Posted by Melvin on Mar 20, 2009 in
Stormy Life How many times have you looked at your best keyword search result page only to find that one of your competitors has outranked you? Just how are they doing this? Is there something you can do to leap frog them?
I scratched my head on this issue more than once before I finding someone with the answers. I am talking about Brad Callen. Brad has some good material on how to determine what your competitors are doing to get those high rankings in the search engines. He has even written a tool to reduce the amount of manual labor it takes to figure it out.
His tool is called SEO Elite. This tool does many things that will help you rank better than your competition. I have purchased this tool and use it to get my page rankings up. With his tool, you can determine where your competition is getting their in-bound links. You can find potential link partners and send out email invitations to link with/to you. One of my favorite options is to see where my pages are ranking in the various search engines with a history of past performance. This allows me to see how my latest change to my page has affected my search engine results rankings.
You likely already know how to find many of the things this software will do for you. However, how much is your time worth? You can set this software to start the research and walk away. While you are away doing other valuable tasks for your business, SEO Elite will be plugging away doing the grudge work of getting you the answers.
There is one thing I wish Brad had done differently with his tool. That is SEO Elite is a Microsoft Windows only application. I run Linux so I would love to see a Linux version of the tool but I do not think that will happen anytime soon. Besides, it does save me a lot of manual labor.
Posted by Melvin on Mar 20, 2009 in
Stormy Life Twitter, the social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length, has no-doubt become quite a phenomenon. It is widely rumored that Twitter turned down an acquisition offer from Facebook for $500 Million. A recent TechCrunch report stated that Twitter’s valuation has reached in excess of $250 Million. There are reports that state that the reach of Twitter has exceeded that of Digg in a very short span of time. With an excess of 5 Million users and over 50 Million monthly visits, everyone’s tweeting!
Needless to say, what’s made Twitter a revolution is its ease of use. From signup to search, from following others to getting followed by others, to tweet or to retweet, to use the web or the phone, Twitter is just plain simple. Add to this the power of Twitter APIs, there are hundreds of tools, utilities and apps that continue to spring from nowhere. Today, there is a twitter tool just about to do anything you want on twitter.
Some use twitter for chit-chat. Ranging from “I just got up, and am off to a shower” to “Please get out and vote for me”, much is being said in 140 characters or less. Folks are asking questions and people in hundreds respond. Advertisers market their products, Affilaites promote products, News sources announce breaking news and Bloggers post their blogs as tweets – whether for personal or for business, Twitter is seen everywhere and used by everyone.
It has never been easier to build a network of followers. Never before has it been so easy to build a network of a 1,000 followers who follow what you have to say and are ready to receive a message from you. And best of all, it costs nothing to do it! Just think about what you would have to do to get a following of a 1,000 people – whether it is cold calling, or mail advertisement, or opt-in email marketing or a paid squeeze page lead capture – it takes a lot of time, money and effort.
The benefits being obvious, everyone is looking to build a wide follower base. There is a widely prevalent phenomenon on Twitter that is increasing in popularity – “Follow Me and I will Follow You Back“. This simply means that if you follow me on twitter, I will follow you right back. There are two schools of thought on this.
The first school of thought is that it is not appropriate to follow everyone that follows you. The second school of thought obviously thinks not. The idea of not following everyone that follow you has some logic to it. You could think of some parallels to this – “Buy my product, I will buy your product back” or “Subscribe to my newsletter, I will subscribe to your newsletter back”. One could also argue that if you follow 1,000’s of people, you really can’t do justice, as multiple tweets from each one (assuming each one is active) would just be information overload and you simply can’t follow any tweet, giving it justice. Both of these arguments could be argued as having some merit. But, also not.
Think for a moment why people use Twitter. True, one of the primary objectives is for you say what you are doing now and for others to tune in (or “follow”), but Twitter can be used for reasons well beyond that. Twitter is a wonderful networking tool, where you can build relationships with others and communicate not just now, but for months and years to come. You can sure tweet for the moment, but you can just as well message the other person in private. And if it is true that Twitter is a social networking tool, and if others have something of value to offer to you in return, there is nothing unusual about you tuning into their message as well. After all, you only stand to benefit!
The school of thought that says “Follow Me and I will Follow You Back” does has merit. Just because two parties follow each other, there is no commitment or obligation. Either party can ignore tweets, or can search through tweets by name, by RSS feeds or utilizing one of the infinite tools available, if the ongoing tweets are missed. Either party can message each other, and either party can choose to review or ignore such messages. And if one does not wants to be bothered, that could be done as well. Worst case, one could unfollow and/or block others as well. Just as anything else in life, if you use the tool effectively, you will only stand to benefit.
Twitter is real. Twitter works. Twitter is the tool of the century – probably bigger and better than any other Social Networking or Web 2.0 tool. Embrace it!
And if “Follow” bothers you, because you simply can’t follow 1,000’s of people (which I agree with and in that context, Twitter allowing one to follow 2,000 people may not make sense either, unless most are not active, in which case they should not be on Twitter in the first place!), then follow others on Twitter (and be followed) so you can use it to “Send and Receive Messages“. Again, there is no better tool, whether online or offline, that allows you to be able to send and receive messages to such a wide audience that has mutually agreed to receive and send messages to each other.
If you agree with this thought process, maybe we should rephrase the theme to “Receive Me and I will Receive You Back“. And, maybe we are not just talking Twitter, but rather an enhanced Twitter, one that is naturally Two-way, maybe we are talking Twowitter
Posted by Melvin on Mar 20, 2009 in
Stormy Life When you start a business, you do not have to spend a penny on marketing or advertising to make an income online. If someone told you that you must spend money to market your business, you can tell them that they are wrong, because I am about to give you some information on the facts.
Do a search in the search engines and see how many responses you get when you type in the key phrase “free classifieds“, over 10 million results! That is the sites that will allow you to post various things 100% FREE! Be it selling stuff or finding a match, classified ads always catch the eye of the readers.
As long as you are willing to put in some time every week and don’t mind a little work, you can honestly make a good income online with free types of advertising and marketing.
Free classified advertising is a great way to advertise your business. Anytime you can find free advertising, go for it. If you have never posted an ad at one of these sites, there are some things you need to know before doing so. You don’t want to end up spending tons of time writing ad after ad with no results do you?
You must do your research to find a few of your local free online classified sites. They are not all the same, so it is a good idea to check them out and pick a few to get started. Go ahead and register in the sites that look good.
The title of your ad is the most important part. It must grab the attention of the reader immediately. Keep testing until it does work. Writing ads can take some work, but repetition will make you an expert.
Write the ad, think of the person that will be reading your advertisement. What are they looking for? What do you have to offer them? What about your company or services will benefit their life? These are the things you want to write about.
Be precise and straight to the point. Don’t write too much or too little. Grab the readers’ attention right away. Your ad must stand out in the crowd. So make sure your ad is completely different from other ads you have seen about the same product.
You will find that there are some ads that use photos or graphics in them. Is this really a good idea? Of course it is. This will get the attention of the reader even faster.
Don’t forget your ad after you submitted. You need to renew your ad once every couple of days or so. This is because ads will show up at the top after you renew it. If you find your ads are buried deep in the list, try renewing it to get it up again.
Singapore Free Classifieds is one of the free online classified ads website that lets people post their ads, build profiles, and connect. Creating an active environment for people and businesses to place their Free Classified Ads. Go ahead and register for free. Thanks for reading the above article I hope the information assisted you in some way.
List Building Strategies W/ Alex Jeffreys & Erwin Chua