Success With Marc

Today, I want to let you know about two internet marketing tips that are related to EzineArticles.com.  The first tip is to use the EZA Twitter Directory to discover other marketers who you can follow on Twitter.  EZA has set up an author directory listing authors who have signed up to have their Twitter followers notified whenever one of their articles is published.

Here’s the cool part! You can click on the link next to the author’s picture and see the titles of all of his or her articles published.  If you like the the type of articles written, you can click the twitter link and choose to follow.  I did this for Jeff Herring, and discovered that he wrote about article marketing, and now I’m happily following his tweets.

Jeff is the source for the 2nd tip.  If you write a lot of articles as part of your marketing strategy, then an easy way to get people you know or meet to read them is to get a domain name that is forwarded to your profile page at EzineArticles.com. Jeff suggests something like “ArticlesByYourFirstName.com”.  This will give that person access to all your article links, your blog links, and your social marketing links just by entering ArticlesByMarc.com .  I think this idea is awesome, and just another reason that Twitter is an amazing marketing tool.

If you like this second tip, I get all my domain names at GoDaddy.com. I usally pay $9.95 per year, but there’s a button link to the left where you can get the domains on sale for $6.95 per year.

So, there’s two good marketing tips. I hope that you find them useful..

Technorati Tags: ezine articles, internet marketing tips, twitter

If you’re like most internet marketers, you spend some time working on your site search engine ranking. There are plenty of reports, books, and experts on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) right now as more people compete to rise to the top of the search engine rankings. Type ‘SEO’ into Google and you’ll see 39 million pages dedicated to that keyword!

A lot of buzz about Don Crowther and his presentation at BlogWorld Expo 2008 hit the blogs and Twitter this week.  Unfortunately, I didn’t attend the event, but if the participants attending his seminar walked away with what I’ve learned from him this past week, then it must have been a highlight of the conference.

I received my package from Stompernet.com last week, and I’ve enjoyed many of the articles in their magazine publication. However, the one that truly stands out for me is Don’s article about the anatomy of a site search engine ranking.  SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) is a critical part of online success as a marketer, or any business for that matter.  SEO, or knowing how the search engines decide which pages get ranked at the top, is what a lot of us want to know and invest money or time trying to figure out.

I won’t cover the entire article. It’s rich and jam-packed with a full 3 pages on SEO tips.  I’ll cover some basics in the hope of getting a dialogue started in the comments.  Let me know what you think and what tactics are you using to achieve high search engine ranking.

Don breaks down search engine engine criteria into two groups:

• On-page factors which you control
• Off-page factors controlled by others.

Let’s focus on what we control first.  Don lists 16 things that we can do to our sites or posts to improve rankings.  I’ll share 4 of them.  I don’t want to risk infringing the copyright  with Stompernet. Here’s a hint: I included most of the other tactics within this post if you wish to look for them. I’ll update about this page’s progress in the rankings in the next few days.

1. Use keyword rich title tags - Make sure that your title tags have your keywords. Your title is shown at the very top of your browser. Don’t leave it blank, or only have your company/site name up there.
2. Write long copy - Don’t write short posts for all of your pages. The average page at the top of Google’s ranking is about the size of a good article. Search engines love content. I heard someone once say that text is great spider food.
3. Have clean URLs - Get rid of the ? and & in the page URL.  Many time the search engine spiders stop at the symbol and ignore what follows in the URL.
4. Add new content daily - This one is difficult to do, but vitally important. Content gives more for the search engines to index. Create one quality content rich post a day that targets a specific keyword everyday.

Off page factors is all about the links, that is all about the incoming links.  I’ll cover some of that information within the next week.

The basic take-away from Don’s article on SEO is to write great stuff that people want to link to, and your site search engine ranking will climb quickly.

In the meantime, there are definitely ways to structure your site and pages to help things along!

Technorati Tags: search engine ranking position, seo, serp

Looking for the best places to find an affiliate niche?  The key to making money in internet marketing isn’t the product; it’s finding the buyers.  Market research needs to come before finding a product, or even creating a product to sell online.

I’ve always put most of my energy into network marketing, so I’m relatively new to affiliate marketing. However, I’ve learned that determining the right hot niche saves time and makes money.  Once you find a niche, then doing further research into its size, the competition, the willingness of people in the niche to buy, etc. comes next, but first you need to find the best niche.

There are so many ways to find a niche, and here are my 10 best places to find an affiliate niche:

Google Hot Trends -Top 100 search terms or phrases on Google updated up to the minute (or pretty darn close)

AOL Hot Searches -Very extensive compilation of top AOL searches from electronics and celebrities to personal finance and travel…and more.

Technorati Popular - Top searches, Top Blogs by fans, Top Blogs by authority. Great way to see what other blogs people want to visit.

Amazon Hot New Releases - Not only for affiliate products, but can you find a niche with many books or journals about it?

Ebay What’s Hot - Looks at eBay sales data to determine what’s in demand

Yahoo Buzz - Top searches and Top Stories based on votes, emails, and searches

Lycos 50 - Lists its Top 50 links for pop culture. Take a look at the lower right section of the page to subscribe to the Lycos 50 newsletter

eHow - How to do just about anything. Check out what people want to know

About Ask.com:IQ - Top weekly searches and advancing searches

Google Groups - Group directory by topics, size, language, region, and messages

This is a great starting list for finding that market ready to buy.  If you have any other places that you find helpful, please share them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, find a niche, internet marketing, niche