Monday, December 11, 2006

7 Online Marketing Tools for the Smart Webmaster

As an online marketer, it's hard to wade through all of the
misleading information that is running rampant on the Internet.
Who do you trust? Where do you go for the very best information
in online marketing? Well, this article was written to answer
those very questions. Below I have outlined 7 tools that can
be used to increase your marketing knowledge, improve your
website, increase your website's traffic, and even save time.
Hope you enjoy!

1. Make Your Site Sell

The first of these tools comes from Ken Envoy, who has released
his bestselling internet marketing book to the public for free.
With 100,000+ copies sold, Make Your Site Sell! 2002 can now be
downloaded free of charge.

This internet marketing bible has timeless information to
improve your online business and increase your traffic. Because
it was created in 2002, some of the information is a bit dated,
but if you skip the search engine info, Envoy's book is a gem
from front to back.

This is the book that got me started in internet marketing and
I am forever thankful to Ken Envoy. Inside Make Your Site Sell,
you'll find the three cornerstones of building a successful
online business - developing a great product, building a site
that sells, and attracting targeted traffic to your site.

Check it out at http://myss.sitesell.com

2. Dotcomology (http://www.dotcomology.com)

Another great resource for learning about online marketing is
Dotcomology by Stone Evans. This one is a bit more up-to-date.

Inside you'll learn:

* How to increase your traffic using expired domains
* How to build and maintain your credibility online
* How to increase your profits using back-end and cross-selling
techniques
* How to optimize your site for high rankings in the search
engines
* How to profit with Google Adwords
* How to build a massive opt-in mailing list
* How to set up joint ventures to expand your marketing reach
for free
* How to use press releases for free publicity and....
* How to launch a viral marketing campaign

In addition, you'll also get a number of free tools for all of
your webmaster needs.

Download this book for free at http://www.dotcomology.com

3. Website Translation

Do you know how you can multiply your content by 9 times by
expending just a few minutes of your time? Simply translate your
website into 9 other languages. There are tools out there that
make the process quick and easy.

You don't have to worry about duplicate content issues either.
It's all unique content that the search engines love. More
content equals more traffic. 64.8% of the world is surfing the
Internet in a language other than English. By translating your
website into other languages, you immediately open up a stream
of new markets and increased traffic from foreign search engines.

If you are a seasoned SEO, you'll be happy to hear that the
competition in foreign language search engines is much less
than in the English search engines.

There are a number of tools available that will enable you
to translate your website.

The first one is a Wordpress plugin called Simple Thoughts. This
plugin uses automatic machine translation to translate your blog
into eight languages - Spanish, French, German, Portuguese,
Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

You can download this plugin at

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/angsumans-translator-
plugin-pro-for-wordpress-blogs-released/

If you're looking for a higher-end solution, I would suggest you
take a look at http://www.translationgold.com. Translation Gold
can be used on blogs as well as traditional websites to translate
your site into 9 different languages.

4. OnlyWire

Social bookmarking is a great way to increase the exposure to
your articles. However, it can also be quite time consuming.

Fortunately, there is a tool that will automate much of your
social bookmarking for you. It is called OnlyWire
(http://www.onlywire.com) and it allows you to submit links
to 17 social bookmarking sites all at one time. Simply create
an account, give your bookmark a title, type in the URL, add
tags, and send it off.

When using this tool, you must keep in mind that it is not meant
to be abused. This tool is simply a time-saving device to help
you in your social bookmarking efforts.

You must always submit quality content. In addition, you should
also share and submit other sites that you feel would provide a
great resource to these communities.

Social bookmarking is all about community. If you are not
actively involved in the community and submitting links besides
your own, then you are simply wasting your time.

However, if you spend a little bit of time to do things right,
you can reap some enormous benefits.

To find out more about OnlyWire, go to http://www.onlywire.com

5. ROR Sitemaps

Sitemaps are an important tool for making sure your site can be
completely spidered and indexed by the search engines.
Unfortunately, many of today's sitemaps are specific to one
search engine or another. Because of this, there have been a
number of Google and Yahoo sitemap generators produced in
recent years.

However, there is an alternative that presents many benefits
over today's Google and Yahoo sitemaps. In addition, these new
and improved sitemaps are readable by all search engines.

They are called ROR sitemaps (http://www.rorweb.com). They use
XML feeds to describe your web content. These sitemaps are
structured feeds that enable search engines to complement text
search with structured information to better interpret the
meaning of your site. With a ROR sitemap, search engines can
better understand your products, services, images, newsletters,
articles, podcasts, and anything else that you want to describe.

You can create your own ROR sitemap at
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

6. Web Templates

If you are a webmaster, then you know the importance of quality
web design. Good web design can mean the difference between a
paying customer and a confused visitor.

Fortunately, there are a few websites that are providing free,
quality templates. One of these can be found at
http://www.oswd.org, where they offer over 1,600 web designs.

Open Source Web Design is making the web a prettier place, one
template at a time. To find a professional template for your
own site, you can check out some of their favorite designs at
http://www.oswd.org/designs/favorites/ .

If you are looking for a nice blog design, you can go to
http://themes.wordpress.net, where you'll find over 800
themes, free to download.

7. Viral Marketing - PDF Generator

To start your own viral marketing campaign, I suggest that you
look at Viral Publisher (http://www.viralpublisher.com). This
free software allows you to create your own brandable PDF ebooks
and optimize them for the web. Creating your own ebook and
giving it away for free is a great way to increase your
online exposure.

You can offer your ebook to your affiliates, website visitors,
and your customers.

Because it's brandable, the user can customize the ebook with
their own affiliate links, encouraging them to pass it along
even further.

Start your own viral frenzy at http://www.viralpublisher.com

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Kim Roach is a staff writer and editor for the SiteProNews
(http://www.sitepronews.com) & SEO-News (http://www.seo-news.com)
newsletters. You can also find additional tips and news on
webmaster and SEO topics by Kim at the SiteProNews blog
(http://blog.sitepronews.com/). Kim's email is:
kim @ seo-news.com

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