Internet Marketing School

Hello Fellow Netpreneurs!

Trust that you are enjoying your Internet Marketing learning journey so far.

As you would probably know by now, effective keyword research is at the heart of every piece of online marketing you do — you simply cannot bring traffic to your site without knowing what people are searching for.

Use Wordtracker results to:

• Optimize your current webpages
• Generate ideas for new content
• Spot new trends before your competitors
• Design advertising and PPC campaigns
• Find profitable niche opportunities
• Generate new business ideas
• Optimize press releases

Have you started using the FREE Wordtracker Keyword tool so far to assist you in your keyword research and help you find your market niche?

If you have not, this is what Wordtracker is about:

http://affiliate.wordtracker.com/r/699/a/152873/l/m31hz0

You can play around with the actual Wordtracker tool for FREE at:

http://affiliate.wordtracker.com/r/699/a/152873/l/v42ax8

Remember also to download your FREE Wordtracker Keyword Research Guide (ebook) at:

http://affiliate.wordtracker.com/r/699/a/152873/l/2f7dr4

It is not a must that you purchase the paid version of Wordtracker, but if you are serious about wanting to succeed in Internet Marketing, you will find that the paid version gives you a big edge in terms of finding long-tail keywords, keyword synonyms, keyword stemming, and much more which is crucial for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

We will not, however, recommend that you rush into purchasing your paid Wordtracker subscription. Instead, you should make use of the Free 7-day trial of the full-version to do proper keyword research for your proposed online business niches.

Sign-Up now at:

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In the event you are keen to sign up for the full Wordtracker version, do check out the frequent limited offers to obtain the Best Offer available:

http://affiliate.wordtracker.com/r/699/a/152873/l/c86px5

To Your Success!

Kelvin Kong
Founder, Internet Marketing School

Copyright 2008, internetmarketingschool.org

Link Building or Back Link Creation for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to successful positioning in SERPs for websites in Internet Marketing, especially for online commercial ventures on the Internet. Back-link assimilation strictly speaking should be naturally occurring credits on the web – your site credited with a link because of its favorable attributes. This is termed as natural organic growth which comes by other sites linking to yours.

Few websites among millions are able to attain this. The reason is that for natural growth on the Net the site should deliver substance of value in terms of information, utility and products. Other merits the site should have are excellent internal architecture, design and content. The aesthetic of the design also plays an important part in terms of visitor preference.
Such meritorious website design and development is as we all see not widespread as the search engines or the visitors would wish for. Yet there is a mad rush to be visible on the SERPs. And why not the cyber space is free without any bounds at all…err…eh!

So if you can be an aggressive Internet Marketer with a flair for creating back links without being penalized by the search engines you succeed.

How does one achieve a large number of back links of one’s site?

It takes a little working out and scoring few Seo guru websites and bingo! You know how back links are created. Well do you? Know one thing the search engines are continuously twitching their algorithms so if you know something today you won’t tomorrow.

The key is in understanding link weight. If you are able to get back links from high ranking directories or article sites with strong editorial scrutiny then you achieve weighted back links which matters a lot in the SERPs. These back links from high profile sources will remain in good books of the search engines for very long. So if you are a good seo content writer or web designer you have a good chance to get this authoritative back link.

Else you hire a content writer plus lot of trainee Seos and publish articles en mass or submit to large number of web directories. This way you can quickly amass a large number of back links to make your site rank high on the SERPs. How long this strategy going to work will depend upon when search engines tighten their nut and bolts. In its patent Google has already applied to penalize such mass unnatural back links from link farms.

The crux is the search engines are making continuous effort to index and rank site on their merit and utility…for a particular search term. The ongoing research and development will result in algorithms which will do greater justice to meritorious web sites and portals in time to come.

This valuable article was contributed by Uday Patel (from Jabalpur, MP, India). He is a search engine optimizer and content writer. He contributes articles regularly on the Net. He maintains blogs on SEO (http://learn-search-engine-optimization.blogspot.com) and Content Writing (http://seocontentwriter.wordpress.com).

Edited and published by the Internet Marketing School team.

Are you going about building your Online Business Relationships in Internet Marketing the wrong way ? Are you gaining the trust and rapport of your prospects and potential partners ? If someone approached you today or tomorrow offering you something that you do not you feel that you have the need for, would you take them up on their offer ? I know that I wouldn’t. When I first began to build my online business I had no idea on how to gain influence and develop long lasting business relationships. But with trial, error, and advice from other like minded individuals I began to develop and apply the skills that have helped be gain long lasting, business relationships. Here are a few vital tips to help narrow your learning curve.

1. Build Rapport - The most important part of any relationship is trust. If you do not have trust that you do not have a relationship. This may appear to be common sense, but there are many people out there who are not first gaining the trust of their prospects and potentials customers. Talk to your prospect. Let them know about you and your story.

2. Listen - Ask questions. find out whats picking their brain. Ask about their interests, their family, their likes and dislikes. Develop a genuine concern for what the individual has to say.

3. Expose The Problem - How can you offer a solution to something if the individual does not even know that the problem is there ? Bring your prospect to the light of whats wrong or missing. Create the desire to take action.

4. Expose The Solution - Let the individual discover what you can do to solve the problem. Have them discover what makes you better than the rest. Help the individual fill the void. And always keep your solution simple.

5. Appeal To Emotions - “Facts tell, story’s sell.” You must touch the emotions of the individual. Tell “your” story. Build a momentum of desire and excitement.

6. Ask For Action - I know you have heard the saying plenty of times, “A closed mouth does not get fed.” Be confident enough to ask your prospect or potential partner to take action. People could be ready to grasp what you have to offer, but if you do not ask how would you ever know ?

By applying these skills into building your relationships, whether it be business or personal, you will begin to notice a stronger bond with others. My question to you is, how many of these skills are you applying to your life?

This valuable article was contributed by Tyreek Baskerville (Philadelphia, PA) of www.ManifestCashFast.com, and edited by the Internet Marketing School team.

Affiliate Marketing - Affiliates involved in Internet Marketing tend to be experts with both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing, this is due to the nature of what they do- ie. Get traffic to their site or the program they promote, as such there’s a whole sub-industry, built around helping make an affiliates job easier.

Before we go on to looking at top tools for affiliates we need to have a look at the kind of things an affiliate would need before they get started.

First, they need to know the basics of HTML, after all this is the most basic ‘internet language’; they also need to understand, at the very least the basics of marketing, after all the bottom line is this is about marketing products and brands, affiliates, particularly those focused on Search Engine Optimisation, also need to know how to write high quality Search Engine Optimized content.

So, the top 5 Affiliate Marketing tools comprise the following:-

1. Wordpress (www.wordpress.org): I can’t sing its praises enough, but it cuts out a lot of the headaches. You can essentially create a blog in a few hours and start writing, and this includes customizing both the front end and back end. You have two ways of using this, you can keep it as an open and on going blog, or you can write, then ‘close off the blog’ by creating a ‘front page’, given the level of functionality it’s pretty much the perfect tool for affiliates. Here’s a few examples:

• www.shoppinglinks.org.uk
• www.bargainflightsto.co.uk
• www.bloggersnetwork.co.uk

2. Firefox (www.firefox.com): This is the worlds best web browser, its free to down load so you have no excuse, like wordpress, its very customizable with tools affiliates can use, these plug ins allow you to find out all sorts of information and add plenty of functionality to your browser. You can find plugins for Firefox here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

3. Keyword Tools: Theres a whole range of these out there but you’ll be able to find free tools that will help support your On-Page SEO, and whats more these are fantastic as they provide you with a lot of information:

• http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
• http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/keyword-density.html
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
• http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

4. Dreamweaver / Photoshop: These are really two tools, but they help with design and layout for both images and websites, as they are both WYSIWYG editors, you don’t need much technical knowledge to get started, the down site ic they can be quite costly.

5. YouTube.com: I personally love YouTube as there’s loads of videos about Search Engine Optimization and Affiliate Marketing you can find for free, for content you’ll find videos on virtually any subject and product so it helps to provide you with content. Loading videos allows you to get linkbacks from youtube so its good for SEO, and little know fact but when you put a video from YouTube on to your site, you get linkbacks from it again good for Search Engine Optimisation.

These are really my top tools and these would differ from person to person but regardless, keep focused on the objective of marketing and providing information to your users and you’ll see traffic and sales increase gradually and steadily.

This valuable article was contributed by Ken Cheung (United Kingdom). Ken Cheung is a Part time affiliate (www.dj-music.org.uk, www.bloggingnetwork.co.uk, www.affiliateblogger.co.uk) and an Affiliate manager for Altogether Ads (www.altogetherads.com), a UK based affiliate network, which is part of Altogether Digital (www.altogetherdigital.com) a full service digital agency and member of The Engine Group (www.theenginegroup.com).

Edited and published by the Internet Marketing School team.

Social Bookmarking in Internet Marketing - If you do a quick Google search, it won’t take you long to realise that there are enough social bookmarking sites out there to sink a rather large yacht. And worse, every day there seems to be a new one, claiming that it is the ‘only site on the internet to offer community tools’ (er…which internet are you looking at? Because the one I look at has several hundred sites offering community tools) or that it is the ‘best social bookmarking site around’ (which is really a matter of subjective taste). So how do you know which sites to spend your time with?

Not another list…

I am not going to provide you with another list of sites, or extol of the virtues of Digg or Delicious. Nor am I going to recommend which sites I think you should be using. Rather, I am going to pose some questions for you to consider when you do come to decide which sites you want to spend your time on. That way you can ensure you have utilised your time effectively and not spent it on a site which does absolutely nothing for you.

How much traffic do you want?

There is no doubt that the more popular the social bookmarking site, the more traffic you are likely to receive from it if you are successful with it and become a well known and respected member of the community. Of course, the extent of site popularity is directly proportionate to difficulty of gaining that respect and familiarity. Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious have very large, well established communities which are difficult to make an impact in. By all means, work on them and I would certainly include them in your arsenal, but don’t be disappointed if the flood of traffic, or the huge number of friends takes some time to achieve.

What is your subject area?

Some social bookmarking sites have a particular leaning towards specific topic areas. Delicious and StumbleUpon are both fairly balanced and generalised, but others have a techie/geek emphasis, or a political emphasis or a current news emphasis. If your area is technology, then find one of the social bookmarking sites that favour technology. Don’t spend your time on the political news site and wonder why it perhaps isn’t working for you.

What countries are you focused on?

Although many of us in the English speaking world may assume that English is the ‘language of the internet’, there are plenty of social bookmarking sites which are home to German speakers, French speakers, Dutch or Russian speakers. If your target audience is among them, or you want to find good non-English recommendations, it might be worth diversifying into some of the non-English bookmarking sites.

What is your purpose?

Are you looking for a good way to manage your bookmarks, or a clip file for posts or articles you have found? Is it recommendations that you want? Do you want to find random sites which you may never have come across before in your choice of areas? Do you want to write a review or not? How much interaction do you want to be able to have with the community? The answers to these questions will often determine which sites you spend time on. Bear in mind that not all of them are the same, and not all of them will offer what you want.

How close knit do you want the community to be?

It is fairly obvious, but the larger the community, the less close knit it will be and vice versa. However, human nature is such that a large community results in smaller groups within that community to form. And human nature further dictates that some of those smaller groups can become cliquey or insular. I am not going to say here which sites I think are cliquey and which aren’t because that is probably a personal assessment. But before you dive into a site and devote your every waking hour to it, do a search around the blogosphere for other people’s experiences.

Ok…I want a list

No. I’m not going to give you one. I have a spreadsheet with a prohibitively huge list of social bookmarking sites on it, but its probably easier if I direct you to some blog posts which have done the list thing already. Go for your life.

• Top 30 Social Bookmarking Sites in Internet Marketing
• Arsenal Marketing’s List with over 120 Social Bookmarking Sites

I am sure you get the picture…

This valuable article was contributed by Nancy Williams (United Kingdom), the Managing Director of Tiger Two Ltd, (ie. http://www.tigertwo.co.uk).

Published on the IMS community blog portal by the Internet Marketing School team.

Social Bookmarking is an important facet of Web 2.0 and creating online awareness in one’s Internet Marketing endeavors these days.

The following is a listing of the Thirty (30) most popular and largest bookmarking sites amongst Online Marketers:-

1. digg.com —117,796,083 - Inbound Links | 16,964,445 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 8,700,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 98 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
2. Technorati.com — 75,306,437 - Inbound Links | 3,231,709 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,400,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 216 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
3. del.icio.us — 171,593,051 - Inbound Links | 1,699,128 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,300,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 248 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
4. Propeller.com — 997,000 - Inbound Links | 1,454,912 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 2,180,176 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 2,308 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
5. StumbleUpon.com — 19,050,177 - Inbound Links | 1,313,586 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 695,239 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 300 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
6. reddit.com — 45,307,577 - Inbound Links | 1,226,467 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 344,383 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 852 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
7. Fark.com — 11,438,723 - Inbound Links | 306,597 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,767,165 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1,958 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
8. MyBlogLog.com — 1,742,265 - Inbound Links | 1,972,847 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 84,922 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 432 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
9. Slashdot.org — 13,555,035 - Inbound Links | 724,424 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 269,884 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 579 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 9
10. kaboodle.com — 100,266 - Inbound Links | 1,751,763 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 851,858 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 9,125 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
11. Bloglines.com — 50,717,948 - Inbound Links | 382,663 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 103,711 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 853 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 9
12. newsvine.com — 24,200,775 - Inbound Links | 315,857 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 203,761 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 3,977 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
13. blinklist.com — 23,770,576 - Inbound Links | 243,277 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 165,306 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 4,647 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
14. netvouz.com — 8,112,272 - Inbound Links | 75,507 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 54,325 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 15,048 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
15. clipmarks.com — 164,419 - Inbound Links | 196,107 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 147,131 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 6,740 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
16. Furl.net — 49,595,144 - Inbound Links | 148,975 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 57,547 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 4,112 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
17. Mister-Wong.de — 13,214,146 - Inbound Links | 25,416 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 3,432 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1,889 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
18. dzone.com — 1,065,009 - Inbound Links | 100,784 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 117,897 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 5,187 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
19. ma.gnolia.com — 13,701,444 - Inbound Links | 110,662 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 32,363 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 7,454 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
20. Tailrank.com — 5,320,211 - Inbound Links | 71,563 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 35,783 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 28,920 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
21. ShoutWire.com — 168,480 - Inbound Links | 101,738 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 55,337 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 10,552 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
22. simpy.com — 13,107,730 - Inbound Links | 62,645 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 49,205 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 10,948 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
23. BlogMarks.net — 9,748,453 - Inbound Links | 61,740 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 28,075 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 11,880 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
24. BlueDot.us — 1,159,780 - Inbound Links | 107,717 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 60,045 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 12,072 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
25. Spurl.net — 18,628,253 - Inbound Links | 42,300 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 3,483 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 14,300 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
26. Spotplex.com — 541,599 - Inbound Links | 52,176 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 15,106 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 42,809 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
27. linkswarm.com — 150,842 - Inbound Links | 14,504 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 10,476 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 47,267 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5
28. Spotback.com — 97,564 - Inbound Links | 42,838 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 5,037 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 42,015 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5
29. PlugIm.com — 161,039 - Inbound Links | 48,078 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 2,000 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 13,133 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5
30. MyBookmarks.com — 25,191 - Inbound Links | 10,934 - Compete Monthly Visitors | 7,727 - Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 108,226 - Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5

Copyright 2008, internetmarketingschool.org Internet Marketing School

Social Bookmarking in Internet Marketing as a whole doesn’t have a written rulebook. Each social bookmarking site, as mentioned in the last post, will have its own unwritten conventions which will generally be self policed by the community. It pays to learn these, but there are some general do’s and don’ts for pretty much any social bookmarking site you wish to join.

DO…

…read broadly and submit regularly. Social bookmarking sites work because of the sheer variety of amazing stuff that people submit. Don’t just limit yourself to one area. If you love extreme ironing as a hobby, then submit extreme ironing sites. You’ll be amazed at who else you can connect with because of your breadth.

…submit to the right category. For people to benefit from your submissions, it certainly helps if they can find it. It may be an idea to contact the site administrators if you want to add a category but before you do, think whether it would be something that people would look for, or whether you might be better off using one that already exists.

…tag, tag, tag. We discussed it last week, but tagging is what makes the whole process of social bookmarking that much more social and accessible. Do it!

…talk to others personally. On some of the social bookmarking sites I am a member of, I get generic messages from other members just so that they can make contact. They are so mechanical, is is pretty obvious they haven’t bothered to pay much attention to who I am. You have far more chance of actually making a connection if you take the time to find out who that person is, what their interests are and address them personally.

…be a regular visitor and submitter. Everyone knows that it’s no going just joining a site, visiting once or twice and then complaining that it isn’t working for you.

…give. A lot. Vote for other people’s posts, submit their articles, become their friends, recommend them, send appropriate recommendations to them. It is the old adage of give in order to receive.

…write a review or synopsis where you can. Not only does this show you have actually read the article, but it is great for your own reference in the future. This is especially important if you are the first to stumble a page!

…try and find new stuff. Almost every post from Problogger is already going to have been found because thousands of people go there. How about enriching the community with something they might not have already spotted?

DON’T…

…just post your own stuff. It isn’t going to take long before people just start to ignore you. Many social bookmarking sites see it as bad form if you simply submit your own articles or information. Not to say you can’t do it at all, but find out what the site conventions are and make sure it is proportionately balanced with the rest of your participation.

…use automatic submission services. Since when was a robot ‘social’?

…overload yourself with sites. Choose several which are appropriate for what you want to achieve i.e. the right kind of people or interests, and stick with them. Spreading yourself too thing won’t help you achieve great results.

…spam. ‘Nuff said.

…expect overnight results. Social bookmarking is something which takes time. The people who have 30,000+ stumbles on StumbleUpon didn’t just sit at the computer one weekend and stumble every single site they came across.

…be shy. People won’t interact with or notice you unless you go and talk to them.

…submit rubbish. Social bookmarking sites become a valuable resource, often providing better results than search engines, because the information bookmarked is of great quality. Don’t mess that up. We already have one flawed Google algorithm.

…be dismissive of newbies. You were a newbie once and I bet you had some great quality stuff to submit. You have no idea whether the next newbie to say hi might have some unbelievable content to contribute. It’s worth giving people a chance.

…befriend everyone just to get your numbers up. If they aren’t the kind of person you would want to go and talk to at a cocktail party, why add them as a friend?

These are just a few guidelines for the social bookmarking sphere. I would love to hear any more…

This valuable article was contributed by Nancy Williams (United Kingdom), the Managing Director of Tiger Two Ltd, (ie. http://www.tigertwo.co.uk).

Published on the IMS community blog portal by the Internet Marketing School team.

Lately it seems that the focus of internet marketers everywhere has shifted toward participating in giveaway events. Most people has a few basic questions when it comes to these types of events. What exactly is a giveaway event? And, why should I participate? Isn’t my goal to sell products, not give them away? And, all of these are valid questions.

1. For the internet marketer, webmaster and business owner, registering to download products from giveaway events is a fantastic way to obtain popular reports, eBooks and software… without any out-of-pocket money. The only requirement is that you must provide a valid email address to the product owner, in return for your access to each product… which is a small price to pay. Obviously, you can always remove yourself from the marketer’s email list if you choose to do so at a later date. Although, if you select carefully, you’ll find that most of these marketers provide high-quality content that has continued value… beyond the giveaway event itself.

2. Many top internet marketers, webmasters, software developers, authors, and affiliate marketers have developed HUGE lists of 50,000… 250,000… or more (within a few weeks or months) by simply uploading their free products to these giveaway events.

3. Obviously, making sales are important. BUT… making sales to tens or hundreds of thousands of people (who’ve downloaded your freebies & joined your mailing list) is much more important than selling products through your website. And please don’t misunderstand me, because selling products through your site, through affiliate promotions, through article marketing, etc. are all vital to your online success. However, adding giveaway events to your “promotion arsenal” will make life a lot more fun for you & will thrill your wallet too.

4. When you participate in a giveaway event, it’s vital to your success… to have your free product shown as close as you can to Page 1 or the top of the list. To insure higher rankings, most giveaway sites will allow you to upgrade your membership, which insures that your product won’t be deleted & that more people will download it. Choosing to upgrade (or not) will make or break your “giveaway event success”.

5. Last of all, it’s also very important that you promote the event as much as possible… to your customer list, on your website, on your blog, etc. When everyone works together, more traffic goes to the event, and when more traffic arrives, more products are downloaded, and when more products have been downloaded… you WIN with a LARGER LIST.

With that being said, if you have a product that you’re willing to giveaway for free exposure & to build your list… I highly recommend visiting http://leekendrick.com/massive-jv-giveaway & signing up as a JV partner.

If you don’t have a product to upload (i.e. still working on your eBook, have been procrastinating, etc.), simply upload one of your Private Label Rights (PLR) products that you’ve collected as cyber-dust on your hard drive. I also recommend changing the author’s name, maybe the title of the product, etc. to make it your own. But, this isn’t 100% necessary. You will connect with your audience (downloaders) if the product appears to be your own creation. But, at this stage of the game (to all the procrastinators), it’s more important that you start getting people added to your list… FAST!

Every person added to your list is worth at least $1 per month to you, as long as you build a relationship… add value to the relationship with great content in the future… and stay in touch with them on a regular basis.

If you need some free reports, I highly recommend visiting my website at http://leekendrick.com/free-listbuilding-tools today. You can get 1 free report each month, which you’ll also be able to rebrand (in less than 2 minutes & maybe faster) with your own affiliate links. Each report is extremely high quality & excellent cover graphics too. There is an option to upgrade, which will let you get 4 free reports each month… in almost any niche. PLUS, you can upload your free reports through this link too… helping you get more website traffic & broaden your reach.

The site administrator at http://leekendrick.com/massive-jv-giveaway will provide you with a squeeze page for a nominal fee, if you don’t already have one (or don’t have the time to create one).

I hope this article answered your questions about giveaway events, and feel free to comment if you have something you’d like to ask or add to this. Additionally, you’re invited to subscribe to my ‘Insane Website Traffic Tips’ newsletter via email or RSS feed at http://leekendrick.com… if you’d like to learn more about giveaways, article marketing, SEO or other internet marketing topics.

This valuable article is contributed by Lee Kendrick (Lexington, KY) and published by the Internet Marketing School team.

Social Bookmarking - Bookmarks have gone through a fairly dramatic evolution. Once long ago, a bookmark was a slip of paper or a spare postcard, or even something made especially for the purpose, which you slipped in between the pages of a book so you would know what page you had got up to next time you picked it up. Along came computers, and some clever bod liked the name and adopted it for their method of saving a web address to your ‘favourites’ folder so you could access it later from your browser. It was a digital version of folding the corner .

I still remember the days when I bookmarked a site in Netscape and then was very confused next time I came back to the computer, opened Internet Explorer and couldn’t find my bookmark even though I was sure I had saved it…Naturally enough, along came the need to be able to access everything, anywhere, at all times. It meant that suddenly bookmarks had to become portable and so we saw the rise of the social bookmarking sites.

But why is it social?

Social bookmarking, according to Wikipedia

“is a method for internet users to store…and manage bookmarks of web pages on the internet with the help of metadata.”

All well and good – your favourites are now accessible at any time and in any place (as long as you can access the internet of course), but why leave it there? Why not share those bookmarks with your colleagues or friends? And, if you want to take it one step further, why not share them with the world at large? Suddenly, you can access them, people you know can get the heads up on good web sites, and even people you don’t know can search through tags and be directed to the sites which you think are worthwhile. It certainly saves them clicking through unendorsed sites in the search results, and we all becomes one big happy family.

It even goes a step further…

Initially, when one said social bookmarking, sites like del.icio.us would come to mind. Essentially, this is precisely what social bookmarking needed to start with – online access, ability to make your bookmarks available to everyone or no-one and so on. Del.icio.us is fantastically useful, and I know we haven’t used it to its full extent, but it was very soon eclipsed by sites which almost fell outside of the social bookmarking genre into what could be called ‘social news’ sites. These are the Digg type sites which allow for peer review, voting systems, popularity contests and masses and masses of traffic if you happened to get it right. They are the epitome of web 2.0, leaving the memory of your IE favourites a work of ancient history.

That’s all lovely and philanthropic, but does using a social bookmarking site help my reputation?

Absolutely - it helps your reputation in four key ways:

1. Personal popularity and visibility: if you use the sites as they are meant to be used (i.e. don’t spam, annoy everyone or undertake any underhand tactics), then you become a part of the community. That in turn means people become curious about you, so will dig deeper to find out about you.
2. Link popularity and visibility: if your site, article or post gets bookmarked, and voted upon favourably, you can suddenly find yourself with more traffic than the M25 at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon.
3. Trust: This follows on from the previous two, but if you consistently bookmark and tag excellent, useful information, then others in the community or outside of it will learn to trust you and will be more likely to approve of, follow or promote your selections.
4. Backlinks: this is a slightly more difficult claim. Not all social bookmarking sites provide DoFollow links. There are several blog posts out there which list those sites that do – the one post I would trust would be Caroline Middlebrook’s list (note: this trust has been built through her social bookmarking activities among other things!) But I think it is as important to consider the backlinks you may foster from the combination of 1, 2 and 3 above as it is to consider them directly from the social bookmarking site itself.

Social bookmarking and social news sites are essential in any Online Reputation Management (ORM) campaign. But they are slow burners. Just like you can’t just walk into a party uninvited, pour the bowl of punch over your head, take off all of your clothes, drag the hostess off for a two-step and still expect to have a great reputation, nor can you leap into a social bookmarking site and expect results without getting to know the etiquette, people and rules first.

Just on etiquette, people and rules, I know that many of your have really worked hard with del.icio.us and found it an invaluable tool. I’d love to hear about your experiences. What worked? What didn’t? What’s the best way to use it? And do you find it an essential part of your social media armoury?

This valuable article was contributed by Nancy Williams (United Kingdom), the Managing Director of Tiger Two Ltd, (ie. http://www.tigertwo.co.uk).

Published on the IMS community blog portal by the Internet Marketing School team.

Keyword Research Tools are extremely important for your Internet Marketing endeavors. Best of all, the following keyword tools for your Online Research are FREE!

You will use these Online Marketing Research Tools frequently whenever you do your Niche Market Research, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing and other Online Marketing campaigns.

My personal three favourite online keyword research tools are as follows:-

• http://www.FreeWordtrackerTool.com: FreeWordtrackerTool presents you with the daily keyword search volumes, and also details the search results in a very friendly and easy-to-read manner.
• https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal: Clearly an important tool since it provides search data results straight from Google, though the search volumes are depicted in relative terms. 
• http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/: The little Gtrends graph function on the top right of the search results is extremely useful in the selection of a suitable market niche, as it provides a relative understanding of the Demand for the keyword (a rough gauge of >100 searches a day is a good niche market) versus the Competition faced for the keyword (a rough gauge of <30,000 competing websites is a worthwile niche market).

Of course, there are also other research tools you can use to broaden your keywords/market niche research:-

• http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• http://www.google.com/trends
• http://inventory.overture.com
• http://freeadwordstool.com
• http://www.FreeKeywordDiscoveryTool.com
• http://goodkeywords.com/
• http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

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