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An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us

Welcome to An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us, where you can learn how to market yourself effectively on the web, get into major search engines, learn advanced SEO techniques, and not pay for it! Please support our advertisers and enjoy your new place on the Web! Subscribe to this site by entering your email on the right! Also sign up for the free offers we list. Internet
Sunday, 27 November 2005
How to Get High Rankings without tricks
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Happy couple of days past Thanksgiving and welcome to "An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us." Today I'm going to share some of my thoughts/observations on the current state of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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Jill Whalen, a stay-at-home mom become SEO, has some interesting comments in issue 105 of the High Rankings Advisor. She suggests that if you are doing your own Search Engine Optimizartion (SEO) and you think that your keywords are "in all the right places," then you are essentially sinking yourself. Google, especially after the latest Jagger update, looks for all the SEO tricks; and there is evidence to suggest that the other search engine spiders have similar mechanisms in place. Basically, having keyword phrases peppered all over your site/having a keyword-rich domain will only sink your site several pages deep into the search listings.

Instead, try being creative rather than formulaic. Each page in your site does not necessarily need an H1 header. Instead use header tags as seems natural, when you want to draw your reader's attention to a point.

Additionally, images don't make sense with a keyword phrase in their alt tags. For example, you might have a sight about cycling and you insert alt tags relating to forex (which frequently appears in the "high-paying keyword lists" rogue SEOs try to sell), which has nothing to do with cycling and will probably get your site kicked out of Google. I.e., don't use the alt tags simply for the search engines. Optimize for 2-3 key phrases spread over your entire page in natural positions.

The saying goes, less is more, and that's certainly true when it comes to your web page. A tool I have recently discovered that has helped is the SiteReportCard. It gives a free analysis of your website. Sometimes it can get a little confused about HTML sytax. For instance, I posted simple HTML tags like italic or bold and forget to tell my blog software to post my entry as HTML. What I posted looks fine on screen, but SiteReportCard thinks it is not formatted correctly.

That being said, some of the other comments on my HTML were right on, such as not nesting STYLE elements in the BODY section. I moved a few elements around using my blog builder's advanced customization mode and the only resulatant errors were ones I expected. It does give you a good guide to examining the state of your HTML, though I wouldn't necessarily follow all its warnings. Such a site might appear formulaic to search engine spiders.

Another thing you can do with the HTML to help get high rankings is to remove the whitespace. Having spaces between portions of your code may be appealing to the eye and make your codeeasier to read, but it slows down the speed at which your site loads and results in lower rankings in the search engines. Even in this age of broadband, T1 and T2 connections, the search engines check to see how fast a page would load on dial-up, the lowest common denominator when it comes to connection speed. Plus, web browsers don't recognize the whitespace. If you need to position something on the line below, in HTML use the BR or the P tags. Also, don't use uppercase in your HTML. I did so in my description simply to highlight the code. Uppercase HTML slows down the speed of your page loads, as the browser has to convert it to lowercase first.

Also, reducing the number of images or optimizing them on your site will increase the speed at which it loads and also your rankings. SiteReportCard has an image optimizer as well.

Utilizing these techniques and the others from earlier posts have earned me a top 10 listing for "internet marketing tutorial." I hope these techniques will be beneficial to you as well.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 8:48 PM MNT
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Thursday, 24 November 2005
About Google Base
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Happy Thanksgiving from An Internet MArketing Tutorial for the rest of us. I hope you are happy and well and enjoying the time with your family and/or friends. I'll be discussing and ranting about Google's latest offering, Google Base, today. Please take the time to sign up for some of the free offers I offer throughout this post. Christmas freebies are the next post down.

According to Google, Google Base's "goal is to organize the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible." Google Base (Beta) is basically a free classifieds/personal listing service. But why do we need another free classifieds service? Well, according to Google, you can use attributes to better describe your content and help users find it. Also, the items or services thus listed are filtered to Froogle and Google local. I'll be ranting about this in a minute.



Their SafeSearch mechanism recently failed and ushered in tons of porno. Oops! Officials at Google swear that adult content is but a small part of what is available on Google Base. Right! Tell that to my 10-year-old daughter!



My personal reaction to Google Base? (i.e., the rasnt starts here) I think their goal is laudable but misdirected.



The idea of a free internet classified listing where millions of potential customers/clients could read your ad is an appealing one, but in my own personal experience, has not led to any productive internet commerce. There is a glut of free classifieds out there, and I'm not convinced that having "Google" attached to your listing will help significantly.



I have also had no success with Froogle or Google Local, to which your listings are allegedly filtered. Froogle takes too long to set up a listing and, as well, is competing against a glut of similar services already widely available. Google Local, like Yahoo Local, is a nice touch for a traditional storefront business that wants a larger customer base, but is not really for people running a home business off their computers.

Plus, word is, Google Base is virtually identical to ROR. I'm no expert on ROR, but more info on this emerging technology can be found Rorweb, and a free ROR-generator for your blog/site can be found at ROR Generator. I'll be adding that to this site after I finish this post.

CIAO for now,
Randy

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Posted by Randy at 11:54 AM MNT
Updated: Thursday, 24 November 2005 7:32 PM MNT
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Update on the Blog and Ping Method and Christmas Freebies
Mood:  special
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
I have to apologize about the lack of new content for the past week. I've been very busy at work and haven't had any time to post, so I've just left the recipe up. The reason behind that was twofold - it was my way of celebrating the holiday season with you and I received a tip that the key ingredients of the recipe were skyrocketing in the search engines. I've had between 700 and 1000 visitors a day as a result. As new tips come along, I will try to pass them along to you so your traffic can soar.

Also, I've been working on a slow redesign of the site. I was hoping the affiliate program associated with the search box I had on the site until recently would go somewhere - I can't even log into the affiliate webpage now. Live and learn, huh? Hence, I replaced it with some ads from my partner Adbright (click to join). They are a reputable, paying affiliate program.

Click the links under "The Daily Ping" on the right for all the major places to ping your blog. The Yahoo link pings this blog only - right click the link, click "View Source," copy the code on a sheet of paper, replace "https://www.angelfire.com/hiphop4/perfect_wedding/biking" with the web address of your blog, type that in your browser and hit enter. The last link, marked as not functional, is there primarily for historical reasons. They may get the site back up one of these days, but it has been down for at least a month. Writer Robin Good has many more sites listed on his web page, but the ones here are the best by far. I personally prefer Pingoat, because it also pings non-english search engines, which can be helpful if you have an Altavista translator box on your site.

Now for the Christmas Freebies! These are some wonderful items for everyone on your Christmas wish list, and best of all they are free.

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CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 2:42 AM MNT
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Saturday, 19 November 2005
Butternut Squash Recipe
Mood:  party time!
Topic: Wedding



Butternut Squash is delicious and a wonderful addition to our holiday dinners. Courtesy of the Food Network and Todd English, here is a delicious recipe for "Tortellini of Butternut Squash with Brown Butter." I have altered certain portions of the original recipe to reflect my personal tastes. Additional kitchen utensils you will need for this recipe are a food processor with a metal blade and a pasta machine (for the tortellini).


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Butternut Squash Filling



* 2 TBSP butter
* 1 large or 2 small butternut squash, peeled and diced
* 1/2 CUP ground amaretto cookies
* 1/2 CUP bread crumbs
* 1/4 CUP grated Parmesan cheese
* 1/4 TSP ground nutmeg
* 1 1/2 TSP salt
* 1/4 TSP black pepper
* Filtered water



The Dough



* 2-2 1/2 CUPS flour
* 1 TSP salt
* 2 large eggs
* 3 large egg yolks



The Brown Butter



* 2 sticks butter
* 1 TBSP chopped sage leaves
* 1 TSP salt
* 1/2 TSP black pepper



Prepare the Butternut Squash Filling



Melt the butter over medium heat and add the butternut squash. Cook about 10 minutes, or until the squash is golden grown. Cover the squash with water and cook for 20 minutes, until squash is tender. Drain and put the squash in a food processor with the rest of the Butternut Squash Filling ingredients and blend until smooth.



Prepare the Dough and Tortellini



Flour a large cutting board. Put 2 CUPS of flour and the salt in the center of the board and make a wide well with it. Drop the eggs and egg yolks into the well. With a fork, follow the perimeter of the well and bring small amounts of the flour in until most of the flour is absorbed. Add up to 1/2 CUP of the remaining flour as needed. Divide the dough into 2 pieces and then put it into the pasta machine. Fold the dough into halves and reinsert 15-20 times to knead it, continuing until the dough is paper-thin. Lay out the sheets of dough and cut into 4-inch squares. There should be about 40-42 squares. Place 1 heaping TBSP of the Butternut Squash Filling on one corner of ea. square. Fold the squares and press down around the filling. Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the tortellini and cook for 3 minutes or until tender.



Prepare the Brown Butter and Serve



Melt the butter in a large skillet and cook 4 min. Add sage, salt, and pepper. Cook 3 minutes. Toss the tortellini with the brown butter and parmesan. Serve immediately and enjoy!

Just reading the recipe makes me drool! Hope you enjoy it as well!

CIAO for now,
Randy








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Posted by Randy at 8:31 PM MNT
Updated: Sunday, 20 November 2005 3:33 PM MNT
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Wednesday, 16 November 2005
How to succeed online
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs

These are some tips for your internet marketing success culled from an article by Jill Whalen, co-founder of Search Creative LLC. They provide a nice summary of points I have made over the last several months.

1) Don't buy a new domain unless you have to
Google is notoriously slow about updating such things, as are the other search engines.

2) Optimize for your audience, not the search engines
If you want quality traffic that will return to visit your site, don't play to the machine. You want people to see the site you've worked so hard on, and the search engine spiders tend to recognize when they're being played and will give you lower search rankings.

3) Research your keywords
Think very carefully about what you want as your keywords, then do a Google search for them. The more specific, the better. Look at what results you get and check the Adsense ads next to the the results to get a better idea of what you should use as your keywords.

4) Set up your site to reflect your keywords
Basically, make sure your site is easy to navigate. I.e., if people were looking for, say, sofas, on a site devoted to furniture could click on a link toward the top left of the page that led directly to a page devoted to sofas. Likewise for other furniture items.

5) Make your site "crawler-friendly"
Search engine spiders are stupid creatures. They can't read forms; they don't do Java, Flash, or graphics; they don't do drop-down menus; and they can't search your site. What they can do, and do very well, is follow HTML links from your main page and from those subpages.

6) Label text links
Anchor text (i.e., in the following bogus link < a href="http://mygroovysite.com > My Site < /a>, My Site is the anchor text) is not only what your visitors see, but the search engines too. Try to be as descriptive as possible. In the preceding example, a better anchor text might be "Jason's furniture store has comfortable sofas" (to build on the sofa example). Use your keywords in the text links.

7) Write good copy for the main pages of your site based on the keywords
This goes almost without saying, but make sure your copy is clear enough so that the search engines can classify your site correctly. Remember, they are stupid creatures. Don't put them in graphics or flash, although the visual appeal is stunning. Only use keyword phrases when appropriate, and don't just list them at the top of the page. If you need any assistance or pointers with your copy, just email me at randyinternetmarketing4.us.

8) Use your keyword phrases in each page's Title tag
Search engines like Title tags, and people searching for your keywords will find the title of your page.

9) Link-worthiness
Much is made of how search engines rank pages based on links. Make sure that your site is good enough that others would want to link to it. Also, don't have a link on your site to just any old site; make sure that site is of high of quality as yours. Linking to lousy sites is a bad reflection on yours as well.

10) Don't get hung up on a keyword phrase or rankings
If you do the things I advise in this tutorial, you will naturally see an increase in traffic. If you want to add new content, consider usefulness.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Get a free night at the movies

Posted by Randy at 8:33 PM MNT
Updated: Thursday, 17 November 2005 12:36 AM MNT
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Wednesday, 9 November 2005
Free Items and money
Mood:  happy
Topic: Make Money with Your Blog
In the last post, I gave links to several sites where you can make money from surveys. I received some really good feedback, so as a follow-up, tonight I will give links to several sites where you can pick up free items, win prizes, or get free money. Sometimes you have to refer some friends to receive your items, other times you just have to fill in your name an address. Please click at least one of the following that interests you and follow the directions on the screen. Thanks a lot and enjoy your freebies!

Get the best freebies delivered to your inbox Monday thru Friday. Freebie of the Day delivers the best samples, coupons, online games, software downloads, and more!!!

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CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 9:47 PM MNT
Updated: Wednesday, 9 November 2005 9:56 PM MNT
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Sunday, 6 November 2005
Make Money from Surveys
Mood:  happy
Topic: Make Money with Your Blog
If you enjoy taking online surveys, join the following sites. They are all free to join and frequently reward you with cash and/or prizes. Please click and join the following - you'll be glad you did!

Get a free night at the movies

Daily Prize Giveaways at www.OpinionSquare.com!

Win $50,000 Cash from Nielsen//NetRatings
Join the Nielsen//NetRatings Research Panel
Give your opinion and you could win!

Win Great Prizes at PermissionResearch!

Get Paid Cash or Sweepstake Opportunities for each survey you complete about movies, sports and products!

CIAO for now!
Randy

Posted by Randy at 7:13 PM MNT
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Tuesday, 1 November 2005
Organic Marketing
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Today we're taking some notes from our old friend Brad Callen on organic marketing.


What is Organic Marketing?



Well, we're not talking gardening, that's for sure. Well, not exactly. Like a real-world garden, your marketing efforts are going to take some time to show some fruition. I've said it before, but it bears repeating that there are no quick-fixes, no "give me $25 and I'll deliver a million visitors" in the real world. You'll just lose $25 and maybe get a lot of visitors who don't speak English, so they pay no attention to your site. As a garden needs multiple sources of nutrition (sun, water, fertilizer), even so your website needs multiple sources of traffic. Don't rely on Google alone.

Also a garden can provide quality and value to your life by beautifying your house or, if you have a vegetable garden, by providing you with nutritious food. Likewise, provide your visitors with quality and value in your website; they'll return and tell their friends about your site, thereby creating even more traffic.


Other Sources of Traffic



Some other places to look for traffic other than search engines are link exchanges (I've had mixed results with these), articles (there are a number of places you can post articles that will help develop your reputation in your area of expertise), participating in forums and blog discussions. Some people enjoy using chat rooms to post links to their site as well, but I find this is an ineffective way to get quality visitors.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 9:21 PM MNT
Updated: Wednesday, 2 November 2005 6:36 AM MNT
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Thursday, 27 October 2005
Skills Required of an SEM
Mood:  happy
Topic: Make Money with Your Blog


























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List Your Site





If you are as intrigued about the ever-changing world of search-engine marketing (SEM) as I am, here are 8 tips culled from Jim Hedger, StepForthNews Editoe, StepForth Placement Inc. Please click on any of the ads that interest you in between the points.

1) Knowledge of how computers operate. Basically, you need to be able to wear many hats since most SEM firms are small operations. You need to know not only about SEM but also file-server maintenance, troubleshooting, networking, intranet and internet connectivity, etc.



2) Software knowledge, ranging from spreadsheets to client management software to specialized search engine software. The knowledge should be more intuitive than learned.

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3) Proficiency in the English language. Despite the growing number of non-english sites (see some of the non-english search engines listed at Pingoat), English is the unofficial language of global commerce and the internet. Well-written page content is always in demand.



4) Great interpersonal skills. You need to be able to simplify, explain, educate, gently correct and comfort clients.



5) Knowledge of how ISPs work. You have to be able to assess the host server and how the site is set up. You have to know how to talk tech with the client’s ISP when you need them to install software or modify the client’s account in one way or another.



6) Web design skills. This is a no-brainer, but should not be overlooked. You need to be comfortable in a wide array of platforms, languages, styles, and designs.



7) Basic to advanced knowledge of traditional marketing and sales. Even though the internet has "levelled the playing field," to coin a metaphor, these basic skills are the basis of any profitable organization.

8) Strong research skills. You may need to become an instant expert in any number of fields, depending on your client's interests.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 11:06 PM ADT
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Tuesday, 25 October 2005
How to Avoid Spam Robots
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
When you begin to enjoy some success with internet marketing, you probably will begin seeing your inbox bulging with spam, in spite of the illegality of using robots to harvest emails. Spammers use software spiders to grab email addresses anywhere they might be on the internet.

Here's some tips from Jim Edwards, sent my way via Kurt Inman.

1) Simply put, don't put your email address anywhere on your site. Instead of

YOURNAME@YOURDOMAIN.com, use
YOURNAME (AT) YOURDOMAIN.com (replace AT with @)

This will discourage most spam robots.

2) Spiders can't read from images. If you must put your email address on your page, type it into your favorite graphics program and save it as a gif or jpeg file. Then post the image on your page.



CIAO for now,
Randy

Posted by Randy at 9:55 PM ADT
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