Archive for April, 2008
Online Video Marketing - How to Optimize your Videos for Search
Posted by Mark Robertson in General Marketing on April 30th, 2008
As you may have noticed, there is a ton of buzz out there about video search and marketing for video search engines, and there are a few posts out there with good information on how to upload your videos to these search engines, but most do not provide insight into the specific needs of SEO for video.
In order to successfully optimize your videos for search engines, it is important that you have some knowledge regarding the various aspects of search as well as the difference in techniques with regard to video.
As with Search Engine Optimization for webpages and text content, keyword research is an important first step. Prior to optimizing your videos, you will want to obtain a keyword target list. There are however, some difference with regard to how users search for videos vs. website and webpages. Namely, most users include the word “video” when doing a search. Make sure that your keyword list contains several variations with the word video, Examples - car videos, car video, racing video, automotive videos, etc….
The next step after you have generated a keyword list is to take a good look at the video search platforms to see which channels and categories, tags, etc… tend to get the most views, as well as to look at which platforms have the highest performance in views, ratings, etc… You will certainly want to submit your video to multiple sites but you will want to make sure that at the least, you submit your video to the more popular engines.
As a side note, pay attention to the audience that is already searching for the terms that you identified in your keyword research. Are there closely related terms that you did not include? Take a look at videos that are similar in terms of the keywords that you are targeting and view the comments and feedback from users to find related terms.
You will want to encourage readers to submit feedback as studies show that users who provide feedback tend to be more active and easier to convert. In other words, those users that provide feedback, typically are more likely to call, email, visit your site, etc…
It is much easier to get your video optimized and seen on search engine results pages when you are choosing a theme that does not already exist in mass. Dont make the mistake of creating videos that repeat videos already out there. Instead, choose fresh ideas and find a “content space” for your theme/keyword.
Studies have shown as well that users who watch videos are less interested in watching videos that are more than a few minutes in length. Try to target your videos to be less than 3 minutes in total length. If you have a very long video, perhaps try to create multiple segments or clips from the video targeting videos with 1-3 minutes in duration.
With video SEO, it is also important to take advantage of the ability to brand your video using watermarks, logos, text, or any additional information that will get users back to your main destination. That is the beauty of video search engine optimization. It does and will drive traffic back to your website or business.
So, if you want to get your video discovered, view, and consumed by more and more users, video search engine optimization is the way to go. This is a great new technique for getting maximum exposure to your business, and currently, this is such a new topic, that you can be one of the first to capture your keyword or theme with a video search result.
Affiliate Programs - How To Write Articles To Boost Sales
Posted by E Walker in General Marketing on April 30th, 2008
If you’ve been checking out this series of articles, you’ve seen how important it is for any serious affiliate marketer to have good web content. Good content can mean the difference between someone clicking onto your site and clicking away a moment later and someone staying for a while and then clicking through to buy the affiliate marketing product or service you’re trying to sell. But what if you just aren’t a very good writer? What if your mind is programmed for business, not English. Don’t worry, there are options for you.
Search the public domain. There are millions of articles that are currently in the public domain that you can use on your web site free of charge. A simple web search can bring up hundreds of these kinds of articles. And the best part is you can edit them, change them, alter them or do whatever you want to them so that they sound exactly like you want them to. You don’t have to worry about paying any authors or stepping on any toes. This is an excellent way to go if you don’t want to write content yourself.
You can pay companies to write content for you, and in most cases, it’s cheaper than you think, having in mind what the affiliate marketing payment are. When you consider how important good web content is, paying someone a few dollars to write exactly what you need isn’t such a bad idea. Of course, some companies charge more than others and it always pays to shop around, but don’t shut yourself off to the idea of paying for content. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money and this is one of those cases if you don’t want to write your own web content.
Maybe the best choice of the three is to simply read and learn. Spend a week or two clicking around on the Internet and reading the web content on other affiliate websites. Take as much of that content in and then try to write in a similar style about the product you’re trying to sell. You don’t instantly become the best writer in the world this way, but studies have shown that the more you read, the better writer you’ll be. Experience pays and the more you know about how to write in this style, the easier it will be.
Having solid web content can’t be overstated. You will never have a truly successful affiliate marketing website unless you have good content for your affiliate marketing sites. If you can’t write it yourself, you do have other options, but the best thing you can do is to learn how to write in this style. It will be an investment that will pay off time and time again.
Five Tips for Traffic Generation
Posted by Kacy Wong in General Marketing on April 30th, 2008
You will probably know that you have to create your own website when you are working as an affiliate marketer. Without any surprise you will also need to drive traffic to your site.
However, it is also commonly known that driving traffic to a web site is always a difficult task. This is why so many webmasters are discussing about ways to drive traffic on the web everyday. The follows are some ideas for you to get some traffic to your affiliate site.
You can drive traffic to your affiliate site by blogging. Yes you will try to start a blog. You will need to write something really interesting in order to attract more readers. And in your blog you will put a link back to your site. This will certainly help you to promote your affiliate site. As a matter of fact, it will also improve the link popularity of your site. And as a return your ranking in the search engine will also be improved. Yet you have to remember that you need to create at least a new blog post everyday.
Another way to promote your affiliate site is to promote it in the forums. Some people will be thinking of spamming the forums. However, this is not the way to do so. You have to remember that you are not doing advertising on the forums. Instead you are discussing with other members in the forums. You will only put your link in the signature file and it will appear under your every post.
Viral marketing is certainly one of the ways which have been proved to be very effective when web promotion is concerned. You will give away some free stuff such as an e-book in your site. Remember to grant your readers the right to give away the e-book and it will certainly create a snowball effect.
You can also take advantages of social networks like MySpace. The Facebook is another site that you may take advantages of. You will be able to drive a lot of traffic from these sites.
You can also drive traffic by article submission. This is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic. The readers of the articles will follow your link in your resource box and visit your site.
Undoubtedly you will need to drive quality traffic to your affiliate sites. This is the way to make money with affiliate marketing. You will be able to earn a lot of commission if you succeed in driving traffic.
Search Engines 101: Paid Search Vs. Natural Search
Posted by Alicia Kinder in General Marketing on April 30th, 2008
Search Engines
Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN are really just data bases. When you do a Google Search you are not searching the “world wide web” you are searching Google’s data base. There are two ways to get in to these databases. One is to submit your site to the different search engines. In about 6 to 9 weeks the search engine will index your site. They have software that comes to your site and index every page and adds it to the database. They come into your main web URL and follow the links to all the pages of your site. They capture key elements from the code on your page to the content. These are then stored in the data base. When someone puts a keyword in the search box the “algorithms” determine the best page or links to the best pages for your search.
The other way to get added to the search engines data base is to have the search engine software find you through a link to your site from another web site back to yours. The software, called “spiders” will periodically comeback and re crawl your site to see if you have updated it.
One important thing to know is that each page on your site is indexed individually and each page stands on its own. The ranking are based upon the combination of correct meta tags, relevant content to the keyword they are trying to get rankings for and link popularity. Mostly one way links back to their site from relevant sites.
As long as the search engine can index the site, clearly read the meta tags and content, the better. The big issues come when a site is built in flash with very little content (search engines cannot read or index “flash” sites. Also, if the bulk of the relevant content is in PDF format this is bad because the search engines cannot read PDF. If the search engines cannot index the relevant text there will be no rankings.
You all ready know this but “sites” are not ranked, individual pages are ranked for specific terms found in the content of that page as well as link popularity, (relevant links pointing back to that specific page) for the term that you are trying to get ranked on. This is why each page has to be giving very specific attention. Paid search
Paid search is when your ad shows up at the very top of a Google search or down the right hand side of the results page. These are called “sponsored ads”. You pay for those positions. When every you click on one of those ads the owner of the ad pays the search engine. This is also called “pay-per-click”. The amount you pay is determined by several factors including what you are willing to pay every time someone clicks on your ad.
Natural Search
Natural Search is when you type in a “keyword” and a link and a description shows up on left hand side of the search result page. The only way to get on the first page is to have very relevant content on your web site and links to your site from other relevant sites. This is a long process for people in it for the long haul. There are a lot of companies that claim to be able to get you on the first page of Google. That may be true if the “search term” is very specific and no one else would ever search for it but you or they are using a “black hat” method that could get you site banned from the search engine. Bottom line: Paid Search means you pay for your position. The benefit is, if you have the $$, you will get instant traffic. Stop paying and the traffic goes away. Natural search is free traffic but it is built over time. The advantage is, if done right, it can provide traffic for a long time.
Search traffic (paid or natural) is the BEST traffic to have because you are being found by folks who are specifically looking for what you have. It does not get any better than that.
Search Engine Marketing - What is Search Marketing?
Posted by Alicia Kinder in General Marketing on April 30th, 2008
If you run a business that operates on the Web you’ve probably heard that you need to do some search marketing but you might not know what search engine marketing is. Search marketing is the process of getting listed higher on search engine result pages so that your website is more visible to potential customers. Studies have shown that people are most likely to click on the top three or five sites listed on search engine result pages and probably will never look at the other pages that are listed. So you need to get your site listed on those pages in order to increase web site traffic that you need to really be successful. You can use search engine marketing to get your website listed higher on search engine result pages and get more customers.
Traditionally there are three different ways that you can use search marketing to get a better place on the search engine result pages. You can use SEO content or search engine optimization to make your site show up higher on the search engine result page or you can use ad placement or ad inclusion in search marketing. Paid placement ads are also known as pay-per-click ads and paid inclusion ads work in a similar fashion although they are different than paid placement ads. Most businesses choose to use the search engine optimization method.
In order to get great results when using search engine optimization to increase your search result page status you need to make sure that the SEO content you put up on the website is original and uses the keywords or key phrases that are related to your business the right number of times. If you use the keywords too much then the search engines will think you are stacking your webpage with copied content and your site will be dropped to the bottom of the list. If the keywords or key phrases are used too little then your page will end up not being on the first page of search engine result pages and if your business isn’t listed on the first page you might as well give up because chances are very high that no one will see you website.
Search engine marketing might seem sort of difficult to figure out at first but it’s just a necessary part of doing business on the Web. It would be nice if your next YouTube video went viral and millions of people found your website but unfortunately you can’t count on that. But if you learn more about search marketing and use a lot of search marketing to drive customers to your website you’ll see you a large increase in the amount of traffic that your website gets. And since the main thing that you need to be successful on the Web is to increase web site traffic, if you can successfully use search marketing you will start to see great results for your business in no time. Search Engine Marketing is really the best way to get noticed on the Web.