If you are looking to learn how to become a guest blogger on other blogs, then you know that it is something that will truly help with your internet marketing goals.

Being able to be a guest blog is simply just making a post on someone else’s blog and basically reaching out to his or her readers, this will drag some traffic back to your site.

This is incredibly helpful because you are able to network to more people.

In order to guest blog, all you really need to do is make connections. Networking is the one thing that will really help you out when it comes to internet marketing.

Though you may not be an intense blogger, this is a great way to get to know more people and these are connections that can prove to be valuable in the future.

It is a good idea to choose bloggers that have more readers than you. Readers that might like your style of writing. It will not make sense for you to guest blog for a topic that you know nothing about.

Being able to guest blog has many benefits but the main one is getting backlinks. Depending on how big the bloggers website is, it can be a great way to get more exposure and to really gain more readers.

A lot of bloggers will admit that they get most of their followers from guest blogging and so you should take the opportunity every time it comes.

Though you might think it is a little scary to blog on another person’s site, it is actually very fun and it is something that most bloggers do. You can then return the favor and have that blogger guest blog on your site as well.

This is a great way to make friends and to explore more about the blogging world.

If you have any further questions please contact me at rodney@rm2project.com or call our free toll number 1 800 301 5420

Google’s Penguin Update has been a hot topic in the SEO world for around three weeks now. With widespread reports of ranking penalties and false positives, Google’s Matt Cutts has chimed in on the debate labelling the Penguin Update a success.

“It’s been a success from our standpoint”, Cutts said.

When asked about the issues of false positives (people who feel they’ve been unfairly hit by Penguin when they weren’t doing any spam) Matt went on to clarify,

“We’ve seen a few cases where we might want to investigate more, but this change hasn’t had the same impact as Panda or Florida,”

“No algorithm is perfect. While we’d like to achieve perfection, our litmus test is, ‘Do things get better than before?’”

Matt also went on to clarify that penguin was designed to be quite precise, only acting against pages where there was a high confidence of spam being involved.

So what should you do if you were hit?

Google have said that those hit by the penguin update will need to make changes to their website or link profile in order to recover.

As we’ve mentioned before, bad linking practises seem to be a major cause of this penalty. Some of the things to look out for include,

1. Paid text links using exact match anchor text: For companies that want to rank for a certain term (such as “red widgets”) one way to accomplish this is by buying links from other websites with that exact matching anchor text. This is against Google’s guidelines, as Google would consider this a paid link that exists solely to manipulate PageRank, rather than to provide any value to visitors.
2. Comment spam: Two things proved problematic for websites trying to unnaturally rank for specific keywords: signatures in comments that contained exact match anchor text; and people who used a spammy user name (e.g., Best India SEO Company) as exact match text.
3. Guest posts on questionable sites: Although guest posts are a legitimate way to earn links to your site, sites dinged by the Penguin had links pointing to their website from sites filled with low-quality articles where the focus was on the anchor text rather than the content.
4. Article marketing sites: Thin content featuring links with exact match anchor text were another common factor among affected sites.
5. Links from dangerous sites: Do you have inbound links from sites that have been flagged for malware, numerous pop-ups, or other spammy issues? This was another factor that caused websites to lose their Google rankings, so links to and from web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” are a danger.

If you’re looking to clean up your link profile one technique you can try is called link pruning. This basically involves identifying poor incoming links to your website and taking steps to remove them.

Here is a basic outline of the steps to take,

1. Identify: You need to gather a comprehensive backlink profile for the site in question. There are several tools available that would accomplish this, including Google Webmaster Tools Backlinks Report, Majestic SEO Site Explorer and SEOmoz Open Site Explorer.
2. Investigate: Go down the list of backlinks to find the rotten ones. It’s a time intensive step that requires you navigate to each link to evaluate its quality. After a while you may start to get a sense of what’s bad by the URL of the linking page alone. If you opt for using Majestic SEO, you have the benefit of their proprietary ACRank, a quality score that you can use to judge link value.
3. Send Requests: Create a template email requesting link removal that you’ll send to the webmasters in charge of the links identified as low quality. The template should candidly explain that you are an SEO or site owner trying to recover from a Google penalty and would he or she please remove the following links. List the URLs where the links can be found, the URL on your site they point to, the anchor text ─ all the info needed to easily find the link you’re requesting removed. To send the request, you may find contact info on the site, you may need to do a whois search, and you may need to do some sleuthing to get names and email addresses.
4. Follow Up and Repeat: Expect to receive four types of responses to your requests:● Remove link and tell you.
   ● Remove link and not tell you.
   ● Not reply or do anything.
   ● Will remove the link if you pay them. 

   In the case of the first, verify by going to the page where the link was and if the link was removed, check it off the list. If you haven’t gotten any response back from a contact in 2 weeks, check to see if the link has been removed. It may or may not. If it’s been removed, cross it off the list. If it hasn’t been removed, send a follow-up request.The process of link pruning requires multiple cycles. Each successive cycle will see more links removed. If you run across a webmaster requesting payment for link removal, let’s just say there’s a search engine who will be very interested to hear about this.

5. Communicate with Google: Throughout this process you must keep detailed records of your actions. A spreadsheet with columns for the linking URL, the contact name, the contact email, the date a request was sent, and responses or actions taken by the linking site. In the end you will not be able to extract all dubious links from the site but you will want to be able to show you’ve done everything in your power to extract manipulative links from your backlink profile.

Have you been impacted by Penguin? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Read Original Story at INeedHits.com

We’ve written many times about the does and don’t of creating a landing page that will convert.

But a recent article from the team at Kiss Metrics caught my attention when it outlined 11 elements of a page that are often overlooked. It certainly made me look twice at the most popular pages on our own site to see if we are overlooking these particular elements ourselves. The good news for us is that we’re not, but for most website owners you could be killing your conversion by simply glossing over these elements.

I have outlined below the 5 elements that I believe are most important, however you can read the full article here.

1 – Clear, Differentiated Pricing Information
Have you ever checked out a product online and been unsure what the difference between the Silver and Gold plans were? Did Pro seem a little too much like Basic? The most effective methods can be boiled down to a simple philosophy – focus on the benefits, instead of features, and highlight the differences. The best pricing tables allow you to quickly ascertain the value you’ll personally get out of each option, and discern the differences between each.

2 – Customer Confidence
There are many ways to build this trust though, and almost all are fairly easy to implement. For instance, if you use an SSL certificate to secure your transactions (and you really, really should be if you’re processing credit card info), show it! Many consumers know to check for secure web pages when proceeding with a purchase, so they’ll be looking for that all-important padlock icon.

3 – Unconventional Social Proof
Incorporating social proof into your product pages is a way to complement and reinforce the positive influences on your visitors for a given product. It can take many forms, ranging from customer testimonials, to star ratings, to simply exposing the number of units of that particular product left in your inventory.

4 – A Clear Next Step
Too many product pages clutter up their pages with excessive calls to action. View customer photos, view pricing, view our knowledgebase, get customer support, talk to a representative, read reviews. Without good design, these calls to action all blend into a confusing mess, and make your user feel like they’ve just been blindfolded and spun around.

Typical methods for designing a good call to action include using high-contrast buttons, treatments or callouts that are unique to the overall design of the page, as well as giving the actionable elements plenty of breathing room to make them stand out.

5 – Wayfinding
How many steps lie between your product page, and your transaction confirmation page? If you don’t know, then it’s probably too many. A convoluted and laborious funnel is a sure-fire way to kill conversion.

If the customer is on the checkout page, then get them to their final purchase as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don’t make their purchasing effort seem like an arduous journey that can leave them second guessing their purchasing decision along the way.

Are your product pages missing some of these elements? If so, it might pay to give it a bit of an overhaul, especially if it means more potential sales.

Read Original Story at INeedHits.com

Internet marketing is all about choosing a niche and becoming an authority in your chosen niche. However, you will need to first choose a niche that you are very passionate about.

Once you are able to choose a niche that you can truly write about, then here are some things that you should focus on.

1. Share something different but valuable

Most blogs will often have the same content and in order to really standout, you must give them something different every time.

You have to somehow provide people with information that they do not usually see or hear and this will help you build your authority within your niche online.

2. Prove you know what you are talking about

You have to somehow prove to the readers that you are a master with what you are talking about. Whether it is by telling them about your background or accomplishments throughout your experience, it is important that you find a way to make them trust you.

Though this can be tough, it is almost essential that you try and convince them that you know what you are talking about.

3. Be creative

Though the content that you are delivering may be seen in other areas, you can still be creative with the way you deliver it.

There are plenty of ways to be able to write a blog post and so you will need to find a way to share it without sounding repetitive.

If you are serious about being able to become an authority in your niche, you will simply need to standout.

Most people will simply just repeat what everyone else says and this is not the best way to become an authority.

With just a little patience and hard work, you will be able to truly become an authority and finally make your presence known on the internet.

If you have any further questions please contact me at rodney@rm2project.com or call our free toll number 1 800 301 5420

Each year, the WordPress core development team meets in person for a week to work together and discuss the vision for WordPress in the coming year. As annual events go, it’s easily my favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I love attending WordCamps and local WordPress meetups (which are awesome and you should try to attend if you are able), but at the core team meetup, the focus on working together and getting things done is unique, as is the experience of every person in the room being so highly qualified. This year, instead of just planning a core team meetup, I’m aiming a little higher and shooting for a full-on contributor/community summit.

Core code isn’t the only way to contribute to the WordPress project. We have an active theme review team, support forum volunteers, people writing documentation, plugin managers, community event organizers, translators, and more. The teams have been siloed for too long, so we’ve recently begun the process of bringing them together by having teams elect representatives to facilitate more communication between the contributor groups. These reps will form the nucleus of the contributor summit now being planned for a long weekend at the end of October in Tybee Island, GA. This is completely different from a WordCamp. It will be a combination of co-working, unconference, and discussions among the project leaders, and participation will be by invitation.

In addition to bringing together the active contributor team reps to work together, I think it’s important to include community members who don’t fall into that category (at least not yet!). Successful WordPress-based business, authors of popular plugins and themes, and people using WordPress in unexpected but intriguing ways should have a place at the table, too. That said, part of the magic of the core team meetup is the small size; it allows every voice not only to be heard, but to engage. Since this is my first attempt at bringing together so many groups and points of view, I want to try and keep it small enough to retain that personal atmosphere while at the same time ensuring that the best possible mix of people and businesses in the WordPress ecosystem is represented. This is where you come in!

Taking a cue from events with limited availability like AdaCamp (attendance) and the jQuery conference (speaker roster), I want you to nominate people and/or WordPress-based businesses to participate in the summit. Yes, you can nominate yourself.* You can nominate up to 10 additional people — be prepared to provide URLs and the reason you think they should participate. You can also nominate up to 10 WordPress-based businesses without naming individual people, so if there’s a theme or hosting company (for example) that you think should be there, you don’t need to go looking for employee names. This nomination process will hopefully ensure that we don’t overlook someone who is making a difference in our community when it comes time to issue invitations.

Nominations will be open for a week, after which the survey will be closed and the process of analyzing the results** will begin. The nominations process will lead to invitations in June, confirmations in July, planning in August and September, and the summit itself in October. Hopefully we can stream and/or record some of the activity to share online at WordPress.tv. Additional invitations may be extended up until the event if there are people/businesses that become more active in the community. If you’re thinking to yourself that maybe now’s the perfect time to start contributing time to the WordPress project, good thinking! In the meantime, if you want to weigh in, fill in the community summit nomination form. Thanks, and wish us luck!

* Nominating yourself: Do nominate yourself if you fall into one of the categories described in the post above, or if you believe that you have a unique point of view. Please do not nominate yourself if you just think it would be cool to hang out with this group. This is a working event, and everyone is expected to bring something special to the table.

** I (and/or a helpful community volunteer) will sift through the nominations and compile a shortlist of the most-nominated people/businesses and the most intriguing underdogs. This list will be reviewed by the summit planning committee (made up of team reps) to create the invitation list.

View Original Post on WordPress.com

If you have plenty knowledge on the topic of affiliate marketing and online SEO, then you can actually make quite a lot of money online offering these services to local offline businesses.

These businesses know about the power of being online, and if you can help them by only charging a few thousand dollars, they’ll be grateful because they know how it’s even more expensive to advertise offline.

5 services you can sell to offline business

1. Facebook fan pages

Provide for them Facebook Fan Pages and get people to “like’ their page. Many businesses would pay easy money just to get their very own Facebook fan page put up, so if you know how this works, then you should consider doing this and make some extra cash.

2. SEO

If you know how to rank websites for low competition keywords, then you should really consider offering SEO services. I’m sure you understand SEO just a little, and if you do, you can offer this service to offline customers.

3. Article writing

Provide articles to offline business owners who already have websites. You can provide for them content or give them advice to how upgrade their website. If they want, you can just write articles to Ezine Articles while providing their URL at the bottom.

4. Site building

You can build a site for them and you can talk about their business. You can just do the SEO for them if you want, but you’ll earn more when you do the both of this together.

5. Packages

If you want to make the ultimate income, why not create a package for them to use where you offer site building, article writing, SEO, and their very own social media presence all in one offer.

This will surely make them jump on right away no matter how much you decide to make them pay.

Offline businesses are really in need of people like you. They want to make their business known online, and you can help them by offering these basic skills that you already possess.

If you have any further questions please contact me at rodney@rm2project.com or call our free toll number 1 800 301 5420

Google has recently announced a significant change to AdWords.

Advertisements on AdWords will now be limited to thirty days. Before this announcement, advertisements could stay on a site for an indefinite amount of time. As the recent Panda and Penguin updates suggest, Google is making a strong push to get rid of spam and to encourage fresh and unique pages. It is only logical to assume that fresh advertisements would be next; fresh advertisements that reflect the fresh content on a page.

After the thirty-day period, AdWords will keep and optimize the best performing advertisements. Advertisements that are doing well are ones with high conversion percentages and ones that are receiving the most clicks.

According to the official announcement on the Google AdWords blog “Every time a creative is enable or edited, the ads in that ad group will rotate more evenly for a new period of thirty days.” Advertisements that are already on a website will automatically auto-optimize.

The new ad rotation is seen by Google as “a preference that determines which ad in your ad group should show (when you have multiple ads).” However, the new update does give advertisers some control. For instance, they can request to have their best performing advertisements appear more. They can also request that the advertisements be distributed more evenly.

AdWords users will also be able to control the settings. They will be able to choose one of the three advanced settings:

• Optimize for Clicks: this is the default setting of the rotation. This setting bases advertisements off of previously successful clickthrough rates (CTRs).
• Optimize for Conversions: Instead of relying on clicks, this setting factors in advertisements that will yield the most purchases and opt-ins.
• Rotate evenly: setting is performance-blind; it will showcase each advertisement equally.

The goals of this new update are supposed to benefit the consumer, advertisers and to optimize AdWords itself. The first goal of this change is that website readers will get to see more relevant advertisements. The second goal is that websites will get more clicks. The final goal is that it will improve the functionality of AdWords.

However, this announcement has not been met with much enthusiasm. Many advertisers do not appreciate the loss of control over the length of time that their advertisements will be available; other advertisers call the change a waste of time.

What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Read Original Story at INeedHits.com

In order to succeed in life, whether it be in business, relationships or sports, you will need to have the right mindset.

Most people simply do not know how powerful their minds are and how it can be the determining factor behind their success.

A lot of people have failed simply because their minds were never in the right place.

Here are 5 success points you should have to be able to really succeed.

1. Determination

Successful people are simply more determined than those that are not. This is a point that is seen in every person that is successful in their given field.

2. Relaxed Despite Adversity

If you are a business owner, you have most likely dealt with a lot of issues. The way that you deal with this adversity will shape who you are as a person and as a businessman.

If you are able to stay relaxed despite adversity, you will be able to become more successful.

3. Knowledge

Smart people are simply smarter but this is not talking about grades in college. Knowledge with everyday things and common sense is very important and you will need to understand just how important it is to have a lot of knowledge.

4. Invest

Successful people will not be afraid to invest in themselves. Whether it is for training, practicing or something that will help with their success, successful people will simply invest in their success.

5. No fear of failure

If you have no fear of failure, then you will be able to see success clearer. Once you are able to rid your mind from the fear of failure, you will be able to be more successful.

These are just some of the traits that successful people have but you can certainly have them as well. Just as long as you are patient and you try to incorporate these traits, you will be able to succeed in any aspect of life.

If you have any further questions please contact me at rodney@rm2project.com or call our free toll number 1 800 301 5420

Here’s something new from Yahoo: a centralized location where business owners can get quick overviews of the effectiveness of their marketing strategies.

Dubbed The Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard, it’s a one-stop-shop for small businesses to track their marketing and includes the following features:

• Reputation Tracker: This feature scans over 8000 sites across the web to see what customers are saying about a business. Since social media and social proof are fundamental to a marketing plan, the tool pays close attention to Facebook and Twitter. The tool looks at online reviews, customer ratings and mentions.

 

• Local Visibility: Gives a small business owner a snapshot of where and how a brand appears in search engines. This allows a business owner to correct any errors. Incorrect information can deter and confuse potential customers. The tool can also find new places to add listing information about a business.

 

• Site Traffic: Using tools, like Google Analytics, this feature reports the number of visits to a company’s website, the number of page views and the average time a customer spends on a website. The site traffic feature simultaneously compares data from the previous week while also providing a breakdown of the types of traffic including direct traffic, traffic generated from search engines and traffic from referring sites.

 

• Campaigns: Gives an overview of a brand’s email marketing, SEO and efforts through a partnership with ConstantContact and Orange Soda. The tool highlights the total conversions that occur during a one-week period. This tool also conveniently breaks down conversion distribution by campaign types. It also gives you new marketing opportunities that you may not considered before. This user-friendly feature uses pie charts, bar graphs and other graphics to guide business owners.

 

Best of all, the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard is free and pretty easy to use, although some of the features are only available under the paid version. You will no longer have to waste money and time in marketing strategies that are not producing results.

It’s currently only offered to US small businesses, but fingers crossed this spreads world-wide soon. You can sign-up for the dashboard here.

Read Original Story at INeedHits.com

No matter how good you are at your craft, there really is nothing like being able to have a mentor. Someone that is there for you anytime when you are in need of advice on your work.

Most business owners and successful online entrepreneurs will admit that a mentor was a big part of their success.

A lot of people feel like they can do everything on their own and this is something that can lead to a lot of problems.

If you are serious about succeeding in life, you will need to know the importance of having a mentor.

There really is nothing like having someone tell you that what you are doing is wrong.

A lot of people go through life without having an idea as to what they are doing and this is why it’s important to have someone guide you.

Having an advisor will take you through the steps and let you know if you make a mistake. A mentor is someone that more experience and someone that you can trust.

Remember that there are mistakes that you can commit without you ever knowing about it and so that you will need to find the right mentor.

In order to succeed, you will need to make sure that you find the right advisor. However, finding one can be one of the toughest things to do.

Though you might associate a “mentor” as someone that is older than you, a good idea is to simply just worry about their experience and knowledge.

The person does not need to be older but someone that can truly guide you the right way. Whether it is your boss, teacher, coach or even a family member, it is important that you choose one correctly.

If you are serious about succeeding and being able to avoid mistakes with your business or life in general, it is crucial that you find the best mentor possible.

If you have any further questions please contact me at rodney@rm2project.com or call our free toll number 1 800 301 5420