Ironvine Search Marketing

How to market your website with free publicity!

Press releases and well written informative articles are a cheap and easy way to get public awareness of your site and promotions. Not all submission sites charge to send out your PR, although most have some sort of limitation to them unless you pay for features. This article should show you how to get around having to pay anything for some great online visibility!

Are you quaking in your boots about having to write something from scratch? It is not as challenging as you may think, and you don’t always need a professional copywriter to do all the work for you! The main goal to writing a publication is to provide valuable information. It may be something as simple as how to properly wash you hands. That may not sound like much, but to a company that sells soap or paper towels that bit of information could end up making them a lot of money!

Step #1 - Think of something relevant to you or your company to write about!

As I mentioned above, it doesn’t have to be something major like a public stock offering notice. Something simple, easy to understand and relevant to you is all you need. Somewhere in the world there is someone who wants to know what you have to share.

Going back to the example of an article explaining how to wash your hands correctly, there are any number of people or groups that could find this information valuable. Hospitals, dentist offices, supermarkets, Microsoft, you never know! And neither will they unless you tell them.

Step #2 - I have to write now???

Soon, but before you have to get into your creative mode there are some tips that might make things easier. From experience, looking at a blank piece of paper can be scary. It is easy to get lost in the blankness of how to fill the white void.

Solution: Make yourself a template and break the page up!

Not only will a template help you start writing easier, it will help you organize your thoughts, form a well structured document, AND have it ready for all those online submissions later on! Here is a sample template you can use while getting ready to create a document. Notice how the headings are put in brackets to help distinguish the sections.

[DATE]

[TITLE]

[SUMMARY]

[BODY]

[RESOURCES/LINKS]

[AUTHOR]

Step #3 - Great! You have something on that blank page now right? Now you are wondering what to put in each of those sections. Let’s go through them briefly.

[DATE] - This should be self explanatory. This is more for records keeping than anything. Maybe you write a great article and want to share it more than once, but you want to give it a month or two before resubmitting it. Now you know when it was first published.

[TITLE] - The title may be the first and last step of your creativity. Many times a title that was started with changed dramatically by the end. Still it is a good place to start. Give your article something to go on.

[SUMMARY] - Tell the people what you are going to tell them, briefly. Hit the high points of what you are going to say. This section can either help focus your ideas, or you can come back to it after you are finished writing the bulk of your text.

[BODY] - Here is where your true genius shines through! This part of the writing I can’t give you too many tips on. The content really depends on you and what you want to say.

Some general tips: Be thorough. Be concise. Be intriguing. Write information you want your audience to read and remember. Stylistics: For online reading if you can keep your paragraphs to no more than 4-5 lines long it is easier to read. Remember to spellcheck!

[RESOURCES/LINKS] - Feel free to back up your information with supporting data! Your website/blog being the #1 prime location to link to. Other supporting resources that will provide your readers with valuable information are also good. You may have a great new idea, but help your credibility with supporting data.

[AUTHOR] - Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Who do you work for? Why should someone listen to what you say? How can someone contact you? Provide your information here.

Step #4 - Almost done! Now you have your article prepared. What do you do with it?

First of all I would suggest having someone proof-read it. Spellcheck doesn’t always catch wrong words. Now it’s ready for publication! Below is a long list of sites where you can submit articles and press releases for free. I am not supporting one over another as there are many popular to professional news agency sites listed.

You will most likely have to create a user account on each before they will allow you to publish your work. Be careful as most free submission sites will try to get you to pay for certain features. Feel free to use any features you like, they can really add to your visibility, but they can add up ($$$) quickly and are not always needed.

What should you expect to get out of all this work? Getting your name and information out to the public should be worth enough, but there are other perks. Search engines love linkbacks from quality sources. How much more quality can you provide than using yourself as a source publishing around the world? It can be a huge boost to any search engine optimization plan. If you can get people talking about you, good or bad, it’s all publicity.

Hopefully this article has helped you in some small way. If it has then it was worth the effort of writing it!

Good luck and go get that free publicity!

[RESOURCES]

[Press Release Submission Sites]
PR Free [http://www.prfree.com/]
SBWire [http://www.sbwire.com]
Press Zoom [http://www.presszoom.com/]
Press Base [http://www.press-base.com/]
Express Press Release Distribution [http://www.express-press-release.com/]
Press World [http://www.press-world.com/]
Open PR [http://www.openpr.com/]
Free Press Release [http://www.free-press-release.com/]
Free News Release [http://www.free-news-release.com/]
I Newswire [http://www.i-newswire.com/]
Newswire Today [http://www.newswiretoday.com/]
PR.com [http://www.pr.com]

[Article Submission Sites]
iSnare [http://www.isnare.com/]
ArticleBlast [http://www.articleblast.com/]
Ezine Articles [http://www.ezinearticles.com/]
GO Articles [http://www.goarticles.com/]

For more information please visit:
Ironvine Search Marketing Blog - Tips, tricks, code, resources and news 

[ABOUT THE AUTHOR]
Steve Terjeson is an Online Marketing Specialist with over 10 years programming and web experience. As a search engine optimization expert, he has managed hundreds of web sites in high performance search engine rankings and has set up marketing campaigns with exceptional results.

Steve Terjeson
Online Marketing Specialist
Ironvine Search Marketing

Published Source: How to market your website with free publicity! - Amazines.com

Technorati Tags: seo, marketing, ironvine, website, publicity, article, press release, how to, online marketing

ChannelAdvisor Lays off 19% of its Workforce

Sad to say, I was one of them. Apparently there were 32 Employees let go in the US offices.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m01/i23/s04
http://onlinesaleschannels.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/my-liquid-lunch-with-ex-ca-employees/

I look at this as a good thing though as I was the only member of the Seattle office left on staff after they vacated the office building in Oct 2008. (Yes, no more west coast office). I have had to work out of my home office since then. It will be nice to be able to get back into traveling to work and getting to talk to other people, sharing and learning new things.

If anyone knows a company looking for a Search Marketing guru feel free to contact me at steve @ ironvine.com!

My condolences to all the other employees that were let go this week I wish you all the best, and to my former co-workers it was a great 2 years. Take care!

As I posted last week over at SearchMarketing.com, Yahoo has done a good bit to give more insight into what it is doing to combat click fraud.

While there is not a lot of everyday usefulness in the update, they are making a good faith effort to combat the very controversial topic.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Search Marketing, Click Fraud, Ironvine

I know we’ve probably all used these but I thought I would toss them up here when I found an article with them all included.

Word Tracker http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
With Wordtracker you type in one keyword and can get up to 100 top keyword variations and approximately how many searches each one receives. They also have an ‘adult filter’ you can use to eliminate any adult orientated search terms that might be related to your keyword.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
The Google Adwords keyword tool is great! You can type in as many keywords as you like to start with, and Google will literally give you hundreds of keywords to choose from including different variations of your keyword to misspellings. They also give you much more information than just keyword variations. They can show you advertiser competition, search volume per month, average search volume total, average CPC , ad position and much more.

SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
The  SEO Book Keyword Research Tool is very cool for many reasons. Mainly, it shows the estimated number of daily searches for each Google, Yahoo and MSN. They’ve also recently added an export to CSV feature, so you can now export the entire list of keywords into a spreadsheet to share with others or to use for future references.Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.htmlThe free Keyword Discovery tool is great for giving many different variations of keywords and their estimated number of searches performed. The great thing about Keyword Discovery is that they collect data from all major search engines. I do feel however that on some keywords they estimate a very low number of searches .

SpyFu http://www.spyfu.com/?kw=keyword%20research%20tool
 Spyfu is pretty cool in the fact that they give you more than just variations of keywords you are searching for. Spyfu gives you such information like, an average cost-per- click, cost/day, clicks/day, the number of advertisers also bidding on a particular keyword and the number of search results listed. In addition, they will list out top related terms, related concepts and keywords that competitors bought. What’s even more cool, they will also list out the top 5 (although you can view more) advertisers who are advertising for this keyword, their domain and ad text, both in paid search and organic. Now that’s a lot of info!

MSN Keyword Forecast Tool http://adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx
This tool doesn’t necessarily give you variations of a keyword you type in, but it gives you traffic forecasting information as well as demographic information. For Example, for the keyword ‘catheter’ I found that that majority of people tying in this keyword are women ages 50+. This will help me understand my target audience better as well as allow me to set up correct demographic settings within my accounts. It also gives me an estimate of when searches on this keyword are highest and lowest so I know when to expect more traffic and when to expect a drop in traffic.

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM, Keywords, Tools, Tips, Marketing, Search, Ironvine

Here is a first look at a new visual search engine at searchme.com.Searchme does look good, resembling a mashup of Google with Apple’s popular Cover Flow three-dimensional graphical user interface used on its iTunes service, with a little of Ask.com’s categories thrown in.For now, Searchme is only going into private beta, adding users by invitation only.To create the page-riffling effect, Searchme has been working with Adobe. The top screen, after a search term has been entered, then creates a stack of pages to represent the page links on a list below.Technorati Tags: Searchme, Searchme.com, Search, Engine, Google, Apple, Ask, Ironvine

Today CNN published an article about some major changes in the way Ask.com is going to be doing business moving forward. They are changing their focus from an all inclusive, interactive search engine and adapting it to target a specific audience.

With the change it will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions about recipes, hobbies, children’s homework, entertainment and health.

The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the southern and midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google.

While I am fully supportive of them creating a niche market to provide specific answers, this comes as a strange choice to me. Thinking economically that demographic isn’t among the stronger per capita income areas. They are going to have limited influence in the market base with advertisers who will also be constrained by their focused market.

It seems as this is yet another down turn in the search competition world, Ask.com is starting to fade away into its own corner and returning a small portion of the market share back into the search pool.

You can read the full article at CNN - Ask.com gets a makeover, lays off 40

Technorati Tags: Ask.com, CNN, Search Engine, Marketing, Search, Ironvine

Steven Terjeson of ChannelAdvisor is accredited as an official Microsoft adExcellence Member. A Microsoft adExcellence Member has completed comprehensive online training on managing Microsoft adCenter search engine marketing campaigns and has demonstrated expert knowledge by passing the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam.

This completes my suite of certifications, Google, Yahoo and now MSN.

Technorati Tags: adExcellence, Certification, SEM, adCenter, ChannelAdvisor, Ironvine

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you had a safe and happy holiday season.

I know I was very busy as most marketers are in the last part of the year.

Remember to make your post holiday paid search bid corrections, and plan those budgets for a highly competitive online year!

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Ironvine

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This is a good article to keep in mind when working with keywords.

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=19527

Technorati Tags: Search, Paid, Marketing, PPC, SEW, Ironvine

Last Friday MSN adCenter updated their interface to include several new features including faster editorial reviews, a hew home page dashboard, and faster ways to copy and edit keywords and create campaigns. You can review the update notice below.

Microsoft adCenter will upgrade on Friday, September 7. The tools and functionality in this upgrade will include significant improvements in editorial efficiency, campaign creation, and campaign management.

During this upgrade, adCenter will be temporarily unavailable for up to 8 hours on Friday, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time. Your ads and keywords will remain live and continue to run as usual, during this time.

After this upgrade, reporting will be delayed for up to 72 hours. To see when your data was last updated, check the timestamp on the bottom of adCenter Reporting tab.

Upgrade highlights:
Save time with fast and thorough editorial reviews for new ad groups.
Create campaigns with ease by quickly importing campaigns directly from other paid search programs or by copying existing ad groups within adCenter to a new campaign.
Instantly navigate to specific accounts, campaigns, or ad groups with the new adCenter home page dashboard, a one-stop-shop for all of your daily campaign management tasks.
Update keyword bids in bulk and view keyword performance on the same page.
Visualize your campaigns’ targeting settings with Microsoft Virtual EarthTM map integration for geographical targeting.
For details on how to use these adCenter improvements view the Feature Release Guide. In addition, the adCenter Blog will highlight detailed feature reviews after the upgrade occurs.

If you have any questions, please contact our adCenter Support Team.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Technorati Tags: MSN, Microsoft, adCenter, PPC, Paid Search, Online Marketing, Ironvine

SES was a pretty good conference. The event hall was pretty well staffed with vendors including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, iProspect, and many more. There were lots of Search companies, link building companies, and various other web companies.

My conference was highlighted by the Google invite only Agency Lunch and the Google Dance at the Google Campus in Mountain View.

The Google Lunch was a small group of invite only agency people. I sat at a table with the CEO and a few other people from advertising.com. The presentation was basically all about the new Google offerings in addition to search, Print, TV, Radio, etc. Print as well possibly. I’m sure some of our clients already do radio ads and could be pretty easy to migrate over. The nice thing is that Google offers ways to track the performance, like dedicated phone numbers which they offer for free or by using dedicated trackable entry points.

Google Dance 2007 was a huge bash at the Google campus in Mountain Home.
You can see more pics from Google on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/gdance2007/GoogleDance2007WeRockedIt
There were lots of product demos on all the Google applications, Meet the Developers, food, drinks, a huge dance party in the rec hall, green screen karaoke, and my favorite the Candy Bar.

All in all it was a great trip. Met lots of people in the event hall and the sessions had some decent information. Next time I hope to get into some of the other sessions to see what they are about.

Technorati Tags: SES, San Jose, Search Engine Stratagies, Search, Paid Search, Marketing, Advertising, Ironvine, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

The Improved Ad Preview tool is now easier to use!

» We’ve recently updated the Ad Preview tool to include easy drop-down menus to select different locations and languages. This improvement will make performing a test search that much easier.

As a refresher: The Ad Preview tool enables you to view ads and search results as they would appear on a regular Google search results page. With the Ad Preview tool, you can also adjust the location to see locally targeted ads–no matter where you are located. Plus, you won’t accrue extra impressions!

Visit the Ad Preview Tool to give it a try.

Technorati Tags: Google, AdWords, Paid Search, PPC, Search, Marketing, Ironvine