26-Week Internet Marketing Plan » Phase #3 – Link Building

What is niche marketing? Exploring niche marketing strategies…

David Bain — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:37:42 +0000

All Internet Marketers know that the most important thing to do is pick a niche and then work from that. There are lots of reasons that this works so well but the most important reason is that when you focus just on one niche, you have a better chance of finding success. It is important that awareness is grown about this topic because it is one that worries a lot of people in Internet marketing. So what is niche marketing? Let’s explore some niche marketing strategies…

Have you explored your niche marketing strategies?

Reveal your skill in a particular area

As your audience values knowledge in a distinct area, it reveals your skill in that same area. For example, a heart specialist is more ‘niche’ than a regular doctor. As opposed to focusing on all medical fields, the heart specialist concentrates on one specialized part. Failure is certain if you try to be the answer to everything and everyone. When you comprehend how important it is to having a place of your own and going for it, you will be successful. The more effort you put into defining and working with your niche, the better will be the results.

Use JV marketing to help focus on your niche

When you want to sell lots of products and build a real business for yourself, a good way to do that is through joint venture marketing. If you target a single and specific niche, you will be able to send all sorts of good signals to future joint venture partners and that can lead to partnerships that are reliable. When you are in business, you need to put forth the right image to your competitors so that they will understand just how much progress you have made and what kind of approach you are taking. If you target one niche you’ll have a much easier time telling the real competition apart from the rest.

Niche marketing will give you an increased market awareness

Niche marketers are in a better position to serve their customers than those whose businesses which have less focus. It will give you an increased market awareness and will obviously allow you to get the most out of your marketing because your efforts won’t be focused internally but externally in helping your customers out. The better targeted your business is, the more sensitive and aware you’ll be regarding what your customers want. This approach will make your business one that recognizes the importance of providing the best possible customer service, and this will make it easy for you to expand.

What matters most in niche marketing is taking regular action and not being afraid to take a risk or two. Including niche marketing as part of your online marketing plan is mostly about getting some fundamental things right: like selecting a targeted niche!

Is your business using local search engine marketing?

David Bain — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 10:22:08 +0000

The internet is still growing very quickly as more and more people get online. These day, the internet has transformed from what it was just a few years ago. One of the big opportunities at the moment is local search engine marketing.

Is your business on Google Places?

Local search engine marketing is an opportunity for you to reach out to your target audience by optimizing your website for local SEO results. Basically, local search marketing no more than allowing your local prospects be aware of your business and make it more accessible. The purpose of this article is to learn how you can get into local search marketing and utilize it to your advantage for getting more exposure for your company within your local area.

Quality content

First and foremost; understand the importance of creating quality content to impress the local search engines and add more value to the local directories you’re submitting. Many business lack in the area of good content, that is shown to be the key to success with local search. When you have unique content you will have a competitive advantage over others and see to the full benefits of the local search marketing. Make it a goal to set a high bench-mark for you goals then exceed them with superior content. Adding valuable content to your website to your targeted prospects, will be a great benefit to both parties. The more value you are able to give to your prospects, the better results you will achieve in the long run.

Selecting the right keywords

Secondly, when generating keywords for your local search marketing, don’t get confused by focusing on too many keyword tools. A lot of businesses end up wasting time trying to find the magic solution for finding the right keywords with the wrong tools. Nothing works as well as Google Keyword Tool which is both efficient and reliable.

So brainstorm as many keyword phrases as you can on your own and enhance your list with this tool. As you work to generate keywords, remember that quality is more important than quantity.

Get started now

Last but not the least; getting started should be your first priority. You won’t really see any results come your way, if you don’t get out there and take some real action. By wasting time, your competition will have a better advantage of you, so don’t be a procrastinator. Getting thousands of visitors from local search engines and directories is definitely possible, but if you’re just going to waste your time analyzing and studying, instead of moving forward, it will be difficult to make a mark.

Local search marketing plays an important role in today’s online scenario. Focusing on the local segment of the market can be highly beneficial to your business, even though there are lots of marketing methods. While local search is nothing new, awareness of it is spreading thanks to social media showcasing the importance of local audiences. When you include these local search tips as part of your online marketing plan, you’re moving in the right direction.

Linkbait Examples – What is Linkbait?

26weekplan — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:33:18 +0000

Linkbait is all about using different ideas and methods to get people to link to your website. Here, you’re not directly asking someone to link to you but you’re giving out some kind of value, which makes others link to you.

What are you catching with your linkbait?

What is Linkbait?

Linkbait is the most powerful way to get backlinks to your website. Even though many times you don’t really put in the effort to linkbait, it just happens. For instance, you may write a controversial blog post with honest intentions, but it ends up spreading virally across the web, getting many to link to you. But, this should not stop you from creating a linkbaiting plan because you still can do it. Here are a few Linkbait examples…

Front of the line advantage

There’s a huge advantage in being the first when doing something in a niche. If you work on bringing something new to your niche that others aren’t doing, blog owners will begin linking to you very quickly. This is a really simple way to build backlinks in a hurry. For example, if you released a new social application that got people talking and communicating, this could make people blog about you and include a link to your site. Anything that goes viral this way can be excellent for linkbaiting. Be a little creative about your ideas, add quality content and be quick about getting them out into your niche.

Break some news

See if you can report important news relating to your niche before anyone else. Plenty of websites hunt constantly for news worth relating to their own readers. People will begin linking to you as the source of their information if you’re consistently the first with these things. No matter what niche might be, it’s still a good idea to be the first person releasing pertinent information to your industry. For example, there are tech blogs, like TechCrunch.com, that specialize in being the first to release breaking news, which earns them massive amounts of backlinks from other blogs. you can also linkbait with social news.

Rant about something

Rants are usually filled with zeal. They show what you are thinking and are perfect for attracting attention. You can take your frustration out of just rant because you want to. However, if it is truly a powerful rant, you will see a lot of people who want to link to your blog. People want to be linked to these types of rants because they share the same feelings and can identify with you, where others disagree with your rant. So ranting is a strategy that works for linkbaiting. I you’re not sure what to rant about, check out these 18 Linkbaiting ideas.

Linkbaiting can be seriously beneficial for any site or blog, and this article should clarify some options you have open to you. Finding ways to encourage webmasters to link to your site is easier than you think, so work on your own linkbaiting tactics and you’ll see results. The key to making linkbaiting an effective part of your online marketing plan is to be creative. Work on some creative tactics of your own and find reasons to encourage other webmasters to link to you voluntarily.

How to build backlinks – 3 simple steps

26weekplan — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:03:44 +0000

Because you need to work at it on a regular basis, getting targeted backlinks to your site requires you to be very dedicated. One reason to be consistent about getting backlinks to your site is without it, your site won’t achieve your desired ranking. And if you manage to rank for your primary keyword, without additional effort, you won’t maintain it because you’ll have competition. So here’s how to build backlinks in 3 simple steps…

Are you building your backinks on a consistent basis?

1) Give out testimonials

If you look around, you’ll find many websites in your niche that are selling products/services looking for testimonials.

Provided that the sites are trusted and reputable, you can have your link go along with the testimonial, giving you the advantage of getting a targeted backlink to your site. So search for sites in your niche that are looking for testimonials. In case you give feedback for a product, make sure you mention it clearly that they can use it as a testimonial, given that they link to your site. Testimonials are a great way of getting traffic.

3) Submit articles to article directories

Article directories are the easiest way to get relevant backlinks coming to your website. You can find several broad and targeted directories that allow you submit articles and have your link mentioned in the resource box.

One of the most popular article directories happens to be EzineArticles.com, which not only receives high traffic but also shares a great relationship with Google. When you regularly submit articles to this particular directory, you create high quality backlinks to your site. You can find many smaller niche based directories that accept submissions for free so don’t limit yourself to only the top directories. However, son’t make these common resource box mistakes.

3) Comment on social sites

Many people do social bookmarking, but not many realize they can also comment on these sites. Commenting is permitted on all of these sites, and in many cases you have the opportunity to add a link pointing to your site. Since these are high traffic sites with high page rank, you can benefit a great deal by getting links from them. You don’t only have to comment on new pages, but you can also browse through the older ones, many of which will have attained a high page rank, and you’ll be getting a high quality backlink. Why not try using a social bookmarking submission service like Social Maximizer?

I hope that this gives you a clear picture of how easy it is to build backlinks to your site and the efforts you will need to make it happen and make your site grow with incoming links. Remember, the more effort you will put into creating your backlinks, the more popular your site will grow in the search engines.

Google Local Business Listings – Ed Dale Interview Transcript Part 5/5

David Bain — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:56:00 +0000

This transcript is the fifth part of my Ed Dale interview and this part focuses on Google Local Business Listings.

27:24 DB: Wow, a lot of really good information there. In fact, that was the question that I was just going to conclude on in terms of what’s the important site to keep an eye out in 2011. Is it Facebook or are there… one two other sites out there that may be worthwhile considering or should Facebook be the full focus?

27:42 ED: Yeah, well, I’ve been looking a lot into this… Definitely Facebook is definitely going to be number one with the bullet. There’s no question about that. But having said that, it’s not the only game in town and it’s a good thing. There’s… Google is there. And I think in Google if there was one thing I’d really like to highlight in Google and that is Google and Google Places and Google local business listings. So Google is desperate to deliver relevant results and that’s how it came into existence. And it knows that if products and services… If everything is equal between company A and company B, everything, price, service, product, the whole deal, yet one is a multinational and one is your local, is actually down the road from you in your local town, then who are you more likely to buy from, David?

28:35 DB: Absolutely. It’s got to be the local one.

28:37 ED: You’d buy the local one and Google understands this so they want to emphasize people who are local in their results. So business… We’ve been advising businesses who do have a national footprint is to really focus on making sure their individual branches are… well and truly, obviously available and most companies often hide their local branches inside complex, dare I say it flash driven types search services. You can’t do that. You’ve got… You can use the fact that you’ve got a local footprint to a huge advantage. So for me, getting your… Not ignoring Facebook is absolutely going to be crucial in 2011, looking at locality and how that applies to your business. And if I can give you a third one, David, is mobile, my goodness, the apps-based economy. As we discussed earlier on, the stats in this are absolutely unbelievable.

29:38 ED: Let me give you just one that’s slightly not work-related, but it just goes to proving a point. You add up all the games that have ever been produced ever, any electronic game that have ever, ever been produced on any platform ever in existence right back to your Sinclairs, ZX80 and 81s, your Spectrums, your VIC-20s, and right through to your Xbox 360 and your PS3s. You add up every single game, and your PCs, chuck them all in there, put them all in. That doesn’t… That number does not even equal half the number of games that have been released just for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s mind boggling, right? This is… This is beyond… It is, again, an unavoidable thing. So, unlike Facebook where I’m saying, yeah, if you’re seriously don’t have a Facebook starting in 2011 then I hope you’ve got a retirement strategy. It’s literally that serious. I wouldn’t say that… I wouldn’t say that with mobile just yet but I’ll tell you what, now would be the time to ask yourself, “What would people on smartphones and in particular Apple devices, but smartphones in general, how would people interact, what can we provide with our business product or service that is actually going to be useful for people in a mobile context?” Because again, most people are spending most of their time… In terms of Internet time, they’re spending most of it on their smartphone or their tablet device or iPad.

31:13 DB: Absolutely, and if you don’t know, ask your customers and I’m sure the customers will give them the information.

31:18 ED: Abso… Goodness me, what a concept David. What a concept, you know. It’s just such the best… Because often, and I find myself in a situation where I say, “Oh gee, I wish they had an app for that or… ” And asking your customers… And the good thing is, and here’s the exciting part, there was a real constriction, sort of 18 months ago, on people who were capable of producing iPhone apps. But of course people follow the market and of course every kid that’s even vaguely interested in programming is now programming for these apps in iPhone in particular. And so, the price of getting an app produced is really becoming pretty reasonable. And the important thing for people listening to the podcast is you don’t have to know code, you don’t have to know design, but you have to have an extremely strong vision about what you want the thing to do.

32:17 DB: Right.

32:18 ED: What you want that app to do. And if you’ve got that, you’re set. You have no problems. When people run into problems when it comes to creating an application or a program and relying on other people is their vision isn’t strong enough. And so they start to rely on, “Oh what do you think?” and, “How do you think this should work?” And that’s where you start… That’s where the project blows out, scale blows out, budget blows out. Everything becomes a problem. They would be my three definites to watch for in 2011, Dave.

32:49 DB: You’ve given a lot of great information there, Ed. Thanks for joining me. I’m sure that after listening to that, some of the listeners will want to hear your thoughts on other internet marketing topics. So where’s the best place for people to find you online?

33:02 ED: OK – If they go to eddale.co, that’s E-D-D-A-L-E.co, then you’ll see links there to my Facebook fan page and Twitter and all of those things. And thanks for having me on, David, really appreciate it.

33:17 DB: Wonderful. Thank you for appearing. Great to have you.

#57: Link Building Strategies Podcast Video – Phase #3 Summary

David Bain — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 06:49:59 +0000

The 57th edition of our podcast brings you a summary of phase 3 from the original 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan. This video talks about link building strategies.

The recording is taken from our original 2007 seminar. At the time it sold for £399 as part of our 26-Week Internet Marketing Plan home study package. Now, for the first time we’re giving it away for free via our internet marketing podcast.