ClubBlogger

If you don’t have a great deal of money to dedicate toward marketing your blog but you do have plenty of time, social networking is a great way to boost your traffic while also building a community with your blog. In fact, one of the great things about social networking is that it can really help you build a solid reputation within the community of your target audience while also helping you build-up the popularity of your website.

There are many ways you can go about conducting social networking, but the basic premise behind this marketing method is to get out there and interact with others so they will want to come check out your blog. One common method of social networking is visiting blogs that seem to be targeting the same audience as you. Take some time to get to know the blog and its community, then start making your own comments and participating in the discussions. Each time you leave a comment, you can also leave a link to your blog. If the members of that blog community like what you have to say, they will likely click on your name in order to learn more about you.

You can use the same type of technique with forums. With forums, you may be able to set up your account so your forum log-in name is linked to your blog. If not, you can include a link to your blog in your signature. That way, your link appears every time you leave a message on the forum and, once again, those whose interest you pique will click on the link and visit your blog.

Video websites such as YouTube also provide you with great opportunities for networking. If you create humorous videos, instructional videos or informational videos that become popular on the website, you can potentially bring a great deal of traffic to your blog. In fact, any time you create a video to post on your blog, you should also post it on sites such as YouTube in order to get even more use from your video and to increase your chances of reaching more readers.

Sites such as MySpace and Facebook also provide opportunities for social networking. By interacting with those communities on a regular basis, you can build relationships with other people that might be interested in reading your blog.

The key to successful social networking is to leave comments that are meaningful to the blog or forum you are visiting. Simply saying something such as “Great post!” is not going to be enough to draw in traffic. Rather, take the time to build relationships with the communities you find at these sites and you will soon find them coming to your blog to interact with you there as well.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Share on Linkedin
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

Pay-per-click, or PPC, advertising is one of the most effective methods for drawing traffic to a website or blog. At the same time, it is potentially one of the most costly methods for marketing. If done correctly, however, the return on investment (ROI) will pay off quite nicely.

A PPC advertising campaign is one that involves paying to have your blog appear among the “Sponsored Links” or the “Sponsor Results” you find on the right hand of the screen when you perform a search with a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. You accomplish this by placing a bid on certain keywords and keyword phrases. Then, every time someone enters those keywords into the search engine, your blog will be brought up in the sponsored results. Every time someone clicks on your link, you will have to pay the search engine a certain pre-determined amount.

As you can imagine, paying for a PPC campaign can be quite costly. After all, even if you are paying just five cents per click and you have 1000 clicks per day, that is $50 per day. That comes out to be $350 per week, which can eat away at your marketing budget rather quickly. Now, paying $350 per week may seem worthwhile if it is bringing you 7,000 new visitors. But, if only one or two of those people are people who are actually interested in your blog, the cost certainly isn’t worth it.

So, how exactly do you make your PPC campaign worthwhile? This is where your marketing research comes in handy. Since you now know the needs of your target audience, you can select keywords for your PPC campaign that will draw in visitors who are interested in what your blog has to offer.

Be certain to select keywords that are very specific in order to bring in the right type of traffic. For example, if you are maintaining a blog about dog training, you should not set up a PPC campaign based around the word “dog,” as this can bring in visitors who were looking for information about dog breeds, searching for dog food, trying to find instructions for building a dog house, or any other possible term associated with dogs. Rather, select keyword phrases that are more specific to dog training in order to bring in the right type of web traffic.

When searching through the various keywords you can select for your PPC campaign, you should look for phrases that are popular while still being within your budget. You should also place a bid on phrases that will allow you to be within the top 5 results. That way, they will be displayed on the first page of the search engine results and will be more likely to be seen by your target audience.

If you are looking for a quick way to boost traffic to your site and if there is room in your budget, PPC advertising is a good route to take. Otherwise, you may want to explore other methods of marketing that are not quite so costly.

For a free CD about nailed-on effective marketing, click here.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Share on Linkedin
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

Whatever your business is on the web, you’re going to need advertising if you want the big bucks. First though, we must recognize that the meaning of the world ‘advertising’ has changed since the days of the TV, Radio, Magazine and News Paper monopoly. Advertising was simple to define and easy to recognize back before the internet, but web based advertising techniques are a different ball game altogether. Let’s take a look at these new alternative advertising methods in order of their cost to your business.

Word of Mouth: The internet’s impact on ‘word of mouth’ advertising has been huge. The invention of social networks and media sharing facilities has put thousands of likeminded people in touch with each other in ways that were impossible before the web. If you have a great product that a particular group of people will really like, you can be sure that it’ll be talked about on the web.

PPC/PPI Advertising: Pay per Click advertising and Pay Per Impression advertising will both cost you a little bit of cash, but you can build a campaign relatively cheaply and reach many thousands of people for extremely low cost. PPI is best for generating brand recognition on the whole, while PPC is ideal for deployment to key demographics who might want to read more about your product or service.

Affiliate Systems: Affiliate systems are a great way to sell medium to high cost services. Using an affiliate system allows you to put your affiliates in charge of your advertising. They are rewarded only for sales converted from their links, and so the burden of advertising, and the large rewards, rest firmly upon your selected affiliates. Be prepared to give away a significant percentage of your profits though, as good affiliates work hard to promote your product and expect payment in kind.

Mail / Software use: Last but certainly not least is the use of bulk e-mailing and software advertising. These are generally considered to be distasteful and annoying advertising methods but are certainly effective. Consider your business relationship with its customers very carefully before you undertake such a project. While these are ideal for one shot small purchases, they can alienate more picky customers.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Share on Linkedin
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

It’s no secret Google use the number and quality of incoming links to help rank web pages in its search algorithm. In fact, this is a significant factor in goggles’ bizarrely accurate search results and something that other search engines are keenly developing. What is less well known though is that Google also uses the quality and quantity of outgoing links to learn even more about each website it visits. What is your website saying about itself with each outgoing link?

You can do a little experiment to demonstrate the power of this Google feature. Set up a page on an obscure new domain, but don’t advertise it. Instead, put a single HTML file with a plain list of links to a group of similar sites. The first thing to note is how quickly the bots notice your website, and then how surprisingly high your Google page rank will be for a website with no incoming links or SEO content.

So how can you take advantage of this new SEO device? Be creative with it! No one is really sure exactly what does and doesn’t work yet, even more surprising results might be possible than have been discovered yet. A good place to start though is in considering how you want your website to be classified and linking out to similarly classified websites. This will help to re-enforce the purpose of your website, increasing goggles’ confidence in its content.

Then there’s the regional trick. If you are running a local book store, make sure Google knows that it’s a physical store, and its location. Now use lots of outbound links to websites like Amazon and even to national book retail franchises. When someone searches for a book store in your local area, Google will return yours with significantly more confidence in the quality and size of the store, because of its inferred association with the big retailers.

It’s a fun and simple SEO method, which might result in significant gains for particular websites . Let us know if you discover something amazing!

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Share on Linkedin
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post

When search engine optimization is successful, it can result in laser targeted traffic from visitors that are looking to spend money. It is partly because search engine optimization is so effective, that it is difficult to achieve good rankings and keep them. Depending on the keywords that you are targeting, you could have millions of other webmasters competing against you for top rankings. This is why you must know what you are doing and choose the right keywords to target.

When it comes to web optimization, you can take on the job yourself, or pay someone to do it for you. While it might be faster and much easier to hand off the chore to someone else, you will want to make sure that you at least have a basic knowledge of the process. There are people and companies on the internet that will charge you thousands of dollars for things that you can do yourself. They will also speak to you with fancy words to justify their prices. If you can filter through the junk, you will be able to determine if you are getting worked over. Besides, you will find that the process isn’t terribly difficult, it is just time consuming. If you understand how to optimize your website, you can outsource some of the more boring tasks and do the ones that you find more fulfilling yourself. It will save you both time, money and put you in control of the entire process.

If you know very little about search engine optimization, keep reading, we will discuss the basics.

1. On-Page Optimization: Even though on-page optimization isn’t as powerful as it once was, it is still necessary. If your site doesn’t include keywords in strategic places, your link building efforts won’t be as effective. Be sure to include your keyword and related ones in your H1, meta, title and description tags. Also be sure to use 1-2 in the first and last paragraphs of your copy and sprinkle it in a few times throughout. Don’t go overboard. Keyword spamming may nullify your efforts.

1. Link Building: Getting incoming links to your website is probably the most important part of search engine optimization. However, you don’t just want any links. You want quality links from well respected websites. Look to add links from top article directories, social networking sites, .edu sites, popular forums and other webmaster’s sites.

1. Adding Content: The search engines reward sites that are growing. Be sure to continually add content to your site. This not only helps you get better rankings, but it also gives you more opportunities to make money.

As you see, search engine optimization isn’t difficult. It is pretty formulaic. The problem is that the formula changes every few years (the search engine don’t like to be manipulated) and that it can be time consuming to get your site to rank well and maintain it’s rankings. It is important to keep up with the changes and to properly optimize your site. Again, this is a job that you can do yourself or you can pay someone to do it for you. Before shelling out the cash, be sure to research various companies. Ask to see proof and for the contact information and websites of people that they have worked with. You don’t want to spend thousands of dollars and not get any results.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• Share on Linkedin
• Share via MySpace
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post