According to a new report by Hitwise, social networking sites and forums such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter now receive more internet visits than the search engines in the UK.

The report goes on to reveal that during May, 11.88% of UK Internet visits went to social networks whilst only 11.33% went to search engines. This is significant because it would be the first time ever that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK.

That said, truth be told, the difference is not that big and it is only for the UK, nonetheless Google’s determination to remain the world’s number one online brand could lead to a review of its approach in the UK in order to contain and reverse the trend.

Furthermore, before we start hammering in the nails for Google’s coffin, it’s important to point out that there is no one dominant player in the UK social network market unlike the search engine market where Google is dominant both in the UK and most global markets.

Both www.google.co.uk and www.google.com account for 99% of all web searches done in the UK during May. Google UK was also the most visited website in the UK during the said period. Google UK got 9.29% of all visits while Facebook accounted for only 7.04%.

Within its own market Facebook accounts for 55% of all UK social networking visits, almost three times as many as the next most popular social network, YouTube. Twitter, one of the fastest growing and most talked about websites of the last two years, is now the third most popular social network in the UK, putting it ahead of former favourites such as Bebo and MySpace.

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After reading several eBooks on AdWords, listening to the “Google AdWords Professionals”, and hiring ad agencies to run my AdWords account, I found these “experts” were using a predictable and flawed approach to AdWords Campaign set-up.

Many will advise you to create a list of hundreds or thousands of keywords, group them together by likeness into several AdGroups, and place them under a handful of major Campaign categories.

One company that I hired created over 18,000 keywords for me and achieved terrible results. I believe this traditional approach to setting up AdWords Campaigns is laborious, wasteful, and unfocused.

With my proven methodologies, you can reduce your costs, increase your click-through rates, and drive more traffic to your website while spending less time managing your Adwords campaign. In fact, I am so confident with my approach, that even today, I am able to get 200-300 clicks per day and run one of my businesses from a single keyword! (It doesn’t get much better than that).

So how do I do it? Here’s how.

Keyword Selection – If you haven’t done so already, I suggest that you develop a starting list of 25-50 keywords for your business.

Use Google Keyword Tool and Google Suggest (found under the Google Labs section) to compare popularity and relevancy.

These keywords should be included in your current or future website and define the value proposition of your business in the eyes of your customer.

Put yourself in the customers’ shoes when developing this list and ask yourself, “What would I type into a search engine if I wanted to buy something from my company?” P

lace your keywords into the Google search engine and see if you find your competitors. If you do, then you’re on the right path. Review your list and go to the root of a word whenever possible.

For instance, if you sell “china dolls”, I would test the keywords, “doll” and “dolls”. Though this may seem too broad and you may be concerned about a high expense, you can just place “china doll” or “china dolls” in the headline and body text of your Google Ad to ward off anyone looking for a “Barbie”.

Ad Group Set-Up – This is one of the most critical “UnPublished Secrets” about AdWords. When setting up your Campaigns, only use one keyword under one Ad Group per each Campaign.

Let me repeat – one Keyword per one Ad Group per one Campaign. Place that one keyword as keyword = broad match, [keyword] = exact match, and “keyword” = phrase match. This gives each Campaign an extremely high relevancy factor in the eyes of Google and does not dilute your Campaigns with multiple keywords.

Finally, I recommend that you start by testing up to 30 keywords across 30 Campaigns. Place your bids high and lower or raise the cost of each Campaign by $.05 each day until you’ve optimized each keyword cost.

Statistically speaking, once you reach 30 clicks on a particular Campaign, you can determine, with a 95% confidence level, whether or not to replace a keyword. Swap out any underperforming keywords that are not converting well and those whose cost per conversion is too high to generate any profits.

Using these “UnPublished Secrets”, you can focus on a handful of keywords and eventually test your way to success. In my business, I tested over 100 keywords before I realized that 6-7 keywords were converting the best.

Even better, I found a single keyword bringing in 75% of my business. Talk about a time saver. Now, that my friends, is another holy grail for AdWords advertisers.

Written by PPC Expert, John Pfeiffer of  www.PPCforSmallBiz.com

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Viral email marketing is one of the most popular means of promoting your products or services. You can easily contact several thousands – or even millions – of individuals at one time and have them spreading your email message, promoting your business and generating income for you.

It is important that you understand the mechanics of viral email marketing to take advantage of its full potentials, and get the cash your business needs at a fraction of the usual time and effort. 

What is Viral Email Marketing?

Viral marketing is one of the most efficient marketing tool innovated in the online industry. The term was coined after the idea of an information spreading quickly and effectively.

In offline marketing industry, viral marketing is what is often referred to as “word-of-mouth” marketing strategy, which is considered by some marketing experts as the most effective type of marketing. 

Viral email marketing is a branch of a variety of viral marketing tools and techniques that internet marketers can use these days. Although the benefits are quite appealing, there are certain techniques that online marketers need to follow closely in order to reap those benefits.

Since most people these days utilize their email to communicate on a daily basis, it is where viral email marketing is targeted. You can therefore appeal to every individual in your target market specifically, which when done correctly, have higher potential of generating sales.

If you were to recall the history of email marketing campaigns, it all started with Hotmail. They offered clients who availed of their service a free email account.

For every online businessmen though, you can offer a variety of techniques to your prospects through their email that will enable you to utilize the power of this technology to spread the word about your marketing campaign. 

Viral Email Marketing Techniques

The techniques you use in your viral email marketing campaign depends largely on your business goals. In most cases, the goals of an online marketer when sending out emails to the people in their mailing list is to inform them about a particular product or information.

A subset to this goal is to compel them to forward the message or email to their friends in their email list, thus spreading the word about your line of products.Why would your prospects forward the email they receive?

The key here is to send them emails that are of some level of worth. If not, then it would probably take them a shorter amount of time to delete the email message than they would reading what the content of the mail is.

One effective way to increase readership is to carefully consider the information value or entertainment value you input in the content of your email message. Being informative does not necessarily mean your email message has to be dull.

Learn how to infuse some creativity into it. With proper use of useful or amusing content, you will most likely compel people in your mailing list to read your emails and forward them to people who might benefit from them.Prior to this stage though, you need to have had proper methods of building a large opt-in list.

The methods you use must also be targeted, such that the people in your mailing list are most likely to respond to your viral email marketing campaign.

Subject Line of a Viral Email

Although this comes prior to the actual opening of your emails, this is incredibly important. The subject line is the first thing that a person sees whenever they open their inbox.

There are only two options for them: to click on the mail you sent or not. Hence, it is important that you convince them to do the former. One technique is to keep your subject line interesting or provoke curiosity.

Using the “Open Me” or “Read Me” approach is fast becoming ineffective. Plus, it is a very lazy approach at convincing people to actually read the mail. Try to keep your subject line short but snappy for higher effectiveness. 

Content of a Viral Email

You have three options in terms of how you build the content for your viral email marketing: sales letter, newsletter, or review format. Regardless of your choice of content format, you need to keep it brief yet ample in scope.

Remember, people browsing the internet have short amount of patience and you need to feed them the information they need within the shortest time possible.

If you find that the message is too long but all parts are too relevant to omit, consider sending them in parts. This is also an effective way to rouse the reader’s interest.

Another way to convince them to click on the links you provided is by offering them a valuable and tangible object. It does not need to be a lucrative object but must be something of value or usefulness to them. This helps further an effective viral email marketing that produces real results.

Timing or Frequency in Sending Out Viral Emails

Here is another important component for an effective viral email marketing campaign. If you have set the schedule for the broadcast of your viral email messages using an autoresponder, make sure to limit the amount of emails you send the people in your mailing list. 

Three times a week should be substantial to advance your viral email marketing, but there are always exceptions to the rule. The key is to be sensitive to the needs and desires of your audience, and to offer them the right amount of information at the right moments. 

Overdoing it can result to annoyance on the part of your readers and cause them to opt-out of their subscription. Or worse, they could spread the word about their dissatisfaction, which could negatively affect your reputation. 

After all, an effective viral email marketing campaign is built more around the powerful messages you send them, rather than the frequency of emails on their inbox. 

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Google’s DoubleClick has announced the acquisition of start-up Invite Media for an undisclosed amount. Invite Media claim to offer “the first “universal buying platform” for display media” online.

The acquisition is part of the company’s move to invest in the “advertising ecosystem”, which, DoubleClick believes, has great potential.

According to DoubleClick “Real time bidding technology… enables advertisers and agencies to tailor their bids on an impression-by-impression basis, based on their own data, when bidding on websites that choose to make their ad space available through an advertising exchange,”

Real-time bidding enables a brand or business to up the price of its bid on certain conditions, notably if the lead is already qualified by visiting a correlated area of a website before coming to the entry point.

Without going into the financial details of the deal, Neal Mohan, DoubleClick’s Vice President of Product Management, stated the company’s intention to “continue to invest significantly in improving Invite Media’s technology and products as a separate platform and, in time, make it work seamlessly with our DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) ad serving product.”

The post continued to add that Invite Media’s unified platform will benefit DFA’s clients as a one-stop place for online advertising and it will continue to operate independently as its clients will not be required to go through DFA.

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Twitter is one of the fastest growing and most popular social media websites on the internet, because of Twitter’s huge popularity it is also increasingly becoming a popular tool for online marketers

Many online businesses are using Twitter to gain consistent and genuine traffic to boost their search engine rankings through tweets.

However if rumours are true then there is even more reason for anyone wanting to improve their Search engine marketing campaigns to start tweeting right way.

There is increasing speculation that the social media website, Twitter is about to launch a new feature aim primarily at developers, that will allow annotations to be embedded into tweets, giving more and updated information.

At present, Twitter members are able to tweet up to a maximum of 140 characters, this will be bolstered should the new feature be made available. It will also offer users the chance to add meta data, including websites, locations, reviews, and events.

With the integration of meta data into tweets, users will be able to substantially enhance their SEO campaigns through increased traffic.

However as I have repeatedly said, this is all rumour and speculation at this time and I will certainly bring further updates to you on my blog, as and when they are made available.

For now, my advice is to create a twitter profile and start tweeting and building your twitter lists and followers should the new feature be implemented, the SEO benefits could be huge, especially for small business owners (with low competition, long tail keywords) where the effects on your search engine rankings could be dramatic.

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There are no shortage of websites out there with badly written seo meta-tag data. Just because Google no longer places as much weight on meta data as it used to, does not mean that you should not pay any attention to it either, or you could find your search engine optimization campaign grinding to a halt.

Generally speaking, I find a lot of these SEO mistakes with search marketing beginners or SEO DIY’ers. If that’s you then I have compiled a shirt list of SEO mistakes and how to avoid them.

1) Do Not Stuff Your Keyword tag with Keywords

Your keyword tag will look something like this;

<meta content=”your keywords in here, comma separated” />

The purpose of the keywords tag is for you to accurately describe / tag the nature of your page. Therefore do exactly that, don’t stuff the keyword tag with non relevant keywords or keywords from other parts of your site. Your tag must reflect only the keywords on that page. Keep your tag no more than 20 words and do not repeat any word more than 3 times

2) Use the Description tag to Describe Your Page and Stoke Interest

Your description tag will look something like this;

<meta content=”your description in here.” />

The purpose of the description tag is to describe what the page is about in the search results so that human searchers can decide if they want to click on the link to find out more. You should therefore use the opportunity to write a good teaser description that will stock curiosity and encourage a click.

google-search-results-description-tag-seo

Keep your description to no more than 20 – 25 words and do not stuff with keywords, instead use your keyword no more than twice in the description.

3) Don’t Put Your Web Address in Your Title Tag

Your title tag will look something like this;

<title>You title in here</title>

Arguably the most important SEO tag out of all the other meta tag data as I is the first tag the engine will read and it tells the search engine what the page is about. It is also displayed at the top of the browser. You should not put your web address in here. Try and subtly include you keyword in here without keyword stuffing and if you can, include your company name at the end. For example if your keyword was “prestige cars” your title could be as follows;

<title>Quality prestige cars from Prestige Cars Ltd</title>

Your title tag should not exceed 60 characters

 4) Optimize your Content for Your Keywords

Just as you need to optimize your SEO meta tags based on y our keywords, you also need to ensure your content is optimized for your chosen keyword(s).

Current guidelines are that the keyword should not comprise more than 2% of your content, for example if your content includes 500 words, each keyword should not be more than 2% of the 500 words. Further SEO content optimization includes using keywords in your H1, H2 and H3 tags, bolding of keywords in your copy and including keywords in anchor text links, to internal or external pages.

SEO or search engine optimization really isn’t black magic, stick to this simple and easy to follow guide and you shouldn’t go far wrong. Or if in your in doubt consult a qualified SEO expert.

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As one of the most sought after gadgets in the world, Apple’s iPad is undeniably a hit, but the tablet has also caused a certain amount of controversy and problems for various agents in digital media.

Apple announced this week that it had sold 2 million iPad units in less than two months. Only 28 days after the initial release in America, Apple had already sold their first million iPads. By the time the product was released in Europe, Australia and Japan the sales figures quickly broke the 2 million milestone.

Sales of iPads were seemingly only limited by how quickly Apple could get them made, and according to Wired, the iPad is already outselling the MacBook line. “The iPad, then, is a success, and the tablet mass-market is officially here,” wrote Charlie Sorrel for the Gadget Lab.

However, despite the iPad’s commercial success, Apple have caused problems for advertisers trying to make the most of the device for mobile marketing purposes. Online adverts already redesigned and optimised for smartphone screens will have to be reworked a second time to make the most of the iPad’s larger screen.

Sky have created a specially designed iPad app to watch live English Premier League football on the tablet. For £35 a month, subscribers will be able to watch the stars of the Premier League on their iPad, but Sky were forced to redesign their iPhone app in order to optimise the football viewings for the larger iPad screen.

The absence of Flash from the iPad has also caused a headache for web developers and those who use Flash based online advertising. Not only that, but Apple’s strict policies on censoring content have led some news providers to boycott the system.

The question remains whether Apple’s success is strong enough to force the online advertising market to adapt to it, or whether the advertisers will adopt a new champion leaving Apple behind.

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If you are serious about earning a living from home, then affilliate marketing business is a great internet marketing opportunity to start making money on the web.

As with any online affilliate marketing business there will obviously be some start up  costs involved when getting into the affiliate marketing industry. To generate that extra income you will need to invest in a webhosting service, registering your own domain name and building your own website which should cost you about $130 a year in recurring costs, which is very cheap to compared to an offline business.

If you are new to internet marketing and not sure where to begin, you may want to consider setting aside some cash to invest in some online marketing training courses.  At the time it may seem to be a pinch on your pocket, but get your hands on a succesful internet marketing system model that works, and it definately pay back for itself 5000x over.  One of my favourite internet marketing courses is the Niche Blitzkrieg system from Micheal Brown.  It literally holds you by the hand an walks you throught the entire process of setting up and making money from your affilliate marketing websites.  Be sure to check out the Niche Blitzkrieg Review here.

Depending on your affilliate market you may want to get professional looking, clean, aesthetic website templates and edit it to put in your information. Invest time in researching quality content. Although it will take a little time and patience, make sure the website is easy to read while fulfilling the needs of being an affilliate marketing site. This will go a long way in securing more hits adding to your objective of making money on the web.

You can also hire professional writers to do the content for your website. They are expensive but deservedly so, since they can make or break your web presence. Use their services by choice and prudence, remembering that it will ultimately affect your bottom line of that extra income you are chasing.

What you are investing today is your investment into your future and your success. Follow up your investment with zeal and commitment and there would be nothing stopping you from realizing your dreams through earning that extra income.

Rome wasn’t built in a day; your affilliate marketing business wouldn’t be either. It takes time to succeed in everything and anything. Patience and perseverance are keys to building any business.

I hope this article have given you some insights into setting up and building a successful affilliate marketing business, and the direction you should take towards making money working at home.

Keep going and it won’t be long before others approach you for advice and internet marketing tip on how to be successful.

Original author, Keron.

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As an Online Marketing specialist, I am constantly coming across small business owners who are overlooking the single biggest asset that they have for sales growth. I am talking of course about their email list.

From modest lists of 4,000 to larger lists of 20,000 or more, small business owners often do not appreciate the value of their email lists in improving conversion and needlessly spend money and effort in acquisition activity through both offline and online when they have a perfectly healthy list. Often referred to as a house list, in my experience your house list when tested against all other lists on a like for like campaign will convert far better.

The success of your house list will also depend on how the list was recruited, for example a list comprised of previous purchasers will convert better than that comprised of enquirers. A list comprised of enquirers will in turn convert better than that comprised of competition entrants and so on.

Successful online marketers improve their conversions by skilfully utilizing their lists in a number of ways to build long term relationships and sell products that are relevant to their lists.

Here’s how you can utilize your list to improve your conversion rate.

Use An Email Series

With every email you acquire, regardless of whether it is from an email campaign or from a general sales enquiry, make sure you add them to your email file and send them a regular email series to improve your conversion. Your email series can work towards a single goal such as a purchase or you can aim to provide further purchase ideas or industry news and thus aim to provide added value. You can use an auto responder, either free or paid such as Aweber to help you deliver your email series. My advice is to go for a free auto responder to start with and then utilize a service like Aweber once you know you can pay the monthly fees.

Build Desire Before a Product Launch

If you regularly launch new products or if you are about to launch a new product, why not build a pre and post launch communication plan. This could include access to product information, downloads and maybe even videos to help build anticipation around your launch date. On launch day, build a sense of immediacy and scarcity through your copy, whether in the email or landing page and watch your conversions skyrocket.

Ask for Referrals

Use the power of viral marketing to grow your list further. Make your emails easy to forward and ask for referrals in return for further discounts or special offers. Why not ask for referrals on your sign-up page? Asking for referrals is a great way to grow your list whilst maintaining the quality of your list as these individuals are more likely to buy from you.

Talk To Your List

Talking to your list on a regular basis will help you build your brand and ensure you extract maximum sales potential. Use an auto responder to send a series of closely related messages over a period of time for example weekly or monthly, to ensure your list stays engaged and continues to buy from you.

Conclusion

It’s all well and good having an email list, but unless you utilize techniques such as the ones described in this article, you will not realise the real potential and value of your list in increasing conversion. The time to start building your list is right now.

What are your thoughts on this subject or article, please feel free to share your thoughts or experiences with us by commenting on this post below.

Every single business online must sustain itself with traffic, even if the service and goods it sells are good. A good looking and easy to navigate website won’t help a business succeed if no one is visiting it. There are lots of other ways to plug your business, but its more important to deal with web surfers who are just browsing the web for a good or service your site has. Most surfers use social media sites thanks to the fact that they give many options that include multimedia features and communication .

 These features make it easy to share info. It is straightforward to draw in folks in selected areas by following these tips.

Complete your Profile ( s ) before beginning

All social media sites have control panels. These control panels let users fill in different fields so the visitors get a greater understanding about who they are working with. On these internet sites one should fill the fields out honestly. The fields include personal information, personal interests, and different websites. With an internet site field you can tack on your website and its interests. The interests can then be changed into keywords that may increase your companies exposure. For every social media website you only have to fill in this information once. After filling in your basic details on a social media website you can focus on revising and updating your profile as time rolls by.

Due to the multimedia features on a few of these websites you can load videos and audio content as well as use text and pictures that spice up a profile and increase interest in you and your business. If you are associated with other websites selling their products and services, you can use their resources to add banners, videos and different graphics to your profile. Make sure you add these resources but make it simple because it isn’t straightforward to navigate a cluttered web site.

Join and play a role in groups concerned in social media.

The greatest social media sites have groups created by its users that have hundreds or perhaps thousands of folks inside them. Each group is category and theme specific. Simply join a category that fits your market or interests to help increase traffic to it. Don’t try too hard to put your self out there as if you used to be a spammer, because people generally hate spam advertising and it could get your account shut down.

Assuming you followed the directions above all you must do is increase traffic to your web profile

Create a link to your net profile.

Social media not only increases web site traffic, but also increase increases your conversion. Thanks to the interaction and personalization of the medium. With the use of profile buttons, sharing resources, and widgets offered by the network you allow the visitors to easily interact with you. If these folks are educated and entertained it can help drive up sales.

Social media selling can hugely increase your web reputation when your business first starts out.

Social media marketing also helps in dominating search engines in your local market. To find additional info find how social media marketing is archived.

Source http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/how-to-create-your-social-media-profiles-1079872.html

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