Most likely you have read this advise over and over again, comment on other related blogs for SEO.

The next thing you did was listened to that advise and then jump from one blog to another to leave comment, even if useless, just because someone said it is good for search engine optimization if you get in the top commentators list since you would get a dofollow link. However, that type of game is over now, it never was effective actually but it is definitively over since Google is becoming pretty good in devaluing those type of links.

Now that this type of game is over, you need to take one step back, blame whoever advised you to promote your blog by just leaving useless comments and start with the main purpose of leaving comments, and that is comments that do add value to the topic AND to you, as each comment you leave reflects to your knowledge, personality and professionalism.

The entire point of commenting on relevant blogs is to get connected with other people, get to know people that share the same interest to you, to find people that have similar blogs and great posts from where you can learn something, to read through the comments and find valuable information’s.

When I first started this blog I did the same, made a list of blogs that had “interesting and valuable” posts where people like me would hang out, made sure the blog has some authority and a decent number of followers. The blog I ended up commenting more often was johnchow.com, the blog covered “some” interesting posts, it had a decent amount of followers, it had some controversial comments (which is good to get into a discussion) and at the time everyone would talk about that blog, so it was in buzz mode.

During the period I used to comment I got like 300 unique new visitors to my blog, and my RSS feed started to slow increase, but the most valuable thing for me at the time was that I got hooked up with new bloggers like Paul Barlow of Money Making Schemes, Catherine Lawson and some others.

The results of these new bloggers with which I connected with were the next:

• They would subscribed to my RSS or simply come back and visit the blog for new posts, even tho I had stopped commenting on johnchow.com
• They would participate on the content I publish and leave a comment, create a discussion which turned out to be very informative as well
• They would link to my posts as reference whenever it made sense
• They would help me out when I needed, like in the 2008seocontest

If you didn’t realized already, blog commenting if done only for the purpose of driving traffic it will sink at the moment you stop commenting. But instead, if you do it in the proper way, and that is, helping out someone with your comment, clarifying a doubt, showing that you do have knowledge over your topic, then that comment would be 10 times more effective then a simple blatant “thanks nice read”.

3 Points to keep in mind when leaving a comment with internet marketing purpose

• Do you really have to comment on that post?
• If you do, what will be the value of your comment? Would you add an additional tip to help other readers?
• Are you willing to also continue the discussion if someone responds to you?

If you have at least two of the three points in mind when you are about to leave your comment then you are doing the proper marketing of your website/blog online, while leaving a comment that helps others and show that you know the subject, when people read interesting comments are they are also willing to ask questions, if you follow up it shows that you are dedicated to help out others and chances are they will follow the link and land to your website and not only, would subscribe to follow your new posts or comment on older interesting posts, half of the job has been done, you now just passed from None to Some visitors that will follow you.

Things I didn’t do at the time, and that I regret now

At the time, when the new visitors would come to my blog and get hooked up with new bloggers one thing I regret for not doing is, keeping in touch more often and in a more personal way. When I stopped blogging, they stopped following up and we never even exchanged emails to ask for help or share ideas. Never connected with them through Facebook, MyBlogLog, Twitter or any other form except emails, if you are new, make sure not to do the same mistake.

Note: this article may be adjusted/modified in near feature to improve it’s quality, add new techniques and ideas on how you can use blog comments for blog marketing. Subscribe to my RSS feed to get updates when this article will be modified

The reason why you have build a site is so that people could see it, know about it, buy your product or even just simply click on your affiliate links or advertisements and make you earn money. If no one knows about your site, then all the time you have invested to build it is nothing but a big waste of time. Of course, you could have other reasons to build your site, but still, without proper marketing on internet nobody will come and see what you have in your site, nobody will know that your site exists.

You could simply concentrate on SEO to bring targeted traffic to your site, visitors that found your site based on the keywords they searched for, but this could take months (and if it is a very competitive term or you target the wrong keywords, your site might never make it to have that desired visibility, anyway you can check out my seo articles archive and get to know with seo if you are not familiar). But, can you really wait that long until you generate your first sale? Or if you have a fat budget to invest, you could also jump in PPC marketing and have targeted paid traffic.

Free internet marketing strategies that work

What if I would tell you that there are methods with which you can benefit on both ways, drive targeted traffic and improve your search engine rankings? What if I tell you that you have ALWAYS knew this, but never thought it was worth, or thought that it was just time consuming and waste of time? I believe you already know where I am heading to in this article, and most likely you are right. So lets take a look at these free and effective internet marketing strategies, but before we proceed, you might want to subscribe to my RSS feed as this will be a series of posts, explaining more in details each of bellow mentioned marketing strategies.

• Directory submission (old style, but good for the first links to kick-start you)
• Follow & participate in related blogs
• Participate in related forums
• Use social networking sites
• Use of the social bookmarking sites
• Write and distribute articles (or rather, article marketing)

I know you have heard about this too often, and you might be thinking: hey, but you are not telling me nothing new. The point is, after reading all this for so much time did you took the time to actual do it, or you just kept reading and reading and reading. And if you tried to do all (or some) of the points above mention, were you doing it the right way?

In this series of the articles I will go one step further and not just tell you to do it, but will actually try and show you HOW TO DO IT IN A EFFECTIVE WAY to get the real benefit from these free and effective internet marketing strategies and how to organize everything so nothing would be just a waste of time. Don’t forge to subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me and the series of internet marketing strategies.

Things to do before you start marketing your website

In order to put in use in a effective way these free internet marketing strategies you need to first do your homework and plan every single step. You need to organize the time you want to invest in your site, double check the list of things to do and start preparing your to-do homework in groups.

Just a short example of how work plan should look like

• Identify keywords that are related to your product and search for alternative keywords too that don’t have too much competition. Once you have found all the possible keywords that you believe are worth investing time and effort line them up based on priority. Identify blogs/forums that are related to your. Identify article directories that are worth submitting your precious content. Then pass on second stage, the process of internet marketing through free methods.
• Week 1: 30-60mins a day to submit your site to web directories. Most likely 10-15 directories a day would be more then enough, so that would be even less then a hour a day. We will see in the next article why this old method isn’t something you should ignore, or you can check the previous post on how old style seo works.
• Week 2: Start to slowly participate in blogs that are related to your niche and forums too. More tips on how to make an effective internet marketing strategy out of this in the upcoming article.
• etc..list goes on, based on your priorities

Without a solid plan and clear ideas of what your target is, what is that you really want to achieve you are going nowhere. Non of these (nor other techniques) will help you out, you will burn all your enthusiasm you had for your site or business in couple of months (if not weeks). Most importantly once you have done your homework and scheduled your to-do list of free internet marketing promotion you will need to STICK to your plan and keep up with the free internet marketing strategies even when you will get a solid amount of traffic.

Whats the new find? Microsoft’s new find is GetSearchPerks. So practically in short words, with GetSearchPerks people can earn credits if they perform a search in one of the three search engines that Microsoft does actually own, and with those credits then you can buy yourself gifts or give them to a charity.

Just few words on how to apply, in case you are interested. If you have an MSN/Hotmail/Live email account all you have to do is sign in, install the plugin for your IE browser (it only works with IE browser) and then perform your search through one of the three mentioned search engines. With every search query you perform you receive 1 credit and you can obtain up to 25 credits a day (i.e. up to 25 search queries a day can be performed to gain credits). But lets leave the fun aside and try to see what actually is behind this.

It has been years now that Microsoft’s search engines have been classified on the third and sometimes popping on the second place as the biggest search engines, and its been much more time that Microsoft is trying to achieve it’s first place. Innovating technologies and improving search experience has not helped Microsoft enough, empowering their search engine through Windows Live Messenger didn’t helped that much either..and now, with GetSearchPerks it looks like they have came to their extremes.

It is apparent enough that Microsoft’s adCenter is lacking in advertisers, and they are willing to do anything that it takes to increase that number, but it doesn’t really seem like they are aiming quality but rather quantity (if they do really rely on GetSearchPerks).

Whats your say on all this?

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Sometimes it is hard to find the proper plugins which you might want to use in your blog, I can’t remember when I first started how many plugins I had to download test them and pick those that mostly suited for my needs. What made my research more easier were websites that had posts similar to this, listed with a nice amount of plugins which users could download and use.

However I have now compiled a short list of plugins (which I have used and some I still do use) that can make your blogging experience even better. Bellow you will find a list of plugins separated in categories, SEO Plugins, Browsing and Entertainment, RSS feed plugins, Advertisement Plugins (related to make money online) and social bookmarking plugins. Hope this will turn useful.

SEO Plugins

Of course I have to give precedence to the SEO plugins first. You can also find my previous list of recommended seo plugins for wordpress, however let me compile the list again.

• All In One SEO Pack
• SEO Slugs Plugin
• Related Posts Plugin
• XML Sitemap Generator
• Textual Sitemap Generator
• RSS Footer For Scrapers

Social Bookmarking Plugin

There are different social bookmarking plugins out there and you can just be embarrassed which one to chose. Whoever I prefer more plugins that don’t invate the site and keep the layout clean.

• Alexa King’s Share This
• Apostolos Social Bookmarking
• AddThis Social Bookmarking

RSS Feed Plugins

The value of a blog actually lays on RSS readers (the regular readers which actually say that this blog is worth reading, we are reading it daily). However you need to remind them that you do actually have a RSS feed in your blog some times, and with these plugins it will be easier to get started.

• FeedSmith for FeedBurner
• Notify Uncofirmed Subscribers

Advertising Plugins

Not all of us start a blog to monetize it, but all of us end up doing that sooner or later. Here are some useful plugins that will help you monetize your blog by placing advertisement (private ones or as PPC publisher).

• Sell Ads Privately
• WP Ads (Rotate your ads)
• AdSense DeLuxe
• Got Banners
• Monetize Your Feed (Feed Footer)

Browsing and Entertainment

With the bellow plugins you can assure that your visitors will have a better browsing experience and make it easier for them to reach you.

• WP Page Navigation
• WP Polls Plugin
• Enhanced WordPress ContactForm Plugin

If you find this post useful, feel free to stumble, digg or bookmark on del.icio.us this post for feature reference. You can also subscribe to my RSS feed and get updated whenever a new post is published.

I was kinda surprised when I received an email from Aaron Wall (which I believe was sent to all affiliate registered members) that Aaron’s successful SEO Book business was going to change the business model.

So far we were used to the seo book to read it in a PDF format as it comes with the purchase (maybe even print it and read it somewhere else instead of in front of your computer in your free time…cough). The ebook is so good and has lots of those informations regarding search engine optimization as well as search engine marketing that in the course of the years the name was changed among the crowd, even tho the books name is SEO Book for most of the folks (me included) it comes natural to refer to this seo book as SEO Bible.

Well, we will have to get used not to have this eBook anymore, I am not sure if the ebook will be still available for purchase or it will be delivered as free any longer (sent an email on this regard to Aaron), but from what it looks it will not get updated as it used to before when the search engines would change their algorithm and the book would have included the latest changes and with the new seo tips.

The SEO Book change of the business model

Instead of the downloadable SEO Book in PDF format, users that want to learn about SEO will now be able to do it in a more interactive way backed up through a forum, which will have more the look of a consultation and service rather then selling a product for Aaron.

With this change of the business model I do see some good points for people that want to learn seo and most likely more work and hard time for Aaron Wall. The good point is that now everything will be more interactive, since the services will be based on a community forum you will be one step closer with the SEO Expert, Aaron Wall, and instead of sending him emails to ask questions about doubts you get while you were reading the SEO Book you will be now able to just comment on the threads and ask your questions.

The community will be obviously paid membership one, since it will be a online seo training program. The price for this training program through for paid members will be $100 USD per month. But if you rush now, for a limited time you will be able to subscribe for only $50 USD month. And knowing the guy either way $100 will be most likely worth, but if you can save $50 why not?

There are already some hundreds of members registered in his forum that Aaron invited to help him get everything started, and this is why I mostly like community forums, different people, different point of views and different techniques to share. There will be plenty to learn.

Top Selling Affiliaters Get 3 Months Free

Thats right, if you are a top seller affiliater of the (now previously) seo book you can get 3 months membership for free, all you have to do is drop an email to Aaron with your affiliate ID and affiliate user to enroll.

Hard Time for Aaron

Not always true that running a training program where it is open for a unlimited number of members is going to be a hard time for the trainer (Aaron). Even tho the number of members could be higher than what he could handle to train it is always fun in communities and I believe he will have a great support from other SEO friends he has and that have subscribed to the community.

What might sound a bit scary is that all the training course can be exposed to the public (yeah, there are always some pricks out there, even tho the major of the folks respect Aaron) or even benefit out of his articles within the community.

I hope you enjoyed this post and that you have already subscribed to my RSS feed or have the posts delivered via email.

Does copywriting influence your online business? – Surely, it does. The recent surveys have proved that professional copywriting increases sales on average by 50%. Actually, this number can increase twice – or tenfold – provided the content is really good. Psychologists and sociologists haven’t made certain yet why some words make people click the “Buy Now” button without any hesitation; however, some content creation gurus know how to produce such kind of effect. The most generous of them are even ready to share their advertising copywriting secrets with mere mortals.

The fact is that to build a highly converting copy you should keep to the 3 Rs: tell the Right words in the Right order and to the Right people. Let’s see how it works.

1.Choose the right words. Remember that readers don’t know why the product or service you advertise is the best solution for them. Of course, the list of features is very useful, but it doesn’t call to action by itself: to make the copy persuasive you should apply the functional approach. In other words, explain people how the product will help them fix their problems. Use spoken language as if you are talking to your friend, along with testimonials from happy customers and a money back guarantee that will establish your credibility. Another critical point of advertising copywriting is to find the golden mean. When emphasizing the product’s advantages keep from going too far: reserved admiration based on indisputable benefits is more effective than excessive enthusiasm and far-fetched statements, like “this amazing device will change your life once and for all!” while you are just describing a cutting board for barbecue.

2.Place the words in the right order. First work on a killer headline that will grab the attention both of potential customers and of those who weren’t going to buy anything (at least before reading your brilliant copy). In the first paragraph of your advertising writing outline the topic clearly, creating the problem and suggesting the only possible solution – the product you advertise. After that the bullet points come: make your copy scannable, dividing it into small paragraphs which describe the main benefits of the product. Include the most striking testimonials you can find (or create ). When all the numerous product advantages are described, inform customers about the price, without forgetting about money back guarantee and tempting discounts, of course. To make it more believable, invent a cogent reason, such as seasonal sale or some community preferences, like “only for the members of our forum”. At last, add one or several P.S.’s which are meant to create urgency and to call to an immediate action. The whole structure of the copy should be absolutely logical, with all points placed in due order. Like one can’t start building a house with roofing, you shouldn’t change the location of each ingredient, giving the price before the bullet points or ending by testimonials.

3.Appeal to the right person. That means: focus on individual needs of each prospect. The fact is that while most search engines are similar, people aren’t. All customers have their own expectations, hopes and tastes, so your copy has to meet multiple requirements at the same time. Sometimes a better solution is to create several advertising copies, if necessary. Determine who your target clients are and what they aspire for. Use psychology; for example, softly and delicately let the prospects know that you completely understand their pain and you’ve experienced the same, like “I used to be broke and eat only cornflakes, but one sunny day I heard about…” etc. Share the customers’ troubles – and you will be surprised how the conversion rate of your copy increases.

Finally, if you’ve used all the 3 Rs properly, they will bring you to the 4th one – the Revenue.

If you did like this post and would follow up with new articles on SEO Optimization than subscribe to my RSS Feed.

The series of building backlinks tips continues and I kinda feel it deserved a category of its own. But on a second thought, it is better that all the building backlink tips remain under the seo tutorials category. Todays tip is about building backlinks with article marketing techniques.

Article Marketing to Build BackLinks

Article marketing can be presented in different shapes and methods, such as article directory submission on ezine or even guest blogging on another more or same famous blog as yours or simply starting a thread on a forum of the same topic as yours and write an article. Just as with communities where partecipating and sharing your thoughts is important to get known between other bloggers or internet marketers, article marketing and the submission of your articles on article directories is a great way to build readership and backlinks to your site.

The good part of article marketing and publishing your article on famous article directories (aside the traffic and readership) is that those directories are for a long time alive and under aged domains and are most likely going to be online for a longer period. This means that as the age of your published article grows the more value search engines will give to the backlink from that article and as older the article gets more likely is that that article page will receive a decent PageRank (especially if the homepage of the article directory is high) which means you benefit in PageRank and a permanent backlink from aged article under a aged domain, a great value for your SEO in the long run and a great opportunity to increase your readers base.

Most article directories such as ezine articles have strict rules that need to be followed before they approve and publish your article, mainly the rules are pretty easy to follow so it is not hard to get approved as long as you have a good article and that fits with their rules. Article directories allow you to also link with a certain page of your site and use your desired anchor text, of course it has limits as of how many links you can use to link to your own site.

For a blogger that has been blogging for a longer period to write an article and use it only for article marketing purpose is pretty easy as older bloggers can easily write articles on their niche so article marketing for them can be really easy to do. The better the article is the more likely readers of that article are going to follow the link of the author and get to your personal blog or website. If you are new in blogging or in writing articles all you need is a sharp eye and some money to hire a company that offers copywriting services to write the article for you. You can than chose to publish the article in your own blog, rewrite the same article to a certain point and use it on your article marketing technique and publish it in a articles directory and link back to your original article or homepage of your site with the desired anchor text.

If you did like this article on SEO Optimization than subscribe to my RSS fead to read seo and other tips daily.

Lets imagine we are on the streets and in a corner it spots out a red background with two curved white lines, without even being able to see anything more, what would you guess, who’s brand is right after the corner?

Or lets imagine we do see just the very right leg of the letter M with the ® sign right next to it, what would we think about? It has also be proven that kids between 2-4 years old do recognize the McDonald’s sign as McDonald before they even recognize it as the letter M.

Thats how powerful the branding is. But to build a brand that people will recognize it in the way they recognize the Coca-Cola brand or the McDonald’s brand is almost impossible. The Coca-Cola has invested billions and billions (and still does) in advertising. A whole wall covered with the Coca-Cola brand or other huge advertising we have seen in our town.

After the new design i decided that there was another piece of the SEO Optimization blog that does need a retouch and a more refreshing and remarkable look, my logo. I decided that my old logo did not had that remarkable or refreshing look and mostly, it did not match the overall look of the layout. This is how my old logo looks:

The look seems to be poor, and it totally stands out with the new design of the SEO Optimization blog. And i bet you do agree with me. But in case you will still prefer the new logo i might end up placing back the old one, but lets give a look to the new logo (the one thats on the top right corner).

This is the new logo, it is nothing special, nor is something really professional. It is just a new logo that I do find to suit better with the new layout and that has a more refreshing look, it is also more remarkable. Do you think that logo will help me to enter in your brain and when you will think about SEO Optimization the next thing that will follow that thought would be the URL of SEO Optimization blog – dnseo.net ? Just not to confuse you, to build a trustworthy brand is not all just about making a new logo, it takes much more effort and investment, but making a logo that will be printed in your memory is the first step into building a brand.

Let me know what you think..compliments are appreciated, critiques are even more appreciated . Tho if you have an idea of a logo for SEO Optimization or can design a logo for SEO Optimization feel free to design one.

If in the first episode i said learn internet marketing while watching a show in this episode i can say only watch how mean internet marketers can be. The second episode has little less of knowledge to share with you and obviously less knowledge to get from it. It can be as boring as fun, watching the aspiring internet millionaires being mean to each other and speaking on others back (such a poor thing and such a wrong way to compete).

I am sorry Joel Comm, but this time i can’t say much about this episode, it was not as good as the first one (but maybe this could attract Paris Hilton to watch this show too and just internet marketing newbies).

The guest posting is a common internet marketing strategy lately and it is a win win situation for both, the blog owner that does get new good and unique post on his blog and for the guest writer that receives popularity and some link juice from that blog. The popular the blog where you guest post is the stronger link juice you will receive and of course the bigger popularity you will reach if the article is useful and informative for the readers.

There is a slight line between a guest post and spam post, rules which the owner of the blog or articles database should define. What for you could not be a spam post it could be for the blog owner tho. Things you should not do while writing a blog post is using anything excessive, like bold text, italic style text (embed) too many outgoing links to your site.

As you may notice there is a Top Commentators block on the right sidebar of my blog, by using that plugin i give some link juice to those people that do contribute my blog by taking some of their time to comment on my posts. Of course, there is a slight line between contributing and spamming my post.

Slight line between spam and contribution

The Top Commentators block will display the names of the commentators of SEO Optimization blog that do contribute to this blog with giving more ideas, filling some spaces that I might have forgot to mention on the post or simply saying thank you to share this with me, which than motivates the blog owner (me in this case) to continue to share more useful informations with his readers. Those commentators as reward get some link juice from my blog since the links on that blog don’t have the nofollow attribute.

Some that have notice that do comment on the blog but just to get some link juice and thats fine for me as long as in a certain point of view they do contribute to blog. But those commentators that keep always the same name on comments but they frequently change the URL to match a post with relevant content as the one i have wrote are those that i do call Spammy commentators. I would not dare to change their URL they have used, since that is their comment, but i can always chose not to publish their comment as i manually approve comments.

This is what i do call one hand washes the other hand, thing that actually does not happen in a famous webmaster forum.

The webmaster forum i am speaking about is the v7n.com/forums/, which is a big forum but does not have the quality of other webmaster forums. Tho i signed up because i saw most of the users were lacking in SEO and i thought I could contribute by sharing that little knowledge I have on SEO with them.

When John Chow redesigned his blog i wrote Whats wrong with John Chow’s new theme a post which was not only speaking about John Chow’s theme but it was in the same time informative about some SEO techniques a blogger should consider for his blog. In regard to that post i also made a new article which i posted on v7n.com forums and i linked back to the original post for those that wanted to have a more detailed information on that, but they don’t like the one hand washes the other idea and removed the link, but that did not let me down. A pitty tho that i could not remove my post..hey if you don’t help me why should i help you after all.

I have used this internet marketing strategy in the past and i still use it for some other blog sites i own and it has performed very well for me. What about you? Have you guest posted somewhere and are you satisfied with the results?