I set up a blog for one of my clients the other day. After a rather long winded chat about why it is important to research keywords for articles and blog posts, I was left scratching my head on how could I make things simple until they were in a position for either spending money on professional keyword research software or grasping the concept of researching keywords manually.

The problem was my client was suffering a classic case of information overload. After getting over the fear of the Internet, accepting that the world wide web wont crash if he makes a mistake and learning how to post on WordPress, his brain was well and truly frazzled.

It was a reminder on how much of a learning curve writing for the internet actually is!

I needed simple and free tool that didn’t have a huge learning curve to ease him into researching and writing.

While I was looking around for an easy to use and understand free keyword tool, I stumbled upon Keyword Eye. It is rather nifty and very, very simple.

Basically, you put in your keyword idea and it returns results in a familiar tag cloud formation (or a pie chart if you select that option). The larger the font, the more searched for the term, hover your mouse over the word for actual search volume. The words are colour coded too – green for low competition, orange for medium and red for high.

There is an advanced search where you can change your Country option, select volume parameters and ignore certain terms etc.

Keyword Eye is a free keyword research tool that is ideal for gathering keyword ideas for your articles at a glance. Of course neither Keyword Eyes developers nor I will be claiming its the be all and end all of research tools.  But, when I can give an instruction like, “Choose green phrases in a medium to large sized font”, well it can’t get much more simple that that!

Do you need to know more about researching keywords? Download my free guide – here

I set up a blog for one of my clients the other day. After a rather long winded chat about why it is important to research keywords for articles and blog posts, I was left scratching my head on how could I make things simple until they were in a position for either spending money on professional keyword research software or grasping the concept of researching keywords manually.

The problem was my client was suffering a classic case of information overload. After getting over the fear of the Internet, accepting that the world wide web wont crash if he makes a mistake and learning how to post on WordPress, his brain was well and truly frazzled.

It was a reminder on how much of a learning curve writing for the internet actually is!

I needed simple and free tool that didn’t have a huge learning curve to ease him into researching and writing.

While I was looking around for an easy to use and understand free keyword tool, I stumbled upon Keyword Eye. It is rather nifty and very, very simple.

Basically, you put in your keyword idea and it returns results in a familiar tag cloud formation (or a pie chart if you select that option). The larger the font, the more searched for the term, hover your mouse over the word for actual search volume. The words are colour coded too – green for low competition, orange for medium and red for high.

There is an advanced search where you can change your Country option, select volume parameters and ignore certain terms etc.

Keyword Eye is a free keyword research tool that is ideal for gathering keyword ideas for your articles at a glance. Of course neither Keyword Eyes developers nor I are claiming its the be all and end all of research tools.  But when I can tell someone, “Choose a green phrase in with medium-sized to large letters”, well it can’t get much more simple than that!

Do you need to know more about researching keywords? Download my free guide- here

Kindle publishing has been one of those things I keep putting off.  To be frank, it confused the hell out of me.  Until now…

If you are like me and have been confused about how to convert your ebook pdf to Kindle format and maintain good formatting with no symbols, then Publishing on Kindle Made Easy is ideal for you.

The author Val Waldeck is a breath of fresh air!  From landing on the sales page to reading the ebook there is no fluff, filler, hype, pop-ups, up-sells, down-sells, recommendations for expensive software with affiliate links or any other usual Internet marketing tricks.

Publishing on Kindle Made Easy is 52 pages of pure quality content.  Don’t be put off by the lack of fancy graphics and basic sales page.  The ebook delivers exactly what it promises.

Val’s Kindle publishing guide is split into four very informative sections:

1. Preparing Your Book For Publication
This is the largest section of the book.  Step-by step, Val takes you through everything you need from software (recommended software is free) to building up your ebook.

2. Publishing Your Book on Amazon
How to set up your Amazon publishing account. It isn’t immediately clear when you go through Amazon that they support UK publishers, but they do.

3. Keeping In Touch
Reviewing your published books, editing and reports are all covered here.

4. How to Transfer Your Own Kindle Books to Your Kindle
If you own a Kindle its not immediately obvious how to transfer your own books, Val covers this step-by-step.

Each section gives very clear instructions accompanied by screen shots.  At the end of each section there’s a review list of action steps you need to take.

I really can’t say anything negative about Publishing on Kindle Made Easy.  It does exactly what is promised, a rare thing these days!  I bought it and plan to spend the weekend converting my content.

The guide has opened up even more possibilities for my Internet business.  Not only can I convert my ebooks and guides to sell to a wider audience, but offer the service to do it for others too.

If I can do it, you can too!

If you don’t have your own content, there is a tonne of PLR you can rewrite and make your own.  Publishing on Amazon is free and with Val’s guide the roadblocks are totally removed.

Publishing on Kindle Made Easy is currently selling at $27 and the information is priceless.

Get your copy now.

It is really flattering when someone enjoys something you have written enough to republish it on their own site.

But, once again, I have discovered my writing stolen and mutilated by some awful scraper and auto-spinner.  I mean, really?  Are people that desperate for content they will take something READIBLE and spin it to something that makes no sense?

In this particular case, the thief left in an internal link to another article on this blog so I received a ping back.  But the article itself was uncredited, unlinked and not even fully spun to make it unique.

To make it worse, there is no contact info on the site to harass them by email (not that they would read it anyway!)

I have no issues with people who want to share my ramblings and musings…

Please feel free to use my writing in any way you wish BUT credit where credits due, leave a link back to The Write Article (or any other blog I write on!)

Just to make my thoughts on the matter clear, I have added a Creative Commons Licence in the sidebar.  I doubt any guilty parties will actually read the blog let alone see the licence, but one can hope!

Rant over…

Ohh OUCH!  Now that latest Google slap was more of a killer punch for many article marketers.  Googles algorithms changed again at the end of last week.  So what went on?

To sum up, Google is targeting poor content with the new changes.  Quoted from the recent blog post

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

At the moment, the change has been rolled out in the US but not other areas, and some of our favourite sites are feeling the pain.

Article directories have been hit hard by the recent change.  EzineArticles posted on their blog a couple of days ago regarding how much traffic the article directory has lost and changes they will be implementing to further improve standards.

But EzineArticles is not the only directory to be badly affected by the recent algorithm change.  Sistrix compiled a table of sites that have been the biggest losers in the Google battle against low-value sites.  You can see some article marketer favourites ranking high in there:

• Articles Base
• HubPages
• Associated Content
• Buzzle
• Essortment
• Find Articles…

SEOBook took this one step further and compiled a list of winners in their assessment of the current situation.  Unfortunately, article directories (other than eHow – spot the eHow bashing in the article!) simply don’t feature.

So, how does this affect article marketers?

Well, it really does depend on how you are using your content.  If you are simply writing low quality, short articles for backlinks you will likely feel the sting very soon as the popular article directories start stripping low quality articles and increasing the bar for submissions.

Take a step back from the panic and screams and look at the benefits of this change.

If you publish good, useful content on your website or blog, written with your readers in mind, then the chances are you will see your sites get more traffic to the ORIGINAL article – which is where you want it!

When people read good content they tell their friends, they link to it…

And, those links are better going to YOUR website rather than any article directory.

Article marketing as we know it is dying and it is time to up your game.

What do you need to do now?

1. Write good content that YOU would want to read!
2. Get your own domains and hosting and publish your killer content on your own sites
3. Bookmark your articles on your sites, and make it easy for your readers to bookmark too.
4. Still submit articles to article directories, but direct people to a squeeze page and build a list.  Need an autoresponder?  Listwire is free and GetResponse starts free (up to 100 subscribers)  and the price increases as your list grows.

None of that is rocket science, just basic online marketing that works regardless of any Google mood swings.

Of course, if you enjoyed this post, share the love!

Building free backlinks to your websites,  online content and articles is, to put it mildly, a right pain in the backside. It’s time consuming and boring!

How to Get Backlinks the Easy Way.

When I heard of a new free back links generator, I thought, “Here we go again, more mindless clicking for a couple of hours and trying to join social media sites that no longer exist!”

Well, Social Monkee is actually different and so easy!

Why?

First of all, it is free to join. You set up a new account with a user name and password and off the Monkee goes and creates accounts on the social sites. It takes about 3 minutes and you have time to go make a cup of coffee.

Now, you can either add your site, descriptions and keyword tags on the Social Monkee site, or you can download the Firefox plug-in and build your back links even more quickly.

When you click on the Social Monkee in FireFox, a new window opens with your website details already completed. All you have to do now is provide alternative titles, descriptions and keyword tags.

Why? Well then the Monkee can work its magic and post different information on the sites which is better for you!

The process takes a couple of minutes, just leave it running in the background.

The free account allows you to submit 1 link to 25 sites every 24 hours. That’s 25 free back links for completing 6 boxes and clicking twice. It really cannot get any easier!

Of course, there is a premium upgrade. Once again the Social Monkee has excelled itself! Yes, you can pay for it, or you can refer 12 people and get it for free.

A premium account allows you to access reports and have up to 100 links per day.

So, what are you waiting for? Get access to a great free back links generator and start driving more traffic to your websites today.  Grab the Monkee here.

So, you have decided to take part in one of the many JV giveaway events to build your list. Just how do you stand out from the crowd?

As with everything else in Internet marketing, it is all about knowing what people want and putting it in front of them in a way that makes the crowd go, “Ooooh! I NEED that!” There are a few things that you need to consider.

1.The giveaway event itself.

Is the event one that is promoting products in your niche? Quite simply, if you take part in a blogging niche giveaway for example, there is little point in entering a free download about how to lose weight. However, you could enter a gift that explained how to blog in the weight loss niche.

2. Your gift

Your gift does not usually have to be original, but choose something that is related to the niche you are promoting AND will have some value to your target audience.

Take the above example. If you are an affiliate for weight loss programmes, offering a gift that shows people how to blog about weight loss is targeting the wrong people. You’ll have fellow internet marketers signing up for your list who probably are not looking to lose weight!

Now you have chosen your event and identified a suitable gift, now comes the hard part…

How to Write a JV Giveaway Event Gift Description

Your description will be in 3 parts.

• The gift image – people DO judge the book by its cover. Sticking a picture of yourself there is not a good idea unless you are offering yourself! Use a good quality simple e-cover, resized correctly so that it does not look warped or blurred.
• The gift title – Just as with writing articles, sales letters and ads, your title has to hook the reader. The title of your download gift may already be OK, but if it is a bit bland then sex it up a bit. Now, hype is fine as long as your gift can live up to it!

Boring…

Weight Loss Blogging Tips

could become…

Weight Loss Niche Blogging Tips to Expand Your Wallet Not Your Waistline!

You get the idea!

• The giveaway gift description – Don’t forget your space is limited. A good technique is to briefly outline the problem/question, say what your gift can do to solve it and add a call to action.

Weight loss blog looking skinnier than a super model on diet pills? Discover Insider SECRETS to ATTRACTING free targeted traffic to your blog and CONVERTING like crazy! Download Weight Loss Niche Blogging Tips now!

This is just a made up niche used as an example.  I haven’t researched it so please do not rush off and and start product creating or website building!

Internet Marketing on a budget? Here’s some tools you may find useful for creating your JV giveaway gifts ecovers and building your list.

Listwire – The Free autoresponder
My eCover Maker – Free and low cost browser based ecover maker

Creating content for your websites continues to confuse Internet marketers.  Content is king allegedly, however crap website content does not even make it to the kings court.

So what exactly is the confusion?

Keywords, keyword phrases and keyword density of your SEO articles

It still surprises me how many people get wrapped up in article keyword density for SEO purposes.  I have just read an Internet marketing guide that stated your main keyword should be used 5 times per 100 words.

That’s 5% keyword density.

Now, there are several problems with this snippet of information.

First, if you write an article for syndication with a keyword density that high, it will be rejected by the best article directories for being spammy.

Second, the aim of content on your website is to get people to read and take some sort of action.  Even at 5% keyword density, your content can be quite jerky and not easy to read.  Try reading your article out loud and ask yourself, “Would I stick around and read this?”

Finally, and perhaps most importantly…

When it comes to SEO, content is not king.

Shocked?

Sure, what you write on your webpage is important, but its main aim is to get the reader to take some kind of action.  For the search engines to know what your page is about, using your keyword phrase and related phrases within the article is enough.

More importantly is what happens behind the scenes.

Remember to include your main phrase between the <title> tags, if you are using a WordPress blog install a SEO plugin that allows you to add the tag.

Include your keywords in your <h> tags.

Link back to your content using your keyword phrases as anchor text.

Of course, SEO is a bit more in-depth than that, but not by much!  The point is, write your website content for people to read.  Keep it natural and throw away the calculator when you write.  Keyword density is not important as some Internet marketers would have you believe.

You have read this far, congratulations   Now, you can download my free report, no opt in required!  Effective Article Marketing for Affiliate Marketers.

Well I haven’t been about for a few months. What can I say? I walked away (again). I was tired of writing articles for little reward, tired of the Internet marketing “game”, sapped of energy and completely lacking in focus.

What did surprise me was I STILL received commission cheques. No they weren’t huge, definitely NOT a full time living.

You know what, that is MORE than most people earn online, those articles written months ago were still working!

Between Christmas and New Year I had an A-Ha moment. To cut a long story short, I was shopping online for a new computer. I wanted to see if my local computer shop (10 minutes away, but not likely to be open at midnight!) had any post-Christmas deals.

So, I typed into our friend Google – computer deals (my town). I was rather shocked my local shop (who’s name was on the tip of my tongue but I knew if I saw it I would remember) wasn’t listed. Then a seed of an idea planted itself…

Local internet marketing isn’t new; it’s been one of the many shiny things Internet marketers dangle in front of us. Is offering a internet marketing for small business service the way forward?

I did a bit of digging and there are TONNES of local small businesses that have lovely swish websites and no ranking for common keyword searches for their industry. There are TONNES of local small businesses that don’t have an internet presence at all.

Ok, so there is a potential market of people that I have the skills to help. That is what motivates me – being useful And we know that searching on the internet is the trend and increasing all the time – that’s why there is so much info on SEO and SEO content writing.

But, what do people in *my* town do? How do they find local businesses and services when they need them? I set off on a quest to find out…

It was a hard and treacherous quest. I stepped outside my front door, quaking in my boots!

I live close to a busy doctors surgery and pharmacy, so these poor ill people were pestered by me. I risked my health for facts and scientific evidence! It’s a small sample size, of people of various age groups. I won’t go as far as saying these stats are a statistically accurate sample…

29 people of varying ages and ill health were just asked a simple question – “What do you do to find a local business or service“.

Do you know what surprised me the most? The number of people who didn’t simply search the internet, use a search engine or go online… Just look at how many said “Google it“. Additionally, not a single person of the 29 asked said they used the Yellow Pages or Thompson Local directories.

So, time to reinvent myself again I think. I know I need focus – something I lacked in 2010. Online marketing can work – my meagre results speak for themselves!

To help me focus I have actually invested in a training course – don’t fall off your chair in shock. The one I chose is Power 3 Marketing.

Why?

Well first of all, it is in partnership with PotPieGirl (Jennifer of One Week Marketing fame) and she always seems to have inspirational free information that is easily understood.

Secondly, you can access the basics for free to see if the course is for you.

I upgraded to gold and I am currently working through the training and fine-tuning my approach.

There are lots of easily understood videos from PotPieGirls partner David Bocock that lay out the process from start to finish. The bonus videos to download are useful too and probably worth the cost of the training in themselves.

If I am going to pick holes in the P3 marketing course it would be the videos are on the quiet side for me even at full volume. To be truthful, this is more than likely due to my hearing problems at the moment as I have the usual winter cold! Solved by using earphones rather than my less than wonderful speakers.

Are you considering Internet marketing for small businesses in 2011?
Have you struggled to make your break in online marketing at all?

Then I recommend you sample the Power 3 Marketing course free right now!

You have to love the little touches from EzineArticles. This morning I received a card and a fridge magnet for taking part in the hundred articles in one hundred days (HAHD) marathon challenge.

Ok, so I am behind on submissions – I really need to get a shufty on and get writing and submitting on the same author name! A timely reminder since there is just over a month to go!

It brought a smile to my face though Mail from EzineArticles is much better than bills…
On saying that it does make you wonder just how much they earn from all those ads to be able to regularly send their authors little gifts!

I still want my Ezine Articles mug, I best get writing…