Michael Campbell has released the latest issue of ‘Internet Marketing Secrets’. The featured article is titled “Google’s Advice to Small Business”. [Newsletter]


Michael Campbell has released the latest issue of:

Internet Marketing Secrets

Traffic Generation Podcast Part 3

This is the final installment of the three part series on generating traffic for your websites and blogs. In this edition I bring you interviews with keyword research guru Jim Morris, long tail marketing expert Dave Tropeano, and product creation specialist Dr. Andy Williams.

Jim Morris is owner of the popular Nichebot keyword research service. He is also the cofounder of NicheRockets, a private site that offers 5 PLR ebooks each and every month, that you can sell however you like, and keep all the profits.

Nichebot: http://www.cdzn.com/nbt

NicheRockets: http://www.cdzn.com/nr

Dave Tropeano is the author of the LongTailCash System which focuses on long tail keywords and buying phrases that people search for, when they are in a buying frame of mind. When it comes to generating traffic and converting it into sales, Dave is one of the best in the business.

LongTailCash: http://www.cdzn.com/ltc

Andy Williams is a product creation specialist and newsletter author with a doctorate degree in education. Dr. Williams has produced all sorts of software, from web site builders to keyword analyzers, and he is one of the most highly respected marketers on the internet today.

Keyword Results Analyzer: http://www.cdzn.com/kra

Find out how Jim turns the attendees at marketing seminars into future JV partners. You’ll get details on how Dave uses interstitials to generate revenue from a wide variety of traffic. And Dr. Andy Williams reveals how easy it is to get top search engine rankings.

These marketing experts share inside tips that you won’t find anywhere else… for any price. So if you want more traffic, be sure to listen to this podcast and the other ones in this series several times. And don’t forget to bring your journal along, because you’ll definitely want to be taking notes during the show.

Subscribe with iTunes: http://www.cdzn.com/it

Download the Podcasts: http://ims.libsyn.com

Google’s Advice to Small Business

A friend of mine recently interviewed Matt Cutts, a senior Google engineer, who’s also the head of their anti-spam team. In the interview he offered some advice for small businesses.

1) Start a blog to give your company a voice. You have a unique personality and a blog is a great way to get heard.

Don’t worry about negative comments, as you can always moderate those or filter them out, allowing only constructive comments to be posted.

It’s important to understand the benefits that blogs have in terms of creating user generated content and the value of this content to search engines.

2) Definitely use videos. If you are creating a video this is a pretty simple process with great results.

All you really need to start with is a tripod, a camera, and a room. Then you quickly record it and put it on YouTube. There is very little cost and it’s very simple to start out.

So there you have it, directly from the most widely known talking Google head… start blogging and use video. That combo will give you the most exposure and bang-for-the-buck online.

I couldn’t agree more. Start a blog (more on this later) and allow people to comment on your posts. That will literally force the search engines to come back and spider the new user generated content.

The video can be as simple as “show and tell” what you have. Think of it this way… if a picture is worth a thousand words, a four minute video has gotta be worth millions.

When you upload the video to YouTube, all you need to do, is link to the video from your blog, and you won’t pay a dime for hosting it, even if it’s watched a bazillion times.

If you’d like to get the full 20 minute interview with Matt Cutts, click over to MilestoneInternet.com and go to their blog. But before you do, while you’re on the home page, be sure to subscribe to the Milestone Internet Marketing Newsletter.

SEO & Marketing: http://www.milestoneinternet.com

Milestone’s SEO and marketing advice are top notch, not just for the hotel and accommodation industry, but for anyone serious about marketing online. I highly recommend their newsletter and consider it a “must read” for anyone wanting to grow their business presence online.

Creating the Best Video Quality

I bought an Apple TV shortly after they came out. It gives a lot of entertainment options, like streaming photo albums, movie trailers and YouTube videos on the big screen TV in the living room.

The only downside is, if you wanted to watch podcasts, you had to download them to iTunes, and then stream them to the Apple TV. With the most recent upgrade, being tethered to iTunes is a thing of the past. So is having to burn all your favorite podcasts to DVD, to keep lots of room on your hard drive.

Now you can access any podcast in the Apple library, directly from Apple TV, without even needing iTunes installed on your computer. You can also buy TV shows or rent movies. It’s finally showing the promise of its full potential.

But the message in all this – for anyone creating video – are the new encoding standards for the best possible video quality, while still maintain compatibility with smaller devices.

According to Apple, “If you encode your video podcast at 320×240, we strongly encourage you to increase the resolution to 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files).”

“When encoded well, video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still play on iPhone and video-compatible iPods. To ensure compatibility, we recommend that you encode using QuickTime’s Movie to iPod preset. (Which results in H.264 for video and AAC audio.)”

“When you perform the final encode on your video, enable fast starting. Most recent versions of QuickTime enable this setting automatically. But it’s easy to undo the setting by making changes to the file after the encode. If you do make a change after the encode, be sure to “Save As” again.”

“Apple TV displays a large version of the podcast art. It’s the file referenced in the tag. We recommend that you use a 600×600 square JPG or PNG file.”

After creating dozens of videos with a myriad of software, my experiments revealed that the highest quality video for Mac, PC, iPods and online services, does indeed come from using QuickTime Pro and H.264 compression.

QT Pro is very inexpensive at only thirty dollars. It works with Mac and Windows. It offers basic recording and editing. And has that magical one click export to iPod feature.

It’s really simple. Once your video is ready for distribution choose “Export to iPod” and you’ll get a perfectly compatible iPod / iTunes / Apple TV friendly file, every single time.

(A quick note for those who moan and groan about using QuickTime. The video (H.264) it exports, is a standard MPEG-4 format, not a proprietary Apple format. And yes, you could use other software to export your files, but there’s no guarantee they’d be playable on a video iPod. So it’s a good idea to buy an iPod Nano to proof your work.)

Here’s an FYI, direct from the Apple site, “To ensure that different products that use MPEG-4 each implement the standard in the same way, Apple, together with Cisco, IBM, Kasenna, Philips and Sun Microsystems, formed the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA). Other participants include AOL Time Warner, Dolby Laboratories, Hitachi, HP, Fujitsu and 20 other companies. The ISMA defines profiles that companies implement to ensure interoperability.”

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/mpeg4/

So if you’re using Real Media, WMV, AVI or some goofy proprietary format, you might consider switching to MP4, if video quality is important, and you want it to look good on everything from iPods to TVs.

Oh… and what does YouTube.com want? According to their FAQ; What’s the best format to upload for high quality?

YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats such as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG. Export your videos in the highest quality setting available in your editing software. Generally, we recommend MPEG4 format.

So if you’re looking for the highest quality video, that works on everything from TVs to iPods, now you know what to do.

Don’t Squeeze Your Prospects

Marketers constantly ask me how I feel about squeeze pages. In a nutshell… they don’t work any more.

There was a time – before the CanSpam act – when single signups – without any sort of confirmation process – ruled the world. You could squeeze the name and addy out of a prospect before you’d let them see your sales page.

That tactic is long dead my friends. All you are doing is aggravating your prospects.

These days, double confirmation, or confirmed subscriptions are mandatory. The single sign up is long dead. To even consider using one in this day and age is dangerous, if you want to write a newsletter, or maintain any sort of email relationship with your customers.

In my experiments, giving readers access to my entire site and letting them read backissues, has given me a 57% signup ratio. That means an unprecedented 57% of all unique visitors subscribe to my newsletter, even through there is a confirmation process in place.

Having a squeeze page – before allowing visitors access to anything else on the site – resulted in a pitiful 13% signup ratio.

(I also tested a single signup without a confirmation. And guess what? Over 95% of the addys were total garbage like; nobody, mickey mouse, asdf and other nonsense. They just wanted to see what was lurking on the other side of the squeeze page.)

So the moral of the story and six months of testing? A little candor goes a long way. That it’s better to build a high value readership based on trust, rather than trying to trick or squeeze a prospect.

You must give something of value first. Then and only then, will you get the kind of readership that builds into a long-term relationship.

SEO Blogging Software

Since I mentioned my strategy for Jiggling the Web and described how I can get top search engine rankings in just 24 hours, the questions on how I do it, and what blogging software I use, have been virtually non stop. I am working on a special report and will be releasing it in my “soon to be announced” private site, but am willing to share a little about the blogging software I use for SEO.

I looked at most of the blogging software out there and finally decided on WordPress. It is without a doubt, the most search engine friendly blogging software according to my tests.

Now as a disclaimer, you can use whatever blogging software you choose. But whatever you do, don’t rely on using some third party service to host your blog, or you run the risk of getting shut off without notice. You must host your own blog.

Ok… back to the story. You can use WordPress as your content management system instead of using an HTML editor. WordPress has the ability to make static web pages or blog posts in the writing mode.

One of the better tutorials on how to use WordPress for setting up static sites – that are well themed – is a bonus called “WordPress Blueprint” which is included with the purchase of LongTailCash. It tells you exactly how to use WordPress to build strategic long tail revenue sites around product names and model numbers.

Get LongTailCash: http://www.cdzn.com/ltc

The real SEO benefit in using WordPress as your blogging software, is the built-in syndicated RSS feed. It also has the ability to ping the search engines and blogosphere with each new post. With all techno jargon aside, it means telling the search engines to come and spider your blog with each and every new post you make.

Fact of the matter is, my research shows that blogs – even new ones – tend to get spidered within two to five hours of posting. (No wonder Matt Cutts recommends blogging.) Adding a new web page to a normal website, may take up to seven days to get spidered, even with two decently ranked PR4 pages pointing at it.

Moral of the story, I don’t do “static” websites anymore. Every new site I create now is a Semiologic driven WordPress blog. If you haven’t heard of Semiologic, it’s the perfect SEO tool for WordPress.

Once you have Semiologic, you can use it on unlimited sites. It automatically creates search engine friendly page titles, meta tags, links, urls, categories and tags. Plus it adds all sorts of SEO related plugins for your blog.

Last I checked – by default – WordPress installs only 2 plugins… sheesh! Semiologic installs a tried and trusted 63.

I really like the plugins that prevent blog comment spam. But especially useful are the plugins for spreading the word to social bookmarking sites, social news sites, and RSS subscription services.

Get Semiologic Pro: http://www.cdzn.com/sp

You can use Fantastico Deluxe in the control panel (CPanel) of your hosting account to install WordPress with one click. (The Semiologic dudes have really good install instructions.) Then in the future, any time you need to update WordPress, Semiologic can do it automatically with the click of a button.

Semiologic is one of the best investments that I’ve ever made, and it’s on a VERY short list of tools that I can’t work without. When combined with WordPress it’s the best SEO blogging software, and the secret to my top rankings, every time I Jiggle the Web.

That’s it for this issue my friend. Thank you for reading. We’ll chat again soon. Until then, here’s wishing you all the best for online success.

Michael Campbell

P.S.

You can get even more FAQs, important news and helpful articles on the Internet Marketing Secrets (IMS) Blog.

Subscribe Here: http://www.InternetMarketingSecrets.com

IMS Blog ==> http://homepage.mac.com/dmcorp/index.html
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The information contained in this newsletter is the opinion of the author based on his personal observations and years of experience. Neither the author or publisher assume any liability whatsoever for the use of or inability to use any or all of the information contained in this publication. Use this information at your own risk.

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Michael Campbell

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*IMNewswatch would like to thank Michael Campbell for granting permission to reprint the latest newsletter.

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