I like video. People watch videos, which is why its a great idea to produce your own to display on your web site or blog. But also on You Tube. You tube is the world’s second largest search engine and growing fast. When you do create a video make sure you put your URL to your web site or blog as the very first thing in the Description box, and then tell people to click on it in your video or by way of annotations within the video.

That will help you get traffic and backlinks to your site.

Then write an article for the article directories and put a link to both your video and to your site in the resource box for the article. That will help drive traffic to both and increase viewers to your video on YouTube. This second step will help raise the video within YouTube and start you on your way to enhanced results from your YouTube efforts.

This video doesn’t need to be long. The following video is only a little over 2 minutes long and focuses on decluttering. Keep it simple and short and on topic.

Technorati Tags: youtube, video, real estate tips, traffic, backlinks, decluttering, home staging, article directories,

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: article directories, backlinks, decluttering, Home Staging, real estate tips, traffic, Video, youtube

Over the past few weeks I have posted several articles on this blog that I got directly from ezinearticles.com.  You can do the same thing.  It’s easy and it’s free.

Just go to www.ezinearticles.com and look for the article search tool in the left column.  For this blog, I just type in Home Staging and I usually can find a half dozen new article every week or so to consider adding to this blog. You can do the same thing for almost any niche market.

When doing so, there is one hard and fast rule that you must follow. You need to use the entire article as written, including the author’s resource box at the end.

Now sometimes I will add my own content before or after the article to explain why I used the article or to comment on the issues it raises, but this is optional. As long as you include their entire content, you are fine.

The author of the article gets several benefits from the process.  In fact if you go back in this blog, I have written extensively on why you should write articles of your own to achieve these same benefits, to wit..

They are more likely to be perceived as an expert in their field.  People who see the article may want to learn more and will follow the link in the resource box back to their site.  More importantly in many cases, is that the little bots the search engines like Google and Yahoo will follow these links, even if no once else does and record it as a back link.

Back links help raise your sites relative ranking in the search engines. And the higher your page shows up in a Google search in your market, the more likely your site will get seen, and in turn the more likely you will get new business.

Now by promoting someone else’s article from another marketplace 100′s or thousands of miles away will not interfere with your own local rankings, so there is no reason not to help them and yourself by posting their article.

You get to add worthwhile content to your blog with minimal effort. And the regular addition of content is a major component to successful blogging. Your readers get worthwhile content consistent with your overall topic and are thus more likely to continue to monitor and read you other offerings.

Some blogs are all borrowed content, but I prefer to write my own material and intersperse articles from article directories as a supplement. But the mix of original and “borrowed” content is up to you.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of article directories online that you can find article on. I’ve personally had best success with ezinearticles, but if you want to search for others just type in a good keyword for your industry and then add the word article directories and you will find many more.

One last tidbit. If you are interested in learning how to monetize your blogging efforts, so that they become a profit center on their own, you may want to get a copy of my blogging mentors new eBook called Profitable Blog Steps.   I write a bit about it in another blog of mine called A Profitable Blog

Technorati Tags: ezine articles, resource box, backlinks, succesful blogging, article directories, monetize your blog, profitable blog steps, a profitable blog

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: a profitable blog, article directories, backlinks, eZine Articles, monetize your blog, profitable blog steps, resource box, succesful blogging

Article Marketing – Four Wins in a Row

Article Marketing as it has evolved on the internet is a classic win-win-win-win institution that has become one of the backbones of the internet. There are four essential players in the article marketing game, all of whom benefit, each in their own way.

Like any market, article marketing is a business of supply and demand. There are end users, who get material from their local vendor who in turn gets material from their wholesaler, who in turns gets material from individual producers.

Unlike most markets, the transfer of goods in the article marketing arena is largely free. The end user wants free access to information. The magic of the article marketing model is that it has created economic incentives to all the parties to meet that demand.

There are many places online for people to get information. These include static web sites, blogs, forums, ezines, ebooks, etc. The producers of these sites, blogs etc are frequently monetizing their efforts with products and services they sell directly or on behalf of others or by various forms of advertising revenue.

Several of these, blogs and ezines in particular require a constant source of new material to keep their site fresh and to attract information seekers with the expectation that a certain percentage of them will also take a revenue producing action. The challenge for these venues is coming up with new material on a regular basis.

Their options are to write it themselves, hire it out or find a free resource of relevance to their specific niche of readers.

Article Directories

Article Directories have emerged to fill that role. They are the wholesalers of articles across a vast array of topics and specialties. They recruit article submissions from individual writers and group them in easy to search categories for the blog writer to search.

Most offer this service free of charge to the blog writers and anyone else who just wants to research a given topic. They make their money the same way most of the blog and ezine writers do. They usually have Google Adsense ads on their site as well as other advertising. They sometimes offer additional premium services for article writers and users as well, but these vary widely.

To be successful, article directories have found it necessary to be editors. They want their customers on both ends to benefit from the equation. To assure this they develop specific rules for the type of material they host on their site and editorial guidelines. These vary by individual article directory. Article writers must meet these standards to be accepted into the directory. This in turn assures a quality product for the blogger and their readers.

One of the most frequent editorial restraints is to contain blatant advertising. Most article directories have strict rules that prohibit advertising except in a section added to the end of the article called the Resource Box.

So who produces all this free editorially up to snuff material? What’s in it for them?

There are three primary motivators for the authors. Some are born writers who just need to write to express themselves. Or perhaps they are motivated to establish themselves as an expert in a given arena or niche.

Another major group are individual business people who seek to inform prospective customers about their product or service. In some cases they may share the desire to brand themselves as experts.

The motivation for most businesses lies in the utilization of the resource box. Most article directories allow authors to include two or more hyperlinks in this appendix to their article. These offer two major benefits to the submitting business. They can send people to your web site, called “traffic” in internet circles. They can also serve as back links to a specific page on their web site. These back links are helpful in getting attention from search engines and serve to help increase the targeted web sites ranking

As articles get picked up more and more bloggers and ezines these back links appear in more and more places increasing the relevance of the site in the eyes of the search engines. They are in some sense votes for the targeted web sites.

As importantly for many businesses is the traffic they bring as more and more people read the articles and go to the sites where a certain percentage will buy products or take other desired actions.

This entire arrangement is interdependent on each of the elements. The fact that is has evolved as an essentially free service for the most part is one of the marvels of the internet. The end user gets information, the blogger gets readers, the article directory traffic that they convert to revenue through ads, and the authors who get recognitions, traffic and search engine ranking. A win-win-win-win situation.

Setting up a web page is only the beginning to online marketing. Now you need to get it seen by potential customers. This used to be challenging in many markets, but there has been a big change in what matters. Today, what matters is being seen on the Google Places Page, and you don't even need to have a web site to do that. (although you should.) The good news is that its free, and if you know what you are doing, you can maneuver yourself to the top listing in many markets. That's one of the skill sets I bring to the table. If you would like to get your Google Places Page properly set up send me an email at enetwal@gmail.com and put "Free Initial Evaluation" or something similar in the subject line. Be sure to include your current web site and contact info.

Technorati Tags: anchor text, article directories, backlinks, resource box