2009

Ghost Tweeting

December 29, 2009 By Ben Janke 1 Comment

Usually when you are on Twitter you think that the people that you are following are tweeting on their accounts to pass on good information to you. Most of us know that there is automated systems that tweet for people, but have you heard of “Ghost Tweeting”?

Ghost Tweeting is when an individual or a company hires or outsources to other companies to do their tweeting for them. Do you really think that these huge celebrity tweeters have the time to send out 20+ personal tweets per day? Some do, but a large majority do not. Many of them are using twitter to stay in front of their fans and followers, but it is way easier to have someone tweet your schedule out for you rather than having to think about it everytime you make a move or think a thought.

Check out this video about Ghost Tweeting.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Matt Cutts Talks About Google Caffeine

December 27, 2009 By Ben Janke Leave a Comment

Google caffeine is due to start rolling out here soon. It looks like it is going to be a significant change to Google search. Website responsiveness and more an emphasis on real time search information is rumored to be a part of the changes with Google Caffeine.

Here is an interview with Matt Cutts about some of the changes.

Technorati Tags: google caffeine, matt cutts

Filed Under: Uncategorized

WordPress Training Resources

December 15, 2009 By Ben Janke 1 Comment

WordPress is just a great tool overall. It has millions of users all over the world. The best part is that it is always evolving with technology and changes in the internet world. If you really want to start to build your business online, wordpress is a great way to go.

Here is a good blog post from wordpresstraining.com that I think you will like about how to use wordpress and how to learn more about it.

My next batch of WordPress training videos is currently in the planning stages. To be honest, I’ve been hesitant to put a lot of effort into producing a bunch of new videos with the WordPress 2.5 release just days away.

In the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to point out a few other WordPress resources that some of you might find useful:

The WordPress Training Group on Facebook: The official Facebook group for this website. The group currently has well over 400 members and the discussion forum is turning into an valuable support resource. If you’re on Facebook, be please join us.
Lessons for WordPress Beginners: A set of lessons designed to help the WordPress newbies get up to speed quickly. The lessons are part of the official WordPress Codex. While the Codex tends to be somewhat technical, these lessons are clearly for beginners.
WordPress University: Ben Cope’s new site promises to be a valuable collection of WordPress training videos. Ben covers a couple of topics not covered on this site, including inserting YouTube videos to your WordPress post, and installing up WordPress on a GoDaddy account.
iTheme’s Free WordPress Tutorials: Another collection of free WordPress videos that overlaps somewhat with the videos provided on this site. A few videos deal with issues I haven’t gotten around to yet, like setting up FeedBurner and installing Google Analytics.
Free eBook – How to develop money making niche sites with WordPress: Based on the early results of our WordPress training survey, it appears that quite a few of you are using WordPress with the goal of making money online. If this describes you, you’ll definitely want to check out Caroline Middlebrook’s free eBook. Even if you’re not hoping to get rich with WordPress, Caroline’s book offers pretty good documentation on setting up WordPress with Fantastico.

And finally, If you haven’t done so already, please take a moment to complete our WordPress training survey. Your feedback will help determine the focus of our future training videos.

Filed Under: Blogging

Free Mindmapping Software

November 20, 2009 By Ben Janke 3 Comments

I started making a new project today that I’m very excited about. The great new service for business owners that will help them get their new website online and active, and get their face out there for their prospects to see. I started to think about all the different options and features I want to include in how it was in a work together, and I got all confused in my head. There’s a lot that goes into building a product online or a campaign for your followers and readers. It can be a pretty big web full of ideas.

If you are in a similar situation, or have been in a similar situation before, I found a great tool that will help you organize your thoughts and actually get the job done much more efficiently than before. The website is bubbl.us. They call themselves brainstorming made simple. It’s a creative and colorful mind mapping service that you can share and collaborate with your friends on. You can actually in bed my map on your website or blog, e-mail and print the mind map, or save the my map as an image. The best part about this website is that it is free. Don’t we all love FREE stuff?

I have used quite a few other mindmapping software and sites out there, but this one is very easy and convenient. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Squeeze Pages and Landing Pages Oh My!

November 17, 2009 By Ben Janke 2 Comments

Throughout my years of marketing on the Internet, I’ve discovered that there are a list of 5 to 10 things that marketers must do to be successful. Getting traffic, building links, affiliate marketing, PPC, and networking are all important, but it keeps coming back to the same thing over and over for many Internet marketers. Building a list is it and using nice landing pages, squeeze pages, and optin boxes is an integral part.

If you can build a list of people that are interested in a certain niche or topic, and give value to that list, you can make money on the Internet. I heard this was started marketing online the didn’t really believe it until about two years later when I was not near as successful as I thought it would be that point in time. I would either have a hard time getting people to sign up for my list, or I would fail to give value once they were on my list. Very frustrating.

About 8 months ago, I found some great tools that I just have to share with you that will give you a huge jump start on building your list. Professional squeeze pages, video landing pages, and optin boxes. I have had these custom made for me in the past at a cost of about $100-$250 per template.

I hope this helps you if you are looking for some really nice landing pages or squeeze page templates. They are pretty easy to customize and work with. You could have a professional looking page up in 20 mins. Just edit the HTML and embed your video from Youtube or another video sharing service.

Check out these templates here. HotVideoSqueezePages
They work great with aweber.

Filed Under: Contact Management

Top 10 Steps To A Super Effective Blog Post

November 15, 2009 By Ben Janke Leave a Comment

When you’re writing a post to your blog, you won’t make it easy and fun for your readers to take a look. A post with a list of items is very easy for your readers to read, scan, and enjoy. There’s been some hugely popular list posts about online business and Internet marketing in the past. Let’s go through the steps.

1. Decide on the number of items in the list.
First you have to figure out how many items you going to post in your list. Yeah keep in mind that you don’t want to have the list of 100 items or 200 items because it just makes your reader take less value from each item listed. Instead have a short list. Anywhere from five to 25 should do the trick.

2. Make each item in the list flowed together.
Keep your items in your list in the general same structure and about the same topic. This may seem like common knowledge that there are tons of blogs out there that missed the step up.

3. Start a think about what you know and what your readers want to know.
If you’re an expert in a certain area, you typically get a lot of questions from people inquiring about your expertise. This should give you some great ammunition for your blog post as you think about what people usually ask along what lines they asked the question.

4. Order your list
make sure that you put the items in order to make the most sense. This means start from the very basic, and move to more advanced. This will help work your reader into the subject and help them build their knowledge as they go.

5. If you have a really long list break it into sections.
There’s nothing worse than trying to find the golden nuggets in a list of 50 items. Either bring some of the main points together and include them in one item, or get rid of any items that you don’t need.

6. Think about making your list a series.
It’s advantageous to give your readers or followers your information in small, easy to remember chunks. If you do it this way, you will get to put your face in front of your prospects are readers more often, and they will typically appreciate your knowledge even more because they can digest each section at their own rate.

7. Consistency in your writing
Make sure the structure of each item in your list is easy to read and structured in a way that is easy on the eyes. Think of bullet points, or highlighted sections of each point.

8. Always number your items
Trying to find the main points of someone’s list that are not numbered, it can be a pain. Make sure you make it easy for your readers to understand your blog post and pull out the main points that they want to take from the information.

9. Invite your readers to give their input
Your list is never to be perfect and your readers can be a valuable resource for you. Make sure that you give them the ability to comment on your post and add their own spin of what they think you may have missed on. Or they might just want to add what has worked for them in the past.

10. Make sure you have a great title
Just like any marketing out there your title is going to sell the reader on reading your blog post. If you have a crappy title, no one is even going to take a look.

What did I miss? Comment Below.

Technorati Tags: blogging, lists, tips

Filed Under: Blogging

FTC Starts The Internet Marketing Crackdown

November 15, 2009 By Ben Janke Leave a Comment

On December 1st, 2009 the new marketing on the internet regulations to into effect. Yet another government interference in our daily lives. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that we can clean up some of the false marketing and lies out there, but it is just sad that the government is involved. It isn’t the regulation that scares me, but once they get in it can be a slippery slope.

Since we have to work with the rules, let’s talk about some of the specifics and how they will effect your business.

The FTC has really stressed some the regulation on bloggers and what you say on your blog. But where do you put your disclosures on your affiliations etc.
Read FTC Responds to Blogger Fears: “That $11,000 Fine Is Not True” . The summary is
“Disclosures can be made in different ways, whether you make it outside of the text but in proximity to blog, or incorporate it into the blog discussion itself–those are the issues that bloggers will have discretion about.”

The FTC said that “We just want to bring some transparency to the process.” Which is good in some ways as long as they don’t overstep their boundaries.

We will have to see how and when they start to crackdown on internet marketing blog, sales pages, squeeze pages, and more in the coming months.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How To Get High Quality Backlinks

November 10, 2009 By Ben Janke Leave a Comment

Backlinks are very important to the longevity and effectiveness of any websites out there in cyberspace. However, just because you have 17,000 backlinks is not mean that you’re going to rank above someone who has 1000 backlinks. When you’re thinking about your link building strategy, you really need to think about the quality of your links and not just the quantity.

I wouldn’t say it easy to get thousands and thousands of links but anyone can really do it using tools like Unique Article Wizard, Myarticlenetwork, or SENuke rather really getting gives you high-quality links. When I say high quality links I don’t mean to links on domains that happen to have high page rank on their home page, I am talking about getting backlinks on pages that actually have page rank on that page. remember, Google scores websites page by page not site by site.

Scoring You Backlinks

Anchor text - Your anchor text is crucial when it comes to getting ranked for the keywords that you want to bring for. This is the text that is clickable on any page and links to your page.

Relevance of the page you are on – If you get a backlink from a page that is about “electronics” and your page is about “real estate” you are not going to have high of quality for that link.

Number Of Outbound Links - If the page with your link on it also has 30 other outbound links, the quality score of that link will be diminished.

Where on the Page Is Your Link? When Google scans a page, they read it from top left to bottom right. If your link is the first thing that Google spiders see, you will be rewarded.

Age of Domain: If you can find a domain that has been around for 10 years that will backlink to you, you can really get a boost.

Follow vs NoFollow Status. When you get a link, it is great. If it is a “follow” link it is much better. There is talk about Google abandoning their rule of not giving link juice for nofollow links, but that is just rumor. In the meantime, go after follow links as much as possible.

PAGERANK - This really matters. If a page linking to you has a 7 page rank, you are going to get spidered fast and probably rank up quick too.

My recommendation for building links through a network is Linkvana to accomplish these above. Check it out.

The best way that I have found to build high-quality backlinks for free is to comment on dofollow blogs, guest blog, press releases, and even buy backlinks through some of the available networks. Just don’t tell Google about the buying links part. Link baiting is also a good way to go. That means writing a blog post of very high quality or of some sort of controversy post to get people talking and linking to your page naturally.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization

Linkwheels and SEO: How To Use Them

November 9, 2009 By Ben Janke 1 Comment

I got a question recently about linkwheels. It’s a little bit of a buzzword in Internet marketing community these days even though and has been around for a while. I guess you need to ask yourself is creating a linkwheel important for your SEO or is it something that you don’t really need to pay attention to.

What is a linkwheel?

When you are building links or backlinks to your website, the most standard practice is to have every link linking back to the page on your website that you want to bring link juice to. Keep in mind that most people don’t even do this. A lot of website owners people trying to do their own SEO can to send all of their links to their index page rather than to the page they are really trying to index for that search term.

In linkwheel, you are not linking every page to the page that you are looking to index whether that be your home page or one of your sub pages. What you are doing is creating a series of articles or links, that links to each other in a sequential fashion. For example, your link on a website A was linked to website B, your website be linked with link to your website C link, your website C link would link to your website D link, and your website D link went links to your page you are trying to get indexed.

So essentially what you’re doing is getting your link juice to each sequential page in the series. By the time website D links to your page that you are trying to rank for, website D has much more link juice than website A had originally. So you are creating more significant link to your page that you’re trying to rank for in the end.

Is it more effective?

I haven’t seen any research yet on the effects of linkwheel’s versus traditional link building as of yet. But you can see some of the benefits that it might bring by just looking at the structure of the practice. Rather than having 50 zero page rank links coming to your page you might be able to build up a few other pages that have some page rank does giving you higher quality links.

I will give you any updates I care about link wheels and their effectiveness.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization

Marketing Your Business Online During The Recession

November 2, 2009 By Ben Janke Leave a Comment

Marketing your business online is a business decision that is very important to you and your bottom line. PPC, SEO, Ads, Craigslist, Youtube, Buying Links, Buying Automated Programs. Which ones do you do and which ones do you eliminate? Of course, there are ways to make money online without spending your entire savings. Lets take a look at a few cost saving strategies to use during the recession.

1. Make sure that your website is properly structured for SEO. I see sites all the time from huge companies that are losing thousands, and maybe even millions of dollars per year because of their websites. The structure of the site is important because that is how Google, Yahoo, and Bing find and spider your site. Each page is it’s own project. Make sure you have your keywords in your title, post, and description. ie: check your permalinks.

2. Email marketing. It is not dead yet. It can be easy too. Make sure that you are giving your web visitors plenty of opportunities to sign in to receive more information about what you are offering. Check out Aweber, Getresponse, Infusionsoft, or iContact.

3. Social Media Marketing. This one is a must. We don’t even know the half of what this social marketing boom will turn into. Use Twitter and Facebook to help people become fans of yours and your business. There are some great automated tools for twitter that you can use like TweetDeck, TweetAdder, and Hummingbird2 to help you get a ton of followers. Trust me, it is hard to gain a big following from scratch without some of these tools.

What things are you doing to save money, but still explode your internet marketing.

Filed Under: Featured