11 Email Marketing Mistakes WordPress Users Must Avoid

Thinking about building an email list? Beginner’s often end up making email marketing mistakes that are detrimental to their business. In this article, we will share 11 email marketing mistakes that all WordPress users must avoid.

1. Using WordPress to Run an Email List or Newsletter

WordPress is a robust platform with built-in capability to send email notifications. However, it was not designed to send out email newsletters.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins that allow you to send out newsletter without signing up for an email marketing service. Using such a plugin to build your email list is a terrible idea.

First, your WordPress hosting provider would consider this as a misuse of their terms and service. These mail servers are often poorly configured, have strict limits, and cannot send all your emails at once.

Almost all users who start out with a WordPress plugin or an email script, end up signing up with a proper email marketing service. The switch affects their existing subscribers as many email service providers will ask them to opt-in again.

If you haven’t already done so, then it is time to signup with a reputable email service provider like Constant Contact, AWeber, etc. This will ensure that you don’t lose any email address and that your emails always land into user’s inbox.

For more on this topic, take a look at our article on why you should never use WordPress to send newsletter emails.

2. Confusing Blog Subscription Tools with an Email List

Another common misconception among WordPress users is confusing blog subscription tools with an email list.

Plugins like JetPack or services like Feedburner allow your users to receive blog posts via email. However, this is not really an email list.

• You cannot send out private email newsletters to your users with these tools.


• You do not own your contacts list.


• There are no contact-management, advanced analytics, or any other features


• You cannot effectively use such tools to capture more email subscribers

For more on this topic, you may want to see our guide on how to switch from JetPack subscription to MailChimp, Aweber, etc.

3. Not Starting Email List Building Right Away

Many small businesses and bloggers don’t realize how important it is to use email marketing. They keep adding new content and reach out to audiences on social media, while ignoring the most cost effective marketing tool at their disposal.

Almost 75% visitors coming to your website from search engines will never come back again. Building an email list allows you to reach out to your users, bring them back, and boost your sales.

If you haven’t already started building your email list, then check out our article about why you should start building your email list right away.

4. Not Using a Lead Generation Software

Many users complain that their email list is not growing fast enough or that users are not signing up at all. Some users rely purely on guess work on what would work on their site.

You need to use a lead generation software like OptinMonster to quickly grow your email list. OptinMonster helps you convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. See our case study of how we increased our email subscribers by 600% using OptinMonster.

5. Using only a Single Sign up Form

Many bloggers and small business owners just place a signup form on their website and then forget about it. Your users have a shorter attention span, and unless you are a celebrity, most users will probably not even notice your signup form.

You will need to improve your lead generation by placing multiple optin forms at strategic locations. Using OptinMonster, you can use smart popups, slide in forms, after post optins, and many more ways to make your email signup forms more noticeable.

6. Using Too Many Optins and Ruining User Experience

While using multiple optins boosts your email signups, using too many optins can have an adverse effect as well. You need to find a balance between a reasonable number of optins and good user experience.

For example, using a popup form, slide in optin, welcome gate, together on the same page can annoy your users. Bad user experience not only discourages users from browsing your website, it can also have a negative effect on your sales and SEO.

We recommend having a combination of a static form (sidebar or inline) and a dynamic form (slide-in, welcome gate, or popup).

7. Not Improving Lead Generation with Testing and Research

Often users turn on a sign up form and then leave it to be.

Without proper strategy and testing, your growth will be stagnant.

You need to regularly check which optins are working on your website and run A/B tests to see how you can improve.

8. Not Using RSS to Email Subscription

Collecting email addresses alone is not going to do anything for your business, unless you use it to engage with your users. You need to send emails to your users and stay in touch with them.

Connecting your blog’s RSS feed to your email list allows you to send email to your users whenever there is a new post on your blog.

It helps users check out new content and learn about your business / services. It also helps you build brand recognition among your users.

For detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to add email subscription to your WordPress blog.

9. Buying an Email List

Buying an email list is undoubtedly the worst thing you can do to kill your whole email marketing. Those email lists are not real and even if some addresses are real, those people don’t know you and never signed up for receiving emails from you.

You will be sending unsolicited email and risking your brand name to be included into spam filters. You can be banned or penalized by your email service provider. Most importantly, you will be spending a lot more money to get very little response.

10. Ignoring Google Analytics to Boost Signups

Google Analytics is the treasure trove of useful data that helps you make informed decisions. Many site owners aren’t aware of how they can use this information to build their email list.

If you haven’t yet installed it, then check out our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress. After that follow our guide on how to use Google Analytics to understand how to analyze reports.

More experienced users can jump directly to this guide on how to use Google Analytics to discover ideas for lead magnets.

11. Sending Too Many Emails

We mentioned earlier that not sending enough emails can be a big mistake. Sending too many emails can be equally destructive.

Your users should know how many emails they should expect to receive when they signup. Many sites, including WPBeginner, allow users to choose from weekly, monthly, or daily emails.

If you are not segmenting your list like that, then you will need to find out the balance between a healthy email frequency and an annoying one.

We hope this article helped you learn about the most common mistakes WordPress users make while building their email list. You may also want to see our list of 10 WordPress plugins that will quickly help you get more traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 11 Email Marketing Mistakes WordPress Users Must Avoid appeared first on WPBeginner.

7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016)

Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2016? Are you looking for the email marketing software? Choosing the best email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tool. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. For more on this topic, see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.

While you can use OptinMonster to easily get more email subscribers, the actual email delivery part comes down to your email marketing service provider.

If you aren’t careful, then you might end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliverability (which causes you to lose even more money).

A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email marketing service ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.

You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, and more.

Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, an image library and 1GB of storage for your own files.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, email, community support, and a vast library of resources.

They also offer online training as well as live seminars in your neighborhood. This allows small business to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it like a pro.

For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing service for small businesses.

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as /month.

2. AWeber

AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seemlessly to most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.

You get access to ready to use email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a 30 day free trial. After that, their pricing starts from /month.

3. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.

ConvertKit allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails.

With ConvertKit, you can easily segment contacts into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This is great for marketing automation.

ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.

Pricing for ConvertKit plans start from /month with a 30-day refund policy.

4. GetResponse

GetResponse is a hugely popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses and absolute beginners.

It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns. With a drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send content designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.

Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30 day free trial. Their pricing starts from /month.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. They offer a very easy to use interface with great tools and awesome support.

It integrates beautifully with WordPress, Magneto, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.

MailChimp also comes with easy email creator, merge tags, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking and analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on user’s timezones and setup segmenting based on geolocation.

Support is offered by email, live chat, and a huge knowledge base with how-tos, videos, and tutorials.

MailChimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for upto 2,000 subscribers. Their paid plans start from /month.

Because of their free plan, we rate MailChimp the best email marketing software for nonprofits.

6. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular email marketing solution. It gives you everything you would need to run successful campaigns and then some more.

They have a beautiful drag and drop email builder. It allows you to use professionally designed email templates and make them your own. They also offer a drag and drop segmenting tool to create different campaigns for different contacts based on behavior and actions.

You can personalize each message using the rich customer data. This makes your emails more personal and gives much better results.

Not to mention their easy to use A/B testing, tracking, optimization, and social sharing tools.

Support is available 24/7 via email and support forums. Premier customers can also avail phone support. They have extensive documentation step-by-step how-tos to help you get started and fix things on your own.

Campaign Monitor’s pricing plans start from /month.

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with CRM and sales. It comes with all the tools you will need to create smarter email marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign comes with a beautiful email template editor and mobile friendly signup forms. It allows you to segment contacts based on their actions, location, behavior, and social data. It can also fetch additional data about your contacts using only their email address.

It integrates beautifully with many third party software including WordPress. You can also send SMS messages to your contacts for follow up on campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s plans start from /month. You can also request a demo with limited features for a test run.

Although the pricing on ActiveCampaign gets quite high, it’s totally worth the money if marketing automation is what you’re looking for.

We hope this article gave you a good overview of the best email marketing services for your business. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016) appeared first on WPBeginner.

3 Top Marketing Tips for Increasing Your Ecommerce Sales

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Whether you are just starting your first store or are a veteran, there are a few things you should examine as part of your marketing to grow sales. Online shopping is growing fast, but so is the competition so you need to keep one step ahead – running to stand still.

Below are 3 practices to use to help boost sales.

Design of Your Storefront

If yours shopping cart has flexible templates, you’ll have a great advantage over many of your competitors. When looking for shopping cart software, you want to have a product that offers templates that are both visually appealing and easy to navigate for the customer, as well as easy to change.

Visitors make their initial impression in under 10 seconds. If they see something ugly or the site doesn’t look professional, they’ll be gone. Navigation is important for your visitors – you want to make it as easy for your visitor to find what they are looking for, shop for clearance or sale items, find the right sizes, colors, or styles. Make sure that the buy now buttons, view cart buttons, and up-sell products on your site are always in a location on the page that is natural for a shopper to find when wanting to check out. You want to make your visitors buying experience as smooth and effortless as possible. Make sure you test your design on a few friends. Everyone will tell you how easy it is to use, but watching people use it will be eye opening.

Offer Exceptional Customer Service

Shopping cart systems such as Volusion, allow you to add a “Live Chat”. If someone has a question, you can answer immediately and even offer additional help or sales tips. This will boost your conversion rate.

Be sure to offer refunds and make the process of returning clearly documented and as effortless as possible. Offering a “30 Day Refund” policy will inspire confidence and encourage purchasing, despite that very few customers will ever use the returns policy.

When dealing with customers, remember in these days of social media that it only takes one negative comment from a customer to reach thousands of ears. Be sure you go out of your way by offering “customer appreciation” coupons in their emails once they have shopped with you, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/my-quick-review-on-getresponse/">sending out emails detailing any discounts and sales you have going on, and always be kind and courteous when dealing with email you receive regarding questions or concerns.

Utilize the Power of Social Network Sites

Social Media is turning out to be one of the most fun and profitable ways to get word out about your business.

With the power to reach millions with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace just to name a few, you could explode your sales all with just a few posts written the right way and at the right time. If your customers are on Twitter, they could retweet your messages to their followers and help you find new customers. You can become known as an expert in your industry by writing blog posts and having them post to social network sites. There is no better way to keep your customers informed of industry trends, new products to the market, or perhaps product recalls. The best part of utilizing href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/category/blog/socialmedia-marketing/">the power of social network sites is that they are all free to use.

One of the most important things to keep in mind when implementing new marketing techniques into your weekly routine is to make sure you track everything. Watch where your visitors come from (Google Analytics is great for this) to see what marketing methods are working out the best for you and then work out a strategy to gain as much from that method as you can.

Page 28 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Getting Started on Social Media Marketing

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How to Use the Power of E-mail Marketing to Bring in Business

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Interview with Ryan Morris, Marketing Director at CoolHandle

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Basic Introduction
href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/coolhandle.php">src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/0211-1.jpg" alt="CoolHandle Web Hosting" class="border" />
Formerly known as Pronet Hosting, the company’s long history in the web hosting industry can be traced back to year 2001. If you are one of those who are keen to know more about CoolHandle hosting, this interview is a must read. We’ve got Ryan Morris, Marketing Director at CoolHandle, online and he will be sharing us some useful information about the company.

To dig deeper, you can also check out my latest href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/coolhandle-review/">CoolHandle Review or contact the company directly at 866.200.2828.

Q&A with Ryan Morris, CoolHandle Marketing Director

1. Hello Ryan, thanks a lot for being with us today. Let’s do some introduction for start. How would you describe your role in the company and what can we know about CoolHandle?

Thanks for having me! My name is Ryan Morris, CoolHandle’s Director of Marketing. Formerly known as Pronet Hosting, CoolHandle has provided users with reliable, professional hosting solutions since 2001. We are also one of the fastest-growing companies within the web hosting industry – just last year, in fact, we doubled the size of our data center for higher capacity!

2. What is the size of CoolHandle’s business? Can we have some rough numbers on the domain names and customers the company is holding at this time of writing?

We are rapidly growing, so the exact numbers are always changing, but currently we host over 30,000 domains.

3. Who should consider signing up with CoolHandle? Please briefly describe the company’s target audience.

Our commitment to customer service is an important and distinguishing characteristic of our company. Our first and foremost objective as a company is to sustain long-lasting relationships with our partners and customers. We service a very broad audience, ranging from internet marketers to WordPress and Joomla enthusiasts, from casual users to business professionals.

4. What can we know more about CoolHandle’s data center at Los Angeles?

Located in the heart of Los Angeles, our data center is in the same building as 12 of the nation’s largest Internet providers’. Our data center boasts on-demand connectivity with all major upstream providers. Our redundant network infrastructure is connected to separate circuits, and the entire building is heavily monitored to ensure maximum security and uptime.

5. Let’s talk about customer support, what kind of after-sales services does CoolHandle provide? How many staffs do you have in the customer support department? 

Our dedicated team of employees provides prompt and reliable services. Our hosting customer support department offers 24/7/365 customer service assistance via phone, live chat, and support tickets. We also feature an industry-leading fully interactive help site on our site’s Troubleshooting area.

6. CoolHandle offers different VPS hosting plans. Can you tell us more about these offers?

We offer several tiers of customizable VPS hosting packages at an affordable rate. For customers, it’s a great way to start small with the ability to still scale up very quickly. With full root access, users are able to install advanced software and completely customize virtually anything. For easy administration, cPanel is available as well. Our basic package starts at .95/month with free domain privacy forever. For more information, visit href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/coolhandlevps.php">http://www.coolhandle.com/vps/linux-vps/

7. There are more and more hosting providers going ‘cloud’ nowadays. Is cloud hosting part of CoolHandle’s plan in near future?

We don’t like to jump into new technology without testing it thoroughly, so while we are exploring the option of cloud hosting, we need to make sure that it’s something we can support and execute properly. We don’t have any specific roll-out dates for now, but we are definitely looking into it.

8. One last question, how does the merger with ProNetHosting.net impact CoolHandle’s business in overall? Where do you see CoolHandle in next 5 years?

The merger benefited both parties in several ways: 1) it improved the overall efficiency of our infrastructure, 2) it improved the quality of our customer service, and 3) the merger reduced overall costs, boosting efficiency. As for where I see CoolHandle in 5 years, what with the changing landscape of the hosting business and the rate we are growing, the opportunities for growth are simply boundless.   
9. That’s all for my questions. Thanks again for your time, is there anything you would like to add in this interview?

Thank you for your time as well. I’m glad you gave us the opportunity to give a bit more insight to users about CoolHandle.

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/tick.jpg" /> href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/coolhandle.php">Learn more, visit CoolHandle online.

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Inbound Marketing Strategy For Your Website

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Inbound marketing is exactly what it sounds like. It is marketing that brings new leads to a business. There are as many ways to gain new leads, who will hopefully convert into new customers, as there are types of businesses. However, when it comes to inbound marketing for a website, there are a few tried and true methods that will give you fast results. This is particularly important if you have a new website, have seen traffic fall off, or perhaps simply want to grow your business.

In the world of marketing, many people see “inbound” as the modern marketing and “outbound” as old, tired marketing methods, such as print ads. While print ads have their place, when it comes to your website, there are many inbound and interactive methods that will work much better to grow your site visitors.

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Why Inbound Marketing?

According to a report by HubSpot titled href="http://www.hubspot.com/state-of-inbound-marketing/" target="_blank">The State of Inbound Marketing in 2012:

“SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound sourced leads have a 1.7% close rate.”

In an infographic released by href="http://www.voltierdigital.com/" target="_blank">Voltier Digital, these numbers show success both for Business to Consumer (B2C) conversions as well as Business to Business (B2B) conversions. The graphic shows that 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B have gotten a new customer by interacting on Facebook and more than 50% have gotten a customer because of someone following their blog.

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Types of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing tends to be more interactive than outbound marketing. It also tends to cost less than outbound marketing. href="http://www.leichtmanresearch.com" target="_blank">Leichtman Research indicates that inbound marketing costs as much as 62% less than traditional marketing methods.

1. Blogs

Creating a blog, especially if you already have an existing website, costs you very little money. You will have to invest some time and createhref="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/compare-best-five-hosting/"> unique and interesting content for your readers. According to Voltier, 57% of companies report that they’ve gained new customers as a direct result of hosting a blog.

2. White Papers

Customers have indicated that they like white papers, as long as the information is authoritative and easy to read. Stay away from long, lengthy information sources. Instead, focus on just what the customer needs to know to perform a specific task or decide if they need your product or service.

3. Social Media

If your company doesn’t yet have a social media presence, take the time to create one. Set up a page for your company on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. There are others out there, and depending on your business, you may need to join a book club or forum as well. However, these three are a good place for the beginner to start or perfect marketing methods. Once you’ve set up your social media accounts, ask friends, family and current customer to like the page and to tell their friends about it. You can update your social media pages with the most interesting and witty quotes than anyone ever created, but if you don’t have followers it won’t do you a bit of good. Once you have these platforms set up, use a service like HootSuite to schedule and automate your posts for maximum impact.

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4. Viral Videos

YouTube is a popular platform and if you create a video that people think is cute or funny, it can go viral in a matter of hours, driving massive amounts of traffic to your website. Have a cat in your home office who acts a little crazy sometimes? People love cats. Videotape her and introduce her as your office cat. Put the company website at the end of the video and upload to YouTube.

Even though funny and cut works, you can also offer short videos that show off your expertise. If you sell pots and pans, offer a cooking show or kitchen tips series of videos. If you run a parenting site, offer videos like how to burp your baby or enforcing time outs with your toddler.

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5. RSS Feeds

Remember that no matter what else you do on your site, content is always king. If you add regular, interesting content, then you will gain subscribers over time. Let your customers know when you’ve posted something new by allowing them to subscribe to your RSS feed or a newsletter. A newsletter is perfect because it also allows you to gather e-mail addresses and you can let them know the new article is up and about any specials you have going on. Just don’t overdo it. The reader may just want information at this point and talking about sales or product all the time can seem spammy and be a turn off. Seek first to educate your readers and eventually this will convert into sales figures for your site.

Convert These Visitors Into Leads and Sales

Now, you may be thinking, “So what? I don’t care if I get a million visitors a day if href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/boost-conversion-rates/">they aren’t buying anything.”

Getting the people to visit your site is half the battle, but there are some techniques you’ll want to implement to turn those visitors into leads and leads into customers.

1. Tell Your Customers the Next Step

One area where I see a lot of sites fail in generating leads is that they don’t tell the customer what to do after he lands on the page. Let’s say you sell furnaces. You write an article about the importance of a high energy efficiency furnace and the money it can save consumers. If the landing page is the article, then why not offer a free report if they share their e-mail with you, such as “three models that are energy efficient”.

2. Offer Custom Advice

Another tactic to gain leads can be to offer some valuable one-on-one advice. Of course, how much of this you are able to offer depends on how busy your business currently is. However, if you can offer some one-on-one tips and advice to readers, this often results in a new customer. Using the example of the furnace, you could offer the following:

Having trouble with your furnace? Let our experts give you a free consultation on the best replacement for your current furnace based on your family’s specific needs.

The Ever Changing Marketer’s Toolbox

The best thing you can do to ensure that your marketing efforts are successful is to keep your toolbox updated with new marketing methods. Listen to your customers. Ask them which marketing campaigns they liked the most and which ones they responded to the best. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals from your current customers. Don’t be scared to venture out and try new things, such as Slideshare or Pinterest to attract new customers.

One thing is certain when it comes to marketing. The Internet has forever changed the way businesses reach consumers. What worked yesterday doesn’t work today and what works today likely won’t work tomorrow. As a website owner, it is important that you href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/top-10-resources-every-blogger-needs/">adapt to the rapid shifts in the marketplace as the Internet continues to evolve and grow.

Page 21 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

8 Must-See SEO And Online Marketing Monitoring Tools

alt="8 Must-See SEO And Online Marketing Monitoring Tools" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/SEO-chart-500x500_c.jpg" />

If you’re like most businesses, you’ve questioned social media and online marketing efforts. Maybe you saw a benefit, but how in the world are you actually supposed to know if it’s working?

Social media, SEO, and online marketing are all game changers in the world of marketing, and rightly so. If you’ve heard it once you’ve probably heard it 1,000 times, consumers don’t want just the one-way conversation that traditional advertising channels provide, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/boost-conversion-rates/">they want conversation.

But how do you measure “conversation”? How do you know if the time you are investing in building community is actually affecting your bottom line? You’re in luck, as soon as online marketing and social media were deemed the next generation of marketing channels, developers, marketers, and analytics teamed up to provide a myriad of tools to gauge and track your online efforts.

The following list is by no means conclusive, but it showcases some of the best options, both paid and free, that you can use to monitor your online efforts.

rel="nofollow" href="http://raventools.com/">Raven Tools

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-1.jpg" alt="Raven Screenshot" width="750" />

Of all the tools on the list, this is by far my favorite. Used by both agencies and in-house professional alike, this is an incredibly powerful solution to not only tracking your online presence, but building it as well.

Key Features

• Integrates with Google Analytics and Google Adwords – In other words, you don’t have to scrap what you are already doing. Raven Tools allows you to increase the effectiveness of your current tracking process.
• Simple, intuitive dashboard and tools.
• Read-only user access – This is great for your team to know what’s going on while making sure nothing is adversely altered.
• White-labeling options.
• Simple reporting.
• Manage SEO, PPC, Social Media and more.

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.seomoz.org/">SEOmoz

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-2.jpg" alt="SEOmoz Screenshot" width="750" />

SEOmoz is an all-in-one SEO and Social Media tracking software. A clean interface with accents to call statistics to your attention, this is a great tool for those looking for a little help planning their SEO strategy.

Key Features

• Great resources: including support questions, advanced online marketing guides, and discounts on SEOmoz seminars.
• Weekly Crawls: keeps working in the background and will notify you of anything that goes astray.
• Competitive Analysis.
• On-Page Recommendations.

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.diyseo.com/">DIYSEO

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-3.jpg" alt="DIYSEO Screenshot" width="750" />

Two of my favorite acronyms: DIY and SEO. This tool is great if you are a small business and have the means to tackle your own online marketing or even if you are a large company and prefer to track your progress in-house rather than hiring an agency. They also offer a plan in which they will help you get your strategy on mark.

Key Features

• Step-by-step, customized action plans
• Competitive Analysis
• Partnership opportunities – white label, affiliate, co-branded.

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.webseo.com/">WebSEO

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-4.jpg" alt="WebSEO Screenshot" width="750" />

This software/online tool is great for agencies! Not only do they have a wide variety of tools that aptly track your online efforts, they offer white labeling, customized reporting, and an affiliate program.

Key Features

• Free account: no time limit, no credit card required.
• White-labling.
• Web-accessed SEO Reports.
• Link Building, Site Optimization, and Visibility Monitoring Tools.

rel="nofollow" href="http://authoritylabs.com/">Authority Labs

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-5.jpg" alt="Authority Labs Screenshot" width="750" />

Authority Labs is scalable so it works great for both small and large agencies and businesses. The system is incredibly intuitive and provides a plethora of information in easy to read reporting.

Key Features

• Simple Domain Setup.
• Group and Sync Domains.
• Competitive Analysis.
• Multiple Access Levels – manage which employees can access which information. Perfect for account managers, interns, and clients.
• White labeling.

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.radian6.com/">Radian6

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-6.jpg" alt="Radian6 Screenshot" width="750" />

Teamed up with one of the top customer relationship management tools, Radian 6 is a powerhouse. Everything you could possible need or want in an online monitoring tool can be found in this software.

Key Features

• Outstanding Customer Service.
• Access to a multitude of resources.
• Mobile Friendly.
• Community Management.
• Intuitive Dashboard.

rel="nofollow" href="hootsuite.com">Hootsuite

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-7.jpg" alt="Hootsuite Screenshot" width="750" />

While Hootsuite is thought predominately as a way to manage social networks and not as much to monitor and track the analytics, the program does offer both options. If you are already using Hootsuite, it sometimes works best to keep everything in one program.

Key Features

• Free Plan.
• Customizable Analytics Reports.
• Integrates Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.
• Customizable Levels of Access.
• Mobile App Friendly.

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hubspot.com/">HubSpot

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-8.jpg" alt="Hubspot Screenshot" width="750" />

Similar to Hootsuite, this is an all-in-one marketing software. HubSpot is a leader in the industry and has a phenomenal team that not only help you understand their software, they help you understand online marketing.

Key Features

• All-in-One Software: provides assistance from the launch of your site through your arrival as an online powerhouse.
• Blogging Content Assistance.
• Lead Generation Tools.
• Easily Syncs with CRMs.

You may also want to check out a few other blogs regarding the topic: Klout (social media influence) and Twitter tools. Have any other tools that you live and die by? I’d love to hear which one is your tool of choice and why.

Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Social Media Marketing Tips For Online Stores In 2013

alt="Social Media Marketing Tips For Online Stores In 2013" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1103-2-500x751_c.jpg" />

dir="ltr">class="alignright size-full wp-image-720" style="border: 0px;" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1103-2.jpg" alt="Social Media" width="262" height="394" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1103-2.jpg 262w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1103-2-199x300.jpg 199w" sizes="(max-width: 262px) 100vw, 262px" />

dir="ltr">Social media marketing is evolving constantly, as fast as technology is. The first question you need to ask yourself is whether your company’s strategy evolves at the same rate. When was the last time you changed something in the marketing strategy for your online store? I still come across executives who think keywords are the most important thing they should pay attention to concerning the SEO of their online store, and who focus only on technical aspects of SEO, completely neglecting any social component.

dir="ltr">The first and foremost piece of information regarding href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/social-media-marketing-basics-the-2014-starter-guide-for-smm-managers/" target="_blank">social media marketing in 2013 you need to know is the fact that ignoring or misunderstanding the importance of social media for online stores significantly reduces the ROI due to losses caused by falling way behind the competition. The implications of social media marketing development for e-commerce online stores are extensive, and dealing with the essence of changes will help you understand these changes and adapt to them, preparing your company for social media marketing in 2013.

Online Stores and Branding

dir="ltr">Let’s say you want to buy a new cell phone. You found out everything there was to know about the model you are interested in, and now all you need to do is to choose the retailer you are going to buy your phone from. If you had to choose between Amazon and an online shop named Mobile Phones, which you have never even heard of, but is cheaper, which would you choose? Of course you would go for Amazon, because it is a familiar, omnipresent retailer. No one ever buys from someone they are not familiar enough with.

dir="ltr">Now, how does one become familiar with a brand? How do people start trusting a brand?

dir="ltr">One always trusts those brands they see everywhere, those brands that provide consumers a chance to read about them, get to know their employees as experts in the field, and generally become involved with the life of the company in some way. This will be the most important role of social media marketing in 2013 – branding, building trust and prompting interaction which contributes to building that trust.

dir="ltr">Companies need to stop hiding behind their brand in 2013, and so do online retailers. Consumers feel the need to interact on a personal level with companies who want their trust, and those companies need to include their employees as individuals into such interactions.

Overcoming The ROI Issues

The ROI issues arise when social media metrics are brought to the table. Namely, it is really difficult to title="Measuring Social Media ROI" href="http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-measure-social-media-return-on-investment-for-the-complex-sale/" target="_blank">precisely determine the ROI from social media marketing, and that is the most common reason for neglecting it, especially when it comes to online stores, whose success is often measured by profits.

However, is a measurable ROI (ie. direct profit) really the most important gain from social media marketing? My opinion is that it is not so.

dir="ltr">Social media marketing creates leads, which lead to selling goods when combined with some other necessary factors. Though leads do not immediately sell, if a lead does not exist, chances are there will be no purchase. The year 2013 will most likely bring about the acceptance of this fact, and a deeper understanding of social media marketing required for social media success.

Online Store Owners: Here’s What You Should Do in 2013

Accept social media

Your customers spend a lot of time on social networks, and this is where you should interact with them. The logic is the same as with television – advertising through a medium which is interesting to your customers, only, with social media, a certain level of interaction is necessary, which wasn’t the case with television.

Be open-minded

Social media may not bring direct income at first, but nevertheless you need to dive into it sooner or later. If you never start dealing with it, you will fall so far behind your competition that it will be very difficult to get back on track. Experiment a little, provide interesting content and develop a strategy along the way, if you are skeptical about social media, and you will soon see how important it is.

Hire a person who understands content marketing

This should be done as soon as possible, since you cannot do everything on your own. An employee who is gifted in communication will know what type of content needs to be shared and how the interaction with the customers should look like, which will save you a lot of effort in trying to figure it out on your own.

Include your employees in content creation

They are your most valuable asset for presenting your online store in the best possible light.

Pay attention to sites with ratings of the products you sell or online shops in general

People do check the reviews of what they are planning to buy before they buy it, so it may be essential that you interact with them while they are doing this, to secure a positive impression by politely explaining things and answering potential complaints.

Be present on several chosen platforms

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-717" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0619-1.jpg" alt="CEO's Presence On Social Media" width="600" height="353" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0619-1.jpg 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0619-1-300x176.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

Do a little research or a survey to find out where your customers are, and then create a presence on their favorite platforms. Currently, href="http://heidicohen.com/fortune-500-ceos-dont-get-social-media-research/" target="_blank">70% of the Fortune 500 company executives are not present in social media. This is bound to change in 2013, as the executives become increasingly aware of the importance of social media. You should create a presence right now so as to be ahead of those who still fail to comprehend social media.

Be aware of the different ways the content is consumed

In 2013, you will need to provide the content about your online shop which is just the right thing for your audience. Also, be aware that you should carefully dose sharing content which promotes your business, and share more purely informational and entertaining content to keep your audience’s attention.

And One Last Final Tip

Keep in mind that social media is not a “revenue engine”. It’s most important value lies in creating a firm bond of familiarity and trust with your customers.

With Google’s semantic search, social media becomes your way of creating a complete image of your online store for your customers. Do not miss out on that.

If you want to learn about social media in 2013 in more detail, watch this great video “Social Media in 2013”.

Several ideas expressed in it were incorporated into this article. Enjoy 2013 with social media!

Page 21 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

How to Use YouTube as a Free Marketing Tool for Your Website

alt="How to Use YouTube as a Free Marketing Tool for Your Website" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-1-500x268_c.jpg" />

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-875" alt="Incredible YouTube Stats - Why Marketing At YouTube" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-1.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-1.jpg 633w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-1-300x161.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 633px) 100vw, 633px" />

If you always thought title="YouTube" href="http://www.youtube.com/" target="_blank">YouTube was just to upload cute cat videos or funny human mishaps, then you may be missing an entire area of promotion that is cost effective and will help you reach an entirely new audience of potential customers.

One of the best reasons to use YouTube to market your business is that you can easily learn to make the videos yourself, which puts an effective promotional tool into your hands for free.

In a href="//www.fastcompany.com/3007301/most-innovative-companies-2013/one-billion-people-use-youtube-every-month-says-youtube" target="_blank">Fast Company article, technology writer Addy Dugdale offered some perspective on YouTube viewership numbers:

“YouTube has hit a milestone. One billion active users a month, it announced on its blog yesterday. That’s one in seven of us on the planet watching something on the Google video site every 28 days or so.”

What Are People Viewing?

Almost anyone with a video camera or some basic movie editing software can throw together an upload for YouTube. However, there is little point in creating the movie if no one will bother to view it. Before you create a YouTube video to promote your business, ask yourself what types of videos are trending on YouTube.

Fortunately, YouTube offers a useful tool for figuring out what’s popular called href="//www.youtube.com/user/Whatstrending”">What’s Trending?

You can browse around this page and discover recent uploads, what people are viewing and even read through the discussion forums to find out which videos are creating a buzz.

One type of video that is always popular on YouTube is anything with a cat doing something cute or funny. If you can figure out a way to include a funny cat with your business marketing, then you’re certain to have a hit. Since that doesn’t fit the theme of most businesses, you’ll need to think outside the box.

Some examples of videos that went viral in the last year or two include:

href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEsnb3kUDAw&feature=player_embedded”">Finnair Flight Dance

Takeoff to Bollywood! A Dance Crew surprises passengers after boarding of a Finnair flight to Delhi to celebrate India’s Republic Day on January 26th 2012.

src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mEsnb3kUDAw" height="422" width="750" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0">

href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IJoKuTlvuM&feature=player_embedded”">Harlem Shake

Schools, businesses and groups released versions of the Harlem Shake and many went viral.

src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0IJoKuTlvuM" height="422" width="750" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0">

href="//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM”">Charlie!

This cute brother duo went viral once, so they released a new video. Although this isn’t business related, it underlines the point that people love cute videos.

src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_OBlgSz8sSM" height="563" width="750" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0">

Your first step in creating a video to market your website is to figure out what is trending on YouTube and how you can use that trend to create a commercial or fun video that underlines the product or service you offer. For example, if you sell a hair product, you could create a funny commercial about how a woman’s hair looks after performing the Harlem Shake and how the product fixes her hair back to normal.

Funny or Informational?

Although a whimsical or funny video can easily go viral, don’t underestimate the value of href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/compare-best-five-hosting/">sharing specialized information on YouTube in the form of a tutorial. There are numerous cheer gyms that offer videos on cheerleading routines or how to do stunt and find that they gain new customers from those in their area who view their videos.

A video lesson can be created for any topic you can think of. Keep in mind that the attention spans of Internet users can sometimes be short, as they may be hopping online during a commute on the train or during a lunch break. Keep the video to five minutes or less and you should hold the viewer’s attention.

5 Steps to Getting Your Video Online

1. Create the Video

This step may sound obvious, but there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind as you record your video. You may have to experiment a bit to get the recording just right.

• Make sure the lighting is good. No one wants to watch a video that is so dark that you can barely make out the shapes.
• Make sure anyone speaking talks loud and clear. Have you ever tried to listen to a video where the sound quality was lacking? Frustrating isn’t it?
• Practice speaking parts. Try to deliver your lines without saying “um” or “uh” throughout.
• Get feedback on the video before posting. Once your video is complete, have friends and family view it and offer feedback. They may spot things you didn’t and you want the video to be as perfect as possible before you release it online.

2. Create a YouTube Account

Even if you already have a personal account, it is best to create a separate YouTube account for your business. Since Google owns YouTube, consider setting up a Gmail account just for this purpose. You should also link your Google+ profile to your YouTube home page and cross-promote your videos on as many other social media platforms as possible.

Did you know that according to YouTube facts by Jeff Bullas:

“500 years of YouTube video are watched every day on Facebook [and] over 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute.”

Be sure you completely fill in any profile information with your company information. Every person who views your video is a potential customer.

3. Upload Your Video and Describe It

Uploading your video to YouTube is a simple process that doesn’t require a lengthy explanation.

• Log into your account
• Click on the grey “Upload” button at the top of the page
• Browse to and choose your video

Now, this is where your marketing efforts kick in a bit more. In addition to simply uploading your video, you need to describe it in a way that will help it rank well in the search engines and will let viewers know about your business website.

Keyword Titles

Make sure you choose a title that contains the keywords you think people would likely search for that relate to the video and your business. Let’s go back to the example of the ad for the hair product. You wouldn’t want to just title it “Harlem Shake” but “Perfect Hair Even After Harlem Shake” or something along those lines. Use keyword search tools and trending to choose the best keyword title for your video.

Search Terms in Description

First and foremost, the description should explain exactly what your video is about. However, this is also a good place to work in a few of the search terms you believe people may be seeking. Make sure the wording has a natural flow. Don’t insert keywords just for the sake of using keywords.

URL in Description

Include your company website URL in the description of the video. This will allow the viewer to easily find the link and click on it should she want to visit your site for more information.

Tags

Go ahead and reuse those keywords/search terms again in the tags for the video.

Create an Image for Yourself on YouTube

class="alignright wp-image-876" alt="Your Image At YouTube" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-2.jpg" width="372" height="248" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-2.jpg 620w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0426-2-300x199.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 372px) 100vw, 372px" />

When you create your business profile at YouTube, be sure to set up some channels and customize the look of your profile page. This is the page that viewers will see when they click on your name for more information. If you take the time to set up channels, you can control what comment goes where on the page.

This is particularly useful if you want to highlight one video over another, especially if it is not the latest video you’ve created.

• Add a custom background
• Set your profile pic to your logo
• Change the setting to “Player View” so you can choose a featured video that will begin as soon as the visitor lands on your page. Be sure to check the box to autoplay the featured video.

Making Your Video Go Viral

While you can’t force a video to go viral, there are some things you can do that will help it do better in the search engines. Keep in mind that the more people who view your video, the better it will rank in the search engines. With that in mind, be sure to:

• Tell everyone you know about the video, both in person and online.
• Ask others to share your video on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• As it makes sense, offer a link to the video in online forums and during discussions on social media. However, be careful that the video adds to the conversation, as you don’t want to spam people. That will drive customers away instead of helping you gain them.
• Make sure the video is under five minutes and gets right to the main point.
• Offer incentive to link back and share your video, but make sure it is ethical and you aren’t just trying to bribe them. For example, you could offer free membership or entry in a contest for each time they share your video link.

When it comes to marketing, there aren’t many things that are free. Creating a YouTube video should only cost you a little time and creativity. However, the potential for impact may be huge, especially if your video goes viral.

Image credit: title="One Hour Per Second" href="http://www.onehourpersecond.com/" target="_blank">One Hour Per Second and href="http://www.morguefile.com/creative/hotblack" target="_blank">Hot Black. 

Page 21 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Smart Link Building (And Web Marketing) For The Average Guys

alt="Smart Link Building (And Web Marketing) For The Average Guys" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-500x240_c.jpg" />

We get jaw dropping stuffs on the Internet daily. rel="nofollow" title="Space Jump" href="http://www.redbullstratos.com/the-team/felix-baumgartner/" target="_blank">Record breaking space jumps, rel="nofollow" title="Zappo Tony Hsieh Story" href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/tony-hsieh-zappos/" target="_blank">smart young entrepreneurs making billion of dollars, rel="nofollow" title="Robot Dance Brothers" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1AwrqoHA2c" target="_blank">stunning robot dancing skills, rel="nofollow" title="Kim Jung Gi" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGjGhU2o7sQ" target="_blank">awesome drawing talents, rel="nofollow" title="Smashing Magazines" href="http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/09/27/fixing-broken-user-experience/" target="_blank">in-depth views and studies about UX design, rel="nofollow" title="Noob Online Marketing Guide" href="http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/" target="_blank">extremely long and comprehensive infographic, and rel="nofollow" title="OK Cupid 10 Charts About Sex" href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/10-charts-about-sex/" target="_blank">some really interesting research about our sex life.

Cool. Awesome. Great. Remarkable. Extraordinary. Ground Breaking. You know, the usual “extraordinary” stuffs we tend to blog, tweet, pin; in short, link to it from our websites and social network profiles.

But, how about average people and small businesses with low influences? How do we get others to link to our websites when we have very limited resources?

As y’all knew, back link is the lifeline of a website. No links = no exposures + no search ranking = no traffics = no incomes. Having a clear and effective link building strategy is vital to any web success.

In this post, we are going to talk about winning the link building (and indirectly, web marketing) battle as the average guy.

Smart Link Building Is All About Win-Win

Instead of writing down a long list of suggestions, I am going to boil everything down to one simple idea: Think Win-Win. That’s right, before you try to get a link from the others, ask what you can give first.

I know, this sound a little weird at first. You probably don’t get this a lot from other link building guides.

To build legitimate links, most will suggest viral videos, beautiful infographics, free ebooks, valuable blog post with excessive information, etc etc. However, doing all these need great talent, heavy working hours, and probably lots of money (unless you can do everything by yourself, but then again, time is just another type of cost). Bear in mind that in an average guy’s world, talent and money are always in scarcity. This is why we need alternative way to build link when talent, money, or manpower comes short.

My Real Life Experience With The Strategy

Let me describe the idea with two real life experiences.

Pingdom Uptime Checker Tool

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2.jpg" alt="Pingdom Tweets On WHSR Posts" width="835" height="316" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2.jpg 835w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2-300x113.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2-750x283.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 835px) 100vw, 835px" />
I have been using rel="nofollow" title="Pingdom" href="https://www.pingdom.com/" target="_blank">Pingdom Uptime Checker for quite some time. Basically, what the tool does is that it sends an HTTP request to your site every 5 minute 24/7 (to check on the uptime) and provides an overall report to your registered email by end of the month. The tool is accurate, extremely user-friendly, and best of all, free of charge.

The objective behind this free tool is clear: Pingdom wants to build its brand and gain more exposures (and sign ups) among webmasters. Having that in thought, I took the initiative and introduced Pingdom Uptime Checker to our readers in title="WHSR WP Engine Uptime Review" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/updates-news/quick-update-on-wp-engine-hosting-2-months-later/" target="_blank">this and title="Server Uptime Monitor Tools" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-tools/5-handy-tools-to-measure-server-uptime/" target="_blank">this post. I then notified Pingdom staffs about the post via Twitter mentions. The outcome? Pingdom’s free service is revealed to my readers (counting at 1,200 unique visitors daily at that time); and in return, folks at Pingdom tweeted about the posts to 60,000+ followers. The tweets not only gave us dozens of new followers on Twitter, it also helped us gained a few extra free links from other bloggers/webmasters who saw the tweets – all at the cost of one short posts and one roundup posts.

iPhone Apps For Web Developers

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1.jpg" alt="Tweet By iPhone Apps Developer" width="835" height="402" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1.jpg 835w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-300x144.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-750x361.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 835px) 100vw, 835px" />

On another example, some time ago, Danielle and I decided to cover a list of title="Handy iPhone Apps For Web Developers" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-design/handy-iphone-apps-for-web-developers/" target="_blank">useful iPhone Apps for web developers on WHSR. As you probably knew, app developers are always racing fiercely to win market share at Apple Apps Store. What app developers need most, without doubt, will more exposures on their products.

So, without any incentive from the app developers, we simply gave out free publicity and links to the selected app developers. The post was then submitted to dozens of different web design sites and social networking sites for marketing purpose. After a few emails and mentions on Twitter and some Stumbles, our work started to payoff. Some of the featured web developers picked up the post and linked back to us from their high authority blogs, and some tweeted about the post, and some simply emailed and gave us a free trial account (hey, we are web developers too). The link out strategy earned us more than just links; it also helped us to build relationships with other players in the industry, which most probably will help us to thrive in long-term. Sweet!

Your Takeaway In This Guide

If you are reading this, chances are you were looking for ways to improve your site’s link profile. And, if you are like me – an average guy with limited resources (money, manpower, talents, access to useful data) – you’ll need to get smart and work really hard.

So here’s how you can apply my idea to your next link building campaign.

1. First, Instead of looking for what you can gain from others, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/my-quick-review-on-getresponse/">ask yourself what you can give to others. Compile a list of 50 sites/blogs related to your industry. Briefly review each of them in the list to understand their strengths and weaknesses, jot your thoughts into the list. If you are familiar with your niche, this shouldn’t take too much of time, target spend less than 20 minutes on each.
2. Now, look at the list and ask yourself: “How I can I help to fill the gap and help the site/blog owners to improve?”
3. Is there any bad English grammar you can help rectify? Is the site owner/blogger missing certain web marketing skill that you are good at? Can you help pin point the broken links on the site/blog? Does the site/blog need any beta tester for certain program or web service? Is the site owner/blogger looking for users to write a testimonial?

I once did a round of 20 article submissions on my EzineArticles Platinum Account for a guy in order to get a link on his blog homepage. All it took to get that 20 standard articles approved on EzineArticles was some extra labor work and I got that homepage link without spending a dime. The site owner later told me that I’m the first one who did that and he was glad that his other competitors were not following my strategy.

You see, it doesn’t take a genius to create a symbiosis, win-win situation. Just be generous and be that guy who is not afraid to take the first step.”Give and you shall receive” – there is indeed some wisdom in the old sayings. Yes, the process can be a little tiring sometimes but hey, it works. Do this once per week for the next 12 months and I bet your site will have a totally different link profile (and much higher traffic volume one year later). After all, this is how I grew WebHostingSecretRevealed.com from 0 visitors to 80,000 unique visits per month with limited budget in two years time.

Now that’s my link building trick as an average guy. What’s yours?

Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed