Search engine marketing using online articles is a great way to start an internet business, promote your existing business and make money online. This article shares why article marketing is so powerful and important.

Article marketing is an extremely effective traffic generation method for three main reasons:
1. You’ll get multiple back links to your website/landing, which could help boost your rankings in the search engines.
2. You’ll receive targeted traffic.
3. If written and submitted correctly, your articles will be listed on either the first or second page on Google search under some of your most profitable keywords. Obviously this will avoid some Pay Per Click expenses as well.

Marketing with Articles is one of the absolute best and least expensive ways ti market online. Like anything, it requires training to do it properly. Not just any article will do. The results are not instantaneous but done properly you reap the benefits for years to come.

Why are articles such a great search engine marketing methods?

Experienced internet marketing experts knows that writing articles can make or break your online advertising campaign. Articles provide back links back to your site. Good quality back links increase your sites popularity with the search engines and lots of links help to attain good positioning. Submit your articles to multiple article directories but the ones with a high page rank is the best place to boost your page’s rank.

Readers that read and like your article will publish them in their own ezines and on their websites, and this provides more back links, publicity and popularity.

Articles posted in article directories establish your expertise which in turn increase your credibility and trust ability in the eyes of your prospects.

Don’t submit multiple articles to multiple directories in one day because the search engines have been programmed to flag sudden surge in traffic to a link. The thinking is that a human can’t do that many submission so they are being submitted automatically.. It’s better to submit articles every couple of days.

Don’t submit articles already on your own website. It may be considered duplicate content and Google usually considers the site with the higher ranking to be the originator of the article) and your site’s page rank may suffer.

Don’t submit PLR (private label rights) articles without making changes! These are articles you can submit as is or rewrite. Either way you can claim you are the original author! The search engines and the article directories want original content. There is so much PLR available today (free and otherwise) and it is very tempting to just grab it and use it. Don’t do it. The purpose of these articles is to provide you with a basis for an article. Read it and rewrite it in your own words. Duplicate articles could be rejected by the article directories and the directories and they may just decide to ban your account.

Use good keywords in your article’s title and also in the beginning of the first paragraph. Sprinkle your chosen keyword all over the article as well. How do you find good keywords? Find the words people are searching for and incorporate them into your articles to help the search engines find your articles and the people searching for those keywords to find your website.

Use anchor text that relates to the keywords you are targeting and create hyperlinks in your articles. This will help you attain a better position in the SERP’s (search engine result pages). If you are targeting the word “gardening tips” make sure to hyperlink to your website from each mention of the term in your article. This will help your gardening site be higher in the search results for the term “gardening tips”.

There are three ways to create articles:
*write original content yourself
*rewrite PLR articles
*hire a ghost writer to create the articles for you (go to elance.com – it’s inexpensive and frees your time to do other things

Remember people will be reading your articles so make them readable. Don’t flood your articles with the keyword phrase because the search engines are sensitive to this as well. Make your articles content rich and laser focused on the title because if they don’t read the article they will never get to the end of it and see your ever so important resource box!

Article marketing is an very important element of internet marketing. Become proficient in article marketing. Information is king. Share your knowledge and draw your prospects towards you.

Why market with articles? Become recognized as an expert, increase the number of back links to your site, see your article spread name across the internet and make money all from the power of article marketing…

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Use Email marketing in your internet marketing to make money online. It works equally well whether you want to start a successful internet business or you are trying to rev-up your existing one.

E-mail marketing offers many advantages over other marketing methods to make money online: low cost, high conversion rates, detailed tracking… The problem is that Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about spam and are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail. And, the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them. Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. The challenge becomes that of crafting an effective email campaign.

Following are 5 suggestions for crafting a successful email campaig:

1. Don’t Spam In Your Email Marketing! The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week and 62% of them are are spam. Spam filters are helping consumers to relax and be more at ease when it comes to spam. The answer is a to use permission-based marketing. With this in mind remind your subscribers to add you to their “safe senders” list. Second, is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with the Internet service providers and choose an email marketing software with strict anti-spam policies and complies with the Can-Spam guideline.

2. Personalized and relevant Email Marketing Is a Must. A recent study by DoubleClick found that email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. Allow users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the “from” field. So make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the “subject” line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

3. Click-through and conversion Are Your Goal In Email Marketing: Once the prospect has opened your email and read the content he/she is increasingly likely to buy from you if you have a link to an order form in your email or if you have email link for more information so they can purchase the product later.

4. Provide a coupon TO Improve Your Response Rate In Your Email Marketing. Use of Online coupons is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline. The the top performing industries are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

5. Track Your Stats To Learn How To Improve Your Email Marketing: If your provider’s email services do not include detailed, real-time tracking find a new provider. Real-time tracking allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last.

Email marketing done correctly is a powerful and profitable marketing tool that you should include in your marketing efforts.

People fail to make money with their online business because they think about themselves and making money before they consider their customers needs and concerns. No one cares about what you do – they only care about what you can do for them. Poor internet marketers fill their web pages with affiliate links and ads and wonder why they aren’t making any money.

Step-By-Step, here is how to effectively use articles as part of your search engine marketing efforts to make money online.

1) List 5 hobbies, experiences or topics you know about or would enjoy researching and then choose one of these as the theme for your site.

One caution – actually two: You should be passionate about the subject and there must be a market that is hungry for it.

2) Reasearch and create valuable content for both your sites visitors and for the search engines. You can not have too much content. Provide valuable, problem-solving information for your visitors. This allows them to build a relationship and trust with you and they will be more than happy to buy your products – when they are ready. Your articles must also be search engine friendly so your target audience can find them. Optimize your content for the search engines and the search engines will start sending you free, targeted traffic — traffic that will steadily increase.

Distribute your articles, participate in targeted forums, post to other related blogs… this allows you to establish yourself as the expert in your field and to win the trust of your audience. Also, you will attract free, targeted traffic from the search engines.

3) Add new marketing strategies as you progress. Create a free report e-zine or e-book to give away to build your customer base and establish yourself as the expert in your niche.

4) Once you have at least 40+ content pages and 50+ unique visitors per day, start monetizing your site by adding affiliate links, Google AdSense, products and services to sell… Monetization comes last in the process of building your online business..

In review, first create valuable content, next generate traffic, gradually gain the trust of your visitors and then start to monetize your site.

Follow the “Content – Traffic – Trust – Monetize Traffic” formula and you can’t fail!

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Internet marketing has grown to include pay per click advertising. These are ads (when you do a Google search, they show up on the top, bottom and right hand side of the page) that are written by advertisers to be triggered when certain keywords or phrases are searched on. Each time a person clicks on the ad, they are sent to the advertiser’s website, and the advertiser is charged for that “click”. This is how Google makes billions of dollars – And, how you can lose thousands of dollars if you don’t learn to do it properly.

Don’t let me scare you. It isn’t hard to learn.

Pay per click advertising consists of ads (when you do a Google search, they show up on the right hand side of the page) that are written by advertisers to be triggered when certain keywords or phrases are searched on. Each time a person clicks on the ad, they are sent to the advertiser’s website, and the advertiser is charged for that “click”.

Pay per click advertising can be a VERY profitable way to increase sales and leads (if done correctly).

* It’s fast – you can have a campaign up and running in less than 30 minutes. Getting your site into the search engine listings can take weeks or even many months depending on the competition level.

*If you understand how to manage a pay per click campaign, you can have immediate feedback and metrics to determine the return on your investment. You can see exactly how much money you’re spending, what your potential customers are doing online, and what sales you’ve made. If you think about advertising in the Yellow pages, it’s the exact opposite…with the Yellow pages, you never even know if anyone sees your ad!
*It can tell you what the money terms are! How do you even know what search terms you want to optimize your site for? You can test them quickly and easily with a pay per click campaign, and then apply that knowledge to your search engine optimization efforts.

Pay per click advertising needs to be a part of every business owners’ Internet advertising campaign. Unfortunately, managing even a small pay per click campaign can be complex and require very specialized knowledge and experience. There are several problems that the novice advertiser runs into.

Google’s rules and tips and tricks to work within them – Google doesn’t make it easy to advertise. There are lots of unwritten rules for how Google likes campaigns to be set up and run. These rules have a direct impact on how much you’ll pay for the advertising. If not respected and understood, many campaigns are doomed to be unprofitable. These rules include:

* Keyword grouping
* Quality score
* Ad relevancy
* Click through rate management
* Bid pricing
* And many more…

Keyword research – I guarantee that if you’re already using adwords, you’re leaving out important keywords in your campaign.
If you have 10-30 keywords currently, you should most likely be bidding on 1,000-3,000. It’s that big of a difference when you
have access to the right tools and strategies.

Ad testing – If you’re not split testing (comparing a control to a candidate, or a different ad to see which is better), you’re most
likely getting only ½ the visitors to your site than you should be.

Conversion tracking – Most business owners don’t know how to track whether a dollar spent on advertising generated any
sales. Obviously, without this information, you’re flying blind.

Tools – There are several very important tools in the market to help create and manage pay per click campaigns. The problem is
that they are expensive, and don’t make financial sense for one business owner managing one campaign.

Only sending visitors to the home page – There are probably many different types of potential customers for your products
and services. Sending them all to a generic home page isn’t nearly as effective as sending them to a targeted page that tells them
exactly how you can solve their particular problem.

How To Do It:
* Understand your customers’ searching behavior. Walk in their shoes, and understand the dialogue the searcher is having with the web. Most customers are researching or looking for a problem to solve. If you understand what problem they’re trying to solve (keywords and phrases) you can provide them with a very customized solution to it (your landing page, website…and ultimately your product).

* Decide how you will track conversions. Often this is easy…it’s when you make a sale. Other times it can be trickier. If you’re a real estate agent, you’ll most likely be tracking leads. In addition, you’ll have to assign some kind of dollar value to that lead so you can determine how much advertising to spend in order to get it.

* Decide on autoresponders and set them up. Autoresponders are simply a way to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. Essentially it’s automated email.

* Do the keyword research

* Brainstorm the core ones with a diverse group, “spy” on your competitions’ using tools, use other tools to expand the core list

* Group keywords by the conversation type (what is the potential customer looking for?)

* If you’re a real estate agent, you’re prospects will be having different conversations if they’re looking to relocate as opposed to someone already in your area looking to sell their house

* Build landing pages on your site for each conversation type

* You’d want the two different potential customers above to go to two different pages within your site, because you want to highlight the different value propositions you’re bringing to the table…to solve their particular problem.

* Set up your own blog

* Set up your adwords campaign using the keywords, groupings and landing pages

* Monitor and test…EVERY DAY

* Split test ads every day, Adjust bids every day, Get rid of non-performing keywords every day

* As soon as a great “money term” is found, start the search engine optimization process for that term

* Market 2-3 articles per week (or even more), Make blog postings on your blog and others’, Answer posts on forums and yahoo answers

* Move great “money terms” to Yahoo and MSN pay per click advertising engines

* Rinse and repeat this process every 90 days!

This probably looks overwhelming. However, if you know what you’re doing…it’s very straightforward.

As always get proper training. Learn how to automate these processes. In fact you alone can do this.

Good Luck!

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Search engine optimization refers to any efforts that are required to try and get your web site into the top rankings of Google (and others) search engine listing results when someone searches for your “keyword phrases”.

Everyone loves successful search engine optimization, because you can get lots of traffic…and…it’s free! The problem is, that no one really knows how Google decides where to rank your site and when it will show up. Any expert that tells you that they know exactly how Google’s ranking works and/or guarantees that you’ll get into the top spots (for a fee, of course), is being less than truthful. For this reason it is important to understand SEM tactics so you won’t be taken advantage of.

Even so, there are proven techniques that you can employ to get your site into the top of the listings.

Business owners have big challenges when it comes to search engine optimization:

* Often, Google doesn’t even know their site exists (this is VERY common)

* Even if Google does know about their site, it never shows up in search engine listings.

* Even if their site does show up in some kind of search, it’s hardly ever the “keyword phrase” that the owner would like

* Even if the owner could dictate to Google what keywords to show the site for, most business owners don’t know which words
and phrases are the money makers!

11 Things To Know About SEO:

1. Content. Content. Content. Effective, professional, optimized Copy writing is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. Think original, well articulated and informative.

2. Analyze Web Logs.
Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content.

3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine. Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim.

4. Some things are just plain silly. You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on it’s own. Three (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web – Google, MSN and Yahoo.

5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click. While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service.

6. There is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with training and time. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with.

7. Do-it-yourself SEO. Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you.

8. Phased Implementation. While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow.

9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one.

10. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. I

11. All incoming links are not created equal. Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good.

These are not insurmountable but point to the need to to get training. Learn and understand what you’re doing and you will have highly profitable campaigns.

Put in the simplest manner possible, organic SEO is search engine optimization done manually using no black hat methods, no underhand methods and no automated scripting. It is the purest form of optimizing your website for the benefit of search engines, while still retaining interest for your site visitors, and done well it is exactly the thing that search engines are looking for in a website. Once they find it they will reward your site with better rankings and improved positions within the search engine results pages.

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Use Email marketing in your internet marketing to make money online. It works equally well whether you want to start a successful internet business or you are trying to rev-up your existing one.

E-mail marketing offers many advantages over other marketing methods to make money online: low cost, high conversion rates, detailed tracking… The problem is that Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about spam and are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail. And, the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them. Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. The challenge becomes that of crafting an effective email campaign.

Following are 5 suggestions for crafting a successful email campaig:

1. Don’t Spam In Your Email Marketing! The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week and 62% of them are are spam. Spam filters are helping consumers to relax and be more at ease when it comes to spam. The answer is a to use permission-based marketing. With this in mind remind your subscribers to add you to their “safe senders” list. Second, is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with the Internet service providers and choose an email marketing software with strict anti-spam policies and complies with the Can-Spam guideline.

2. Personalized and relevant Email Marketing Is a Must. A recent study by DoubleClick found that email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. Allow users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. Users in the study said the most compelling reason for them to open a business email is the name in the “from” field. So make sure your company name is clearly stated there. Another major factor is the “subject” line. Users cite discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, followed by new product announcements and free shipping offers.

3. Click-through and conversion Are Your Goal In Email Marketing: Once the prospect has opened your email and read the content he/she is increasingly likely to buy from you if you have a link to an order form in your email or if you have email link for more information so they can purchase the product later.

4. Provide a coupon TO Improve Your Response Rate In Your Email Marketing. Use of Online coupons is booming: 73% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon for an online purchase, and 59% have redeemed an online coupon offline. The the top performing industries are travel, hardware/software, electronics, apparel, food, home furnishings, gifts/flowers and sporting goods. All companies sending business emails in those categories said between 71% and 80% of recipients have purchased their products because of an email campaign.

5. Track Your Stats To Learn How To Improve Your Email Marketing: If your provider’s email services do not include detailed, real-time tracking find a new provider. Real-time tracking allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last.

Email marketing done correctly is a powerful and profitable marketing tool that you should include in your marketing efforts.

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Non fiction/self improvement e-books present a wonderful marketing search engine marketing tool that is often overlooked by many business people because they either think it is too difficult to write an e-book or they don’t understand the value an e-book in their online marketing efforts.

If you think it too difficult to write or if you don’t have the time to write an e-book then contract with a ghost writer at elance.com – the cost is reasonable. You’ll be surprised.

As an e-book author you are free to write what ever you want to write and will not be influenced by a publisher, publicist, or any one else. Ebooks usually contain much more than just the book. They can have printable worksheets, menus, lists, affirmations, links to other sites, promotions or any number of other beneficial items that relate to the particular topic of the e-book – all of which you control and can profit from.

As an internet marketer consider giving your e-book away in exchange for your prospects contact information. Think of your e-book as a detailed brochure or as an ethical bribe. Solve your prospects problems. Answer their commonly asked questions. Sprinkle in calls to action and customer testimonials… You can’t lose!

Give e-books a try as your online marketing tool and make money online. Once created you can use it over and over again. Create the e-book yourself or have it created for you. An e-book that solves some of your prospects problems will always be in demand. Give it away in exchange for your prospects contact information. It will be one of the best things you could do for your business.

© SEM Business Blueprint Report

Discover how effective forums are in your online search engine marketing efforts.

Forum’s are free to participate in, they are effective in building your database and in establishing your expertise and credibility. While the approach is non-aggressive, the results are solid, consistent and speak for themselves. Your goal in forum marketing is to help others, participate in discussions and establish a presence. Do this and you will build trust, credibility and a loyal following.

Having said that, people are skeptical when it comes to doing business online because they are less likely to trust someone they’ve never met. Your job as an online marketer is build trust and loyalty with your prospects. This becomes a difficult task since you have never met these people in person. Forums provide an excellent way to overcome this and build trust and a relationship with your prospects. Forums are free and an effective form of marketing. A definite for the budget conscious internet marketer and established, prosperous online marketer alike.

Join forums and gain access to a community that shares your specific interests and a huge base of potential customers. Forums are free to join and post to, cover almost every topic you can imagine, and most allow you to include a personal self-promotional “signature”to promote your business and link to your website. It is free advertising and it establishes a link to your website. How Cool is that?

To find relevant forums Google “forum + your desired topic or keyword phrase”. For example, a Google or Yahoo search for “website marketing forum,” returns dozens of relevant forums and also gives you an indication of how highly they are regarded by the search engine giant as indicated by how high they rank for that key phrase. Search out and join the forums that rank higher on the search engine result pages for your chosen niche.

In the forum you will share your knowledge to help people solve their problems. They will come to consider you as an expert making this a highly effective marketing technique. Once others begin to see you as an expert they will seek your opinion and expertise without you having to promote yourself.

People like to do business with people know, like, and trust. Forums help others to see you as a person that they know, like and trust. Your business becomes an extension of you. You begin to stand out from your competition because you are willing to accept some degree of accountability for your actions and your potential customers respect and reward this. Establishing meaningful relationships online is a lot like making friends in the real world. After all, on the other side of the terminal is a real person with real emotions just like you.

Be open and transparent. Normally use a nickname in your public forum posts but use your real name in private correspondences. Begin your messages with a salutation and address people by their real name whenever possible. A little courtesy goes a long way in building loyalty and trust.

To be effective you must offer valuable information and thoughtful help when you respond t questions and offer solutions. You your products and services your want to sell must also have value for the people you offer it to – and you must offer it at fair prices as well! . Why? Because, when you do business on forums there must be extra value for your “friends”. If you overprice your widget, you risk receiving flames from other members that could harm your reputation. This is why it’s so important to research what other members are charging for a similar widgets and to price yours competitively. Often you’ll end up charging lower prices to members of your forum than to other customers with whom you have not developed such a close a relationship.

Also don’t promote a product or service every time you post. About once every ten posts is a safe ratio. You may be flamed if you do it more often. In the nine posts you don’t promote a product or service offer advice or simply agree or disagree. Remember you still have your signature with your link.

Build relationships in the forums. Make others feel important. Answer questions promptly. Attend to people’s concerns. Listen to their inputs and incorporate their ideas into your business practices. Make your customers a part of your team. Teamwork is not limited to interacting with other members of your company. Build mutually beneficial relationships with your customers.

Make sure you know and understand the forum rules before you start. Start slow and make a good first impression. Don’t be too aggressive by pushing your business. Your goal is to help others and solve problems. If your forum has an area for advertising and sales posts take advantage of it. Use your signature file to promote you, your product and service. Keep your posts on topic and helpful and you’ll be better off in the long run. intermittently guide others to your site and advertise in your posts.

The best advice I can give you is to think of each post as a chance to help a personal family member or close friend to solve a problem. Do this and watch the traffic and sales roll in!

© SEM Business Blueprint Report