Create a Viral Marketing Strategy to Drive Traffic to Your Website
By Donna Gunter Platinum Quality Author
Viral marketing can best be described as a marketing campaign that permits you to reach a large number of people quickly online, much in the same way a human cold virus might spread throughout an office complex. The online equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing permits people to pass along marketing material to friends, customers, and colleagues so that the marketing campaign catches on and spreads like wildfire. Because many online distribution channels are free or low cost, viral marketing is possibly the most cost-effective Internet marketing technique out there. Once you've launched your viral marketing campaign, it has the capability grow and spread automatically for years.
With a well-thought out and implemented viral marketing campaign, you can:
--increase targeted traffic to your site
--build brand recognition
--increase your link popularity
--collect contact information from targeted prospects
Two of the most common viral marketing strategies I've seen implemented are viral movies and viral ebooks. Movies can be quite costly to produce, but with the increasing popularity of video viewing sites like YouTube, your ROI (return on investment) may be the highest from this form of viral marketing. TheTimeMovie.com was the movie that introduced me to the concept of video viral marketing. It's short, compelling, and evokes an emotional response from the viewer -- all important attributes to ensure that people pass it along to each other.
One of the best viral ebook creators is Seth Godin, who had over 1,000,000 people download his ebook, Unleashing the Ideavirus. It's still one of the most discussed marketing books around, and Seth has had similar success and gained a great following by giving away other ebooks he wrote, as well. Most of these ebooks are now for sale as paperbacks, and I'm sure this viral marketing strategy led to very high sales of his printed books. At the very least, the strategy has pushed him to the top of the list of marketing experts.
How can you create a viral marketing strategy to drive traffic to your website? Here's a step-by-step process:
1. Determine what you're giving away. Will you make a movie, write an ebook, create an ecourse, or have a special piece of software written for you? The key to success in picking your product is to make sure that it solves a big problem experienced by your target market. You may also locate your giveaway by using something that someone else has created that permits you to brand it with your company information. (Get an example below in the author's resource box).
2. Brand the product. Make sure that your logo, your website URL, and/or your tagline is on the viral marketing piece. You want anyone who downloads this viral marketing product to be able to link back to your website, just as you would want someone to be able to contact your brick-and-mortal store when you provide a promotional giveaway like a pen, coffee cup, mousepad, etc.
3. Set up delivery process. Will visitors be able to download the software directly from your site, or will they have to provide their contact information? The best option is to give it away with no strings attached. However, on the page in which you offer the download, you can offer visitors yet another gift, one that requires their contact info to receive.
4. Give away the rights. If you'd like to really jump start the viral marketing process, give people the rights to give away your viral marketing piece to their own customers.
5. Rebrand the item. If you permit people to rebrand the giveaway with some of their contact info or affiliate links, as well, they will really be motivated to pass along your viral marketing piece.
6. Announce the availability of the item. Write an article or a press release about your viral marketing item. Announce its availability to your contact database or ezine list. Ask your readers or visitors to your blog to announce it to their lists or just simply give it away.
Capturing the power of viral marketing is a simple and cost-effective strategy to drive traffic to your website. If implemented properly, who knows how much fame and fortune this technique could bring you?
Copyright (c) 2007 Donna Gunter
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. Get your free affiliate link cloaking program at Affiliate-Link-Cloak.com. It's a perfect example of viral marketing in action! Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Keyword Research Essentials
Keyword Research Strategy 101
By Bina Omar Platinum Quality Author
Keyword research has now become an essential part of a web building process for just about any type of web site. It is no longer enough to just have a fancy looking web site.
In this article, we're going to go through a basic keyword research strategy. If you're new to the internet and just about to set up your own web site, this strategy is for you.
# What are keywords?
Keywords are simply words or, more often, phrases that you would like your web pages to be found with, in search engines. If you had a web site about babies, for example, you would want your web pages to appear when someone searches for "baby names" or "baby furniture" etc. You wouldn't want your web pages to appear in search results for the keywords "fishing rod" or "hunting guide" because a person doing that search will not be interested in your site.
# Finding keywords
The first step in your keyword research strategy is to find keywords that are relevant to your web site theme. A good place to start is to just brainstorm of words that you yourself might use to find your web pages. A big mistake that newcomers make is to stop at that. You may be quite surprised that the keyword that you think will be used by others may not be used by them at all.
Fortunately, there are keyword research tools out there that you can use to help you find out what terms are being searched for. One tool you could use is Good Keywords, which is a free keyword generator software that you can use to do a quick keyword research for your terms and their demand (i.e. how many times they're been searched for in a month). You can download a free copy of Good Keywords from http://www.goodkeywords.com
Typing in the word "baby" in Good Keywords brings up the following results (first 10 only):
baby name 1016116
baby gift 760898
baby r us 493144
baby 474805
baby cds 109643
baby name meaning 103122
baby shower 89866
baby boy music video 88601
personalized baby gift 87855
baby shower game 78860
# Choosing keywords
The second step in your keyword research strategy is to choose "good keywords". As you can see, the "baby" theme is quite popular. Should you use all terms as your keywords? You could if you wanted to. Depending on the number of competitors you have (i.e. other webmasters who are targeting your chosen keyword), you'd more likely be better off focusing on a tighter theme. A quick search for the word "baby" on Google, comes up with 1,000,000,000 results. With so many competitors what are your chances of ranking in the Top 10? You could focus your entire site on just "baby shower", for example.
To have a better idea of which keywords to choose, you could use a keyword research tool like WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com). WordTracker provides information on how many times your keyword phrase is being searched for in a day, the number of competitors and something else called KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index). All else being equal, the higher the KEI, the better.
WordTracker has a trial account you can experiment with but it brings back just 30 results, which is a good start to helping you focus on a niche. Typing in "baby shower" in WordTracker brings back the following top 5 KEI results for the following keywords:
152.264, baby shower footprint invitation
73.085, free printable baby shower games
61.711, free baby shower games
52.127, baby shower games
37.829, free printable baby shower invitations
According to WordTracker keyword research, KEI above 15 is a good keyword.
# Using keywords
Once you've chosen a set of "good keywords", you next step in your keyword research strategy is to actually use the keywords. You should start off your site by creating web pages with content optimized for the high KEI keywords. How do you do this exactly?
- Focus one keyword phrase per web page
- Use the keyword phrase in your web page Title Tag
- Use it in your keywords meta tag
- Use it in your description meta tag
- Have it appear in the first 250 words of your content
- Strive for 5-7% keyword density (5-7 keywords and/or keyword phrases per 100 words of text).
-Use your keyword phrase in your H1 tag.
-Use keywords and/or keyword phrases in your image ALT tags.
- Use it as the text to any outgoing links on the page.
- Have the keyword appear once at the end of your content.
There's a lot more to keyword research then I have time to explain in this article. But this basic keyword research strategy should be enough to get you started in the right direction.
Bina publishes the WebBriefcase at http://WebBriefcase.com.au. She recommends that you check out the free action guide at http://action-guide.sitesell.com/freebonus.html for a more detailed demonstration on how to go about doing keyword research.
By Bina Omar Platinum Quality Author
Keyword research has now become an essential part of a web building process for just about any type of web site. It is no longer enough to just have a fancy looking web site.
In this article, we're going to go through a basic keyword research strategy. If you're new to the internet and just about to set up your own web site, this strategy is for you.
# What are keywords?
Keywords are simply words or, more often, phrases that you would like your web pages to be found with, in search engines. If you had a web site about babies, for example, you would want your web pages to appear when someone searches for "baby names" or "baby furniture" etc. You wouldn't want your web pages to appear in search results for the keywords "fishing rod" or "hunting guide" because a person doing that search will not be interested in your site.
# Finding keywords
The first step in your keyword research strategy is to find keywords that are relevant to your web site theme. A good place to start is to just brainstorm of words that you yourself might use to find your web pages. A big mistake that newcomers make is to stop at that. You may be quite surprised that the keyword that you think will be used by others may not be used by them at all.
Fortunately, there are keyword research tools out there that you can use to help you find out what terms are being searched for. One tool you could use is Good Keywords, which is a free keyword generator software that you can use to do a quick keyword research for your terms and their demand (i.e. how many times they're been searched for in a month). You can download a free copy of Good Keywords from http://www.goodkeywords.com
Typing in the word "baby" in Good Keywords brings up the following results (first 10 only):
baby name 1016116
baby gift 760898
baby r us 493144
baby 474805
baby cds 109643
baby name meaning 103122
baby shower 89866
baby boy music video 88601
personalized baby gift 87855
baby shower game 78860
# Choosing keywords
The second step in your keyword research strategy is to choose "good keywords". As you can see, the "baby" theme is quite popular. Should you use all terms as your keywords? You could if you wanted to. Depending on the number of competitors you have (i.e. other webmasters who are targeting your chosen keyword), you'd more likely be better off focusing on a tighter theme. A quick search for the word "baby" on Google, comes up with 1,000,000,000 results. With so many competitors what are your chances of ranking in the Top 10? You could focus your entire site on just "baby shower", for example.
To have a better idea of which keywords to choose, you could use a keyword research tool like WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com). WordTracker provides information on how many times your keyword phrase is being searched for in a day, the number of competitors and something else called KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index). All else being equal, the higher the KEI, the better.
WordTracker has a trial account you can experiment with but it brings back just 30 results, which is a good start to helping you focus on a niche. Typing in "baby shower" in WordTracker brings back the following top 5 KEI results for the following keywords:
152.264, baby shower footprint invitation
73.085, free printable baby shower games
61.711, free baby shower games
52.127, baby shower games
37.829, free printable baby shower invitations
According to WordTracker keyword research, KEI above 15 is a good keyword.
# Using keywords
Once you've chosen a set of "good keywords", you next step in your keyword research strategy is to actually use the keywords. You should start off your site by creating web pages with content optimized for the high KEI keywords. How do you do this exactly?
- Focus one keyword phrase per web page
- Use the keyword phrase in your web page Title Tag
- Use it in your keywords meta tag
- Use it in your description meta tag
- Have it appear in the first 250 words of your content
- Strive for 5-7% keyword density (5-7 keywords and/or keyword phrases per 100 words of text).
-Use your keyword phrase in your H1 tag.
-Use keywords and/or keyword phrases in your image ALT tags.
- Use it as the text to any outgoing links on the page.
- Have the keyword appear once at the end of your content.
There's a lot more to keyword research then I have time to explain in this article. But this basic keyword research strategy should be enough to get you started in the right direction.
Bina publishes the WebBriefcase at http://WebBriefcase.com.au. She recommends that you check out the free action guide at http://action-guide.sitesell.com/freebonus.html for a more detailed demonstration on how to go about doing keyword research.
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