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Link building is an extremely important part of any online marketing campaign. Since page rankings with the major search engines are influenced by the number, as well as the quality of links that direct traffic to your website, knowing how to formulate and execute a link building campaign is imperative.
The first step in any link building campaign should be to make sure that links exist on sites that you already do business with. It is usually simple to get links in such places, and they will more than likely remain there for quite an extensive amount of time. When starting out, make sure to have links in the following places:
• Vendors and suppliers websites.
• Trade associations.
• The Chamber of Commerce.
• Friends’ websites.
• Customers’ websites.
• Trade groups and associations websites.
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June 30th, 2006
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As the number of websites grow everyday, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a new site to attain good rankings on search engines. Since major search engines factor link popularity heavily into their ranking algorithms, building relevant links to your site is perhaps the single most important component of search engine optimization.
For a new site with no or few inbound links, buying text links on more established related sites could provide a boost to your link popularity. But this strategy could prove prohibitively expensive, especially in a highly competitive market where you’d have to buy lots of links to catch up with the competition.
Web directory listing represents a viable alternative to link buying. Apart from driving traffic to your site through direct referrals, web directories provide one-way inbound links to your site, boosting your link popularity and ultimately improving your search rankings.
There are thousands of web directories on the net, with dozens sprouting up every day. Some are general directories; others cater to specific niches. Some are free; others charge inclusion fees. Some are free only if you provide a reciprocal link in return. Many feature both free and paid listings.
The main advantage of a paid listing is the luxury of having your site listed quickly above everyone else’s. Free submissions may take several weeks or months for review. If you work on a limited budget, you may want to submit to a handful of paid directories and a few hundred free ones.
Some directories charge inclusion fees that are too high for the listing to be cost effective. When considering a paid listing, look at not only the Google PageRank of the homepage of directory, but also that of the subpage where your link will actually reside. While it may seem like a good deal to have your site listed on a PR5 directory for $15, the offer becomes far less attractive when you find out that the internal page where your link is placed is only PR2.
If you’ve ever submitted to web directories before, I don’t have to convince you that the process is extremely tedious and time-consuming, especially when you submit to a large number of them. Unlike search engines that send out robots to index web pages, web directories rely on more detailed submission forms to gather information about your site. Since each submitted site must be reviewed by a real person, most directories require that submissions are also performed by a real person, as opposed to an automatic script. Many directories use a visual code verification process to prevent automated submissions. Apart from complying with the directory’s guidelines, manual submission is the only way to ensure that your site is submitted to the proper category.
Because of the time involved in manually submitting your site and the sheer number of directories on the web, it’s important that you know which directories to submit to. Obviously, you’d want to submit to only the high-PR directories and avoid the low-PR ones, right? Not really. Just because a directory has a low PR does not mean that it’s not worth submitting to. The directory may be brand new and has not been around long enough to be ranked by Google. In contrast to the more established directories that continually experience a back-log of submissions, newer directories tend to review and list sites more quickly. As the directory becomes more popular, so will your link. So, don’t judge a directory solely by its PageRank; rather, base your decision on the overall quality of the directory.
Another important thing to look at is whether or not the directory you submit to is search engine friendly. Search engines like static web pages whose contents stay the same regardless of who visits the page, or when they visit, not dynamic pages that are created on-the-fly. Browse to a couple of categories and look at URL in the navigation bar. If the URL looks like, http://www.godirectory.org/links.php?ax=list&sub=42&cat_id=245, it’s probably not search engine friendly. An example of a static, search engine friendly URL is http://www.godirectory.org/dir/713/index.html (notice the “.html” suffix).
Another question to ask is: How easy it is to submit to the directory? How many hoops do you have to jump through to get to the submission form? When you finally get to the form, how many fields does the form have? A directory should ask for pertinent information like your name, email, URL, link title, link description, and keywords, but it should not look like a job application. With the exception of a handful of major directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, you should not have to spend more than 3 to 4 minutes to submit your site.
Another consideration is whether or not the directory has a category specific enough for your site. For optimal SEO benefits from your listing, your link should grouped under a specific category containing sites whose contents are related to yours. Such a grouping makes your listing more relevant in the eyes of the search engines, as well as providing an easier way for visitors to the directory to find your site.
Simply having your site listed on a directory is not enough. Your choice of the link title can determine how much impact your listing will have on your search engine rankings. Ideally, your link title (or “anchor text”) should contain the keywords that you want others to search for to get to your site. Since most web directories require a unique link title, however, it may not be possible to select a common phrase like “Free Web Directory” as your link title. This title is likely already taken by another web directory. Simply prefixing the phrase with your domain name, e.g. “GoDirectory.org Free Web Directory”, would make the title unique.
Oftentimes, a directory would have several related categories that are suitable for your site. How do you decide which one to submit to? Ideally, you’d want to submit to the category that has the highest PageRank. However, this may not turn out to be the wisest choice as your link may be buried among a zillion other listings. Going with a lower-PR category with fewer competing links may prove to be more beneficial. When choosing from multiple related categories, choose one with a good balance of relevancy, Pagerank, number of competing listings.
In sum, submitting to web directories is a highly effective link building strategy that should be an integral part of any search engine optimization campaign. Manually submitting to a large number of directories is both laborious and time-consuming. Just keep the above points in mind to make the most of your time.
About the Author
Oudam Em is the webmaster of www.UnlimitedTraffic.net, a site that offers a wide range of cost-effective web traffic solutions. Visit his site to use his manual web directory submission service to quickly submit your site to up to 500 search engine friendly web directories.
June 30th, 2006
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Many people have told me that they want to make money by selling ebooks, but they don’t want to write an e-book. If this describes you, I have great news for you! You can still make money by selling e-books written by other people by using affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant (the person who wrote and owns the ebook) and you (an affiliate). You agree to use your web sites and blogs to promote the merchant’s e-books and to link to the merchant’s web site. In exchange for this, the merchant pays you a commission on all sales that were generated by the affiliate web site. A referral occurs when a customer clicks on your product link and makes a purchase.
So now that you know what affiliate marketing is, start looking for a few affiliate products that you would like to sell. You might already know someone whose ebooks you would like to sell, and who has an affiliate program. In this case, just register for this person’s affiliate program, get your affiliate links and start promoting the e-books.
If you don’t know of anyone who has e-books and an affiliate program that you can use to sell them, just use your favorite search engine to find them. For example, if you are looking for e-books on gardening that have an affiliate program, just type in gardening e-books affiliate program into search engines. Chances are, you will find what you are looking for.
Once you find e-books that you would like to promote, start promoting them. Here is information to help you promote them:
Create good web marketing copy for the e-books on your web site. It is not enough to list the e-books on your web site and then link to the seller’s web site. The people who come to your web site are not looking for links to other sites; rather, they are looking for useful information for themselves. Having useful information on your web site increases the changes of your web site visitors buying the e-book, and will generate affiliate commissions for you.
Once you have good web site copy, start promoting your web site online and drive traffic to it. One way to do that is by optimizing the site for search engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site. The more visitors to the web site you have, the more affiliate products you will be able to sell, and the more money you will make. Make sure you optimize every page of your web site for search engines, especially the ones that provide the information about the e-books and sell the e-books; that way you will get more web site visitors.
Another way to drive more traffic to your web site is by creating a blog to promote it. A blog is your business diary, in which you share the information about your web site, as well as the e-books you are promoting. Your blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about the affiliate products and to connect with potential customers who would want to purchase them.
In order to bring the most online traffic and make money with your blog, make sure that your blog consistently and create blog posts that are of interest to your past as well as potential customers. Regular posts that are interesting to read is what will keep your readers coming back and buying from you.
Use the tips discussed above to make money selling e-books written by others. That is an excellent way to make money online.
About the Author
Start making money with affiliate marketing today! Biana Babinsky pays you 50% commissions for selling her Complete Online Marketing Course at http://www.completemarketingcourse.com/affiliates/
June 30th, 2006
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This article will provide a brief overview about the concept of hospitality industry, the problems faced by this industry and importance of hospitality marketing to ensure customer satisfaction and business growth.
Hospitality industry has a long evolutionary history. In older times, analysts suggest that the concept of this industry was initially known with a synonym, hotel industry. However in modern era the terminology of ‘Hospitality Industry’ is more common that comprises those businesses that provide services such as accommodation, food, and beverages to travelers seeking pleasure as well as those who travel due to business reasons (Gray & Liguori, 1996). Moreover it is argued that to some extend components of leisure industry such as cruise ships restaurants and to some lesser degree airlines are also considered part of hospitality industry as well (Papers4you.com, 2006).
Though the industry is assumed to be in nevr lasting demand but there are certain problems that this industry regularly faces. These problems may include uncertainty to the costs of even most economic source of energy, increased trend of problems in maintaining profitable food and beverage facilities, comparatively more increase in labor costs as compared to productivity, customer dissatisfaction due to increase in size and number of rooms as it is claimed to increase registration and other services process time and more importantly very high competition that induces heavy rate cuts to survive (Gray & Liguori, 1996).
Keeping these factors in view, in particular customer’s dissatisfaction and profit reduction, Lewis & Chambers (1989) asserts that hospitality industry historically did not realize importance of marketing and a remedy to industry’s problem is encapsulated in ‘hospitality marketing’, both in its foundation and practices. It was further asserted that in 1950s and 1960s, industry focused on technology and updating their telephone reservation systems. Similarly in 1970s and later, businesses were focused to increase assets and forgot the essence of industry, that is, ‘customer oriented service’.
It was suggested that players in hospitality industry should realize that hospitality product is different, that is in fact, something intangible that they are selling and as both product and reasons for buying it are different also different so it demands a different marketing strategy, something like hospitality marketing that requires customer centered hospitality need identification, specific segmentation & positioning and ‘the hospitality marketing mix’.
Such trend can be observed around the world (Papers4you.com, 2006). Food chains like McDonalds, Pizza Hut etc are now focusing on customer’s service and taste rather than focusing on their own brand name only. McDonalds in India, for instance, operates differently while focusing on the ‘vegetarian aspect’ of their tradition than McDonalds in USA where focus is more towards an easy accessible food facility.
Hence the discussion may conclude that hospitality industry provided ever needed services. Nonetheless it may face certain specific issues that can be counterattacked through industry specific ‘hospitality marketing’
References
Gray, W & Liguori, S, C, (1996), ‘Hotel and Motel Management and Operations’, Third Edition, Singapore: Prentice Hall Simon & Schuster (Asia) Pte Ltd
Lewis, R, C & Chambers, R, E, (1989), ‘Marketing Leadership in Hospitality- Foundations and Practices’, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold
Papers For You (2006) “C/M/142. Dissertation. Measuring service quality in a Hotel”, Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprttrav6.htm [22/06/2006]
Papers For You (2006) “P/B/582. Benefits and problems of small hospitality businesses”, Available from Papers4you.com [21/06/2006]
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Papers4you.com
June 30th, 2006
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