, or not using white balance to regulate color can turn people off. If you don’t have the best video editing and production skills, it’s best that you try to learn the very basics at least.

To give you a point of reference, here are a couple of free online classes offered to help you hone your basic video production skills:

• Introduction to Video [MIT]
• Good Shooting Guide: the Basic Principles [BBC]

3. Can it be Easily Embedded? After the video is filmed and uploaded onto an online video medium like YouTube, you want to make sure that consumers can easily add your video onto multiple sites like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and email—after all, this is how viral videos are spread from person-to-person. So do what you can to make sure the video code is easily-accessible.

4. Is it SEO-Ready? Not only do consumers need to be able to embed your viral video but they also need to be able to find it. And like most users looking for things, search engines like Google are typically the g-to-choice. This is why you need to make sure that you carefully write your Metadata description titles with strong key words so that Google can properly store your video in its databases.

5. Are You Engaging with Target Audience? Lastly, you need to make sure that you are including your audience in the process. No, they don’t need to be in the video but when they start to make comments etc or maybe have questions about the product you are marketing, don’t be afraid to actually answer them. You can also take their comments into consideration when creating your next viral video.

About the Author

Lauren Bailey is the author of this post. She is a regular contributor for best online colleges and she accepts comments at her emailaddress: blauren99 @gmail.com.

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Viral Video marketing article feedback

If you liked Lauren’s article about these 5 viral video marketing tips, make sure to let us know in the comments form and share away! Thank you Lauren for your contribution.

Related post: Viral marketing techniques

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Viral Marketing as a vital part of your Online Marketing Business Plan

We have all heard about viral marketing and how powerful it can be for a business brand. Today we will clarify some important points concerning the viral marketing aspect of your website content promotion.

Viral Marketing Definition

Firstly, Viral Marketing is a type of advertising where business news and offers spread via the “word-of-mouth” between people and their acquaintances, relatives, friends, business partners etc. This advertising method can be applied to all businesses either they are online or offline. “Word of mouth marketing” or “tell-to-a-friend” advertising (viral marketing) can be one of the greatest and most effective online marketing strategies to include in your online marketing plan for your business.

As long as you do it right!

Speaking about content, it can be in any form:

• article
• video
• press release
• e-book
• white paper
• an entry or comment on a social media

Viral marketing campaigns can be easily created for all the above mentioned types of content.

The Roots of Viral Marketing Concept

Back in 1997 is the time when Hotmail launched and in less than 1,5 year it gathered 8M users of Hotmail personal free accounts.

What was Hotmail’s Viral Marketing secret detail that made it huge?

It was a very simple detail that found itself being a click-able link in the footer of each sent email stating that “this email is sent via my free Hotmail account. Get your own free web based email account here!”.

Tell-To-a-Friend / Word of Mouth Marketing / Viral Marketing Ideas

People speak to each other about nearly everything. It is in our human nature to exchange information with our friends, family, acquaintances and mates about what theater play we saw and why we liked it or not. Sharing personal experiences with others is a factor that either motivates other people to decide on something or discourage someone about something.

For example when we want to buy a new online marketing training program but are not sure about its quality, we search for the course’s name on google adding the word “review” in the search box. We care to read what other people say about what we are thinking to get ourselves into. Viral marketing is powerful.

Today, with social media sites and the ease of sharing stuff with other people, viral marketing is an every day reality. Social media enthusiasts are far more likely to purchase a product of a page that their friends recommend and ‘LIKE’.

Smart Viral Marketing Campaigns Create Willing Buyers To Get Your Products

People are making buying decisions from interacting with their friends and following their acquaintances status updates on fb, twitter, LinkedIn and so forth. Consumers post reviews about product and services they use and this also is a very powerful advertising method for the concerning service or product for someone that will read this shared opinion.

Viral Marketing Ideas

It is very easy for viral marketing to be applied for your content.

If your shared resources are worth spreading the word for it is very likely to gain extra visibility, followers and increase your readership in general.

Viral Marketing Techniques

A simple text link attached to the footer of your blog posts along with a “Call-To Action” for readers to take specific action like “Share on Twitter”, “Like on Facebook” etc is enough to make your content spread viral.

Have a clear and distinguishing “call-to-action” that will make it plain simple for your readers to act up on it.

Make sure you offer the best content you can out there. Make it entertaining so people cannot resist sharing it with their friends. Provide info that helps to solve problems.

Some extra Viral Marketing Tips

1. Have you heard of Viral Video Marketing?

Turn your already existing content into videos using a free service named ANIMOTO . You can create unlimited free videos of 30 seconds duration and they offer free royalty pictures and music that you can use for your videos. You can also add your own text slides within the video to communicate your message in words. You must have heard how effective viral video marketing can be if you share smart, useful and entertaining content.

2. Write and submit high quality articles on the top article marketing sites

Even if it is said that after Google Panda Update article marketing is not so effective as it used to be, it still remains a great way to establish yourself as a professional in your niche and let people know who you are and what you do. If you provide great and interesting content on these sites, other users will use the share buttons on these sites for your articles and you can go viral asap.

3. Start Guest Blogging on other webmasters similar niche blogs

Finding other niche blogs that are in the same niche as you and agreeing on guest blogging there with your “About the Author” details attached is a great way for your content to spread virally as you reach out to a completely new audience. If these new audience like your content they will share it with their friends and social media buddies

4. Install Digg Digg Plugin or other sharing tools for your WordPress blog

Add a share widget on your blog to make it easy and obvious for your readers to recommend/share your wealth. I currently use the vertical “Sharebar” wordpress plugin but I have found Digg Digg to be a good one too. There are many sharing options and plugins designed for this purpose. You just go for what suits you best.

5. Create short pdf reports that you can give away for free to your readers

Write an e-book about a specific subject in your niche that people have unresolved questions for. It is not hard if you have material to talk about. When I first started I remember myself having so many questions about things and functions that now seem ridiculously plain and simple to me.

There was a time that even a Google Analytics code could cause severe headache and anxiety to me as I had no idea where to put it. I expected my mentor would have the answers for me but as it turned out he did not.

The frustration of that time and my effort to overcome it simply by learning how to do things on my own, easily became an e-book for starters, my own online marketing plan as a newbie with some more extra information on how you can move forward with your website, sharing online marketing training free reports, resources and avenues that you can explore to start making money online. You can get it for free after subscribing to my newsletter across my website’s forms.

I will be creating shorter reports though to give away for free that will cover more narrow subjects and will then use viral marketing tools such as “pay with a tweet” so all you will have to do to access it is to share my free offer with your social network connections.

Viral Marketing Campaigns love freebies…

This is an excellent viral marketing example. People love to download freebies in e-book (pdf) format and again if they like what they read they will spread the word to others about it. I recently came up against a service for twitter users named “Pay With a Tweet” where people are required to “pay” for your e-book or short report (or any other type of content you are giving away) with a tweet share on their twitter account. After this the content is unlocked and a download link appears to your offer’s “tweeters”. Sound cool huh?

6. If you currently offer a newsletter to your subscribers, attach a footer message at the bottom of your newsletter content that encourages your people to share your newsletter. If they are happy and pleased enough to read your messages all the way through the end, they will likely encourage others do the same!

If you liked this article share it with your friends on facebook and twitter from the share icons on the bottom bar and spread the word!

What viral marketing technique are you using with your content so far and how has it helped you?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

I did not expect to turn around 9 days later and see a number of 1.077 pending posts for me to review.

I have not found the time yet to read none of them but I glanced at the contents of two or three articles.

I have to make some points clear next for all my subscribers and potential guest authors/posters:

• Not All posts are going to be accepted because you can register freely as a contributor
• If you don’t follow the guidelines by the book you won’t be able to see your post published

What are the rules? I created a whole new page for that reason.

Please be my guest and read the guest posting guidelines carefully HERE, THANKS!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

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The Advantages of Having an In-House SEO Team

As a business owner or employee, you likely have an understanding of why SEO (search engine optimization) is so important for success. Less than 5 years ago, the idea of making web content appealing to search engines wasn’t exactly a high priority. In today’s competitive marketplace however, placement is one key item for conversion optimization success. Okay, so you understand these techniques are important, so what now?

It only seems logical now that SEO is now something that many people can easily incorporate into their online presence building practices, and no longer does Google Analytics cross as many eyes as it used to. Organizations like the SEMPO Institute are now offering fantastic training for companies, giving them the tools to create their own in-house SEO.

For many businesses, they have found themselves at one point realizing that SEO may be something that is thought of after online marketing efforts have begun. There is an incredible benefit to having SEO in-house; companies will have their own SEO “cheerleader” who not only represents strong SEO practices, but also represents only one sole company, and therefore only one online marketing campaign.

With someone dedicated to SEO, they’re able to bring their strong skills to anywhere they are at any given time within the company; they are there for meetings, events, everyday occurrences.

Logistically, it just makes sense from a company standpoint to bring SEO in-house. For one, everyone within the company will be able to receive immediate answers whenever a question arises. If a writer, marketer, designer or any other member of the team has a question about how to best optimize something, there is a person in-house to answer that question immediately – no phone calls, no emails, simply an instant answer.

Additionally, it also makes sense from a monetary standpoint. If a company has someone for search marketing in-house, then that company is expressing to everyone: whether internally or externally; that they are dedicated to strong SEO principles.

In some cases, agencies bill for hours which are unnecessary and don’t always have the client’s ultimate best interests in mind. In turn, this makes ROI very important, so what is going to optimize ROI more than having someone dedicated to something that means so much to ROI?

An in-house SEO team will always be looking for ways to increase ROI, conversion rate optimization and best of all, they can always be on the lookout for new things that need to be incorporated and will be able to come up with strategies much faster versus when an executive has to reach out to a third party service, who will be busy working on however many other companies SEO, thus putting you behind if you’re not in the front of the line, and you can’t always be in front of the line.

Just remember to be selective when hiring your team. Find a variety of experts with various backgrounds, strong work ethics and personalities that will fit well into your team.

About the Author

Elizabeth Murphy is a contributing writer for Invesp, which helps others develop on an online presence with optimization techniques and landing page design.

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Feedback time!

So, after giving it a serious thought, would you hire an in-house seo team or would you outsource your seo projects?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Hiring In-house Writers: A Guide

If you are an affiliate marketer, a blog owner, or any other type of webmaster, then you know the importance of getting high quality content up on a regular basis – especially since the Google Panda update rolled in.

Hiring in-House writers is a good thing for any webmaster to do at some point – and just because they are called in-house writers doesn’t mean that you and the writers have to be working in the same building. In fact it will be more cost effective if you allow your writers to work from home – and this will also allow you to hire writers from all over the country (or even the world if you would like).

When you are hiring in-house writers there are a few things you will need. Here is a short, but effective, checklist:

Internal Collaborating System. There are many of these types of programs out there on the Internet (CentralDesktop and ActiveCollab being two good ones). The good ones cost money, but if you are going to be pushing out a lot of content with your in-house writers than you should definitely invest in one. These will allow you and your writers to work together without having to do much communicating. Communicating with your writers is important, but without an internal collaborating system you can waste a lot of time on the phone or via email. The system will allow you to communicate with all of your writers at the same time throughout the day and will allow you to set up projects, milestones, task lists, and databases for you and the writers’ benefit.

File or Folder Sharing. Although you are able to do a lot with databases in an Internal Collaborating system, you will still want to use a file and folder sharing program (one great free one being DropBox) to store all of your content in. You can organize your folders and files however you want, and can grant access to individual members or all members. It is your personal storage system – and much easier for storing text files across a network of people than anything else.

Side Note: if you are using DropBox and an Internal collaborating system then here is a really cool way to repeatedly get extra Gigabytes of storage in your DropBox account. DropBox has a cool affiliate program where every time you recommend someone DropBox through an affiliate link you get 2 GB of storage for free (only your initial 2 GB are free). Place that link in your internal collaborating system and every single time you refer a new writer you will get free GB’s! I am in no way affiliated with DropBox, I just think its an awesome free tool!

Hiring in-house writers opposed to outsourcing your content creation needs to a company that provides content writing services will give you a lot more control over the type of content that you put up on your website – and with the Panda update that is extremely important. Volume writing is not as nearly as important as creative writing any more – and if you can’t write some content that will attract links naturally on your own, then you should definitely look into hiring some in-house writers.

About the Author

This article was written by Gabriel Jones. Gabriel helps to run and maintain inetzeal.com. This website is an entity of an Internet marketing company which provides many services, which includes a white label link building service, as well as many other white label SEO services.

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Did you enjoy Gabriel’s hiring in-house writers post?

If you did, we would greatly appreciated if you shared it with your facebook and twitter friends! Also, let us know in the comments form what methods do you use in  order to finding great content for your site? Is hiring in-house writers an option that you consider essential or effective for your online marketing campaigns?

Online Marketing Training Blog

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

How are these two areas combined and fit together providing better results for the future and survival of an online business? Alan Grainger is here today and shares with us his views about customer service being an important factor of a company’s overall marketing and service plan. Thank you Alan for your contribution.

Customer Service – A New Job Role in Online Marketing

Over the last few months, the launch of Google+ and the revolution to personalised search features on search engines have made social media very relevant to SEO. Google entering the social game could soon mean that getting people tweeting and+1ing about your business could have a very real effect on how your site is seen in the SERPs, so even the most cynical of search engine professionals are having to pay more attention to social than ever before.

Social success for SEO depends on getting endorsements from customers and website users in the form of likes, tweets or +1s and this means honing your customer service skills to a whole new level.

It isn’t just social networks that are becoming vital to SEO, customer review websites and the star ratings that they offer are also cropping up in the SERPs and all of this has an influence on click through rate.

So how can your online marketing department use the new customer focused signals that Google are looking for to increase your web visibility?

Social Networks

The SEO camp is firmly split in two when it comes to social media, those who love it and those who loathe it. If you’re in the latter camp, it may be time to take a few deep breaths and venture into the world of social media.

Tweets and +1s are going to play a huge role in the visibility of sites in personalised search, and if Google+ takes off then you can expect many more people to be performing searches while signed in to a Google account, so this is going to be important.

The SEO of the future is going to have to interact with customers and encourage them to leave reviews, tweet about their experience or hit +1 so that your site will be visible in the SERPs to all their friends.

While this may be something that you are already doing, these social endorsements are set to be the new links in personalised search so they may become crucial should more people use Google when signed in to their account.

Review Sites

Review sites such as Trip Advisor have been the vain of the travel industry for years, but with star ratings now appearing in the SERPs, your click through rate could count on it. You need to liaise with customer services to make sure that customers are encouraged to leave their feedback, and if you get negative reviews then action needs to be taken to rectify the problem and encourage customers to re-review based on your handling of the situation.

It’s important not to be scared of bad reviews as when handled correctly they can turn into some of your best ones. Go out of your way to rectify the problem and update the review page with what you are doing to help the customer out. This will give the impression to anybody reading it that you are a trustworthy company who will go out of their way to fix any problems that might occur with an order.

If Google+ is adopted as readily as they will be hoping, personalised search could play a huge role in SEO of the future, so snagging those endorsements early will be crucial in not only increasing the visibility of your site but also in maintaining the presence that you currently have.

Author Bio:

Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer in the promotional gifts sector and manages SEO for The Corporate Gifts Company. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department. Follow him @alanjgrainger.

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Online Marketing and Customer Service article feedback

Did you enjoy this post of Alan’s about customer service and its significant role in online marketing? Give this article a share if you did and feel welcome to add your point of view through the comments form below!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Today’s article “How to Appeal to Headhunters in the Technology Sector” is a contribution of Kieron Casey.

Enjoy the tips

Headhunters

Headhunters are often viewed as underhanded figures particularly by those who are not familiar with their workings. They are, however, both specialists and professionals who use a variety of skills and abilities to seek out well qualified candidates to fill specific roles and job positions. These professionals may work for a private firm, a sport organisation, the government or otherwise.

Oftentimes headhunters work in networks to find candidates by referral and most of their recruitment tactics stem from their contacts and ability to make them. Some headhunters will also utilise other methods for finding well qualified candidates. This includes online social media, networks and other organisations.

Types of Headhunters or Recruiters

There are generally two types of recruiters or headhunters: third-party or independent and in-house. The former works for a firm or himself, representing multiple companies at one time. As third-party or independent recruiters find and place more qualified, successful candidates, their client network grows. The latter type of recruiter, an in-house headhunter is generally a member of the company’s human resources department.

These recruiters have the advantage of knowing the company from the inside. This allows them to find candidates will the best skill set and to negotiate compensation. Some in-house recruiters are brought on by a company for a specific period of time. They are contracted to work exclusively for the company during that time. Once the time period is over, they move on to another company to work in-house.

Understanding the role of a recruter

What does all this mean for job candidates in the technology sector? Understanding the role of a recruiter is paramount to appeal to them. You should know how they operate so you can get in front of the competition.

Cultivating Recommendations

The first and foremost requirement in attracting the attention of headhunters is cultivating recommendations. A headhunter will approach candidates they have already placed for recommendations. After all, successful candidates are likely to know others in the field of technology that would make a good fit for a company. That means you need to increase your network.

 Social Media Visbility

Use social media to become more visible. This includes passing out businesses cards – a low tech way to get your name around the technology community. A headhunter conducting a technology executive search is most likely to approach a candidate whose name they have heard on the grapevine either through on-line presence or physical objects such as a business card. Both of these things show an eagerness to be recognised, a positive attitude towards progressing a career and are likely to attract the attention of recruiters.

Social media is one way of keeping your name out there but there are other old fashioned ways of networking that have always existed. Become a “Yes” man. Technology doesn’t sleep. Not that you shouldn’t. But if an old college asks you to go to the local and plow the frost of a couple of pints, do so. Keep the alcohol consumption reasonable. Ask about her career and any opportunities she may know about.

Quantification of Qualifications

Get your qualifications quantified. Like a resume, you need something to speak for you. Unlike a resume, it isn’t about past employers, it’s about you. Jot down your proficiencies. Include facts, figures, numbers, percentages. Keep it to one sheet of paper.
Staying Employed

One of the most obvious pieces of advice for attracting recruiters or headhunters is to stay employed. While that sounds like a no-brainer, it is essential. This will separate you from your unemployed competition. Recruiters are more attracted to those employed in the field rather than those trying to break or stay in.
Stay Professional

Headhunters are busy people. Once you have the chance to speak with one, treat it like an interview. Keep gesticulations to a minimum. Speak directly about your skill set in the technology sector. Send a thank you note, regardless of how you believe the meeting went.

In short, stay in the game. Keep yourself visible and you will get noticed.

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Related articles: Resume Boosters and the funniest “cover”  letter I ‘ve ever read

Stay safe.

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Designing a website is no longer a tedious or time consuming task for the web development professionals. The abundance of website design tools available in the industry has made their job easier. However, they have to cater to the changing requirements of the Internet users who have become far more demanding and aware.  The web users want the websites to offer them updated as well as relevant content and have interactivity at the same time.

A web design company also needs to learn about the specific need of the client and his target viewers before designing a website. The web developers need to do their bit of homework to understand the psyche of the target viewers of a website. Designing the website for an aviation company is a huge responsibility for a web designer and he has to pay attention to various important factors.

• A website design company making the web site for an aviation company should ensure that the site should look professional by all means. Such a website should also have a dynamic and suave appearance. The designer should be very careful about choosing the color and graphics for the site.  A color that resembles the color used in the company logo should be chosen. Gradient colors can also be used.
• The text used in such a website should be legible enough. It is okay to select a trendy font for website designing for an aviation company. However, the font color should contrast well with the background. The web developers should keep in mind that people browse aviation websites for information and not eye candy.
• It would be a nice idea to implement Flash design in the website. However, it should be used with restraint as Flash design suffers from a few caveats. A lot of people access the Internet using their smart phones and several phone browsers do not support Flash. The visitors also may not like Flash animations that take long to load.
• The website should have a well organized FAQ section. This is helpful for the first time visitors and those who do not have enough time to see the website in its entirety. The website should also have a user friendly navigation and consistent layout. This helps the users to find the information they need quickly.  It would be a nice idea to make it linked with social networking sites like Facebook.

About the Author

This article is authored by Pankaj Roy. WebGuru India has been a pioneer in the field of website design and web programming services since 2005. We have written and published numerous articles on web design, logo design, web development services and SEO and internet marketing.

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Feedback for Web Desinging Tips Article

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This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

New Developments on JoannaVaiou.com

Good day to all no matter where you are around the globe we all share in this wonderful life . For those who may have forgotten about me, this is Joanna, the owner and webmaster of this blog that has so long since she published one of her own posts.

Guess what, I am still here running this site. Yep! I hope you enjoy my guest authors posts, I am grateful to have them to say the least.

I have been very very busy with working on a fantastic partnership that does not leave me enough time to post my own articles. I apologize for that and for the fact that I have approved many comments from lots of my readers without yet having found the time to reply to those..

BadAss, I know but I am here now posting this article to make it up to you and update you with some stuff that have happened and changed on my internet marketing training theme blog.

So here we go:

• CommentLuv Premium Plugin for WordPress is Activated

What does this mean for me as an owner of this blog and for you as a reader? Well, on my side it offers me much more flexibility on rewarding my commentators and my blog posts readers depending on the quality & genuity that they put in to their comments. It also saves me a bunch of “web space” as it pertains to 7 individual WordPress plugins in one.

So I was very happy to deactivate and remove these 7 individually installed “heavy” plugins at the same time that I bough, installed and activated CommentLuv Premium Plugin version. I dislike webpages that do not load fast enough. Every second is valued for me.

What it means for you is that if you do 3 great comments and I approve them, you will be able to put your keywords after your name like this ( yourname @ your keywords ) at the name field in the comments form and your keywords will become a dofollow status backlink to the webpage that you will define at the website field in the comments form.

You can also choose from you last 10 blogposts from the drop down list of your blog posts according to the URL that you will define at the website field. Hell yea, another backlink (deeplink) for you on the fly, just because you added a wonderful comment.

What is a wonderful comment for me: A comment that shows me that you have actually read the posts and that actually has something to add to the conversation.

BEWARE: Always put your name FIRST in the name field!

2 things happen to those who only put their keywords at the name field..

• Their comment goes to TRASH instantly
• Their comment is approved but the link is stripped OFF (yes I do that manually as I still manually manage; approve or delete my comments)

Don’t say I did not warn ya

Conclusion: So if you ask me “Why is your blog Nofollow Jo?” the answer you will get is that “My blog is a DoFollow, but not for ANYONE.”

Show me that you deserve my link juice and you’ll get rewarded. It’s time to raise the quality bar a little higher.

• JoannaVaiou.com received a Website Purchase Offer…

That was something rejuvenating . I found it normal to receive offers for some niche websites I built and managed  previously but receiving a purchase offer for my full name personal branding site sounded “weird” to say the least. I did not build this blog with the thought in the back of my head to sell it and that’s why I gave it my full name.

I don’t want to sound ungrateful but hey, other issues arise, what would the new owner do? Conduct business under my name? Or buy a new domain and apply a 301 redirect permanently from my FullName.com website to the new one?

For something like that to take place, well… The new owner would have to gain my TRUST. And that is not something I spare easily. The opposite I’d say.

Conclusion: I took the offer as a compliment but my name is not for sale. At least at the time we speak, it’s not.

• New Page is on the Way

I plan to create a new page with my requirements for publishing guest posts on my blog as I feel the need to organize this area in a more strict and professional way since I get lots of requests.

• I redirected my Free Ebook page to the next post where I share lots of information about what you need to know before buying into an online marketing training program or course

This doesn’t mean that you can’t access my free report anymore. You can right next at my online marketing training programs information post.

It was a pleasure writing again, thank you all and enjoy your Sunday!

Best,

Jo

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Guest blogging can significantly affect your blog’s results as well as your reputation. Next are some examples as far as in what ways this specific guest blogging online marketing promotional strategy can benefit you as a new blogger-online business owner-webmaster (whatever term fits you best ).

Advantages of Guest Blogging as an Online Marketing Technique

• It builds your credibility as an established professional in your niche
• Guest blogging lets people know who you are and where you are good at
• It can make people trust that you know what you are talking about, even if they don’t know you
• It helps to your betterment of your search engine optimization results as long as you link back to your site with your preferred anchor text that you want to rank for
• It loans you free extra traffic from already established websites (If your new traffic likes what they see when visiting your blog, they will come again so you will have gained this traffic instead of simply borrowing it)
• It will get you more feed and email subscribers to your business newsletter
• Guest blogging will increase your revenue from selling your own products on your site or affiliate products and adsense ads

Choose Big Blogs To Submit Your Guest Blogging Articles

Make sure to choose blogs in your niche that are already established and authoritative so you get the most out of your guest blogging efforts. As you surely understand it is much more beneficial to be read and seen by as many targeted people in your niche as possible and be featured on highly respected web entities.

Taking about guest blogging I would like to add here that I am not an expert, I am kind of new to guest blogging. Whilst I have managed to rank most of my wordpress weblogs that I took on their online marketing, when it comes to guest blogging I am still new.

It’s a fact! I have successfully completed my first online marketing plan ebook as a guide for starters that want to start their online business but have no idea how to go for it, but I have never before exposed my writings for other people to accept or reject within a deadline!

I recently read some posts on other great blogs about the power of guest blogging on other blogs and I started doing my due diligence. Since I enjoy writing in general for things I am really passionate like sharing online marketing training resources with my readers online, I gave it a serious thought and started writing for other blogs.

First I registered on 4 social networks specifically for bloggers and one of them is Blokube.com. One of the administrators of this blogging community network named DEVESH from India asked me if I would be interested in guest posting on his very well established and authoritative blog about my so far experience with Blokube bloggers social community where bloggers meet, vote for each others articles and interact, learn form each other.

Aside from all the benefits that guest blogging on other authority blogs can offer to your business blog, there is an amazing feeling you get when connecting with other people that are interested in what you are interested in and are willing to interact with you in a way that can only offer mutual satisfaction between the two of you.

Guest blogging builds your self confidence, especially when your articles are accepted

I am very warmed up with guest blogging on other great blogs so it would be very weird if I was not willing to offer the same opportunity for my readers on this site as well, the one you are currently reading.

And when your articles are not accepted, (this will happen sometimes especially if you are new to guest blogging) it will give you great insights on how to improve your writing skills and submit new guest posts that will be accepted and increase your readership, backlinks and improve your online reputation.

My Blog is Accepting Guest Blogging Inquiries

You can also now use my contact form  and sent me your name, email address, your article and your author bio and allow me few days to review and inform you back with any potential edit suggestions and date of publication on my blog. I recently got a Google Page Rank 3 after the Google Panda Update so article offers are steadily increasing.

My requirements for your articles

1. The word count must be 500-1500
2. The content must be UNIQUE, never published again before elsewhere (I run copyscape checks)
3. Subject of the article must be related to my blog’s theme (Internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization, online business models, site flipping, blogging tips, affiliate marketing, social media, web content, web design, WordPress tips etc)
4. They must be an interesting read, informative and with high quality

That’s it!

I hope you enjoyed this post about guest blogging on other blogs and start crafting your guest posts! if you have any experience good or bad, well.. You know already that I am dying to read about your guest blogging insights, right below in the comment section!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

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SEO or PPC – or Vice Versa

When marketing your business online, the first decision you will have to make is which of the two main search engine strategies you should use. Both methods can bring benefits to your web marketing strategy but one might be more applicable to your requirements than the other, so which should you choose? Let’s take a look at both of these strategies in a bit more detail.

SEO

The strategy of SEO has generated a multi-million dollar industry of various agencies and practitioners who will promise to get your website to number one on Google. The industry has become so successful because of the many riches that a number one ranking for a good keyphrase can bring you, and getting this strategy right can be an essential way of generating relevant leads for your company.

Composing a Search Engine Optimization strategy should be an essential first step for any company that is looking to market itself online and undertaking the right competition analysis, keyword research and on page optimisation should be among the first things you do when building your site.

Link building should be your next step as creating a profile of links from websites that are relevant to your industry can catapult you up the rankings.

So what are the drawbacks to this method? Time. For more competitive keyphrases it can take anything from 3 months to a year to start to see any success from the organic listings, so SEO should be seen as part of your medium to long term strategy.

PPC

PPC is the option for those who cannot afford to wait for SEO to have an effect and it is a way of getting yourselves some search engine visibility straight away. The Google AdWords platform lets you bid on certain keyphrases in order to attain a visible ranking on all Google platforms and can be an effective way of getting traffic to your site without waiting for your SEO strategy to blossom.

Keyword research is just as important in PPC as you will be paying for each click you get. If your keyphrases aren’t sending you the most relevant traffic then you will be paying for nothing, so be thorough with your research and monitor your traffic to make sure you aren’t throwing money away.

So what are the drawbacks to PPC? Money. If you don’t get your PPC advertising campaign right then you could end up throwing a lot of money at it for very little return. Research your industry keywords thoroughly and be ruthless with underperforming campaigns. It’s tempting to leave them in the hope that they will turn around but in reality you could save yourself a lot of cash by losing underperforming campaigns quickly.

When looking at your web marketing options it is important to see both of these strategies as tools you can utilise together. If you are launching a new website, start your SEO strategy immediately, ensuring that your on-page optimisation is strong and you get a link building campaign going straight away.

While you are waiting for SEO to start bringing in the traffic, create a PPC campaign to secure early interest, build your brand and generate sales.

When used together, there is no reason why both of these strategies cannot help you to grow your business.

About the Author:
Alan Grainger is an in-house B2B web marketer in the business gifts sector and manages SEO for Business Gifts Co. He writes articles exploring the issues faced by the B2B web marketer, giving an “in the trenches” view from an in-house SEO department.

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SEO or PPC?

For those who love to work on the SEO aspect of their business websites read my article about what has changed and what you should emphasize on, after Google Panda Update. Also if you are new to SEO  read my post about Google Page Rank and don’t forget to read the ultimate guide for SEO at the end of the article.

For those of you that want to jump start their marketing with Google Adwords Pay Per Click Ad program I highly suggest you sign up for the Free 5 Day E-course of Perry Marshall next: “5 Days To Success With Google Adwords“.

After that you can move on to

Google AdWords Definite Guide of Perry. Click the on the icon below to learn more.

Did you like Alan’s SEO or PPC post?

Share away with your twitter and facebook friends! Subscribe below via email to receive our next articles directly in your inbox. Also if you have an experience in using PPC or SEO with your website, be our guest and share it with us here via the comment form!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Here you go…

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“How To Write a Terrible Blog Post” Tips…

OK, so the chances are when you sit down to write a blog post your objective isn’t to not get people to read it but every other post about blogging out there seems to be about how to write the perfect post so I thought I’d try writing it back to front and throw in a little sarcasm too.

1. Blog For The Sake Of Blogging

If you want to make sure your blog is really terrible and not one single person actually reads it all the way through blog just for the sake of it. In the days before social media every depressed teen/aspiring poet/wanna be writer had a blog and every single thought that entered their head got posted. Luckily we’ve got Twitter and Facebook for that these days but there are still some blogs out there that just post content because it’s a day that ends in Y. If you have nothing to say keep it zipped!

2. Give It A Really Boring Title

On any given blog you might have dozens of other titles to compete with for user attention and on any given search engines results page you might have ten other results all itching to be clicked on. To give your competition a hand make sure you put no effort what so ever into naming your post. Blogs are meant to be informal and therefore don’t have to follow the strict rules of grammar and syntax the rest of your website copy does but don’t let this be an excuse to come up with something creative. If you can’t put a bit of imagination into it just step away from the keyboard.

3. Blow Your Own Trumpet

There’s nothing more fun than reading a blog post that reads just like the rest of your site, seriously, I wasn’t quite sure your products were so amazing just by reading your product descriptions, customer reviews, Tweets and Facebook updates so it’s great to be able to make extra sure by reading a blog post that does nothing except bang on about how super amazing all your products are and how wonderfully helpful all your ‘professionally trained’ staff are. A blog is a platform where you can let your personality shine through and really show people who you really are so if you’re just going to ramble on about your products or services I’m just going to assume the person behind the blog has no personality and neither does the business.

4. Throw Spelling And Presentation Out The Window

It can get very boring reading all your competitors blogs when they’re so easy to read. Give your readers a challenge by posting all your posts in one big block of text, don’t bother spacing it out, giving it little sub headings or throwing in a few bullet points. Just in case the huge block of text wasn’t off putting enough, don’t forget to forget to proof read it. A blog full of spelling mistakes or grammatical errors or poor syntax give the reader a challenge and there’s nothing quite like that smug feeling you get from spotting someone else’s mistakes so make sure your blog reads like it was written by your cat. Who only has one eye. When it’s feeling hung over.

5. De-Socialise Your Blog

You don’t want people confusing your blog with an actual blog which is a social platform so make sure there’s no room for participation or sharing. Close those comments off straight away (not that anyone is going to read your blog post long enough to leave a comment) and make sure you don’t have any social media plugins otherwise you might make it too easy for people to share your (awful) post. Let’s be honest if you post really is this bad you’re not going to want people trying to syndicate it round the web and after all who really wants all that extra traffic and increased rankings?

About the Author

Jessica works for Mozaico who sell beautiful stone mosaics and mosaic patterns and are in the process of putting a blog together at the moment

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How to write terrible blog posts feedback

Did you enjoy Jessica’s tips on how to write a terrible blog post ? Let us know via the comments form! What do you think and what methods do you apply when you are in the process to write a new blog post?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

This post is updated with the Free eMarketing Plan Information which you can get for free by clicking the icon below to instantly download my book.

Internet Marketing Ebook Contents Overview

Online Marketing Training

If you are currently thinking of starting with online marketing training programs or e-courses on the internet you will most certainly need some decent amount of time to do your own research. Before you get into any buying decision you want to feel that you are not taking any kind of financial risk and you want to make sure that you will get great value out of any purchase you make.

Regardless of what online business model you will choose to follow either it is affiliate marketing, or a direct sales business opportunity, a Multi Level Marketing business, website flipping or a cost per action model there are some standard areas of online marketing training that you will definitely need to master.

You will need to learn how to get a website up and running, even if the company you are representing gives you a replicate website with your embedded code to send people to. And that is because you do not own this website so you cannot develop it on your own as you would like to match your personal way of doing things and match your creative individuality. Here is when the necessity of learning how to blog comes into place. Either you are given or not a ready made replicated website you will need to learn how to promote via a blog on your own.

Blogs are a MUST in your online marketing training.

You simply cannot call yourself an online marketer if you cant manage and run your own blog. Blogs are very easy to manage and update and do whatever you want in means of developing, optimizing and finally profiting from. Also, blogs rank very well on the search engines compared to static websites, supposedly you know how to apply some basic search engine optimization rules and online marketing strategies. WordPress blogging platform is the most loved one and widely used from most of online marketing professionals as it leaves a great space to add your individual creative element and have unlimited customization options. You can really run the show of your business blog as you like and you can profit from it.

What Your Online Marketing Training Programs Must Include

• How to do keyword research and choose the best domain possible for your business blog
• How to set up your own self hosted wordpress blog and install on the domain you will buy after doing proper keyword research
• What hosting company you will use to host your blog’s files
• How to apply on-page search engine optimization rules on your each wordpress page
• How to apply off-page search engine optimization (creating unique content to publish on the web for your business in multiple places and start generating inbound links)
• How to write, create or get great unique content to market your business on the internet and start building authority.
• What are the most effective strategies in your online marketing training plan that you should use to achieve more the sooner possible (usually things need more time to happen than most people would handle)
• How to outsource some online marketing tasks that either you don’t want or know how to do them yourself on your own and not get scammed

Avoid the online marketing training programs that promise you that as soon as you buy those you will have an automated money making machine embedded on your computer. There is no such thing. Actual work and serious training and patience from the learner’s side must be present in order to walk towards a success path with online marketing and online businesses. Beware of the courses that promise that you will make a fortune by learning how to use one single marketing web entity or tool, like Hubpages or Squidoo.

Whatever more you can learn that concerns all areas of how to market your business online you should get to the punch of it. The more you know about the many ways that can earn you an online income, the soonest you will be able to choose what is the best online marketing plan that suits your style, budget, capabilities and ambition.

Tip: Exposing yourself to as many as possible online marketing training resources in order to choose the best program or plan for you may sound easier said than done. You are right. Most people feel overwhelmed and throw in the towel before they even make a dollar. You need to learn how to handle the information overload syndrome if you wish to be successful with your online business. That said, I wish you a happy online marketing training programs research, happy absorbing and successful implementation of the recurring info you get.

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What I’ve been doing last week…

I had many things going on on my plate and I did not devote time to post on my blog. My “To DO” list was big and not to mention… MIXED! Since I don’t enjoy “mixes’ in general and confusion on the other I decided to research for a way to get organized and “clean” my desktop files, which means that I either had to delete what I had already used and did not need any more or move some files to other ones and rename, categorize and let my desktop breathe a little. I used a new (to me) free software to do that that is named EVERNOTE.

My “To DO” list is still BIG!!!

After I had the greatest pleasure to found out that my newly launched blog gained Google Page Rank 3, I was on FIRE. So I thought that it was a great opportunity to start researching in more depth the multiple guest blogging networks and check which of them carry the highest quality of bloggers and content shared.

I can now offer my blog, while having full confidence of providing a great place that other people will be pleased and intrigued to feature their business articles and gain 1 do-follow keyword rich anchor text links back to their websites and the services or products they are promoting. I joined one guest blogging network and I was so excited that yet I haven’t gotten the chance to research for the second one. I posted an entry at the network’s forum stating that I have a new PR3 top online marketing training blog that is  looking to host AWESOME guest posts.

Read the guest posting guidelines HERE

Within the first hour I had 5 offers of other writers/authors/bloggers/webmasters that were looking for BLOGS to post articles on them and spread the word about their business advantages, answer questions that their specific niche market (online marketing training and IT sub-niche) and increase their link popularity and authority of their websites in terms of search engine optimization and Google with their 1 juicy backlink.

What did I get?

5-6 Emails with different guest posting inquiries. And I do not only care about new content, I also care about GREAT content as I have respect for every single visitor new or regular that visits my site. For that reason I was very direct withing my thread’s content and stated what I will accept as well as what I will not accept to be published on my blog.

I then realized once more the fact that when you are sincere and direct (sometimes it might make you look like the bad guy) you will attract what you asked for, serious people with serious intentions, willing to cooperate with you and build relationships that will be based in mutual respect and offering value.

I was pleasantly surprised to receive great posts and feel very well during my communication with all my guest authors. I am still receiving new inquiries and it makes me even more happier.

Aside my online marketing training blog

I decided to travel a bit and fill my batteries! It has been two years since the last time I traveled abroad and the bells have started to ring dangerously. It is also summer and it is very easy to get carried away from work thoughts as much as some of us are attached to our daily schedule and our “To Do” lists. Since I literally have not left my lap top or my emails unread for two years now more than a full day, I guess this will be a whole new experience for me.

I will take my lap top with me and I will challenge myself not to spend more than half an hour just to clear my emails (oh yes, I dislike mountains of unread emails, it scares the hell out of me ) and empty my digital camera with some pictures that I will take so I can take more after that! Whoever knows me is aware that I don’t post personal pictures or many pictures, I am not such  a”picture” person but hey! I am going to Spain, to another country and this alone is definitely worth to take pictures for. Counting days for my vacation and I seriously cannot wait. I know I will miss being here but I will have to go through this and acquire some new experiences for myself.

I will come back and continue my daily schedule plus a with whole new mood. I wish you have a great time while  won’t be here posting and I will catch you up laters. When other people ask me to guest post is a great honor as well as receiving inquiries to feature other people’s great content.

My guest authors posts for this week are these next:

• Designing a Website for an Aviation Company
• SEO or PPC
• Top 3 Must Have iPhone Applications
• How To Write a Compelling “About Us” Page

All sweet!

“Online Marketing Training Programs” Feedback

If you enjoyed this article and specifically the info provided on what you should search for or expect to get from the numerous available online marketing training programs, we would greatly appreciate if you spread the word on twitter and facebook and we would love to receive your feedback via the comments form at the bottom!

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Google Page Rank took this name from its inventor Lawrence Page the guy that created Google also. In simple words, it is an algorithm created with the aim of evaluating how important, relevant and authoritative are the websites for the niches/purposes they represent.

Google page rank is far from being a static measure of sites value, instead it is changing regularly and being updated constantly. Google is getting smarter and smarter and webmasters follow their updates in order to retain and pursue their google page rank numbers and top listings on the top search engine named Google.

Google Page Rank Depends on Many Factors

The factors that are taken into account when evaluating a site’s page rank on google are plenty, maybe over a 100. One of the most important google page rank criteria is the “how many times a webpage has been mentioned (linked to) from other websites on the internet. When another site on the net links to another one, this counts like a vote in the eyes of Google.

The more links you have back to your webpages, the better google page rank you will gain in time for the term you want to rank for, assuming that the resources are quality ones and use your preferred keyword phrase as anchor text when they link back to you.

Another very important thing when it comes to get more google page rank is regularly posting unique quality content on your site itself and other web entities. Duplicate content is not the way to go with Google. This is basic principal that you learn during your online marketing training.

Outbound Links Can Improve Your Google Page Rank

A third factor that helps in improving your google page rank is to link out from your blog to other sites which are relevant to what you are posting and belong to an authoritative website that has big page rank already. It seems kind of cool for a  blogger to do that and search engines pick it up! You can have through 2 outbound links in your each post or every each second post you publish on your website.

After these summary tips on how you can improve your google page rank you may want to get more into the punch of it and access a complete guide resourceful entry that will clarify everything you need to know about:

• Google PageRank (what exactly is it)
• Tips to get better at it.
• How to maintain it after you get it
• What not to do for the sake of maintaining or increasing it

I found this post very useful and I am sure you will too .

Understanding the basic concept principals is going to enhance your overall search engine optimization efforts.

Here you go, click on the link and let me know how much you liked what you read next.

Read Your Complete Guide To Google Page Rank

What happened to your Page Rank after the recent Google Panda Update? Did your Google Page Rank go up or down?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Hola! This is Jo, I am back from Barcelona . I had the most wonderful time on my vacation and now I am back to share my guest authors post. I hope you enjoy and feel free to share this post if you like it and leave your feedback on the comments form. Internet marketing budget views by Natasha as follows..

Why you need to increase your internet marketing budget even if your online store is not getting enough sales

At times, Internet marketers have to deal with an inherent problem. An offline company decides to launch an online outlet, and hires a team of internet marketers to promote their business. The marketing team works hard and devises a multi faceted marketing strategy for the business, but after some time the company decides to drastically cut the internet marketing budget, reason? There are very few sales recorded at the online store. Which apparently means that internet marketing is not fetching any returns at all?

So, is not putting aside an internet marketing budget for your business a sound decision?

The answer is a big No, for a small online business the results might be limited to the sales coming from online store, but for a medium or large enterprise, online sales are not the only scale to evaluate the success of your internet marketing budget spending decision. In fact, there are reasons that you might want to spend more on internet marketing, even if the online store isn’t generating enough sales.

Maintain your Internet Marketing Budget

Reason 1 – Reputation Management:

Internet (and more specifically Google) has given a new meaning to the term “reputation management”. Prior to the advent of Internet, reputation management was limited to releasing one or two press releases every now and then, and very rarely a company has to actively engage in reputation management. Not anymore, reputation management is a different ball game altogether with more and more customers choosing to do some search online before buying from a business. And it’s not limited to big brands, even small local businesses needs to start spending on an internet marketing budget, because it is common practice amongst users to search on internet before finalizing a place to dine out or shop.

Reason 2 – Credibility:

Having a “static company website” is a thing of past, in this time and age; businesses need to have an active online presence, which is more than a website consisting of half a dozen pages. Having an active presence on Internet adds much needed credibility to your name, especially for the new entrants in the market. Your website, corporate blog, social media profile, and the likes will help the customer to know more about your company, by reading about your history, taking a look at your products, viewing factory images, talking to other customers, and all of these things will add to the trust and credibility, as a result customers will feel more comfortable when buying from you for the first time.

Reason 3 – Customer Service and Feedback:

One of the biggest advantages of Internet marketing is the amount of feedback that you can garner without having to spend a lot on traditional research and surveys. Coming to the customer service part, because people now spend a big part of their daily lives on internet, they work, play, socialize, and even shop on internet, chances are that they’ll prefer Internet to get in touch with a business for pre or post sales inquiries, even if they’ve purchased from an offline store.

Reason 4 – More offline sales:

The biggest reason why you just cannot assess the efficacy of your internet marketing campaign by looking at the number of online sales is that many new customers who make a buying decision online; still prefer to go and buy from the offline store of the same business (if available). As suggest throughout this article, Internet is not just an outlet to make some additional sales, there’s a lot more on stake, so regardless of the number of sales your online store manage to generate, you’ve got to put aside some part of your budget, precisely for online marketing.

About the Author  

Natasha is an internet marketing expert by profession. When she’s not working, she likes to travel, blog, and even draw (though she shares her paintings with a selected few, who are good at containing their laughter). Currently, she’s working for Abbey Loft Conversions that provides the services like Loft conversions in Essex

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Internet Marketing Budget | Reasons To Keep it Going

Share your opinion with us next via the comments form. Do you agree with Natasha our today’s featured author? Be my guest. Would you quit your internet marketing budget if your online sales were not encouraging? What strategy do you use so far when it comes to defining your internet marketing budget for your business?

This is a post from Joanna's Vaiou Online Marketing Training blog where you can access training material in plenty areas of internet marketing like SEO and access more specific guides like how to write a white paper and many more.

Article Marketing Tips

Two definite indicators for web pages when it comes to ranking highly are 1) unique content and 2) a good amount and quality of backlinks to your site. This means web business owners initially must attain great quality of original unpublished written content in their specific niche market and then publish the information and resources on multiple web 2.0 and content and best article marketing sites to get started on getting inbound links.