Wednesday, 12 January 2011

5 Useless Website Promotion Techniques

Every owner of a website on planet Earth knows that getting a constant flow of traffic is the key to making money online. The world wide web attracts such a massive number of buyers that regardless of what you sell, you will make some really good money when you have lots of traffic.

Internet marketers are constantly coming up with newer ways to expand their reach across the Internet because no website can survive without enough specific traffic. In their quest to obtain more of the elusive traffic, the website marketers have come up with some rather creative ways to bring in greater amounts of traffic in a short period of time and with little effort.

My email inbox has been flooded with sales letters promoting some automated software or seldom used secret that promises an explosion of website visitors within 30 days. The disturbing part of all this is that it goes against the teaching of our early years; that nothing good comes easy and there is no quick path to building a successful business. As a result of these promises of abundant website traffic and exploding sales figures, many have abandoned those time tested methods of attracting real targeted website visitors that are prepared to take some kind of action. Keep in mind that website traffic isn't something that you can just get, but visitors will come to your website when you have something to provide, enticing them to click on your link.

Too many people are cashing in on a person's desire to get to the top without much effort by offering some really useless website marketing techniques that could actually kill their search engine rankings. The fact is that these are nothing more than 'Marketing Fads', that may produce some huge results in the beginning, but when the newness wears off their effectiveness will fade away forever just like the telephone booth.

Remember when pop-ups and pop-under advertising came out years ago? This was the hottest marketing tool since the time of placing fliers on cars in parking lots. However, when people around the world started using pop-ups to promote their websites there were windows popping up every time you visited and exited a website. Internet users worldwide got so sick of all those pop-up windows that someone invented pop-up killer software. The search engines even started penalizing websites that were using pop-up scripts and soon after that method of website promotion faded away.

I will attempt to identify and explain some of these useless website promotion techniques that should be avoided at all cost. Using some of these bad website marketing techniques could certainly kill your search engine rankings.


Automatic Search Engine Submission Services

These free search engine submission websites allow you to put in your URL, keywords and a description of your website. You then click Submit believing that your website is on its way to being indexed on thousands of search engines. Not so! First of all, the major search engines require manual submission by hand and even implement coding script to prevent auto submission. Secondly, when you click on that Submit button you have no idea where your website link will end up going. Your website link could be automatically posted to illegal or international directory websites that are nothing but a colony of spam links. If Google crawls your website and finds out that you have links to your website coming from other websites with rotten content, then your website will pay the price in low rankings.

There is absolutely no substitute for manually forwarding your websites to the search engines. You will have complete control over where your link is going, and the search engines will automatically crawl your website to get your title and description.


Auto Submission to Directories and FFA sites

You may have seen those places that claim you can blast your website to over 2 million websites and directories. As a general rule, please stay away from anyone that uses the word 'Blast' because this is just another way of saying Spam. It sounds like you are literally placing your link on millions of other websites and getting tons of instant backlinks to your website. Those FFA or Free For All websites are nothing but a link farm containing links from sites with bad or irrelevant content. The search engines won't ever see your website as being respectable enough to rank high in the search results if it is affiliated with that type of environment.


Lead Generation Software

I once got an email that said, "Hello Webmaster, My name is John. I have been searching the Internet for some business opportunities and came across your website. I just wanted to know if you are still in business today. Please email me at this_email@emailaddress.com and let me know. Thank you."

I replied to the person giving them more information about one of our websites. That particular email was forgotten until I got a few other emails with the same content from different names and email addresses. This matter sparked my curiosity and prompted me to do some further investigation to find out why these emails turned up so frequently.

I discovered that this was the work of lead generation software that extracts website links and email addresses from the Internet for any category. You just type the keyword in the search box and the software literally pulls in millions of email addresses. The software even allows you to email all those addresses. On the surface it appears to be the perfect way to put your website link in front of millions of people in the same industry as you.

This has the look and smell of spam, but because the one sending the email does not attempt to sell you anything, it's not quite spam. This marketing technique is not very effective because the email is generic, impersonal and did not give the reader a reason to respond. Your emails should speak to a person's needs and not just at them. Readers respond to emails if you find a way to reach their interests, giving them a reason to take action.


Backlink Generating Software

Google loves websites that have lots of quality backlinks, considering such links votes on the importance of those sites. Somebody got this crazy idea to automate the link building that Google loves, hoping to get huge numbers of valuable links and move to the top of the search engine results. Google has now gotten smart and has found to way to detect how you are getting your backlinks and even the speed at which you are getting them. So, if you are still buying links or using software to get instant backlinks, then chances are Google will find out and penalize your website. Nothing can substitute for writing valuable content that will automatically attract quality backlinks.


Automated Article Submission and Article Spinning

Writing high quality articles is a great way to attract targeted visitors to your website. Again, someone invented a way to automate this process as well. They came out with article submission software that they claim will automatically send your written articles to hundreds or even thousands of directories. There is even software that will take one written article, spin the title and words around, and send them to more directories. This software sells like hotcakes because people don't want to do the labor intensive work of writing their own articles and sending them manually to article directories.

The real, authentic article directories that can syndicate your articles are getting smart and have installed a special code that disallows auto submission of articles. They have also installed a special script that can detect articles that have been spun off from the original. Most of them manually approve articles before they are published in their directory and can easily detect duplicate and spinned content.


Conclusion

Widespread use of these automated website marketing techniques has taken away the need to apply really genuine website promotion that gets real results and replaced it with push-button marketing. You may see some quick and positive results, but only for a short period of time. Treat your website like an infant; give it lots of attention, feed it some healthy content, protect it from dangerous spam activity and let it grow naturally over time.



About The Author Deek Ennis is the Founder and CEO of Buildstar Wholesale Resources. Since 2003 they have helped over 100,000 businesses fulfill their wholesale and drop ship product sourcing needs with free worldwide shipping on over 5 million wholesale products.

Deek is the author of numerous published articles on internet marketing and business such as, "7 Do It Yourself Techniques to higher Search Engine Rankings" and "How to Avoid Getting Scammed While Buying Wholesale". Learn how Deek and Buildstar can help fulfill your wholesale product sourcing needs at www.buildstarwholesale.com

Sunday, 9 January 2011

Does Google Consider Your Site Safe?

Recently, Google introduced a new security layer to it's search engine results pages (SERPs) which informs users if a site has been compromised through hacking (see post: Google Adds New Security Layer To SERPs).

Although this new security layer is good at protecting users and their computers from sites that have been hacked, what you may not know is that Google maybe warning users not to visit your site, because of your outbound links.

Last Friday, I received a message from John Gilbert of The Blog Farm informing me that my blog was unsafe to visit because it had a link to a site that has malware. After doing some checks on Google, Webmaster Tools and even on Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page, there was no indication any said links existed on my blog and that my site was safe.

John then provided a screenshot of the message he was receiving from Google when trying to access my blog. Here's a copy of that screenshot (Site omitted due to legal reasons. Click image to enlarge):


Click to Enlarge


Initially, I was shocked because I'm very careful who I link to on my blog. Furthermore, I could not understand why Google's SERPs, Webmaster Tools and the Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page were not picking this up.

After further investigation, it was found that John was using Google Chrome whereas I was using Internet Explorer. It was also found that the said link was actually a comment from a reader on one of my blog posts. The link that this reader had posted was actually to a respected site. However, because it had recently been hacked and malware left on the site, that site plus my blog was now considered harmful by Google. If it wasn't for John, I wouldn't of been aware of the problem, costing me crucial visitors.

So the moral of the story is this:

If you run a blog, discussion board or any site that allows visitors to post messages and links, be warned. You may be careful in ensuring that your site is safe, but it only takes one outbound link to a site that has been compromised to cost you visitors, money and maybe your reputation.

Also, don't fully rely on Google SERPs, Webmaster Tools or Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page to pick anything out of the ordinary. These might indicate everything if fine but as you can see from my case, it wasn't.

My suggestion is check your outbound links often using Google Chrome to access your site on a regular basis. That way, you can be sure your site is considered safe and not being blocked by the major search engine.


If you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts, don't forget to follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar), on Facebook or subscribe to our feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
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To Your Success!

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Server Problems

Our hosting company has been experiencing intermittent server problems over the past 48hrs. If you've had difficulty connecting to the Mirage BBS Discussion Board or downloading your free ebooks, I do apologise. Hopefully, our hosting company will have this issue resolved soon.

Thank you for your patience.


UPDATE 4:35pm: The server problem has now been resolved. Thank you again for your patience.

Friday, 7 January 2011

Yahoo Continues To Downsize It's Workforce

Yahoo! has done it again. In less than 4 years the company has gone ahead and issued the pink slip to as many as 2,700 employees. History says that the Sunnyvale, California based company had sacked around 1,400 jobs in the year 2008 during the time of recession and then up to 700 job holders were shown the gate in the very next year 2009.

Following this is yet another lot of 600 people who now have to look for other job opportunities. The downsizing saga continued with Yahoo! chopping of 600 jobs during December mid-month of 2010, but the number supposedly higher than the real deal. There were speculations of at least a 20% layoff which in real-time has reduced to a 4% layoff.

Although there were reports of the fact that the layoffs would majorly be in the Yahoo! products group, which builds Web properties like the company's popular news, sports and finance pages, as well as its widely used e-mail service, there is no definite news that the downsizing has taken place in this particular division as yet. Rumors doing rounds suggest that the head of the products group at yahoo Blake Irving who moved from Microsoft to Yahoo! has his plans cut out and plans to reduce operational costs by cutting jobs of up-to 20% in his division.

Now let's move on to a more sane discussion and try to understand the logic behind such downsizing and see if this kind of strategy has really helped Yahoo! over the past. Understandably and a very obvious reason for the layoffs is to cut down on costs. Secondly, the company wants to ensure that it aims at optimized downsizing i.e., an effort to chop jobs that aren't as productive as they have to be. Yahoo! is also looking at re-inventing itself in order to compete with internet rivals Google. A Yahoo spokesperson said "the company will continue to hire on a global basis to support our key priorities and laid-off employees will receive severance packages and outplacement services". This meaning that the company does not always endorse the idea of downsizing.

Carol Bartz, Yahoo!'s CEO has her work cut out. After having shown the gate to as many as 2000 employees and more, Bartz now has to ensure that she does not put a step wrong in the future. Her plan is to streamline the company and drive its focus around content again. To turn Yahoo! into what it was a few years ago Bartz says she needs some time. The company under her leadership has surely cut costs and also cracked a deal with Microsoft's Bing. So it is not a bad idea to downsize but there needs to be enough care taken to ensure that there are no hiccups like the idea of arranging for severance packages and outplacement services, improving business deals, etc.

Though 2010 has proven to be a mix of good and bad for Yahoo! there could be some respite for the company in store in the year 2011.


Published by Brajeshwar Oinam on Searchnewz.com

Saturday, 1 January 2011

Get Blog Updates On Facebook + 5 Free Ebooks Giveaway

Happy New Year..!! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and enjoyed the New Year festivities :) Here's wishing you much happiness, joy, peace and prosperity throughout the coming year.

Now that we're in 2011, I will be making some changes to the blog (see previous post). One of these changes is to synchronise my blog with Facebook, enabling readers like yourself to subscribe and follow my blog through Facebook.

I've been working hard over the past 24hrs to implement this change... and to start the New Year off with a bang, I am pleased to announce that the synchronisation has been completed and you can now get blog updates posted direct to your Facebook page. By using the NetworkedBlogs Facebook Application, you are now able to follow my blog via Facebook and have all new blog posts posted directly to your wall.

You can subscribe and follow my blog on Facebook in one of two ways:

1. Visiting NetworkedBlogs at:
http://networkedblogs.com/blog/dereks_home_and_business_blog/?ahash=25cb857d3f14f932af4c6e8186d2a615

2. Using the Facebook Application at:
http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/actions.php?readit=1&blogid=661473

The links above will automatically subscribe you... just login using your Facebook Email and Password to complete the process. You can also use the widget I have installed on the sidebar to subscribe.

As it's New Year and as a thank you, I'm giving away 5 ebooks to the first 50 readers who follow my blog on Facebook. These are quality ebooks that can help you in your daily work and in making your website a success. Here's what you'll receive once you subscribe:

1. Blogging For Success: An 11 page ebook that teaches everything you need to know to Blog successfully.

2. Better Business Blogging In 2011: This complimentary 24-page curated ebook, written by four business blogging experts and including case study examples, will help you get your efforts off to a better start in 2011.

3. The Insider's Guide to Article Writing Best Practices: A 15 page guide to understanding the right approach to writing articles and giving them widespread appeal with a handy checklist of 100+ common errors you need to avoid.

4. The Insider's Guide To Understanding Duplicate Content: A 12 page ebook on how Google defines "duplicate content", how to use syndicated content safely and how to maximize exposure for your content in a Google-friendly way.

5. How to Increase Twitter Followers on Autopilot: A 42 page ebook in PDF format that tells you everything you need to know about building and monetising your Twitter follower base.

Once you subscribe, send me an email or a message on Facebook and I will provide you with the links to download these quality ebooks. Don't forget, these ebooks are only available to the first 50 readers who subscribe... so to avoid disappointment, subscribe now to reserve your copies!

I'm still making some final adjustments to the synchronisation which should not effect you. However, if you do find a problem with subscribing or that you're not receiving blog updates on your Facebook page, please let me know. You can check the latest blog posts directly on Facebook by visiting this page.

As ever, if you want to stay up to date with the latest blog posts away from Facebook, you can follow via Google Friend Connect (button on sidebar) or subscribe to our feed at:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DereksHomeAndBusinessBlog

You can also follow me on Twitter @djones1509 and on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/djones1509

Until my next post, have a wonderful New Year's day!