First of all, I 'd like to apologise for not posting in over a week. I spent a lot of time promoting the Affiliate X Factor and it was the easiest 50 bucks I ever made online. The product hasn't launched yet and hopefully a few of those 50 people I referred will purchase the product and I'll get a nice little check from clickbank too.
I also launched my new blog "Best Way To Lose Weight – Watch Me Lose 100 Pounds". Yes, I am a fat ass but not for long! I have already lost 16 pounds and am on track to meet my goal of 100 lbs. by the end of the year. I am keeping of log of how I am accomplishing this, so if you are trying to lose weight, you need to check it out.
OK, first an update on the Grafixplus promotion. I made a post on Feb 20th and the Grafixplus home page was had moved up 20 positions in the Google search results to 230th. That was in 1 weeks time. I checked it a few minutes ago and it is now ranked 108th place for our target keyword phrase "web page graphics". That's 122 positions in 3 weeks. Not bad considering I have been slacking on my end. The results so far have been brought about by builidng a Hub page and a Squidoo lens.
Now that I have my weight loss bolg finished (a blog is never really finished) and Andrew Fox is no longer paying for leads, I will turn my full attention back to the Grafixplus promotion. I still haven't finished my article and submitted it to a ton of directories. Speaking of articles…have you created a good one for your product or niche yet? Get on it, because next post we are going to hit the article directories hard and I am going to tell you about the best kept secret in the Web 2.0 realm.
Actually, I'll clue you in now. Go sign up for an account at Gather.com. You can look around and set up your profile. Check out some of the articles and you will see that this is not a place for spammers and blatent promotions. This is why you need at least one "really good, original" article for your promotion. Get one ready and next post I will show you how to use Gather.com to your advantage.
I know I keep bringing up the JV giveaway thing but I can't help it. I just started using them this year and have had phenomenal results building my list. I have added more subscribers in a month and a half then I did all of last year. Not to shabby, eh? I have been busy creating a Hub page and Squidoo lens targeting the keyword phrase "jv giveaways". I wanted you to see how quickly this system works for keywords that aren't hyper competitive.
The web page graphics promotion is coming along. Grafixplus has moved up to the 230th spot, which is 20 postions better than a week ago. As long as we keep moving up we are in business. The problem is that most people that are involved in web design and graphics also know there SEO. We are copmpeting against a lot of sites that have been optimized for the search engines. It will take longer to make the top 20. The Hub page and Squidoo lens have also been moving up in the ranks as well.
Here is the difference. I made my Hub page for JV giveaways a few days ago. It is already listed on the third page of Google results. I just published my Squidoo lens yesterday so we will give it a couple days but I am sure it will be up in the top 20 results within a week. That is because the sites listed under JV giveaways are not "authority" sites that have been around for a long time. When you search for "web page graphics" you get a lot of websites that are 5 years old or more and have page ranks of 5 and 6. Those kind of sites pull a lot of weight. It will take longer to pull ahead of them.
Do you use Firefox web browser? If so, you can download a plug in called "SEOQuake". When you enable this, you will see all kinds of information in your google results pages. It will tell you how old the site is, what the page rank is, how many back links it has, how many listings in Yahoo, and Msn, the Alexa ranking and more. This tool is very useful in determining your competition.
Filed under Hub Pages, JV Giveaways, Squidoo, Web 2.0 by 
Hub pages is having a HubLove contest that starts in a couple hours. They are giving away a prize package valued at $5000. Starting at noon Pacific time today, a clue will be given for a specific topic. There will be one new topic every day. The first person to solve the clue each day will earn bonus points. Once you have determined the days topic by solving the clue, you can publish up to 10 Hubs on that topic before noon the next day.
Points will be given for each Hub published and the best Hub of the day wins bonus points. The person with the most points after 30 days wins the grand prize. but that's not all. You can sign up to be a HubLove judge and host clues on your blog. You will also have a say so in which Hub of the day is the best. There are going to be a lot of people participating in this contest. Think of all the exposure your blog can receive on the day you host one of the clues. Wink, Wink.
So get on over to Hub pages, sign up for an account, and win some cash or some free traffic and exposure. If you are following my Web 2.0 Whammy promotion you should already have a Hub account.
Hi all, I have been really busy this week and didn't get much done this past weekend. I did manage to update the Hub page a little. Hub pages gives every Hub a score that is based on content, how many visitors you get, and other mysterious variables that no one knows. When you first make a Hub, your score is 50 and 100 is the highest. Right now my Hub is at 74 which is pretty good. The Squidoo lens is ranked 930 in the Business category and is ranked 15,333 out of all lenes, which is also pretty good. Remember that these pages are not even 2 weeks old.
I checked Google today and Grafixplus has appeared in the results under "web page graphics". The website was not in the results for this keyword before I started the promotion. It is in the 250th spot which is page 26 in the results. Not very good but it's a start. I will continue to keep you updated and as I turn up the heat on the promoting, we will watch it move up in the rankings. My Hub page is in the 330th spot and my Squidoo lens is in the 386th spot.
This past weekend, I used my favorite Web 2.0 tool, Web 2.0 Submitter, to submit my Hub page to several of the big Web 2.0 sites. About 2 days later is when Grafix plus appeared in the Google results under "web page graphics". You will soon see just how effective this strategy can be, even for a competitive keyword phrase.
Before I start on the Squidoo lens, I want to cover something I forgot to tell you about the Hub page. When you set up your Hub page, (and your Squidoo lens as well), make sure you add at least 20 tags. If you did your keyword research properly then this should not be hard. Make sure you add a few general keywords as well. For instance, I would use internet marketing and web promotion with my "web page graphics" page. This is very important and can make the difference of your Squidoo lens ranking higher than someone elses on the same topic.
You will run into this on Squidoo because there are a lot more people using Squidoo than Hub pages. You may not be able to get the url that you want when you start your lens. Try to get as close as you can to your keyword phrase. Maybe you can get the phrase with out hypens like "webpagegraphics" or use under score like "web_page_graphics". Yesterday, I also failed to stress the importance of using your keywords in the capsule titles. Squidoo calls their capsules modules. The modules will let you use subtitles as well. This is a good place to put your secondary keywords and maybe some of the high competition keywords in your niche. (hint, hint)
You will create your Squidoo lens with a similar layout that you used in your Hub page. Don't be overwhelmed by all the different modules that Squidoo has. Start out with the basics. Create a nice introduction with keyword rich content from your article. Don't over do it with the keywords. Keep it under 5%. Use variations of the keyword instead. It looks more natural. If you look at the lens I created for this promotion you will see that I used "web page graphics", "website graphics", "web page design", and "web design".
Take note that I created 3 anchor text links in the introduction. Two of them using the text, web page graphics, and 1 using Grafixplus. When you start a promotion like this you want to always use the target keyword phrase as the anchor text in your link. For those of you that don't know, that is the text that will be clickable. You may have some difficulty with your linking if you don't know any HTML. Squidoo does not have an editor like Hub pages. You must enter the HTML tags yourself. Here is a quick lesson.
- To make a link: <a href="http://targetwebsite.com" target="_blank">Your Anchor Text</a> (will open in new window)
- To make a word bold: <b>your word or phrase</b>
- Italics: <em>your word or phrase</em>
There you go. That should be all you need for now. HTML is not very difficult. You just need to learn a handfull of tags and you can do a lot. If you more help, just leave me a comment with your email address and I will get back to you.
Take notice that in my lens intro I created a link to my Hub page and two links to the Grafixplus home page which is our ultimate target. One of the links used our target keyword phrase and the other used Grafixplus. If I was promoting an affiliate product, I would do the same. One link to the product affiliate page using the keyword as anchor text and the other link using the name of the product. I used the same linking strategy on my Hub page. Two links to Grafixplus and one link to my Squidoo lens that targets my keyword phrase for Grafixplus.
OK, back to the Squidoo lens set up. After you create an awesome intro lens you can use the base package to get started. Go ahead and set up an RSS module. Try not to use the same feed that you used on your Hub page. If you are in a hurry you can but make sure you go back and change it after a day or two. The same goes with the You Tube module, look for another video.
I used the same videos on both because they are really high quality vdeos, created by the guys at Stompernet, with extremely relevant contenet to my keyword phrase. Also, the owners at Grafixplus are working on a video that I will use on which ever page is in the lead. It is always better if you can create your own video but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. There are usually plenty of good videos on You Tube to chose from.
I would go ahead and use the Amazon module and then make sure you change the title on Guest Book. If you don't set up at least the intro and 3 modules, your lens will not be published. It will be listed as under construction. You have enough with the intro, rss, youtube, and amazon modules. You can always use another text module to add more content but I wouldn't go over board at first. It is better to set up a basic lens and see how it does in the search results. If hasn't done what you want in a couple weeks then you can slowly start adding modules.
That doesn't mean that you can't do it now. If you feel frogy then go for it. Click on the add modules button and browse through the screens. There are over 100 different modules you can add. I like the link modules and the poll modules. The poll modules let your visitors interact and the link modules give you a chance to promote some of your stuff. I belong to a program called Squidoo Secrets that I always set up a text module and promote on all of my lenses.
That should get you going on your Squidoo lens. If you need any help feel free to leave me a comment. I didn't go over this in baby steps because most of it is straight foward and self explainitory. You want to make sure that you put your keyword phrase in the url, if possible, and in all of the module titles. Use the same setup as your Hub page but try and use different rss feeds and videos to prevent any duplicate content penalties that Google is know to access.
When you finish with your lens, make sure you click on the "Publish" button and your site will be live. Then make sure you submit it to Onlywire. The next post we will start promoting in earnest. I want you to sign up for accounts at the following Web 2.0 sites:
Stumbleupon, Technorati, Digg, Propeller, Shoutwire, Reddit, PlugIM, Newsvine, and MarkTD.
If it takes me a while to get the next post up, (I'm soooooo busy), then go ahead and submit your Hub page and Squidoo lens to all of the above except for Digg and Propeller. These two are very picky and will ban your account if you do anything the least bit spammy.
