Facebook Fan Page

Rest Area by Joel Kaplow

A face book fan page is now essential for any business.Facebook still remains a social media platform but given the amount of traffic it gets,no business can ignore it.

It can be a two edged sword though because once you are up there people are going to tell the world what they think of you good or bad.But if your company is committed to excellence then you have nothing to fear do you?

Facebook now has an Alexa ranking of 2,second only to Google so if you want traffic then you must go to where the traffic is.

It is important to keep your personal Facebook profile separate from your business and with Fan Pages you can achieve this.

So what are the best ways to optimize your Fan Page profile?

1.Decide on a suitable name for your Fan Page.Choose well because once it is set you will start to accumulate SEO points.Change it and you will go back to zero.

2.Make sure you utilize  the static FBML application which allows you to insert your own web page and web form into your Fan Page Profile.In effect your Fan Page becomes and extension of your website or blog.

3.Use the information tab to include keyword rich content that describes your business and backling to your company website.

4.Ensure your are regularly updating  your wall with both valuable content as well as promotional links to your company website.

5.Make sure you get people linking to you as the more inbound links you have the better you SEO ranking.You should know that once you have 25 other Facebook followers  you get to choose your URL.

6.Mix up your content.Don’t just use words upload video and pictures too.With pictures use descriptions with your chosen keywords.

7.As well as liking your fan page,get your fans to post comments on your wall.The links between your page and theirs will be seen by Google as a thumbs up for your page.This can only mean a better page ranking.

Implement these strategies now and  you will drive more traffic to your website.

Yours in Mastery

Andrew Collinson

How To Monetize Your Website

It is important to have a monetization strategy as you build your blog or website.Sure you want to be giving away great free content  put at some point there has to be a buy button on your site.That or some other form of monetization such as advertising.So let’s look at what’s out there.?

Most people start with Google Adsense as it is easy to install and you can forget about it once it’s on your site.Adsense is  the other side of Adwords.Google will place ads on your site that are related to your site’s niche.These advertisers pay each time one clicks through from your site to their’s.Google keep about 75% of the charge and give 25% to you.

You cannot rely on this strategy alone for your internet lifestyle income as initially the traffic to your site will not be enough to earn anything substantial.Only sites that get massive traffic do well from Adsense.

The other problem with Adsense is that people will click away from your site to another which may be a competitor of yours.So even though you get an income from that click you may be helping a competitor more than yourself.

On the plus side the ads that appear on your site will give you ideas on future topics to write about.It’s also useful to go these sites and see who is linking to these sites.Backlinks as we know are important in improving your ranking.

You can find out who links to any website by going to Alexa.com.Type in the name of the website you want details on,then click on the “sites linking in ” tab.

This will list all the sites.You can then contact the site owners and see if they will link to you.

Affiliate links

Depending what your site is about you can promote digital affiliate products or physical products.

For the former go to Clickbank or Pay dot Com and for physical go to Commission Junction or Amazon who sell a whole range of products not just books.At Clickbank you browse products in your niche then you either grab a banner ad of the product you select or just use a text link.

Private advertising

This is where companies approach you to advertise on your site.This will only happen once you start to rank highly on Google.

So have a message on your navigation bar that invites people to advertise with you.This will lead to a page you create which allows the visitor to leave their contact details.

You then contact them a do a deal.

As to the price well that’s up to you but think of a figure a double it and see what reaction you get.They may say yes.

One way of estimating demand is to use the Google Keyword tool to see what Google are charging for the keyword that relates to you potential advertise.

If say it’s $2 per click and you’re getting say 5000 visits a day to your site,well assume a 5% click through on the ad.Your advertiser would be paying $500 per month if they an Adsense ad on your site.

So negotiate something a bit below this figure.

These are just a few ways of generating income on your site.I’ll be looking at some more in future posts.

Writing good content

Writing good content will always beat SEO because it is good content that Google is looking for.

That is why they have are now giving more weight to backlinks from sites with high page rankings because then they know the content must be good.

So what can you write about?

There is a temptation to go for a subject you are already an expert on and this makes sense most of the time,because less research is required.However it can sometimes be an advantage to pick a niche you know very little about but would have high monetization potential.

The advantage with this approach is you can get into the mindset of a visitor to your site who know little about the subject themselves but wants to learn more.So what questions would you ask if you were a newbie to a niche?The answers to those questions will form the content of your site.

If you need inspiration as to what questions would be asked go to Yahoo Answers and do a search on your niche.Somebody,hopefully,will be asking the questions you can give answers to.

What is your keyword phrase?

You must decide on your site concept keyword that will go in your URL if possible.This is a word that has good demand but not too much competition.You can use the Google Keyword Tool for that and as for competition just type the keyword into Google and under the search result you will get a number.If it’s not too big,under a million ,then you are in business.

It is important that there is depth in your keyword so any derivative of that keyword still gets good traffic.It is no use if your keyword has good demand but any derivative gets little traffic.You will have a very small website if you go after such as keyword.

After building up a good list of keywords that have your primary keyword in it,you want to find good keywords that are related to your keyword but do not have the keyword in it.An example would be a primary keyword of rock climbing having a secondary keyword phrase of climbing rope.

I use a website building system called Site Sell which has a great keyword search tool.It will pull in all the keywords that relate to your primary keyword phrase, some you just would not have thought of.

So do you keyword research first before you ever start thinking about SEO.If you keyword phrase gets no traffic or would be difficult to monetize then you should move on to another niche. Site Sell also has a great tool called Brainstorming which you can use when you know the general area you are looking at.It will bring back more specific niches which you can then research futher.

All this research may seem to take a long time,but believe me you will be glad you did when the money starts rolling in.

How to set up a blog

How to set up a blog

If you a going to create a niche site then there are two options create a web site or create a blog.In this post I am going with a blog seeing as how this platform is one!

Which blogging platform to use.

There are several platforms including WordPress.org,WordPress.com and Blogger.com.The last two are free services but the URL you will be assigned includes blogger or wordpress which detracts from the professional image you will want to portray.It’s like using a Hotmail account for your business you just don’t do it.

The best option is WordPress.org which gives you greater flexibility and your own URL.There is a cost to pay being the purchase of the domain name which is around $10 per annum.I use Namecheap.com which offer domain names slightly lower than the big ISPs such as GoDaddy.

For hosting I would recommend Hostgator where for $7.95 a month you can host an unlimited number of websites or blogs.In fact you can install WordPress inside you cpanel in a matter of seconds.Once the site is live you can change the theme from the WordPress default theme to another be it free or paid.

If you do use say Namecheap to register the domain name and Hostgator for hosting you will have to change the Nameserver settings inside Namecheap so they point to Hostgator but there are instructions inside both Namecheap and Hostgator as to how this is done.

Plug Ins

There are a number of plugins that you will need to optimize the blog for the search engines.They are:

1. All In One Seo- This plug in overrides your normal WordPress setting for the page title and description.A box will appear at the base of any post you are writing where you can insert the title and description that will appear in the Google search results.The title is the bit that appears as dark blue in Google and the description is the bit that comes next.Be sure to use your keyword phrase in both.There is also a box for keywords that are inserted in the HTML metatag part of you page but do not appear on the page.

These keywords are not given as much weight as they once were,because people were using keywords unrelated to the page in order to gain high ranking.Google now give more importance to backlinking from sites with a high page ranking.

2. XML Site map- this plug in creates a file that is used by the Google spiders to index the site.

3.Easy Privacy Policy creates a privacy policy page plus privacy content which Google likes to see.The page is automatically shown in your navigation bar.

4.Permalinks allows you to alter the url of your blog post so that you can incorporate your keyword phrase.

 
You want to select the custom structure option as shown above and the use the coding /%postname%/.Then when you write a post you can change the file name to whatever you want.

5.You will want to track where your traffic is coming from so you can use Google Analytics.This plug in will link to a Google Analytics account you have already created.You can set up your account here.This plug in gets round the problem of inserting the analytics code in your html directly if the thought of that makes you nervous.

The Theme

The next important part is the look and feel of the blog.Just as with hosting you can have free or paid themes the latter giving you more flexibility but if you are on a budget then the free ones do just fine.Look for the appearance tab on your wordpress dashboard and look for the themes option.

This will open a page which shows the current theme you have but look for a search box where you can find more to chose from.There is even a filter function where you can specify the colours used and how many columns are deployed.Then with one click the current theme is removed and your new one goes in.It’s that simple.

Content

Once you have completed all these tasks you are ready to write your first blog post.Remember each blog post must be keyword focused so you need to know what are good keywords to write about in your niche.We can say the people come to the internet looking for information that will solve a problem.They will not stay on your site or buy from you if you are not offering a solution to a problem.

So you need to find they keyword phrases people are using to find those solutions and then build blog posts around those keywords.I use Wordtracker for my research though this is a paid service.For free keyword searches use the Google keyword tool.

Another tool to find what question are being asked in your niche is to go to Yahoo Answers .There is a search function where you can find the questions.As well as getting post ideas you can start answering the questions yourself and post a link back to your blog.

Well this post has gone on rather a bit so look out for the next one where I will go into more content strategy as content will always beat SEO in the end, as it is content  that people really want.

Happy Blogging

Andrew Collinson

Backlinking-strategies-that-work

Backlinking Strategies That Works

Building multiple backlinks to your website is vital if it is to rank highly on the search engines.One of the most popular methods is to write articles which can then be “spun” to produce even more versions.These are then posted in article directories which contain links back to your website.

The Google spiders see all these backlinks and start to rank your website.The problem is if you use one of these article submission sites then Google will see all these backlinks going to your site and know it’s unnatural.The use of these article submitters may therefore be counter productive.

The solution is to have a a tier of sites that point to your main site and have all the mass submitted articles point to this tier of sites.These are sites which have high Google ranking and can therefore handle and massive amount of inbound links.Google would have no problem with this.

Then you link from that tier of sites back to your main page so that the SEO linking can happen without Goole getting suspicious.The sites for this protective tier are

1. WordPress.com ( not WordPress.org where you have to pay for a domain name and hosting.)
2. Blogger.com-free and owned by Google.
3. Squidoo.com created by Seth Godin.
4. Hubpages has a PR of 6 and an Alexa ranking of 188 at the time of writing this article.

So now I have shown the reasons for this system let’s see how it works:

Create an article for your niche site.

You first write and article that is original or outsource this function if you are confident with this method.I use Elance.com when I outsource.You will need to find someone good to work with who has a strong track record in your niche.The article should be 400 to 600 words in length.Post this article to your blog and ensure is optimized for the search engines using All in One SEO plug in.

Set up your tier of website that surround your niche site.

These are the sites mentioned above and are all free.You will need to create content for each site and ensure there is a link back to your main site.You can re-use the same content as the article or blog post by creating a You Tube video which you can embed on the Squidoo/Hub page site with a hyperlink from You Tube.

Submit to the article directories

You do this using your article submission software.I use  Submityourarticle.com which spins your article first  then submits it over a number of days, the choice is yours as to how many days.All the big article directories are covered such as Ezine.com and GoArticles.com.

Make sure these article link to your Squdioo,Hubpage WordPress.com and Blogger.com pages NOT your niche site.

Rinse and repeat

Go back to step one and start again.The whole process will take some time unless you outsource and for me is all free except the article submitter software which is a paid service.

Tel me what your strategies are to get backlinks  by leaving a comment and let’s see who’s got the best system.

Keep your blog comments out of the spam box

You will know that posting comments on other people’s blogs is a great way to get back links to your site.Go after sites that have a high PR ranking and Google will like that.

The problem is that many blog owners throw out most of the blog comments they receive as they are just computer generated spam.Most have a Word Press plug in called Akisnet which does the job for them.If you don’t have this plug in install it now.I expect you are being overwhelmed with spam if it’s not installed.

Whilst this plug in is great it can weed out legitimate comments,comments perhaps made by YOU on  a blog.So you need to know how to post comments if you are to get through the filter.Here’s what to do:

1. Use your real name not  some name stuffed with keywords.
2. Link to your home page not a specific page on your blog as Akismet will notice this and mark you as spam.
3. Leave long comments that add value to the debate that is going on.This is the big one.If you just say ” great post” that will be deleted.Show you have read the post and then add something that will help people.The blog owner will like you for it and encourage you to come back.People will see your helpful comments and come to your blog.
4. Avoid “spammy” words such as any relating to gambling,debt consolidation or hair loss!

Follow these simple rules are you will get through the Akismet filter.

How to you get through the spam filters?Leave a comment and let me know.

Website Traffic Generation:How to get some more

There are many ways to generate traffic.Most have been round for some time,but I thought it would be useful to go through them so we are all crystal clear how it's done.

1. Use many sources as in that way if one falls over you are not badly affected.For example Google are notoious for "slapping" people for no apparent reason and your business could die if that was your sole source of traffic.Many sure the clicks are coming from many places.
2. Once you have a strategy in place learn how you can build a system and then automate it,so you are not constantly coming back to check how's going.You only do that if the traffic dries up.
3. Decide what you want your visitors to do when they come to your site.Is it to buy a product or opt into your list?Once you are clear on this you can create a conversion environment that works eg a lead capture page or sales page.
4. Track everything using Google Analytics or other tracking software such as http://www.woopra.com.

Was this of use to you?Leave your comments and let me know.

Yours in mastery

Andrew Collinson

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Traffic generation via SEO or search engine optimization is one of the least understood, yet effective traffic generation strategies in online marketing these days.

Are you using a website to promote your online business?  (If you said no, stop right here and go set it up NOW – your online business is useless without a lead capture/landing page!!!)

If so, you may have found yourself a bit frustrated – to say the least! – by how difficult it can be to generate targeted traffic to your website.

Many marketers launch websites (or just use their company duplicated site, which is also a huge no-no) with the “build it and they will come” mentality, thinking that simply having a site is the key to successful traffic and lead generation.
Unfortunately, no matter how much time or money you have sunk into your online presence, building a website is not enough.

In order to make your website truly work for you, you need to use search engine optimization (SEO) to get targeted traffic to your website

Search engine what?…
Q:  What is search engine optimization | SEO?
A:   Search engine optimization involves generating traffic to your site through being ranked high in search engines for your chosen keywords.

Q:  Why should you care?
A:   Search engine optimization robots look for keywords , and having them in your content will help your site to achieve a position high up on the search result rankings.

Think about the last time you did a Google search.

How many pages of results did you look at to find the information you wanted?
Chances are you didn’t look past the first page or two of results. If you are on page 4 of Google you might as well not exist.

The same is true with the vast majority of internet users — if they don’t find what they’re looking for on the first page, they usually either give up or try a different search phrase.

There are several good SEO keyword tools I use Wordtracker  to find keywords relevant to your business and generate more traffic for your site via search engine optimization.

Spend some time finding out what people are searching for in Google and other search engines… and use these keywords in your content.

This includes not only the text of your website, but also your image tags, title tags, and page descriptions.
It takes quite a bit of time to use search engine optimization to gain more traffic for your site — time that you would probably rather spend talking to prospects.

HOWEVER, by properly optimizing your site for search engines, you can generate targeted traffic much more effectively — and spend your time capturing email addresses through your autoresponder like Aweber, instead of hunting for those leads.
 

Re-engineering the same article

1. We all know that to be be on the first page of Google we need to have lots of back links to our sites.One of the best ways of getting those backlinks is through article writing.Ezine.com is the daddy of them all. You write an article and then use the resource box to link back to your website or lead capture page.

The trouble is you need lots of articles to get up the rankings and it’s hard to think of new things to say.

To over come this problem what you can do is say the same thing in several articles, but in a slightly different way.So consider the problem you are offering a solution to in your article, then present it in the ways I’ve shown below.

1. Your top ten tips on how to solve the problem.
2. Frequently asked questions about the problem.Answer them.
3. A  How to list which solves the problem.
4. Common mistakes and errors  made by people in trying to solve this problem and how they can be avoided.
5. 5 steps to solve the problem.
6. Myths about this problem.
7. Rules about this problem.
8. Stories about this problem and how the problem was overcome.
9. Checklist of the things to do to solve the problem.
10. The warning sign that this problem might be heading your way and how it can be avoided.

See how you can take just one article and turn it into 10.No need to think of fresh content just say it slightly differently.

Finding a JV partner

One of the ways to grow your list is to JV or joint venture with someone who is also in  your niche.

There is a right and wrong way of approaching a potential JV partner.

1.Until you have a big list do not approach the big gurus like Frank Kern or Eban Pagan,they will ignore you.

2.Find up and coming marketers in your niche and start posting on their blogs or Facebook Fan Pages.Try and be a bit controversial,as the blog owner may come back to you.Then you get a conversation going and you will build trust.Then offer to promote THEIR product to your list.Once you have helped them they will want to help you.A good way of promoting to your list is to do a joint webinar with your JV.

3.A way of finding such up and coming JVers is to become an affiliate of one of the big boys as they launch a new product.They usually hold a competition to see which affiliates bring in the most sales.Google there people and find their blogs.Then start posting.

4.Still got a small list?Under 500?Build the list first,use Google Ads to drive traffic to your squeeze.

Hope that helps,what strategies do you use to attract JVs?

All the best

Andrew