Thanks for checking out our blog again! If you have an opinion on any of the posts you've read, feel free to leave us a comment.

An Internet marketer friend of ours recently stumbled upon a tool that allows you to create a classified ad, and post that ad to Craigslist, Kijiji and Backpage in multiple cities, using multiple ad versions (allowing you to bypass website exclusion monitors) and refresh your ad so that it gets back up to the very top of the listings on a frequent basis.

We had been looking for a tool like this for some time, so I’m glad he made us aware of it. Here’s the link…let us know how the tool works for you.

http://www.cladgenius.com/purchase.html

Popularity: 61% [?]

There are a few different ways you can generate distribution for your press releases on the Internet – by paying for press release distribution through a popular press release distribution service called www.prweb.com (the most popular choice for press release distribution online) or making use of free press release distribution sites to distribute your press release.

There are pros and cons to both methods. PRweb is generally thought to be the most effective press release distribution site online because of their coverage. They’ve also got a pretty decent reporting system which provides you with statistics on the traffic your press release is generating online. The downside to PRweb is the cost. The current cost of their “Advanced” press release distribution service is $200/release- which adds up over time.

Free press release sites are another option to consider. You won’t get quite the distribution levels of a PRweb and may have to use multiple sources to generate solid distribution, but you save money.

Listed below are 34 free press release distribution sites to make use of:

34 Free Press Release Sites

Popularity: 41% [?]

1) Be newsworthy. That’s not as difficult as it might sound. Hundreds if not thousands of small business stories are published every week in the media. Look out for these stories and try and analyze how they happened. Read them carefully and pick out what made the journalist write about the business.

Now can you imagine your business in a similar story?

2) Write a great press release and distribute it to a targeted group of journalists. A good press release should have as a minimum: * A headline that says exactly what the story is about * A great summary paragraph * Quotes from people * A link to more information on your site * Contact details * Editor notes

3) Find and approach journalists who write about your industry, make yourself available. Here’s how: * Search Google News using some of your industry’s popular keywords to find which journalists are writing about your industry. * Take a great story in the past and look how it has been covered. * Browse your industry trade press and see who’s writing what * Buy contact lists of journalists – one inexpensive service is www.medialistsonline.com

4) Time your news story carefully. What’s the best time to publish your story? Can you tie in with a national event? The biggest secret is to coordinate everything. Good stories in mainstream media sometimes do happen by accident, but if you plan and follow a clear strategy then your chances of success are so much higher.

5) Get to know your social media – that means actively participating. Twitter, for example is becoming hugely important for spreading news stories.

This article originally appeared in linking matters.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Online press releases have become an increasingly important tool for getting the word out about your business on the Internet. Most search engine optimization companies use online press release creation and distribution as a core part of their online marketing strategies.

When crafting an online press release, you’ll need to be aware of a few things:

1.) Putting your online press release in the proper (accepted) format: Before submitting your online press release for distribution online, you’ll want to make absolutely certain that your release is in the accepted format. A great guideline document to reference on the subject can be found on this webwire post:

http://www.webwire.com/FormatGuidelines.asp

Follow the simple step-by-step instructions in this post to create a proper press release.

2.) Making sure your press release is NEWSWORTHY: Before setting out to create a press release, brainstorm with colleagues friends or family in order to come up with newsworthy items relating to your business. Ask yourself, “Would I click on, and read, the headline that currently sits at the top of my press release?”

If you can’t answer YES definitively to that question, others aren’t likely going to want to read your release either.

So…

Take time with your brainstorming, put a list of final ideas/concepts together for your press releases, and when you’re happy with them – start writing!

Popularity: 42% [?]

Choosing an SEO (search engine optimization) company or agency can be a difficult task. For starters, many people will find it difficult to evaluate an SEO company because they aren’t even aware of the criteria for evaluating and SEO company.

After all, search engine optimization is a new field that is constantly evolving – arguably just as quickly as any other occupation or field on the planet, making the process of choosing an SEO company a difficult task, especially for an industry outsider or Internet neophite.

There are however some general guidelines that make the process of choosing an SEO company more simple – and these guidelines come from Google itself. The following questions are important questions to ask when choosing an SEO company:

• Are you able to show me examples of your previous client campaigns and relay some success stories?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Does your company offer any other online marketing services to complement your organic search engine optization business?
• What types of results could you expect with my business, and in what time frame? What methods do you use to measure those results? 
• Do you have any specific experience  in my industry?
• Do you have any experience in my country/city?
• What is your level of experience in developing  international sites (in the case that your business is an international business)?
• What are some of your most important SEO techniques? Are all your SEO techniques white hat SEO techniques? 
• How long have you been in business?
• How can I expect to communicate with you? Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

Asking the specific questions above when choosing an SEO company allows you to dig deeper in evaluating  your host of search engine consultants more deeply, giving you greater odds of making a sound choice.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Google Analytics is our preferred method of website visitor and general statistic tracking. Google Analytics is a robust tool with a variety of reporting capabilities and features that you can take advantage of.

Setting up Google Analyticson an HTML website is a fast and easy process. In our last video post, we showed you how to set up Google Analytics for a wordpress website, which is a similar process – with a few particular differences.

The following video is a great little tutorial for setting up Google Analytics on a basic HTML website, which will allow you to configure your website tracking quickly, without the help of a Google Analytics consultant.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Setting up Google Analytics is an important step in tracking website traffic – and website visitor data in general.

Setting up Google analytics is a very straightforward process, however, depending on the type of website you’d like to use Google Analytics in conjuntion with, there are a few analytics set up details that you need to be aware of, as the set up process is different on an HTML or flash website, versus a Wordpress site for instance.

Follow the quick and easy steps outlined in this Google Analytics set up video in order to get set up Google Analytics on a Wordpress website, without the help of a Google Analytics consultant!

Popularity: 86% [?]

Off page optimization generally involves the building of back links to your website.

When creating back links to your website, there are a number of important things to keep in mind…because the quality of the links you create will be of upmost importance.

General consensus is that the quality (and by quality we really mean from authoritative and relevant websites to your industry) and quantity of back links that you have pointing to the web pages that comprise your website are the main determinants of higher rankings.

When building back links make sure to keep all the following points in mind:

• Websites that relate closely to yours in topic / area of interest.

• Links are all “do follow” links, thereby allowing search engines to follow the link to the destination page that the link points to.

• Links are one way links, rather than two way links or “reciprocal links” that were created through a “link exchange”. Links that come via reciprocal linking arrangements have been severely downgraded by Google.

• Links come from pages that contain a high “page rank” Authority sites, which is essentially the quality score that Google assigns to every web page on the Internet (note: download the Google toolbar in order to see page rank values for websites). Scores can range from anywhere between 0-10.

• Links that have your target keywords in the anchor text of the link. For example instead of a simple click here link you’ll want to establish keywords in your links, such as: left handed golf clubs.

In addition, you’ll want your links to point back to the page on your website that has been optimized for the keywords “left handed golf clubs”. 

• Lastly, you’ll want to stay away from what are known as “link

farms” at all costs. Link farms are cheap link listing pages that serve no purpose whatsoever, other than potentially get your website de-listed from Google, for practicing less than ethical search engine optimization practices. So – don’t use cheap shortcuts. Just quality links that will help you establish a solid ranking for the keywords you’re targeting over the long term and ensure your good standing with search engines.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Perry Belcher is a recognized social media marketing expert, who has created a great living through the traffic he’s driven through social media properties.

He’s an entertaining guy who follows a sound methodology in his social media marketing. It’s a common sense video…but one that should be listened to seriously nonetheless, so you avoid making the mistakes other have in their social media marketing.

Social Media Optimization Video:

Popularity: 27% [?]

With your goal set to increase site traffic, you’ll want to enure that you’re focus is on the right web properties that will generate leads online.

On a high level, focus on the following search engines and web directories as the bulk of Internet traffic flows through these eight sources (with the vast majority of traffic centered in the top two):

1.)             Google

2.)             Yahoo!

3.)             MSN

4.)             AOL

5.)             Live

6.)             Ask

7.)             The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)

8.)             Yahoo! directory

 

Listed below are the market share figures for the major search engines over the last two years as an indicated of how market share is centered in relatively few players…

 

 1.1- January 2009 compared to Nov & Dec 2008

Search	Jan-09	Dec-08	Nov-08
Google	81.48%	81.26%	81.11%
Yahoo!	10.22%	10.43%	10.47%
MSN	2.95%	2.96%	3.00%
AOL	1.94%	1.96%	2.01%
Live	1.67%	1.59%	1.56%
Ask	0.97%	0.96%	1.03%
Other	0.12%	0.13%	0.13%

 

The top 5 players on this list account for a full 98.26% of Internet traffic in January of 2009, with the top six accounting for 99.23% of the traffic. What this tells us is that apart from the top 5 or 6 players on this list, it’s a pretty futile exercise to aggressively promote your website to the secondary search engines that fall outside of this list. They’re just not going to deliver the traffic volumes to your website to make the process of submitting site maps to them worthwhile. (In aggregate these secondary search engines account for a total of .12% of Internet traffic. That’s it.)

Stay tuned for information on which additional properties thoughout social media, along with other web properties you’ll want to also explore seriously.

Popularity: 20% [?]