Someone sent me the question “Why Social Bookmarking? “
And I thought to myself: “Um. Why not?”
Since I’m not really sure what they meant by that, I’m going to assume that this person mean “Why should I use social bookmarking in my business?” - with a full understanding of all the risks associated with “assuming”.
I figure that if you’re reading this, you have that question, or a similar one.
There are three reasons:
1 - More links
2 - More traffic
3 - More credibility
More links are always a good thing.
Think of links as the road traffic that moves through the web. If there are no roads to where your business “lives” online, namely your website, it’s far less likely that the visitors you want will end up getting to you.
That’s true whether you’re talking about search engines or links from other sites. Search engines use a mysterious cross between the number and quality of links to your site in their determination of whether you should be number one or number 701 for your desired keyword.
In addition, the “nicer” the road, the more traffíc will flow through it - think of an authority site linking to your site as a highway that leads directly to your site, and one from a reciprocal link or link exchange scheme as a back street in a sketchy neighborhood full of potholes.
Improved traffic, also good.
From social bookmarking, this traffic is often targeted. Through tagging, the description someone writes, or the title they assigned to your link, the person who discovers the submitted link on a social bookmarking site knows exactly where they’re going, and why they’re interested in getting there.
It’s like seeing the cover of a magazine on a rack. That’s what pulls them in, they see a headline - and to get to the story they are compelled to take another action.
The more credibility thing is a bit harder to explain, so we’ll go with another analogy.
Let’s say I made a movie and I thought it was fantastic. If I hadn’t met you before, and I tell you, “hey, I made a kick-ass movie, come see it!” - you may come see it, you may not.
It depends more on how much time you have and if you’re interested in that kind of movie, or even how nice of a person you are, than my opinion.
Why?
Because I’m the one who made it, so you can’t know whether to trust my opinion, at least in relation to how much YOU might like it. Of course I think it’s great, but I have no way of knowing whether you will.
Now, if you knew me and my taste, and how alike our tastes are, you may be a bit more inclined. So if I’m, say, Michael Bay, and you liked my last movie, and my new movie is on the same type of thing, you might go see it based on the trailer alone. You know you’re taking a gamble but it’s a safe bet.
Now watch this.
Your best buddy, the one who likes all the same things you like, the one you hang out with and trust the most, calls you on the phone and says:
“I’ve just seen the best movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I have to see it again. When are you free, I’ll come pick you up.”
The only thing that could make that deal sweeter is if your friend has also said “My treat.” At least as far as recommendations go, the person who knows what you like the most is likely to be the person whose advice you’ll follow.
If you know that friend, and that person has similar tastes, or at least knows what you like, you’re more likely to see the movie.
My sister and I have similar tastes in movies, but I’m a little more patient with beginnings and endings and like more indie-fare. Yet, no matter how many times I have suggested we watch a movie together that she ends up not liking as much, if I rave about a movie, she’ll at least give it a chance.
Now, let’s take that back to social bookmarking. Imagine you can find hundreds of people, all over the world, with tastes similar to yours, sharing information you wouldn’t find yourself.
Or maybe you can just connect faster and more frequently for suggestions from people you already know. Wouldn’t you be more likely to follow their suggestions than some stranger?
That’s the power of social bookmarking. It’s put a technology behind word of mouth sharing of web sites that anyone can use.
And they do.
Now all you have to do is learn how to be the person or company everybody is spreading the word about. Which is another conversation altogether.
submitted by: Jonathan Grey
http://www.rankmyurl.com
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Search Engine Optimization palys a vital role in terms of getting your website indexed in the Search Engines. You only need 3 of them (Google,Yahoo,MSN) forget others.
You need to make your site perfect to achieve what every webmaster or website owner dreams to….i.e. be listed on the top10 of Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) based on the keywords often used by 70% online buyers from around the world. These visitors are called as ‘organic traffic’ for which you pay nothing for them to come to your website. These visitors normally don’t have more than one minute to decide whether or not to purchase what they are looking for. So they try a couple of sites listed on the first page or probably second and hardly third page.
If your website happens to be on the first page (top 10 listings) you have about 75% chance of getting your product or service SOLD. Remember, this fact completely depends on how your website is presented, otherwise chances are he/she will go away to click another listing.
Wow…it’s interesting but how to get there in front of those millions of Results???
Hang On ! Not so fast ! Make sure that you’ve correctly done your first task that is by choosing right keywords, descriptions, alt tags, design, presentation, inbound links, outbound links, header title, footer title, h1 h2 tags, css to name a few. Use the vital keywords related to your site and also don’t hesitate to use your competitors keywords. Use some of these vital keywords in your main homepage content using h1,h2,bold tags, add “alt” tags in all your images using keywords. That’s the basic.
Second, go search for yahoo, msn, google (webmaster tools). Need userid for 3 sites. Add your site in their network, insert their .html or .xml or meta CODES in your website first and VALIDATE or AUTHENTICATE. Done??? Pretty cool.
And then ! sign up with the technorati,digg,flikr,delicious,myspace,squidoo,linkedn social networks considered by google as “authority sites”. If possible, bookmark your site in their network.
Go to surf some blogspot,skyrock,stumbleupon,facebook blogs try to leave a comment with your website link.
Go to Forums like sitepoint,digitalforums,webmastertalk,blackhat,godaddy participate often, use signatures with your website link.
OOps… I’m running out of space here.. Don’t worry.. If you have done the above, Your site could be on the top20 in 2 months, top10 in 4 months, top5 in 5 months.
If you don’t believe.. don’t waste your time here. If you don’t have time then go search for
“gurung webmaster”.
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How you could Use Web Analytics to Grow Your Business:
If you own a business, chances are you do. But don’t pat yourself on the back too quickly.
By now it’s widely-accepted that if you have a business card you should probably have a website. It doesn’t matter what your company is selling - a website, however modest, has become a standard.
The real question is: what is your website doing for your business?
As a web marketer I often put this question to the business owners I meet. Not because I’m trying to lead into my sales pitch, but because I’m intrigued to hear the answer.
Most people get a certain “deer in the headlights” look in their eyes when I ask this question. To be fair, it’s not a question we’re used to hearing. But that’s not all that’s going on here.
Traditional advertising mediums - print, TV, radio, etc - are notoriously difficult to track. Sure, you’ll know how often the phone is ringing or how many people come in with a coupon clipped from the Sunday paper, but what you don’t know is how many people saw/heard your ad and whether they were interested, oblivious or, worse, annoyed.
Business owners are used to this. We all know we need to advertise - it’s a necessary cost of doing business - so we buy that half-page ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper, we sponsor an event or a little league team, we have a radio commercial written (maybe even with a jingle) and we hope for the best.
This has been a given in marketing since the beginning. But the web, and analytics, changed the game.
So how should you be using your web analytics to grow your audience, and your business, online?
Track Everything
With web analytics on your site you can track:
- Where your traffic is coming from by
- The referring website and page
- The search engine and keyword used
- Your website visitors by
- Their location
- Their operating system, browser and monitor resolution
- Their network
- Visitor behavior and actions by
- Duration of visit (time on site)
- Pages per visit (number of pages viewed)
- Bounce rate (percentage of users who viewed only one page before leaving)
- Conversion rate (percentage of users who completed a preset task)
If you’re planning on doing any kind of web marketing, be it through search engines, email or advertising on other websites, information on your past and current traffic is crucial. Not to mention you’ll want analytics in place so you can properly track the new traffic your promotions will, hopefully, bring in.
Tie Your Traffic Sources to Your Users’ Actions
When looking at your analytics data the behavior and action metrics mean little by themselves. If the bounce rate of your site overall is 75%, what does that tell you? Well, this is a pretty high bounce rate - you should at least be shooting to have a bounce rate lower than 50%. But does this tell you exactly what is wrong?
Likewise, if you have secured advertising or a listing on another website, the number of visits coming in from that site only gives you part of the picture.
Tying your bounce rate to a specific traffic source, on the other hand, can tell you a lot.
If a given traffic source is generating a bounce rate of 85% or more, for example, this indicates that users are not being satisfied. There are a few possibilities as to why:
- The users may not be well-qualified - or the site where you are listed or advertising might not have the best audience for your content/offer.
- The listing/ad may promise something that the entry page does not live up to (or, at least, the promise is difficult to locate once the user arrives at your site).
- Your site is simply not usable, is unattractive or unprofessional, causing users to leave immediately (and most don’t come back)
- Your users are not connecting with your content/offer.
There are other possibilities, but you’ll want to find the most likely answer here - and try to fix it. Then, using the same metrics (traffic source + bounce rate), you can see whether things improve moving forward.
Using metrics like these you can also get a sense of which advertisements are bringing you a return on your investment and which aren’t. With goal tracking in Google Analytics, for example, a conversion rate is added to just about every traffic metric, including referring websites. If you’re finding that a website is sending you plenty of traffic but none of it is converting, re-examine the referring website’s audience, how your site is being presented and the user’s experience when they click through.
The Point
Your website is more than a brochure. It’s an interactive tool for your users. The only true way to find out how they’re using it (or not using it) is to get web analytics set up properly on your website (including setting goal points to track conversions).
And the best way to improve your website in the aim of building your business is to use the information your web analytics give you.
The age of blind advertising - of throwing money at the problem and hoping for the best - is dead.
If you aren’t tracking everything, taking time on a regular basis to understand what the data reveals about your users and adjusting your efforts based on this information, you’re missing an opportunity to optimize your advertising and get a better return on your budget.
In this economy, is that something you can afford?
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Here are 20 ideas you can use to help you create a blog post when you’re stuck for an idea:
1. Current events. Can you link what you do in your business to a current event? Open up your daily newspaper or your RSS news reader and see what’s happening in the world, your country, your state, or your city. Give your opinion about the event and a solution, if you have it, and relate that to your business if you can.
2. Trends in your industry. I read constantly and subscribe to more industry publications than I have time to review. However, there are a handful that I do regularly read, and it’s to those that I look to for what the trends seem to be. When you blog about the trend, put your unique perspective on it, or write a rebuttal post, disagreeing with the relevance of the trend.
3. Get personal. Tell a story about what’s happening in your life or in your business that would be useful or instructive for your readers. Chronicle both your highs and lows, your wins and your struggles. One key to successful blogging is getting personal with your readers. The more “real” you are with your readers, the better your reader gets to know you and begins to like and trust you. You become a “real, live” human being to them who faces similar issues that they face.
4. Top 10. Most of my writing is in the form of a Top 10 list because it’s an easy way for me to outline the points I want to make and then go back and fill in the details for each point. In this case, each of your points for a topic can become an individual blog post, and when all the points are complete, you can compile the full list for an article for your ezine or website.
5. Frequently asked questions. If you’ve been in business for awhile, you know the questions that clients and prospective clients ask you to answer over and over again. Instead of repeatedly responding to the same questions, write a series of blog posts that answer your target market’s most frequently asked questions.
6. How you helped a client solve a problem. Clients hire you to solve a specific problem they’re having, whether they do that when they buy your service or your product. List 3-5 most recent problems that you have helped your clients solve. Create a post that talks about the problem and the solution you provided (either with your client’s permission, or by making it generic enough to hide the client’s identity) that becomes a learning experience for your readers.
7. Interview an expert. What people do you know and admire in your industry? If you admire them, chances are that members of your target market do, as well. Contact them for a short email or recorded interview and ask them 3-5 questions that you’d like to hear them answer about their lives, their businesses, industry trends, or how to solve a particular problem. Publish the interviews as blog posts, adding audio and graphics if you have them.
8. Solicit and answer questions. Ask your ezine subscribers or blog readers to ask you their most pressing question related to what you do. I do this and get questions for 1-2 blog posts per week, and it helps me stay in touch with the needs of my readers, as well.
9. Review something. Read a good book lately related to your industry? Just purchased a product to help you solve a problem? Reviews aren’t limited to the critics at the New York Times. Blog about your experience with a product, book, or service, highlighting both the high points and low points, and whether you would recommend that others use or purchase it.
10. Read other blogs. Go to Google’s Blog Search or Technorati and find other blogs related to your industry or your target market. Add those to your blog reader and take an hour or two each week to read the posts on those blogs. Do you agree or disagree with the post? Have another point of view? Think the blogger was on target but you want to expand on her point of view? Reading other blogs is a great way to generate ideas for your own blog.
11. Keep an idea file. Sometimes a blogging idea or concept will strike you when you don’t need (or want) to blog. Begin a blog idea file by creating a document or spreadsheet to track your ideas and thoughts. If you’re in the zone, go ahead and write the post, and then you can post it to your blog on a day when the idea well is dry.
12. Create a tutorial. There’s always something you can tell your target market how to do. Create a written, audio, or video tutorial of the process as your blog post. Depending on the complexity of the tasks, the tutorial may need to created in multiple parts, like Part 1, Part 2, etc., which would make for multiple posts to your blog.
13. Share a positive/negative email. I often share exceptionally positive or negative emails I receive from people (without names to protect their identity as appropriate) either to celebrate kudos I’ve received or to demonstrate how I responded to a particularly nasty or upsetting comment. I get the most mileage out of the negative emails, and I often ask for feedback about how my readers might respond to the situation.
14. Take a tour. Take a self-made in-person or virtual tour of something useful to your readers. For example, if you’re a dating coach, tour the top 5 online dating sites and report your experiences as a client in each. If you’re a restaurant consultant, visit 3 local restaurants and evaluate what’s often overlooked in staff training based on your experience as a customer.
15. Write about a Twitter or Facebook update. You only get 140 characters in Twitter to write about something. If you need more space, or want to respond in greater length to someone’s Tweet or Facebook status update, do so in your blog. Thought-provoking questions are often asked on Twitter, and the answers may inspire you to blog.
16. Create a “Best of” list. What are the top 7 blogs to read in your industry? How about the top 5 people to watch? What about the 10 most useful online tools you use? Nothing attracts attention on a blog quicker than a list, so create one yourself or ask your readers to help you in the process.
17. Report from an event. Attending a professional trade show, conference, or networking event? You can report live about your experiences at the event on your blog. Talk about the workshops your attended, the vendors you met, the speaker you heard — the sky’s the limit!
18. Debunk a myth. Each industry is plagued with myths and fallacies about success/failure or what does/doesn’t work that the industry professionals would like to see vanquished once and for all. Use your blog to debunk some of the most common myths/preconceptions/notions in your industry and set the record straight.
19. Talk to newbies. Picture yourself as a newbie in your industry once again. What do you know now that you didn’t know then? What questions did you ask? What knowledge do you have that you think everyone knows? Getting back to the basics can help bring all of your blog readers up to speed.
20. Write about a client conversation. Many times I’m inspired to blog as an expansion or continuation of a conversation I had with a client. The blog post focuses on a topic of the conversation, not the conversation itself. Typically the strategy/idea/technique you’ve discussed with one client will benefit your blog readers as well.
This is just the tip of a very large iceberg of ideas for posts to your blog. Take a look around your life, your business, conversations with clients and colleagues, and what’s happening in the world around you. You’ll soon begin to see more potential for blog posts than you ever thought possible!
Author:
Kevin from http://www.bloggerscommunity.net
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Downloading youtube video has never been easier for me in the past. A lots of softwares to be installed before the video starts working. And those softwares come with a lot of strings attached. Not counting the numbers of spywares, trojans getting into your PC.
Fortunately I got the right answer from yahoo answer. Someone had posted a link and that was absolutely fabulous. This guy is known as Gurung Webmaster and he has even made flv player available for free without any strings attached.
And now I have collected most of my favourite music videos and watch it without any fear.
Thanks Gurung Webmaster
Here’s the link to find this tool:
http://www.gurung.net/youtube/viddownload.html
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The Cheaters Guide to Marketing Review and Bonus is a complete step-by-step guide created by Eric Farewell and Richard Legg - two highly repsected gurus in the Niche arena. Eric has put his 9 years of experience as an internet marketer into this program and is now releasing it out to the public for the first time.
This course is packed with over 25 hours of videos that let you look over the shoulder of the masters and see how they make millions a year just by putting up blogs that are specific to certain niches.
Richard Legg has created multiple successful programs that include - "Traffic Uncut", "Succeed In 30 Days - How anyone can have an online business in a month or less" , and "My Instant Traffic".
Eric Farewell, has been behind the scenes of many profitable program launches and is not well know on the outside. He has been super successful by learning and helping others to start making money online by teaching them to do the same as himself. Currently, he owns his own coaching program that is very difficult to get into because of the demand for his services.
The Cheaters Guide to Marketing is the most comprehensive course put together to date. Taking Richard and Eric’s combined experience and knowledge and putting it into easy to follow videos and documents. Through this you learn how to find, build and dominate the Niche Market.
This course is in high demand and releases Jan. 22nd to the public. Click the links in the article to find out more information. This program can literally take you from rags to riches. I suggest looking into it.
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A new deep link building service called NextGenLinks promises to be the next best thing in improving your sites ranking in the search engines. The new service provides contextual deep linking to every page on your site which is very different from many other similar services that only link to the home page. This is much better for SEO and looks much more natural to search engines so you avoid the over-optimization penalties.
The new NextGenLinks service allows you a complete level of control over every link you both receive and send to others in the system. The limit on outbound links is five to prevent too much pagerank from leaving your pages. The inbound link building can be completely automated unless you want to control it.
One problem I had was their spider did not discover all the pages on my website. Not sure where the bug is, but since the URL’s are uploaded using a CSV file it was easy enough to make my own list. I’m sure the minor issues will be ironed out in time.
The interaction and customer service from Charles Kassotis the owner has been amazing so far. His replies are timely and complete. I have not had the chance to test the rest of his Help Desk yet.
After joining you simply need to add a domain, add a small snippet of code, spider and upload a CSV file of all your URL’s, and then just wait for contextual backlinks to come in. A easy and fast process considering all thing, though the inbound links did seem to be added not so quickly, but that will only improve as more users are joined to the system.
I have hopes NextGenLinks will only continue to improve in the future yet am pleased with what I see from it so far. Contextual linking is the way of the future since it is so close to natural linking that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will love it. For more NextGenLinks Reviews just click the link or visit nextgenlinks.org in your browser.
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So, have you heard about the Niche Blueprint yet? If not, and if you are interested in making it online in 2009 (we mean the first three months) then it is time for you to take some serious action and go as soon as you can to find out what exactly is the Niche Blueprint and what it can do for you.
Niche marketing is big money. While it focuses on the smallest parts of the massive markets and groups of customers online, we dare to say that most of the money is actually made in niche marketing. The thing is, while it focuses on the smallest parts of global niche markets, it can be quite hard to find a profitable niche and once you have found a profitable niche, what do you do with it? If it was that easy, everybody was rich, so, we can conclude that in order to become successful with niche marketing; you need certain knowledge to become successful.
This is where Niche Blueprint comes in and will assist you in making it big on the internet. Niche Blueprint will provide you not only with the knowledge but also with all the tools you may ever need to make Niche Blueprint work for you.
We need to stress on detail which can become fatal for you should you not take action now.
Niche Blueprint has just 700 positions available and will be on the market for only 7 days. If you want to become one out of 700 successful Niche Blueprint marketers, you need to act now.
Sign up for Niche Blueprint
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People often think that starting up a niche store requires much skill, planning, and labor; the task seems daunting and laborious for starters. While it may seem like a complicated idea, with the right motivation, knowledge, and tools, you can easily have your own online store. However, just like any other ventures or businesses, creating your own niche store require your involvement; investing your time and effort is necessary.
The tools and skills needed to develop your dream venture are pretty much available and accessible. What’s important though is to make sure that you have the most effective and proven-to-succeed tools or systems. The Internet is filled with compelling offers of many ecommerce programs and you might get confused. Niche Blueprint Ecommerce system is by far known and proven to be a great tool to help starters create a market niche store.
In addition to having the right Ecommerce system in your hand, here are a few more tips to help you create your very own online niche store:
- Think of how you will build your very own community. The online business climate today is very competitive. In order for you to build you own pack of people who will patronize your product or services, you have to create a very unique niche. Offer something that no one else has, Niche Blueprint can give you an advantage on this part.
- Target a business where only a few markets are available. The lesser the competition, the more chances of having your niche store known to many customers. Is there a niche that many marketers have failed to fill in? Then it’s your chance to be a specialist on that particular area.
- Know your customers: Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they do? What do they want? Focus on what your customers need and match your products to what they want to buy.
- Create your online niche store. You will need a website where you can collaborate with your community, incorporate comments from customers, write blog posts, open a forum, and of course sell your products and services. If you don’t have any idea how you can manage to get through this process, Tim Godfrey and Steve Clayton’s Niche Blueprint, which comes with a Niche Blueprint bonus, will help you in setting up your website.
- Never let your niche grow old. Brainstorm now and then and always respond to change in a positive way. To have a successful niche store, it has to grow and at the same time evolve with time.
Nowadays, people have an innate desire to share and connect with other people. The Internet is making communication a breeze. That being said, creating your niche store and making it known to the whole world is easy. If however, you are not confident in making all things work by yourself, read Niche Blueprint review and you will know that there is help available for you.
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Internet marketing is pretty cool and can bring in some serious cash. The latest trend on successful internet marketing is niche marketing and is hot. It is hot because it is so much fun and it is hot because of the tremendous amounts of money it can bring for relatively small efforts NicheBlueprint" is about to be released to the public. This is getting exiting now. There are only a few more days and you can get access to the niche blueprint. If you wanted to tap in to the multi billion industry called niche marketing then this is your chance. While it sounds complicated to do, once you are given the key to the engine you will find it being as easy as a breeze.
The thing you need to remember is this: Niche Blueprint will only be on the market for 7 days and seven days only. There will be a straight limit to the amount of people who will be allowed inside the niche blueprint and we’ve just been told that already thousands of people have pre registered for Niche Blueprint. Take our advice and make sure you preregister as well in the coming few days before the Niche Blueprint launches. This way you can assure you can get in should you want to. Once too late you will be left out. If you sign u9p now for preregistering (which is free by the way) you will be put on the VIP list who will get the exclusive right to admission to the Niche Blueprint. "Niche Blueprint" does not only offer you all of the tools you need to become successful with niche marketing, they will hand you over all the knowledge you need to know to make it a huge success too. Tim Godfrey and Steven Clayton, the makers of the Niche Blueprint have included personal coaching for every niche blueprint member as well. Click here to find out what is inside of the niche blueprint.
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