Before you do anything else with forum marketing, your first step should be to create a master list of forums. Once you have constructed this list, you can use it to determine how you should spend most of your time on forums.

One good place to start when constructing your list is www.big-boards.com.

Here, you will find the most comprehensive list of forums, along with a rundown of relevant vital statistics.

As an example, you might be trying to generate traffic for a site that helps people to restore old cars. You would then navigate to the “cars” section of Big Boards: www.big-boards.com/kw/cars/.

Here, you will find a variety of different car forums: Honda Tech, Club RSX, NAISOC Forums, Bimmerforums, and more than 250 others. Creating a master list is simply a matter of checking out the vital statistics and determining which fit your criteria.

With this in mind, you may want to open up an Excel spreadsheet; and create a row in it for each candidate site. Record all of the related vital statistics, such as the number of posts, the number of members, and the degree of relevance (as judged by you).

In addition to this, you should make an attempt to roughly judge the traffic trends of the board. You can do this by clicking the graph icon next to it. Big Boards tracks and provides information about the number of posts over time, the number of members over time, the number of daily unique visitors over time, and dozens of other categories of traffic statistics. You should attempt to use this information to determine whether the forum is growing or dying (and then jot down notes on this in your Excel spreadsheet)

Once you have finished creating this Excel spreadsheet of forums, you should begin pruning it down to something more manageable. You can do this by visiting each forum individually; and attempting to capture the atmosphere. You might want to ask the following questions:

1. Is it a hostile or a friendly forum? For instance, are questions usually answered or ridiculed?

2. How quickly (if ever) can you add a signature that includes a link to your site?

3. How does the forum deal with commercial sites? Do they strictly prohibit reference to them? Do they allow it if it is reasonable and not an attempt to blatantly market the site?

4. Who typically posts on the forum? Experts, novices, buyers, or sellers? This is important to understand, since a gardening site for gardening equipment sellers will have a very different type of commercial value than a forum for gardening equipment consumers.

Finally, after asking these questions, narrow down your list to less than 10 forums. This is your “master list” of forums. You should bookmark each of these and check them regularly.

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: Build a list, Creat a Master List, Forum Hosting Share, Traffic GO

Why You Should Post on Forums

As a procrastinator, the idea of work bores you. And that’s why you put it off until there’s exactly enough time left to finish it—no more, no less.

But what if “work” looked less like work and more like a hobby? Well, that can be accomplished when you generate traffic through forum posting.

For procrastinators, that’s the upside to forum posting. It feels a lot more like recreation or leisure than “work.” But that’s not the only reason why forum posting works.

Another good feature of forum posting is that it helps you to build credibility within the very communities in which you will market your product, look for joint venture partners, and attempt to extract feedback about beta versions of your products and sites.

Finally, when it comes to generating, fast, easy traffic, few things can beat posting on a high-traffic, well-targeted forum. As soon as that thread becomes visible, thousands of people will be able to view the links in your signature, as well as the content of your post.

Talk to you soon,

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: allezlelosc forum index, archasse forum index, autocross west forum index, Best Forum Posting, chassimages forum index, forum post bac, Forum Posting Guidelines, Forum Posting jobs, Forum Posting Service, Internet forum, Paid Forum Posting, royal forum index, sangliers net forum index, softmaroc org forum index, Using Forum, what is forum posting

As strange as it may seem, it is possible to do “too good” a job at search engine optimization. If you follow the advice of “traditional” SEO guides, you could end up getting hit with a penalty and actually sinking in the rankings rather than rising.

One of the things some search engines look at is how “natural” everything appears to be. As I mentioned earlier, search engines do not want to list a bunch of sites that are using sneaky tactics to rank. They want to list quality content that will make their users happy.

Historically, those sites that were the most “perfectly” optimized have mostly been the sites that have had lower quality content. There are exceptions, obviously. However, the search engine developers realized that people who were spending so much time perfecting their SEO were often neglecting content development, or even using duplicate content.

Conversely, those sites which had truly exceptional content often did little to no optimization at all. They were often created by individuals out of a true love and passion for the topic, and those individuals usually knew next to nothing about SEO.

Eventually, search engine developers learned that they could combat the most egregious violators of search engine policies by penalizing those sites which optimized their sites “too well”.

It isn’t easy to trigger this type of penalty. Obviously, a lot of good sites with quality content do optimize for SEO purposes. Most of those sites follow the same basic SEO rules.

Search engines don’t want to penalize those sites that may legitimately have good content. Thus, you must really go overboard to incur such a penalty.

The surest way to get hit with a penalty for over-optimization is to use the exact same keyword without any additional words in your:

Page title

Article title

H1, H2, H3, etc. tags

Alt image tags

Anchor text (at or near 100% of anchor text)

In order to avoid a penalty for over-optimization, there are a few things you should be certain of:

1. In your page title, be sure to include a few extra words, or use two keyword phrases. Don’t use “Improve Your Golf Swing” as your title, for example. Use “Ten Tips to Improve Your Golf Swing”.

2. This also goes for your article title. Don’t enclose your exact keywords in H1 tags or make it your article title on the page.

3. Don’t use your keywords in alt image tags.

4. Never use your main keyword phrase as your exact anchor text for every backlink you get. Use it about 50% of the time, and spread the rest out between three or four other keywords.

Lets know what you think about Over Optimization.

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: Google begins penalizing search 'over-optimization, Google's Over-Optimization Penalty, The Google Penguin Update, Too Much SEO, Understanding Over-Optimization and Google Social, What Google's “Over-Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around for a very long time and it has always been a goal for many webmasters to make sure their pages appear at the top of a page of results.

Search engines want one main thing – to make money. I know it sounds simple, but that’s all they really care about. As long as they’re making money, they’re doing what they’re supposed to.

They have a duty to their shareholders, their visitors, and their employees to be profitable. If they don’t provide the best possible user experience, their visitors will go elsewhere, and they will lose market share.

Thus, search engines’ first priority is to provide a great experience for their users. If someone uses a search engine, they want to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. They don’t want to sift through thousands of irrelevant pages, look at low quality content, or read pages of spam.

If you want to give search engines exactly what they’re looking for, you will make your sites clean, user friendly, and full of the best quality content that fits your subject perfectly.

This is what will get you top rankings, and this is what will keep your site there for the long term.

In the next post i will be talking about Over Optimization as i have been a victim of it, so it will be helpful to you if you encounter the same situation.

Talk to you soon,

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Land, search engine optimisation, The 10 Most Useful Search Engines for Beginners, Yahoo Search Engine

But one form of social marketing that alot of business owners don’t use is something called “RSS marketing”. This is a Web 2.0 strategy, and it’s very simple to use. RSS stands for “really simple syndication”, and it’s a great way to get your content and articles on other peoples’ website in a hurry.

One of the fastest ways to get an RSS feed is to start off with a blog. Now there is a very technical way to create your own RSS feed from scratch, but I’m willing to bet that you don’t want to learn about this technique – especially if you’re not a computer wizard. Luckily, there’s a free service that can create your RSS feed for you.

This site is called Feedburner.com. And it’s free to use, just like a popular blogging platform called Blogger.com. Both of these easy services can help you to get into a niche, make a name for yourself, distribute content all over the internet, and get tons of traffic in return for no cost whatsoever.

I like Blogger because they’re easy to work with. But not only that, they can become quite possible. I know a guy who makes over $100,000 with his simple, plain looking blogger blog, but his information is incredible and he has alot of subscribers. I’m willing to bet that RSS marketing played a hand in the role in having him make so much money also.

When getting your RSS feed from Feedburner, you have to make the decision if you want to use the default “Atom” RSS feed from Blogger, or use the one from Feedburner. I personally think you should use the one from Feedburner because it’s simple, effective, attractive, and very easy to use.

Some people feel that RSS marketing will replace email marketing, but I don’t agree with this notion. Email marketing has its place in the world, and so does RSS marketing. But to think that one will cancel the other one out is just ridiculous. Both of these techniques still work, and will work into the definite future.

If you want your subscribers to get fresh new content, start using RSS in collaboration with your blog everyday. It’s the smart thing to do, and you don’t have to spend a dime when it comes to setting this up and promoting your site or blog. I like RSS, and I think it’s something that you should look more into.

The more you study about RSS marketing, the more likely it is that you will use it, and use it effectively for your business. Get started on it right now before you forget about it.

Be sure to put these RSS tips to use into your business today.

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: How To Make Pinterest Part of Your Social Media Marketing Plan, RSS Blog, Why Social Media Has to Be Part of Your Marketing Plan

Is getting traffic to your website something that you absolutely do not know how to do? Some people feel that they’re business can be a huge success only if they know how to get alot of traffic to their website. If this describes you, then I would like to help you out when trying to get lots of traffic to your website.

Now 2 years ago I bought this widely popular course on how to get tons of traffic to your website, and I admit it was really good. But I heard someone say that this course focuses on using your content to get free traffic – it’s not about strictly showing you where to advertise your website to get traffic.

I totally disagreed on that.

Without that course, I probably wouldn’t be here developing this lesson here today. I know the course works because I’ve tried it myself, and I know that I’ve gotten lots of traffic due to the techniques in the course. One thing that was really good about the course was the search engine optimization part of it.

SEO or search engine optimization is simply the process of taking your website, entering the meta tags about it, and creating content on your website around low competition keyword terms. But the lesson in the course that I bought was so thorough, that it made me look at SEO in a totally different perspective.

What you need to know about getting traffic to your website is that there are a multitude of ways to get it done. But none of these traffic strategies will work well for you unless you take action and use them in your business everyday. This is something that is very important, because if you don’t follow through on your traffic strategies, how do you expect to get a constant stream of traffic coming in everyday?

This is something that you need to think about before claiming that nothing works for your business. I’m willing to bet that the best marketing strategies out there will work wonders for you if you put them into overdrive. This is my model for my business. I don’t just do 1 strategy and call it a day. I do like 10 different strategies and put them all on overdrive.

You need to do the same thing for your business if you want it to work for you. Getting traffic can be made easy or hard – it’s totally up to you to find out for yourself. If you want traffic, you have to be willing to stick it out for the long haul. While there are many traffic strategies out there, only about 7-10 of them will bring you the most results that you are seeking.

Some of the strategies that you need to focus on are article marketing, video marketing, and forum marketing. These 3 traffic strategies play a big role in my internet marketing campaign. I’m willing to bet that if you put them into use, and use them big time… you’ll more than likely see the results that you are looking for in your internet business.

Take these tips and use them to have the success in your business that you have always dreamed of.

Good luck with using these internet marketing tips.

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing Gems, Internet Marketing Gems I Learned, internet marketing tips, Internet Marketing Videos, The Best Online Home Small Business Ideas and Tips

SEO or search engine optimization, when used correctly can get you tons of free organic traffic from the almighty Google. When it comes to SEO practices, there are two main categories – Onsite SEO and offsite SEO. In this article I will explain the differences between the two and how you can target both of them.

Onsite SEO means optimizing your website or blog internally to boost your page ranking. There are many ways to do this – keyword optimization, onsite linking among posts and pages, using anchor text links, tagging posts, alternative text for images etc. Keyword density is an important factor as excessive use of a certain keyword can make you penalized. Fully optimizing your website content is a pre-requisite for good SEO points but it won’t be enough, you’ll have to incorporate off-site SEO methods together in order to be ranked higher in Google.

Offsite SEO involves getting back links from various sources on the internet which does not belong to your website. Back links are basically people from other websites linking to your website. The higher quality the back link, the more Google juice you will get. People sharing your website on social networks and talking about your website also constitute as offsite SEO. You can get a variety of back links from many credible sources such as other people’s blogs (of the same niche), Twitter, web 2.0 pages such as Hub pages and Squidoo, and even YouTube. In summary, the key to getting high placement on Google’s search engine and successfully using SEO is to have good onsite SEO and offsite SEO.

The internet has evolved from an information providing hub to a place of online social interactions which can be seen through social media sharing, blog commenting and reviews. Conclusion It is always advisable do both on site and off site search engine optimisation in order to ensure that you get the best of both of the major SEO components.

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: On-site and Off-site SEO Explained, On-Site vs Off-Site SEO tactics, On-Site vs. Off-Site SEO, The Difference Between Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO, What is The Difference between On Page and Off Site SEO

What is a Sales Funnels?

The sales funnel begins by capturing the interest of prospects. A certain percentage of prospects get persuaded to buy and purchase a basic level product, demonstrating they need to have what’s available and are prepared to invest money to resolve their problem. A sales funnel will then continue to engage with the very best clients, eliminating mismatches and zoning in on the particular target client, offering them more specific services and products, usually at higher prices.

By the finish of the procedure, the funnel has identified the ultra-responsive clients who buy every thing available and obtain the most value and satisfaction out of every purchase made. It’s from these super-responsive customers that almost all profits are created.

Optimizing for profit

Sales funnels are, basically, just a blueprint for your lead to sale procedure. You can start with, say, one thousand leads (i.e. site visitors). One hundred of these leads may click on the sales page url for your product, fifty could click on the ‘Order Now’ button and be taken to the shopping cart and 10 might actually finish the sales process and purchase the product. If your funnel begins with 1000 prospects and finishes with 10 sales, then that is a 1% conversion ratio.

In reality, though, the sales funnels for most online businesses are actually very complex.

This due to all the different kinds of website traffic that visit websites, the various kinds of behaviour that need to be assessed, the buy and connection outcomes and the number of varied ways a visitor may become a buyer.

To produce a more streamlined sales funnel, you firstly have to identify each and every way people can enter the funnel, see where they’ve originated from, what their agenda is and where they’re at in the purchase cycle.

Then, you need to identify every activity that somebody can undertake on the website: read some content, read more content, contribute to a newsletter, view a social networking profile, buy something, or exit the website.

Finally, you ought to identify the measures to place on every activity: the time on the page, the entry path, the exit path, etc.

Then, you analyse this info and come up with all of the different pathways a visitor may take during your funnel. The key is to not change your website yet.

When a funnel is designed and the systems have been put in place, start compiling reports at each stage to comprehend how your funnel operates in reality.

Try out this in your weblog. Once you’ve collated enough information to begin making decisions, I guarantee you will see obvious points of failure in your process and they’re likely to appear in two main areas:

1) A webpage that does an excellent job at encouraging a different behaviour (i.e. instead of keeping somebody in the sales funnel).

2) A webpage that, basically, does not move a person to another part of the funnel.

Initially, you’ll probably feel as if there’s a lot to get through, so you’ll have to prioritize the changes you wish to make. Concentrate on the areas which are costing you the largest quantity of sales (which might be at the end of the funnel).

With effort, focus and time you can see huge improvements in the performance of your site and never have to attract one new visitor. Sounds good doesn’t it?

Talk to you in the next post,

Alexis.

Technorati Tags: How to Optimize the Sales Funnel, How to Optimize Your Sales and Marketing Funnel, How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel for Success, Sales Funnel Optimization

There is a decision to be made when launching a SEO strategy for a global business. SEO means Search Engine Optimization and describes a use of techniques to boost visibility on a search engine. Usually, if you represent a global firm, there will be an arsenal of tricks that can be utilized to ensure your company appears on the first page of a web search. Yet if you are trying to target consumers and audiences around the world, the issue becomes more complex. The majority of the Internet community, over half in fact, speaks English. Though while it might be seen as the lingua franca, English may not be the best way for a company to communicate with its target audience or to make itself more visible online.

The major choice is whether to define SEO by language or country. Each has its own individual benefits, along with drawbacks that can help a global firm raise its profile in its target market online. The answers to which to choose will provide the framework for an effective SEO strategy.

SEO by language

Defining SEO by language means covering several countries and with them native speakers.

Benefits

Using a language approach to SEO is by far the cheapest option. With an understanding of existing and target customer base, knowing what language they speak means a website just needs to be set-up in that mother tongue.
The ease with this option means that language can cover a great deal of geography, while involving a fairly simple set-up. English encompasses US, UK, Australia and Canada. French covers France, Belgium, some African countries, parts of the Middle East, Switzerland and Canada. Spain covers Spain and South America as well as parts of Central America. Portuguese, Mandarin, Farsi each of these languages cross borders making it easier to be visible to consumers or potential clients searching in their native tongue.

Drawbacks

Defining SEO by language, while cheaper, can prove to be more costly in the long run. The nuances of language and linguistics define each market and community. Mis-use and it can become a glaring error. Slang and colloquialism, even the use of language in different context, each of these feed into how a community develops and for a firm to reach that community they need to use language in the same way. For example ‘localisation’ is the correct spelling in the UK, but ‘localization’ in the US. Say the firm developing the SEO strategy is a clothing or fashion company. This use of language and vocabulary can feed into what keywords to use and what consumers will put into a search engine. A US consumer would search for ‘pants’ while a UK shopper would search for ‘trousers’. You would opt for ‘pullover in the US but ‘jumper’ in the UK. For ‘sneakers’ in the US you would need to replace with ‘trainers’ in the UK and ‘joggers’ in Australia.

The way search engines use location and how this affects the ranking of websites needs to be taken into consideration if you use language as the key method for SEO. Localized content needs to be arranged in terms of sub domains and sub directories that are separate. Google’s Geographic Target Tool uses location as a method for defining search results. A user in France gets different results compared to a user in the UK, for example. If using a generic domain, like .com or .org you can give Google information in terms of geography and location making it easier to reach a target market in a specific place.

SEO by country

Defining SEO by country may seem like a more technical option and requires a greater understanding of search engines in individual countries and target markets yet many see it as a more effective way of boosting the visibility of a website or product online.

Benefits

The localized approach in terms of SEO is seen as a way of connecting with a target market more effectively, and ensuring a brand is more visible within search engines. One of the principle techniques is what is known as the Country-Code Top Level Domain, or ccTLD, like .us, .uk or .mx. This has a range of benefits. First of being ‘local’ makes a difference to search engines who boost a ranking for a local site over an international one. This is compounded if the IP address is also local and the severs are. Secondly in terms of brand this helps a company seem more part of the local community. Consumers are often drawn to brands that are national, as opposed to multi-national. Companies can opt for .org.net or .com but these geographically neutral domain names, while often cheaper may not be as effective.
Search engines like locality. As well as the IP address the local information on the page feeds in as do incoming links. If a website is based in France, has the .fr domain then to boost SEO the firm should target other websites who share the country domain to link to them.
It is worth noting these factors are largely defined by Google rules. Google is not the only search engine in the world, and is not the most dominant search engine in many countries even.

Drawbacks

In driving SEO by country there is a risk of duplicating content which can often undo all the good work as search engines will tend to reduce the ranking of firms that have several websites with the same information. A website in the US with the same wording and content as one in the UK might appear lower on a search engine.

To minimize this risk content needs to be re-written. Language changes and modifications can be made to ensure each target market has the right keywords, linguistic usage as well as variety will help please not only a search engine but also a local consumer. Using a native speaking copywriter to help re-draft content, as well as researching the right words to use for keyword searches is vital, if time intensive.
This, however, is costly. The second major drawback of defining SEO by country is just that, cost. Buying domain names for each target market and also paying for a native speaking copywriter. The time taken to research and understand each market. This is expensive, particularly if this is an area of expansion and the target market is not one where the brand name is well known and has an existing consumer base.

The best approach

SEO requires research to help boost visibility online and reach consumers. In truth a combination of language and country is most effective when developing a SEO strategy. Using the right language, making a brand seem local will help it connect and appeal much more effectively with the target market.
Researching keywords so that language is correct in terms of linguistics and vocabulary will eliminate many potential problems and incorrect usage.

Using sub-domains for each target country can provide the benefit of using a language driven SEO solution while also understanding the importance of country and location to search engines. This can also be an effective initial investment before launching a fully hosted site and SEO campaign. The response to the sub-domains can be tracked and, based on the results, you can then make a decision of how to move forward. A good response and it could be worth investing in a full country-hosted site and SEO campaign to boost visibility.

Technorati Tags: international SEO, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO by country, SEO by language

The whole search engine optimization process can be broadly divided into two categories that are on-page and off-page SEO practices. You have to take care of both the factors in order to achieve desired results for your web site’s rankings. In this post, we will be discussing about on-page activities involved with SEO. However, you must remember that some of these factors may change their degree of potential due to constant updates from Google in its search engine algorithm for ranking websites. You can always hire a web development company with proven SEO capabilities to optimize your website according to major search engines as they usually have expertise in SEO services.

The key factors associated with on-page SEO are:

Meta Tag/Title: The title tag should have less keyword and should clearly define your website. Meta tags have lost their importance in Google due to some unethical SEO techniques used by people but they still hold importance in other major search engines. You must remember that you are optimizing your website for all major search engines and not only for Google.

H1, H2 and H3 Tags: You must use your most relevant keywords in H1 tags as they help the search engine crawlers in understanding the information on the page. Also, utilize H2 and H3 tags by using more keywords in them and optimizing your WebPages for most desired keywords. Make sure that there is variation in different tags as similar keywords in multiple tags is just a waste of tag. Use nested approach while adding keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags.

Resolve Canonical Issue or 301 Redirects: The domain name of your website could be prefixed with www as in www.xicom.biz or could also be simply xicom.biz. You can get the 301 redirect access for any name that you want. However, it is suggested that you get the redirect access to your website for both type of names as it is always better than going for any one name.

No-Follow Tags: Do-follow links should be used while creating links to your own pages from your site otherwise you should use no-follow tags while linking to non-relevant niche sites. Also make sure that you are not linking to spam sites as it will have negative effect for your website’s ranking.

Alt Tag: Optimizing the images on your website is also beneficial for your site as it informs the search engines about the images on your website. Use proper keywords to define the images and make them relevant to the page and image.

Fresh and Great Content: As every one know in seo that “the content is king”. Fresh and great content is like blood for your website. New content should be regularly posted on the site as it brings search engines more frequently to your website to check and crawl it. Use proper keywords in the content with proper frequency.

There are many more things that you can do for better on-site SEO of your website such as creating XML site map, proper robot.txt file, minimal HTTP request, proper and easy navigational design etc but the above mentioned tips will be a good point to start and you can always include new activities once you are through with the most important ones.

If you are taking help of a SEO company offering reliable SEO services then you should be very careful while hiring the service provider and conduct some research and investigation to make sure that they can deliver successful results.

About the Author: Chris Miller is a blogger cum developers @ Xicom Technologies which is a leading Software development company offering software development, web application development services, custom software development, IT outsourcing services, mobile apps development, it consulting & BPO services. Custom Web Application developments service from a leading web development company.

Technorati Tags: SEO, seo services