Making money with Blogs

Not many people write a blog for money. More significant yet, not many people know how to make money with their blogs. But those who do write with the intention of making money need to keep in mind one basic and fundamental rule of blogging-Catching the attention of the readers. Once you have learnt to catch the attention of the readers, you need to work on changing that attention into money. Some strategies for making money from blogs are:

1. Advertising in your blogs- What's the harm of endorsing some ads. that gel in perfectly with your blog and may be of use to the readers for buying. Google's Adsense program provides you with such contextual advertisements that have a high chance of getting clicked by readers and you getting paid a certain amount for each click fixed by Google. Compared to Adsense is the Affiliate program option (like Amazon.com's) that pays a percentage of all purchases to the bloggers. This is more like gamble, and here the chances of getting paid are less, but if you do get paid, the money is BIG!
2. Making a company feature, product or service public through blogs is another way of earning revenue for yourself or your business. Many big and successful companies are doing this. The logic they give is that by publishing blogs, they get an opportunity to communicate and interact with their clients, plus they get some feedback (positive or negative) from their customers.This way they use blogs as a major marketing strategy and win the trust of their clients, thus making the one timers as life-long customers of their products or services.
3. Hired Bloggers- If you are familiar with the term freelance writers, you will very well understand the term hired or paid bloggers. They are bloggers hired by a company to write blogs for their products or services for a limited period, without being a part of the company workforce or staff.
4. Banner Ads-While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn good revenue by selling banner space.
5. Widening your network and reputation through blogs may not be a direct way of earning extra money for your business, but it surely helps in making like-minded people or people looking for similar business contacts and relations get into touch with you easily and quickly. You may not realize it now, but networking of this kind really makes your business prospects better as there may be lots of people out there who might want to employ your services or products after reading your blog.

In conjunction with all these strategies, it would do you no harm if you keep improving your writing skills. After all, that's what a blog is all about. It is pure and 100% unadulterated content. The better and more interesting your blog, better are your chances of making more money.

http://www.segnant.com/

Increasing Your Web Traffic with Testimonials

Whenever we see a website, we like to read the testimonials out of curiosity(if there is any testimonials section). Just like trophies act as testimonials of your extraordinary achievement, excellent performance or good work; similarly, testimonials in awebsite act as a proof of the quality and standard of your products and services, thus influencing people's decision to buy them.

They also serve another purpose. When you testify to the features of a product that you really liked or found beneficial as a buyer, you generally give your name and website address along with it. Think how powerful a marketing tool it becomes for you by exposing your business to everyone who's looking at the site where you offered your testimonial. In case the host website where you contributed your testimonial happens to be a well known name in the market, you have struck gold! This would mean unlimited exposure for you.

Also you can put an end to reciprocal linking woes by including your link in the testimonial and showing it on the main page of some high ranking sites and increasing your link popularity to a great extent. Not only websites, you can also submit your testimonials to ezines, free online services etc. Use language as you are complimenting the products or services as websites that wish to increase their sales will definitely use your testimonials. And that means more chances of your getting printed and getting noticed by more people. And ultimately the more you are seen, better are the chances of people coming to your site. So even if you are praising somebody else's products or services, you are still expanding your reach indirectly.

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Why Not Use RSS in Marketing?

Till now you have been familiar and comfortable with blogging only for letting the world know about you and your work. But have you ever tried this amazing technology round the corner called RSS or Really Simple Syndication. To freshen up your memories, RSS allows you to publish news over the Internet and reaches the interested readers. This publishing takes place in the form of feeds or channels and is read using the software called news aggregators or readers. You must be wondering, how it would help you in reaching your target audience. Well, very simple. Now you can send your company profile to the interested parties, in the form of Press Releases, event announcements, memos, reminders, and other information by syndicating content with RSS. Believe it or not-RSS is the most happening thing in web communication and the search engines simply love it. RSS feeds supply headlines and summaries of information in a very concise way.

We all know that the web relishes fresh, updated, and unique content. And RSS feeds gets the first place in leaving e-mail filters behind. When people sign up for RSS feeds along with email newsletters, they don't have to fear blocking of the RSS feeds as is the case with ezines.

You can get listed in the search engines quickly and reasonably by submitting RSS feeds to them. You can widen the horizon and scope of your business by offering your valuable content to other website owners and get extra exposure to your target audiences. By getting your RSS feeds indexed in the RSS directories, you future-proof your business. Offering readers other people's content through RSS feed syndication, along with your own fresh and new content would lead to lots of gains for you.

Are you already bowled over by RSS and its features? If not, then I sympathize with you. But if you have understood the role of this amazing technology in making online marketing a kid's play for you, you are almost there in your pursuit to attain top rankings in search engines.

http://www.segnant.com/

Understanding Link Exchanges: Banish the Half-Truths

Whenever a new technology, concept, invention, or discovery becomes popular, many myths and half-truths get associated with it automatically.The existence of these half-turths is prolonged by the so called "advocates" of that particular concept. Take the case of link exchanges. Every webmaster feels strongly that the more the number of links pointing to a web site, better is going to be the pagerank and positioning of that web site. Agreed that link exchanges play an important role in improving a site's reach and popularity on search engines, but overindulgence or depending solely on one strategy can be sometimes fatal also. It is important to use the link exchange program in moderation and the following half-truths need to be dispelled for more effective SEO:

Half-Truth - "I need to link to every site possible"

This thinking is virtual suicide for your site. Though linking with sites is important, but not with every site under the sun. you need to study and analyse the relevance and relation of that site with your site. The sites you link to must be very much complementary to the services and products offered by your site, at the same time, they should not be a threat to your popularity.

Half-Truth - "Adding sites is like give and take"

It is not necessary that adding others' sites to your site would automatically make others add your site to theirs too. So, don't be under any misconceptions that your favor will always be returned. Be sure that you link to the reciprocal sites by waiting for a green signal from the other sites agreeing to list your site.

Half- Truth - "The title of the link should carry my site's name"

Search engines like Google consider those titles of the links that have specific keywords inserted in the title of the link instead of putting the website name in the title of the link.What matters here is not the name of your web site in the title of the link, but the keywords or keyphrases for which you are optimizing your pages.

Half- Truth - "Placing all links on one page in no order is okay"

Well, this is far from the truth. Make it easy and comfortable for the visitors and search engines to find and explore the differentpages of your site by placing all the links in a directory with each link partner given a specific category.

Half-Truth - "Linking to high Google Page Ranking sites is the right thing"

Not necessarily. Instead of wasting your time on looking for high page rank sites to link with, concentrate your energies and efforts at the quality of the internet business. A well designed site will automatically have higher pagerank, and so will the value of your link increase manifold by linking to a quality site.

http://www.segnant.com/

User Search Behavior and Your Rankings

Google has a reputation of not resting and doing something or the else every now and then to keep the webmasters on their toes all the time.The latest patent specification points towards Google's intention to keep track of the users' clicks and the amount of time spent looking at a page listed in the search results. In other words, by keeping an eye on the click-throughs, Google might please and reward the sites with a high click-through rate. Not only this, Google is also planning to track web users' behavior through bookmarks, cache, favorites, and temporary files. Basically, Google might be tracking the volume of searches over time, information related to a webpage's ranking, upswing or downswing in click-through rates, click-through rates for fresh or old web pages, click-through rates for specific key terms/phrases, traffic to a web page, etc. In fact the overall behavior of the user for documents might be kept track of to see any changes in trends. The total time spent by a user on a particular web page may also be monitored to guage the uniqueness, quality or likeability of that page. So, now the search results and user data can have an effect-positive or negative-on your web site's rankings.

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Common SEO Mistakes that Must be Avoided

Times keep changing and so does the basis for ranking sites by search engines. What was acceptable a few years ago may not be the norm today. Given below are some very commonly made mistakes by even seasoned and experienced webmasters. Avoiding them will help increase your site's rankings to a great extent.

1. It is not advisable to use multiple domain names, if possible. But if you have to, then do not use the same content in all the domains or redirecting the multiple domains to your main domain. Also, inform the users of the reason for using multiple domains to avoid confusion or misunderstanding.

2. Use limited graphics on your site. Try to understand the difference between a website and a print advertisement or a beautiful painting. Use more of text and your page shouldn't take more than 7 seconds to load. If you cannot avoid graphics, use JPEG, or GIF images and not .psd, .bmp, or .tiff files.

3. Flash is not very much recommended in websites as it increases loading time of the page and is not viewable by all browsers. Moreover search engines still have a weakness for HTML for conveying content rather than flash.

4. Pop-up windows are a big no-no. Do not use them at any cost as they distract visitors' attention unneccessarily and are not indexed by search engines because of the JavaScript used to open them up.

5. Frames are not much liked by search engines, so they should be avoided if you want your information to be indexed fairly.

6. Image maps can land your site in trouble as search engines can't read them. So make sure that if you have to, you place them on unimportant pages and not on the main page of your site. Better still include links to other pages for making it easier for the spiders to move on.

7. Javascript shouldn't be used much as it slows down the speed of your website and is known to crash certain browsers.

8. Content on dynamically generated pages is sometimes not indexed by spiders, so it is better to construct important pages in HTML.

Keeping in mind the mistakes mentioned above may save you a lot of effort, money, and resources as far as getting higher rankings are concerned.

http://www.segnant.com/

Using CMS to develop Content tailored to Web users Needs

The population of experienced and sophisticated web users is on the rise, and so are the challenges for the web marketers to present professionally developed content suiting different needs and demands of different users. Content Management system comes (CMS) as a whiff of fresh air in the web marketing arena as a solution to the creation, editing, management, and publication of marketing content. As we all know that in the highly competitive world of web marketing where every second businessman has a web site of his or her own, these infinite number of web sites are doing their best to tailor the content in such a way that it is very interactive and providing a large array of services and products to the customers. Here in lies the utility and advantage of having CMS. In order to handle the complex and never ending flow of information in the website, CMS helps manage this content in a very efficient and professional manner. The best part about CMS is that you can create, edit, and schedule content without being bugged by HTML codes and graphical formats. It makes your site dynamic and interactive, hence enhancing the impact of the site on users.Using this system, content writers and editors can quickly create and manage web pages as well as e-mail messages tailored to individual needs.

Some benefits of CMS are:

1. design and content creation remain separate entities and this gives a consitent look to the whole web site
2. Multi channel publishing is possible where same content can be published in different formats and locations
3. content can be dispalyed according to individual tastes based on each person's profile
4. High ranking search engine results are produced by using a search engine friendly CMS
5. Diiferent deaprments of a business can update, modify, and publish content according to their access level.

CMS gives you the ability to update your own content and pictures as easily as sending an email. When we talk about web marketing, we actually mean marketing with content and Content management is about getting the best out of your content.

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Link Management Software: A Cool Tool To Manage Your Link Campaign

Those who have even some knowledge about Seo know the importance of link building in site optimization. At times managing the links can be a very difficult and cumbersome process if you are a busy person. Well, no need to worry or sweat it out! Here comes another tool to manage your link campaigns smoothly and perfectly-Link Management Software.

Why Link Management Software, you ask? Because the list of its features is amazing and great, I answer. Yes, it has features that will make the whole process of link management a trifling issue after using it.

1. Firstly, it is completely ethical in its practices. The practises used for link management are very good. You can view the PR of the potential link partner as well as of the link page where you placed your link.

2. It makes it possible to run a report of all those partners who have a PR of 0. How will this help you, you ask? Well, very simple. When you know the links that have 0 PR, you can easily identify problem links and remove them. Remember Google's strict adherence to penalizing errant sites, it becomes all the more important that you don't link to any one of these blacklisted sites.

3. Also you would definitely want to assure that the link partners are linking back to you. Well, Link Machine does that checking for you and you can send an email to you link partners to link back or remove them from your links.

4. You can easily add new partners with the special tools available in this software. On arrival of a link request, with the help of this software, you can check their site, link page, PR and accordingly decide to accept or reject the requests.

Link Machine is a great link management tool that helps you achieve maximum positive results from your link exchange program.Try it out and see the difference it makes to your link building exercise.

http://www.segnant.com/

Buying higher rankings in Search Engines through PPC affiliate program

What is PPC advertising?

Pay per click is a type of affiliate program of internet marketing used as a tool/strategy through which the websites can enhance their chances of getting highest ranking coverage on the internet. Like in T.V., advertisers bid for the prime times and prime channels where they would want their advertisements to appear, similarly in PPC advertising; the website owners bid for their advertisement to appear in the top most websites on the web. Though it is not guaranteed that every click by a visitor will turn into more sales for the advertiser, but it can help increase the sales of the advertiser by bringing more targeted visitors to the site.

In this advertising, the advertiser is the website owner who agrees to pay a rate (decided by him) on every click made by a visitor on the advertiser’s website through the search site. The advertiser who makes the highest bid on a particular keyword or phrase, for which he/she wants visitors to search for his/her site, is ranked the highest by the search engines like Google or Yahoo or any search engine that the advertisers decides to hire for it’s services. The best part about PPC is that the advertiser sets his own budget, and gives his own keywords for which he/she wants people to search. He is the decision maker for the price he wants to pay per click.

Plan of action for an effective PPC program

1. Well targeted traffic

What is the USP of your service or product? Are you giving the visitors what they are looking for? It is an effective and profitable proposition as the advertiser pays only for the clicks that are made by the visitors. Basically, only a targeted audience who is interested in a particular website’s services and products would click on the website, thus putting an end to the unwanted traffic of visitors to the website. So it is important to plan the whole PPC campaign in such a way that only targeted visitors come to your site.

2. Study the bids carefully

Whether PPC advertising is useful for you or not depends upon the visitor/sales conversion rates and the price of your products/services. And for this, it is important to keep a tab on your bids. They have to be monitored regularly. The idea is not to pay too much on the bids and at the same time getting a positive return on your investment.

3. Writing a very attractive ad copy: saving CPC and increasing CTR

You must act like a smart businessman and try to save your cost per click (CPC) by maximizing your click through rate (CTR).

Whenever you pay on every click made by visitors, it is called your CPC. The percentage of people who click on your ad as compared to those who only visit your ad (called an impression that is not charged) is called your CTR. For example, 100 people visit your ad, and only 3 people click on your ad, so your CTR would be 3%. The CPC is decided according to how much you are ready to pay per click. The minimum that you have to pay is $ 0.05 per click. But there may be higher bidders than you in the market. So the bids you make have to be carefully studied and decided.

The calculation of your ad’s position as compared to other competitors is very simple. Google does it by using this formula:

Your CPC * your ad’s CTR = your ad’s position index (PI)

Let’s see the execution of this formula. For example your company Segnant specializing in creating websites, has two more companies in competition with you, say, by the names Createsite and Dreamsite.

Segnant 0.09 CPC X 3% CTR=0.27 PI
Createsite 0.08 CPC X 5% CTR=0.40 PI
Dreamsite 0.10 CPC X 2.7% CTR=0.27 PI

Your ad’s numeric position as compared to your competitors is 0.27, whereas Createsites’ position is highest even though it is paying lesser CPC than you and Dreamsite. The reason is that their CTR is higher than yours or Dreamsites’ CTR.

So this is the best part about Google’s Adwords search engine that even on a lower bid, your site will get a good ranking provided your CTR is high. So, it is important to create a very interesting, compelling and attractive advertisement.


4. The right key words

You must be sure of the keywords that you bid for in the search engines. Your selected keywords should complement the services and products offered by the websites. If the keyword choice is not correct, you will not be able to draw the targeted visitors to your site and worse yet the good search engines like Google may not accept them even if you’re ready to pay a high amount for them.

5. Know your budget

It is essential to know how much you are ready to invest in PPC campaign. Always invest in relation to a good return on investment. If you are not getting good returns on your investment in the campaign, this means that you need to either stop the campaign or restudy your plan and implement again. Calculate your returns with the help of this formula:

Profit per sale / clicks per sale = maximum cost per click

PPC can be an effective strategy to attract more people to your site, if you know how to use it in the right way.