Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Squidoo Affiliate Marketing: Post, Publish, Ping

I recently received the following question from a subscriber:
"How do I get more consistent traffic without having to do
specific actions each and every day (pinging, bookmarking, etc)?"

The short answer is you need to do those daily tasks
- post,
publish and ping.

Here's the long answer.

The amount of traffic you will get is a function of a number
of things:
  • Level of interest in your keyword(s) and/or topic area
  • Number of searches conducted for your keyword(s)
  • The level of competition
  • The value of your site to the reader
  • The frequency with which you update
(Re competition: the keyword "internet marketing" brings
up 53 Million results on Google and is controlled by
long standing marketers, some of guru status).

The Law of Attraction works in this arena too.

Repeat visits will come if you offer free and substantial,
expertise relevant to the viewer's goals. They will not
return if your site does not offer value.

I have learnt this through my blog and my main lens.
I get enquiries everday from all over the world and offers
to promote other people's products.

People are starting to refer other people to my blog, my
lenses and my articles. Others are creating links on their
lenses and blogs to my lens/blog. Two top marketers
recently mentioned my blog/lens in their own newsletter/
blog. Still others are seeking me out on FaceBook.

So if you are offering something of value that is timely
and needed by a target market, they will eventually
come to you. But they have to know that you exist.

Both Google (and other search engines) and Squidoo
will naturally give priority to sites that are regularly
updated.

One of my Squidoo lenses had a bug in it
recently preventing me from editing it, and in four
days it dropped from 270 overall to 737!

However, it has now reached no 8 position on Google
(out of 400,000+ results) - by daily updating and
pinging (lens first published on 17/9/07).

The gurus tell us that the marketing power now lies
with the quality authority sites (Wikipedia is but one
major example). One of the top marketers refers to
these authority people as "Top Dogs" - in her words,
those who offer substantial, free expert advice on a
topic.

Jack Humphrey, who I referred to in a recent post
actually claims to have coined the term
"authority site" - he certainly pushes it and his site
is a great example of an authority site.

If you download his Authority Black Book, you gain
access to his special traffic blog and another service
Through the Authority Site Center he will create a
Wordpress blog for you and a header and host
your site.
He uses special software to make your site
a traffic generator.
Plus you get access to a mastermind
group. All this for
around
$97 a month.

I mention this mainly to make a point!

Despite doing all this (using software he developed at a
cost of $1Million), he insists that you post daily...and that
is how you become an authority and develop an
authority site. His software automates the pinging,
submission to social bookmarking sites, RSS feeds, etc.

As you know by now, if you want to post daily, you
have to learn a hell of a lot pretty fast.

So even the very top people with the most sophisticated
traffic generating software in the world insist on daily
updating.

The top bloggers post four or five times daily - that's how
they dominate the search engines and their niches.

You can also buy traffic but it won't be as targeted as
organic search engine or Squidoo traffic (unless you
use something like adwords - at considerable expense).
However, if you do not update daily you can
drop in ranking in both Google and Squidoo.

So the moral of the story is - Post, Publish, Ping...
on a daily basis.

If you find this a challenge, check out my Squidoo marketing
lens for ideas on what to add to your lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies/

****************************************************************
PRODUCT OF THE WEEK

Submitting your latest blog post to the various Web 2.0
news sites is a powerful method to generate immediate
targeted traffic to your blog or lens. This generates
high-quality traffic and links and builds your authority
status getting you into search engines faster and ranking higher.

The downside - it takes a lot of time to cut and paste your post
title, keywords and description into each site. Here's a way to
save time and get instant traffic - autosubmit to Web 2.0
news sites:
http://www.web2submitter.squidoomarketingstrategies.com

************************************************
Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster and
provides free resources for Squidoo affiliate marketing
on his Squidoo lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Ron is the author of the ebook:
Squidoo Marketing Strategies


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Friday, October 19, 2007

Squidoo Affiliate Marketing - Article Writing (2)

The Bum Marketing strategy suggests that you use
articles to target specific keywords that have
high monthly searches but low competition.

I have been using MicroNicheFinder daily to
identify such keywords for my articles, lens tags
and the URLs for my new lenses. This tool
is absolutely invaluable:
MicroNicheFinder for Article Writing and Lens Creation

I have previously reviewed MicroNicheFinder here.

Enough of this rave...but I so rarely come across a
tool that is so useful and opens up so many new avenues.

Through MicroNicheFinder I established that Squidoo
Affiliate Marketing
was a keyword that had a good
number of searches but low competition, so I decided
to target it in my articles.

I already had multiple listings on the first page of Google
for the keywords squidoo marketing strategies
and squidoo marketing.

One of the secrets of article writing is to ensure
that your targeted keyword appears as the first term
in your article title (you also want it in your article
summary and spread throughout your article).

The title is critical - it's what Google looks at first!
The keyword does, however, need to be repeated as
indicated above to convince Google that the article is
really about the title topic.

It may take a bit of mental gymnastics to get your
keyword in the title but believe me it's worth it.

Here's proof - these two articles were written to target
the keyword Squidoo Affiliate Marketing
and submitted on 4 October to Ezinearticles.com:

Squidoo Affiliate Marketing - Use Squidoo to Leverage
Your Writing


Squidoo Affiliate Marketing - Get Multiple Listings
on the First Page of Google Results


Today (20 October) these articles hold nos. 3 & 4 positions
on Google search results for the term Squidoo Affiliate
Marketing
.

In my next post on this topic I will talk about how
to use the resource box to reinforce your keyword rich
title.

************************************************

Product of the Week - Authority Black Book

All I can say is WOW! This free, 64 page e-book
by Web 2.0 expert, Jack Humphrey, is something special.
It gives you the complete list of Web 2.0 resources you
need to generate a steady stream of qualified traffic.
Jack discusses blogging, RSS marketing, social bookmarking
sites, social media sites, video marketing and provides the
Big List of Web 2.0 Resources (with hotlinks). Well, Jack
should know - he gets 5,000 visitors per day to one of
his sites (and 850,000 page views in a month). Get your
copy of the Authority Black Book:

CLICK HERE

************************************************
Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster and
provides free resources for Squidoo affiliate marketing
on his Squidoo lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Ron is the author of the ebook:
Squidoo Marketing Strategies


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Saturday, October 06, 2007

Squidoo Affiliate Marketing - article writing (1)

Article writing is one of the most effective strategies for
gaining traffic for your affiliate marketing Squidoo lens.

Articles bring targeted traffic to your site almost instantly
if you use the top article directories for submission of
your article.

Squidoo enables you to leverage your article writing through
the use of the link and/or RSS feed modules.

If you submit a number of articles to an article directory
such as Ezinearticles.com, you can use the RSS feed on your
Squidoo lens so that whenever you publish an article, your
Squidoo lens is updated.

In an article I published yesterday I show how you can
use Squidoo to leverage your writing:
http://www.squidooleverage.squidoomarketingstrategies.com/

If you need further motivation, here's some great reasons to
write articles:

1. your article, with its resource box links, can appear
on the first page of Google results for your
chosen keyword.
(The article I wrote and submitted to Ezinearticles.com on
Friday is number 3 on Google search results for my targeted
keyword today, Sunday.)

2. if you submit to high ranking article directories you
create valuable backlinks to your lens and/or blog.
Ezinearticles.com, for example, has a Google ranking of 6.
(A confirmatory story - when I edited out my blog links
from my articles on Ezinearticles.com, my blog dropped
from a Google ranking of 4 to 3!)

3. article writing and submission is an effective form of
viral marketing
(My 17 articles on Ezinearticles.com have attracted
7,667 views and been accessed by 328 ezine publishers
who,in turn, have shared them with their subscribers.)

4. article writing builds your internet profile
and establishes your expertise in an area.

5. article writing brings you targeted visitors because
visitors find your article through direct search
(another form of what Seth calls "permission marketing")

6. you get to access visitors you would not otherwise
reach

(one of my articles has even been translated into Spanish
and Greek would you believe!)

7. article writing gets easier the more you do it and
there are benefits for writing more.
(Ezinearticles.com, for example, gives you priority
reviewing and greater exposure once you have submitted
and published 10 articles. My article written on Friday
was accepted the next day and listed in Google results
the following day.)

8. you can get continual traffic to your Squidoo
lens for many years
from writing and
submitting one article.

There are few internet marketing methods, paid or free,
that will give you a better return on your time than
article writing and submission.

************************************************
Ron Passfield is a Top 100 Squidoo Lensmaster and
provides free resources for Squidoo affiliate marketing
on his Squidoo lens:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Ron is the author of the ebook:
Squidoo Marketing Strategies


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