Articles provide a chance to share information and establish yourself as an expert and create opportunities for you to direct new traffic to your website, establish new links into your website, and provide fresh and relevant content for both your visitors and search engines, which results in higher ranking.

How does Article Syndication work?

-you write an interesting and valuable article
-you then find a service that will provide article syndication
-find sources where you can market the articles yourself
-post your article on your site and wait a few days to make sure the web spiders index your page
-create accounts at the article sources you found and start submitting your articles
-follow syndication guidelines (if they allow HTML editing, require unique content that hasn’t been published before, require the articles to be on your own page, allow multiple submissions per month etc.)

Benefits of Article Syndication:

Brand awareness
Publishing articles to multiple article directories boosts your online visibility. You have your own name/company name in the anchor text, which makes you more popular to the audience

Obtain Higher rankings
Keyword-rich articles are a sure way to improve your incoming links and improve your search engine rankings.

Longer life span
Articles posted in directories are rarely removed. The fact that articles written have a much longer life span shows just how important this marketing tool can be.

Direct traffic
The articles posted on article directories are a great way to get direct traffic to your website. Plus, the readers click through to your website, bringing you getting valuable targeted traffic to your website.

Here’s how:

1. Offer valuable, rich content.
Don’t just throw subscribers a couple of bones, but give them solid information that they can actually use that would want them to read next month’s issue.

2. Create a theme and a name.
Create a newsletter that is meaningful and positions your company as a trusted source of information. Instead of cluttering your newsletter with everything you’ve done the past few month, choose a theme and a name that frames your information and grabs attention.

3. Keep it simple.
Keep your newsletter brief, but offer solid, valuable content. If you make it too long or stuffed with too much information, chances are that clients won’t read it all. Go for a readable length of around 1 to 3 pages, including a response area.  You can even use a dedicated blog to house your newsletters.

4. Call to action.
Always place a call to action, be it a request for more details, the option to place an order, a survey, etc. If you ask something from your clients, they are more likely to respond. This works in most industries as long as you offer a product or service that your customers would want.

5. Be Viral.
Use e-mail forwarding. Encourage your customers to share your newsletter with others who may be interested in what you’re offering. Make it easy for new visitors to subscribe through a link in each issue of your newsletter

A wave is made of a complete thread of multimedia messages which enables people to easily communicate and work together using richly formatted text, images, maps, videos and more, allowing users to make real-time modifications to the content.

Here is a brief of the innovative features of Google Waves:

Instant messaging and IRC
You can chat with people on the wave to exchange ideas and solutions.

Editable content
Any content shared on the wave can be modified by any other user on the wave, allowing real-time updates and edits to the information on the wave.

Drag & drop file sharing
You no longer need to attach files, as you can simply drag & drop documents into the wave.

Playback option
You can playback and analyze any part of the wave to see how it progressed.

Embedding
You can embed Google Waves and bring the application on your website and blog.

Natural Language
The wave auto corrects spelling mistakes and translates automatically, just like Google Translate language service.
Google Wave, the next step in social media, will definitely revolutionize the communication and collaboration process between people, by allowing instant interaction and file exchange.

A solid web marketing strategy should cover the following aspects:

1. Help you understand your niche market. This way, after you take the “pulse” of your audience, you can easily create and sell your product or service, in a way that would grab attention and produce visible results.

2. To sell massively, you must ensure you attract potential customers and increase traffic to your website. You can do this by implementing SEO and PPC.

3. Once you have consistent traffic, you have to do everything you can to turn your visitors into buyers. It’s best if you can provide a wide range of products and services at different prices and also offer your prospective clients all the information they need.

4. Maintaining an open channel of communication with your visitors is essential. Allows your visitors to directly approach you and solve their queries so they can easily make a purchasing decision.

To conclude, your web marketing strategy supports your business objective and defines how you will achieve your goals.

Landing Pages
Landing pages are usually one-page creation that focuses on a particular offer and specifically on leading the visitor to take certain action. Landing pages are used for direct marketing campaigns and are considered to be essential to the success of these campaigns. All savvy marketers use and test hundreds of different landing pages in order to optimize conversion rates.

Microsites
Microsites are one or more Web pages used for a number of purposes:
•Consumer goods companies may market a new product, because the main website may leave the product underexposed; a microsite will focus on that particular product or service and provide extensive details and information.

•A magazine may want cover a time-sensitive and popular event, such as the upcoming presidential election or some world championship and may leverage a microsite.

•A software company may offer its clients more information on a product, which cannot be posted on a simple landing page and adding several pages to its main website would mean burying the information and relying on visitors to feel their way through to the specific information.

In most cases microsites and landing pages are created to convert visitors into leads. Microsite also result in increased SEO opportunities.  Microsites are typically hosted on a different domain than the primary website and contain sometimes multiple pages of topic-related content for high organic search rankings. Most savvy marketers tend to use both microsites and landing pages somewhere along the way. And if microsites are hosting on multiple- C IPs (SEO-hosting), the results can be even more considerable.

Customization & self-promotion
The customized username will replace your profile ID number with your desired name which will feel more personal to you. It not only adds more trust within community members but also brings an increased level of personalization and promotion. Not to mention that you can now include Facebook in your personal branding strategy and increase shareability of your profile.

SEO
Custom Facebook URLs are also great for SEO purposes: When a person searches your name on Google, it’s likely your Facebook vanity URL page will be among the top results. Facebook ranks extremely well in Google search results and custom URLs will likely be on the first page of listing when people search for your name or brand.

Shorter URLs
Another benefit of choosing a customized Facebook username is that a shorter URL will be easier to remember and share. For instance, you can visit President Obama’s profile at www.facebook.com/barackobama.

Increase your (personal) brand exposure
With the new username Facebook feature it’s becoming much easier to increase your businesses exposure, using this easier to remember web address providing a tidier path for users to reach your content and brand.

1. Online businesses
Once you have created a loyal community of followers on Twitter, you will want to start leveraging them. You can start tweeting about your blog, company or anything you are involved in. Your followers will then start re-tweeting your tweets, bringing more traffic to your website! For example, Dell has successfully leverages twitter to drive sales to its outlet website.

2. Journalists
Twitter is a great way to spread breaking news very quickly and easily. CNN’s Breaking News is already posted on Twitter. It’s all part of the wider move of journalism to becoming more connected with readers.

3. Teachers/Educators
Teachers and educators can access a stream of links, ideas, opinion and resources within seconds from a selection of global professionals. It’s now possible to actively compare what is happening in schools in your county with others on different continents. Twitter is a great medium for sharing ideas and getting instant feedback.

4. Artists/Creative People
Create a dialogue with your audience. Twitter works very well for the creative community including artists. You can use Twitter to help encourage people to visit your blog or your website, promote your work and your activity.

5. Politicians
Use Twitter as a political tool to communicate with people.

6. Sports organizations
Sports organizations can ask questions, get instant feedback from fans, plus save money on focus groups. It’s easy to spread the news and extend sponsor promotions.

In short, Twitter can be used by anyone who wishes to:
-    Keep track of breaking news
-    Monitor their reputation
-    Get quick answers
-    Stay in touch
-    Meet new people
-    “Be” in several places at once
-    Build their authority as an expert
-    Share their knowledge

Learn more about Twitter at www.twitter.com

1. You become known as an expert in your field
Use a blog to easily share your knowledge and expertise on a specific niche area is a great advantage to business. A Blog gives you a place where you can write in your own voice and establish yourself as a trusted expert.

2. Blogs get you more traffic from search engines
Search engines love blogs and blog directories because of their built-in notification features and also because bloggers continually add fresh content to their blogs. Blogs also get traffic from highly popular social networking search engines like Technocrati, DIGG and Reddit.

3. Podcasts – easily shared
Podcasting refers to a very low cost medium that enables you to share tailored and targeted content with your audience. Another benefit is given by RSS technology that enables your audience to subscribe to your website podcasts and blogs and pull content they I want from you. Podcasts can also be easily downloaded.

4. Interactive FAQ section
Your blog can also have an interactive FAQ section where customers can ask questions and you can interactively answer them. How great would it be to get your questions answered right away!

5. Blogs are free
You can set up a blog in minutes for free using wordpress.com or blogger.com.

6. You can update your blog without a webmaster
Updating your blog with fresh content is easy to do: you won’t need a webmaster to do that for you. You can work at your own pace and you don’t have to spend extra money.  If you post valuable information on a regular basis, it will boost your credibility and establish you as an expert in your field.

7. Start a series of How-To articles
You can put up articles and explain various concerns in your industry. This will save your readers time spent looking it up and give proof that your company knows what they’re doing, creating a greater chance for sales.

8. Easily connect with your visitors
Your blog can be a great means of communication between your customers who want to share their comments, feedback, ideas and concerns with you.

9. Blog content density is better than your website’s
As mentioned earlier, search engines give blogs a higher rank and active blogs are indexed on a more regular basis than websites because of continuously available new content.

You can have your website built from the ground up or you can buy a pre-made website template and use it as it is, or you can have this template customized to give it a more original and distinct look. Bear in mind that there are limitations to the extent of customization for a pre-made website template.

Differences between a custom web design and a template design

A custom website is designed from the ground up for a unique look and feel and is created with meaningful and pertinent content. It is is built after a significant amount of research and analysis to suit branding and business requirements.

A template-based website is generally built using a pre-made website template package that has most of the common pages already designed. Website templates are created using preset backgrounds, banners, main navigation links and masthead areas. In theory you just need to add content and your website is ready. In reality, it is not as simple as this. You can liken a template-based website to a pre-fabricated house and a custom designed website to a properly architected and constructed home. Furthermore, a pre-made website template is generally used for multiple websites so the creators of the template can offset their investment in building the template. A custom designed website is unique in its look and feel

If you are lucky enough to find a template that suits your business style and image and if your content fits the template, then a template-based website can be an economical choice.

A custom designed website usually costs significantly more than a template – mainly because it is specifically built to your requirements and make your web presence unique.

Visitor tracking also tells you where your visitors are coming from, what pages they visit, how they navigate through you website and what topics they find of interest. The intention is to find out what interests your visitors so you can fine-tune the content of your website to provide a more targeted source of information and to better serve your visitors and customers.

Furthermore, visitor tracking also captures search engine activity and provides a thorough analysis of which keywords are driving the most of traffic to your website.  Visitor tracking can also tell you how much of your traffic is direct, how much is coming from search engines and how much from referring websites. Advanced visitor tracking also lets you see the traffic originating from organic or natural search engine optimization and allows you compare that with any paid marketing campaigns. This way, you can fine-tune your content and marketing strategies to gain an better understanding of how to increase your online visibility and ultimately, result in more traffic.

Here are 3 popular visitor tracking systems:

StatCounter (www.statcounter.com) provides both free and paid services. You can choose to implement Statcounter in invisible mode meaning that there are no obvious links or counters on your web pages.

Clicky (www.getclicky.com) has picked up a significant amount of traffic over the last few months and provides a very comprehensive statistics.

Finally, you can always opt for Google Analytics, which is also free and also gives you great statistics and ties in beautifully with Google Paid Advertising (PPC).