How to find the best article marketing sites for your niche!
Go where your customers are! Ever feel like you are spinning your wheels and just hoping and praying that the SEO strategies you are doing are actually working? We already covered that one factor in determining what article directory sites are the best in terms of getting urls indexed quickly, but what if your client wants not only backlinks, but also traffic? How can we determine if a site will also send traffic! One easy way is using Google Adwords Display Network with Managed Placements. Basically you create an ad based on your keywords and main target and then set up specific sites in the display network that you want to test. Start with choosing all of the basic sites you can get content placed on easily such as ezinearticles.com, hubpages.com and squidoo.com. Set your dollar amount per click pretty high so you can get as many impressions and clicks as possible. If budget is a concern, then set the campaign to have a specific start and stop date.
After you have it set up, let it run for a few days or a week or so. Go back and look at the number of impressions and number of clicks. What you are looking for is which sites have a higher click through rate for your specific market. The sites with a higher click through rate are the sites you want to focus on to get your content placed on! If they have a high click through rate for the ads, they will also have a higher click through rate for the articles themselves on the sites as compared to other sites. Some other factors such as layout of the ads and where your links appear in the articles will of course factor, but we are looking at general numbers to compare different sites… not an exact science!
As you are researching the backlink profile of your competitors and as you find more sites, add them to your Google Adwords campaign. Go back each week and see if any of the one’s you have added have a lot of impressions and / or clicks for your target market and then work on focusing on getting links on those sites whether it be from getting a guest blog post placed or even paid advertising.
Have a question or tip? Leave your question below in the comments area and we will do our best to answer it!
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Web 2.0 Blogging Strategy for 2010
Link wheels, web 2.0 sites, Hubpages, Squidoo… all the big craze but what actually works? Some say to use web 2.0 properties as the search engines love them and they get spidered early and often. Others say why bother as you don’t actually own them and your web 2.0 property can get banned and deleted at any time.
When to use them.
Web 2.0 properties have two purposes. Ranking and links. First for ranking. If when you do a search for a long tail keyword and a web 2.0 property shows up in the search results, then that means that there is little to no competition for that keyword and it will be easy for you to also build a web 2.0 property and also get ranked for that keyword. Second for links. There are a lot of tools that allow you to research the backlinks of your competitors. If during this research, you find that your competitors have web 2.0 properties in their backlink profile, then you should too. These are some of the easiest links to go after and most can be gotten in a few hours of work… or less if you outsource it!
How to use them.
First step is to identify the top web 2.0 sites to build links from. The best ones are the ones that get indexed quickly by the search engines. Always remember that if a url is not indexed, then the links don’t count! After you identify which sites are the best, create accounts on them using your keyword as the subdomain. Upload 2-5 articles or blog posts of 100-500 words each. In each article or blog post include 2-5 links to your web properties. It is always better to link out to a variety of web properties versus sending 5 links all to the same domain for example.
So what are the best sites? Based on our 3 months of research we have found that the web 2.0 properties that are getting indexed the fastest are the following:
- Myblogsite.com 100%
- Blog.co.in 100%
- Ugetblog.com 100%
- Wordpress.com 81%
- Blogster.com 80%
- Diarist.com 80%
- Soulcast.com 71%
- Weebly.com 70%
- Bloggels.info 70%
- Bloguni.com 70%
- Gather.com 70%
- Blogspot.com 70%
- Blog.com 61%
- Blogetry.com 60%
- Bravejournal.com 51%
- Spaces.live.com 50%
- Wetpaint.com 50%
- Weblog.com 50%
- Sosblog.com 40%
- Sites.google.com 38%
- Zoomshare.com 38%
- Vox.com 34%
- Tumbrl.com 30%
- Livejournal.com 30%
- Multiply.com 30%
- Typepad.com 20%
- Xanga.com 20%
- Thoughts.com 20%
- Quizilla.com 20%
- Ning.com 20%
- Webs.com 10%
As you can see, the majority of the web 2.0 properties have a less than 70% success rate. So is the statement that the search engines automatically love the web 2.0 properties an accurate one? We think not! For web 2.0 properties to work successfully you will need to go the extra step and promote the RSS feeds and also build links to your web 2.0 properties.
Have another web 2.0 property you would like us to test? Tell us about it in the comments section!
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Article Marketing Strategy for 2010
Recently here at StartRankingNow we have been running a test to see what exactly are the best article directories to submit articles to. There are many sites that will provide a list of the top 10 article directories to submit articles to based on Page Rank, but just because a site has a PR of 4 on their home page, does not mean that it will be valuable or profitable for you to submit your articles there. As we literally submit hundreds of articles per month to the article directories, we have run a test to find out which article directories get indexed by Google the fastest without having to do any external link building.
What we did:
We submitted 100 articles to each of the article directories over a 3 month period. Within 30 days of submitting the articles and the articles being published, we checked all of the submissions to determine if the urls generated by the article submissions were indexed in Google. We gathered the data and determined what percentage of the urls were indexed.
Here are the results:
- Ezinearticles.com 100%
- Buzzle.com 100%
- Goarticles.com 89%
- Articlebase.com 91%
- A1articles.com 100%
- Articleblast.com 90%
- Articlefeeder.com 96%
- Articlerich.com 83%
- Thefreelibrary.com 89%
- Amazines.com 32%
- Articlemonkey.com 30%
- Articlecube.com 35%
- Articlesfreedirectory.com 5%
- Articlesnatch.com 35%
- Articlepool.com 0%
- Ideamarketers 22%
- Ehow.com 40%
- Associatedcontent.com 40%
- Helium.com 40%
- Isnare.com 21%
Always remember to TEST your SEO activities and be sure it works. If your SEO company is submitting to hundreds of article directories but your articles are not getting indexed, then those links don’t count!
Do you know of another article directory we can test? Please let us know!
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How StomperNet Can Make Your Business Explode
Whether you already own an internet business or are thinking of starting an internet business so you can reach your goals faster than you can imagine with the help of StomperNet.com. StomperNet is a community of entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and can help you build your business from the bottom up, in the quickest and most efficient
way possible. This site is full of amazing information from some of the top experts in their fields. The information they provide is the latest and greatest, so you can be sure that you are on the cutting edge of internet marketing. StomperNet takes all the guesswork out of building a successful internet business. The information is really invaluable, and the free tools are the icing on the cake.
If you join StomperNet you not only have access to internet marketing experts, you also gain free access to some amazing marketing tools. One such tool is Market Samurai which makes analyzing keywords quick an easy. It consolidates all the information you need to pick the best keywords for your business such as page rank, advertising costs, SEO analysis, content writing and link building. It takes the tedious and time-consuming tasks related to market research and makes them a breeze. The information you will get from this tool will get you higher rankings and more traffic faster and easier than you can imagine.
Another benefit of the new StomperNet is a social marketing tool called Stomper Social that can help you conquer all of the social media sites out there and get you tons of free traffic. The social media market has given fast and unlimited access to a huge consumer audience without the having a huge marketing budget. It has literally given every internet business owner the ability to reach thousands of potential customers with no real out of pocket expense. While social media marketing has now become a big part of internet marketing it must be done hand-in-hand with the proper search engine optimization. 
The bottom-line is that StomperNet has everything you need to help your internet business take flight and make you money quickly. All the information you need is consolidated into one place and there are tons of experts available to answer questions and guide you along the way. StomperNet is an amazing site that offers you tons of tools and information that will get your site ranking in no time. You will be amazed at the amount of information you will have access to and how easy they make it for you to learn how to build an online business. If you have an internet business or you are considering starting one, you can join StomperNet and get all the information you need, and best of all they offer a 30-day money back guarantee, because they are so confident that you will love what you find on StomperNet.
With all the free tools and information you get on StomperNet you will be able to build a successful online business the right way, the first time.
More Tips for Tweeting on Twitter
If you signed up for Twitter and just love sharing things that you have learned that are making your business bigger and better you probably have some of the basics of tweeting down. Maybe you read our post “Tweet, Retweet, Hashtags: The New Language of Social Media” that showed you a few of the basics. If you are finding that Twitter has been an amazing tool for your business and are in need of more, this article will take your tweets to the next level. While tweeting can be a great way to share information you shouldn’t forget that Twitter is a two-way-street and may teach you a few things, too.
A great tool, that isn’t the easiest to find, is Twitter’s advanced search. The advanced search feature can help you find posts about a term, 
a person, a topic, a location or even a certain date. The tool can be found by scrolling to the bottom of any page on Twitter and look for the “Search” link. There is also another link there that lists all the Twitter search operators like “from:” which allows you to find tweets from a specific person or shows you that putting words in quotes to find tweets about a specific term. Advanced search can really help you find information on exactly what you may need help with at the moment you need it.
Another cool feature that is available to Twitter users that also have a Facebook account is the ability to install Twitter on Facebook. This allows you to update your status in one place, instead of two and keep your social media endeavors efficient. All you need to do is go to twitter.com/widgets/facebook and click on the button that says “Install Twitter on Facebook”. You will be taken through a few steps and you can choose to either let Twitter update your Facebook or Facebook update your Twitter status. It is a bit easier to configure your Twitter account to update your Facebook and doing things this way will help you keep your tweets to the 140 character limit.
If you are used to desktop applications like AOL Instant Messenger there is a Twitter application that can be added to your desktop to make tweeting a breeze. Digsby is an application that Windows users can use to view postings from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all your email accounts in a long window that looks like an instant messenger window on steroids. It is a great way to keep track of things without having to sign in to multiple accounts. If you like a larger view you can use an application called TweetDeck which allows you to personalize how you see your tweets and can also be configured to see your Facebook updates and also has a ton of other features.
If you have realized how important social media marketing is to your business, it is important to make the process as efficient as possible, or you can easily find yourself spending all your time tweeting and updating your Facebook account. While these tools can be amazingly beneficial to you, it is a good idea to specify how much time each day you want to dedicate to this form of marketing. Remember, it is very important to utilize multiple marketing techniques for your business and never put all of your eggs in one marketing basket.
Keeping Your Social Media Strategy Professional
For those of us that have Twitter and Facebook accounts it can be a difficult task to determine how to keep things professional if your main focus is to build a strong business network. Even if you start with the intention of keeping things professional, all it takes is one tweet or one photo to transform a professional site into something that some may find a bit unprofessional. We love social media sites because things are so instantaneous, but we forget that a single tweet can generate a rush of replies in mere seconds. So, policing your own accounts can become a full-time job. It is very important to make the purpose of your account clear from the first moment it is activated.
One of the things that can cause an issue on Facebook is the fact that people can tag you in on pictures they post without your approval. Therefore, your profile can be open to risk of unprofessional exposure. It is very important to monitor your Facebook on a daily basis for photos that may not align you as a business professional. All it can take to turn a potential business contact away is an unprofessional photo
that you may not even be aware of.
Facebook has a number of privacy settings that can help you keep things separated. For example you can create a number of different friend lists so that you can have one group for friends, one for family and one for business contacts. This allows you to set up privacy settings for each group. For example, you may want to share photos of your family vacation with your friends and family contacts, but not your professional contacts. There are also settings on Facebook that allow you to remove yourself from public search results. This will help keep your personal information separate from your professional information. It also may be helpful to remove yourself from Google. This can also be done by going to your personal settings page.
There are also settings on Twitter that can help keep your postings private so that only people that you approve of can see them. It is important to understand that once you change this setting it will make any new postings private, but postings made before you changed the setting will still be public.
Doing a little research and taking the time to learn how to safeguard your personal information is a good idea on many levels. It will also help you to separate the information that you want to share with your family and friends from that which you want to share with your professional contacts. These things will help you to keep a professional rapport with your professional contacts while still sharing photos of your vacations with your family and friends. This will help you keep things professional with your professional contacts and they will not be distracted by personal information. Social media sites can be a great benefit to your business if you just take a few precautions.
How to Build a Solid Link Strategy
Building a link strategy that will work can take a bit of time and research. Linking is one of the most important parts of a successful internet marketing campaign. It is important to understand how to build links that will be useful to your business and not just be a waste of your time. There are a few things to look at before you start building random links to your website. You want to make sure that the time you are investing in building links is time well spent. If you decide to outsource your link building, these steps are also important to complete before you hand off this task.
Finding the Right Keywords
One of the most important tools for choosing keywords is the Google keyword tool. It is important to vary the keywords that you are using to build links to your website. This Google tool can help you find a number of quality keywords that you may not have even considered which will help you build a solid foundation for your link building strategy. You do not want to create hundreds of links for your main keyword, only. You want to vary the keywords which will build a more natural looking network of links pointing to your website. It is also important to consider long tail keywords when you are building links. These are more like key terms that people would associate with your products or services. In many cases you will find that you will rank quickly for these types of links since they tend to be more specific. While long tail keywords may not carry the search volume that a main keyword can, they are important to incorporate into your linking techniques.
Using Yahoo to Find Great Places to Post Links
Finding the best places to post links to your site can seem like a completely overwhelming task. The best place to look for clues on where to post links is right at your top competitors. In many cases they can provide you with a plethora of information that can help you gain the right exposure for your company. Everyone knows the saying “Don’t reinvent the wheel” which basically means if someone has already come up with an idea that works there really isn’t a need to start the process over from scratch. You can easily find out what sites your competitors are using to build links from by going to Yahoo. All you need to do is type the following into the Yahoo search bar and you will have tons of helpful information right at your fingertips: linkdomain:www.mycompetitorwebsite.com. This will give you an up-to-date list of which sites are linking to your competitors, so you can go after the same links.
Vary Where Your Links Point
The next important thing to do when building links to your website is to vary where you are pointing your links to. You do not want to point every link you post to your homepage. You want to make sure that you are mixing things up and pointing links to different pages on your website. This is as important to your link building strategy as picking the right keywords. If you keep these three tips in mind when you start building links you will have a solid foundation that will be very beneficial to your business which will help you make the most out of the time and money you are spending on your link building strategy.
Using Facebook to Grow Your Business
Started as a way for its founder Mark Zucherburg to connect with friends at Harvard, Facebook has exploded to over 200 million users and growing each day. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family and even reconnect with old friends from years past, but it also can be a great tool for your business. Facebook makes it easy to share information with tons of people, all at once, all you need to do is update your Facebook page and bam, everyone you know now knows the latest news about you, your family and your business.
Just remember, if you are going to be using your Facebook page for professional purposes it is important to keep things professional. While, the more contacts you have the more exposure you may get for your business, you want to make sure that the exposure you are getting is positive. If you just go and add every person you may have rubbed shoulders with to your account you may be risking your page to some unprofessional exposure. So, it is important to be selective when you are inviting people into your professional network.
That being said, social media marketing is a great way to share information about your business with tons of people in an instantaneous way. Say you want to promote a sale for your business or promote a new product you just added to your site. You can just make a quick posting on your Facebook “wall” and you have just updated all of your contacts with the latest and greatest news about your company. As you build contacts from people you know you are sure to create new connections in the process. Those new connections can then give you additional exposure which will allow you to build your network with people you may not have even known a day ago.
People are always looking for ways to make their business or job easier and more effective. By posting information that can be useful to the masses you are building credibility for yourself as a business owner and an expert in your field. By sharing business tips, along with information about your specific products, you can build a strong following that can quickly expand your network and build exposure for your company. Say you have a great tip about organizing your emails. You can post the tip on your Facebook status box. This will let everyone that has followed you see the tip and see that you are willing to share helpful information with them. This will build a sense of trust and confidence in you which will translate to a sense of trust in your business.
Facebook is a great tool to help promote your business and build your brand. Sharing helpful business tips can build trust with followers which will translate into a larger network than you can imagine. Just make sure and keep things professional if you are using your Facebook for business purposes, otherwise, your exposure could quickly switch from professional to unprofessional and that can be hard to change back.
Tweet, Retweet, Hashtags: The new language of Social Media
Twittering is all t
he rage lately. Even if you are watching TV or listening to the radio you will hear the mention of Twitter, Facebook or MySpace as a way of following the moment to moment thoughts of TV stars and entire news channels. Everyone is jumping on the Twitter train and if you are not yet an expert you better get started. Social Media marketing is a beast all of its own and learning the intricacies of how it works can be similar to learning a new language. A few of the terms you will need to know to get started on Twitter are tweet, retweet and hashtags. There are tons of Twitter terms already in existence and new ones are created all the time. Twitter can keep you connected to customers 24 hours a day 365 days a year so you can keep them informed of things like new products or sales events, but it must be done in 140 characters or less.
First, we will discuss who a tweeter is. A tweeter is a person that posts messages on Twitter. So anyone that puts down a thought on Twitter has the title tweeter. There are currently over 14 million US visitors on Twitter alone from Joe the Plumber to rockstars like Bono. You can keep track of what they are doing and what they think is important enough to share with their followers. Twitter is an amazing networking tool if used correctly. Remember, people have to follow you and if you are not keeping them interested you are sure to lose their interest quickly. Which brings us to our next Twitter term, tweet. A tweet is simply a posting on Twitter. Now, Twitter tweets are limited to 140 characters or less so you have to get your point across quickly. Fast and furious is what Twitter is all about. You need to become an expert at getting your point across in a few words an
d in an intriguing way.
This marketing tool can really make your business soar to new levels. You have the power of viral marketing right at your fingertips. Think about it, you tweet a message to your followers and if they think it is interesting enough, they can comment on your tweet to their followers or simply retweet your message. Then the followers of those tweeters will do the same, over and over until thousands of people have seen your message within minutes. Think of the power of that, not only are you reaching potentially thousands of people, you are doing it for free. Not one penny of your marketing budget is being spent, that is a truly powerful marketing tool. So, in case you didn’t catch it, a retweet is simply to repeat or quote another person’s tweet. In order for a retweet to be seen by the masses it is important to put some type of notation before the @name of the person whose tweet you are retweeting. Many people write retweet or R/T or simply RT before the original tweeters name to show that they are retweeting a message. Retweeting is one of the highest compliments you can pay a fellow tweeter. It means that you think that their tweet is important enough to share with your followers. It is also a common courtesy to thank the person that retweeted your tweet.
Lastly, I wanted to mention hashtags. Hashtags are an important tool for serious tweeters because they give you a way to add additional context and metadata to your tweets by simply prefixing a word with a hash symbol, #hashtag. A hashtag is a way for others to find information about your keywords even if they are not following you, yet. It is a great way to get new followers that are interested in your topics and can give you even more exposure. Hope these Twitter tips help you get start on Twitter. It really is an important part of your internet marketing strategy, so go get some followers!
