Welcome back!

This is something we should have addressed earlier in the year. But better late than never.

If you have been involved in online marketing for more than a couple of years, you’re familiar with how quickly things change. Marketing strategies that burst onto the scene a few years ago are less effective today. Search engine   optimization tactics that worked phenomenally well in 2008 barely have an impact these days.

If you’re not evolving with these changes, you’ll be left behind.

Today, I’m going to reveal the top 5 online marketing trends for 2010. Can you make money online while ignoring them? Of course. But if you keep the following trends in mind, you’ll make more money while attracting a growing legion of happier customers and affiliates.

#1 – ROI Takes Center Stage

ROI has always been more important than traffic. Bringing 5,000 visitors to your site each day means very little unless they’re buying something or clicking an ad. Likewise, if you’re using PPC to drive traffic, your backend must be able to monetize that traffic over your click costs.

Over the last few years, marketers have realized that traffic does not necessarily mean profit. This trend is going to escalate further as marketers begin to refine their strategies. We’ll see this happening in email, search marketing, social media, and every other channel.

#2 – Local Search Continues To Grow

Local SEO started to gather steam a few years ago. At the time, a lot of the old school search experts ignored it, thinking it was a waste. They’re paying attention now. And so are their clients.

If you’re targeting a location-based niche or you’re doing SEO work for clients, you’ll need to master local search. Many of the same strategies you use to rank your sites in Google’s broad index can be used for their local index. But there are also a host of other tactics exclusive to local SEO. This area is going to heat up.

#3 – Online Marketing Drills Into Micro-Niches

Niches are much easier to serve than trying to appeal to the masses. They’re also easier to target and approach. For example, the weight loss space is more difficult to penetrate than the “losing pregnancy weight after having a baby” niche.

Get ready for your niches to shrink. Tight niches will become tighter. Small niches will contract to micro size. Start thinking about where your market spends its time and create your strategy for reaching them.

This is an exciting trend. Targeting a wide niche is like being a small fish in a large pond. Controlling a micro-niche is like having a small pond to yourself. There’s a lot of money to made there.

Rosalind Gardner offers excellent information on niche marketing and making a income online with her Super Affiliate Handbook  Click Here to Read More About it.

#4 – Site Buying And Selling Accelerates

In a recent post, I mentioned that you can buy your way into the top search positions by purchasing aged, authoritative sites. This happens more frequently than a lot of online marketers realize. In fact, marketplace sites like Flippa.com are attracting more attention than ever.

Even though this buying and selling activity has been going on for several years, most of it has been under the radar. That’s already changing. You’re going to witness a flood of people rushing to pick up sites. However, rather than merely buying old sites for quick search positions, marketers will begin picking them up as cash-generating properties (similar to real estate).

For more information on selling see my post on how to Flip Sites for Money.

#5 – Social Media Focuses On Metrics

When social media marketing first launched out of the gates, everyone with a Facebook account seemed to be an expert. At the time, nobody had the numbers to prove what they were saying, so there was very little accountability.

This too, has begun to change. Social media is maturing and the focus has shifted to the metrics. This means the field of “experts” will begin thinning out as true professionals in the space emerge. They’re the ones to watch.

Online marketing has been evolving from the beginning. But its evolution is about to be thrown into high gear. Keep your eyes on the trends in today’s post and find a way to integrate them into your marketing plan. As I said earlier, there’s a lot of money to be made.

P.S. – You Should read my Review of Socialnomics By Erik Qualman and for more information on niche marketing see the Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop

Optimizing your site for the web is one thing but optimizing your site to compete in each different search engine is another. We have already gone over the basics of optimizing your site for yahoo, and Google. Now what other huge sites could there be left to optimize for, you might ask.

Well Ask, of course is a major player as well when it comes to search traffic along with windows live lately and not to forget MSN. But right now we are going to cover some simple things that you could do to help raise your rankings in the search engine ASK.

Although it has not been around long and came in pretty late after all the other search engines it has still been able to hold its ground after much needed advertisements on TV and radio and print magazine features, So Ask has been able to carve its simple 3 letter image into the heads of online internet users.  And the one thing that you want for your site is for those users to be able to find your site, not only in Google and Yahoo but also in the smaller players as well like Ask.

To start with, Ask search engine optimization comes with the feel of being able to answer a question for their readership. They are looking for the how to information and the go to information when it comes to answering a question or solving a problem. Ask does not accept web site submissions but instead prefers to find your site through others linking to you.

Ask use what is called Expert Rank, an algorithm in which it places the importance of your site based on whether or not it is a hub or and authorities. Authority sites are those that are the leader in a community of similar sites teaching the same topic. One that has a whole lot of links pointing to them, Hub sites are those that are smaller in the same teaching community but has links pointing out to the larger authority sites. Ask puts sites in communities or clusters of sites and ranks them according to their importance or links. Not to say a hub will not rank high because many do, but in order for this to happen hub sites need at least some authorities sites linking back to them along with a natural progression of linking out to the higher sites.

Ask search engine is also pretty slow when it comes to indexing sites into there search engine, but the best thing to do Is work on getting links from those authorities sites by paying for links, or writing how to information that answers a question and list them in article directories. They do accept advertisements but if you pay for Google adwords your listing is also going to show in their advertisements.

So there you have it, the basic of seo for Ask, how to get indexed. Make sure if you missed part one on Search engine optimization for Google, and Yahoo. Just click on the links below.

Seo for Google

Seo for Yahoo

Seo for the search engines- Yahoo!

As we covered in the first lesson on seo for the search engines Google, we covered many of the factors that would likely cause one to rank high in Google. Some of those search engine optimization factors include having good quality content on your site. Having great content is key for Google since they make up and send the most traffic to sites. It is the largest search engine and therefore should not be taken lightly. I always say when you do decide to optimize your site, optimize your site for Google first, then the others will fall into play.

However, when and if you do decide to optimize your site for yahoo, there are a few certain seo techniques that you should consider. For one we all know that the algorithms are constantly changing and many of the search engines look at keywords in the description tag, some the header tag and so on and so forth. With yahoo you can still be rest assured that keywords are a big element that comes into play when optimizing your site for them. As with Google who loves relevant links and quality on page factors. Yahoo loves keywords placed throughout the Meta tag, title tag, and description tag about your site and especially keywords in your domain name. This lets them know what your site is about and how and where to place your site.

But don’t be too quick to think that is all there is to ranking with yahoo, because it is not. Yahoo will not even find you’re unless it is listed and has links from other sites. Directories are big and known with yahoo; try to get your site listed in as many relevant niche directories as you can. And you will find your site being listed a whole lot quicker in yahoo and ranked a little higher also. Many people pay around 200.00 to 250.00 to have their site listed in the yahoo directories. Which in my opinion can help if you get listed, but there is no guarantee that you will even if you pay the money. So if you do decide to pay make sure you have a domain keyword rich website name.

One way to see what pages if you have any listed in yahoo is to do a search using:

site:www.yoursite.com

In the search engine browser. To see what pages yahoo sees linking to your page use

linkdomain://www.yoursite.com

Yahoo owns alltheweb and AltaVista so getting listed in them you are also likely to be listed in them as well. So focus on quality keyword page factors, and off page relevant directories listings.

PART ONE Google

Seo for Search Engines

Getting listed in the search engines is first main focus of any site owner, but getting listed in the search engines fast and in the right one can be time consuming. It takes a little research to know how to do it right to avoid the Google sandbox even if there is such a thing.

However, one thing you do need to know is that older websites can and most hold higher rank or superiority over newer websites, Especially in Google. So no matter how much you optimize your site to be better than your competitors with the right keywords and seo tips. Your older competition can seem do better than you for quite sometime unless you focus down more into a sub-niche. Then you can see results quicker, for example instead of “internet marketing” how about “internet marketing courses”.

The long- tail keyword can be used for domain name or even keywords throughout your site to bring in traffic quicker to your landing page. However, the focus of the article is to bring out how to get rankings in Google and correctly.

For one Google loves content and good linking structures. You need to make sure you have a natural linking strategy in place when it comes to Google. Just sending out the same articles to hundreds of directories is not going to cut it when it comes to Google. Most of the times they only give rank from a couple of directories anyhow to avoid duplicate content issues. So even if you do get the links it is best to just keep your links coming form article marketing down to about 20% of your marketing campaign.

The next thing you need to do is to purchase links from niche related directories in your field and optimize your pages for the correct related keywords you are trying to target.

One quick tip is offer on your site a reciprocal link exchange for other site owners to publish your article on their site.

Google loves great content and a natural link building structure, If you can build this naturally and quickly then kudos’ to you. Because no matter if your site is new a good natural link strategy and constant good content you can expect to see rankings pretty quickly.

Stay tuned for part two: yahoo

In conclusion to the most recent post here is a short little audio on search engine optimization. That will enhance and stress the most important issues for improving your Google ranking. Many of these techniques are minor and should be practiced as soon as possible if not already implemented into your search engine optimization campaign. So for those that are more visually inclined I hope you enjoy!!

The SEO Book

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

http://www.dmoz.org/