Work From Home

There are endless products sold online that the owner of would be more than happy to  publish a testimonial about. Most info-product sellers have a whole page set aside on their website just to display testimonials, and they actively have to go out and drum up the first batch of them before they can properly launch their product!

It doesn’t really matter if you find them before their product launch or years afterwards, you can still get great, targeted links to your website from these short blurbs.

The nature of testimonials is that the more you provide proof that you exist, the more the business owner will be compelled to display your link, closest to the top.

Give it some thought. If you just send in a testimony that says:

“
Your product rocks!
-Bob Jones
”

Then the site owner might not even publish it because it’s  not a ‘credible’ testimonial that proves that you exist and he didn’t make that entry up.

Not to mention, how does that help your website?

The way to properly use testimonials is to write a favorable but not over-the-top review for products that you really are familiar with, and then give as much evidence of your existence as possible… Your URL should be the absolute minimum you supply. Try this format, for example, and imagine your Headshot to the left of it:

“ Wow!
This program knocked my socks off. From the moment I turned it on, I could see
how powerful it was and it helped me churn  through my pages in less than half
the time that my old, bloated program did… And the results are terrific!

Thank you for a high-quality product.

Sincerely,
Bob Jones,
Creator of the Peanut Butter Sprocket
http://www.peanutbuttersprocket.com
“

If the product has already been launched, then the owner won’t usually take the time to post a photo, although some do. Photos add credibility too.

Even without finding the owner before  the product launch, these links are valuable because you’ve made them targeted. You did  that simply by making your product known up front, just before your link.

Googlebot will see the relevance because your surrounding text includes keywords of yours. (“Peanut Butter Sprocket,” in the example) Technically your name is a keyword too. But targeting is all about what a human is looking for.

People who don’t like Peanut Butter, for example, wouldn’t click your link, and that keeps the low-quality  traffic out. But when a truly  targeted visitor who you’d want on your site comes along, then you’re likely to get that click.

Think of all the online products and services, from AOL to ZIP, that you use regularly and go check out their websites. 99% of them will have posted testimonial pages, and you can tell from there if they post links or not. If you see even one live link on that page, (it must be made live, meaning a click on it will take you to the site) then this is a company you should send a testimonial to.

It should take you no more than 10 minutes per company that you can think of, only one time each, but these will be high-quality, far-flung links that will benefit your website’s ranking forever.

If you ever find a product before it is launched, possibly through a JV network or something similar, then you’ve found yourself a great opportunity.

Technorati: Testimonials, Link Building

Any Internet Marketers not Squidooing right now simply aven’t tried it yet! This exciting Web 2.0 application is truly a business Marketer’s dream come true. You can think of it as ySpace, but for serious professionals. It’s a lot like being given editorship of our own topic at About.com, but with even more functionality!

A lens is a web page on their domain that “brings into focus” your niche topic in a few and dynamic way. It’s a place for you to show off everything you know about our topic, as dynamically as possible.

Started in the Fall of 2005, within one year flat Squidoo had already gotten gotten itself into the top 1000 sites according to Alexa, and it’s been pretty steady ever ince, slowly growing.

I believe a lot more Internet Marketers would use this service if they only knew about it. I’m already starting to see Squidoo Pages pop up in the #1 spot at Google for those member’s keywords!

They’ve now got about 65,000+ lenses, although considerably fewer members… few people have cranked out many lenses on all of their favorite topics, so here’s no reason you can crank out one for each of your business ventures or marketing ideas.

To attempt to get your lens featured, simply email their review team once it’s one and they’ll consider making it the “lens of the day.” These get some serious traffic, but of course they won’t select a lens that appears to be blatant advertising.

One other great feature to note is they share all advertising revenue with you for dvertising on your page! Some people are making lenses, and treating them as irtual Real Estate style publishing sites… Theoretically, you could make a few undred great lenses and live comfortably off the income forever.

For our purposes, however, the benefit of using lenses for marketing our other websites is clearly the main reason to get involved. The branding you create and the nearly automatic stream of traffic will be well worth the time.

Technorati: Marketing, Squidoo

Search Engine Optimization is big business. The number of companies out there providing SEO services is quite staggering, and it’s growing every day. Does that mean it’s too difficult to do all by yourself? Not at all. It’s very involved, and it will take a little time and ongoing effort, but it’s not rocket science, and you can even do everything you need to organically Rank #1 in all major search engines by yourself, all for free.

When I opened my SEO Services business in 2004 I only had experience working with my own websites before that point, and I learned VERY quickly one last, very important thing about SEO… It’s personal.

If you pay a big company to Optimize your website for you, as opposed to you learning how and doing the optimization yourself, then you’ll never be able to rank as highly. Another company cannot have the very discreet knowledge of your businesses’ keywords and market that you had to learn the hard way. You can’t just write some keywords down on a list and give it to them, either. You have to be the one continually choosing your website’s keywords and putting them in your site where you see fit. Any other method will either make your site be someone else’s work, not matching your industry, or simply ineffective. (Usually all three.)

The good news is that you taking on the role of SEOer of your own site means that you won’t have to pay a penny for SEO services at all. As my ratings suggest, it’s not a very quick way to bring in traffic, but scoring very highly for your keywords in the Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search engine ranking pages (SERPs) is an incredibly effective way of bringing in traffic. Possibly the best of all ways, because it is the highest possible quality, and if you can dominate enough keywords for your niche, the highest possible quantity as well! People who don’t understand SEO just aren’t aware that it’s all about the Keywords. Choose the right ones, and all the ones, for your niche, and then use them everywhere you can. That’s really all there is to SEO, but there are infinite variations to the process. Let’s hit the major areas by category.

Keyword Selection

Keyword Density

META Tags

Site Flow

SiteMaps