Digging your way out of Googles Sandbox

Many have debated it’s existence, but if you’re in business on the web and your site is less than three years old . . . you’ve probably been a victim of it. I’m of course referring to the infamous ‘Sandbox’. Google’s way of say, “I won’t trust you until I can see you are trusted by your traffic . . . but of course you don’t have any traffic because Google doesn’t trust you. Ahrrg!

Andy Hagans of the Link Building Blog gives us the Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 Revealed. The self proclaimed "Organic-Is-My-Middle-Name" Hagans gives practical advice to help you dig (or maybe Digg) you’re way out of the Sandbox.

Andy writes: “The sandbox is no longer the pink elephant in the room. As webmasters, together we've cried about it, argued about it, and fretted over it. We've gone through the emotional steps, too; first there was grief (waah waah my site won't rank), then bargaining (I promise I won't spam if you un-sandbox me), anger (darn it, greedy Google just wants me to spend more at AdWords!), and finally, acceptance (OK, how do I beat it?).”

Andy gives information to first decide if you're in the box and ideas of why you're there and then gives suggestions of ways to get out of the box. His suggestions are complete with linking strategies to help you gain the trust of Google. Great information to have.

Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start a Work at Home Business

Improve your blogs performance - Increase Traffic

For those of us who are dependant on the traffic we are able to generate for our blogs, we have “3 Ways to Immediately Increase Search Engine Traffic”. And to add further, Nick Wilson of Performancing Blog, gives us The Art of Linkbaiting.

Nick cuts to the chase on Linkbaiting and gives us the answer to what we have all wondered in the past . . . how do you get someone to link to you if you’re a new blog. He writes; Ever found it hard to get other bloggers to link to a new blog? Sure you have, it's not easy sometimes. Even established blogs need to expand their traffic and influence on a regular basis, and linkbaiting is one way to do it. It's not without potential perils, but the time honored tradition of being contrary, in order to get attention is well proved, and done right, it's a killer way to break into a new area. There are also safer ways of linkbaiting, they're just less fun :)
In order to bait a link, you need a hook. Hooks come in variety of flavors, some of the more popular would include:

• News Hook
• Contrary Hook
• Attack Hook
• Resource Hook
• Humour Hook

And then he proceeds to show examples of each which are very enlightening. If you’re planning on earning on your own blog, you don’t want to miss this one. Performancing Blog is dedicated to helping bloggers succeed; great site.

You may also want to check out the Copyblogger post; 'How to Attract Links'. Great reading. Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start a Work at Home Business

Traffic – Give me Traffic . . .

The bane of every online marketer is the need for traffic. You can have the perfect site and sell the perfect product at an unbelievably low price and it won’t matter unless you have traffic. And unfortunately organic traffic is one of the hardest things to get.

In fact to stay in business, at least in the beginning, you almost have to resort to some form of advertising. And paid advertising can cut into profits pretty darn quick if you’re not extremely careful.

Kim Roach of 'UnleashTheTrafic.com’ wrote this week about Untapped Advertising Hot Spots. With an expected 20 Billion in online advertising next year (yes that’s a ‘B’ – Billion) every affiliate marketer should be able to find advertising venues that fall within their budget. She explores 4 of the most lucrative online advertising spots that are currently available to you. They include CPA programs, blog ads, comparison shopping engines, and the ISEDN.

Hopefully this will give you some advertising ideas that extend past the Pay-Per-Click we all seem to rely on. Check out the Traffic page on www.EarnOnYourComputer.com for more ways to increase your traffic.

Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start a business from home!

Spammer in the Slammer – and – Human Phone Support

Spammers and Customer Service Reps . . . wouldn’t you know it, we seem to have an abundance of the first and a shortage of the second. Though these two items are not directly related to Internet Marketing at first blush, they both serve to rob marketers of their time. Hopefully these two items will serve to help the situation.

• Lisa Barone posted on Bruce Clay, Inc.’s Blog, that Jeremy Jaynes, one of the worst spammer in the world, received 9 Years for his nefarious deeds. (Only illegal because he exceeded an average of 10,000 unsolicited e-mails sent per day; doesn’t that seem a tad high or is it just me?)
  
  I’d like to believe this might slow the flow, but I’m not holding my breath. It looks as though tighter controls would be in order just for starters. Click the link to look at the full article. Of course the spam filters of most e-mail service providers have to be cutting into their profits. Right? We can always hope.
  

• Next, is there anything more annoying than the endless phone trees you find yourself on when you call customer service departments? Stephen J. Dubner of Authors’ Blog gives us
  Things to Do in Customer-Service Hell. If phone trees were as interactive as the talking computer on Star Trek – and don’t forget the voice of Majel Barret – perhaps we wouldn’t mind it so much. But until that happens, visit GetHuman database before you dial that CS number to see if they have any suggestions to help you ‘get a human’.

Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start your own home business!

Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.

To write a blog that others want to read, you have to read blogs . . . lots of blogs. This will not only help you stay current on the issues and provide topics for your own blog but will also help you find that all important scoop. And while the following could not be classified as a scoop, it is good advice.

Here's a great post by Guy Kawasaki (he posted it in April . . . I'm behind in my reading to say the very least). In his post The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog he points out the interesting honor system in blogging. "Suppose Blogger A finds an obscure article and posts it to his blog. Blogger B reads about it on Blogger A's blog and links to it. However Blogger B doesn't link only to the article; she also links to Blogger A to give him credit for finding the article.

"This means that if you hustle and scoop stuff, other bloggers will link to you. For example, when I found and publicized the Stanford Social Innovation Review article by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, many other bloggers linked to my blog, not just the article itself. I was surprised by this. Bottom line: if you want lots of people to link to you, read voraciously and find cool stuff first. As a Japanese philosopher once said, "Eat like a bird, and poop like an elephant.""

To read the entire post on Evangelizing your Blog follow the link. Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start a Business from Home

Going for the 'Long Tail'

If you’ve been around the net for very long you’ve heard the expression ‘Long Tail’ being bandied about and wondered what it was and why everyone seemed to be going for it. For a great explanation of ‘Long Tail’ you may want to follow the link.

Savvy Internet Marketers will want to chase the ‘Long Tail’ and capture those shoppers. To do this there are several simple things we can do.

• First, look at each of the pages on your site with a critical eye and evaluate the buyers as they arrive at your site. Exactly what are they looking for and what would have been the best and most specific terms they could have used in their search to arrive at the perfect site (yours of course).



• Next, add these terms to your ‘Meta Keyword’ and also optimize your page for those terms. Visitors using highly descriptive search terms to arrive at your site are more likely to buy than the casual surfer using broader terms.



• Last but not least, provide links, in and out of that page using those same terms as anchor text. This will further optimize that page for those keyphrases.

Rest assured someone is going to capture the profits from those buyers – wouldn’t you much rather it be you?

Until next time . . .

All the best,
Joyce
Start a business from home !