Best use of a marketing budget of $500

One of the most difficult things to do when starting out in SEO is to determine how to allocate the resources you have to guarantee the best ROI (return on investment).  Ecommerce store owners have a harder time of it as they are trying to spread their marketing dollars out across literally hundreds of keywords for all of the products on their stores.  Many times clients send us lists of hundreds of keywords and want to know how to best narrow the list down and how to best allocate the resources they have.  Here is what we tell them.

1. Narrow your keyword list to 5 keywords.  With a budget of $500 per month, it is best to focus on a short list of 5 keywords.  You can much easier track your results and get results quicker which will in turn open up your budget to focus on more keywords.  To avoid getting a penalty from google you will want to have 5 keywords but only 2-3 urls.  This means that you will need to have some of the keywords be variations of the main keyword.  First step is to narrow your list to a short list of 20-40 keywords.  Organize them by search volume.  The second step is to check the all in anchor ranking for all of the 20-40 keywords on your list.  For any that you already have an all in anchor ranking in the top 20, then put those on your shortlist of keywords to choose from.  If a keyword has an all in anchor ranking in the top 20 it is going to be easier to push it to the top 10 or top 3 in the search engines than a keyword that you are not ranking in the top 100 for according to all in anchor.

2. Article writing.  For article writing you can choose to get a few high quality articles from a US writer or a lot more articles from a Philippine writer.  My advice is that if you are going to be placing the articles on your website, then always use US writers.  If the articles are going to be used for link building and you are not YET a Fortune 5000 company, then Philippine writers are awesome! 

3. Article Marketing.  Now that you have the articles, what to do with them!  My recommendation is that the first place to always start is article marketing.  You can create accounts on the article directories or outsource it.  There are also some distribution services such as isnare.com and submityourarticle.com that will submit your article over multiple websites.  The monthly fee for sites such as these range from a few dollars per article to about $47 per month.  You can put a project on odesk.com for someone to submit your articles to the article directories and provide them the article and a list of sites and your work is done!

4. Blog commenting.  Although thought of as a spammy link building method by most, when done correctly, blog commenting is one of the best ways to build up a lot of backlinks to your site on unique ips.  You can either do the blog commenting yourself or outsource it.

5. Reporting.  Before you begin you will either want to run a report on the allinanchor rankings and number of backlinks according to open site explorer or outsource the report. 

There you have it!  The above is pretty much the exact strategy we recommend and implement for a budget of $500.

Tips for Outsourcing LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an important tool for any business professional as it can keep you connected with colleagues no matter where they may move within their professional careers. It enables you to keep your address book up-to-date so that you never have to worry about losing touch with any of the people you have built your network with. LinkedIn is a way to search for business opportunities and answers to questions you may have about your business with experts that you can trust. With over 40,000,000 members and growing you can exchange ideas, knowledge and information with a huge network of professionals.

If you are looking to outsource your LinkedIn account you should make sure and choose a professional that has experience with resume writing and can create a profile that stands out. The more detailed your profile is, the easier it will be for people to find you. This is the most important step in creating your LinkedIn account. The easiest way to ensure that your profile is as accurate as possible is simply to provide a copy of your resume to the person you have chosen to complete your LinkedIn account. Make sure and highlight important keywords and skills so you can ensure that these are included in your profile.

The next thing you will want to provide to the person you are outsourcing your LinkedIn account to is a professional photo of yourself. Make sure that it is a professional shot, because LinkedIn in a professional network and not a personal network like Facebook or MySpace. Remember, LinkedIn is a way to find expert professional contacts that can help you build your business. For example, if you are looking to hold a seminar in your area, you can contact people in your network and see if anyone has a space they can lend you for little or no cost. People understand that building connections is a two-way street and if they can help you, you may be able to help them sometime in the future.

Obviously, it is important when outsourcing tasks such as your LinkedIn account that you have a person that has experience, is a professional writer and can communicate clearly. If you already have a relationship with a writer and trust them to be detailed and accurate, it may be wise to use them for this task even if they do not have experience with LinkedIn. There is a lot of helpful information on the LinkedIn site that explains how to create an account, so if you already have a professional you communicate well with it can make things even easier.

Just make sure no matter who you choose to outsource your LinkedIn account to, that you review their work and make sure that everything is stated in an accurate manner. People in your network need to know that they can trust your information is accurate so if they recommend you to a person in their network they are not jeopardizing their professional relationships.

LinkedIn can be an amazing tool that can help you with your professional career whether you are looking for a job or looking for assistance building your business.

Tips for Outsourcing Your Twitter Posts

Twitter has finally blasted into the social media world and its 140 character posts, though short, can really make an impact to your SEO strategies. Now, with all these different social media sites such as Facebook, My Space and Twitter it seems that small businesses have more ways than ever to expand their online presence and reach more potential customers. These networks, in reality are giving you the opportunity to advertise your business to a potentially enormous audience for free. All you need to do is post something interesting enough to keep your existing followers interested and to entice new people to follow your Tweets.

Like many of the other internet marketing tools and strategies, Twittering takes time, maybe not a lot of time, but when you add this to an existing social media campaign, it all adds up. This is why Twitter is a great task to outsource to someone that has experience in social media marketing and can do it right. The last thing you need, as a business owner, is to have to clean up a mess of unsightly tweets that some inexperienced freelancer placed on your Twitter.

The good news is that there are many people out there that do understand the importance of social media and have experience helping other businesses gain exposure with it. That brings me to my first tip. If you are going to outsource your Twitter projects do a bit of research and find a person that already has experience with these types of projects. While you may have to pay a little more for a person with experience it will save you lots of time and money in the long run.

There are some challenges with using Twitter. The main challenge is understanding how to deliver a great message to an audience in 140 characters or less. One of the great ways that Twitter is being used it to point people to your blogs or online articles. Sometimes url’s alone can run well over 140 characters. There are tools that you can find online that will shorten your url’s so that you can squeeze a bit of information into your post, too. This is an example of why you would want to find a freelancer who does have some experience working with Twitter, because they will know the tricks to getting the most out of your posts.

Twitter posts can be a great way to get more traffic to your website, blog or online articles, but as with any project you are outsourcing you want to make sure you are getting what you need. Assigning small tasks, at first, is a good way to get a feel for how well the freelancer will perform before committing to a large project and finding out too late that they are not the right fit. Also, make sure they have some experience with the type of project you need help with; this will make things go much smoother. And the biggest tip is to provide as much detail as possible about your project to your freelancer. This will ensure that they have a clear understanding of what you need and will lessen the amount of time you will have to micromanage them.

Tips for Outsourcing Your Squidoo Articles

Many internet businesses are utilizing article sites such as Squidoo, Ezine and Hubpages to build their online presence and lead consumers to their website. The most important thing to remember when writing these articles is that they need to be creative, informative and interesting enough to online readers. They should contain relevant information that can educate a reader about your product or service. While article writing is a very important part in your SEO strategy, it can be a time consuming task. This makes it a great candidate for outsourcing.

 

If you are thinking of outsourcing your Squidoo article writing you should start by compiling a list of keywords for the person that will be writing your articles. There is definitely some technique that is required when writing Squidoo articles. You would want to outline a few requirements for your writer so that you are getting what you expect. Taking the time to do this will ensure that you are getting a final product that will get exposure on Squidoo. Defining the keywords that you want in your articles is the best place to start.

 

The next thing you should do is create the titles of the articles for the freelancer. This is an easy way to make sure that they are writing about things that relate well to your product or service. This step will cut out a lot of time down the road if you find that the person you hire is not writing about topics that you feel are most important to your business. It will also cut down on any frustration your freelancer may feel if they spend their time writing an article only to find that it was not what you were hoping for. The clearer you can be with the task, the easier you will find working with a freelancer.

Also, you will need to know if the person you are working with has experience writing Squidoo lenses and adding the different modules that will help your lens rank on Squidoo. They will need to know how to add links, videos and pictures. You may even want to provide them this information so you can be sure that the Squidoo lens is being built in the best way possible. Once again, by providing the writer with all the information they will need at the beginning of the project is sure to save you time and frustration later.

 

When outsourcing tasks it is always important to choose writers that have already completed similar projects. This way, you will not have to spend time teaching them the right way to complete the task. Just give them all the information and requirements you can at the beginning of the project to avoid any guessing. Another option is just to have them write the Squidoo content and then you can have an in-house employee actually post the article with the pertinent links and videos. Whichever way you choose to go with your Squidoo outsourcing, keep your tasks small and clearly outline your requirements. These simple steps can make all the difference and keep frustration levels down on both sides. <–>

How to use Google Keyword Tool to Grow Your Business

Whether you are looking to start an internet business or you already have one established there are a number of tools that Google offers you to help you maximize your marketing efforts. One of these tools that can really help any online business owner is the Google Keyword Tool. This tool gives you access to thousands of keywords that are related to your business and shows you how competitive the advertising is for them and how much search volume they receive. You can even sign on to an external keyword tool without even having a Google account. All you need to do is go to the following link https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

The Google Keyword Tool provides you with a great starting point for your SEO marketing strategy. You can simply type in a keyword that relates to your business and the tool will provide you with detailed information on that keyword and give you a ton of other related keywords to help you capture more customers. If you are currently only writing content or articles for one or two main keywords you are missing out on hundreds, if not thousands, of searchers a day that may use other related terms. It is simple, by compiling a larger list of keywords that relate to your business you will be able to attract more shoppers and make more sales.

You can generate a list of keywords by words alone or by searching existing website content. If you have a good idea of the keywords related to your type of business you can use the word search and get a huge list of keywords that you may not have even considered before. If you are just starting out with your online business you can select the website content search method and see what keywords are related to other websites that are already online. Both methods can be very helpful in giving you a broader range of keywords that you can use to build your Adwords campaigns and your SEO strategy.

If you already have a Google Adwords account, you can find the keyword tool by going to My Account, clicking on Adwords and then looking under the Tools menu. This option gives much more detailed information about the different keywords that can be used for your business. For example, it shows you the search trends throughout the year. This is a great tool because it shows you which keywords are the most popular each month of the year. This can help you with budgeting or to find other related niches that can help you supplement when search volume for your keywords tend to fall. It also provides you with the average CPC for each keyword and shows you which month in the past year produced the highest search volume.

As you can see the Google Keyword Tool is really a tool that no internet business owner should miss out on. It contains tons of priceless information that can truly help you grow and expand your online presence. If you take a bit of time and really analyze the data it provides, you can really transform your business.

Tips for Outsourcing Your Facebook

As the internet has developed it has opened the door for many companies to outsource some of their projects, like their Facebook, without spending tons of money in the process. Outsourcing is a great tool for smaller businesses that may not have huge budgets. Many smaller companies have small and large projects here and there which do not substantiate hiring a full-time employee. These are perfect examples of when it can be a smart decision to outsource some projects in order to get things accomplished within a limited budget.

Outsourcing can be an amazing tool for small business owners, because it gives you access to employees when the need arises and does not force you into hiring a full-time employee when you may not have a consistent amount of work for them. In many cases you can find people that are very knowledgeable on exactly what you need done, so there is no need to invest your time, effort and money in training an employee that you may have to let go in a few months.

A great task that can be very easy to outsource is building a company Facebook page. Facebook is a great resource for reaching people and creating buzz about your company. Once it is set up it does take some updating on a regular bases to help attract “fans” to your page and to keep the existing fans interested. This is why this is such a great task to outsource. You can pay someone 1-2 hours a week to keep your Facebook current instead of overwhelming an existing employee or trying to create enough work for a full-time employee that you would, most likely, have to pay much more.

Obviously, if you are going to outsource something like your Facebook account you will want to make sure that the person you choose is familiar with Facebook and has some knowledge or familiarity with your type of business. This will help you from having to micromanage the freelancer which can be counterproductive towards your efforts towards streamlining your business.

You may also want to portion out your tasks over time. This will give you an opportunity to see how they work before committing to them for a larger project that you may wait weeks for completion and then find out that they didn’t really meet your expectations. You can simply start with the task of setting up your Facebook. It is always a good idea to give clear details on what you would like done. The more specific you are when you outsource projects, the better your results will be. Once you have approved the Facebook page you can set up weekly tasks for the freelancer to complete. Setting up a weekly schedule will give you the opportunity to see their progression in a reasonable timeframe. This will give you ample opportunities to reevaluate their work and decide if they are meeting your needs.

Outsourcing for your Facebook can be a great way to get you moving on your social media projects. Just remember to use established freelancers that have similar projects already under their belt and give them small tasks to begin with until you are confident in their performance.