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Archive for October 31, 2009

bikram | October 31, 2009
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Why Would You Want to Build Backlinks

Everyone talks about backlinks, and some even tell you how to build backlinks. But what bothers a newbie a lot is the fact that seldom they are told about the many benefits of link building. Yes, you read it right. No link building is done for the sake of link building itself. There are much more to it. There are many benefits of link building, which you will be seeing in this post.

As we know backlinks are of two kinds: one-way backlinks and two-way backlink. One-way backlink means a backlink from a website to which you are not linking back, whereas, two-way backlinks means exchanging links from the website that links back to you.

One-way links are seen with much respect because it is assumed that you can get one-way link to your web page only when other webmasters think that the content of your webpage is worth sharing.

Purpose of link building

Traffic Boost up: A backlink to your web page works as a doorway through which people will enter into your website. The more backlinks you will have the more entry points you have created, and naturally the more entry points you will have the more people will enter. Strategically placed backlinks are the most potent way to pull targeted traffic to your website.

Page popularity

Backlinks also works to popularize your different pages. Unlike other marketing tools that work to promote the entire website, a backlink works to promote individual pages of the website. This is very important. Suppose, to build an e-mail list, you are offering one very valuable e-book for free on one of the pages of your website. But, despite the quality of the e-book and huge number of traffic visiting your home page, you have not been successful in pushing this free e-book as no one comes to your website.

What will you do?

You have to popularize your page, if you want someone to find this page. And to popularize your page what tool will you use? You can use any marketing tool you like, but backlinks are the most potent tool for this purpose.

Search engine ranking

Backlinks also play a crucial role in getting high ranking in search engines. The number and quality of backlinks matter a lot when it comes to ranking in the search engine. As said, it is not just the quantity but it is quality of the backlinks that matter much.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 28, 2009
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How Sam Built a Gigantic E-mail List

Sam is a master list builder who at times goes haywire, but most of the he is on track. Building e-mail list is one of those things in which Sam never go awry. In this post, I will explain the 4-step process Sam uses to build his huge e-mail lists that he further uses to sell his products.

Step 1: Create a hook and duplicate is umpteen times

If you want to pull people to enter their e-mail IDs and submit the form on your website then you will have to push quality freebies down their throat. I am not suggesting buying them a beer. Just offering free videos, e-book, how-to guide or podcast will be enough. Create one hook for you niche and make many copies of the niche and put it at strategic location on the web (pond), and wait for fish to take the bait.

Step2: Spread the word

Let as many people on the Internet know as you can. Use all possible channels to spread word about the wonderful freebie that you are offering.

Step 3: Create a Landing page

Create a simple landing page that may ask for the visitors name and address while making a promise to give access to the freebies once they have entered their mail ids and names. Do not make this page long, and keep the form above the fold of the website.

Step 4: Follow up

As soon as you get the mail IDs you were seeking, send a mail to their IDs with a link to the freebie. Write a small mail describing your purpose. You can also send a “thanks for downloading” mail once your visitor is done downloading the freebie.

This is a proven way to build huge mailing lists. You should replicate this step whenever you need to build mailing lists.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 25, 2009
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SEO SIMPLIFIED: When to Stop Internal Linking

There is wisdom in the suggestion that one should profusely link to various posts, both old and new, within the website. And the effect of internal linking on SEO and PageRank is also not exaggerated, but still there is something that does not seem right; at least not as a visitor.

As a SEO person you may tend to profusely use internal linking all through your website, but as with everything else, too much internal linking is bad. Let’s look at the picture below to understand what I mean.

To give you a proper perspective of how things are, let me give you some stats. In the above two paragraph that contains 211 words, we have 10 links: 8 links are pointing to internal pages of the website, while 2 are in-text advertisement links. This means we have 1 link every 21.1 words.

Of 211 words, which make the paragraphs, 48 words are used within links. It means 22.75% of total words have been used as links. In other words, around 1 of every 4 words has been used for inking.

Isn’t it too much?

I came across the above paragraphs while one of my random walks through the cyberspace, and I simply flinched. I was about to leave when the thought to talk about this hyper-interlining came to my mind. I thought to tell you how bad internal linking can get, if you do not use it in moderation. Too much internal linking makes the article or blog-post unreadable. It sours the visitor’s experience. People tend to stay away from such posts.

Ground rule for internal linking

In my view, one should not indulge in too much hyper linking. Limit internal linking to 10% of the total word count, and insert only one link every 75-100 words. This will serve your SEO purpose while keeping the post readable for the visitors. In extremely rare cases, you can tamper with this ground rule.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 24, 2009
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Holiday Gift Shoppers Goes Online

The shopping trend in the United States is witnessing a sea change, concluded the study by the marketing research companies MarketLive, Inc.  and the e-tailing group. Results from the “2009 Mindset of a Multi-Channel Shopper” survey has indicated that in 2009, around 55 percent of the US consumers will go online for shopping for the holiday season. And 26 percent responded said that they will purchase more gift online this year than they did last year.

Survey Highlights

  • 88 percent of the US shoppers are ready to pay full price for hard-to-find products.
  • 800 number, online chat, simple-to-use order status, e-mail alert of shipment, and other conveniences matters.
  • 85 percent of online shoppers still shops online to save their time.
  • 40 percent of respondent said that wish lists are important, whereas, only 38 percent gives any importance to reviews.
  • 33 percent people will shop online for Books, clothing, music, gift certificates, toys, and consumer electronic.
  • 62 percent respondents have exclaimed that they do not order online because of the high shipping rate, and if shipping is free then they will purchase more goods online.
  • Online shoppers have shown loyalty to their favorite online retailer, but 70 percent of the respondents have said that they will buy from the competitor’s store if the product they are looking for is not available with the retailer they usually buy from.
  • 60 percent respondents said that in-store pick-up of the product purchased online is important.
  • 1 in every 3 shoppers uses mobile phones for shopping-related activities like price checks, in-stock checks, and redemption of promotions this holiday season.
  • Shopping behavior of 37 percent people will get influenced by social networking sites this year. Last year the percentage was 24.
Category: Business | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 19, 2009
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Top 50 Online Properties in September 2009

The marketing research company comScore has released the ranking of top 50 websites in the United States for the month of September, and to no one’s surprise, Google site ranked number 1. In total Google sites served 165 million visitors. Yahoo! Sites gave a close fight with 160 million US visitors, and Microsoft sites took number 3 position with 133 million visitors.

Social media giants Facebook and twittered took 5th and 46th position respectively with 95 million and 21 million visitors. Shopping giant eBay served 70 million visitors and stood at 8th position, whereas, Amazon served close to 69 million visitors to take up 9th spot.

WordPress was the only blog platform to feature in the top 50 list. WordPress sites served more than 28 million visitors to stay on number 31, way ahead of twitter. See the picture below to know the complete list of websites featuring in top 50 websites for the month of September.

top-50-websites-september-2009

Category: Technology | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 15, 2009
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Basic Facebook Etiquette

Facebook is a killer app. It has literally killed many social networking sites. Most notables of them are Orkut, and MySpace. Yes, MySpace and Orkut are long dead, and what you see for Orkut and MySpace these days are nothing but the corpses.

Social networking sites are not the only things that Facebook killed during its rise to the status it currently enjoys, the social networking giant has also accidentally killed the basic etiquettes people had in pre-Facebook era. My goal in this article is to help people reinstate the good old ways of doing things. I want people to be considerate as they were in past. Hence, in this short blog post, I will point out the bad behaviors that Facebookers should avoid.

Basic Facebook Blunders

  1. Playing games and publishing all the updates (minor or major) is the first misconduct to go in the list. People are in the habit of playing multiple games and publishing even the tiniest of update. Avoid doing it. This act irritates everyone. Major updates could be okay.
  2. Sending numerous quiz requests is another bad behavior. It should be avoided. Do not send a take-this-quiz request to every friend in your list. This is a surefire way to make people angry. No one opens his mailbox to see how many quiz request he got.
  3. Do not send unlimited likes and dislike alerts. These updates piss people off.

At this moment, I cannot think of any more Facebook misdeeds that can cause others to flinch. Can you help me in listing more? Use the comment box below to do that.

Category: blogging, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 11, 2009
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Monetizing Blogs: Understanding Online Advertising

There are many ways in which a blog or a website can monetize its traffic. Some of them are quite common and easy to do, while others are time consuming and more complex. When I say easy to do then I do not mean that you will not require to do anything and money will flow. I am sorry to break your heart and hope, but this simply is not possible. All I meant with “easy to do” is that enrolling in such networks is easy and making money takes less effort than it will in the complex mechanism like selling merchandise, e-books, courses, consultations, etc.

Advertisement is one of the easiest sources of website monetization tools for online publishers. It is arguably the biggest source of revenue generation for an online publisher. If a properly targeted advertisement is placed above the fold then the blog or website owner can even expect to earn living from his online property, provided his website or blog has enough traffic.

In the following posts, I will cover in detail the different types of online advertising networks available for the publishers. The categorization of ad networks in the following posts will be on the basis of visitors’ interaction with the ads, not on the basis of ad formats like banners, text links etc. I will not concern myself with the format of ads, but with the kind of interaction or response the ads want from our visitors. Before I sign off for the day, I should give you the classification of online advertisements on the basis of required response from customers.

Types of ad networks

The entire gamut of online advertisements can be classified into three categories, which are:

  • CPA (cost per action)
  • CPC (Cost per click)
  • CPM (Cost per thousand)

For now, keep this in mind and in the next post, I will tell you what CPA is and the post following that will discuss CPC and the final post in this mini-series will tell you about CPM. I will also give you names of the major players in each category.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 7, 2009
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Domain Name Secret Unveiled

What is a domain name?

Domain name is a unique name given to each of the websites. There cannot be two websites with same domain name.

How to find a domain name?

There are many domain name registration company where you can choose a domain name of your liking and get it registered. The price of a domain name varies from extension to extension. Like .com, .net and .org extension comes for around $10, while .me comes cheaper.

Note 1: Currently, Gossimer is running a domain name promotion on .com, .net and .org domain names. You can purchase your .com, .net and .org domains for just USD 7.99. This is limited time offer so buy now before it goes back to its $10 level. Hurry!!!

Finding a domain name

Let me tell you that domain names are scarce resources, and almost all the 3 letters name has been taken and so has the four letters one. Hence, you need to think really hard on which domain name to choose. I am giving you a brief checklist below that will assist you in choosing a domain name. Before buying a domain name find the following:

  • What kind of business will you be in?
  • Do you have your keyword handy?
  • Is your domain name easy to remember?
  • Is it keyword rich?
  • Is it timeless? (Example: fifa2012.com will not be timeless. The utility of this domain will be zero after the fifa2012 world cup)
  • Are the spellings correct?
  • Can you find a right domain without using special characters like (-)?

Along with this, you also need to find the kind of extension you need. There are many domain extensions available. Some of them are very good while others are not so useful. If you want to buy a domain name then you should try to get .com for your domain, and if .com is not available go for .org or .net. If none of these are available for the domain name you have chosen then change the name unless you have specific use of that domain.

Country specific domain

If you are running a business exclusively for Indian market then getting a .in and .co.in domains is a good idea, as it is tightly focused on the market it is going to operate in.

Note 2: Gossimer has announced a Domain sale for .IN, .CO.IN, NET.IN, ORG.IN, GEN.IN, FIRM.IN, and IND.IN domains. You can get these domains for just USD 6.59. This is the cheapest you can ever get for country specific domain. Avail the discount and buy now!

Category: Domain Registration | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 6, 2009
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3 Cs of Blogging – Comment, Conversation and Community

Acquiring new users and keeping the existing ones is the goal of any blog. The blog’s success in these two departments will determine the overall success of a blog, and fortunately there is a way to do this. A system that will help you acquire new visitors and retain the existing ones. We call it 3 Cs of blogging: Comments, Conversation and community.

Comment

Comment is the life blood for your blog. This is the juice that flows only when you write a compelling post and ask people to send in their views by adding call to action at the end of each blog post. At the end of the post ask your visitors to leave comments, suggestions and their opinions about the post. This will prompt them to write on your blog.

The best way to get comment is to write something controversial. Having said that, it is worth mentioning that despite what you do, comment rate will never be more than 1-2 percent of the total readership.

Conversation

Take it like this: you started the conversation by writing a post, and the readers did their part by writing their views in the comment box, now it is again on you to respond to each comment to keep the conversation going. You should never stop responding to your visitors. You will stop getting comments, the moment you stop responding to your visitors, so keep the conversation flow swift and let the comment juice flow.

Community

A lot of two-way conversation builds a community on your website, a community of people that have similar aspiration and desire. Now it on you, the blogger, to keep the community intact by providing the community what it seeks. If you want to build a pool of loyal reader then do not ignore any reader. Respect each of them, and respect their views. By respecting their views, I do not mean to say that accept it. You have all the right to contest their views and think differently, but do it in such a way that it does not offend the visitors.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | October 4, 2009
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SEO Simplified: Writing Titles

Page title and titles of blog post play a crucial role in search engine optimization process. Generally, when write a blog we tend to use the same title for the blog post title and the page title, which in my view is a good practice. This makes a title even more important; therefore, it is imperative for us to know the right way to write a page title. Let’s see how we can write a search engine optimized page title.

Length of the title

Google displays just 67 characters including spaces for a title in its result pages, and yahoo and MSN displays the first 70 including spaces characters of a title. Hence, we need to keep our title length below 67 characters including spaces so that our titles are optimized for all three search engines.

Do not use stop words

Stop words are those words that thwart the flow of a title. Never use any stop words in your titles. Question mark (?), colon (:), and any other special characters are considered stop words for SEO. Avoid using them; if you have to use one then limit your use to hyphen or dash (-).

Keyword first

As the length of the title has been limited by major search engines, it is important for us to use our important keywords as early as possible in the title. If you do not do that then you always run a risk of keywords being missed out by search engines. Ideally, the first word of a title should be the main keyword of the article.

Duplicate titles

Duplicity is never regarded in high esteem by any one nor even by search engines. Do not use the title that has already been used by someone somewhere in the world. Do not write duplicate titles. After writing a title for your blog posts, make sure to check it in all major search engines to ensure that none of the indexed articles have used the title you are going to use.  Use the quotation marks around your titles when searching for it in search engines to get the exact match.

Category: SEO | Tags: ,
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