Online Marketing Systems | Titus Hoskins

Posted on April 30, 2010 by Rio

This is a great article by Titus Hoskins. You can add the “press release” to the list below.

Creating Simple Online Marketing Systems That Work!

When I started with my first website around 10 years ago, I foolishly thought all I had to do was create some great content and people would flock to my site. Sometimes that does happen but most times it does not. 10 years later I now know the difference. I know I really have to work the Internet if I want my sites to be successful. These are marketing systems that I put into place to promote my sites and gather quality traffic in order to produce the sales. My marketing systems take into account countless strategies that produce the quality traffic. It’s not just one method of getting traffic but many. I use many marketing tactics to build up a complex, yet very simple marketing system that works.

It all comes down to promotion. You have to promote your site in numerous ways. Some of my favorites are:

Article marketing – writing  simple how-to articles on the topic of your site and distributing them all over the web. Over the years this simple technique has brought in the most quality traffic to my sites.

I use keyword marketing to get my chosen keyword phrases to the top of the search engines. I concentrate most of my efforts on Google because it brings in the most traffic. Achieving top rankings will give you interested visitors and buyers.

I use blogs and RSS feeds to connect my sites to all the media sites and online bookmarking communities. Don’t underestimate the important of these media sites in your marketing. I just read in WebProNews that Facebook can drive more traffic than Google to many sites.

I use link bait like free ebooks, free reports, free ecourses... if you give out valuable content that people want – they will link to your site, bringing in more visitors and customers. I also use the PPC programs such as Google Adwords which can produce quality traffic to your sites.

I use follow-up emails to produce repeat traffic to my sites. This is one essential marketing tactic every online marketer must use if they want to fully benefit from their traffic. The concept here is not to directly sell to potential customers but give them valuable information that they need and want.

Weekly newsletters and/or ezines are another good way of building relationships with your site’s visitors. It is also an excellent way of getting repeat traffic to your sites. Another marketing tactic is to establish your site or yourself as an expert on the topic of your site. People will look and come to you for information on your topic. Building online credibility is often overlooked by many marketers but it is essential to your online success. If people respect your opinion,they will seek you out.

Participating in online communities and forums is one obvious way to establish your expertise in a given area. These forums are also an excellent source of quality traffic to your sites. As you can see from above, creating a successful web site or business takes a lot of promotion and work. Don’t just sit back and wait for things to happen – instead become pro-active and make things happen.

Write articles and distribute them. Write viral ebooks and special reports. Do PPC advertising. Start building your contact lists. Do a regular ezine or newsletter.

Participate in forums... Create a simple, yet complex system, of connections all over the web. These links/connections will draw in quality traffic that will make your site successful. Build up a whole combination of traffic sources for your site and you will create a marketing system that works.

Just get out there and do it!

For more ideas on marketing and marketing tools go to this online blog: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/weblog/

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How Many Websites do you Need? | Titus Hoskins

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Rio

This is an excerpt from an article by Titus Hoskins:

“Actually, some online marketers don’t even have a site of their own and instead they promote other affiliate sites and products with their marketing. While I don’t personally recommend this route, many successful marketers have taken it and are quite happy with not having to bother with the whole business of running an online site of their own.

But you should have at least one main site, your flagship, your address on the web where people can find you. This also gives you an online identity. It tells everyone this is the area or subject matter you’re promoting…

For years I had one main site which kept me extremely busy and earned me a modest online income. I still have this site and yes it still keeps me busy and it is still profitable.

So why build more sites?

Mainly because as you proceed with your online marketing, you will find niches that require their own sites. You have to expand and branch out from your main site. The new sites are connected and supported with your old one. It is a very effective way of building more quality traffic and business.

But the main reason to build new sites is to prepare yourself for the future. You must stake your claim in all those “keyword domains” that still can be had at the moment.”

To know more visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com/

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Marketing Tactics | Titus Hoskins

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Rio

Titus Hoskins’ blog is one of my favorites because he mixes common sense with expertise, and leaves all hype out. I subscribed to his newsletter and always learn something new. Recommended! Here is a post on his top marketing tactics for 2009; it makes sense!

My Top Internet Marketing Tactics For 2009

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Google Search | Five Pillars | Titus Hoskins

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Rio

Interesting update from Titus Hoskins, an excerpt and link:

For many of the most competitive, profitable (I like to call them moneyed keywords) Google is displaying a whole
range of search results that can be divided into 5 groups, classifications, types of listings… knowing and targeting
these 5 different areas can make a big difference to how well you rank in Google.

These 5 Pillars of Google Search also has many ramifications for webmasters and especially for online marketers. I believe they will be much more importance as Google moves forward and makes more changes to its ranking system and how it displays those results.

Anyway, I have written a very detailed article on this subject and placed it on my site. The piece discusses
these 5 areas and how you should both know and target  them in your own marketing or with your website. I believe
it will help you get better rankings for your site or keywords. It’s too long to put here so you can read it here:

http://www.bizwaremagic.com/5_pillars_of_google_search.htm

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Google Help | Ranking | Marketing

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Rio

I recently received interesting information from Titus Hoskins about how Google ranks our sites. If you have a website or blog you might be interested. Here it is:

“Lately, there seems to be a lot of information coming from the top search engine on the web. Google is becoming more transparent in how it ranks pages in its index. For webmasters like myself, this is very welcomed news.

Google uses 200 different ranking factors in its algorithm… any webpage that it ranks has to be filtered thru these factors. The more you know HOW Google ranks pages, the better you can prepare your site and marketing to match their expectations.

http://bit.ly/l5SW

Google for so long has been very tight-lipped about how it ranks pages… it has been one of the major “beef” webmasters has had with
Google. Is all this now changing???? Maybe. Sometime in the not so distant past, higher board members or CEOs must have made a strategic change in HOW they would treat webmasters… who after all are really Google’s bread and butter!

It’s our products and content they’re dishing up in their SERPs… why bite the hand that feeds you! Maybe Google has finally gotten the “webmaster” issue right, just like have gotten so many other things right.

Those top Google executive members must have decided to deploy the troops in helping webmasters understand how Google ranks
webpages.

So now you Google troopers such as Matt Cutts, Maile Ohye, among others… following orders from on high and opening up about Google and ranking.

Now, Google is not giving away the shop, but they are becoming a lot more open and straightforward in their answers many concerned webmasters have, regarding how their sites perform within Google.
Which can only mean less sleepless nights for webmasters around the world.

Now we are talking all “white hat” by the book SEO techniques here… how to build backlinks, how to optimize your pages, how to link out to
other sites, and the list of SEO methods goes on.

If you’re serious about ranking high within Google – this “Live Chat Q&A” will give you a lot of solid pointers. Check it out here:

http://bit.ly/l5SW

o Marketing In Harsh Economic Times

Don’t have to tell you, these are very scary economic times no matter where you live in the world. What’s happening with the stock markets,
mortage meltdown, government bailouts…no country seems immune to all these perdictions of a looming recession.

What does an online do and how should you react to these tough times? So far, I haven’t seen much of a downturn in my own online sales yet, although there’s a slight dip in some luxury affiliate items that I sell, but believe it or not, there are still people buying
big-ticket items on the web.

But there has to be a slow-down in online sales…given all this bad news and how reluctant prospective buyers are becoming. So the real question remains – how do you market in these tough times?

Perhaps, you should look towards those industries that are recession-proof to find your answer. Look towards health care, education, renewable energy, environment, security, international business…
these areas the experts say are the most recession-proof.

Keep in mind, when things are tight financially, people look for ways to save money. It not exactly rocket science to understand that Walmart was one of the stores to see an increase in sales lately…
while most others are dropping.

For the online marketer, this could be pointing to areas where there are opportunities. You can look for bargain retailers, discount stores, coupon shopping… as areas where there will be more and not less economic activity.

Then you have all these workers who have lost their jobs looking for new ways to earn more income. You have retired people who will be looking towards the web to supplement their dwindling retirement savings.

Online education could be a major area of activity in the coming months as laid off workers upgrade their resumes.

Even Internet Marketing will probably see a minor boom as many people look for ways to earn a little extra part-time income. We could see major increases in online webinars and off-line seminars as experienced marketers take advantage of this opportunity to
teach others how to sell and earn on the web.

Since many people will be worrying about debts and bills – any financial courses, services and helpful programs will probably be very popular.

So too will software programs that help people cope with all this financial stress and worry. If you look closely, there should still be a
lot of areas for your online marketing could prosper. Just adjust your marketing to suit the times.

Here’s a really good example of what could do well in these harsh economic times.”

http://www.bizwaremagic.com/financial_gps.htm

Kind Regards,

Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.blogspot.com

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

Amazon kindle 2; the next generation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI?tag=thenet-20

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Google is your ally | Titus Hoskins | Tips

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Rio

Titus Hoskins just sent me an email with very useful suggestions on how to turn Google into a very efficient ally. I believe they will be helpful to most of my my readers as well, so here they are:

“Google must be your number ONE ally if you truly want to succeed online. Love it or hate it – Google is fast becoming the dominant marketing force on the web and you must use and exploit it to your advantage.

When most people mention Google, all they think of is the Search Engine. But if you’re marketing or promoting your site on the web – Google is so much more. It has countless programs you can use to further your goal.

Here are some of ones I use:

o Using Google Adsense For Profit & Monitoring

I use Google Adsense on almost all my site, it’s a simple way to monitize your site or sites. Google gives you a simple piece of code which you place on your webpages and it serves up text or image ads marked “Ads by Google” on
your pages.

If someone clicks on your ads you get a few pennies or a few dollars… Google Adsense is great if you have a large content filled site and want to earn revenue from your traffic. I use it in conjunction with my other affiliate
links on many of my pages.

Now, I can get 10, even a 100 times more with an affiliate link/click so I mostly use Adsense where I am not targeting a particular affiliate product with my marketing. However, I have received Adsense checks each month for the last three or four years – always puts a smile on my face to get that check from Google!

But also use Adsense to track and monitor my site’s traffic in ‘real time’ and it gives me a good picture of how my pages are doing. I still use my log stats to monitor my traffic but Adsense is just another way to do it.

If you’re not using Adsense on your sites, I suggest you give it a try.

https://www.google.com/adsense/

o Using Google Benchmarks To Improve Your Site

If you have a website, it’s only natural that you would like to know how your site compares with other similar sites on the web. Now, we are not talking about comparing apples to oranges here – we are talking about comparing your site to others that are the same in size and traffic.

Google Benchmarks which is a part of Google Analytics, lets you compare your site to other sites on the
web that are similar to yours. It will tell you how your site is performing compared to your
competition. This is enormously valuable information because it gives you a clearer picture of how your
site is performing.

I find it extremely helpful in telling me what parts of my sites are not working and where I
have to make improvements. It also tells me what parts of my sites are working or performing above
my competition.

Things like bounce rates, pageviews per visit, time on site… I can see how my sites are doing
compared with others in my area of interest. This is vital if I want to keep my sites competitive
and “in the game”.

If you’re not using Google Analytics and Google Benchmarks, I would strongly suggest you use this free service from Google. It is a great way to track your sites and visitors. It is invaluable for improving your site’s content.

You can also use the Website Optimizer to test which content, headlines, graphics, page design… are best
for converting your visitors into customers or clients. Simply find out what works best and use it.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics I
strongly suggest you start using it. You can
sign-up here:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

o Simple Market Research With Google Trends

Another Google program that I use a lot is Google Trends, especially when I am first
developing a site or looking for small niche markets I can make profitable. Google Trends
tells you what things or topics are “hot” or “popular” – ones being searched for by web users.

Google Trends can give you a good overview of of things that may be worth your time and effort,
in regards to marketing. It also lets you compare different items and it gives you a graph read-out
of how popular each one is or is becoming.

For example, if you’re selling electronics on your site, and you want to find out if you should spend more telling selling PCs or Laptops…. you can do a Trend search for each one and compare your results.

What’s even just as great, Google Trends will tell you how popular they are in different countries
or regions of the world. Again, if you’re marketing on the web, this will give you some simple
market research into your area of interest.

You can check Google Trends here:

http://www.google.com/trends

o Information Gathering With Google Alerts

Perhaps, one of my most favorite of all Google programs is Google Alerts. This is
simply the most valuable tool for searching for information on your site or topic.

You use Google Alerts to “tag” or “mark” any subject or phrase you want Google to
email alert you – when any new content appears on the web related to your topic or phrase.

These Alerts will give you the links to the new pages so that you can check out
the information. It is a great way to “keep up to date” on all your niche markets
and keywords you’re targeting with your sites.

This is also great for link building since many of these Alerts will be blog links
and you can easily go and add your comments with a link back to your site. Google will
send you email alerts when a new link or page is created on your targeted keyword.

I also use this free service from Google to keep track of my name so that whenever someone
is saying something about me anywhere on the web – I know about it!

I do the same thing for my sites. You can also use it to track your articles, keywords or just
about anything for that matter. Invaluable service for gathering information on the web…

Get it here:

www.google.com/alerts

What Google Thinks Of Your Site?

Furthermore, if you want to find out how Google
views you site. You can check out this handy
article I wrote a little while back:

http://www.bizwaremagic.com/google_webmaster_tools.htm

o Free Online Graphics Editor

And now for something completely different…

I heard about this free online graphics editor from Design Guru Ryan (The guy who does my
web graphics) and it looks very good. It’s called Pixlr and if you need to quickly
design or fix your graphics, this could be a very good option if you don’t have your
own image editor on your desktop.

You can find it here:

http://www.pixlr.com/

Kind Regards,

Titus

P.S. I have placed links to some of my sites,
blogs and social networks altogether here:

http://www.titushoskins.com

Includes Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, LiveJournal,
SiteProNews Blog… and others. In case you
really want to get to know me!

You can also go to this online blog:

http://www.bizwaremagic.blogspot.com

or on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/bizwaremagic “

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Tips on Search Engine Optimization | Titus Hoskins

Posted on December 27, 2008 by Rio

A friend just sent me an email with an article about Search Engine Optimization. These tips on SEO were compiled by Titus Hoskins and I find them extremely useful. Here is the article:

“No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms… SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche — you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time. I make this clarification because you must understand search engines, especially Google, are constantly redefining how they rank pages. Here are my favorite tactics and strategies:

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and SEObook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it – keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site — make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 – 700 word informative and helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts — a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO; you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you’re pursuing — your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That’s why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what’s been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site — tops in your niche — the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you’re into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you’re seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.”

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools If you liked the SEO tips above, why not check out the author’s blog at SiteProNews: More SEO Tips

Copyright © 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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