Internet Marketing Center
June 30, 2006
Use Podzinger to find quality audio and video content
If you're thinking about adding audio or video content to your blog or web site, there's a cool new audio and video search engine that you should know about. It's called PodZinger and it performs searches on audio and video podcasts, making it easy for you to find multimedia content that's related to your particular industry.
Podcasts can be a great source of FREE audio and video content for your web site or blog. And offering industry-specific multimedia content is an awesome marketing strategy — it adds value to your site and encourages people to return on a regular basis to see what new content you've posted recently.
The only problem is, it can be difficult to find podcasts that are relevant to your target market, or related to the keywords you are actually searching for. The regular search engines — like Google and Yahoo — aren't much help, because they only allow you to search for audio and video files by their title. They don't let you search for specific words that are actually spoken within the audio and video files.
However, PodZinger now allows you to do just that!
PodZinger — which recently received a "Best of the Web" award from Forbes magazine — uses speech-recognition technology to create a text script of audio and video files. This allows you to find specific words located anywhere within a podcast, and jump to the point where those words appear.
With PodZinger, you can now search for podcasts by keyword in the same way that you use Google or Yahoo to search for written information on web sites.
To show you what I mean, here's a screencap of the first result I got when I used PodZinger to search for the keyword phrase "Internet marketing":
As you can see, the search result gives you the name of the podcast series (Six Pixels of Separation — The Podcast), the episode (Episode #6), a brief synopsis of what the podcast is actually about, and links to every mention of your search term. When you click on one of these links, you'll be taken directly to the place where your search term is spoken.
In other words, you don't even need to download a podcast before listening to it. You can play it right from PodZinger's search results page! The embedded player also lets you rewind, fast forward, and pause the podcast, as well as subscribe to its RSS feed.
You can also submit your own podcasts directly to PodZinger to have them indexed in its search results. There's an easy-to-find link that allows you to make submissions right on the homepage. Plus, the PodZinger "spider" scours the Web on a daily basis, adding thousands of new podcasts to its listings every week. PodZinger is already searching over 200,000 podcasts, which makes it one of the biggest podcast directories on the Web!
As the number of podcasts continues to grow, it's becoming even more important for you to make sure your podcasts appear in the top search engine listings. So if you want people to find your podcasts, you should definitely submit them to PodZinger.
With its unique technology that lets users search for spoken words in podcasts, PodZinger has become one of the most popular places to search for podcasts on the Web — which means that if your site is featured high in its listings, you'll soon be seeing a whole lot more downloads coming your way!
Posted by Derek Gehl at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
How a Game of "Tag" Can Direct Swarms of Targeted Traffic to Your Blog
Did you know that by adding a simple word to the end of your blog posts, you can skyrocket them to the top of the search listings on the 'Net's most popular blog community?
It's true! These simple words are called "tags," and they act as labels that help specialized search engines identify the subject matter of your blog posts. These tags also alert the search engines whenever you publish a new post -- so when someone uses one of these search engines to look for blogs related to a certain topic, posts that are tagged with that topic label will appear at the very top of the listings, with the most recently published post appearing first.
So what this means is, if you add certain tags to the end of your posts, you can drive a whole lot more traffic to your blog -- and all this traffic is going to be made up of people who are actually searching for blogs on the topics YOU'RE writing about!
Sounds pretty cool, huh?
Okay, so here's how tags actually work:
After you finish writing a blog post, choose a word or phrase that accurately describes the topic of your post. That word is going to be the "keyword" label for your tag. (For example, if I was going to create a tag for this post, I'd probably label it "Tags.")
You don't have to stop at one tag, though -- you can add as many tags to your blog as you want! (You just have make sure those tag labels are relevant to the content of your post -- people who do a search on those words and click on your blog will be annoyed if your posts have nothing to do with the topic they're looking for. And you DON'T want to annoy your readers -- otherwise, they'll never come back!)
So for this blog, I could also add the following tags: "Derek Gehl," "Internet Marketing," and "Blog Traffic," just to name a few.
Once you've created your list of tag words or phrases, all you have to do is attach a snippet of HTML code to each one, so that the search engines can recognize them as tags. (I'll tell you exactly what code to use in a moment... )
If you're the kind of person who goes cross-eyed at the thought of generating HTML code, don't worry! There are free online tools you can use to create your tags for you, such as the one at Keotag.com
Now, here's the kicker: the HTML code you use to create your tags is going to be different, depending on the search engine you want to "read" them. That's because tags work by actually linking your blog post straight to the search engine's index. (For example, if you go to Keotag.com, you'll see that you can make tags for Technorati, a popular blog community, or Flickr, the 'Net's largest photo blog community, or del.icio.us, a popular online bookmark site.)
Right now, the best place to link your blog tags is Technorati. In case you've never heard of it, Technorati is the Internet's most popular blog community. Currently, Technorati has over 45.3 million blogs in its index -- that's up from 24 million in January, which means it's grown a whopping 88% in just five short months!
And all these web pages are linked together via more than 2.5 billion Technorati tags that allow people to surf from one linked blog to another, or to find blogs related to certain topics by using Technorati's search engine.
This means that if someone does a search on "Internet Marketing" on Technorati's search engine, for example, this blog post should appear at the top of the listings. (Until it gets bumped off the list by more recent posts that are tagged with "Internet Marketing," that is... but in the meantime, I should get a whole lot of extra traffic to my site!)
Not only that, but if any other blogs are also tagged with the keyword label, "Internet Marketing," then they're going to be linked to this blog post as well -- which means that some of their readers might click on the "Internet Marketing" tag at the bottom of their blog post and be sent to mine!
Tagging in Technorati is easy. All you have to do is follow these three simple steps:
# Create your own free account with Technorati.
#
Go to your Account page on the Technorati site and "claim" your blog (in other words, register it) under the "Your Blogs" header.
#
Include Technorati tags in your posts by inserting an HTML link at the bottom of each post. The tag should look like this:
[tagname]
All you have to do is copy the above bit of HTML and add your own "tagname" to it. The tagname is the word or label you want to use for your tag. For example, if I wanted to create a tag for "Derek Gehl," it would look like this:
[Derek Gehl]
Once you've created a new HTML snippet for each of your tags, using a different tagname for each one, you're done! Your blog post should now be indexed with Technorati, so you can take advantage of their HUGE community of blog readers.
If you have a business blog, I highly recommend you start adding Technorati tags to your posts right away. You'll soon find out that driving more readers to your blog is child's play. As in... Tag! You're it!
Technorati tags: Derek Gehl Internet Marketing Traffic Generation Internet Marketing Center Marketing Tips Blogging Tips Tagging
Posted by Derek Gehl at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
June 15, 2006
Harness the power of quality directory listings to drive more targeted traffic to your web site!
Everyone knows that search engines like Google and Yahoo are great way to drive tons of traffic to your site. But I see a lot of online entrepreneurs completely overlooking another incredibly useful source of traffic: online directories.
If you're just getting started online, and you're not sure what an online directory is, don't worry -- it's just an online database of web sites that's compiled and sorted by human editors. In fact, an online directory is similar to a business directory or phone book, in that it arranges its web site listings by category. So, for example, if you're looking for a web site on how to grow tomatoes, you'd probably find it in the category, "Gardening."
Some directories, like DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project), will list your site for free. Others will charge you a listing fee, some of which can be pretty pricey. Yahoo, for example, charges people $299 a year to have their site included in its directory listings. But most paid directories are a lot cheaper than that.
Five years ago, getting listed in a directory was a sure-fire way to increase your traffic and improve your search engine ranking. But directories fell out of fashion when a number of disreputable ones started using questionable payment schemes and dodgy SEO strategies that caused their listings to be dropped from the major search engines. People didn't think they were worth the money -- or the risk.
However, you shouldn't count out online directories just yet! In my experience, they can still play an important part in any serious link-building campaign.
While you should definitely avoid "link farm" directories (they're the ones that sell links to absolutely everyone and have disorganized lists of unrelated links that point off in every direction), there are still some great directories that are worth looking into.
The most important thing to look for in a quality directory is good human editors. Google, in their webmaster guidelines, specifically points to the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ as trustworthy directories. That's because these two have established themselves as having legitimate and critical editorial processes that weed out any unworthy sites that try to get listed with them.
Google views links from DMOZ or Yahoo Directory as votes of trust -- which means that getting listed with them will boost your Google PageRank rating and move your site up the listings.
While Google only really looks at listings in the big directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory, MSN Search and Yahoo Search value links from smaller directories, as well. If you want to boost your ranking with all the major search engines, try submitting your site to a wide number of directories.
So which ones should you focus on? Here's a short list of directories that screen their listings thoroughly and are highly rated by their users:
*
DMOZ
*
Yahoo Directory
*
Best of the Web
*
MSN bCentral
*
Business.com
*
Gimpsy
*
UncoverTheNet.com
*
lii.org
*
site-sift.com
*
JoeAnt.com
*
WowDirectory.com
To get listed by a directory, just go to the site and sign up -- most directories have some sort of "add URL" or "suggest site" link.
For DMOZ (The Open Directory Project), simply go to their "Suggest URL" page and follow their instructions to submit your site. Every submission to this directory is processed by an unpaid human editor so it will definitely take some time (from two weeks to several months, they say) but on the other hand, it's free.
For paid directories like the Yahoo Directory, the submission process is faster and easier -- they guarantee a response within seven business days -- because of their $299 fee. To get listed, go to the suggest a site page and fill out the application there.
By getting your site listed in these directories, you'll increase the number of relevant links pointing to your site, which should propel your listing closer to the top of the major search engine results. That'll drive more traffic to your site -- and hopefully drive up your sales numbers, too!
http://www.mininggold.tk http://www.surveyscout.tk
http://www.moneybank.tk
Posted by Derek Gehl at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Use Podzinger to find quality audio and video content
If you're thinking about adding audio or video content to your blog or web site, there's a cool new audio and video search engine that you should know about. It's called PodZinger and it performs searches on audio and video podcasts, making it easy for you to find multimedia content that's related to your particular industry.
Podcasts can be a great source of FREE audio and video content for your web site or blog. And offering industry-specific multimedia content is an awesome marketing strategy — it adds value to your site and encourages people to return on a regular basis to see what new content you've posted recently.
The only problem is, it can be difficult to find podcasts that are relevant to your target market, or related to the keywords you are actually searching for. The regular search engines — like Google and Yahoo — aren't much help, because they only allow you to search for audio and video files by their title. They don't let you search for specific words that are actually spoken within the audio and video files.
However, PodZinger now allows you to do just that!
PodZinger — which recently received a "Best of the Web" award from Forbes magazine — uses speech-recognition technology to create a text script of audio and video files. This allows you to find specific words located anywhere within a podcast, and jump to the point where those words appear.
With PodZinger, you can now search for podcasts by keyword in the same way that you use Google or Yahoo to search for written information on web sites.
To show you what I mean, here's a screencap of the first result I got when I used PodZinger to search for the keyword phrase "Internet marketing":
As you can see, the search result gives you the name of the podcast series (Six Pixels of Separation — The Podcast), the episode (Episode #6), a brief synopsis of what the podcast is actually about, and links to every mention of your search term. When you click on one of these links, you'll be taken directly to the place where your search term is spoken.
In other words, you don't even need to download a podcast before listening to it. You can play it right from PodZinger's search results page! The embedded player also lets you rewind, fast forward, and pause the podcast, as well as subscribe to its RSS feed.
You can also submit your own podcasts directly to PodZinger to have them indexed in its search results. There's an easy-to-find link that allows you to make submissions right on the homepage. Plus, the PodZinger "spider" scours the Web on a daily basis, adding thousands of new podcasts to its listings every week. PodZinger is already searching over 200,000 podcasts, which makes it one of the biggest podcast directories on the Web!
As the number of podcasts continues to grow, it's becoming even more important for you to make sure your podcasts appear in the top search engine listings. So if you want people to find your podcasts, you should definitely submit them to PodZinger.
With its unique technology that lets users search for spoken words in podcasts, PodZinger has become one of the most popular places to search for podcasts on the Web — which means that if your site is featured high in its listings, you'll soon be seeing a whole lot more downloads coming your way!
Posted by Derek Gehl at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 21, 2006
How a Game of "Tag" Can Direct Swarms of Targeted Traffic to Your Blog
Did you know that by adding a simple word to the end of your blog posts, you can skyrocket them to the top of the search listings on the 'Net's most popular blog community?
It's true! These simple words are called "tags," and they act as labels that help specialized search engines identify the subject matter of your blog posts. These tags also alert the search engines whenever you publish a new post -- so when someone uses one of these search engines to look for blogs related to a certain topic, posts that are tagged with that topic label will appear at the very top of the listings, with the most recently published post appearing first.
So what this means is, if you add certain tags to the end of your posts, you can drive a whole lot more traffic to your blog -- and all this traffic is going to be made up of people who are actually searching for blogs on the topics YOU'RE writing about!
Sounds pretty cool, huh?
Okay, so here's how tags actually work:
After you finish writing a blog post, choose a word or phrase that accurately describes the topic of your post. That word is going to be the "keyword" label for your tag. (For example, if I was going to create a tag for this post, I'd probably label it "Tags.")
You don't have to stop at one tag, though -- you can add as many tags to your blog as you want! (You just have make sure those tag labels are relevant to the content of your post -- people who do a search on those words and click on your blog will be annoyed if your posts have nothing to do with the topic they're looking for. And you DON'T want to annoy your readers -- otherwise, they'll never come back!)
So for this blog, I could also add the following tags: "Derek Gehl," "Internet Marketing," and "Blog Traffic," just to name a few.
Once you've created your list of tag words or phrases, all you have to do is attach a snippet of HTML code to each one, so that the search engines can recognize them as tags. (I'll tell you exactly what code to use in a moment... )
If you're the kind of person who goes cross-eyed at the thought of generating HTML code, don't worry! There are free online tools you can use to create your tags for you, such as the one at Keotag.com
Now, here's the kicker: the HTML code you use to create your tags is going to be different, depending on the search engine you want to "read" them. That's because tags work by actually linking your blog post straight to the search engine's index. (For example, if you go to Keotag.com, you'll see that you can make tags for Technorati, a popular blog community, or Flickr, the 'Net's largest photo blog community, or del.icio.us, a popular online bookmark site.)
Right now, the best place to link your blog tags is Technorati. In case you've never heard of it, Technorati is the Internet's most popular blog community. Currently, Technorati has over 45.3 million blogs in its index -- that's up from 24 million in January, which means it's grown a whopping 88% in just five short months!
And all these web pages are linked together via more than 2.5 billion Technorati tags that allow people to surf from one linked blog to another, or to find blogs related to certain topics by using Technorati's search engine.
This means that if someone does a search on "Internet Marketing" on Technorati's search engine, for example, this blog post should appear at the top of the listings. (Until it gets bumped off the list by more recent posts that are tagged with "Internet Marketing," that is... but in the meantime, I should get a whole lot of extra traffic to my site!)
Not only that, but if any other blogs are also tagged with the keyword label, "Internet Marketing," then they're going to be linked to this blog post as well -- which means that some of their readers might click on the "Internet Marketing" tag at the bottom of their blog post and be sent to mine!
Tagging in Technorati is easy. All you have to do is follow these three simple steps:
# Create your own free account with Technorati.
#
Go to your Account page on the Technorati site and "claim" your blog (in other words, register it) under the "Your Blogs" header.
#
Include Technorati tags in your posts by inserting an HTML link at the bottom of each post. The tag should look like this:
[tagname]
All you have to do is copy the above bit of HTML and add your own "tagname" to it. The tagname is the word or label you want to use for your tag. For example, if I wanted to create a tag for "Derek Gehl," it would look like this:
[Derek Gehl]
Once you've created a new HTML snippet for each of your tags, using a different tagname for each one, you're done! Your blog post should now be indexed with Technorati, so you can take advantage of their HUGE community of blog readers.
If you have a business blog, I highly recommend you start adding Technorati tags to your posts right away. You'll soon find out that driving more readers to your blog is child's play. As in... Tag! You're it!
Technorati tags: Derek Gehl Internet Marketing Traffic Generation Internet Marketing Center Marketing Tips Blogging Tips Tagging
Posted by Derek Gehl at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
June 15, 2006
Harness the power of quality directory listings to drive more targeted traffic to your web site!
Everyone knows that search engines like Google and Yahoo are great way to drive tons of traffic to your site. But I see a lot of online entrepreneurs completely overlooking another incredibly useful source of traffic: online directories.
If you're just getting started online, and you're not sure what an online directory is, don't worry -- it's just an online database of web sites that's compiled and sorted by human editors. In fact, an online directory is similar to a business directory or phone book, in that it arranges its web site listings by category. So, for example, if you're looking for a web site on how to grow tomatoes, you'd probably find it in the category, "Gardening."
Some directories, like DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project), will list your site for free. Others will charge you a listing fee, some of which can be pretty pricey. Yahoo, for example, charges people $299 a year to have their site included in its directory listings. But most paid directories are a lot cheaper than that.
Five years ago, getting listed in a directory was a sure-fire way to increase your traffic and improve your search engine ranking. But directories fell out of fashion when a number of disreputable ones started using questionable payment schemes and dodgy SEO strategies that caused their listings to be dropped from the major search engines. People didn't think they were worth the money -- or the risk.
However, you shouldn't count out online directories just yet! In my experience, they can still play an important part in any serious link-building campaign.
While you should definitely avoid "link farm" directories (they're the ones that sell links to absolutely everyone and have disorganized lists of unrelated links that point off in every direction), there are still some great directories that are worth looking into.
The most important thing to look for in a quality directory is good human editors. Google, in their webmaster guidelines, specifically points to the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ as trustworthy directories. That's because these two have established themselves as having legitimate and critical editorial processes that weed out any unworthy sites that try to get listed with them.
Google views links from DMOZ or Yahoo Directory as votes of trust -- which means that getting listed with them will boost your Google PageRank rating and move your site up the listings.
While Google only really looks at listings in the big directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directory, MSN Search and Yahoo Search value links from smaller directories, as well. If you want to boost your ranking with all the major search engines, try submitting your site to a wide number of directories.
So which ones should you focus on? Here's a short list of directories that screen their listings thoroughly and are highly rated by their users:
*
DMOZ
*
Yahoo Directory
*
Best of the Web
*
MSN bCentral
*
Business.com
*
Gimpsy
*
UncoverTheNet.com
*
lii.org
*
site-sift.com
*
JoeAnt.com
*
WowDirectory.com
To get listed by a directory, just go to the site and sign up -- most directories have some sort of "add URL" or "suggest site" link.
For DMOZ (The Open Directory Project), simply go to their "Suggest URL" page and follow their instructions to submit your site. Every submission to this directory is processed by an unpaid human editor so it will definitely take some time (from two weeks to several months, they say) but on the other hand, it's free.
For paid directories like the Yahoo Directory, the submission process is faster and easier -- they guarantee a response within seven business days -- because of their $299 fee. To get listed, go to the suggest a site page and fill out the application there.
By getting your site listed in these directories, you'll increase the number of relevant links pointing to your site, which should propel your listing closer to the top of the major search engine results. That'll drive more traffic to your site -- and hopefully drive up your sales numbers, too!
http://www.mininggold.tk http://www.surveyscout.tk
http://www.moneybank.tk
Posted by Derek Gehl at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
posted by Ali Reza @ 5:23 AM
0 comments
