Tool Recommendations

I just wanted to fire a couple tool recommendations at you:

Statcounter is an excellent free way to track visitors to your websites. You can set up in the same account different projects, so great for multiple websites, or if you want to track various parts of your website seperately.

For Pinging blogs, there are two service I have used. In the past I used Pingomatic.

But recently I have been using Pingoat. This service used to have a bad reputation as they were too quick to judge blogs as spam blogs - splogs. But new ownership has taken over, and they have a bigger coverage than pingomatic, so now Pingoat is my favorite.

And finally a really neat tool from google is Google Trends. This shows the searched of a key word or key phrase over the last 3 years, along with the amount of news that item has had. Great for keyword research.

You can then break it down by country, or time. And it shows you which regions have the highest relative searches of that term.

Well hope those help,
Jack

Latest Updates - 30 Day Underachiever Challenge

The latest great project we are working on is the 30 day underachiever challenge. Ed Dale and Frank Kerns are putting about 2000 of us through the 30 day wringer trying to make internet marketers out of us.

We start right from square one, no knowledge, no product, no website, nothing. Ed and Frank takes us step by step on the road to making that elusive first dollar online.

They do this at no cost to the participants. Well at least no cost that we are paying Ed and Dale. They do not make a red cent off of any of the 2000+ participants.

There is a little cost in that we need to set up web sites, so have to pay for domain registration, and web hosting. Also part of the program is using adwords to drive traffic to the site for testing. But Ed and Frank have a work-around for the adwords if you are extremely short of cash.

So it started July 1. They have been throwing 4-5 or more videos at us showing us various things we need to know and how to do them. Also there is a daily podcast to explain what we will be going over. Then there is always a few assignments. And a contest everyday! Overall, lots of work, but so far I have learned plenty.

So even experienced marketers could learn some ideas from this challenge. And for newbies, it may be a little overwhelming, but if they work hard they will be immensely rewarded.

For more info on what is happening, I am posting my notes that I prepare as I go through the various steps on my other blog at Zedpromarketing.

Til next time,
Jack

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

How to Optimize your Website for Search Engines

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.
But to tell you the truth, you can essentially get information on low cost SEO anywhere in the Internet. But only several really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.
1. Link exchanges
One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you nothing at all. Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.
2. Write or acquire key word rich articles
Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It's either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact. Just don't stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bore of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.
3. Catchy Domain Name
What better will make your target visitors remember your website but with a very easy-to-recall domain name. Something sweet and short will prove to be very invaluable. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is.
4. Organize your site navigation
Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website.
Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you on the top ten rankings of Google or on any other search engines. Some may cost a lot but there are methods that can give you the same results at a low price or you can even do on your own such as those mentioned above.

technorati tags:Internet, SEO, Marketing, business

Online Forums

One of the greatest sourced of information are online forums.  There are many on the net.  Almost every guru on the net has his or her own forum.  There are some big forums geared at web development, seo, and just about anything else to deal with running a business on the net.

I am active in quite a few of these forums.  Alice Seba’s Internet Based Mom’s forum is one of the main ones that I check in regularly, as I am a moderator on that forum. I also regularly check in on the Warrior forum, TurboCommunity, Internet Buzz, Adsense and Rich Jerk among others.  Many others I pop in at occasionally to check what the latest info is and make a few replies, maybe start my own threads if there is something that I am working on and need some info.

This does a couple things.  First of all it keeps me abreast of the latest in the industry.  It keeps me in touch with new concerns and happenings.  It also gets my name out in the Industry and provides back links to my various sites (I change up the signature on various forums, but ALWAYS have a signature in my posts).

But what it also does is make me part of a community.  It gets me involved.  It is in a way volunteerism.  I take the time to answer posts when I have what I think is valuable info.  I help out people by giving critiques of their sites.  I do this because others have done the same for me at one time or another, and I will need it again.

Without people  taking an active part in online forums they will die.  If you look at any thread you see 2 things, views and replies.  Yes if you start a thread you want people to view it, but the most important thing is replies.  Without replies, your thread will soon fall off the first page and move into oblivion (we all know 95% of forum viewers only view the first page).  Replies are the life blood of forums.

So my call to action is get involved, get active in those online forums.  Do it for your own good, to get the advantages I listed above.  But do it also to keep the forums alive and vibrant.  I want your opinion, I want your experience, I want your point of view - I value it, and cherish it!

A Big THANKS for your next forum post.

Jack

technorati tags:internet+marketing, forum, online, zedbiz