So I run a few websites and blogs, and when I check the comments or emails that I get from those sites, I’m always a bit surprised to see the automation of unrelated blog comments and automatically generated emails I get in my inbox asking for something.

Automation is Great, But…

Automation is great for a lot of things online but when it comes to blog comments I would stop the automation and start getting involved with blogs and websites where you can comment about your industry or related industries.

You’ll know when you find a great community of people who comment by the rich comments they leave.

They leave their real name or their name @ <company name/site> in the “Name” field of a comment. This helps make it feel that a real person is commenting and is putting themselves out there to be addressed and identified as a real person.

However, on the other hand, if the name field for a comment says something like, “BuyMyCoolStuffAtMyCoolWebsite.com”, that probably isn’t the best “Name” to use for the comment. I would most likely delete that comment instantly and not look back no matter how much you want comments at your blog.

Keywords and Comments

Another thing people do when leaving a comment on a blog is to use keywords in the “Name” field. So for example, if the person leaving a comment is trying to get a backlink to their website about wooden floors, they would fill the “Name” field with “Hard Wood Floors”, hoping that the “Name” field would get indexed by Google and that would give them additional backlink power to rise in the search engines.

Another tactic that I see in the fields of the comment form is the “Name” field is filled in with a  keyword or keyword phrase. I see the “Email Address” field filled in with something like the keyword phrase as well as the “Website” field filled with the keyword phrase too. Then the contents of the comments will be laden with the keyword phrase and/or related keyword phrases.

So you end up with one big comment and related fields full of someone trying to gain awareness and backlinks to their site and not too interested  in leaving a worthwhile comment.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see using maybe one keyword or keyword phrase that might help clarify the contents of a comment, but it should make complete sense and add meaning or quality to the comment that in turn adds quality to the article.

So keyword stuffing the comment form is probably not the best way to join a community of people who are wanting to engage at a great blog article.

Some of this might seem obvious to you that it would be considered blog comment spam or just spam, but you see, sometimes bloggers who don’t have a whole bunch of traffic and people commenting at their blog, might approve automated comments just so they can get any comments at all on their blog posts.

An example of a great commenting community is people who leave at least 3 sentences for a comment that adds to the discussion and the article. For some communities you’ll find consistent 2-3 paragraphs or more per comment with great discussion.

An example of an automated comment include a comment that looks like this:

“Our company blah blah, has been doing great stuff for 30 years. We build this and that, we do this and that and we have over 1,000 satisfied customers who will tell you how great we are. We provide the following services: service 1, service 2, etc. We’ve created over x incredible products for you to use when you do this and that.”

Well, I think you get the drift. The above comment was something like a comment I received on an article about social media that had nothing to do with this comment. The comment was geared towards the flooring industry.

When I see this type of commenting, I can’t help but think that this company is either using some type of automated software to fire off as many unrelated comments as they can, to as many unrelated websites, hoping to gain backlinks to their website and articles.

Automated Emails Using Contact Forms

Another way to annoy the heck out of blog owners is to use automated software that looks for contact forms that are on blogs that accept guest blog posts.

When I receive an email via the contact form on my blog, I know they either didn’t read the text on the contact form or they’re using software that automates looking for contact forms on the web, auto-filling in the form and submitting to the website or blog owner.

On my contact form, I’ve included two links to my guest posting guidelines. But it never fails that I get emails from my contact form wanting to know if I accept guest blog posts.

In this case, I just delete the automated email. Hopefully someday the auto-emailer person will browse to the contact form and read what to do next about guest blog posts.

So there you go. Don’t use automation software to post comments all over the web that don’t make sense and don’t auto-email people to see if they accept guest posts.

It’s much better to keep your reputation intact and build your trustworthiness by actually providing great comments and searching for guest post opportunities. Doing this slowly over a long period of time (like growing a business) will reward you and go much farther in the long run. What a novel ideal.

What do you think? Have you used automation software for promoting websites? Tell us all about it in the comments.

This is a guest post by Melanie Slaugh. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest posting guidelines here.

You Can’t Do What You Want…Or Can You?

I’m a writer; it is as simple as that. I love to write. My passion, my preference, would be to write only about the topics I really enjoy. Unfortunately, in life you can’t always do exactly what you want. How I got in to guest posting is an interesting story. I actually have a permanent blog I write for, MyISPFinder.org, and I enjoy writing for that site very much. The only bad thing about it is how limited the topics are.

And now we get into guest posting. Part of the reason I started guest posting is to not go crazy. Yes, you read that right. I wanted to… No, I had to write on different topics. I was getting into a serious rut. Since I started guest posting, I have learned more about a wide variety of topics than I ever thought I would. It’s like going to school all over again!

Another reason I started guest posting is to make connections. Feeling trapped in a little telecommunications bubble, I wanted to expand the audience of readers I had. But how do you do that? How do you get your writing out there? Well, everyone loves quality content, and if other bloggers were like me, we all have days where we just can’t write one more thing. So, why not help them out and me too?

Getting Started Is The Hard Part

You wouldn’t believe how many blogs you have to contact to just get one positive response. You’d think bloggers would be hungry for new content, but that’s not necessarily true. I guess I can understand it. They are not sure if the content will be good enough for their blog. It is their baby, after all.

Anyway, I followed a few blogs, so I started there. I knew what they typically wrote about and I also knew I had an opinion I’d like to share. Gradually, I worked my way out of my comfort zone and fell into blogs that were entirely out of my scope. How did I keep writing?

I learned. I read several of their past posts, usually the most popular ones, got a feel for the blog’s tone and attitude, and then I did my research. It’s not hard to find something you can talk about once you know where to look. The better informed you are about a topic, the better your writing will be.

It Is Fulfilling!!

Another thing to remember when you contact a blogger is to pay attention. Use their name, or whatever information they share with the world at large. Make sure you personalize the email. Don’t just slap in a sir/madam thing. Use their name. Tell them what you like about their site. And give them some idea of what you would like to write for them. If you have done previous guest posts that are similar, include links to those as well so they can get a feel for your work.

It takes some work, but guest posting can be a fulfilling use of your time and effort. Don’t expect everyone to love your writing or jump at the chance to have you write for them. Take your time, build up your portfolio, and, above all, enjoy what you write.

About the Author – Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and topics related to internet service providers. She provides this information so people can choose the right Internet package. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907[at]gmail[dot]com.

This is a guest post by Glen. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest posting guidelines here.

Browse randomly to any SEO topics on strategies and you’ll be wondering why some “SEO experts” use the word “trick” or “tricks” in search engine optimization—as if it’s real. SEO is no trick, plain and simple. Search engine optimization is defined as a process or systems of processes and strategies that makes any website crawlable, indexable, and relevant enough for search engines to provide its users the information they need as an answer to their query.

SEO “Tricks” versus SEO Strategies

• Linking to hundreds of link farms can sometimes give your website a boost in keyword rankings for a short period of time, but once a search engine will pick up, you’ll find your website lost in the oblivion. All ranking lost, all tricky efforts are put to waste, and your website lost in the race for good.
• Abuse of web directories and social book marking sites can rapidly boost the number of your backlinks but search engines will see that you are trying to manipulate the results and devalue your efforts.
• Using paid linking tricks to boost off page optimization can be good at some degree provided that links come from authoritative, related, and relevant websites. Otherwise, both text link ad space provider and client will get some slapping from search engines for trying to manipulate rankings.
• Adding irrelevant hidden texts in the background of a website that baits users that search for such terms, which make users confused as to how they were able to arrive in sites irrelevant to their search queries. Eventually, these type of tricks are going to get caught by the web spam team and devalue them. Don’t just include it in your plans. Ever.
• Spamming forums and blogs to be able to get enough of that “link juice”. You may think that adding too many links in the same forums and blogs overtime could give you 100% of link juice for each link you add which is in reality not the case. For example, a PR3 forum or blog has got 65 external links in it so each link to a website only gets 1/65 of the overall value of the PR3 website. If this same website gives you a backlink, that means, you will share 1/66 of the link juice with the rest of the websites the site is linking to. Spamming the same forum and blogs because they give out free backlinks might not at all do you any favor.

SEO is a process that goes on and on and on, not because you tried “tricking” the search engine results by building too many backlinks or trying to lure the traffic makes you an SEO expert. Trying to manipulate search results by using SEO tricks is against Google’s webmaster guidelines. Yes, you will probably get a boost for some time, but just one search engine algorithm update and your site will be penalized, or worse, blocked by the search engines. Search Engine Optimization techniques are easy to follow. Start with Google, Bing, and Yahoo webmasters’ SEO guidelines and it will surely help you keep grounded and succeed in achieving your well-deserved search ranking positions.

About the Author – Glen is a part of the NetiDnow.com team that provides ecommerce SEO including link building services to different online business entrepreneurs today.

Photo Credit: Yannick Croissant

This is a guest post by Paul Roebuck. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Facebook

Ah, Facebook. The original social network. If your business is new to Facebook, and you’d like to start growing your fan base, the first place to start is your friends and email list. You can “invite” people to like your page. Then, once your little community has started growing, start posting relevant and interesting content – links to articles, videos, infographics, and be sure to offer something insightful to say about what you think as well.

Don’t post too much though – a maximum of twice per day is more than enough. Any more, and you run the risk of your fans getting tired of your posts and “unliking” you.

Depending on the kind of business you’re running, you can also seek out the pages of companies, bloggers, and experts in your field, “like” them, and reach out to them via “mentioning”.

Twitter

Twitter is useful for monitoring conversations around specific topics which are relevant to your industry. Keep an eye out for trending topics (by searching for particular hashtags with keywords related to your industry) and join in the conversation by tweeting your views and insights on the topic, and using the same hashtag. Tools such as Radian 6 come in particularly handy here, as it allows you to search for what’s being said about a topic, idea, or even your own brand.

Pinterest

Everyone seems to be raving about Pinterest at the moment. Even President Obama has signed up to be a part of the pinning revolution. However, if you’re new to the virtual Pinboard that’s taking the world by storm, it can all seem incredibly overwhelming, but you can actually use Pinterest to increase referral traffic to your website.

Fast Access

If your business is very visuals-based (eg. a photography studio or online magazine) “Pin” your own content onto your boards, and consider including the “pin it” button on your website (alongside your “Tweet” and “Like” buttons), as well as a Pinterest widget encouraging users to follow you. Then, go nuts! Categorise your pins into different “boards”, follow other users, and pin original content that you find surfing the web (rather than just “re-pinning” things from other people’s boards all the time).

In terms of keeping your account up to date with fresh content, the iPad is probably the mode most suited to accessing Pinterest on the move. Pinterest is a highly visual service that’s based almost completely on single clicks, organising and sharing – things that are often done easily with the intuitive capabilities of a large touchscreen. Also because Pinterest is so heavy on photos and video, it’ll certainly lend itself well to the iPad’s Retina display. So if you’re looking to access Pinterest on the go, you can’t go past an iPad. You should consider buying one if you don’t have one already, or maybe check out new iPad rental options.

Managing your networks

There are also tools and services to help you manage your Twitter and Facebook communities all from one dashboard. Tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck allow you to schedule posts. In terms of when and what to post, check out this blog post on the best times to post on Twitter on Facebook.

About the Author – Paul Roebuck is a uni student who likes to keep tabs on the latest in social media with his iPhone and new iPad rentals. Visit http://www.thesmarterwaytopay.com.au/Home/Tablets-available to see how you can rent an iPad, and keep on top of all your social networks for your business.

This is a guest post by Marcela DeVivo. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Boosting your website and increasing your site visitors is possible by getting creative and utilizing free communities and applications online to share your brand and help with gaining loyal followers and visitors as well.

Consistently Updating With Relevant Content

If you are running your own website, it is essential to consistently update to ensure you continue to receive visitors and page views on the site throughout each day and month. Add relevant tutorials, how-to guides and information articles that are relevant to your website.

As part of Google’s ranking algorithm, they check for a content update ratio, so if you are not creating content regularly, you will receive a low score for the update ratio. Additionally, relevant content keeps people coming back to your site, and as Google also utilizes traffic and return visitor ratio as part of the algorithm, creating quality content affects your ranking bottom line.

Host Guest Blogging Spots

Host guest blogging spots on your site to attract new visitors while offering honest advice or information from a well-known figure in the industry. This allows you to potentially gain followers from fans of the guest blogger as well, giving you another way of increasing visitors and page views overall.

Designing Your Own Infographics and Getting Creative With Internet Marketing

Infographics are a fun and catchy way to present information with the potential to go viral. Especially these days with Pinterest and other “pinning” services popping up like weeds, creating Infographics is a way to get noticed. Beautiful and creative graphics with interesting information are fun and easy to share, helping the image to go viral thus increasing your links and traffic.

Giveaways and Contests

Host giveaways and contests on your website to draw in new visitors, offering items and products or services that are also relevant to your own site. People LOVE giveaways and the opportunity to win something free, so they will be more willing to participate and to share in order to gain votes and a chance to win.

Using Social Networks to Market for Free

Using social networking communities is a vital part of marketing websites and brands to increase visitors and web traffic overall. Create accounts for popular networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and even the fast-growing Pinterest. You can add your logo to help with building brand recognition while you have the ability to instantly update all of your fans and followers online to share new products, sales, and services, which will help to draw visitors and page views in.

Share and Bookmark your Content

There are many sites that allow you to share how to information and to bookmark pages. Develop a list of these and start sharing content on each of them. Some examples are wikia, instructables, squidoo, ehow, and many more. The key for these is to make sure when you add links to these sites, that your links are DoFollow links. Additionally, the value of these pages is based on whether or not they are linked to, so use your own profiles to link to other profile pages thus boosting your overall brand.

After Google’s latest ranking algorithm, they upped the ante, making it more time consuming for webmasters to gain visibility. To stay ahead of the game now requires more effort and time. If you create sustainable goals and start working on the campaign slowly and surely, over time you will find that you created hundreds of new links and you’ll be rewarded by the increase in visitors to your website.

About the Author – Marcela De Vivo is a social SEO that has been in the internet marketing industry for 12 years. She writes about Industrial Solutions for Process Sensors Corp and blogs at MarcelaDeVivo.com.

This is a guest post by Wes Burns. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Knowing how to find valuable keywords is one of the most critical skills to being a successful webmaster. You can be competent in SEO and have great writing skills, but knowing how to find valuable keywords will bring you (and your website) to new levels of profitability.

Identifying valuable keywords is a skill that few people have. Take the time to develop this skill and your skills will be in high demand. Not only will you be able to make your own websites profitable, but you will find it easier to land jobs within the SEO industry.

1. Identifying Search Terms that Indicate Intent

There are certain keywords that indicate visitors are willing to take a desirable action when they reach your website. Knowing how to identify buy-now terms is part common sense and part experience. If you get into the habit of thinking about which terms indicate intent, you will get better at it over time.

Let me explain what I mean by “intent.” The nature of some search terms indicate that people are searching with the intent to purchase, download or sign up for something. For example, a person searching for “buy computers online” is obviously interested in spending money on a new computer. This search term is much more valuable (per visitor) than a search term like “how do computers work.”

Obvious keywords that indicate intent tend to be highly competitive. The “buy computers online” example from above is dominated by big-name companies and well-known brands. The trick is to find keywords that aren’t as obvious as “buy computers online.” It is much easier to go after smaller niches and dominate those keywords.

For example, a niche in the general computer sales category could be a website that specializes in gaming computers or a website that specializes in computers for people with disabilities. These are just random ideas off the top of my head, but that’s what I mean when I say “niche.” Every industry from online file storage to credit card applications has specific niches that you can attack.

2. Use the AdWords Tool to Find High Volume Low Competition Terms

High volume, low competition search terms are the holy grail of internet marketing. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool can be used to research the search volume and competition of any keyword in the world. Just type in a keyword and Google will return a report of how many people search for that keyword every month and how competitive that keyword is.

The Keyword Tool is often criticized for being inaccurate, but it will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect from various keywords. You will see the most accurate results if you uncheck the “broad” option and check the “exact” match option.

You probably won’t stumble on any massive keywords with little competition, but that’s OK. You can still make plenty of money by searching for intent keywords (explained above) that have low or medium competition. Keywords that indicate intent do not need the massive search numbers that generic search terms require for profitability.

3. Use Google Webmaster Tools to Find Breakthrough Keywords

Google Webmaster Tools is a must-have for internet marketers. You can set up a Webmaster Tools for free on any website. Just visit Google and search for “Webmaster Tools” to find the official link. You can then sign up for an account at the Google website.

Next, log in to your Webmaster Tools account and notice the “search queries” section. Click on the “more” link to see a full report of search terms and your average ranking for each term. You can use this report to find high volume search terms that you are really close to breaking in to prime positions.

For example, I recently found a search term at one of my websites that generates 75,000 impressions per month with an average ranking of 9.5. This is a keyword that I am already ranking well for but it needs a little boost. If I can get into the top 3 for this keyword, I’ll have a significant bump in traffic.

Breakthrough keywords are nice because it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort to improve their rankings. If you’re ranking anywhere from 5 through 15 for the term, it means Google likes the page at least a little. Add a little content to that page, send a couple of internal links to that page and build a couple of external links to that page.

Breakthrough keywords are valuable because you can easily improve page rankings at minimal cost to you. You are not starting from scratch on a new keyword; you are improving upon a page that is already ranking well for that keyword. In other words, you get a great return on your investment when you invest in breakthrough keywords.

About the Author – Wes Burns is a tech writer and full time internet marketer. His latest project, www.OnlineFileStorage.com, is devoted to all things related to storing and backing up data in the cloud.

This is a guest post by Kit Pierce. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Facebook is introducing a new design to every profile in their network of 750 million people and counting. It’s called Timeline, and fortunately for business owners, the change will be more helpful than frustrating.

Starving artists, Smartphone repair shops, and car dealerships alike will benefit from Timeline’s introduction, particularly when it comes to marketing. Regardless of what your business is, Timeline contains new features you’ll be able to take advantage of.

Signage

Every Timeline profile begins with a banner that spans the entire width of the browser. It’s an image of your choice and it’s called the cover photo. Here you have a free billboard for promoting your latest sale, the hottest trend, or funniest ad in your campaign.

Put something in your cover photo that immediately grabs the attention of your audience–it’s the first thing your buyers and clients will see.

Content Presentation

After being lured in by the cover photo, whatever is immediately visible in the content of a page will be the next thing a customer looks at. Most people skim pages rather than read them, and Timeline’s layout does a great job of displaying updates that are eye-catching and relevant. It also makes it easier to find older posts than before.

If you post frequently, you’ll have a living, breathing profile, which prevents the consumer attrition that results when you leave a page dormant for any length of time. One more thing, you can and should mark the most important updates with a star, which lifts an update closer to the top of the profile and makes it easier to find.

Contact Information

We all use Google to find contact and address info when we need a lawyer or a bite to eat, but even the world’s best search engine occasionally produces questionable links. Instead of searching through some murky, ad-infested yellow pages site, a consumer can now head to your Timeline profile, where your contact information is right below the banner.

Your customers will easily find your address, email, and phone number at the top of the page. Take advantage of this area by keeping it updated and simple. Everyone Googling you will appreciate it!

The Timeline

Most businesses operate for years before gaining recognition. The namesake feature of the Timeline redesign gives you an easy way to record and display the ups and downs along your journey to the top. In the right hand corner of each profile, you can place a breakdown of all the years since the creation of your business. By clicking on an individual year, users can view photos and updates from that particular year.

Seize the opportunity to include some interesting material here. Apple, for example, has over a million Facebook Likes, and with Timeline, they can tell you who they selected as their eight biggest fans in 2010.

Popularity

Previously, a business profile sported a title and a button at the top for collecting Likes–nothing else. With the new layout, links for your YouTube channel, your blog, Twitter, additional content, and whatever else you use for the cause of marketing have been conveniently relocated to the top of the page.

Fill this area with all of your promotional tools. Here you can provide a link for a Fan of the Week page, exclusive downloadable content, or related videos and photos with visual appeal. There are dozens of ways you can use this space, but you have to be creative.

If you use Timeline the way it ought to be used, you’re going to get a lot of mileage out of the new layout. Just remember to use the right imaging for your audience, and to learn from the Timeline profiles of bigger companies. They can provide you with a lot of good ideas, even if you’re only selling fish bait. If you haven’t adopted the new layout yet, post some of the ways you plan on using the new Timeline below.

About the Author – Kit Pierce loves to read classic literature and blogs about human rights. In her spare time, she writes for attsavings. She’s interested in steampunk, likes watching funny cat videos, and enjoys discussions about philosophy.

This is a guest post by Eric Greenwood. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Document management has always been an issue for teams, especially teams working in fields like design and IT. Version control becomes critical, and the approval/editing process very often lends itself to error. There are many ways to work around this, of course; one of the newest approaches involves the use of online storage.

Online Storage Basics

At its core, online storage works like networked storage. You have a document or other file that resides in a single location. Multiple users have access to the file, to make changes, comments, or provide approval.

With online storage, the document can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection and from a variety of Internet-enabled devices; network storage requires you to be on the network and to access it via a compatible device.

More Flexible than Email

You can do the same kind of thing via email, of course, but you lose some of the flexibility. Every time someone opens and re-saves a document, there is the potential for a divergent version of the file to exist.

With online storage, there’s only every one copy of the file. You reduce the risk of duplicate files and divergent versions.

How a Team Might Use Online Storage

Let’s look at a real-world example. A marketing firm might be developing a brochure for a client. Here’s how that process would look like with online storage:

• The graphic arts team puts together a general layout, saving the document to an online storage site.
• Each member of the graphic arts team works on the document in turn, as each person completes their part of the design work (e.g. layout, images, graphics, etc). “Dummy” text is inserted as a placeholder.
• From there, the copywriter opens the document and inserts the appropriate text in the appropriate places.
• The design team is able to then review the document, and make an adjustments based on text layout.
• The salesperson or customer liaison can access the document throughout this process, and offer input based on customer suggestions.
• The final product can even be provided to the client via online storage, which can be especially useful in the case of larger files.

This is a much more streamlined process than emailing the document back and forth until the team finally gets it right. You have built-in change management and quality control, simply by choosing the online storage medium.

Plenty of Options

If you need more advanced collaboration options, there are online storage services that offer that as well. Some integrate project management functionality, for example. Others allow advanced security options to address compliance and legal concerns.

A team’s effectiveness can be limited by their choice of tools While the right tools don’t guarantee a team’s success, the right tools can greatly increase efficiency, saving you time, frustration, and even money.

About the Author: Eric Greenwood is a technophile whose interests include all things cloud from software as a service to online storage. Get more tips and advice by going to the blog Online Storage!