Internet Marketing and Advertising

If you don’t have time to shop but would like to browse through products and order in the comforts of your own home or office, then you should order free catalogs. The internet is a great source for such freebies, and if you log on to the right sites, you will be able to browse your way into the product you are looking for in no time.

You can get free online catalogs from virtually everywhere, but be careful not to immediately sign up for free offers – some merchants may flood your inbox with catalogs you did not even request.

Visit a reliable catalog Web site that allows you to become a member and limit the free catalogs you would like to receive. The site should allow you to check off what categories interest you (such as appliances, furniture, car care, baby care, etc.) and indicate how many times you would like to receive them (daily, weekly, or monthly). If you don’t want the catalogs going straight into your inbox, the site should give you the option to just receive reminders instead. When a new catalog on a product category you chose is available, you get a link to the new catalog and decide if you want to download it or not.

Free online catalog portals should not only be static brochures – they should also link up to the actual merchant sites so that you can order immediately if something catches your eye. The site should likewise be very well-organized. The categories should be comprehensive, so that you can click around intuitively and be led to the product you are looking for. A good keyword search facility helps, too – this way, you just type in a brand or product specification, choose from among the results, pay with your credit card, and wait for delivery.

Catalogs provides detailed information on Catalogs, Online Catalogs, Free Catalogs, Mail Order Catalogs and more. Catalogs is affiliated with Birthday Clip Art.

Tags: Catalogs, Free Catalogs, Mail Order Catalogs, Online Catalogs

Wouldn’t it be great to have a huge crowd of people lined up outside your business waiting for you to open the doors–like when they release the newest Harry Potter book, or when the summer’s hottest new “blockbuster movie” premieres? Imagine what a boost it would be for your business to have your email inbox filled with queries from potential customers and your phone ringing off the hook with new orders!

A good promotional campaign can do that.

But what if you don’t have big bucks to spend on advertising the way Hollywood and the publishing giants do? What if you need to attract a large number of people, but you don’t have the money to reach a large number of people?

Then you need to get creative. You need to get free advertising.

That’s right–free advertising in the form of publicity.

You don’t have to spend piles of money on TV or radio ads, or pay for expensive newspaper display ads. You do however, have to do something to grab the media’s attention. Something that will make them sit up and take notice.

You want them to write about you, or interview you for a news segment, or invite you to be a guest on their radio show. That way a wide audience learns about you from a source that they believe establishes your credentials. You see, when you pay for advertising, it doesn’t automatically give you the same credibility that an endorsement from the media does.

Even if the news source is just reporting facts about your business, or offering an “inside look” at your industry from your perspective, it still sends a subliminal message to the audience that you’re a reliable businessperson worthy of the media’s attention. If the media considers you an expert, then the public feels safe in assuming the same. In a lot of ways, free publicity is better than paid advertising.

So how do you get free publicity? How do you grab the media’s attention? By coming up with a “news story,” or a human-interest angle on an event or topic the media will want to cover. Then you write a press release, or hire a freelancer to write one for you, so the news reporters and journalists will contact you for an interview, or write about you in their publication. (For tips on writing a press release that gets noticed, check out the Press Releases section on our website.)

Some newsworthy events you can announce are:

• Publication of your new book or e-book


• Sponsoring a fund raiser


• Grand opening of your store/business or website launch


• Participation in a charitable event


• Awards or nominations you’ve received


• New product launch


• A new group you’ve formed (such as Work-at-Home Moms Club, a writers’ group, a new business networking group, etc.)


• A demonstration you’ll be giving (such as cooking, karate, kite-making, dog training, website design, etc.)


• An Open House celebration (in connection with a holiday or store anniversary, etc.)


• An attempt you’ll be making to break a world’s record (baking the world’s largest pizza, jumping on a pogo stick for the longest time, walking backwards for the greatest amount of miles, etc.)

Anything out-of-the-ordinary is worth reporting to the media. Something as mundane as moving your business two blocks to the south won’t cut it, but if you’re relocating to a building that’s been designated as a national or historic landmark and you can tie that in to your business somehow, then you’ve got a news release.

Other ways you can generate publicity are:

• Offering to appear as a guest on a radio show


• Writing a “tips” column for your local newspaper


• Teaching an adult-learning course at the community college or senior center (Introduction to the Internet, debt management strategies, how to find the lowest mortgage rates, etc.)


• Podcasting or blogging

Whatever methods you use, your goal is to keep your business on the media’s radar screen so your name becomes synonymous with “expert in your field.” When used wisely, the power of the press can give you what money can’t buy: positive word-of-mouth advertising. Now that’s priceless!

Angel Brown is the Founder and President of the Women’s Business Gallery (http://www.womens-business-gallery.com), the ART of business specialists, providing women entrepreneurs and small business owners with the information you need to succeed.

Tags: Advertising, press release, publicity

So you’ve built your website, you know what keywords you want to target (i.e. what words your customers are searching for), and you’re ready to write your copy. You’ve been told that you should use your keywords frequently so that you appear in search results for those words. But what does “frequently” mean?

How many times should you use your primary keyword? This case study helps answer that question.

Some background on “Keyword Density”

In order to understand optimum keyword usage, we first need to have some way of measuring keyword frequency. In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world, frequency is actually referred to as density. Keyword density is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears on a page expressed as a percentage of the total wordcount of that page. For example, if your page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, its density is 5%. So when you hear someone say “keyword density”, that’s normally what they’re talking about. (TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page at LiveKeywordAnalysis.com.)

However, there is another, more complex measure of keyword density which takes into account the text components in the HTML of the page (i.e. the meta tags: Title, Keywords, Alt Text, Description, and Comments). When using this measure, you don’t just count the words your visitor sees; you also count the words in your meta tags. For example, if you have 100 words on your home page, 10 words in your Title tag, 20 words in your Description tag, 70 words in your Alt tags, and 10 words in your Comments tag, your total wordcount for the page is 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 10 = 210. Similarly, when counting keywords, you don’t just add up the number of times a visitor will see your keyword, you also count the number of times that keyword appears in your meta tags. For example, if your keyword appears 5 times in the home page copy, 3 times in the Title tag, 5 times in the Description tag, 30 times in your Alt tags, and twice in your Comments tag, your total keyword count is 5 + 3 + 5 + 30 + 2 = 45. So with a total wordcount of 210 and a keyword count of 45, your keyword density is 45/210 x 100 = 21%. It is argued that this measure of keyword density is more relevant as the search engines measure density in this fashion. (TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page using this more complex measure at GoRank.com.)

As you can see, you need to be very aware of which measure you’re talking about when you’re talking “keyword density”. But let me reiterate; mostly when people talk about keyword density, they’re talking the simple measure.

What is the optimum keyword density

And now down to business What keyword density (of either kind) should you be targeting on your website?

There’s a lot of debate surrounding this issue because the search engine companies don’t disclose the details of their algorithms (as that would allow people to abuse the system). Instead, people working in the SEO world are left to figure it out based on their experience.

A recent article by respected SEO and Blog expert, Wayne Hurlbert, (see Keyword Density: SEO Considerations) suggests that Google sees pages with a keyword density of greater than 2% as spam. It was this article which prompted me to analyze the keyword density of my copywriting website.

CASE STUDY

The Website: This case study analyzes the website for my advertising copywriting and SEO copywriting business, Divine Write – http://www.divinewrite.com. For my primary keyword, my site is now on page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results).

Number of pages on site: At the time of writing, my website contained a total of 53 pages.

Primary keyword phrase: “copywriter”

Average keyword density: Using the simple measure of keyword density discussed above, the average keyword density of my copywriting website is 1.9%. Using the complex measure it’s 4.9%.

Keyword density range: Using the simple measure, my density ranged from 0.4% to 7.6%. Using the complex measure it ranged from 1.6% to 17.5%

Some comments on the figures

The figures and corresponding ranking detailed in this case study may not be directly relevant to every site. There’s a lot I don’t know about the algorithms and there are bound to be other factors at play which I don’t know about.

With regard to Wayne Hurlbert’s article, it would seem that he is referring to keyword density as calculated using the simple method discussed above.

The range figures are noteworthy because they suggest that you don’t need to be paranoid about having some pages with a very high density and some with a very low density.

Conclusion

A simple keyword density of 1.9% can be enough for a first page ranking in Google.com (assuming you have enough quality backlinks – see http://www.divinewrite.com/SEOCEO.htm and http://www.divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm for more information).

Happy SEO writing!

* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

Tags: copywriter, copywriting, density, engine, keyword, optimisation, optimization, search, SEO, web copy