I have talked about this a little bit already on this blog. Hopefully, you have at least signed up for the free version of Squidoo Secrets. If you have been following this blog, you should have already signed up for a Squidoo account and a Hub pages account. You will need them for this. Here are the basics of the strategy:
- find a product that you would like to promote that hasn't launched yet
- claim your real estate on Squidoo and Hub pages (the ideal lens or hub has the product name in the url…"www.squidoo.com/product-name" or "hubpages.com/hub/product-name")
- use the techniques in Squidoo Secrets to make your lens irresistible to the search engines (most of the techniques will work for your Hub page too)
- ping your lens and hub page at pingomatic, ping goat, and other pinging services
- submit a story, (a review of the product works good), about your lens to Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and any other social news sites you can think of. ( I use Web 2.0 Submitter, but you can use Social Marker as well )
- bookmark your lens everywhere: Technorati, Delicious, Only wire, you name it
- make your review into an article, with links to your Squidoo lens and Hub page, and use this free article submitter to distribute it to over 300 article directories (not all at once, 5-10 directories a day looks more natural)
- if you have a blog, make a couple of posts with links to your Squidoo lens and your Hub page.
If you do the first 5 steps a couple days before the launch and then follow up immediately with the rest, you will have at least 2 listings on the first page of Google results when the product launches. The sooner you get your sites up, the better chance you will have. The search term you will be ranking for is the product name itself.
I have found that usually the first Squidoo lens built about the topic will be the one that Google displays. This will change over time and the lens with the best content and optimization will win out. If some one beats you to the punch at the start, make sure you build a lot of back links to your lens and Hub page via the social bookmarking sites and by making blog comments.
Also, once the product launches, make sure you go back and update your lens and Hub page. I would make it a habit to add and/or modify your content on a weekly basis. This will give you the best results, especially in the beginning. After all, the search engines love fresh content.
Filed under Social Bookmarking, Web 2.0 by 
I ran across this awesome social bookmarking tool the other day and just had to share it with everybody. I have promoted a tool on this blog, called Web 2.0 Submitter. Web 2.0 Submitter lets you semi automate the submission process to 10 different social bookmarking sites. It is a great time saver in what can be a lengthy, drawn out process.
Well this new tool I ran across submits to 47 different social bookmarking sites.
It's called "Social Marker". OK, it doesn't automate the process as much as Web 2.0 Submitter but it will shave some time off the submission process. The big difference is that it is free. My recommendation is to use them both together. You can use the Social Marker to do the bookmarking sites that Web 2.0 Submitter doesn't cover. You will be able to create a ton of powerful, high page rank back links to your sites in know time.
Filed under Internet Marketing Tools, JT Recommends, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web 2.0 by
My last post I apologized for not posting in over a week and then I turn around and don't post for almost three weeks. Shame on me! The truth is that I have been really busy. My new weight loss blog is like a daily journal so I have given it priority and post almost every day. My son has started soccer so that eats up about 4 – 6 hours a week, but enough with the excuses. To make up for my lack of attention to this blog I am giving you a free gift. Hopefully you have created a blog or website with a Squidoo lens and a Hub page to go with it based on the same topic and key words.
One of the best ways to get one way backlinks and some free traffic to your sites is to submit them to directories. This is old school marketing but it is still very effective and one of the basics that you should always do when you create a new blog or website. The main draw back with this tactic is that it is very time consuming. To help you speed up the process, I have a free tool for you called Directory Submitter. This is not a cheesy peice of software like some of the article submitters you have probably seen. This software is from Bryxen Software better known for porducts like SEO Elite and Keyword Elite, which by the way are 2 of my favorite marketing tools. Most of these types of submitters are not user friendly and they sometimes have problems auto filling the proper fields.
Directory Submitter does an awesome job. Click on one of the links in this post to download your free software, then submit your blog or website, your Squidoo lens, and your Hub page to all of the directories. There are 350 directories in the free version. I recommend submitting to 25-50 directories each day until you have submitted to all of them. This looks more natural to the search engines and is a better strategy then submitting to all of them on the same day. If you want to put your promotion in over drive then you can purchase the "gold" upgrade and submit to over 2200 directories. Go ahead and work on this and next time we will jump into Gather.com.
Filed under Directory Submission, JT Recommends, SEO, Web 2.0 by
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
