Are you unknowingly writing articles that simply annoy your readers? If you are making the 10 article writing mistakes below, then I’m sorry to tell you – but “YES!” you are.

10 Ways to Make Sure Your Article Readers Do NOT Become Prospects and Customers…

1. Over-promising and under-delivering in terms of content.

If you make an outrageous proposition or a huge promise like (Lose 30 pounds in 30 days) in your article title, then you better make sure you back up your claims. For example, when I wrote the article, “How to Promote Your Book to the Top of the New York Times Best Sellers List,” I showed the exact steps we took to help Dr Mark Hyman achieve that status.  Within our article, we shared our case study and provided valuable information for authors.

2. Too many errors.

Whenever I make an occasional grammar mistake (or when I pronounce a word wrong) my GetLinkedInHelp.com business partner Kristina Jaramillo has to correct me. She’ll do it in a lovingly way (as she is my partner in business and in life) – but she has to point it out every time because to her it’s like taking your fingers and making the screeching sound on the blackboard. Do you want your readers to have that kind of response because you simply did not take the time to proofread your articles?

3. Not enough beef.

You really expect me to trust you and buy from you when you are giving me bits and pieces of information. Yes, 200-250 word articles are perfect for your blog as long as you produce highly-valuable, highly-informative content all the time. But if I’m reading your articles on someone else’s blog, website or ezine I need to see that you are the expert and I need you to give me a real reason to go to your website to grab even more information.

4. Hard selling.

If you are hard selling within your articles, you instantly lose credibility. Instead of being seen as an expert who truly wants to help others success, you’ll be seen as an advertiser.

Also, trying to sell me within your article is like asking me to marry you on a first date. You have to build and nourish your relationship with me first. Provide rare gems that no one else is offering, then invite me in your bio box to grab a free resource such as a special report, ebook, templates, video etc. And, make sure this free offering provides real value – otherwise you are wasting your time.

5. Writing in gigantic blocks of text.

Big blocks of text are easy to get lost in. They also strain eyes and make reading difficult because it’s hard to scan, let alone read. In fact, a study shows that only 16% of your readers will actually read your article word-by-word. The rest mostly scan.

6. Writing like a robot with no personality.

Readers do not like to read writing without personality. It feels as if you’re reading from a robot! Or even an impersonal “professional” commercial site! Instead, write your articles with style and personality.

This is one of the reasons why I say that you should be writing your own articles instead of hiring a writer. No one can copy your personality. Let your personality shine through and you will create an instant connection with your readers. This connection builds trust and will help you in your cause of getting them onto your list.

7. Crossing the line with your writing.

I want you to write with personality. That doesn’t mean to get profane. It doesn’t mean to insult your audience. It does not mean to talk down to your readers. It doesn’t mean to be a Rush Limbaugh in words!

8. Re-purposing the same story over and over again.

One of my article marketing clients includes the story on how he went from barely making it to the bottom of his driveway to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in every single one of his articles. These articles are getting put on his blog. They are being used for article submission and in a 30 day auto-responder series. Now, I just want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro to get away from this story.

9. Over-stuffing your articles.

Now, I already talked about not adding enough beef. Here, it’s the complete opposite. Many article marketers are throwing together so many different ideas together – and they’re all over the map. They’re literally confusing and overwhelming readers. Keep your articles on focal point!

10. Making your articles boring.

The number one rule of writing anything – is to stay away from boring. You need to add stories. You need to engage readers. And, you need to add psychological triggers.

By avoiding these 10 ways to piss off your article readers you will convert more readers into prospects and customers. Just remember, you need to provide value.

Guest Author: Article marketing expert Eric Gruber creates online marketplace opportunities for authors, internet marketers and small business owners who want more website traffic, prospects and profits. Now you can get started with article marketing fast with Eric’s free instant article writing templates that will help you write articles in 30 minutes or less.  Grab them now at: http://www.trymyfreearticletemplates.com

Imagine you had a shop where you sold candy apples. And your shop was located in an area of town where there were a lot of other shop owners who also sold candy apples.

When people walked through your door to buy candy apples, you greeted them with this message:

“Welcome to Tracy’s Candy Apple Shop. We’re so glad you stopped by. Let us know how we can help you and by the way here try a sample of our delicious, crunchy candy apples. Oh and if you are looking or more candy apples, they sell them two doors down and across the street. You might find delicious, crunchy candy apples there as well.”

This sounds ridiculous…right? Well unfortunately I see too many business owners doing this exact thing on their website everyday. That is…sending people to other experts for their solutions.

As a webmaster I am often asked to create a page of links or to add some links to a resources page. Site owners so many times want to give their visitors or readers access to or referrals to other organizations, experts or associations where they can find out more information on a particular topic.

Even the other day I asked a client to send me a few blog posts to get his blog rolling so it didn’t look quite so empty. He ended up sending me links to other sites where there were some good articles on his industry.

And two weeks ago a client wanted me to post links to a industry directory where there are lists and lists of other experts that do exactly what she does.

“But wait…” I said. “Why would you want to send your visitors away to someone else’s site? Especially after you’ve just spent so much time and money trying to get them to come to your site?

It astounds me that people are so willing to do this. But I understand where it comes from.

Many entrepreneurs know that when they give ….they will receive. And I do believe this too.  But in this case, I have to disagree. There is a time for giving and a time for keeping the prospects you struggled so hard to get.

I think there are two reasons why site owners are so willing to do this without really thinking it through:

• They are giving their readers access to some great resources and there is nothing wrong with that. But why not instead BECOME that great resource. It will take time, but consistently adding content to your site is what is going to keep people coming back for more and start to see you as the expert.

• At some point they may have been told that swapping links with other business is a good thing. Again, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that at all…BUT ONLY if there is a WIN-WIN-WIN for all parties involved. Here’s an example: A web designer might provide a link to an internet marketing consultants site and vice versa. They are non-competing. They both win. The client/visitor/reader wins because they’ve been introduced to two people who can help them in different but complimentary ways.

So having said that, I encourage you to stop putting exit links on your site. What you’re really doing, is sending your potential clients and visitors to someone else. It doesn’t position you as the expert and it doesn’t get your client results any faster.

Tell me what you think below and please share this blog post if you thought it was interesting or helpful.

Guest Author: Tracy Matthewman provides internet marketing training for small business owners. Watch her short video on how to build your own website in less than 10 minutes.

Dealing with clients having very high expectations that are hard to meet is not an uncommon thing for search engine optimization (SEO) providers. Since SEO is an always changing industry, and techniques and methods get outdated very soon, lots of misconceptions take birth in the mind of potential clients which eventually gets transformed into unrealistic expectations. So, it becomes very important for every SEO provider to clear all kinds of misconceptions a client may have before taking on optimization projects.

Here, we’ll cover the most common unrealistic SEO expectations clients usually have and how they should be addressed.

1. Speed of ranking improvement – Normally clients have a misconception that the amount of time required to take a website from page 2 to page 1 is the same as the amount of time it takes to bring a website from page 3 to page 2 of search results. Ranking of a website depends on many factors (links, domain age, content, onsite factors, etc.,  and the amount of effort and time required increases exponentially when one has to compete with websites on page 1 as compared to time and effort required when competing with websites on page 3 and so on.
2. You can’t rank for everything – The other unrealistic expectation clients usually have is the desire to rank for all the keywords in their niche.  Only the most relevant pages can rank at the top for a keyword, and one can’t make a website highly relevant to all important keywords. Also, since most SEO’s work on a fixed monthly budget, increasing the number of keywords will dilute the overall impact for each keyword. So either they have to increase their budgets or limit themselves to specific set of keywords.
3. All backlinks are same – Time and again, we see clients who think that all links require the same amount of effort and are of the same quality, which enables to take decisions on the basis of number of links (i.e., a link from a free link directory is similar to editorial link from an authority domain). A quality backlink is much more effective than hundreds of spammy poor quality links. So, one should consider both quality and quantity of links before hiring a new SEO provider.
4. Rankings not traffic – Some clients also get too obsessed with rankings of their website that everything else – conversion rate, web design and traffic quality take the back seat.  Rankings are important but are not very effective if the traffic they send is not relevant, or if the website is poorly designed that it can’t convert traffic into leads.
5. Fixed targets – Most clients have fixed targets like “we want to rank number one for web design in three months,” which is a wrong way to judge the performance of a SEO provider. The effectiveness of a SEO program must be evaluated on the basis of overall improvement – increase in traffic, increase in business, and increase in number of subscribers and so on.
6. Rankings shouldn’t drop – Do not panic if rankings of your website drop by a few positions. You are not the only one who wants to be at the top.  Also, search engine algorithms keep on changing, so ranking fluctuations are very normal in SEO. As long as you are seeing improvement in traffic and in your business, your SEO program is performing well.

Do you provide SEO services and would like to share some more misconceptions clients have? Please feel free to share them with us in the comments below.

Guest Author: David Smith works for Conversion Rate Optimization Company Invesp and enjoys writing on SEO, landing pages, conversion optimization and affiliate marketing.

You’ve heard social media gurus say that you must listen online before getting involved with social media, but you don’t understand what that means.  So, what does it mean to “Listen” in social media? To listen also means to monitor, to lurk, or to observe what is going on online because it is essential to do your homework before you leap.

A couple months ago, I listed 25 monitoring tools that will not cost you a penny; however, there are tons more that may be worth including into your budget.  Below are 15 monitoring tools that have a price, but will help you ensure that nothing online will escape your radar.  They are listed in no particular order.

Radian6: One of the most comprehensive tools out there, Radian6 allows you to listen in on conversations that involve you and gives you the opportunity to put the information into quantitative formats, which allow you to create an action plan to improve your strategy.

Visible: This platform comes in at the higher end of the spectrum of social media monitoring services in both price and functionality. Get not only updated trends on online conversations, TruCast will make you aware of all the influencers that people listen to when looking for new brands to try out. It also offers very strong customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

Trackur: One of the more affordable social media monitoring solutions. Trackur provides conversation trending, email alerts, custom filters, a nifty AJAX dashboard and the ability to monitor brands, execs, employees and competitors.

Cision: This platform has 24/7 buzz reporting, as well as daily alerts via email.  You can monitor thousands of online forums, millions of blogs, and hundreds of media sites.

Alterian: Also known as Techrigy.  This allows you to crawl into blogs, wikis, embedded videos and social networks.  Find out all the good as well as the bad things that your consumers, competitors, clients and partners are saying about your brand, products, and competitors.

Attensity (formerly Biz360): This tool gives you information on conversation topics, sentiment, conversation topics, and monitors your competition as well as offers many other interesting features.

Cymfony: This tool monitors articles, paragraphs, and sentences, and analyzes grammar to determine how a tidbit of info relates to another, among other things.

Webtrends: This is a group of tools divided into four sub-groups. Listen, engage, measure, and decide. You can analyze buzz, monitor blogs and video sharing sites in real-time, figure what content is making the biggest buzz, and find who the influencers are.

Nielsen Buzz Metrics: Nielsen offers many products and tools, including but not limited to brand tracking, brand auditing, and a brand scorecard. They also have a great tool that lets you view any threats to your brand that may be hanging out there.

CI Listen and CI Learn: Duo Intellect that you can use singly or together. CI Listen tracks activity and emerging themes from across blogs, boards and news items, while the CI Learn is a report available to subscribers that shows trends in consumer-generated information complete with graphs, charts and analysis from CI’s digital communications experts.

Brandseye: Helps get rid of duplicate mentions as well as a helpful reputation scoring system that can create a single reputation score you can track and graph over the long haul.

Scout Labs: Buzz and sentiment are two different things that you have to be familiar with if you’re interested in tracking online conversations and how your brand is perceived and what people are thinking.

Spiral16: This is great for your PR strategies. It enables you to do three important things: determine the effectiveness of your social media strategy, mine huge amounts of data, and understand what goes on in online conversations beyond numbers only.

ViralHeat: Enabled with Twitter and Google Buzz, you can monitor your tweets and dig really deep into analyzing your competition. It has a real-time tracking system that lets you keep on top of those that are talking about you as well as a great influencer feature.

Sentiment Metrics: This tool monitors not just what’s said about you, but also reports on how it’s said. It allows you to determine whether or not an online mention is negative, positive, or neutral, and neatly cleans and organizes content into tables and graphs to help you better understand the information.

Ok, I have lots of questions:  Do you use any of the above tools?  Would you pay to monitor your online brand?  What is your favorite tool?  Is there a great tool out there that I missed?

Would love your comments!

It’s easy to take the idea of search engine optimization for granted. Yeah, the marketing landscape is abuzz with all things SEO today, but did you even know what the term “search engine optimization” meant ten years ago? The term has no doubt covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.

But let’s forget about SEO for a brief moment (gasp!). Trust me, it’ll be OK.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to make our businesses look good to Google. Maybe it’s time we listen to what Google already likes about our business and do something about that.

“What the hell does that mean?” Let me explain via a personal experience.

Shortly after I started blogging a few years ago, I experienced a less-than-optimal situation at my local gym. With one post, I ranted about it. Soon thereafter, I decided to try to be a small part of the solution instead, so I wrote a post filled with my own gym marketing tips. It was a short-lived and somewhat related departure from my normal topics (namely, marketing leadership), so I immediately returned to my regularly scheduled programs.

Here’s the deal: I’m not a gym marketing expert. I have expertise in certain areas of marketing, and I have frequented lots of gyms over the years, but I’ve never really combined the two. I was simply just giving my unsolicited advice on how gym owners could make things work a little better.

However, Google doesn’t quite see it this way. In Google’s eyes, I’m an authority on just about any phrase related to gym marketing. I get a minimum of 20 visits a day from people looking specifically for gym marketing tips. It wasn’t my plan, and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m not sure if the post is constructed well or if it’s simply a void niche, but Google has decided what I have to say on this topic matters.

Which got me thinking ….

How to Leverage Surprising Inbound Keyword Phrases

Let’s face it: expertise is in the eye of the beholder. If Google thinks I know what I’m talking about, and comments and emails and other analytics confirm that I know what I’m talking about, then maybe I know what I’m talking about. But how do I take advantage of such an unexpected gift?

I don’t know the answer to this question, but my pondering has led me to these six options, and I’d love to hear more.

1. Accept advertising for the specific post. Any niche is going to have its major players. If Google’s looking to you when it comes to certain keywords, then these top dogs probably should, too. If you’re entire site isn’t dedicated to the topic, then run-of-site advertising probably doesn’t make sense to them. But an ad per post probably would. Email them and make them aware of the traffic you’re pulling for specific keyword phrases, and then give them a price. You could do banners or simple text links. This is probably the easiest and most immediate way to leverage this traffic. In my example, I could go find software programs for gyms or even authors who write on the topic of gym marketing.
2. Build your list. Forget cash, at least directly. Build your email list or subscriber level with a special, targeted call to action within the post. Or set up an autoresponder that expands on the specific topic. Then, hopefully, your delivery of valuable content over time will build trust, which in turn could lead to business.
3. Create an information product. eBooks, white papers, videos, automated presentations, video, podcast, whatever. If your ideas on the niche have legs, let ‘em loose by creating a more robust information product. You could give it away and leverage the list-building and linking to your site as your form of currency, or you could sell these items at a reasonable price. Just be sure to link the title of the product to the keywords that are most often bringing people to the site. Might as well give them exactly what they’re looking for.
4. Use affiliate links that make sense. Whether you’re keeping it easy with a simple Amazon.com affiliate program or something a little more robust with a service like Commission Junction, affiliates oftentimes take a lot of the grunt work out of selling. Find some products that fit your niche and just post them. Or you could find creators of products that would make sense for you to peddle and offer to set up an affiliate program for them. Then everybody’s winning.
5. Manufacture your own hard good. Go ahead and go old school. Make an actual, tangible product, be it a book, a widget or whatever. No need to feel confined to the online space if an offline product is what people are looking for.
6. Build a company around it. If you’re really feeling ballsy, and if the niche is really ripe for the picking, and if you’re passionate about the niche, then maybe there’s a business waiting for you here. Just be careful: opportunities like this are great at taking your focus off of what you’re really good at it. Make sure you enjoy centering your business around this new niche, or else you’ll be miserable.

Remember to harness and harvest the gifts that Google gives you every single day. Google will let you know where you really stick out. If you can figure out a way to leverage it, you’re a step ahead.

I have no idea which of the above ideas I’ll move forward with, if any. If you were me, what would you do? What other ideas do you have for ways to leverage surprising niche keyword traffic?

Guest Author: Brett Duncan offers common sense for marketing leaders at his blog, MarketingInProgress.com. He spends his days as Senior Director of Global Online Solutions for Mannatech, and his nights chasing a crazy little boy around the house in between brief moments of cheering on the Texas Rangers. He lives in Irving, Texas. Sign up for his free newsletter now if you like practical, thought-provoking marketing tips.

As an expert in your field, you’ve got a ton of really important information in your head. But you’ve got to get it out of your head and into some useful format for lead generation. Information is the heart and soul of marketing, so you’ve got to have some idea about the products you want to develop as part of your overall strategy. Let’s talk about the top five.

1. White Papers

“White paper” is the corporate, fancy-pants term for an online article. A white paper usually ranges from two to three pages and stands alone as an item customers or prospects can download. White papers work great as a lead generation tool when you ask prospects to provide their email address in exchange for your valuable”"yet free”"information.

2. Free Reports

A free report is like a white paper, just a bit bigger. From a lead generation standpoint, it holds more value than a white paper and is usually several pages long. Free reports are great products to use as an add-on to online purchases. “Buy Product X and receive three Free Reports!” You can also use them like white papers and offer them as free downloads in exchange for contact information.

3. E-Books

E-books are the killer product that can create a lead generation bonanza! Like a real book, an e-book is going to be long…at least 50 pages. The fact that it’s a real book makes the perceived value huge. If the copy inviting prospects to download your e-book is well-written and compelling, you can generate several thousand new leads from this one lead generation tool alone.

4. Audio Reports

An audio report helps prospects get a feel for what you and your company are all about. It’s a way for prospects to talk to you about doing business without really taking to you. Using audio reports as part of your campaign can boost brand loyalty and help you prospects commit to a sale. If you are well known in your industry – or if you can hire someone who is – you have the power to generate a LOT of leads using audio reports.

5. Webinars

No joke. Webinars can drive an endless stream of customers to your business. Like audio reports, they give customers a feed for your company. But webinars go way beyond teaser information. The power-punch of the webinar is that it lets you cover the entire sales pitch AND close the deal. Another bonus is that webinars can be recorded. That lets you leverage your time by making the pitch once and then playing the presentation again and again for new groups of prospects. Talk about a time saver!

How Does It Work?

Here’s the way it works, in a nutshell.

• Develop information products.
• Make the available on your site in exchange for contact information.
• Send out an announcement to your email list that also creates a sense of urgency.
• Put tools in place to track downloads and capture new leads.
• Follow-up with leads to convert them into customers.

To check out some real lead generation products, download a free report about Email Marketing 2.0.

After a partnership agreement was signed exactly one year ago, Yahoo! has finally started testing organic and paid listings from Microsoft Bing this week. Yahoo! states if all goes as planned, users should expect Yahoo!’s organic search results to be powered by Bing around August/September.

The organic search transition will happen automatically. However, if you perform SEO on your site and ranking high in these search engines is important to you, I recommend keeping a close eye on any updates and tips from both Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Yahoo has already provided its users with three valuable tips:

1. Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that work best for you.
2. Decide if you’d like to modify your paid search campaigns to compensate for any changes in organic referrals that you anticipate.
3. Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Microsoft platform crawler, as Bing listings will be displayed for approximately 30% of search queries after this change, according to comScore.

I also found the Yahoo! FAQ page to be extremely helpful in answering some the questions I had.

Here’s to a smooth transition!

Your brand, industry, and competitors are being discussed online whether you use social media or not. Actively monitoring what people are saying about you, your brand, your industry, and your competitors has many benefits, including protecting your brand reputation, discovering what customers want and need, learning of new opportunities, staying on top of competition, avoiding disasters, and measuring ROI.

Below are 25 monitoring tools that won’t cost you anything to use, and will help you gain a wealth of knowledge about your brand, influencers, prospects, customers, competitors, and much more.

1. Backtype – Get alerts of where your competitors are promoting their website and who they are interacting with.
2. Bit.ly – Shorten and track how many clicked on and retweeted your links.
3. BlogPulse – Get data from blogs, news posts and other online content that include you or your competitors in the conversation.
4. BoardTracker – Search forums and discussion boards or set up alerts that will tell you when and how often people mention a particular search term.
5. DomainTools – Get a report on a website’s domain information.
6. Google Alerts – Set up email alerts of target keywords or phrases that are important to you, your brand, and industry.
7. Google Analytics – See where your website traffic is coming from, what pages are being visited, what keywords are being used to find you, etc.
8. Google Video – Find videos on a specific topic, competitor videos, etc.
9. Jodange – Track consumer sentiment about your brand or product across the Web.
10. Klout – Measure who a person influences and the specific topics they are most influential on.
11. Knowem – Check and reserve your brand, product, personal name or username on social media websites.
12. Monitter – Find out what people are saying in real-time on Twitter.
13. Oodle – Discover competitors’ plans for the future by monitoring the types of jobs they post online.
14. Quarkbase – See traffic data, similar sites, social comments, description, social popularity about websites.
15. SEO for Firefox – Find out a site’s PageRank, age, number of links at a certain domain/page, if it’s listed in certain directories etc.
16. SEOPro Link Checker – Find out which sites link back to your website as well as your competitors’ sites.
17. SocialMention – Check and get alerts on what people are saying about a term across different blogs and social outlets.
18. Technorati – Find industry bloggers, influencers, and monitor who mentions you or your competitors in the blogosphere.
19. Trendrr – Find out how your brand or product is trending in real time compared to others.
20. Tweetburner – Shorten and track URLs on Twitter and Friendfeed.
21. Twendz – Track conversation and user sentiment on Twitter in real-time.
22. Twinfluence – Measure the combined influence of tweeps and their followers.
23. Twitter Search – Using keywords and phrases, search what people have discussed on Twitter.
24. Xinu – Find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics
25. Yahoo Site Explorer – Discover who is linking to you and your competitors.

Of course, it does not stop with these. There are hundreds of tools out there! In another blog post, I will discuss the paid monitoring tools.

What tools do you use? Which free tools did I miss?

Today, I am going to discuss something that I’m sure everyone has seen at least once or twice, and I would hasten to add that probably the majority of marketers have been guilty of it at least in some small way (I’m certainly no exception).

Ego-centric Marketing

It’s not usually done on purpose, but I think businesses sometimes are guilty of forgetting what their marketing is really about, and who it is for…

So here it is then: Marketing is for the sole benefit of your customers. It is about pleasing them, helping them, answering their questions. What it is not, is a chance to tell them everything that you like about your business.

Avoiding Vanity

We’ve all seen examples of this, the Internet is full of it. Corporate websites often looking smashing, but when you land on a home page that reads like a business plan, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about staying to explore that website isn’t it?

Sentences like “We use innovative [jargon] to excel at [jargon] and provide a more [jargon] service for our key customer groups.” belong in your marketing strategy, or maybe on an about us page.

Your marketing copy needs to be focused on why exactly your customer should buy from you. Customers don’t buy from a company because of how exciting and innovative they are. Customers buy because they believe that the product or service available will solve their problem better than the competition.

Focusing on Your Customer

Once you have come to terms with the fact that 9 times out of 10 your customer doesn’t really care how you do what you do, you can start thinking about why your customers actually do want to buy from you, and then you can start talking about what is so great about your products.

A Good Home Page

A good home page should not have huge blocks of text, it should be fast answers to your customers questions. Lead them towards the action you want them to take, you can always give them the option of learning more about you by viewing your “about us” page.

This is not really a new concept, marketing to our customers is something we all know we should do. But it is all to easy to get wrapped up in your business, I do it, and you might do it too.

Some times the most important thing is just to take a step back and ask yourself “Who have I written this for?” I like to give myself an ego check every so often, just to make sure that I am still approaching what I do in the right way. It’s a trap that anyone can fall into… Have you given yourself an ego check lately?

Guest Author: Mark Johnson is the author of Marks Marketing Blog, a blog about internet business and anything to do with making money online. It’s full of helpful tips for anyone starting an internet business.

When putting together a website, it’s important to think about optimizing your internal link structure to make sure it’s as search engine friendly as possible. A lot of the time, the potential of internal linking is overlooked in favor of other SEO factors, focusing mainly on the specific pages and not looking at the website as a whole.

When structuring your website, you want to be making it as clear as possible to the engines what pages are most important, what categories exist and what subcategories lay under these. This effect is often done through the initial navigation and via the use of breadcrumb link trails. This is also usually backed up by a sitemap listed in hierarchical order or priority calculation with XML sitemaps.

Another thing that is often overlooked is using the full URL when linking to internal pages (i.e, <a href=”http://www.mirnabard.com/2010/05/9-steps-to-reduce-scraping-and-catch-blog-post-theft/”>). Many times the relative URL is used, (i.e., /category.html). The effect this has on rankings hasn’t quite been determined, but what is for sure is that if any of your content is picked up by scrapers, you will have a full link back to your website.  This helps the page to avoid getting penalized for duplicate content.

Anchor text is important when linking to your internal pages. Often the benefit of this is overlooked, but don’t forget that these are controllable and important links that can tell the search engines a lot about your website. SEOmoz has an interesting post about internal linking.

Another key thing to consider when looking at internal linking is PageRank sculpting, making sure that your website links well to the most important pages is vital. Think about how the search engines are going to look at your website. What pages do you want to make sure they find and understand are important?

By following these steps and making sure newer/deeper pages are well linked to with targeted anchor text from already established pages, you can help to give them a boost in the SERPs.

Guest Author: Ben Hook, a search engine marketer and owner of UK based search engine optimisation company, Navaro.

QUESTION:

“Hi Mirna.  Just how crucial it is for a start up e-commerce business to invest in an SEO campaign, and when would you say is the best time to do that?” — Ali Badruddin

ANSWER:

This is a very common question and most e-commerce business owners fail to budget for (search engine optimization) SEO into their start-up plans.  SEO for e-retailers is as important as e-commerce site functions and the products you are selling.  Many end up spending a fortune on web site design neglecting to save dollars for SEO.  This is a huge mistake because majority of online users go to the search engines to research products so it will do you no good if your site shows up beyond page one or two of the search results for your targeted keywords.

SEO should start at the conception of the web site during the web design phase.  During this stage you will be making design decisions that will either benefit or damage your SEO efforts.  Starting early can save you from having to put more time, effort, and money in re-designing the site later.

I recommend starting right away even if you start slow.  If you are looking to outsource this time-consuming task make sure you do your due diligence and search for the right SEO firm or web developer who have experience with e-commerce sites.  Unless you are doing the optimization yourself, I would budget at least 20-30% of your investment into search engine optimization since this an ongoing process and not something you stop and finish.

If you would like to get your questions answered by Mirna, please visit the Ask Mirna page.

As a business owner, you know that search engine optimization (SEO) is important. Without it, your website will languish in anonymity. It can be very easy to get obsessed with getting higher rankings and more traffic, something that everyone wants. Unfortunately, there are many unscrupulous people out there who prey on those desires to make your website the best that it can be and they set up scams to trap unsuspecting website owners.

It’s easy to be lured by a site that offers extra traffic or better SEO and while there are certainly plenty of legit operations out there. Here are five scams that you should be aware of.

1. Submitting to thousands of search engines.

This is a scam that has been around for quite some time. You pay a sum of money (usually astonishingly low for the service) and your URL will be submitted to not 10, not 50, but hundreds or even thousands of search engines. It sounds great because you figure that you’ll be covered no matter where people are searching, right?

Wrong. Most of the sites your website is submitted to are actually spam sites that may even pay the scammer for your site. You’ll be getting hundreds of spam emails from them which are a waste of time and energy and certainly not worth paying someone for.

2. Your URL submitted to 500 directories.

We all know that getting backlinks is very important and can raise our value in the eyes of the search engines, but just how smart is it to submit to 500 directories? Not very. The reason for this is because first of all, there aren’t that many good directories. The vast majority are link farms (yes, they still exist) which can actually lower the value of your URL. Google in particular notes when your URL shows up in “bad neighborhoods”. The second reason this is a bad idea is that Google gets suspicious when a brand new site abruptly gains 500 backlinks within 24 hours. You could end up in the sandbox or otherwise penalized for your “SEO” techniques.

3. An insider.

You’ll actually find that some SEO companies claim to have someone inside Google. This can be pretty appealing for several reasons, but it is 99.9% unlikely to be true. Even if someone were spilling the secrets of the search engine giant, it is an every changing algorithm, meaning that it would be virtually impossible to keep up with the changes. The algorithm is also far more complex than most people imagine, making it virtually impossible to crack completely and actually implement everything.

That being said, having someone on the inside could be useful in making sure your site is in the top results for your chosen keyword, but what happens when the mole is discovered, as they always are? Play it safe and stick to real SEO tactics.

4. Guaranteed top spots in Google.

Every website owner dreams of seeing his or her site in the top results for their chosen keywords, but the truth is that this is just not always possible. It’s quite ridiculous for anyone to promise it, since they can’t actually guarantee anything when it comes to Google. Even the masters move up and down in the rankings on a consistent basis and that is totally normal . . . but unpredictable.

Something else to look out for is which phrases they are guaranteeing top ranking for. Often these will be long tail keyword phrases that no one is actually looking for. You could easily rank for these on your own with minimal effort, but what’s the point?

5. Trade Secrets

Run away from anyone who claims it’s too complicated to understand and they fail to fully disclose and explain everything that is being done to your site.  They tell you these are trade secrets; they can’t discuss their proprietary technology, or speak in quasi-mystical jargon and non-specific terms.

Real SEO experts have a true interest in their field and enjoy educating their clients about the details. They don’t hold anything back and more than willing to share the whole process with you.

What other SEO scams have you heard of?

We all know that there are scams everywhere these days, but most people don’t really know what to look for in social media. How do you know when something is a scam or when they are actually as expert as they say? It can be difficult, but there are a few signs that will let you know when something isn’t right.

1. Promises of earning money. Social media is great for networking and making valuable business connections. It’s not great for earning money. If someone promises that you can build a full income with their help on Twitter or Facebook, steer away. You may earn indirectly, by driving traffic to your website or email list, but actually earning with social media is not very likely and people who suggest this are usually trying to get your information or charging a fee for their “expertise”.

2. Too many automated announcements. Some people do use auto announcements on Twitter or other forms of social networking sites, but if you see one particular program being used everywhere and the same exact message is sent out, you should investigate before falling for it. Many scams have been perpetuated this way, with the same exact message being sent out through hundreds or even thousands of users. Do your research, and then check out the actual site if you feel it’s a good idea.

3. Links take you to different sites. In some cases, what is being announced on the social media network doesn’t match the link. The text is only designed to make you want to check out the link, where you may be prompted to download something or sign up for something to give away your personal information.

4. People befriend you only to pump products. It’s happened to all of us, you start following someone who followed you on Twitter and they start sending you DMs trying to sell you something. While this could just be very aggressive marketing, in some cases, it is far more serious and can lead to actual scams that people are promoting. Pyramid schemes are particularly popular for this since they get people to sign up under the belief they can earn hundreds by following a few simple steps, which unfortunately involve spamming everyone in their social network with the scheme.

5. Ask you to give out too much information. Facebook is particularly bad for this in that many apps there feign harmlessness but request far too much information for their purposes. Be careful whenever anyone is asking you for information that could be used to guess your passwords or even your “secret question” for recovering passwords on some sites.

Social media is a great way to brand yourself, get your business recognized and drive traffic to your site, but the fact remains that these sites are also ripe with scams. A little common sense and some investigation can go a long way toward preventing problems with scammers, so stay alert!

What scams have you seen on the Internet?

SEO firms or consultants can be of great benefit to your business, but unfortunately, there are some frauds out there. You can’t just assume that someone is an expert in the field because he says he is. It’s up to you, the consumer, to take the time to do your due diligence, but the following questions can help you get a straight answer and figure out if the company is the right one for you.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

1. How long have you been in business? A company that has only just started might not be legit. That’s not to say that no new company is trustworthy, but you will want to know more about the people behind it and their experience with SEO before committing to them.

2. How is success measured? There needs to be a specific method of checking for success if you are going to hire someone to do your search engine optimization for you. Otherwise, there’s no telling if you are getting what you paid for.

3. What are some of your more successful campaigns? An SEO company that has been in business for a while should have some case studies of happy clients to show you. If they don’t, you might want to look elsewhere.

4. Can you share your general SEO process? This question needs to be asked because you don’t want spam tactics being used. A badly done SEO campaign can destroy your company’s online reputation and ruin your search engine rankings, so make sure the company isn’t using anything but white hat techniques.

5. Do you offer a guarantee? If the answer is yes, clarify, but be suspicious. It’s impossible for anyone to guarantee specific results when it comes to search engines, so if someone says they guarantee top spots, you should look elsewhere.

6. How will I know what you’re doing? Your SEO company should give you frequent updates on what they are doing. How frequent? That’s between you and your SEO firm . . . you should be able to request updates more often if you need them.

7. What is the long term plan? SEO isn’t just about optimizing your content and leaving it, a good strategy is ongoing. Check with the company to see what their long term plan is for your site.

Ask the right questions and you should be able to tell if the firm you are considering hiring is legit or not.  What is your advice to selected an SEO firm?

While browsing through online forums, I noticed one question being asked over and over: I have a small business so why do I need web presence? This is a great question because many small businesses often do not have a clue why they have a website.

The Internet is an affordable, convenient, and effective medium which has become the best source of information for many computer-savvy consumers; therefore, it is very important for even the smallest of businesses to have web presence. It is not necessary for all businesses to have a website, but some sort of presence (i.e., online local directory listings, an e-mail address to communicate with customers, etc.).

In my opinion, there are seven reasons why businesses of any size can benefit from being active online:

1. Visibility: With a click of a mouse, millions of people are turning to the Internet to research products and services. If you want them to find your products/services, then you need to be on online.
2. Reach: A small business is no longer limited to marketing its products or services to its local area and can expand to national or international markets. The Internet is a great way to announce to the world that a business exists! Your business may be in California, but you may have potential customers in Japan.
3. Increased Revenues: Since you are now reaching more people, the chances of closing a sale are much better. On the Internet, there are no geographic boundaries to keep you from selling to potential customers across the world.
4. Increased Savings: An online business decreases administrative costs, telecommunications costs as well as marketing costs. Research shows that Internet Marketing has one of the best returns on investment (ROI) then any other form of marketing.
5. Customer Service: With online presence, your business is available to customers 24/7. If your website is operating on auto-pilot, there is no need for your customers to wait for you to open your store, they can log onto your website and find the information or products they are looking for anytime (We all know how many insomniacs there are out there!).
6. Credibility: The Internet can assist in building a strong corporate identity. In addition, having a professional looking website will add to your reputation and increase customer confidence in your business.
7. Competition: The Internet has given an opportunity to smaller businesses to compete with larger corporations. If potential customers cannot find you online, chances are they will find your competitors.

A small business can build its web presence with a minimal budget. The creation of a web site does not have to be outsourced. There are software programs such Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web that will assist in building a professional looking website for a few hundred dollars, or you can use the free software provided by your web hosting company.

A well designed site will communicate your vision and display your products and services. Once the site is built, optimized for the search engines, and ready to be introduced to potential customers, you can use the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo! Both have very effective local search capabilities.

You do not have to be listed in 20 search engines, only the major players because that is where the customers are going. There are also many marketing tactics on the Internet that often do not require a financial investment, but can produce amazing results. These include article writing, forum marketing, viral marketing (i.e., Email, instant messaging, blogs, social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and digg, and media sites such as YouTube and flickr. etc.)

So, regardless of the size of your business, establishing online presence can only offer a world of benefits for your industry.