How To Modify WordPress Permanent Link Structures

Not many people know about the importance of Wordpress permanent link structures. Basically, the wordpress permalinks or permanent links are LINKS to the individual wordpress pages. Wordpress permalinks is very important for search engine optimization. In fact, the first thing you must modify after installing wordpress is the permalinks.

Below is an example of search-engine-friendly permalinks,

http://online-business-journey.com/blog/seo-tips/power-of-links-for-your-website/

If you don’t modify your pemalinks, by default it will look like this…

http://online-business-journey.com/?p=123

Which one do you think is more optimized for the search engines? The answer is very obvious.

So how to modify your Wordpress Permalinks?

Here are the steps…

1. Log on to your wordpress dashboard.
For example, in my case, I go to http://online-business-journey.com/blog/wp-admin

2. Once you’ve successfully logged on to your wordpress dashboard, click on “Options” (see the red arrow)

3. Now, click on “Permalinks”

4. In the Custom options, select the 4th option “Custom, specify below”

5. Now, type in “/%category%/%postname%/” (without the quotes) in the field and click “Update Permalink Structure”.

6. DONE!

The permalink structure “/%category%/%postname%/” will display both your category and post name which is very search-engine-friendly.

For more information on how to optimize your Wordpress blog, go to “Wordpress Adsense System“.

I always get asked this question…

What is the best way to get FREE traffic from the search engines without knowing a lot about SEO and without spending a dime?

My answer is always this… “start blogging“. It’s very easy to start a blog!

Assuming you already have a topic in mind and you do have some knowledge and interest in that topic, THEN just head over to www.blogger.com, create a free account and start blogging.

Blogger is belong to Google and it’s the best platform for newbies to start their online marketing experiences. It’s so easy to use, if you know how to use the free email systems such as Yahoo or Gmail, you will know how to use blogger.

Other reasons why you should start blogging are…

1. It has all the necessary tools for you to start making your marks online. You don’t have to worry about the technical stuffs like registering a domain, get a hosting account, developing a website, etc.. All you need to do is to log on to your blogger account, start writing and then click on “publish”. Your blog will go live immediately!

2. Search engines love blogs. If you put in fresh content regularly on your blogs and learn some basic SEO, your blogs will rank well in the search engines. This will help to grow your online presence very quickly.

NOTE: Go to “SEO TIPS” to pick up some basic knowledge of SEO.

3. People love fresh content. Again, fresh content is key here. It’s not only loved by the search engines but also human beings. If you can provide up-to-date information on a specific topic, people will come back and visit your blog.

For more serious individuals.

If you’re looking to market your business, passion or hobby online for long term, the better alternative than blogger blog is self-hosted WordPress. It’s also a very popular blog especially for those serious internet marketers. WordPress has two versions: free wordpress and self-hosted wordpress. Both are free except that the latter requires you to have your own domain and hosting account.

If you want to go for the free version, I suggest you go with Blogger because it’s so much easier to use and flexible. Note that if you go for the free versions (blogger or wordpress), all your content are belong to the host.

On the other hand, if you have a self-hosted blog such as WordPress, you’ll get to own everything. If you’ve a long-term plan for your online presence, then I strongly advise you to go for the self-hosted Wordpress blog.

P.S. If you’re a newbie, check out this book “Wordpress Adsense System“. It will teach you step-by-step how to quickly set up and optimize your wordpress blog. You will also learn how to drive traffic to your blog and monetize it with Adsense. It’s a bible for wordpress users. If you’re serious wanting to market online, this book is worth checking out.

Have you heard of KwMap? It’s the best niche brainstorming tool available on the Internet. And the best part is that it’s FREE!

If you’re currently in the process of brainstorming or finding your niche, you should not miss out this free tool.

Using KwMap is very easy.

For example, I’m currently exploring a niche in “panic attacks”. So I go to KwMap and enter the phrase “panic attacks” (without the quotes) in the kw search field.

Below is the result I see…

As you can see from the above screenshot, KwMap displays two lines (axes) full of keyword phrases. One line displays all the keyword phrases that contain your seed keywords “panic attacks” and another line shows you the related niche topics.

You can narrow down to a particular niche topic by clicking on the keyword phrases. For example, if you click on the keyword “agoraphobia”, KwMap will produce the following results…

As you can see it’s very easy for you to navigate and zero in to a more specific niche topic.

On the right side of the diagram, you can also see a list of keywords that is related to your niche topic. You can use these keywords as your main or seed keywords for your niche. For example, you can select 10 or 15 keywords that are most closely related to your niche and then use the more advanced keyword research tool such as Keyword Elite for further analysis.

In summary, if you’re in the process of brainstorming and finding niche, use KwMap! It’s powerful and easy to use. And it’s FREE! I use KwMap on a regular basis to find and research a niche topic.

Video Marketing- Stop Wasting Time and Money with Adwords
By Demetrios Tzortzis

Internet marketers from all over the planet are discovering a new method of promotion. Finally, there is an alternative to expensive pay-per-click campaigns. It’s called video marketing. It’s new. It’s on fire! It’s a readily available method to generate an endless source of powerful leads. Let’s take a closer look:

1. When you’re in business, branding means just about everything. Video marketing is an excellent way to brand yourself and your business. When people get to see you and hear you talk, they get to know you. They get to experience your emotions with you. That is priceless.

2. Video marketing creates a bridge between the potential consumers and yourself. It builds trust. Unlike pay-per-click advertising, it lets them know that they are dealing with real human beings that care enough to present themselves in person.

3. Marketing yourself or your business by video on social networks like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube has the potential for mass appeal. Together, these three entities alone get 50,000,000 hits a day!

Internet marketers who wish to engage in a campaign of video advertising need to pay attention to the following details:

1. Remember that you’re marketing a business. Hold your posture up right. Speak clearly and read from a prepared script – don’t just wing it. Use correct language and professional terminology. Show that you’re confident. It’s only for about 3 minutes; you can do it.

2. Take advantage of the fact that you are engaging in marketing. Be enthusiastic! Nobody will give even 3 minutes of their time to watch a boring video produced by a stick in the mud.

3. Create a sense of urgency to explore your product or products further. You want every viewer to end up that your site.

4. Put some thought into howl you produce the video itself. A backdrop is always nice. Choose a decent camcorder for good video quality. Also, make sure that your production environment is quiet and uninterrupted during filming.

5. Diversify your efforts. Don’t simply put out one video and leave at that. Create multiple videos and release them on various social networking entities. Maximize your exposure. This is what promotion is all about!

So there you have it – a crash course in video marketing! Start exploring. Start researching more. Start experimenting with video creation. Like anything else, your skills will improve the repetition. Project yourself to the world through video marketing and grow rich!

Demetrios Tzortzis has coached and mentored countless individuals in online marketing strategies and tactics. Demetrios’ straight forward, no BS approach is unlocking the potential for new marketers to succeed without the initial “beginners” slump.

Demetrios Tzortzis
720.339.3808
livetoprosper@gmail.com
www.LiveToProsper.biz
www.YouTube.com/Dprosperityman

Related Article: Affiliate Video Brander.

When it comes to internet or online marketing, Affiliate Marketing is perhaps the best way to earn some money online. There are many ways to earn money in affiliate marketing but the most effective and profitable one is writing product reviews. In this post, we will share with you some tips and techniques you must always apply when writing a product review.

Sidenote: The Affiliate Marketing’s business model is very simple. You promote other people products as an affiliate. When people buy the product through your affiliate ID, you will get a commission.

But first thing first, writing product review is not the same as writing a salesletter. The objective of a salesletter is to SELL period. That’s why salesletter uses a lot of HYPE. Most salesletters are over-promised and under-delivered. That’s why people are very skeptical with salesletters.

On the other hand, the objective of a product review is to PRE-SELL (not sell). Pre-selling is a process of gaining TRUST from your readers which is the most IMPORTANT element in converting your visitors/readers into customers. You have to remember this: “Price resistance diminishes in direct proportion to TRUST“. When your potential prospects trust you, you will have no problem in recommending and selling a product.

So how do you gain trust from your potential prospects?

1. BENEFITS, BENEFITS and BENEFITS
When writing a product review, most affiliate marketers make a mistake by highlighting the FEATURES of the products instead of the BENEFITS. Please remember this, when writing a product review, always ask yourself this question from your prospect’s perspective: “What is in it for me?” People only care about what they can benefit from the product, they don’t care about the features. How can the product help them to earn more money? How can the product help them to solve their problems? How can the product help them to save money? etc.. So always ask yourself questions from your prospect’s perspective when writing a product review.

2. Be the EXPERT in your niche
Your readers will be more willing to whip out their credit card if they feel and believe that you are an expert in your field. One way to establish expertise in your field is to target niche market that you’re passionate about. And make sure that the market has people who are especially interested in advice, ideas, and help about a particular topic in your niche. When you’ve expertise in a particular niche market, you’ll tend to write product reviews from an actual experience. Without actual hands-on experience, you cannot include powerful benefits or descriptions in your reviews.

3. Be as OBJECTIVE as possible
A good product review will always states objectively what the product or service is, what it isn’t, and how well it performs. If you can’t state the facts about the product objectively, you need to do more research or purchase the product and then use it yourself. Give your reader the impression of FAIRNESS by including both the positive and negative points of the product. The idea here is to make the information appear more unbiased.

4. Offer PROOF
If you can, test and use the product or service yourself. You can offer PROOF, it will be a very powerful sales motivator. When you show actual results with proof, you give your potential buyers a sense of “security” to make their buying decisions.

5. Learn from your COMPETITORS
Take a good look at your competitors, look at all the strategies being used by your competitors. When you read their reviews, how do you feel? Does it make you want to buy after reading it? When you find one that is very compelling, learn from it and follow his/her strategy. Now, I’m not asking you to copy other people reviews words by words (that’s plagiarism). But, it’s nothing wrong if you copy their strategy and write the review using your own words!

I hope you find this article useful.

For more information on how to make money writing product reviews, check out: Make Your Words Sell.

Setting your internet marketing goals is crucial to your success as long as you follow through your goals with ACTIONS! Please understand that setting goals and reaching them are two different activities. They are NOT mutually exclusive! If you don’t follow through your PLAN or GOAL with ACTION, you might as well not setting any goal in the first place because only action can move you closer to your goal. Nothing will ever happen until you take action. And only those who take action with a solid goal will SUCCEED!

Here are some tips you can use to help you set goals and achieving them…

The first step is to educate yourself. Internet Marketing has many gold mines but it’s also flooded with HYPE and SCAM! The only way for you to break through all those nonsense and keep you focus on your goal is to have a proper knowledge. Without a proper knowledge, dealing with Internet Marketing is like going through a jungle all by yourself without a map and compass.

You must also believe in yourself and visualize your success. If you’re undertaking a project with doubt, it is almost impossible for you to achieve your goals. Having a proper knowledge and faith in yourself will give you a higher chance of success. Having a positive thinking and visualization will motivate you to strive for your best.

Next, pick a NICHE (or target market) you’re passionate about. No idea how to pick your niche? Here is a great tip I use….
Go to EzineArticles.com and you’ll see there are hundreds (if not thousands) of categories and sub-categories of topics on the front page. Just browse through the page and I’m sure you will find a topic that interests you the most. One major advantage of picking a topic from this site is that it’s almost guaranteed that the topic has a demand (or market). It’s important not only you want to pick some thing you’re passionate about, but also some thing that has a market (so that you can make MONEY).

Why is it important to pick something you’re passionate about?

Well, most people give up after a while. If you’ve a passion about your topic, it will help you to maintain your motivation level. Another reason is that you have to know what you are talking about. Knowing the answers to all of your visitor’s questions and being able to assist them on the internet will give you a better chance to success. Remember that people are searching for useful information (or solutions to their problems) on the Net. If you can provide them the solutions, they will pay you for it.

Lastly, it is absolutely crucial that you focus on your niche. No matter what you see or hear from other Internet Gurus. You must NOT let them derail your focus. Just keep your blinder on and focus at one thing at a time until you’ve achieved your goal. Once you’ve successfully built a substantial income, you can then move on to another sub-niche or new niche.

If you’re just getting started in Internet Marketing, check out this great resource: “Newbie Cash Machine“. As I mentioned ealier, the best way to break through the Internet Marketing HYPE and SCAM is by having a proper education and knowledge. Newbie Cash Machine is one of the most complete guide I’ve seen for the newbies. It will teach you the A to Z of Internet Marketing.

So if you have a GOAL or DREAM or PASSION that you believe you can market through the Internet and turn it into an income source for you, take ACTION to make it happens. Don’t waste it!

Hope this article is useful for you.

I’ve seen this over and over again, the reason why people don’t succeed in Internet Marketing or online business is not because lack of intelligence or lack of information. The #1 reason why people don’t succeed is lack of ACTION. You can be the most intelligent human being on the planet but if you don’t take action, nothing will happen!

There are myriad of reasons why people don’t take action, the most commonly cited one is “FEAR of stepping out from the COMFORT ZONE”. Most people feel more comfortable doing the same old things that they’re accustomed to even though they know it’s not going to get them anywhere. They’re just stuck with the routines and refuse to change.

Do you know how to boil a frog?

If you throw a frog into a container of boiling water, the frog will instantly jump out of the boiling water. But, if you put the frog into a container of lukewarm water. The frog will love it and stay in the container. You can then turn on the heat at the bottom of the container. As the water get warmer, the frog will relax and even take a nap. The frog will be so comfortable that it will stay in the container until it’s “cooked”.

The moral of the above story is that the comfort zone can be your danger zone.

In fact most people are just like a frog, we’re in the “comfort zone”. We have a house to go home to, a nice bed to sleep on, foods to eat, and all the basic necessities of life. So why should we change?

Most people will refuse to change because they’re in the comfort zone, and they prefer to stay where they are. In life we are either creating or disintegrating. There is no such thing as “staying where we are”, because the world is always changing. If we are not moving ahead in life, we will never get what we want in life!

So, if you’ve a DREAM, take ACTION to start working on it today. A small action can make a BIG difference.

Go… Go… Go…

If you read my previous posts about On-Page and Off-Page Optimization, you will realize that the most IMPORTANT factor on search engine optimization is LINKS, LINKS and more LINKS. Most search engines place a very high degree of importance on LINKS when it comes to ranking.

So if you want your websites to rank well on the search engines, you need to focus on building LINKS to your site! However, not all links are created equal. There are a few very important “linking-factors” that you need to be aware of when it comes to building links.

In my opinion, the THREE most important “linking factors” are:

1. The anchor text or link text.
It’s very important that you choose the right anchor text or text link as this is like your targeted keyword. Anchor text is basically a keyword phrase other websites use to link to your webpage or site.

TIP: when choosing your anchor text, you shoud target keyword phrase that has low to mid competition. Do not target high-competitive keywords such as “internet marketing”, “make money”, “real estate” or “car insurance”. As these keywords are extremely competitive and will be very difficult if you try to rank them.

2. Links are coming from a variety of diverse locations.
Besides the right anchor or text link, the value of a link is also determined by the number of other sites pointing to your site and how “natural” those links seem. The search engines will place high value for sites whose links are coming from a variety of diverse locations.

3. Links are NOT happening too fast.
The search engines (particularly Google) are very wary of new sites that suddenly have hundreds of links aimed at them. Google assumes that links gained in this fashion are not happening naturally. These kinds of links are put in what has come to be called the “sandbox”. And your site will not benefit from such links. So, if you’re building links to your site, make sure that it doesn’t happen too fast.

Building links is a very time-intensive effort. But, fortunately there is a tool that can help us to automate the link-building process. The tool I use is called “3WayLinks Network” created by Jonathan Leger. It’s a set and forget link-building tool but it has a very advanced technology and it takes care of the important linking-factors we discussed above. This link-building tool has saved me tons of time and money.

Related Article: How To Get Top Ranking In Google.

Let’s face it… having traffic or visitors coming to your website is the first step, next step is how to convert those traffic into cash. In Internet Marketing, this is known as traffic conversion or simply “monetization”.

In other words, in order to convert your web traffic into cash, you need to have a monetization strategy. If you don’t have a monetization strategy, you’ll be wasting or throwing away traffic that visiting your site.

This article will provide some tips you can use to monetize or convert your traffic into cash.

1. Promote a product/service

If you’ve your own product (an ebook, software or service), always mention it in your site. If you don’t, you can promote other people products as an affiliate. There are many places you can find affiliate products to sell such as ClickBank, Commission Junction, PayDotCom, and ShareASale. These are the biggies.

Tip: If you can’t find the products you’re interested in there, try to search using the search engine. For example, if you’re interested in skincare products, just go to Google and type in “skincare +affiliate programs”. You’ll see many affiliate programs that offer skincare products. Signing up as affiliate is FREE. NOTE: DO NOT join any affiliate program that charges you a sign-up fee.

2. Viral marketing and list building

Create a useful ebook that is related to the topic of your site and make it available for people to download for free. You can put your website links and affiliate links in the ebook. Tell the readers that they can distribute or give the ebook away to anyone. With this viral marketing technique, you can increase traffic to your site, publicity and branding without having to spend a dime.

On top of that, you can also build your email list because people need to give you their name & email address before they can download your free ebook. Once you’ve their email, DO NOT bombard them with promotions after promotions. You need to try your best to build good relationships with your email list by providing them useful information, tips and more useful freebies. You can promote products to them but do so by PRE-SELLING.

3. Include AdSense Ads on your site

If you haven’t got an Adsense account, go to google.com/adsense and sign up an account. Follow the instructions and place ads on your site. Google Adsense will automatically display relevant ads for your site. Google will pay you when your visitors click on the ads on your site. Most people use Adsense, but of course there are other alternatives such as Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera. If your site receives good traffic, these programs alone can bring in nice paychecks for you.

Related Article: “Monetization Models“.

If you’re using Google Adwords (Google’s pay-per-click or PPC advertising system), this tip is for you. You will learn what is Google Slap and how to avoid it. If you’re new to Google Adwords, please read this article first “AdWords Pay-Per-Click Advertising Tips“.

If you use Google Adwords, I’m sure you’ve heard about Google Slap. But, what exactly is Google Slap?

Well, simply put… Google is very strict with the advertisers when it comes to “relevance”. You can’t just put up an Adwords ad that goes to a page (or rather landing page) that is “irrelevant” with your ad. If you do that, Google will penalise or SLAP you by charging you unreasonable high price for a click. You can be asked to pay $10 or even $20 per click!

How Do You Avoid Google Slap?

Here are TWO things we always pay great attention to when we set up our Adwords campaign…

1. Relevance:
As mentioned, your ad and your landing page must be Relevant! The keywords you target in your ads and your landing page must be related otherwise you’ll get slapped by Google and charged a very high price per click. Furthermore, you will also waste your potential customer. Because when people clicking on your ad and get to your landing page that has no relation to your ad, they will immediately click off the page and leave! Because they are not looking at the product they thought they clicked on from your ad.

Tip: To make sure your web-page has high relevance, follow the practice of on-page SEO.

2. Content:
Actually, it’s a bad idea to direct your Adwords ad to a single page (or landing page) even though if it’s relevant to your ad. This is because if your site/page only contains a single sales page, you are going to find that the cost of your Google Ads are going to be running in the $10.00 per ad range. To avoid paying the high cost per click, make sure your landing page has many links to relevant content (such as tips and advice) that people can benefit from. If you do this, Google will reward you by cutting down your cost per click.

Yes, you need to spend more time and effort to create more relevant content instead of just a single sales or review page. But it’s worth it because you will pay a lot less per click. So, in the long run you can actually save more money.

I hope these tips are useful to you.