The Mad Marketer

How To Get Listed In Google News

If you are thinking about starting a content site then you should really consider having a site dedicated to bringing the latest news in your field. The pentacle of many news sites is to be listed in Google News. Once you are listed in Google News you will receive a flood of traffic with thousands of visitors. This subject is not talked about too much but there are special requirements to be listed in Google News which I will be going over in this article.Rule 1) About Your Content: You must have unique original material on your site. You can not have any content that is a duplicate of another site.Rule 2) About Your Articles: You must have multiple authors and have at least 2 new articles a day on your site. Make sure you have quality articles of at least 300 words each. Also it is good to include images and even video at times with every article.Rule 3) About Your Website: Your website must look professional. It is very important that it doesn’t look like you run the site by yourself but that you have an organization or company. Make sure that your policy and about us page reflect that too. You can not host your news site on a blog platform. You must use a CMS or content management system because that is what Google prefers for news.Rule 4) About Your URLs: Make sure your URLs are search engine friendly. Don’t have any funny characters in them like question marks and such. Make sure that each article has a specific URL. Your article URLs should end with 3 digits and not 4 or 2 digits. I know this sounds strict but Google prefers it that way. Also make sure that the title tags for your article URLs is the same as the article title.Rule 5) About Your Authority: Google wants to see that you already have some authority before they list you in their news search. So make sure that you have at least 100 articles and are receiving some heavy traffic before you submit your site to them.I know that these requirements might be hard to follow but the pay off is well worth it. Once you set yourself up as a quality news site you can monetize it by offering advertising or offering paid content. If you follow these rules you have a very good chance of getting accepted into Google News. You can submit your site to Google News by Clicking Here. I hope this article has helped you and thanks for reading.

Posted on: 11 August 2008 | 11:44 pm

I Wrote My First Knol

This is just a short blog post to keep you updated. If you remember, a little while ago I wrote about how Googles Knol project looked promising in bringing you more web traffic. So I have also decided to get involved with this project. In fact you can see my first Knol that I wrote by Clicking Here.I decided to write about affiliate marketing since that is a popular subject. That is usually the first method that people try to make money online. It is not such a bad way to go either but there is a lot of misconceptions out there about affiliate marketing. A lot of people think that they can just post their affiliate link at random places on the net and make money but that will not work. If you want to make money as an affiliate marketer and you are serious about it then you must have your own website. I talk about some of the most common types of affiliate sites in my Knol. If you want to be really basic though you can just have a landing page that reviews the affiliate product you are promoting.I also talk about how affiliate marketing all began. Did you know that Amazon actually took the lead in getting it going? Actually even today Amazon is a great example of how an affiliate program should be run. They pay good commissions and provide tools to help out their affiliates.So anyways go ahead and check it out. I would love to hear from you so please leave a comment and tell me what you think of it.

Posted on: 8 August 2008 | 6:34 pm

New SEO Info And FAQ

SEO or also known as search engine optimization is very important for every internet business to use. Instead of paying thousands of dollars to shady SEO firms you can easily do your own search engine optimization and save money.First of all you should know that we will never know the exact formula for getting the number one position in every search engine. For instance Google and Yahoo change their algorithm all the time so that webmasters have to keep guessing. But there are some methods you can implement that all search engines like and will give you a good chance of getting top positions in most search engines.Here are some common SEO FAQ:How should my website be designed?First of all we will discuss the right way of designing your website. The most important part of SEO web design is to have a unique template. Also in your web design you should not have frames, flash animation, or bad coding. It is very hard for search engine spiders to read web pages like that. To check to see if there are any errors in your HTML coding just do a search for “check html coding” at Google. Another thing to keep in mind is that HTML coding reads from left to right. So if you have your navigation menu on the left side then that is what search engines will read first. The search engines like to see keyword rich content at the very start of your web page. So you should have your navigation menu on the right side. Make sure to include your keywords in any images you have on your site by use of alt tags.How should I manage my site using search engine optimization?Now for how to manage your web site using SEO. You should have each page on your site use a different title, description, and keywords in your Meta tags. Every page on your site should be linked to internally using the full URL. You can do this easily with using a Sitemap on your website or blog. It can’t be stressed enough that you should not have any duplicate content on your site. Search engines and especially Google hates any site that has the same content as another site or has duplicate content on the same website. They also love sites that always have fresh unique content. So try to update your blog or site regularly.What kind of domain name should I get?Now for the actual domain name. Just make sure that you have a straight domain name with no hyphens or funny looking characters like this: % $ & ?. Usually most blog platforms have these types of characters in them, but you can easily get SEO plugins to help with your blog URLs.Do links matter in SEO?Now we will talk about doing off site SEO. All search engines to a varying degree place emphasis on the amount of sites linking to your website. So one of your goals should be to get as sites as you can to link to you. Search engines like it better if you are not linking to the same site that is linking to you, so doing link exchanges is a bad idea. Also when getting one way backlinks try to get high authority sites that reside on different hosts with different IP addresses. The actual text in your Anchor links or the links that point to your site should not be the same. Search engines like it if the anchor text pointing to your site has a lot of variety.If you take the time to implement these strategies into your SEO then you will not regret it. Just try doing a few of these suggestions and you will be surprised by the results.

Posted on: 7 August 2008 | 5:05 pm

My Free Marketing Experiment

A question that has always been asked is, “Is it possible to have a popular website without spending any money?” That is a good question isn’t it. There are a lot of people out there who want to start a website or blog and compete with the corporate websites out there but just don’t have the money for it. So to answer this question for myself and others I am conducting an experiment.I am using this blog as the experiment. If you have noticed I am using only free services to promote this blog and get readers. I am using blogspot to host the blog which can handle unlimited traffic so no worries about bandwidth and there are a ton of free file hosting services on the net to handle any files people need. I am also using free methods of getting traffic to this blog. On a later post I will go into more detail about different ways of getting free traffic. But here are some common methods of getting free traffic to your blog or website:- Comment on other popular blogs and participate in forums.- Use Yahoo Answers to answer questions and use your blog as the source site.- Make use of the social networks such as StumbleUpon and MyBlogLog.- Participate in exchanging RSS feeds or links with other popular blogs.- Write articles and distribute them on the internet using your website address in your resource box.- Use Search Engine Optimization to get ranked high in search engines.So those are some common methods to get started. I will be using those same methods myself. So as I am conducting my free marketing experiment please check back and I will keep you posted on my progress.

Posted on: 6 August 2008 | 1:32 pm

Share This Plugin For Blogger

To harness the real power of viral marketing for your blog you need the share this plugin. The purpose of this widget is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to share your content with their friends. They can easily add your blog post to the top 20 social networking sites and to their own personal website such as Myspace or Facebook. They can even send your post to another friend’s mobile phone. As you can see, installing the sharethis plugin on your own blog can bring in a lot of viral traffic.However there is a problem. If you go to the sharethis page that tells you how to install the share this plugin for blogger then your visitors can only promote your home page. This is no good. You need your visitors the ability to share each of your blog post. However finding a plugin that works for blogspot is a friggin pain. But I did find a script that works great for blogger and use it on this blog.To install the share this plugin for blogger just follow these directions:First you need to sign into blogger and go to edit HTML and make sure to have the Expand Widgets Template box checked. Then you need to go to http://sharethis.com/publisher and get the sharethis widget for websites. Then you just copy and paste that code just before the closing header tag that looks like:<head/> Ok now that you got that done now just download the other script at Media Fire and just copy and paste that code right after the line that looks like:<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'/>Now just click save template and your blog is ready to be a viral marketing machine.

Posted on: 4 August 2008 | 2:17 am

The Knol Revolution Is Upon Us

On July 23rd Google released their newest project Knol to the public. Although still in beta it is promising to be a hot source of traffic for your website. Google created Knol to compete with Wikipedia and Squidoo; in fact it is kind of a hybrid of the two. With Knol an author can write an article based on a specific topic and have complete ownership to that article. He can then choose to have other authors edit and add information to that article if he so chooses. Articles are rated by readers on a 1 to 5 star system. Also to keep out spam, readers can flag an article as inappropriate.As Internet marketers there are several benefits to participating in Knol. Since Google owns Knol they will be marketing this site quite heavily in the future. Also they will more than likely give more importance to Knol pages than to other content sites. Also participating in it will give you authority in your particular market which will help brand your product or website.One person has already shown how to use Knol to gain exposure as a niche marketer. His name is David Petherick and if you type “read Russian” into Google, his Knol page entitled “How to read the Russian Alphabet in 75 Minutes” will show up on the first page of results. This is quite impressive since there are over 13 million pages he has to compete with for that term. So you too can be ranked high in Google for keywords in your market but there are some things to keep in mind.Here are some tips for writing a Knol. For one make sure your article is comprehensive and full of quality content. Make sure that what you write is 100 percent original and not copied from anywhere else. This applies also to any of your own articles you have written. If you have previously submitted articles to any directories or posted it on your blog then you’re better off not using it as a Knol. Also make sure to include a picture of yourself as the author.Now keep in mind that all the links in the articles, your profile, or in the comments have the no follow tag, so you can not use Knol for back links. But you can still use it to drive traffic to your website by writing quality articles or posting informative comments.

Posted on: 29 July 2008 | 3:08 pm

How My Blog Got Listed In Google Within 24 Hours

So when you first start a new website your goal is to get listed in the search engines. As far as search engines go, Google is the undisputed leader. Sometimes though new websites have to wait months and months to be listed in Google. I just started this blog recently and it was already listed in Google within 24 hours of when I created it and I am going to tell you exactly how I did it. So you can do it too.The first step is to make your blog and write your first post. Make sure that your first post is unique and not copied from somewhere else. Also make sure that your first post is at least 300 words long. Next start an account at technorati and claim your blog. Then submit your first post as an article to Digg.com and make sure that you have pinged your blog at a pinging service such as Ping-O-Matic. Once you have done those things then you should get listed in Google in 24 hours. Of course there is one more step I take just for good measure.Another step I take is to do a search on technorati for blogs that are related to my blog that have authority of 300 or more. Then I start making comments on those blogs. Now keep in mind that most Wordpress blogs will have the no follow tag in the comments, so try to find non Wordpress blogs to write comments on.Ok well that’s it. Easy right? Anyone can do this so please don’t be fooled and pay for someone to submit your site to Google. And if you have paid for a submission service then ask for your money back.

Posted on: 27 July 2008 | 11:37 pm

Should You Choose Wordpress Or Blogger?

There are many choices when it comes to blogging software and platforms. The two most popular choices today are either wordpress or Google’s blogger. As you have seen by my blog, I have chosen blogger or also known as blogspot. Both choices have their positives and negatives and it just boils down to what your goal is with your blog. I will cover the benefits of both.Lets first talk about blogspot. Google’s blogger platform is really the best for beginners. To start a blog with them is very easy and takes no technical skill whatsoever. You simply start a free account with them and choose a premade template and boom you can start blogging. Blogger is really made for the casual blogger although your personal blog page can handle unlimited traffic. Of course for serious bloggers there are some problems to overcome. For instance it is hard to make your blog search engine optimized so search engines can find it. It is not impossible though because there are several ways you can modify your blogger account to be search engine friendly which takes some work. In fact I will be talking about specific ways to implement SEO into blogger in another post. Another problem with blogger is that there aren’t as many choices for widgets and plugins to put in your blog as there are for Wordpress. So all in all blogger is a good choice if you’re just a casual blogger on a tight budget and would like to start blogging for free.Wordpress is another popular choice. You can either choose to use it for free at Wordpress.com or just upload their software to your own domain and host it yourself at Wordpress.org. If you want to use Wordpress then you should really host it yourself because there are several limitations if you let them host it for you. For instance if they host it for you then you cannot use Adsense on your site and you are limited to the affiliate programs you can use. So the point is if you want to start a blog that is hosted for you then you should just use Google’s blogger.Now on the other hand if you are planning on building a successful online business then you should definitely choose Wordpress and host it on your own domain. There are many benefits to an internet business for doing it this way. For instance it is fairly easy to make Wordpress search engine friendly and there are many plugins for it that will enhance your visitor’s experience. There are some draw backs though too. You will have to invest some money into it, such as paying for web hosting and having it installed. If you are not particularly tech savvy then installing Wordpress and modifying it can be a challenge. For me when I need to modify a site that has Wordpress I just hire a freelance programmer and you can hire them at good rates if you do a search at Google. So in summary if you serious about starting a real online business using blogs then choose Wordpress and host it on your own domain.

Posted on: 26 July 2008 | 5:06 pm

Advertise On TV With Google Adwords

About 2 months ago Google announced that you can now use Adwords to advertise on TV. You can find out all the information at: http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/ and I would suggest you sign up for the webinar and take a look at the “Getting Started” section. This has been in beta for over a year but now is open to all advertisers. Long Ellis is in charge of this project for Google who has a good track record. The real question for Internet marketers though is “Is Google TV Ads cost effective for web site promotion?”Right now Google’s TV ads can be shown to Dish Network’s 14,000 subscribers, but they are working on expanding their distribution. The good news for Internet marketers is that you can link your TV ads with your website and track in real time how effective your advertising is. Also you have a lot of power to select which channels, what area, and what time to show your ads. Google TV Ads is still very new so not many advertisers have signed up for it yet which means right now there is very little competition. With low competition means low bids, so now is the time to buy TV advertising that is probably the lowest you will find. Of course as time goes on the price for Google TV ads will go up and then you might want to search elsewhere to broadcast your TV ads.

Posted on: 24 July 2008 | 8:23 pm

How To Use Emotion In Video Marketing

I just seen a video on You Tube that is just awesome! I can't really describe it so you will just have to watch it below:This video is about Christian the Lion and touched my heart as I'm sure it touched yours. This video has been watched over 3 million times. Can you imagine making a video and having it seen by 3 million people in just a short amount of time? If you can move people with your marketing videos like this did then you could be very popular.Using video on a web site is becoming more and more popular and for good reason. Using video on your site can dramatically increase your sales. But how can you tap into using video to move people emotionally about your product or service?One way is by using case studies documented by video. We all know how powerful using a real life case study can be to promote your product. But having a potential customer really see this person in video and see with their own eyes how their life changes by using your product or service can be so much better. Imagine if you had a weight loss product and could document with video how a person lost a 100 pounds or more using your product. When a visitor sees this video and comes to know this case study as a real person and sees just how much you helped them well what do you think will happen? You guessed it. Of course if they have a weight problem they will buy your product. And if you release it on a site such as You Tube you will get potentially millions of people seeing your product.Another way is instead of using plain old testimonials why not use video. Try recording in video of customers giving their testimonial. That can be way more powerful because the website visitor gets to see for themselves just how sincere and happy your customers are.This is just a couple of Internet marketing tips that are proven to boost website sales.

Posted on: 24 July 2008 | 12:31 am

Cant Login To Hotmail

I just tried to log in to hotmail and got the message "Login Error Windows Live Hotmail wasn't able to complete this request because your account is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." Grrrrrrr ! That makes me angry. I know that if you have a hotmail account you are probably angry too because you have been affected.A few days ago the majority of Windows Live customers were affected by not being able to access their hotmail account. The newest update from them says that only about 30 percent are still affected. Rest assured though that the Windows Live team is aware of the problem and working on solving it shortly. Apparently it had something to do with faulty servers that they were upgrading.So what can we learn from this. Don't rely on Hotmail as your primary means of communicating for your online business. Personally I recommend using Gmail. It has a lot of nifty little features. Such as being able to label your messages through tags and being able to search through the contents of your messages.

Posted on: 22 July 2008 | 3:20 pm

An Honest Google Nemesis Review

Ok so you probably seen Google Nemesis advertised everywhere you go on the internet right? Or at least it seems that way.So I decided to break down and see what all the hoopla was about and buy it. And guess what I found? I found out that it just wasn't for me and I promptly asked for my money back.On a positive note Google Nemesis is excellent at tracking keywords for PPC campaigns. So if you are a heavy PPC advertiser promoting affiliate products and spend $1000 or more on PPC campaigns then you should buy it. With Google Nemesis you can create web pages with ease and it is linked with your Adwords account to automatically track the keywords used for people finding and clicking on your web page. It also is very good at analyzing at which keywords are profitable and which are not. So those are the good things, but ..............Here are some things Google Nemesis will not do automatically for you. It will not write hot sales copy for you to sell your stuff. It will not tell you which products to promote. And it will not do the keyword research for you. All of those things are up to you as a marketer to do.I personally don't focus on PPC advertising so this product wasn't for me. And as you have noticed I am not posting an affiliate link for Google Nemisis because I am not writing in this blog to make money, I just want all of you to get the truth. Please feel free to comment and check back from time to time. Thanks for reading.

Posted on: 21 July 2008 | 4:29 am

Distasteful Marketing For The Batman Movie

OK well I have just seen the new Batman movie that just came out called The Dark Knight. I can say that the movie itself was great, but the marketing for it left a bad taste in my mouth. Let me explain.When I first walked into the theater all I saw was posters and cut outs all advertising the Joker. You might have thought that this movie was all about the Joker because no where did I see a picture of Batman which was odd because the movie is named after him. But just because there is a lot of attention on Heath Ledgers untimely death, the studios decided to market the Batman movie using the Joker as played by Heath Ledger. He was a fellow human being and he and his family deserves respect for his death. But the studios are cheapening his death by using him just to boost their box office profits. That in my opinion is a prime example of distasteful and immoral marketing.In the Internet marketing community I see from time to time the same kind of marketing that is just not right. As Internet marketers we share the responsibility to promote products that will benefit the consumer and promote it in a tasteful way. One example that I feel is immoral is outright lying about a product review when you have never even tried the product. Or another example is promoting products or services that will hurt the consumer, such as gambling sites, matrix sites, or anything else that just has people throw away their money. I am sick and tired of Internet scams and I hate the scumbags that promote them! I know that might sound harsh but I know that a lot of you probably feel the same.

Posted on: 20 July 2008 | 2:31 am

Internet Marketing Blog Archive

You can check out all the previous blog post down below:

Posted on: 18 July 2008 | 2:52 pm

The Cool Club of Internet Marketing

Lately as I read the sales page of a lot of these "Internet gurus" I have gotten really pissed off. You know why? Because they are all in this elite cool club that I can't get into. Or at least that's what they want you to believe.That seems to be a new marketing tactic. In the sales page or video they talk about what they just did with their fellow gurus or about how much fun they had at a recent seminar where only elite marketers go to. It gives you the feeling that you are missing out on something. They want you to feel that if you buy their product you can be just like them. You can have all that fun too. You can have those billionaire gurus as your best friend too. Yes you too can be in the "cool club"!Come on, give me a break. I'm not saying that they will never be your friend. I suppose that if you did spend the money to go to one of those fancy seminars you would meet some of them. In fact you might have a pleasant conversation. But is that really going to change your life?When you are thinking about buying an Internet marketing product there should only be one question you should ask yourself. You shouldn't be thinking "Will I get more friends if I buy this?" or "Will I be a millionaire if I buy this?". The only question you should ask yourself is "Will this product improve my business?". Just think about that. Does that product teach you something you don't already know or you couldn't find out on your own? A lot of time when the gurus say they have a secret, its not really a secret. If you spend the time of analyzing your competition and testing your advertising then you will come to know the same so called secrets.Anyways that is my two cents worth. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Posted on: 18 July 2008 | 2:46 pm

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