SocialMarker.com
This was a great find when we started using this a while ago. This reduced a lot of the work for us in submitting to our social bookmarking sites manually but there was still manual work to be done. It’s free though, so who can really complain?

Then we found:

OnlyWire.com
OnlyWire has a fully automated service which I much prefer with a high submission rate. The majority of sites I set up accounts for got my bookmark and they were listed on the site fast.

OnlyWire has 2 options:

1. Signing up for a free account and providing a link back to them on your blog in exchange for using it. That sounds like a fair exchange.

2. Signing up for a paid account where you pay $2.99/month or $24.99/year and you get ad free, fully automated service.

Summary
I chose to use Onlywire’s paid service and it has worked really well for me.

Rafferty Pendery
Internet Marketing Consultant

social marker

There is a tool that I have been using for some time to social bookmark sites that I like, SocialMarker.com. This tool helps automate some of the process of social bookmarking with all major social websites.

The Pros:
Normally when you social bookmark sites you have to go to the website, login and then bookmark the site I want to. If you want to social bookmark multiple sites this can definitely take some time. Social Marker takes most of the work out of it

The Cons:
The service is not completely automated so there is some work that you will have to do by hand, but I think The Pros outweigh this considerably.

If anyone has seen a service that is better, feel free to comment about it and I would love to take a look.

Rafferty Pendery
Internet Marketing Consultant

People searching for information enter specific keywords into the search engines to find what they are looking for about products, companies, services or whatever. Keyword research allows you to see how people are searching for information, what words they are using and which phrases you should use in your content so they are directed to your website. By gathering keyword data, you can gain valuable insight to searchers behavior and ways to create a user-friendly, informational website that converts visitors into customers. So where to does one start their keyword research?

Start by washing away the common misconception that you already know what terms searchers use to find your website. If you are just guessing at what people are looking for, you run the risk of getting it completely wrong. Place yourself in the searcher’s shoes and don’t look for one right answer. Successful keyword research should lead to numerous great answers.

When doing your research, don’t limit yourself. It is easy to get trapped with a specific phrase you have your heart and mind set on. In some situations, starting with a single word can open the door to a much larger range of potential keywords. If you are not sure where to start, select a broad, non-specific term to start your search and discover a plethora of less competitive yet very effective keyword terms to develop your keyword list. Bear in mind, many keywords and keyword phrases are so popular it is almost impossible to get a high ranking for them.

Once you have completed your keyword collection, and it should be a fairly extensive list, the next step is to research the keywords popularity and competition. This can be accomplished through the use of several keyword research and analytic tools. There are many keyword research tools available, like those offered by Overture, Google and Wordtracker. To ensure the quality of your keyword data, analysis should be performed and cross-referenced across multiple tools. There are also web analytics tools available such as those offered by Webtrends, Omniture and HitBox. Using these tools will allow you to identify the most effective keywords for your optimization plan.

It is also important to target locally. Local targeting, including your location in your keyword search phrases, is very successful as many people mention specific locations when searching for services and products. Also take the time to explore all niche opportunities. It is essential to identify what part of a market you’d like to focus on. Don’t forget, getting ranked number one for a term that has nothing to do with your website is a giant waste of time and money.

Keyword research is the first step in the optimization of your website for search engines and to gain greater site traffic. So get out there and start researching. Discover new keyword opportunities and fix existing keyword uses. Keyword research is an ongoing process. Your customers and your website change over time. It is important to monitor your keywords and tweak them accordingly. Although keyword research is a tedious task it is well worth the effort.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

1. When you write articles with good information related to your industry these sites are no only more likely to be accepted by the article directories, but then many times other sites will republish your articles as well. Search engines search article directories all the time due to the high amount of traffic these sites get and tons of content being generated. So your articles start showing up on the search engines in topics related to your industry.

2. At the end of the articles, there is a place to put links back to your site. This is a completely legitimate way to build links to your website, because you are providing good content in exchange. This aligns with the very purpose of Google. The result is increased presence in the search engines.

Check out my Squidoo page called: Distributing Your Content with Article Submission Services for a more detailed description of article submission and article submission services.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

As connections and the computers they are allied with get faster, video sites must keep up with the times and meet the speed of their visitors. The large video sharing sites, like YouTube, are already testing a player that detects your connection speed to serve up higher quality video. Optional, of course, but who wouldn’t want the higher quality and where does that leave the timeless “camera phone” videos or “first time holding a camera” videos? And if video marketing was on your list of online marketing campaign strategies-what level of quality do you need?

The content of your video is extremely important, but is content more important than quality? It’s a balancing act. They need to walk hand in hand. It is vital to have effective content that intrigues the audience. Without excellent content, no matter how good the quality, your video will stink and sink right out of existence. However, by combining high quality with brilliant content you’re destined to have greater success than the lesser quality video.

Do you need studio quality stuff? No, but a broadcast filled with extraneous noise is just annoying. The people coughing in the background. The shaking and clumsy camera hand. The dog barking off in the distance. Get that stuff out of there. Don’t be mistaken; unedited video has massive value for keeping it real. But it is better to invest your time in producing high quality videos for a lasting high quality impression.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

When using keywords in the title, it is best to not to overdue it. Select a pertinent keyword to your page and form a quality title around the selected keyword. Search engines often highlight these terms in the search results when a user has performed a query. This will help to generate greater visibility and a higher click through rate.

General rules to remember:

• Keep an eye on the length-65 to 70 characters including spacing. Titles that are longer than this often appear unfinished in search results.

• Keeping your main keyword near the beginning of your title indicates the value of your site for this information. Using multiple keywords or repetitive keywords can do damage to your ranking and may get you blacklisted.

• Readability and emotional impact. A compelling title tag will pull in more visits from search results.

Proper time and use of your titles will generate better keyword driven search engine traffic and initiate interest in your site. Don’t just think about optimization and keyword usage. Think about the user experience. Your title is your first impression. Make it a positive one and write your title for the user-and not just for the search engines.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

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Is it possible they were trying to put the antisocial violent subcultures of the world into a car of their own? This would be an unusual target audience choice. As it turns out they are reaching out to the 18-35 year old males who embrace that little bit of “bad-ass” in them. Even this eludes my logic, as guys in a mini-wagon just don’t seem all that deviant to me, unless of course they are going to tool around the city taking out the conformists, but that is well beyond deviant behavior.

Could Toyota have spent their dollars on a more profitable campaign? We have all seen that the car industry giant has targeted the younger generation with their previous Scion line, but this branding point appears to so limit their buyers’ interest by associating the vehicle with deviants. Are there enough deviants in the world to make the millions spent on this promotion worthwhile?

A five-door mini-wagon would be an ideal car for small families, but what family wants to put their loved ones in a vehicle that will forever be associated with massacring misfits. And what about the millions of car guys who love to customize their rides? Scion offers many options for customizing your vehicle making it a popular choice for the younger generation, but are all those “pimped out” car drivers now considered deviants? Not to mention the “sheeples” of the world who may now steer clear of Toyota knowing that the carmaker views them as mindless, zombie-like conformists. Point being that there was a much larger audience they could have addressed and not scared away.

With all the violence going on around the globe and this generation’s movement toward unity, caring for animals and going green, I have to question the mental state of the person who thought up this approach. The delivery was outstanding, but the message was disturbing. Although I in no way identify with either the Sheeples of Attik’s campaign nor their genocidal foes, from this moment forward I will be watching in my rear view mirror, as my head will not become a hood ornament for any little deviants.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

I thought this was great, I asked him if I could take a look at a very small part of what he had done. He showed me a few sites where had set up accounts and posted information and was proud about the fact that these sites were going to push him up in the pretty competitive search terms on Google. Just to be nice I decided to point out how his one way link building had gone bad.

rel=”nofollow”

Many sites are doing this now because spammers had found it fun to get thousands of links from 1 site that were to worthless websites. What this one simple command does is prevent search engines from following that link. So while this guy was doing his amazing strategy, it wasn’t actually doing anything for him, because the search engines were being stopped before they left the site.

The deceiving part is that when you look at it on the page, it appears as a normal link, its what’s behind it that matters. You can see this if you right click on a page and select view source. Then find your link on the page, easiest way is to search for the text of your link when viewing the code. You will see the link show up. It will look something like the link below:

Visit my <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>your link</a> site.

Notice that rel=”nofollow” in there? If you are getting that, don’t think about that site for the backlinks to your site, because they don’t exist. If you see the link without that, then you are good to go and take advantage of it.

Needless to say, we are now working with the client mentioned and are getting him on sites where his one way link building strategy will actually be successful. May yours be too!

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98

Have you ever written an article?

Have you ever written anything on the web?

Has everything you’ve written been indexed and placed by Google in the exact search terms you wanted?

Well if so, then close this window and move on with life. For the 99.99 percent of you out there where this is not the case, read on, because I have some pointers that will help with this.

I was talking with a client last week, he was saying that Google wasn’t indexing the articles he wrote in the search terms he was going for. I asked to see the articles he had written. I read them over and spotted exactly what his problem was…

He was not using the words he wanted his article to show up in, he was using words related to these. I then checked with a few other people that claimed they had the same problem. One-for-one I found the same thing; they thought that Google would index the article for the search terms they wanted because it was RELATED to what they were talking about. Unfortunately, they forgot that, although Google is a very efficient “smart” search engine with millions of dollars in development, it’s not a sentient human.

Let’s take a specific example of using this. The keywords that we are trying to get this article to show up in are Good Green Grass (name of the company) and Lawn Care:

Article Title:

Bad: Green Grass is the best grass

Good: Do it yourself Lawn Care by Good Green Grass

The title is an important place to put keywords. Being the nature of titles, Google will look at this and see what your article is about, given the content in the article matches up it index the article accordingly.

Article Summary:

I recommend that you don’t just take a paragraph or two out of the article and make it the summary. Write a summary, taking advantage of keywords where you can to gain the most exposure for your articles. A lot of the article directories will have listings of articles with the title and summary being shown. What’s written in the summary is one of the factors Google takes into account on where to index you on pages that show listings.

Just as an example, I wouldn’t have a summary like this, “Lawn care by Good Green Grass has Lawn care services so you don’t have by Grass, but Good Green Grass.” As a reader I would think that you are writing for search engines, negating me as a client.

Take advantage of having captured your clients attention this far by saying things like, “Good Green Grass is providing do-it-yourself lawn care tips for those who want to have a beautiful, green lawn, by doing it themselves.” You can see the additional keywords you get by doing this, beautiful, green lawn, etc.

Article Body:

It’s important to use the search term you are trying to get the articles ranked for as keywords in the article itself. You are going to have to use your own judgment on the frequency of your keyword, but a good viewpoint to use is, how many times would you want to see it if you were reading the article as an actual human?

One difference in articles from press releases is that articles need to be informational reports for people to read. They can’t be too self promotional. Take the time to make yourself the authority on your business and having given your customers free information, become their friends. When you become that, you will have more business than you know what to do with.

When writing the body of the article think of different variations of the keywords you are going for. These will help get ranked in related keywords, gaining more exposure.

Resource Box:

Most sites have a resource box a.k.a. an author’s bio. This is the place where you can put your self promotional message. If the site allows links to be placed in the resource box, do it, because then you are gaining inbound links as well as all the other advantages. I will be writing more articles covering the details of how to properly format a resource box and covering each of the different fields you can fill out on an article in more detail.

Keywords:

Put the most important keywords at the beginning of the list. Most sites give you a limit of the number of keywords or number of characters. A lot of the sites that we use limit you to 150 characters in the resource box, this is going to vary from site to site.

Summary:

The main point is to get creative in how to word the search terms you are going for. You need to make it so that it doesn’t seem like you are writing for the search engines, but clients. You must include the keywords though, otherwise your article is less relevant and will not show up to the extent it could. The more you give to other people (not necessarily cash, talking more about information in this case), the more you are going to get back in the end. If you make it a little fun to read while writing, that’s another plus.

Rafferty Pendery

CEO Studio98

Article submission is the process of taking an article relevant to your company or the products or services you deliver and uploading it to article directories. Article directories are websites that collect articles on many different topics, ranging from Arts & Entertainment to Health to Technology. There is no standard list of categories for articles to be submitted to, so you are going to have to choose the most appropriate category on each site.

Examples of Some Article Directories

There are so many article directories out there, it would be impractical to list them all here. Below are a few different article directories that I recommend.

http://www.articledashboard.com

http://ezinearticles.com

http://articlefriendly.com

http://www.articlenetworks.com

http://www.articleplatform.com

Articles vs. Press Releases

There are a few differences between articles and press releases. Articles are more informational type promotion regarding the subject of your business. For example, if you were a spa, you could write an article on “How to Properly Care for Your Nails”. A Press Release is more of a self promotional tool to release some news about your company or products. Articles generally get disapproved if you make them too much of a self promotional piece.

Article Submission vs. Other Strategies Out There

If you look at the purpose of Google, providing good relevant content to their users, articles aligns with this perfectly. Article submission is not a trick or gimmick, it is providing good, relevant content.

There are other “get ranked quick” schemes out there. I DO NOT suggest being a part of these at all. Google spends millions of dollars finding these sort of schemes and it is bound to be shot down sooner or later. You might as well spend your time and money working on something that is going to align with the purpose of Google and not just get you deleted. That’s not to say that you can’t abuse article submission and get content deleted, because you can. If you follow the guidelines of the sites and use article submission for the intended purpose, then you reduce your risk significantly.

The whole idea of article submission is that you provide good information to the users on the internet and it will help build your search engine presence and peoples’ trust in you.

Two Pronged Approach

Article submission really is a 2 pronged approach.

1. When you submit articles, there is a space at the end where you can put links to your site (most sites limit you to 3 links in the resource box). Inbound links are a huge factor in how search engines rank your site on different keywords. So now you are publishing good, relevant content and getting inbound links for it. It works wonderfully whenever we have done it for our clients.
2. Because there are so many people submitting articles to these article directories, they are being searched all the time by Google. You can get the articles that you submit to be ranked by Google as well. If done properly, you will start to see many listings of the article you submitted showing up in Google.

Summary

Article submission has proven to be a great tool. We have used it for our clients to build a strong presence on the internet and search engines. Use it properly and you will win. It can take some work to get started, but once you do, I’m telling you it will be worth it.

Studio98 does have an article submission service where we will take your articles about your products, services or company and post them to 100 article directories, helping to keep your focus on what’s important, delivering great service to your clients.

Rafferty Pendery
CEO Studio98
Website: http://www.RaffertyPendery.com
Blog: http://blog.raffertypendery.com