Getting Better Research Materials By Using Better Search Tools

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Trey Pennewell


150 years ago people who dreamed of becoming rich often went to the mountains and streams of California searching for gold. Their tools were shovels; pick axes, and metal pans. A few became rich - most did not. Today, for those seeking to discover riches, or at least a decent living, there is still gold lying around for those who can find it - but most of it exists as information accessible over the internet - and the tools you need to find it are web browsers and search engines.

In doing research of any kind you have to be able to find and access information and materials. This used to mean books, papers, etc. collected and organized in a library. Catalogers reviewed materials, classified them, assigned a number, created a "card catalog", and arranged the materials in sections containing like materials. Finding information was a slow, and often arduous, task.

You had to "look up" the subject in the card catalog. If you didn't find what you wanted under the word set you selected you had find other words - the word or words that occurred to the cataloger, might not be the ones you were considering. There was never a consistent thread of analysis that one could rely upon for finding the right books, because as you and I might think of different words to find what we want, the book catalogers all have their own personalities and therefore, they would frequently select words to describe a book through their own colored lenses of analysis.

Sometimes a thesaurus, or a reference librarian, was able to help you find the book you wanted. And the catalog cards gave only a hint of the actual contents of a book. Then you went to the shelves, found the section, and looked at what else was near your specific item of interest. Often you found "other things" nearby, which were exactly what you were looking for in the first place.

The computer allowed the development of electronic databases and automated searches. The Internet allowed access to many databases. Search Engines are able to accomplish, in seconds, what a person could not complete in a lifetime. But always we are at the mercy of what is in the database, and how the analysis tools interpret the database. Nonetheless, these Search Engines are powerful tools, which you can use to accomplish market research to find information that can help build and grow your business.

Most people today are familiar with, and spend some time on, the World Wide Web - the Internet. So we know a little about web browsers and search engines (sometimes very little). When you go looking for information, it is the search engine that does most of the work, and like other tools, they don't have the same talents and skills.

In doing a web search you first have to ask a question that contains one or more "key words", words you hope will lead you to the information you seek. Common search engines include Google, Yahoo, and MSN - and there are dozens of others. They access different databases and are optimized for different kinds of searches. Their designers create various features to find, sort, arrange and display the search results in a comprehensible fashion. When I did a Google search for "keyword research" it reported 456,000 results; Yahoo reported 20,700,000 results. Braggart! But how in the world can the program, or the user, ever find what they are after in that many results?

One method that helps people find information that is more relevant to what they need is clustering, which is simply a feature of some search engines' design, which combines different parts of the results together based on specific principles. Clustering can also provide built-in features, which provide a set of related terms, almost like a thesaurus, including in the results words related to your search keywords. Using clustered search terms will allow you to broaden the specific search and perhaps find something like that book on an adjoining shelf that is exactly what you need.

Search engines find web content using key words or phrases to locate items in databases. Both when doing market research, and when building web sites and web content, key words are extremely important. And clustering search features help you (or your potential customers) find similar terms, which will lead you to related (and possibly very important) information.

Using a search engine with clustered search features will lead you to these related items that may greatly enhance the results of your market research. Similarly, using appropriate keywords in your web materials can enhance traffic to your site or articles. One search engine that has clustering search features is http://widow.com/

Widow Search has a simple user interface. Doing a sample search by entering "keyword research" gave some interesting results. On the left side of the results page is a box displaying the results of the "clustered search feature". Below this box is a second box titled "Similar Terms", their suggestions for extended items beyond the keywords you entered. To the right of the boxes is a list of "Resources" which resulted from the search. The first 10 items found by the search are displayed, with brief descriptions, the URL and a link to the target site. Buttons between the screen header and the Results list gives access to subsequent items found.

The clustered search results for this case were as follows:

"Keyword Research":

Search Engine

Analysis

Services

Review

Worldtracker

Blog

Right Keywords

Competition

Complete

Discovery

Some items have a plus sign (+) in front of the listed item and that plus sign indicates that the listed word has a sub-list, which can be displayed by clicking the (+) button. For instance, clicking "Search Engine" displays a list of 8 sub-items.

The "Similar Terms" box listed seven sub-items. This display is slightly confusing since the box uses word wrap and some links are split between two lines. Focus on the type font size - they toggle through 3 different font sizes - when the size changes, you are seeing a different link. Click on a link and it will take you to another list of items keyed to the specific similar term.

Widow Search (http://widow.com/) is a meta-search engine with significant research capabilities that produces excellent results. However, it still requires work, thought and judgment to achieve your goals. But, give it a try. You might just find that you will never have a need to go to any of the Big Three search engines ever again.




About the Author:
Trey Pennewell is a writer who assists the content creation and helps write ClickBank product reviews for: http://www.TrafficAndSubscribers.com If you are spending at least $1000 per month on PPC Advertising, please take the time to review our Pay-For-Results SEO service at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html

Successful Article Marketers Help Readers Solve Problems

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Bill Platt


Every week, I have the opportunity to speak with people about the benefits and challenges of using article marketing to promote an online business. Of course, article marketing is about getting your sales message in front of potential customers and to get links to your website, from the page where an article is posted online.

Where most people get confused with article marketing is with the idea that "it is a method to promote one's website." Many interpret this to mean that an article should directly promote the writer's website within the article, but that approach is wrong and will reduce one's success using this methodology.

Understanding The Overall Article Marketing Strategy

Consider this. Television has been a successful advertising medium for more than six decades, because TV stations understand the importance of providing content to anchor the advertising. In every television hour, there are 42 minutes of content to provide an anchor for 18 minutes of advertising. People tune into the content out of a desire to receive the content, and they accept the advertising as a necessary price to pay in order to get the content for free.

Article marketing works best when the writer emulates the television-advertising model, by anchoring a sales message to content that people want to consume.

The role of article marketing is to capture an audience for the writer's website advertisement, which should be presented in the "resource box" / "about the author" information that appears in the paragraph immediately following the actual article. But, in order to capture that audience, an article needs to tell a story that publishers and webmasters desire to share with their readers.

How To Capture An Audience

When people ask me what they should write about in their articles, I always ask them a set of three questions to help them to define a successful strategy. Those three questions are as follows:

1. What do you sell?

2. Who is most likely to buy what you are selling?

3. What types of problems are common to those people that you may be able to answer?

Publishers and webmasters have a responsibility to their visitors to provide the kind of content that people actually "want" to read. I have heard publishers and webmasters state that if you want to sell to their readers, buy advertising. But if you were willing to teach something of value to their readers, then by all means, they would be happy to give you an advertisement in the "about the author" section at the end of your article, as payment for allowing them to share your information with their readers.

So, if you want an audience for your website's sales message, you should strive to give publishers the kind of information that they would like to share with their readers. If you give readers what they want, publishers will be willing to give you what you want - a chance to share the story of your business with the publishers' readers and website visitors.

Give Readers What They Want

When people go to a search engine, a website, a newsletter or blog, people are looking for information that will help them to address a problem they face. In short, people go online to find solutions for problems.

Since I desire to reach the people most likely to buy my products or services, I want to write content that will appeal directly to those people. When I sit down to write, I try to identify a problem that many people might have, and then I strive to locate and offer a solution to the problem.

When publishers and webmasters agree that the problem addressed is real and my solution is sound, my articles find huge audiences.

When my articles answer a reader's problem, my "about the author" information gets read. When my "about the author" information appeals to the reader, my website gets a new visitor. And for every new visitor my website gets, I have one more chance to sell my products and services to another potential client.

In Closing

There are certain people online, whose articles you have seen frequently on many websites and in some of your favorite newsletters. If you read those articles with an analytical eye, you will soon realize that what I tell you is true. Those people who put the focus of their articles on helping others to solve problems are the people whose articles are published most often and in the largest range of newsletters and websites.

Article marketing works well for those of us who seek to help readers solve problems.

For those who are looking to escape this tried-and-true method of article marketing, I wish you well. But I stand firm in the belief that if you put more focus on helping people solve more problems, you will benefit from article marketing in ways that other people can only dream.




About the Author:
Bill Platt has owned and operated http://www.thePhantomWriters.com article distribution service since 2001, and he has published more than 125 articles in his own name. Article marketing is the perfect advertising system for small businesses, but if you find yourself spending at least $1000 per month on PPC Advertising, then you owe it to yourself to review Bill's Pay-For-Performance Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service at: http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html

Regaining Control Of Your Time And Your Life

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Willie Crawford


Many online marketers wake up one day to discover that what they have built it not a business but an all-consuming job. They've built an entity that totally depends upon THEM to keep it running, and it demands that they devote practically no time to family, fun, and things that make life more meaningful.

Many of them discover that they spend 2-4 hours per day just responding to emails. They spend another 1-2 hours per day responding to "customer support issues."

They often spend another 1-2 hours per day just procrastinating because they feel that they have so much to do that they don't know where to start for fear of getting side-tracked working on "the wrong thing." Like the squirrel crossing a busy highway, they freeze for fear of making the wrong decision, often with devastating results.

How do you end this insanity, and regain control of your life?

I'll tell you how I did it when I basically found myself in the EXACT situation described above.

First of all, I awoke one day to find myself spending MOST of my day just analyzing the email, and figuring out how to keep from drowning beneath over 20,000 daily emails... mostly spam.

I HAD to sift through this email because it contained important communications from customers, clients, potential joint venture partners, affiliates, assistants, family members and friends.

The problem grew to be that there was so much email that at times my email client couldn't even download it all without crashing. Just the process of downloading the email and "indexing it" would cause my email program to CRASH repeatedly.

To start regaining control, I had to begin better directing the flow of communications. My solution to that problem was a helpdesk. I set up a helpdesk and then asked clients, joint venture partners, and staff members to funnel most of their communications through that one secure, centralized node.

I use the Three Pillars Help Desk System, and set up a process where:

1) A person visits the helpdesk and submits a ticket in an appropriate category. They are not required to register, just click on "Submit Ticket," select the appropriate "Category," and explain what they need.

2) Based upon the category, I or one of several appropriately trained individuals get an email, and desktop notification, of a new ticket being filed. "Admins" are assigned specific categories of tickets.

3) The appropriate admin logs in, views each ticket, and for 90% of them, selects a pre-composed answer from a drop-down list of responses. Answers to common questions regarding urls, getting replacement products, alternative payment methods, getting a program installed, being unable to open a file, getting a refund, where to find affiliate tools, etc., are handled this way.

Most of the tickets take less than 2 minutes for admins to respond to. Others require the admin to write an individualized answer. If they don't know the answer, they create a new ticket letting me or an assistant know this is a problem that they haven't been trained to handle.

4) As we get frequently asked the same questions over and over again, where appropriate, we add the answer to those questions to an FAQ file that is accessible right from the main helpdesk screen.

Just installing that helpdesk gave me back 1-2 productive hours of each day. It gave me back roughly 12 hours per week!

I looked at perhaps 30 different help desk software, testing out approximately 10 before settling upon Three Pillars Help Desk. I liked that software so much that I even eventually BOUGHT the company :-)

After redirecting a major percentage of important communications through my helpdesk, where I didn't have to worry about having important customers communications blocked by email filters, I then turned to my biggest productivity bottle neck.

To tackle that problem, I turned to Brad Semp, a systems engineer. Brad showed me his amazing system that he had developed and refined that allowed him to go from 2 1/2 hours per day of dealing with email down to only 20 minutes per day.

Brad's system involves looking at your email flow, controlling that flow, largely unplugging from checking email every few minutes, and forcing the system to only show you emails that you really need to deal with.

I met Brad at a JV Alert Live Seminar in Las Vegas, Nevada, and when he proved to me that he honestly spent less than 1/2 hour per DAY responding to email, without missing anything important,

I set aside a little time to learn his system.

I spent about 3 hours thoroughly learning and setting up his system, which he calls Email CashMaps. After that, I was also down to spending less than 30 minutes per day responding to MY email, and I NEVER miss anything really important.

You can check out Brad's system at http://TamingTheEmailMonster.com

The final big issue that I had to deal with was information overload, leading to indecision and procrastination. I solved that problem by first of all putting a value on each hour of my time. I set that value based upon my annual income goal, and how many hours I was willing to spend to reach it.

Since I wanted to spend less time working, that meant that I had to value my time at MUCH more than the average person has the audacity to do so. As an example, if you check out http://WillieCrawford.com/mentoring.html you'll see that I actually charge $800 for a 1-hour telephone consultation.

Properly valuing your time keeps you from wasting it stuck in endless Skype chat sessions or listening to a telemarketer. If you consider your time worth $800 per hour, then you also view that telemarketer as costing you over $13 per minute. That makes it very easy to end uninvited conversations.

Regaining control of your time hinges upon identifying where you waste a lot of time and upon insisting that your time is YOUR time. That means that you choose how you spend each limited hour that you have. You can't regain control of your time until your acknowledge that you've lost control of your time, and of your life. Once you reach that realization, taking back control is fairly easy as I've just demonstrated.


About the Author:
Willie Crawford is an internationally-acclaimed speaker, author, seminar and radio show host, and leading Internet marketing expert. When not out fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, Willie can be found sharing his 12 years of online marketing experience with members of The Internet Marketing Inner Circle. Join them at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

Making Your Expired Domain An Enduring Income Creator - Creating The Magic Of Expired Domain Gains

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 John Khu


Your expired domains could be the treasure house of unlimited and continuous internet wealth that eventually may create amazing expired domain gains. An expired domain is also a future and potential weapon capable of setting up an online money making machine. To create the magic of expired domain gains, it is neither an easy task nor a flexible exercise; to create your online wealth, you will need to put tremendous efforts as you would, when you are conducting any other forms of business. Thus, it really makes sense to learn and understand some of the greatest secrets and techniques of using an expired domain to establish expired domain fortunes.

Different domain traders use different methods and ways that suit their taste and requirements to create expired domain fortunes, because each one of them is unique and special in its own ways and methods. No one really good method exists that can work or perform better than the other methods and it is very cumbersome to find a method that is better or inferior than the others. Established and highly professional domain name traders own hundreds of domain names and they make it a point to use these domains for creating small pools of income. PPC engines and programs seem to be the most preferred tools to create a constant source of income.

Apart from PPC campaigns, domain parking is another innovative system of creating expired domain fortunes. It is a subscriber based program that helps you park the expired domain with the service provider. A number of web portals like Go Daddy, Money Parking, and Parking Income, Domain Sponsor and Sedo offer convenient subscription based domain parking services.

Domain parking is a small, but a subtle way that can assist you in laying a road map to reach your expired domain fortune goals and objectives. Domain parking provides you a number of distinctive advantages like:

a) You need not create a dedicated web site to make money. There are no hassles of creating site specific content.

b) There is no need to pay a web site designer for creating a web site nor is there a requirement to pay hosting bills.

c) You just need to trust and rely on your domain parking host.

d) Domain parking means lesser amount of work and increased rate of returns.

Some more details on domain parking:

1) Some domain parking services may ask you to park more than one expired domains so that both you and the service provider benefit at the same time.

2) Web hosting and template is free! But, you may need to inform the service provider before making any changes to the site.

3) There are three ways in which you can receive your payments-Immediate, when some one visits your site. This method is pay per impression. You may also get your payment when a site visitor decides to click on the web page and such visitors form the pay per click type of visitors. Lastly, when a certain site visitor decides to buy something after navigating from the landing page to another portal that sells something, the domain parking service will pay your money based on the concept of pay per action.

Though domain parking is a minor exercise in domain trading business, it forms a basic way of producing some income on your way to achieving main goal that is to create a formidable source of expired domain fortunes. Domain parking provides you income in the form of very small droplets, which eventually pool together form a viable source of expired domain fortunes.


About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins


No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms... SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche - you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite tactics and strategies:

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don't forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting "long-tail" keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it - keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords... are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site - make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don't ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google's influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google's Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords but don't ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don't forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 - 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, ThePhantomWriters... plus other major online sites. Don't forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you're also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don't forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages... to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts - a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you're creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter... media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati... you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It's time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don't want SEO - you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you're pursuing - your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That's why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what's been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site - tops in your niche - the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you're into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you're seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.


About the Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools (http://www.bizwaremagic.com). If you liked the SEO tips above, why not try this Free 7 Day Traffic Course here: Internet Marketing Course Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

What Failing Marketers Miss In Requesting Joint Ventures

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Willie Crawford


As I travel from seminar to seminar, and meet people new to internet marketing, I witness a lot of people quickly discovering the power of setting up joint ventures. Many of these people understand that if they could get large list owners (and people with busy websites) to recommend their products, they could make a lot of sales really fast.

They understand that one big joint venture partner can make or break a product launch.

They understand that one successful product launch can propel them to an incredible level of success.

So the light bulb comes on, and the marketers start trying to figure out how to set up join ventures. They start tracking down prospects left and right, and frantically trying to set up those lucrative joint ventures.

However, most of the newer internet marketers completely miss the most important part. They neglect to consider what the wants and needs of their potential joint venture partners are.

They "know" that they have a great product (or a great product idea) and they believe that a lot of people will want and benefit from it.

They also believe that all of the potential joint venture partners on their "hit list" will absolutely love their joint venture proposals.

What they fail to consider is:

1) These potential joint partners already have projects that they are launching -their own or their clients.'

2) These potential joint venture partners already have their own products that they are trying to sell and are even looking for joint partners for.

3) These joint venture partners are often constantly being approached by dozens of others seeking the same type of joint ventures that you seek.

4) These potential joint venture partners, if they are in the same niche, may already have a product that competes directly with yours.

Identifying these all-to-common mistakes, you can now avoid making them, and in the process dramatically increase your chances of getting a "YES" to your joint venture proposal.

Just having that knowledge gives you a huge potential advantage over the hordes of others seeking joint ventures with the same potential joint venture partners. However, having that knowledge is not enough - you need to actually use it.

Setting up lucrative joint ventures is not really an insurmountable challenge. It just involves framing your offer in terms of how it will benefit your potential joint venture partners.

It has to answer the question "Why would I spend time promoting your products rather than focusing on my own?"

Very few less-experienced internet marketers answer that question, or are even aware that this is what's really on potential joint venture partners' minds.

Now you have a distinct advantage. You know what many marketers miss in requesting joint ventures. Your next step is to use that knowledge. It really is that simple.


About the Author:
Willie Crawford is a joint venture brokers who has been launching products over the internet for 12 years. For more of Willie's joint venture tips and strategies, register for his teleclass at: http://WillieCrawford.com/JVTeleseminar/

Can Branding Ever Be Heart Centered?

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Mark Silver


Sometimes the world delivers up vocabulary words that are just plain wrong. Painfully wrong. Words like "branding," which the world of marketing seems to love, but regular folks and cows just seem to hate.

And it's because of how branding has often been used. Companies have done psychological studies on how to craft an environment that gets you to react in the way they want you to. It's like herding cattle into the searing-hot iron--ouch.

Of course you don't want to use branding. Why would you ever want to do THAT?

Is There Anything Redeeming About Branding?

When you take the manipulation out of it, branding isn't that bad. It's just a poor word choice to describe this: how a person experiences your business. And, it can be powerful. Let me give you an example.

After last year's Path to Profitability Retreat, we were discussing Starbucks in our marketing class. Starbucks which, despite recent stumbles, grew 14,000% in ten years. Yes, that's not a typo--fourteen thousand percent.

What's more, one of my clients admitted to preferring Starbucks over another coffee shop, even though she didn't really like Starbucks' coffee that much.

Shock. Amazement. She knowingly spent a couple hundred dollars a year at Starbucks, even though she didn't really like Starbucks' main product.

Why Such an Irrational Choice?

One word: "home." Home? Yup, home. My client said that she preferred the "homey-ness" of Starbucks, how comfortable and dependable it was compared to this other place.

That is to say, you can be great at whatever it is you do, and clients that love what you offer may still avoid you. Huh? That doesn't seem to make any sense. But it does if you understand branding.

But let's not call it "branding." Some macho, "business is war and war is hell," person must've picked that word to describe what is, essentially, the job of a gracious host(ess). No need to be flinging the stuffed olives and salmon croquettes at anyone. Let's pick a different word.

Let's Call It "Worldview"

When you are in the business of making things better for people, no matter how you do it, you are helping to presence, to bring into being, a better version of the world. More love. More peace. More effectiveness. More connection.

Accounting, real estate, naturopathic medicine, consulting--whatever you do, you're presencing a world.

So, it's a good idea if all parts of your business help to presence that world. If the look, feel and how you deliver your invoices has a similar effect on your clients as your healing work, your world feels congruent to them, and they can fully rest into it.

When this happens, people feel safe. They feel at home. They feel as if they are stepping into the better world they are striving toward.

This is why you want to be clear about your worldview, and apply it to all aspects of your business. Because every single aspect of your business can be healing, and can play a part in supporting your clients.

If this seems abstract, let's take a look at how this would work for you.

Keys to Applying Your Worldview

How do your clients feel when they've gotten your best work?

When you are in the zone and you are delivering great work to your clients, how do they feel? What are some of the words they use to describe that feeling? Calm? Inspired? Jazzed? Rested? Relieved?

Identify three or four words like that.

What's the opposite of your best work?

Pick some aspect of your business that you avoid, dislike, or that just feels troublesome, which also touches your clients. For instance, billing, setting appointments, or your website.

What don't you like about it? What are the three or four words you would choose to describe your experience with it?

Transform the worst into the best.

Now, time to presto-chango shine up that troublesome part with the qualities of your best work. Should your invoices be on cool paper, with a fun font and graphic, and use friendly language? Should the door to your office be decorated differently? Would it be a good idea to replace that utilitarian notepad with something that reflects the better world?

Starbucks pays extreme attention to the decor in order to create that "homey" feel my client likes so much, and that attention to detail has skyrocketed their business. You may not be dreaming of 14,000% growth, or world domination (hopefully not), but the lessons here are real.

Pick one aspect of your business' world at a time, and step-by-step transform it so that every part of you and your clients' experience is helping to presence the world you are wanting to live in. Your clients will love it, feel safe and come back.

The best of my business to you and your business,

Mark Silver


About the Author:
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line. He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the globe succeed in business without losing their hearts. Get three free chapters of the book online: http://www.heartofbusiness.com

Several Ways to Optimize and Tweak Your Expired Domains

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 John Khu


Trading and dealing with expired domains offers several opportunities to make decent income online. It is no wonder people call this business as online realty because of its exciting business concept. Talking about expired domain business is just like dealing with those premium properties in a big city filled to brim with fiercely competing realtors. Experienced realtors have the habit of promoting and advertizing their premium properties in an efficient manner so as to make them saleable at equally premium prices. Expired domain industry is almost similar to a real estate industry where you will be competing with thousands of competitors to sell your expired domain names.

Along with those magnificent expired domains and their superb opportunities, you can also use the exciting search engine marketing techniques to optimize and tweak your expired domain names as well. Right now, every domain marketer has a limited availability of 21 top level domain names to choose from; .com, .net, .biz, .org and .info are some of the most famous top level domains in the expired domain name industry.

Expired domain traders choose to buy domain names that can yield better online profits. However, buying such domains could be a lucky affair because of the uncertainties and imponderables involved in the business. Keyword enriched domain names are the most desirable names that can offer you a number of benefits while combining a newly purchased domain name with an efficient search engine optimization (SEO) technique will help you launch the domain to very high search engine ranking.

All search engines simply love and adore keyword rich domain names because seeking to find a precise keyword in a domain seems to a very firm indicator of the domain

's usefulness and relevance to a search command. When you flip your expired domains by making them relevant to search engines and later supplement high quality inbound traffic and links, then it is possible to sell your domains at a very high and premium price.

Simply speaking, keyword enriched domain names and the actual URL paths may not relate to each other. But careful tweaking of these parameters will help you achieve better organic ranking on top search engines like Yahoo and Google.

For example: When you search for keywords like "fresh flowers" on the major search engines, you may reach

www.proflowers.com on both Yahoo and Google, both returning the top raking for the site. Obviously, there is a visible tweak carried out here to make the site appear on top of the search engines.

If you own non-keyword optimized expired domains, you can still tweak it for better rankings by supplementing a number of keyword enriched page names. For example, a simple search on Google for search words. "Diabetes cure" will take you to pages like

http://www.diabetes.co.uk/Diabetes-Cure.html or http://www.diabetes.org/for-parents-and-kids/what-is-diabetes/cure.jsp

Incidentally, both of these pages sit on top of the search engines to reach prospective customers within no time. Using these techniques, you can build an inventory of highly useful expired domains that can provide you a chance to earn very decent income. Let us assume that you have plans to build an inventory of expired domain names over a niche keyword like "fresh flowers". It is easy to find useful domains centering on this keyword. Some of the useful keywords could be:

Fresh garden flowers

Fresh annual flowers

Fresh roses

Fresh flower boutique

The major benefit of enriching your expired domains with useful keywords is the branding ability and capacity to reach top of major search engines.


About the Author:
John Khu is an author and also a seasoned professional with vast experience in expired domain name business. He is also the owner of the path breaking web sites called http://www.expireddomainsecret.com and http://www.expireddomaingains.com which provides complete and up-to-date information on expired domains and their eternal secrets.

Google Reveals More Linking Secrets To Webmasters

Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins


One of the most problematic and confusing issues most webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should construct your internal links? How you should get more inbound links? How many links should you have on a page? And the list of questions goes on...

Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google's secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Google's whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works.

Google's ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are millions of webmasters who would like to "game" the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called "black-hat" SEO techniques and reverse engineering.

Wouldn't it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google's part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn't that be a hoot!

Actually, that's not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google's linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that we'll put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google's advice on link building is rather generous and informative.

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google's Maile Ohye gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and inbound links are the two most important factors. This is what most SEO experts have been saying for years.

A site's content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or offer quality products, entertainment, opinions...

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

"One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking."

"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user."

"As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service."

(End Quote)

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you're passionate about your site's topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they're more likely to link to you.

(End Quote)

SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content then other sites will want to link to you naturally.

Linking out to other sites should be done in a "common sense" manner and it's a way of offering value to your visitor's experience. We expect helpful relevant links when we visit other sites since it's a natural way a good quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to spammy sites that only offer pages of links with very little or no unique content.

There are several things every prudent webmaster should be checking like making sure your site hasn't been hacked and hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge; those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking all your outbound links regularly since you may initially link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page may be closed or replaced with one of those spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.

What has confused things lately is all the "link buying" which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your "wallet" shouldn't be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you're selling a link, it should have the "no-follow" tag so that it doesn't pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a "paid link" has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

You should not have more than "100 links on a page" as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site's "linking architecture" should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use "link cloaking" on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don't worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them.


About the Author:
The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Discover more about linking and ranking directly from Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.