prime gods

There are as many strategies for making it to the top 10 in Google, Yahoo, and MSN SERPs as there are websites; perhaps even more. One thing is for certain though – webmasters’ two main goals are to get a lot of traffic and to make sure that the conversion rate is high.

As of the moment, one of the most popular techniques in achieving those is email marketing. However, a simple email nowadays will not do. This is where email marketing software and tools like the iContact Email Newsletter Tool comes in. According to some reviews, the iContact Email Newsletter Tool has user-friendly interface, includes a tracker for clickthroughs on your emails, autoresponder, and even blogging capability. To cap it off, it even ensures that your newsletter doesn’t get delivered as spam or bulk mail, plus you can avail of iContact’s 15 day free trial at www.icontact.com.

So why create, email, and manage newsletters manually when you can have a single tool do all of those and more for you?

My boss called me last Thursday and asked if I would consider a full time position in our company as a project manager. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer him. I have been doing search engine optimization and search engine marketing for quite some time now, but I’m still not quite sure if I’ll be happy doing it, and only it for one year.

Anyhow, there’s this search engine placement which according to my friend will be able to help me, should I decide to accept the position – the Customer Magnetism. This company generally helps you in your efforts to obtain top natural listings for your websites’ target keywords. I still have to do in depth research about it.

I’ll let you know if it works for me. Wish me luck on my final decision!

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), generally has two main goals: a) to consistently drive targeted volumes of organic search traffic to a particular website, and b) to make sure that the conversion rate is high.

There are various ways and there are no fixed rules to be able to achieve those. Still, there are guidelines which can help, such as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. One key to achieving those goals, according to Google, is to “make your site easily accessible.” You can do this by creating static copies of dynamic pages because not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages.

Then again, creating well-optimized static pages is very difficult. That’s why I was ecstatic to find out that there’s a White Hat SEO Software that makes creating static pages as smooth and as painless as possible - Static Page Builder. To know how it works, I suggest you browse over the Static Page Builder FAQs section.

Being a creative writer, turned SEO, turned SEM, and hopefully a website owner by the end of the year, one of the most important things I learned is this: To learn how to ensure top search engine rankings for your website, it is important to know and understand SEO and SEM jargons. This is because most webmasters use SEO and SEM jargons when they share and discuss their strategies and techniques in forums and/or their blogs, and the best way to fully comprehend and be able to apply those strategies is to understand what they are talking about.

For the noobs out there, I suggest you browse over some Search Engine Marketing Glossary and familiarize yourself with those terms to get started in the web business. Also, if you have time have a look at Search Marketing in Austin for some SEM tips.

FYI, SEO means Search Engine Optimization/Optimizer and SEM means Search Engine Marketing/Marketer.

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Disclosure: This post features a paid link.

“[sic] in the same way that part of public relations is the management of customer relationships, there is a part of SEO that performs the same role: corporate blogging.” - Mark Jackson, May 29, 2007

Online presence of a company through corporate blogging is beneficial not only in terms of SEO, but more so in customer relationship management. This is because most customers want to be heard. They have ideas, suggestions, complaints, questions, and even violent reactions. And as Mark Jackson furthered, “Your customers are going to discuss your products and services online; that’s a given. The question is whether or not you will have the ability to respond in a manner that strengthens those relationships.”

Consequently, companies are making sure to build its online presence with the development, creation and launch of their company blog. An example of this is Future Steel, a leader in the business of designing manufacturing and constructing steel buildings. They recently launched their Future Steel Buildings Blog not just for self-promotion but more so to provide a voice for the online space their customers or prospective clients occupy. According to them, the Future Steel Buildings Blog “will not only help us identify their needs, but in the long run may provide valuable insight into the many uses for Future Steel Buildings.”

For companies without a blog yet, by all means start one immediately.

For those interested in spreading the word about your company, there’s a new global business search engine where you can submit your company profile and/or products and services – masterseek. By listing your company, you can reach a potential of 90.000 unique business-to-business Masterseek visitors every day!

Two of the hard-to-resist features of Masterseek are that it has a triggered listing (based on keywords so you are assured that your profile is published on appropriate categories) and it currently consists of a listing of more than 45 million companies in 75 countries. These features will ensure that you find business partners, sales opportunities, and new avenues to expand your business and increase your company’s profitability.

Since I’m in dire need of cash (for reasons I’d rather not divulge), and the web is now bombarded with a lot of blog advertising networks, I’ve decided to sign-up to more than one blog marketplace. As of the moment, based from my financially-challenged state, one of the best places to register your blog is in Bloggerwave.

Not only is it easy to sign-up, they actually give you opportunities even before your blog gets approved! Personally, I got two contextual opportunities upon registration. What makes it better is the fact that those two offers only required me to write a minimum 50 words for the post, and for hefty cash! To cap it off, you don’t need to add weird looking phrases or keywords in your blog post because the include words field generally contains “No particular include word(s) **”.

Why are you still reading this? *Rolls Eyes* Go, register!

“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.”

–Blogger.com

Blogging nowadays don’t just allow you to share your thoughts with the rest of the world. You can actually earn money from your posts both online and offline. Offline meaning you personally interact with (prospect) advertisers. Online meaning you manually search for advertisers or join blog advertising networks or marketplaces such as Blogsvertise.

Generally, all you need to do to earn cash on blog advertising networks is register your blog, get approved by the network, and write something or mention advertisers’ or websites’ products and services in your registered blog. Voila! Instant cash.

Tip: Make sure you have a paypal account before you sign up. Also, do check the deadlines of the blog post requests so offers don’t get cancelled out.

Google never ceases to amaze me. Just several days ago, my colleagues and I were brainstorming on how to effectively spend our small marketing budget for our network of websites. With the funding we’re getting, we could barely afford to put an ad on our target websites. If only we could appear on their Google Adsense boxes…

Someone re-suggested Google AdWords. I went, “Eh?” We already tried it and, with our meager funding, we weren’t able to get the desired result from it. He continued, “Google recently beta-launched a Site-Targeted Ads for AdWords campaigns. That is, you can select individual sites in the Google content network where you’d like your ads to appear.”

True enough, I quickly Googled it after our meeting and found this - All About Site-Targeted Ads. Here are some of the highlights:

• Site-targeted ads appear only on the Google content network, and only on the sites specified by the advertiser.
• You can select sites for your site-targeted campaign in two ways:
  1. Name the sites where you’d like to advertise
  2. Give Google Adwords a list of words that describe your site

• Site-targeted campaigns are a good option for businesses who want to promote a brand or a new product to a specific audience. That is, you handpick your audience, big or small.
• To create a new site-targeted campaign, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to your AdWords Standard Edition account at https://adwords.google.com (if you’re not already logged in).
  2. On the Campaign Summary page, find the table titled Online Campaigns.
  3. Click site-targeted in the ‘Create a new campaign’ section at the top of the table.
  4. Follow the sign-up wizard instructions to create your campaign.

Click here for more information on the difference between keyword-targeted and site-targeted campaigns.

The catch? Google AdWords’ site targeting isn’t available yet since their beta test of site-targeted campaigns is still ongoing with just a few advertisers. Still, I suggest you keep a close eye on this one. It will definitely change your marketing campaign strategy AND budget allocation.