Your Expert Guide in Internet Marketing Success

The top 5 affiliate programs for 2011

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Put simply, Forex Trading (Foreign Exchange Trading) is the practice of trading currencies from different currencies against each other. If, for example, Euro exchange rates were low and US Dollar exchange rates were high, a Forex trader might buy Euros whilst selling US Dollars at the same time, known as ‘going long’.

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    5 Great On-Page SEO Tips

    Thursday, March 31st, 2011

    Most of the time, we are too busy concentrating on link-building and nailing the off-site aspects of SEO in order to please Google and tend to neglect the on-page aspects. If you want long-term, long-lasting SEO success, you’ll need to pay close attention to your on-page SEO, too. We’ve put together our top 5 on-page SEO tips to help you along the way.

    1. Optimise your title tag

    Your title tag is vitally important in terms of SEO. Don’t simply include your company’s name and leave it at that. Prioritise your main keyword at the start of the title tag and ensure that it reads naturally and doesn’t take up any more than 64-70 characters. Any longer than this, and Google will simply chop the end off.

    2. Utilise your link text properly

    The text that makes up a hyperlink is what tells Google what the target page is about. Want Google to associate a page with a specific term? Use that term in the anchor text of your hyperlinks and you’re half-way there. However, you need to make sure that the text reads naturally and won’t put off humans in favour of search engines. Remember your audience.

    3. Remember the alt attributes!

    Many people neglect alt attributes on images. Essentially, this text tells browsers what the picture is about, seeing as most are unable to read and decipher images. This is vital for W3C validity, but the real bonus is an SEO one. If your image is linked to another page, the alt text will act as the equivalent of anchor text in a text-based hyperlink. By utilising your keywords in the alt text, you can squeeze a little bit more SEO benefit out of your pages.

    4. Keep your code clean and valid

    Having code which is clean and structured and conforms to W3C standards will ensure that search engine spiders and browsers are able to read and navigate your site effectively, as well as being able to extract the relevant content from your site and discover its focus and meaning. Making life easier for Google will make life much easier for you, and you’ll see the benefit in your search engine rankings in no time.

    5. Above all, keep the quality high

    The temptation is always there to spam your pages in order to get the search engine benefit but make your site completely useless and unintelligible for human visitors. Think about it – what use is it being at the top of the search engines if your users can’t find their way around your site or work out what you’re trying to say from your jumble of heavily-SEO’d text? Keep your users at the front of your mind at all times, and search engines will follow.

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      What makes a good call to action?

      Monday, March 28th, 2011

      Your call to action is the technique used to encourage your website’s visitors to perform a certain action, be it filling out an enquiry form or purchasing your product. Your call to action is vitally important to your ongoing online success, ensuring that your visitors do what you want them to do. We’ve put together some tips to help you make the most out of effective calls to action.

      1. Focus on the goal in mind

      Make sure you know what you want your users to do. What is your website’s objective? Whether it is filling in a form, buying a product or signing up for your newsletter, make sure you know what it is.

      2. Offer incentives

      Freebies and offers encourage users to do what you want them to do. If you offer a free quote or discounted rate, your rate of uptake will improve dramatically.

      3. Make it easy for users to do it

      Make sure the call of action is easy for users to carry out. Make the ordering or signing up process as simple as it can possibly be, enabling users to get what they want with maximum ease and minimal fuss. If you over-complicate things, you’ll lose users and business.

      4. Get things moving

      If you use words such as ‘call’, ‘subscribe’ or ‘now’, users feel a sense of urgency in carrying out the action and will make a decision far more quickly. If you have offers lasting for one day only or for the first x customers, users are far more likely to respond quickly and positively.

      5. Location of your call to action

      Make sure your call to action is prominently located, so that users can see it within three seconds of arriving on your website. Don’t put it in the middle of a load of ads or in the footer of your website where no-one will see it.

      6. Font, size and colour

      Pay special attention to the style of your call to action. The image needs to be large and use a darker font. Use contrasting colours and try to avoid red as it tends to signal danger and may warn people away from taking the desired action. Green, on the other hand, signals trust and ‘go’.

      7. After the call to action

      Once the call to action has been performed, you need to ensure that you act on it quickly and professionally. This is what will cause customers to become repeat customers. You’ve got their business, now do your best with it!

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        5 ways that you can make money online

        Saturday, March 26th, 2011

        Making money online is something that everyone dreams of; being able to work from home and earn your own income from the comfort of your living room is something which few people are able to enjoy. Those of us who are lucky enough to do so are often keen to share their tips, however, and we’ve put together a list of our top 5 ways to make money online.

        1. Blogging

        Blogging is still a good money-spinner in 2011, whether it be through paid advertising and affiliate links or whether you use a paid blogging platform such as PayPerPost.com in order to get paid directly for publishing blog posts. A blog takes time to build up in terms of popularity, though, so this income stream is anything but instantaneous.

        2. Stock photography

        If you’ve got a creative eye and are good at taking photos, you might like to sell some of your pictures to stock photography outlets, allowing them to use your images and sell them on a per-download basis, allowing you to make money each time one of your images is used. This can be quite a lucrative source of income if you have the talent and the right set of photographs to sell.

        3. Paid surveys

        Yes, you can even get paid to fill in online surveys. Completely without pride or glory, this income stream allows you to make money by completing dull market research surveys. However, it’s mighty effective. There are thousands of research groups on the internet, meaning that the number of opportunities are virtually endless. Make sure you make up a new email account and use false details where possible, though, as your details tend to be passed on to all sorts of people.

        4. Poker

        Online poker can make you some big bucks if you’re good at it. Assuming you don’t have an addictive personality, and that you can actually play poker, you can make some very decent money. Of course, you can also lose quite a lot of money if you’re not extremely careful.

        5. Sell stuff

        By far the most traditional method, but often still the best. Websites such as eBay and Amazon Marketplace allow you to sell your old junk (read: quality goods) for a neat little profit. Get rid of those DVDs, CDs and books that you don’t use any more and make some money in the meantime.

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          What is Forex Trading?

          Thursday, March 24th, 2011

          Put simply, Forex Trading (Foreign Exchange Trading) is the practice of trading currencies from different currencies against each other. If, for example, Euro exchange rates were low and US Dollar exchange rates were high, a Forex trader might buy Euros whilst selling US Dollars at the same time, known as ‘going long’.

          Forex trading is usually done through a broker, allowing you to place a trade on a pair of currencies which you expect to change in value. Buying 5000€ at a cost of £4000 might see the pound strengthen, meaning that your 5000€ is worth £4500 a year later, giving you a £500 return on your investment. Although banks have been Forex trading for years, amateur traders are now starting to invest their own money in this potentially lucrative market.

          The most traded currencies, in decreasing order of popularity, are the US dollar, Euro, Japanese yen, Pound sterling, Australian dollar, Swiss franc, Canadian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Swedish krona, and New Zealand dollar. The US dollar makes up the bulk of the trade, with almost 85% of trades containing this currency (out of 200%, as each trade involves two currencies).

          Predicting the future fluctuation of currency is difficult to determine, with the political and economic climates giving good indications, as does the past history of a particular currency. With Forex markets opening and closing throughout the day, the worldwide trade is continuous. For example, when the Forex market closes in the United States, it is just opening in Tokyo and Hong Kong.

          To summarise, big profits and returns can be made through Forex trading, but it requires a lot of experience and knowledge of the world’s financial markets before real returns can be realised. Like any form of market trading, Forex trading can be risky and you should be sure to understand the risks and potential pitfalls of Forex trading before you commit any money to your new venture.

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            Top 5 tips for using cash back sites

            Monday, March 21st, 2011

            Cash back sites allow you to save money on your purchases by going through a specialist website (cash back site) which pays you for shopping online. These sites are completely legitimate and are endorsed by websites such as MoneySavingExpert.com. Essentially, they take advantage of affiliate schemes and pass a portion of the money on to you for using it. There are, however, some top tips for making the most out of cash back sites, which we’ve listed below.

            1. Don’t treat cash back sites as an income – they’re only a bonus

            It is important to remember that cash back sites only give you a small percentage of cash back on items you’ve already bought. If you don’t need the item and weren’t going to buy it anyway, you’re not going to be making any money from cash back sites – quite the opposite! It’s also worth bearing in mind that, due to technical difficulties, some cash back sites fail to pay out for some time.

            2. Don’t spend the money until it’s in your bank account

            Just because you’ve got a nice balance showing in your cash back site profile doesn’t mean the money is yours yet. Until the money is in your bank account, the site could still go bust and lose your money, so don’t spend what isn’t actually in your bank account. In addition, there are all sorts of tracking and processing issues which could arise.

            3. Don’t store cash in cash back sites

            As per rule number two, you should withdraw your cash as soon as you reach the withdrawal threshold, which most sites will have. Don’t leave cash to build up as it’s not yours until it is in your bank account. Besides, it earns interest in your bank account whereas it does not in a cash back account.

            4. Focus on the overall cheapest deal

            Cash back sites don’t always give you the best deal. It can be very tempting to opt for a £400 insurance policy with £50 cash back, but why bother if you can get a £200 insurance policy anyway? Cash back isn’t always the cheapest option, so shop around and only look at your cash back options after you’ve already found the best price.

            5. Clear your cookies

            Cash back websites track your visits by placing cookies on your computer, logging that you came to the retailer through them. If you’re using a website which you’ve used before, clear your cookies and then go through the cash back site to ensure that you are logged as a referral from them and will, therefore, get the full money you’re due.

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              What’s the difference between paid and organic traffic?

              Saturday, March 19th, 2011

              When trying to make the most out of search engine traffic in order to generate traffic to and business from your website, there are two aspects to take into consideration: paid traffic and organic traffic. Essentially, the differences are quite obvious: one is free and one requires payment, but the differences go a lot further than that.

              Paid traffic, often generated through Google’s Adwords platform consists of paying for each click that a user makes on one of your adverts, thereby generating traffic to your website and, hopefully, enquiries and sales for your business. Paid search allows you to set your own budget and stick to that, but it does tend to be quite expensive when compared to organic search engine optimisation.

              Organic traffic accounts for more than 85% of all search engine traffic, so you can see where the big money lies. To have real search engine success, you need to be on the first page of Google for your chosen keywords. Of course, some financial input is likely to be necessary, especially if you decide to hire a search engine optimisation company to optimise your website for you. Organic search engine optimisation gives long-term, long-lasting benefits which target the bulk of the traffic, but the results do take time to build up and bear fruit, meaning that you need to be committed in the long term.

              Generally, the best practice (if your budget allows it) is to start off using paid search and organic search engine optimisation in tandem, allowing paid search to bring in the traffic and sales whilst the organic search engine optimisation takes time to come into full effect. As your business from organic search engine optimisation begins to build, you can level off your paid search spend and concentrate on the bulk of the traffic from organic search. Although paid traffic is still successful, it is declining in terms of the likely return on investment that advertisers are seeing, as well as becoming more expensive as a form of advertising and marketing. Through embracing organic search engine optimisation in the long term, your results will be positive and long-lasting.

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                5 Ways to Monetise Twitter

                Thursday, March 17th, 2011

                Many companies use Twitter to blindly promote their products without any real thought or reason as to how to use this valuable social media tool to actually increase sales. We’ve put together five tips to help you make the most out of Twitter and turn it into a sales and marketing tool.

                1. Don’t use Twitter as an advertising platform.

                This is something that we see all too often. Companies sign up to Twitter purely to tweet endlessly on how great their company is, what new products they have available, and why you should buy things from them. It doesn’t work – Twitter’s not an advertising platform or billboard.

                2. Engage with your followers and other users.

                This doesn’t mean you should try to sell to them, either! Help your followers, respond to their enquiries and questions, and use Twitter as a tool to promote yourself indirectly as an industry guru and helpful soul.

                3. Run competitions.

                Competitions work fantastically on Twitter. You can give away products as a prize in return for asking Twitter users to follow and retweet your competition tweet. This way, the tweet will roll on and on, gaining followers and retweets. Make sure the prize is fairly substantial, though; money-off vouchers just won’t cut it.

                4. Include your website link on your Twitter profile.

                This might sound incredibly obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do this. There’s even a dedicated URL field. It costs you nothing, so put your URL in here and allow your Twitter followers to browse your website and become potential customers. If your tweets are mainly industry-related, you may even find it to be a potentially valuable backlink.

                5. Get it on the conversation.

                Twitter’s search function is invaluable for finding people who are talking about your products, services or industry. It takes no time or effort to reply to messages or get in on the conversation. Be careful not to come across as a salesperson – be helpful and informative and don’t go out of your way to promote your website or products.

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                  Top 5 SEO Basics

                  Monday, March 14th, 2011

                  The SEO industry has exploded in recent years, with more and more people jumping on the bandwagon to try and promote their products and services through search engines. If you’re new to the SEO industry and trying to do things yourself, it can be a little bit daunting at first. Fortunately, we’ve put together our top 5 basic SEO tips.

                  1. Title tags

                  Perhaps the most important on-page SEO aspect is what sits between your title/title tags. You should be careful to limit this to 64-70 characters at the most (any more and Google will ignore it or cut it off) and be sure to prioritise your main keywords at the start of your title tag.

                  2. Create a sitemap

                  A sitemap will help Google create an index of all the pages on your site and crawl them effectively, rather than having to follow links. You should create an HTML and an XML sitemap. If you don’t feel confident using XML, a simple text file sitemap will work fine. You should register these with Google’s Webmaster Console and keep an eye on the indexing.

                  3. Keyword-rich linking

                  When creating links to other pages on your website, ensure they are keyword-rich. Whatever the anchor text of your link is, that’s what Google will associate the target page with. Use this to your advantage and create natural, keyword-rich anchor text to use when linking within your website.

                  4. Backlinks

                  Google’s algorithm is heavily weighted towards backlinks. Every link that points in to your site is a vote of confidence, with on-topic and high-authority links counting for far more than minor, off-topic links. You should spend a great deal of your time on your linkbuilding strategy to ensure long-term Google success.

                  5. Content is King.

                  Ensure your site is kept up to date with relevant, interesting content which enables Google to see that your website is alive and growing all the time. Keep the content on-focus in terms of SEO and ensure it is relevant and interesting for users so that they feel compelled to link to it and give you even more SEO benefit.

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                    Understanding the best time to launch a blog post

                    Friday, March 11th, 2011

                    Leo Reynolds from Flickr

                    Understanding the best time to launch a blog post is a tricky thing to do, as the internet is a global phenomenon which transcends all time zones. However, we have a few top tips to help you get the most out of your blog posts and ensure that they are seen and linked to by as many people as possible at any given time.

                    In terms of popularity, studies show that the most popular times for blog posts (GMT) are midnight-2am and 4pm-10pm. In terms of the most popular days, it’s pretty even but Tuesday and Thursday come out just above the other days in terms of posting popularity. Are they the best times and days to post, though?

                    If you plan to tweet with your blog post, a recent study showed that 4.01pm is the best time to tweet if you want to be noticed. After that, 11am-12pm should be considered. The same survey showed that half of people read every tweet, with 20% only reading the last 20 or so tweets.

                    During the 11am-12pm and 4pm-5pm windows, there are between 17% and 20% more users reading tweets than sending them. Between 7pm and 8pm, however, this margin reduces to just 2%, meaning people are more interested in tweeting than reading your tweets.

                    Friday afternoons are always a good time to post, as people tend to get towards the end of their working weeks and browse on the internet. For this reason, the lunchtime hours also work well. However, your blog may be focussed on a particular niche which means a specific time is best for you.

                    Try different times and different days and see what works best for you. There are no hard and fast rules, but studies tend to show pretty conclusively that the 4pm-5pm window and Mondays and Fridays tend to work well for a large number of bloggers around the world.

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