Using Google Alerts as a Sales Propecting Tool

As some of you know, I'm the highly introverted (INFP) who is also a Sales and Marketing director for a company that sells both nationally and internationally.

So, this tells us that I really, really, really dislike sales prospecting -- at least in the stereotypical 'pick up the phone and cold call' 'sales hunter' way. I'm always looking for ways to find prospects in unorthodox ways.

One of these is spelled out in my article Cold Calling for Introverts (http://halwarfield.com/articles/cold-calling-for-introverts/) where I detail a means of using the phone that won't cause an introvert to want to lie down and die.

I found another one yesterday -- it's called Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) and, as with most Google tools, it's simple to understand and use.
Tip! Do not use fake information when opening your Google AdSense account.

In a nutshell ("look, I'm in a nutshell!"), you add some relevant search terms, tell it how often you'd want to be alerted and enter your email address. Poof! A Google-formatted email appears in your inbox full of relevant goodness!

Now, you may be saying, "Thank God Almighty! I see the light!" and others may be saying "So?".

Let's give some examples. Let's say you work in state and local government sales in water purification. You depend on RFPs (Requests for Proposals) so in the Google Alert box enter government, RFP, water, purification_ -- from that moment you will receive everything Google finds that references those terms.
Tip! Sudden drop of the google PageRank of all pages of the website from any level to 0.

Or if you sell large equipment to transportation companies, create an alert with the words heavy, equipment, fortune 500 or whatever makes sense to you.

Be careful not to fill the alert with too many words or you may miss opportunities because you've been overly specific. Keep it general -- it may be better to create more than one alert that covers different aspects of your field and customers.

Now you may get immediate gratification and you may not -- but it's a lot quicker and easier than hunting for these manually. Let me know how this works for you by commenting or send me an email at hal@halwarfield.com.

Hal Warfield is a speaker, teacher and coach.

Hal Warfield is a speaker, teacher and coach. Contact him at hal@halwarfield.com. Or read other self-development articles at http://www.halwarfield.com under the "articles" tab.

Media Relations: When Google Got Googled

Before meeting my soon-to-be-wife for the first time, I "Googled" her. Google, with its amazing alacrity, turned up several documents in less than a second.

It turned up a paper she had written for a medical journal. It displayed her dissertation. Iteven showed me an article she had written for her college newspaper.

A lot of our personal information is on the web. It's a legitimate concern.

So it was understandable when a CEO became irate when a snarky website published all of his personal information it could find - including home address and financial worth - just by going to Google. Sure, it was publicly available information, the CEO acknowledged, but that story was just beyond the pale.

The CEO was so furious, in fact, he ordered his staff not to grant interviews to the news organization, CNet, for an entire year. His choice to "blackball" a website with more than 23 million visitors per month for a full year was a serious one, but one he believed was the right thing to do.

Only one problem. The CEO in question is Eric Schmidt. Mr. Schmidt is the CEO of Google.

In the days following Google's decision, dozens of news organizations - including National Public Radio, the International Herald Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and the Associated Press - covered it. Many of those stories lambasted Google's decision. One story was simply called, "Google Goes Berserk."

Besides being a stunningly tone-deaf decision on Google's part (the kind people should lose their jobs over), there is at least one big lesson to be learned here.

Sometimes, it's better to just be quiet.

Had Google chosen to say nothing after the original CNet story came out, it wouldn't have become an internationally covered story. It wouldn't have made it to the coffee shops of California, the bistros of Buenos Aires, or the patisseries of Paris.

Google took a relatively small story and, through awful crisis management, turned it into a much larger one. Even worse, it gave endless ammunition to Google's critics who have long feared the implications of so much readily accessible information on the web.

Finally, they did at least two other things wrong. We left a message for Google asking for their side of the story. To its credit, one of its representatives, David Crane, did call back within a few hours but said that they have not or will not respond to such queries "on-the-record." That means its enemies continue to get all the ink as Google does nothing. Companies in crisis mode need to say something, even if that means a terse two sentence statement sent via e-mail.

The other thing Mr. Crane did wrong was offer to make comments to me in an "off-the-record" capacity. I'm not a reporter, and was careful about identifying myself honestly. I had no obligation to honor his terms, and could have been the first "reporter" to finally get Google on-the-record.

Brad Phillips is the founder and president of Phillips Media Relations. He was formerly a journalist for ABC News and CNN, and headed the media relations department for the second largest environmental group in the world.

For more information and to sign up for free monthly media relations and media training e-tips, visit http://www.PhillipsMediaRelations.com

The Newest Way To Make Money With Google Adwords

The saturation of sites deliberately built for adsense revenue worldwide is increasing at a rapid rate due to the unbelievable power adsense has to earn the average person a worthwhile second and sometimes primary income. A new addition to the adsense earning idea that is still in its infancy is creating sites that indicate how much different adsense ad clicks are worth, and then display them on the site in large lists, along with the adsense ads next to them. The amount of different keywords on the site ensures the site will be seen by searchers and drive sufficient traffic, and the adverts are clicked in the hope of more information. Thus, the publisher of the site does nothing more than create keyword lists, using appropriate software, see what their value is worth and then post them onto a website or blog.

To do this has been previously difficult, or several sources of keywords and their bids have had to be joined together to create the keyword lists. With the release of keyword Elite, sites has been slowly appearing with these lists on them, and the publisher is making a fair amount of money due to the high click value of the keywords.

The process follows three basic steps:

1. Build a site (With ms FrontPage or a similar basic free site builder) or create a blog (free from www.blogspot.com)

2. Place some title and header tags on the site, and then create keyword lists with Keyword Elite (if you don't make money you can just return the program for a refund), which can then be copied and pasted onto the respective site.
Tip! Fast, Convenient, and Safe. Combining Google Base with Google Checkout provides your customers with a quick and easy to use method for buying your products.

3. Add adsense ads by signing up here and placing the ads on the site. 4.If you like , optimize the site by using a program for search engine optimization like the free version of Web CEO.

About the Author: Learn more ways of Making Money on the internet! Lloyd Lopes is the owner of "BoxofThings.com." It is a site which has helped many to earn an extra paycheck every month. Visit his site to find out how you can earn money online in other ways. mailto:lloydlopes@retromod.co.za

List Your Local Business for Free on Google and Yahoo

As a local business owner you wear many hats and you have countless responsibilities. Consequently you're not always able to follow-up on opportunities that could advance your business. It is the nature of running a business.

Once an awhile an opportunity comes along that you absolutely should not pass up. In this case it is a business listing on both Google and Yahoo local. Not only can it generate targeted traffic in your area, but the listing is FREE. And here is another reason why you need to jump on this, it doesn't matter if you have a web site or not, you still qualify for the free listing.

Why would you want a free business listing with Google and Yahoo?

Because they are the two largest search resources online, and account for approximately 78% of the total search results. But even more important is the fact that your customers are searching for local products and services online in greater numbers. In some surveys it is suggest that as much as 25% of all Internet searches are local in nature.

Your customers are turning away from the cumbersome yellow pages. Instead their utilizing the content rich resources of the Internet. You have to ask yourself - if you competitors are listed and you are not, when a prospect searches online which business will most likely end up with a new customer?

How hard is it to list your business?

It can be done in less then an hour. Below are the two locations:

Local Business Center - https://www.google.com/local/add/login?hl=en-US&gl=US

Yahoo Local - http://local.yahoo.com/ (Click on the "Add/Edit a Business " link at the bottom of the page)

The Benefits of a Local Listing

Besides the excellent exposure, you get to list important details about your business, including:

# Business Name
# Address
# Phone
# Email address
# Web address
# Payment methods accepted
# Brands carried
# Products/services offered
# Specials

In addition to company details, Google and Yahoo both provide an interactive map for locating your business. I'm sure most of you have utilized the mapping service of either of these search engines and know how convenient it makes finding a business. Not only can customers find out who you are, but they also can pinpoint where you are.
Tip! The earliest manifestations of google banning are usually first noticed by the webmaster as a sudden and severe drop in the number of website visitors and when the webmaster tracks the referrers of his visitors, he will not find anymore visitors coming to his site from google.

As I mentioned, neither of these services require a web site, but when you combine your listing with a link to a killer web site you are in position to do so serious customer conversion. For those lacking a web site, Yahoo offers a free 5 page site. It allows you to get a basic web presence until you get the real thing up and running.

At this point few businesses are cashing in on local Internet marketing. For those that are the results show a higher ROI, and an improved customer conversion rate.

The future of your local business will depend on how effective you are in reaching your customers online. Getting a free listing on Google and Yahoo Local is an excellent start.

Fred Waters is co-founder of the Local Online Marketing Association, where you can get the FREE 54-page e-book, The Indispensable Guide to Local Online Marketing.

Competitive Research and Google

It all started out with an email message: "I am starting a new one of a kind company ... at least I think I'm one of a kind ... how do I find out who else out there might have beat me to the punch? And how do I build a web page to advertise my hopefully one of kind new business?"

This is a rather vague question but I'll try to be as helpful as possible with my answer. First off, I have to say that as a management consultant, I am always leery of people who think that they have no competition. With few exceptions, if there aren't already some sort of businesses in the space you're exploring, you need to ask the question why? before you congratulate yourself on coming up with a remarkable innovation.

That isn't to say that you shouldn't bother if there are already companies doing what you want. Not at all! If you can come up with a new or unique angle, price the service/product differently, or even just do a better job of the same thing, there's no reason you can't be a great success.

This all assumes that you know exactly what business you're in, and that's a really important first step. There are lots of people with good ideas that don't actually translate into good businesses. You need to have an idea that will lend itself to producing a revenue stream, for example, because non-income companies are, well, an oddity of the dot-com bubble and nothing more.
Tip! Do not hack or modify Google AdSense code other than to change the parameters that Google authorizes you to change.

One smart way to learn more about focusing your business idea is to read through my tutorial at Startup101 Info entitled Pitching Your Company to Investors. Whether or not you plan on actually raising investment capital, it'll help you clarify your ideas. Then spend some time working on a business plan too, and that site also has another helpful tutorial called Writing a Great Business Plan.

To proceed with a business plan, though, you will need to be able to identify your competitors and, actually, that's what you asked about in the first place! The first approach I would use is to try to imagine that you're a customer, not a competitor, and ask yourself "how would I find out about companies offering what I seek online?" Probably your first stop would be Google, and that's a very good place to mine for competitive intelligence. If you're thinking about, say, being a mobile auto mechanic, then you'd want to search for auto mechanic and your area, or on-site auto mechanic or similar. The key in this kind of searching is to let your mind wander a bit to come up with creative ways of seeking the same thing. Also, don't forget to read the Web sites you find for inspiration on search terms too.
Tip! Hidden text or hidden links This is text or a link that is invisible to the naked eye on a Web page, but are seen by spiders. Search engines use to have a hard time spotting this technique, but now days you should avoid doing this because Google and other search engines can spot this easily.

Once you've found some competition - and I'm sure you will - then you should ask yourself whether you have a geographic advantage for local customers. With a mobile mechanic, you obviously need to be pretty close to your customers, but if you're selling a new type of computer firewall, your competitors can be anywhere on Earth.

Identify your competitors, try to isolate their core value proposition (that is, exactly what they are selling and how), then compare that to what you've envisioned for your own business. If you still think you can compete and that your company can have some clear differentiators in the marketplace, then and only then should you start considering a Web site.
Tip! Fast, Convenient, and Safe. Combining Google Base with Google Checkout provides your customers with a quick and easy to use method for buying your products.

And for a business Web site, the subject of a much longer essay, your key task is to quickly, accurately, and pleasantly convey what problem you're solving for your customers. Oh, and do so in a sufficiently compelling way that you convert visitors into customers, get them to pull out their credit card and actually pay.
Tip! Do not use fake information when opening your Google AdSense account.

This is a lot to digest. Check it out, and feel free to pop back with more questions as you proceed. Good luck!

Dave Taylor has an MBA and an MS Ed. and has been working with entrepreneurial companies as a management consultant for years. His latest projects are startup info, where there are lots of free tutorials on topics important to entrepreneurs, and Ask Dave Taylor, where he fields questions about starting a business and management.

Google Takes Manhattan

Google's Internet search brand is so strong that we forget how big a player it's becoming in the world's advertising markets. Even when we read the latest forecasts about its growing success, we tend to think exclusively about Google's online brand image. That powerful brand image tends to hold back what Google is becoming and that means they will need to consider changing their brand identity, a common problem for companies today who must navigate changes in business direction amid turbulent market changes. Google is so versatile itself now, that it offers a huge range of services and advertising opportunities. Advertisers can almost take it for granted that their advertising will hit the right target market and the right up-to-the-minute brand impression will take place.

Google is Everywhere

According to one Sash's analyst, Google is poised to serve 6.1 billion dollars worth of advertising in the coming year. This makes it fourth among American media companies in total ad sales after Viacom, the News Corporation and the Walt Disney Company, and ahead of giants including NBC Universal and Time Warner (can you believe that?). The Google growth needs to be recognized. It's not going away as this company has the revenue and capital resources to grow and consume other competing media giants. That means Google Adwords will become even more ubiquitous. It's not beyond the realm of imagination that they will show up on television or DVD movie rentals. Anything is possible for Google. As the company ventures into new offline advertising mediums, the Google brand will evolve and lose its "Web only" image.
Tip! Backlinks at Google don't tally with known backlinks. This has been reported a lot in various publications recently.

Getting into Goggle's world is an intelligent investment in your company's future. Most companies could benefit from exposure on Google whether in paid ads via Adwords, or through organic search listings (search engine optimization). Plus you receive all that brand exposure!
Tip! You go to http://www.google.

Sadly most don't. There could be a number of reasons for this. Foremost, it's likely that corporate marketing managers haven't explored the value of search marketing (search engine optimization). The market share numbers are still small, so they don't devote much time to it. A lack of familiarity and understanding of search marketing is another reason. The realm of search marketing is new and is slightly different than the usual advertising buy. It's more complicated, and requires more strategy and it can take some time for results to show through in organic search engine marketing. Those with patience can do very well, but patience seems to be at a premium today.

The success of some companies in search marketing is well known; Internet.com has built an empire on traffic from search engines. Yet this doesn't seem to matter to business managers. They still don't believe search can make a difference in their bottom line. Often, they think about only online sales, and see channel conflicts or 1% conversion rates and then dismiss the whole thing as a waste of resources.
Tip! Accept debit and credit cards without the extra hassle. Google checkout allows your customers to use their credit card or debit card with the MasterCard, Visa, Discover, or American Express insignia to purchase your items.

The truth is, ultimate consumers and B2B buyers and purchase influencers use Google everyday and it's becoming critical to their method of finding relevant products and services.

We see clients receiving visits to the Web from organic search optimization campaigns that dwarf what they receive from print or TV advertising, and at a fraction of the cost. And these are high quality visits from very motivated prospects and here's the kicker. because you come up in the top 10 in Google you become an authority. That's right, your prospects automatically trust you because they trust Google. They may purchase offline or via telephone, but most of them research their purchase online before making the purchase decision. Real sale conversion rates might be from 3% to 20% of visitors, depending on the offline availability of products. For national manufacturers and retailers, the end sales benefit is mind-boggling. The ROI is unequaled. Let me say it again, UNEQUALED! It can power up promotional marketing campaigns as well.

Let's not forget that there are indirect ways of getting to consumers as well, such as other Web sites where promotional advertising can be placed. Often manufacturers can launch their own Web sites and find they have far better control of their marketing and acquire better marketing information than if they rely on an ever diminishing base of distributors and retailers.
Tip! If the majority of your site is a HTML static file or your URLs can be found in your access Logs or if you have a text file that contains a list of URLs in your site, you can use the Google sitemap generator.

Although Google's success is new and even threatening to traditional marketing, major retailers, manufacturers and distributors have to take it seriously. There are many creative and innovative ways to use Google for promotional marketing. It can bring prospects to an interactive Web site that capture the imagination of the prospect and motivate them in ways not possible through other advertising media.

Search engine marketing then, is just the beginning of a rich stream of targeted prospects. Google is growing and represents a revolutionary opportunity for your company. Master this new medium early and your company will prosper for the next twenty years.
Tip! Doing searches on Google show up a lot of anomalies. Many top ranking pages have PR 0.

How Strong Is Your Brand? Do You Really Know? Do You Care? Would you like to take a simple test to see where your company's brand is now? Click on the link below:
Tip! Submit it to Google at http://www.google.

http://www.brandidentityguru.com/bightml/brandmasterpiece.html then click on the button to the right that reads, "Take The Brand Strength Test". This is a very quick and easy way to see where you fall short in your marketing, advertising and branding efforts. It will also show you where you are strong. Take the test if you dare... you may be surprised at the results!

For more info on Search Engine Optimization please visit our blog: http://www.brandidentityguru.com/blog_searchengine

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru (http://www.brandidentityguru.com), a leading brand consulting and market research firm located in Easton, Massachusetts, near Boston.
Tip! Overall, Google Analytics provides you a very cheap service on gaining more customers, if you utilize its results.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation. Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial, Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Franklin Sports and many others, including numerous emerging growth companies.

Scott White is a very enthusiastic speaker and has the gift of being able to explain the principles of branding in a compelling and entertaining manner so that people at all levels can understand.

Why Should You Use Google Ads on Your Website?

If you are interested in earning income from your website, should you consider using the Google AdSense program to place targeted ads on your web pages? When I first considered this idea, I wasn't sure if it was right for me. You see, I have a number of websites that promote affiliate links to products and services in my market. I felt that if I put Google ads on my pages they would compete with my affiliate sales. Sure, I knew you got paid when visitors clicked on these ads, but could it be a significant amount? Eventually, I saw that many other top marketers were using these ads on their pages. So I decided to dive in and give it a try, and after a year of using these ads here is what I can tell you.

The first thing I noticed was the ease of use in using Google AdSense. Once you have joined the program for free, you can start creating your ad codes. And the neat thing is, you can customize the ads to your web pages. You can choose the color of the ads so that they match the color theme of your pages. You can choose from many different size ad blocks. For example, they have 468x60 regular banner size and 120x600 towers. This way, you can choose the size that is right for your page. Once you have made your selection, you simply cut and paste the html and place it where you want on your page, and your part is done!
Tip! Don't 'beg for clicks' or provide any incentive for clicking on your Google AdSense ads.

You can track your ads with ‘channels'. Let's say your website has 10 pages. You can give each page it's own channel so that when you log in to check your ad stats, you will see how many ad views and clicks you are getting on each page. This is helpful because it shows you where your ad revenue is coming from.

I haven't really noticed any competition with my other affiliate programs! I've realized that Google ads don't compete with my website, they are an additional income stream. My sales and sign-ups didn't plummet once I started using the ads. What I believe now is that a certain percentage of visitors aren't going to convert into customers, so the ads are simply another way to generate revenue from visitors who weren't going to be customers anyway. As long as your own offers are well laid out on your site, if a visitor is interested in what you have they will still become a customer.
Tip! Duplicate Content - Again this is a deceptive practice. Google wants to show unique results in the top 10.

A good thing about Google ads is that they are ‘targeted'. This means that the ad content normally matches the content of your site. For example, if your site is about Boston terrier dogs, you will mostly get ads about Boston terrier dogs, or at least dogs. I can't explain how they do it, but the ad html you post on your site picks up the keywords on your pages, and ads are generated that match the site keywords. This is good because the ads will match the target market for your website. And since the ads rotate on their own, it gives you 'fresh' content.
Tip! ) Define budget - in order to maximize exposure Google recommends a daily budget for each campaign.

Another bonus is that you are associating with a trusted source in Google. They are presently the number one search engine, which means that people know them and trust them. Having their presence on your website will therefore not lose you credibility.

Yes, but how much can I make, you ask! That depends on how much traffic your website gets, and the subject matter of your website. Generally, the more visitors your website gets, the more clicks you will receive on the ads. Since you get paid per click, your earnings go up with more clicks. Secondly, the subject matter of your site plays a large part. Advertisers have to bid on the keywords for their ads, and the bids generally go higher if there are more advertisers bidding on the same keywords. Likewise, subjects that deal with highly profitable industries, like loans, mortgages, and home business, tend to get higher bids. The higher the bids, the more you get paid for click. To sum up, if your website deals with popular subject matter in a profitable field, and you get steady traffic, you should do well.
Tip! Save time and money. If you do not have the knowledge or the funds to create a web site right now, you can still begin making money by using Google Base and posting your products for all Google users to find.

In closing, if you decide to join the Google AdSense program, make sure you read their terms of service so that you follow all the rules. They have recently added some extra features to allow members to earn more, such as paying for referrals and toolbar downloads. The growth in online advertising keeps getting bigger and bigger with no signs of stopping. The AdSense program is an excellent way for you to benefit from this and earn an extra revenue stream from your website. I highly recommend it!

Robert Borhi is a freelance writer who operates a marketing website at http://www.HugeGrowth.com. For information on free advertising and online opportunities, visit his website at http://www.HugeGrowth.com

I grant permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the byline is included, with a live link.

How to Use Google Stocks With Google Adsense!

Google currently has the most talked about stocks in the whole market. Everyone is puzzled of how it manages to have so many supporters worlwide. Actually it's quite easy to understand why google stocks seem to be doing quite well. First it's reliability has it's trustees knowing that this long term investment will pay off, it's a widely know fact that Google Stocks have virtually no chance of ever havingno value. The company is a rock solid investment. Even though it may falter at times that doesn't last for long.

Now then let's discuss how you too can jump on this money train. First of course you need to know the basics of stock; how the dividends, common stocks, and preferred stocks work.
Tip! Dressing For Google ..

Here is an introduction to stocks: First know that holdiong a stock gives you a piece of the said company. You have the right to vote on members of the board of directors and other important matters before the company. Also if the company distributes profits you are entitled to a piece. The good thing about this is that if and when the company which you hold stock in happens to lose all it's money or is to pay more money than it has; you the holder of the stocks are not liable in any way. But that's a different story when it comes to private stocks.

First you have to know that there are two types of stocks: Common Stock and Preferred Stocks. Common Stocks are the ones held by the public and gives you rights to dividends and voting too.

Preferred Stocks has less rights than Common Stocks but there is one major difference that's the dividends. Companies with Preferred stocks tend to give out regular dividends like a monthly payout. Also it has first dibs on the dividends over the COmmon Stocks.

That's about it for basics for more info consult Wikipedia Stock Info.

Now then on to the main topics Google Stocks are commonly referred to as GOOG this means that if you want to find it's current stocks info you call it GOOG instead of google. Many websites out have currently updated prices and quotes (predictions on where the stock is heading) but Google itself has it's own reguraly updated webpage located here:
Tip! Click Fraud: Click Fraud occurs when some web-publisher fraudulently clicks on advertisements displayed on his or her own web-site, or automates this clicking process through a software program. Because of the increasing prevalence of this type of fraud, Google has become stricter - and has inadvertently kicked some legitimate web-publishers out of this program.

If you'd like to purchase GOOG Stocks go ahead and head on to my favorite online stock trading market the famous New York Stock Exchange located here. Though I recommend you get a stock broker to do most of your stock investments. They are professinals trained on this kind of thing and also happen to have investment advice upon which companies may bring most profit. But if you are interested in Google Stocks only, what can I tell you? Go jump into the money train.
Tip! Affiliatships remain an important threat to Google AdSense. Well-written content on a website often brings good return traffic.

You may be wondering why I decided to post this on a Google Adsense blog, my reason is the fact that Google Adsense has continually helped rise Google's stocks sales. The fact that Google Adsense itself might be a good investment in the long run, I thought webmasters would want to know other ways to earn money form the Google Adsense and Google Stocks connection. As you keep yourself updated with current info on any Google Adsense developments you should know which ones are either going to drag Google down or pull it ahead. Therefore giving you an advantage in knowing which way Google Stocks is headed.

Thank You

After years of experience as webmaster I decided to help my fellow webmasters by writing everything I've learned starting with google adsense. More about Google Stocks here.

Vote for Your 0wn Website. Nobody Will Mind.

OK boys and girls. Today we're having a pop quiz.

I heard that groan. Don't worry. This will be over in a matter of seconds.

Q1: "__________" is King.

Q2: Link "____________" and link "____________" matter oodles to Google.

The answers are provided in the following...

Are you hearing a lot of talk from marketers about writing and submitting artic|es to art:cle directories and other ezine publishers? I knew you were. There's been a glut of articles on writing articles. For good reason.

Now I haven't been actively writing and submitting articles until just recently, but the effects have been noticeable. So, what have I noticed?

In the last 4 weeks, I submitted three artic|es to a broad network of article directories and announcement groups. Yes, I did take one week off. So call me a slacker. The three article titles that I submitted were:

"How to Put Your Bookmark on Top Every Time."

"When a Customer Has Done Everything to Get Your Goat"

"We'll fix that later..."

I'm going to report the following numbers in real time as I'm writing this article. This relates to "Q2" above. You can do this too because I'll describe each step exactly. It's real simple.

1) Go to http://www.google.com 2) Type the exact article title for each of the following titles and put it inside of quotation marks. (The quotation marks force Google to look for the exact phrase.) 3) Click the "Google Search" button, and... 3) Be am@zed.

Google reports:

"How to Put Your Bookmark on Top Every Time" - Indexed on 5,820 pages

"When a Customer Has Done Everything to Get Your Goat" - Indexed on 62 pages

"We'll fix that later..." - Indexed on 554 pages

Now, am I going to tell you that in 3 weeks time I've managed to generate 6,436 inbound links to my website? Not. Submitting artic|es doesn't do those kinds of miracles, but my artic|es are definitely out there for other webmasters and ezine publishers to use.

Unique visitor count to GoThrive.com has double since starting my article submissions, and as the artic|es get picked up and published, the inbound links will continue to materialize with time. Not a bad investment of time since the entire process of writing the article and submitting it takes no more than one hour per week.

Inbound links pointing to your website are a very good thing to have. This is part 1 answer to question 2 above.

Link Popularity.

The second part of the answer to question 2 above is equally important. You see, it's not just how many inbound links are out there voting for your site, but it's also important that they're voting for the right thing.

Link Reputation.

Let's say you have a website that promotes running shoes, and you write an article on the wonderful benefits of odor eaters. When you write your article, you'll have the opportunity to include a resource box at the end of your article and this is where you can capitalize on your chance to build link reputation.

The idea behind "link reputation" is that the inbound links use keywords in the text that match the theme of the page to which the link is pointing.

One more time nice and slow. I don't want you to miss this.

*** The idea behind "link reputation"... *** is that the inbound links use keywords in the text *** that match the theme of the page *** to which the link is pointing.

This is a fundamental SEO principle that you should keep in mind not only when writing a resource box for an article, but also when you're designing your web pages.

So, to do this right, you'll want your odor eater article's resource box to have an odor eater keyword-laden link pointing to an odor eater page on your running shoes website. Does that make sense?

As the article's author you're in the perfect position to get the second part of the linking equation just right.

~ You decide what your resource box will say. ~ You decide what keywords are used in the link pointing to your website. ~ And you decide which page the link is directed to.

2 down. 1 to go.

Now for Q1. "Content is King." There. I said it. There's no disputing that all of the major search engines crave content. Enter stage left, Mr. Article Author.

If you're writing artic|es and submitting them to article directories, you also need to be posting those artic|es on your 0wn website. When you do so, add about 20% unique content to your webpage so that it's not exactly like every other webpage that's been uploaded to the net. Search engines don't like to see a lot of duplicate content, so take this little extra step to make sure that your page is unique.

Let's review...

Q1: "_____________" is King.
A1: "C_o_n_t_e_n_t" is King.

Q2: Link "___________________" and link "___________________" matter oodles to Google.
A2: Link "P_o_p_u_l_a_r_i_t_y" and link "r_e_p_u_t_a_t_i_o_n" matter oodles to Google.

The service that I've been using for article submissions is SubmitYourArticle.com (http://www.submityourarticle.com), and I've got to say that I love it. I make one submission using SubmitYourArticle.com and my article is automatically submitted to an additional 22 article directories with only one click of the mouse. They offer a number of cool tools and if you're looking for content for your 0wn website, it's a terrific place to start.

Start today by casting a vote for your 0wn website. Nobody will mind. In fact, you'll find that there are large masses of ezine publishers and webmasters who'd be glad to vote for your website too.

About the author:

Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to "GoThrive Online", for big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. 17 Free Cool Tools... http://www.gothrive.com

Why Blogs Have Become the Search Engine Optimization Equalizer

Those who are unaware of Alexa, it offers an interesting tool to webmasters. The service is designed to value websites based on the number of people who visit those sites and the activities of those people while they are on a site.

Keep in mind that their results are skewed to the activities of those who use the Alexa toolbar. If your website is Business-to-Business oriented, then the results may be useful to your needs. If your site is Business-to-Customer oriented, then the Alexa results are far from accurate in documenting the importance of your website.

The reason why the Alexa results are skewed to the Business-to-Business market is because most people using the Alexa toolbar are involved in Business-to-Business activities, either as an user or provider of B2B services.

On May 24, 2005, Alexa's ranking of the Top Ten English Language websites were as follows:

* http://www.yahoo.com
* http://www.msn.com
* http://www.google.com
* http://www.passport.net
* http://www.ebay.com
* http://www.microsoft.com
* http://www.amazon.com
* http://www.fastclick.com
* http://www.google.co.uk
* http://www.aol.com

( This info was is from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 )


WHAT EIGHT OF THE TOP TEN WEBSITES ALL HAVE IN COMMON

Sure, five of these top ten sites are search oriented sites, but that is not the answer.

Passport.net is owned by Microsoft and must be accessed when someone is logging into the msn.com network. Fastclick.com is a site that helps advertisers buy advertising across a huge network of sites. These two sites do not fit the profile.

The one thing that eight of our top ten sites have in common is that they are content driven destinations and they add new, original, and exclusive content on a daily basis.


BLOGS ARE THE GREAT EQUALIZER

Blogs are the great equalizer because they simplify the task of adding content to a website on a daily or weekly basis. They make it simple for the average joe to add content to their site on a daily basis with just a few clicks of the mouse.

What is more, the spider search engine companies recognize this and make it a point to spider the blog networks on a regular basis, sometimes a daily basis.

It may take a spider search engine up to three months to spider your site if you go directly to their submission page to add your domain to their database. On the other hand, with a blog, you can put a story about your domain on a blog with a link to your domain, and your website can generally get crawled within a week or so of putting your link on the blog.


BLOGS REQUIRE A COMMITMENT ON YOUR PART

Daily additions to your blog should be your goal. If you do not have time to do daily additions, you should at worst do a weekly addition to your blog.

Just like in the real world of websites, if you don't update your blog on a regular basis, the spiders will save their time and resources by not spidering your blog on a daily basis. If however you do update on a daily or near daily basis, then the spiders will visit your blog with the same fervor you bring to your blog.

Additionally, it sometimes seems like the search engine spiders are giving some addition weight to the results culled from the blogs. The point in this additional weighting is that blogs are filled with personal comments and recommendations rather than sales pitches.


BLOGS ARE EASY TO SET UP, EVEN FOR THE RANK AMATEUR

There are in fact several blog programs available that you can either load into your own domain or that you can use from a third-party, remotely-hosted server.

To see a list of the blogging programs that are available, check out this link:

http://keywordtext.com/redir/blog-list

My personal favorite is http://www.blogger.com which happens to be owned by Google. Blogger allows you the ability to use the software from their servers or to integrate the blog software into your own site with very little effort on your part.

I was able to integrate their software into our own site and to customize the display of the blogger to fit our domain's format, and I was able to pull that task off in just about 30 minutes --- with most of that time dedicated to the custom display of our blog.

Add to the simplicity of setting up the blog, the fact that since blogger.com is owned by Google.com, they will always be very keen to spider our blog on a regular basis.

From launch of our website, to the spidering of our site by Google took just about ten days. Within three days of the launch of our site, Google had spidered the main page of our site. Within ten days, Google had already spidered the whole of our website.

Compared to other websites we have launched, this was the fastest turn-around time from new release to traffic from the search engines. We believe the difference in this case study had to do more with the addition of the blog on the day of our launch than anything else we may have done to promote our domain.


EQUALIZE YOUR SITE WITH THE SITES OF THE BIG BOYS

The big sites on the internet got to be that way because the consistently add new, original, and exclusive content to their websites.

While you and I may never have as much content on our sites as the big boys do, we can benefit from the lessons they teach to us.

Now that you have also learned this important lesson, it is time to put this knowledge into action. Make it part of your daily or weekly schedule to add fresh, interesting content to your website. Your banker will thank you.
About the author:

Hunter Waterhouse is one of the editors at: KeywordText.com "Keyword Text" managed to bring together several writers and editors to provide a few low-cost writing services for those who are working hard to become more profitable. They offer Content Creation Services which include: Exclusive WebPage Content and Reprint Articles. Keyword Text also offers very attractive Volume discounts. Compare us to our competition, you will be surprised. http://keywordtext.com/dir.pl/ktc/index.html