Web Design Discussion

Writing articles is one of the best ways to attract traffic to your web site however if you video your articles you’ll attract an even larger audience and dominate your niche.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of article marketing and discuss how it also applies to video articles.

1. Generate lots of traffic

Text-based articles generate traffic when submitted to article directories, blogs, ezines or used for e-courses, sales letters and press releases.

Video articles generate traffic by submitting to video sharing sites (eg YouTube, Google Video etc). You can also create video sales letters, video ezines and video e-courses.

2. Build incoming links

The more high quality links pointing to your web site the higher your rankings go. One-way links inserted in the resource box at the end of your article builds link popularity that ultimately boosts rankings. There is no need to exchange links with article marketing.

Video articles also help build links. Video sharing sites like YouTube get millions of visitors a day and is one of the most popular sites on the Net. Make sure you include the full URL in the description of your video. This becomes a live link back to your web site and is displayed to the public. To enable visitors to see your URL, display it prominently in your actual video.

3. Increase search engine rankings

Search engines index content that is optimized for specific keywords so include these in the title, body, and anchor text of your articles.

When submitting your video articles include your main keywords in the tags and descriptions of each video. Search engines look at the keywords used in your tags to display your video when someone enters that keyword in the search box. For example if you enter “How to Repurpose Your Articles” in YouTube’s search box my video will appear for that topic.

4. Become recognized as an expert

The key to getting known as an expert in your field is to produce lots of high quality content whether you write or video your articles. Publishing content in different formats helps it appeal to a large audience. Some prefer textual content whereas others learn visually.

*****************************************
Attract 1000s of NEW visitors to your website with

“Effective Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland Web Design

You can only attract a certain number of visitors with text-based content. You’ll generate a lot more traffic if you repurpose your article content into video. If you combine both methods of marketing you’ll reach a larger audience because your article will appeal to visual learners as well as those that like to just read it.

How to convert your text-based articles to videos

1. Video tape yourself reading the article

Place your video camera on a tripod or stable service then record your presentation. If you don’t want to appear boring to your readers memorize the main points of the article then present it by looking directly into the camera.

Alternatively you can tape yourself giving a lecture style presentation on a white board. Make sure your writing is legible enough to be read on the video.

2. Create a slide show

Use Windows Paint to create a simple slide show. It’s a free application that’s included with every windows computer. Simply open a new window, click on the text icon then insert the words for your first slide. After completing the first slide save it as an image file (ie slide.jpg) then create all the other slides for your video content. Keep the slides in order by numbering them sequentially.

3. Create your video

Use Windows Movie Maker to create the video from the slide show mentioned above. It’s also a free application included with every Windows Computer.

a) Import the slides you created by clicking on “Pictures” under the “Import” menu.

b) Drag and drop each slide onto the storyboard.

c) Add music to your slideshow by using your pc microphone. If it doesn’t have good quality sound you can pick up a higher quality microphone form your local computer or office store.

d) Import your music clips by clicking on the “music” button under the “import” tab, and select your audio track. Drag the music down to the storyboard.

e) Adjust the settings, specifying the time that each slide stays on the screen, adding transition effects. etc.

f) Once you’ve completed the slideshow, click “publish movie” to create a wmv file and you’re finished! You can now upload your video to YouTube and other video sharing sites.

Tip

Another way to create a professional slideshow is to use Microsoft Power Point then record it using a screen capture program called Camtasia.

*****************************************
Attract 1000s of NEW visitors to your website with

“Effective Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland Web Design

Have you been holding off including videos in your marketing mix?

If you want to generate more visitors to your web site don’t just rely on written content. Not all people like to read content online. Many are attracted by learning visually. This is why video marketing is so powerful. You now see Google video ads, video newsletters, video sales letters and so on.

Top 7 benefits of video marketing

1. Attract a large audience

Video enables you to capture people who like to watch rather than read. This extends the reach of your content because you can appeal to visual learners.

2. Engages the senses

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then video does even more because you can create live movies with sound. This engages more senses than written text which only uses one medium.

3. Access at any time

You can view videos with all kinds of devices these days eg ipods, cell phones, laptops, etc. allowing you to access video content anywhere at any time.

4. Achieve top rankings in the search engines

Google recently introduced Universal Search. This means videos now appear in the search results pages. For example if you Google “Mustang” you’ll see video listings of mustang cars on the first page of Google.

5. Become known as an expert in your field

If you consistently create high quality video content that your visitors want and need you will soon become recognized as the expert in your niche.

6. Repurpose content

Convert your written content to video by talking about it in a video clip or creating a slide show then upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube. The beauty of this method is that you don’t have to create fresh content and there’s no need to worry about duplicate written content.

7. Easy to create and publish

All you need is a video camera (or just use a digital camera), windows movie maker software (already on all windows’ computers) and a YouTube account.

Now you have no excuse for not creating your first video then marketing it on YouTube and other video sharing sites. It will take some time to get it right the first time, but with practice you’ll soon be generating more traffic to your web site.

*****************************************
Get 1000s of NEW visitors to your website without spending
a dime on advertising.

Read my new ebook “Article Marketing Strategies“…
to learn the most effective ways to write and submit articles.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland Web Design

If you want to attract the maximum amount of visitors to your articles, optimize them for the search engines before publishing the content.

Why optimize?

Search engines use keywords within your content to index your articles. When publishing optimized articles on your web site, blog, ezines or article directories they attract traffic from people searching on those keywords.

Top 7 Tips for How to Optimize Your Article

1. Create a list of keywords to use in your article

This is to provide a wide selection of keywords as not all will produce search results. Also try keyword phrases as single keywords tend to be too general.

2. Do your keyword research

Enter each of your keywords in WordTracker to find out how many searches that keyword gets each month. If it it gets none or only a few searches remove it from your list or use it to supplement your content.

3. Include the keyword in your title

The title of your article is often what search engines will spider first particularly if it’s the title meta tag of a web page or an H1 tag (content heading). Always place your most important keyword at the beginning of your title (as I’ve done for this article).

4. Weave the keyword into your content

Your keywords should be part of the natural flow of your content. Don’t overdo it so it sounds strange to your readers. Test your content by reading it aloud to yourself or another person. Use synonyms (similar meaning words) to supplement your main keywords.

Instead of focusing on how many keywords you should place in your article, just write naturally using them occasionally. Remember, you are writing primarily for your readers, not just the search engines.

5. Include the keyword in your anchor text

Anchor text is the text included in a hyperlink. Search engines give more weight to anchor text than the url such as domain.com.

6. Include the keyword in your resource box

The resource box is your call to action. Include the keyword in the anchor text of the link going to your web site.

7. Include the keyword in your backlinks

Backlinks are web sites that link to your web site or articles. The quantity and quality of backlinks you have determines the ranking of your web site. Obtaining backlinks to the articles on your web site will boost your site’s rankings. If you exchange links with another web site owner, make sure you provide the exact anchor text code to place on their web site.

Now every time you write an article be sure to include these top 7 tips. Your articles will be search engine friendly resulting in attracting more visitors to your web site.

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*****************************************
Get 1000s of NEW visitors to your website without spending
a dime on advertising.

Read my new ebook “Article Marketing Strategies“…
to learn the most effective ways to write and submit articles.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Maryland Web Design

Are you aware of all the traffic you’re losing due to the broken links on your web site?

Visitors find your web site by following external links from other other sites or find information within your site by clicking on the internal links. If any of these links are broken you’ll lose visitors and potential sales.

When visitors get the dreaded “page not found” error it means one or more links on your web site are broken. This is referred to as a “crawl error.” Google discovers these errors while crawling your pages.

How to quickly find your broken links

1. Create a Free Google Webmaster Tools Account
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

2. Create and Submit a Site Map within your account

3. View the crawl reports

Here is the list Web crawl errors you’ll see:

Errors for URLs in Sitemaps
HTTP errors
Not found
URLs not followed
URLs restricted by robots.txt
URLs timed out
Unreachable URLs

Click on the links “Not Found” and “Errors for URLs in Sitemaps” reports. Look in the “Linked From” column. The “Linked From” column lists the number of pages that link to a specific “Not found” URL along with the date it was discovered. The error page (known as 404) can be within or external to your site.

Now you can find all the broken links that Google sees when crawling your web site and quickly determine if the cause is from within your site or from someone else’s site.

Resource

How to create a 404 error page

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Increase traffic and make more sales from your web site
with my Search Engine Optimization Services

Once you’ve optimized your Zen Cart Store begin a link building campaign. This is the quickest way for new web site to get indexed by the major search engines. Since the web works with links, getting indexed in one search engine often results in getting indexed in many others.

Here are 7 very effective ways to build free backlinks to your online store:

1. Submit your site to general and specialized directories

Find directories related to your niche by entering keyword+directory in the Google search box.
After submitting your site to these specialized directories, submit your site to general directories.
Here’s a list of Free General Web Directories:

2. Research competitors’ backlinks

Enter your keyword phrase in Google to find the top 10 web sites in your niche. Check the backlinks
for each of these sites by entering their URL in the Yahoo Site Explorer Search Box Often the sites that are linking to your competitors will also link to your site.

3. Participate in forums and blogs related to your niche

Enter keyword+blog or keyword+forum to find the forums and blogs related to your niche.
Participate in the forum discussion by answering someone’s question or leave a comment on a blog.
You can include your web site link at the end of your forum post or blog comment.

4. Write/Submit a Press Release

Press Releases can get you many backlinks because your web site address is included and the release
is sent out to many news outlets. Here’s how to write a press release: http://www.how-to.com/Operations/press-release.htm

Here are a few places to submit your press release:

http://www.eBookBroadcast.com
http://www.eBookWeb.org
http://www.PrWeb.com
http://www.InternetWire.com
http://www.XPress.com
http://www.PrNewsWire.com
http://www.NewsBureau.com
http://www.MrSmithMedia.com

5. Write/Submit Articles

Choose a keyword phrase related to your product then write a 300-500 word article on it. Submit this article to ezinearticles.com and other article directories. Placing your web site address in the resource box at the end of each article will build lots of backlinks to your web site when your article gets published.

Read: Article Marketing Strategy

6. Write a free report or ebook

Write a 10-20 page report about the product(s) you’re selling. Include links to your web site in the content. Offer to give your report away for free by including it in your signature file on forums, blogs,
and ebook directories. A viral effect is created as your report gets spread around the Net.

7. Create more content

Search engines love content, so if you continue to add targeted content to your web site
you’ll attract visitors that want to link to it. Unsolicited links are the best to receive
because you telling the search engines your content is worthy to be linked to.

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Build 1000s of NEW BACKLINKS to your Zen Cart Store with
highly effective “Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

You’ve probably heard it said “the money is in the list.

Let’s say you’ve built a list of 10,000 subscribers that opted in to receive your newsletter. This means they are interested in receiving information from you that helps their businesses grow. If you have a high quality product your subscribers want, sending one email to your list will generate instant cash. You didn’t have to rely on the search engines or spend money on pay per click campaigns.

7 Strategies for Building Your List With Articles

1. Write a high quality article

Your article should illustrate a large problem people are having in your niche then offer them an effective solution. For instance, in this article I am offering a solution to the problem of building a large list.

2. Create a call to action in your resource box

Direct readers to an opt-in page on your web site by offering a free report. The free report is to nudge readers to take action. If you don’t offer something for free, you may only get one or two people to click on the link to your opt-in page.

3. Write an effective opt-in page

Your opt-in page should integrate well with the offer you made in your resource box. Don’t trick people by offering something different to what you promised otherwise you will lose their attention and trust. Outline several benefits people will receive by giving you their contact information.

4. Create an effective opt-in box

Design a professional looking opt-in box because many online users are visual learners. The fields should ask for the person’s first name and email address. This helps you connect and build a relationship with your subscribers. Test your opt-in form before it goes live. I’ve subscribed to many opt-in forms that didn’t work so they lost a subscriber.

5. Create high quality free report.

Create a free report by combining some of your best articles. For example, if you’re writing about traffic generation you could offer a report titled “My 10 Top Evergreen Traffic Generation Strategies That Always Work.’

6. Create a series of follow-up messages

Sign up for an autoresponder service such as Aweber so you can touch base with your subscribers several times after they sign up. Your first message will include your report. The following messages can include some of your best articles. Remember, you are doing this to build an ongoing relationship with your list so you can offer new products and/or services.

7. Take good care of your list

The relationships you build with your list can last for a lifetime so make sure you continuously offer high quality unique content. As a reward for being a subscriber offer your articles to your list first. It’s a well known fact that people buy from people they trust.

*****************************************
Get 1000s of NEW visitors to your website without spending
a dime on advertising.

Read my new ebook “Article Marketing Strategies“…
to learn the most effective ways to write and submit articles.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

If you want your web site to rank well in the search engines you need to implement a link building campaign. The number and quality of links pointing to your web site (backlinks) will increase rankings and boost your web traffic.

Internal Linking

Make sure the main sections of your online store are linked from the home page because when submitting your site to directories you only submit the home page URL not all the internal URLS. Search engines will crawl the pages that are linked from your home page.

1. Create a Site Map

A Site Map page includes links to all your internal pages. Some internal links may be several directories away from the home page. Search engines may not crawl these pages. A Site Map linked to the home page will enable search engines to crawl all your pages. Fortunately the Zen Cart Store generates a site map page automatically. You can edit your site map page by logging in to your admin panel-tools-define pages editor and select define_site_map.php from the drop down box.

2. Link to other pages within your content

If one of your internal pages mentions “stainless steel sinks” in its content, link that phrase (anchor text) to the main stainless steel sinks page. This will help boost its rankings because you have a link pointing to it that contains the anchor text “stainless steel sinks”

3. Practice deep linking

External links pointing to your internal pages are known as deep links. The more deep links you get the more traffic you will attract to these internal pages. When obtaining deep links make sure the anchor text is related to the content of the internal page. For instance use “stainless steel sinks” as the link text when linking to the stainless steel sinks page.

Building backlinks through internal links will fortify the theme of your web site, increase page rank, rankings and attract more visitors.

Build 1000s of NEW BACKLINKS to your Zen Cart Store with
highly effective “Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

Your Zen Cart Store may contain hundreds or thousands pages. Fortunately Zen Cart automatically pulls information from the database to create the title meta tags. This is fine if you don’t want to customize each product page however you can attract much more traffic by customizing the meta tags and optimizing the content for each page.

How to optimize product page content

Product pages tend to be very specific because they usually consist of one product. Even if you this product receives only a few searches per month, 1000s of optimized product pages will generate lots of traffic and sales. You can often attain a top ranking by optimizing a product page.

1. Place the product name, and serial number in the meta title tag

e.g. Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet [DS-8810]

2. Create a meta tag description

e.g. Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet 8 Faucet handle Chrome plated brass

drain & pop-up included Ceramic Disc valve w/solid brass stem

3. Insert your main keyword(s) in the keyword meta tag

e.g. “Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet”

4. Include the title in the header (h1) tag

e.g.
<h1 id="productName" class="productGeneral">Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet</h1>


5. Include your main keyword phrase in the product description under the header tag.

e.g. “Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet 8″ Faucet handle centers Chrome plated brass drain & pop-up included Ceramic Disc valve w/solid brass stem”

6. Include the main keyword phrase in the html code that describes your product image.

e.g.
<img src="images/DS-8810.jpg" alt="Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet" title=" Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet " width="120" height="120" />


7. Include your main phrase in the breadcrumb navigation

You can view the breadcrumb navigation by visiting this page:

Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet

Conclusion

If you enter “Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet [DS-8810]” in the Google search box it currently gets a No 1 ranking and is the only page listed there. Now if a customer searches for this specific model with Google search this page will be the only one he sees as there is no competition.

If I build backlinks to this page using the phrase “Dual handle widespread lavatory faucet” in the anchor text, I will also get top rankings for that phrase. This will result in attracting more visitors and making more sales with my store.

If I optimize the content for every page as described above, my Zen Cart Store will become a highly profitable web site.

*****************************************
Attract 1000s of NEW visitors to your Zen Cart Store by creating
highly effective “Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

Each page of your web site is an entry point for your visitors. An online store usually contains many pages. Most visitors will not enter your site through the home page but through its internal pages. The content for each page should be optimized separately to attract the maximum amount of traffic. This means you need to target a different keyword phrase for every page.

How to optimize your home page content

The content on your home page should include your main keywords. For example SinkBiz.com sells stainless steel sinks, porcelain sinks and eco taps. Stainless Steel Sinks is the keyword phrase that gets the most searches according to the keyword research tool WordTracker and is the main product being sold so I placed that phrase at the beginning of the title meta tag and also included it in the opening paragraph.

Here’s the title tag:

Stainless Steel Sinks | Porcelain Sink | Eco Taps – SinkBiz.com

Noticed how I placed the name of the web site at the end. It wouldn’t get much traffic if I placed it at the beginning as no one would be searching for Sinkbiz.com. Stainless Steel Sinks is also included in the navigation links and in the banner title to make it obvious to visitors what the site is about. The keyword phrase “kitchen sink” is also used in the short description under a few of the products on the page.

Tip
When optimizing a web page don’t clutter it with your keywords but mention them naturally through the page e.g. paragraphs, navigation links, product descriptions and header tags (h1, h2).

*****************************************
Attract 1000s of NEW visitors to your Zen Cart Store by creating
highly effective “Article Marketing Strategies”

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO

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