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Archive for November 29, 2010

bikram | November 29, 2010
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How to write Body text of a Print Advertisement?

Advertisements are not only informative, but also entertaining, involving and highly captivating. But an average advertisement falls flat, if it doesn’t have elements to keep readers hooked on to it. A print advertisement is most challenging, since it’s not interactive in nature and advertisements in dailies don’t even offer multiple viewing. Thus it’s very important to grab attention of the reader, interest him or her and stimulate desire to take action. A body copy is the most challenging part of a print advertisement, because it’s the detailed text, descriptive in nature – which generally people tend to overlook. But a good effective piece of body text may turn heads and persuade to read further. Body text is ideally the descriptive part of a print advertisement which talks about the product’s benefits, features, and whatever the advertiser wishes to communicate to its prospects.

A body text typically has three parts – Lead, Elaboration and Call to Action.

The Lead

Lead is typically the starting of the body text. It has to be extremely captivating, inducing readers to continue reading. It can start with a question or a piece of information or a surprising fact or a quotation. Choice is yours. All you have to do is hold the reader’s attention and induce to read on. It typically involves the first sentence of the body text.

Elaboration

Once you grab attention of the reader, now elaborate by describing the product benefits and offers. It may include anything – product’s functionality description, products benefits, promotional offers, testimonials; depending upon the advertiser’s requirement. This part is ideally little long but compact, not more than two to three sentences. Remember, you should describe, but not bore your reader. Keep it descriptive yet crisp, detailed yet interesting.

Call to Action

Signing off part of the body text is equally important. Always remember, a bad ending can jeopardize a good beginning. So be careful while you finish off your body text. There has to be an element which will make the reader take action either in terms of further enquiry or purchase decision. Such elements are called ‘Call to action’. Include phrases like ‘Rush Now’, ‘Come today’, ‘Buy now’ etc. Call to action is the last reminder.

Let the body text of your advertisement draw eyeballs.

Category: Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 27, 2010
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LSI Keywords and Negative Keywords

Taking our keyword discussion forward, we will talk about two different kinds of keywords: LSI and negative keywords.

LSI keywords

LSI keyword stands for latent semantic indexing keywords. These keywords are also known as related keywords, but these keywords are used not for the ranking purpose, but to support the main keyword. For example: LSI keywords for sleeping mattress could be bed, bedroom, pillow, home furnishing, sleep, etc.

LSI keywords are used to build context for your main keywords to function. The logic behind using LSI keyword is this: Search engines assume, and rightly so, that if you are writing on sleeping mattresses then you will talk about sleeping, comfort, pillow, house furnishing, and related things because mattress is related to such things.

Therefore, a legit website that contains such terms can be associated more strongly with a mattress website than the keyword-rich page that talks about mattress, but has related LSI terms missing. This is done to separate wheat from chaff.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords are keyword phrases that you exclude from your list of keywords when building a strategy. Let’s say you are about to run a PPC campaign for your mattress business, and for that you have created a list of keywords that should trigger your PPC ad to appear.

Let’s say you have included words like spring mattress, sleeping mattress, etc., in your list, and decided that whenever a user search for any phrase that contains any of the above phrases your PPC ad should show. This way you hope to get some customers.

After 24 hours of running your campaign, you see that your ad got many clicks, but conversion rate remained zero. To investigate the reason, you see your account only to find that your ad got displayed even when people searched for sleeping mattress wallpaper, or spring mattress video.

You are obviously not targeting these keywords, as none of your buyers will search for terms like wallpaper and video. So, you want to configure your keyword targeting in such a way that your ad do not get displayed when keyword phrases contain these words. To accomplish this, you mark wallpaper and video as negative keywords.

Negative keywords are the keywords or keyword phrases which you do not want to target.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 23, 2010
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Domain Flipping – Why Many Flipper Fails to Make Money

In the last article titled Domain Flipping 101, I talked about the two different strategies adopted by domain flippers, and the process I discussed may have made it look simple, but there are many potholes in the way, which hinders the growth of many domain flippers. The goal of this article is bring those hidden dragons in the broad light of knowledge, so that they cannot surprise you. This will increase your chances of success.

Choosing wrong domain

This is the biggest mistake a person makes when starting out in domain flipping business. Inspired by cool names like Facebook, twitter, flickr, and Yahoo!, a newbie domain flipper often buys out domains that sounds cool to them (but which is actually useless).

And when they find that the names are not getting picked by webmasters, they become worried. Too much worry for too long a time leads to frustration, which results in their pulling out of domain flipping business.

Choosing wrong extension

This is another mistake that people make when starting out in domain flipping business. In an attempt to get a “keyword rich” domain name, a newbie domain flipper end up buying domain extensions that are worth nothing.

Many people buy domains with extensions like INFO, BIZ, TK, IN, CN, etc., to flip it, but they are often left with no buyers, unless supported by some extraordinary content. This is a mistake. One should not buy a domain that does not have .COM, .NET, or .ORG extension. Others are valid too, but the commercial value of other extensions is not as much as of the above ones.

Wrong niche

Some niches are worth more than other niches. And there are quite many niches that do not have any commercial value. Buying a domain name in such niches is not a wise decision.

There are some more domain flipping monsters that have evaded our sight in this article, but they will not succeed in doing so in the next article.

Category: Business | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 21, 2010
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Search Growth Trend – More People Using Search Engines

Despite all the noise about social media growth and Facebook replacing Google, search as a category has seen a rise in the month of October. According to comScore qSearch analysis data released by com Score, except for AOL LLC network, search sites of all top 5 search networks namely Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask have seen a growth.

In October 2010, people of the United States have conducted more than 16.6 billion core searches which is a 4% rise on the previous month data, which as 16 billion core searches.

Although the leaderboard has not changed in October — Google is still at number one, Yahoo at number two, and Microsoft on Number 3 — Microsoft sites have shown some promise. It has risen by 7% to touch 1.9 billion explicit core searches in this month. Google has recorded a growth of 4%, and Yahoo grew by 2% (see image for details).

comscore-us-search-engine-by-number-of-queries

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 18, 2010
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Domain Flipping 101

If you are in the making money online niche for long enough then you must have heard about domain flipping. You might have heard about this, even if you are not in this niche and all you have done is read couple of articles about domain flipping at some random blog.

If you got excited after reading in those articles about the kind of many X is making by flipping a domain, and you do not know how to do it yourself then this is the article for you. As the title suggested, this article is not for you if you are a pro in domain flipping. You may be interested in other stuff on this blog. We have good SEO tips here, you can read that. And for rest, let’s see what domain flipping is.

What is domain flipping?

I am not sure how many of you know that domain flipping refers to buying and selling of a domain. A typical domain flipping case involves 4 steps:

  1. Buying a new domain
  2. Developing a website on it
  3. Propagating it on the Internet, so that you can get some traffic and monthly income
  4. The last stage is to sell this domain.
  5. Rinse and repeat until you become next Bill Gates.

It sounds simple, isn’t it? It indeed is simple in periphery, but in details, it becomes difficult. It is in the details that people get stuck. We will talk about it in the next article. For now, let’s focus on what it is.

There is one more strategy that people use in this. The steps involved in that are as follow:

  1. They buy a already developed domain
  2. Polish it to make it look more attractive
  3. Sell it for profit.
  4. Rinse and repeat until you become next Bill Gates.

Neither of them is more or less complicated. Both of the ways are sufficiently difficult, but as you are just starting out, I will not suggest going to second strategy because a wrong purchase may mean a loss of money and a loss of opportunity to earn. You should, therefore, try your hand in this field for some time before going for buying existing websites to flip. Time will come when you will be able to do that, but not know.

This brings us to the end of this article, in the next one I will talk about the difficulties one face in flipping.

Category: Business | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 15, 2010
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Local SEO – Fad, Fashion, or Gimmick

Local SEO, Google Map marketing, and Google Places listing are the buzz words, nowadays. Marketers and mentors of small businesses are swearing by this set of new marketing tools. The buzz is so strong that it makes people wonder if the new set of tools is a gimmick or a fad. Will it deliver on the promises it make? This is the question that bothers all. Let’s examine this in the following paragraph.

Why Local SEO?

The Internet has lived off its years of hype, and people at large have started using it for real work — to find the best plumber, a good restaurant, an odd-job doer, painter, etc., in their locality. In a world where local search results are not coughed out by Google against a location specific keyword, people have to waste hours and hours of their time to search for a plumber to fix their kitchen tap.

This is so because of the SEO optimization done by various experts. In a non-local-search-result world, a person searching for plumber in Milwaukee may get the phone number and addresses of a plumber in New York State, which is frustrating for the searcher.

To add up to the searchers’ experience, all major search engines (particularly Google) have come up with a solution. They started offering local listing with names, addresses, and phone numbers of the establishment. In case of Google, Google Places and Google Maps are two tools that enable local listing.

What so special about local listing?

For a business to be able to get listed in Google Places, a website is not required. All a small business needs is to add its name, address, photographs of establishment, contact details, and a small description of the business.

This is phenomenal. Now a small business does not have to have a website to get customers from Google or other search engines. They can get it merely by adding their aforementioned details in Google places, and pointing their location in Google Maps.

What I think of it?

I think local listing and local SEO have given a small business an unprecedented opportunity to get customers without even having a website. For me, Local SEO is neither fad, nor a gimmick. It is a fashion that is going to be there for time to come.

Category: SEO | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 14, 2010
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How to Increase Your Blog Traffic This Christmas

One of the most effective traffic strategies that an A-list blogger uses to give a sudden boost to his blog traffic is leveraging special events, and festivals. It helps A-list bloggers pull immense amount of traffic in very short period of time. They do it for every major or minor festival, which gives them several spikes in traffic, and they even succeed in retaining some of the audience who came to sample the blog during the spike for the long time. Over the period of time, all these add up and result in permanent increase in traffic.

In this article, through the Christmas example I am going to tell you how you can use a special occasion or festival to boost your traffic.

Give people reason to revisit

Provide a list of Christmas icons and graphics

During Christmas when everything is painted with Christmas fervor, people do not want to leave their desktop, websites, and blogs behind. Therefore, they remain continuously on the look for cool icons and graphics to decorate their virtual world.

Provide them a list of unique decorating resources. Do not be lazy in creating this resource. This will pull a lot of visitors

Give cool Christmas decoration tips

You can also offer Christmas decoration tips with your audience. Tell them what all they can to do jazz up their Christmas. Be creative, draw inspiration, and create a step-by-step guide. Give detailed instruction on Christmas decoration.

Gift ideas

Christmas is the time of year when people exchanges gifts with everyone they love. Finding and selecting multiple gifts could be a time consuming affair. You can cut down on your audience’s research time by giving them a huge list of top gifts with $100 or $50 or whatever your audience’s budget is. They will really appreciate this effort.

Start applying these traffic strategies right away, as there are just 45 days left to Christmas, and the earlier you will do it the better result you will get.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
bikram | November 14, 2010
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Wanna Save $8K Per Annum? Get Broadband!

Well, this is not an advertisement for any broadband company, this is a finding of Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA).

In a study conducted by IIA it was found that consumers can save upward of $7,700 annually by having broadband internet access. The study suggested that people can save $2,747 per annum on the entertainment alone. Savings on travel, housing, food, and apparel because of the broadband would respectively be $1,532, $974, $965, and $640.

In percentage terms, people will save 51.7% on entertainment, 20% on travel, 7.7% on housing, 25.7% on food, and 37.1% on apparel. (See image below).

IIA has extrapolated the savings by taking into account the Department of Labor annual study on consumer expenditures.

It seems getting a broadband at home is not such a bad thing. It will help you save money in ten areas. Click here to read the article titled, “Access to Broadband Internet: Top Ten Areas of Saving” to read how and where all you can save money. By having broadband internet access.

Category: Technology | Tags: , , ,
bikram | November 13, 2010
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How to Brainstorm a Topic for Your Next Blog Post

What puts a wet blanket on the enthusiasm of most of the niche blogger is the sudden dearth of new topics to write on, which some of us call writer’s block — for bloggers, it should be termed blogger’s block. This syndrome refers to a situation when a blogger opens his or her word processor only to find that he has nothing to write about.

This could be addressed, and it is quite easy to do that. All you need to do is build a system for you, which you will follow every time you will start writing a post. Read this blog post to the end and you will know how to brainstorm for your blog topics.

Brainstorming tips for your blog

  1. To brainstorm on a topic, you need to have a rough idea of what you should write about. To this end, the first thing you need to do is to set Google and twitter alert on the topics you blog about. Skim through the alert, everyday, and jot down the ideas that come to you. You can refer to these idea snippets when writing a blog post.
  2. You can also get idea from the newsletter you have subscribed to.
  3. Once you have the idea, you can do a dipstick keyword research to make a tentative list of keyword to include in the blog post.
  4. The next step is to search Google for ideas that will combine to form a blog post.
  5. Read some blog posts and articles, and write down the important points that come to your mind.
  6. Create a rough structure of the blog post.
  7. See if you have all the information required to write the final blog post. If you do not have all the required information then hit the Google search button one more time.

Now you have everything that you need to know before writing a blog post. Start stroking the keyboard with a confidence that you are going to produce a captivating piece.

Category: blogging | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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