By Brad Lessard

Podcasting is among the modes of information distribution that
help to stimulate consumer action by generation of awareness,
through the Internet. Emails, websites and podcast directories
help propagate marketing messages in a digital format that is
easily accessible, through podcasts. Many of the thousands of
Internet users who receive these messages end up buying the
services or products promoted therein.

Some of the money that was earlier being spent by companies on
television and radio advertisements is now being channeled into
alternatives available online. The World Wide Web is fast
developing into a huge platform for the communication media. The
significance of the Internet as a means for reaching out to
potential consumers is, therefore, expected to continue to
increase.

Podcasting has become an integral part of any plan for
marketing online. It can convey a message effectively to
thousands of potential consumers, at a cost that is almost
negligible, when it is used efficiently. Thus, it can help to
develop a huge client or customer base, as numerous online
channels can be used for its distribution to prospects. It
leverages the Internet’s popularity in a very effective way.
Since early 2005, the use of podcasting as a marketing tool has
increased manifold.

The popularity of podcasting is partly on account of the fact
that it is a channel for direct communication. Upon publication,
subscribers receive podcasts automatically, through Really
Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. They then proceed to review
these. So, a business can benefit immensely, if it can draw up
its podcasting strategy well.

New episodes of podcasts can be downloaded to a user’s
computer, using software like Juice Receiver, or to an iPod,
using the iTunes software from Apple. Updates can, thus, be
received automatically, through the podcatchers, merely by
pointing these towards the podcast feeds. Generally, the
subscription feeds are produced using RSS. So, the users can
simply subscribe to the feeds and these will automatically get
downloaded, as and when these are broadcast. The RSS feeds can
even be downloaded directly to the digital audio players, using
appropriate software.

Podcasts may be distributed through online advertisements, as
well, besides directories, websites, etc., after these have been
created and recorded. The focus of a podcast, obviously, should
be oriented towards the potential consumers and their needs,
besides outlining how a service or a product can meet those
needs. For this, obviously, the marketers have to identify the
needs, so that they can clearly specify the ways in which these
are likely to be met by the service or product that they seek to
promote. This can be done after the target markets have been
looked at carefully and a plan for marketing has been drafted.

More than forty million users could, potentially, listen to a
podcast, if it gets listed in the iTunes directory. Targeted
traffic can be also be secured for a podcast, if its feed can
get indexed by leading search engines. The feeds are likely to
be picked up from there by podcast and blog directories.
Therefore, the online visibility of a business can increase
dramatically, if its podcasts are professionally done and are of
good quality.

Presently, podcasting is firmly entrenched as a tool for
marketing online, as is evident from several Fortune 500 firms
utilizing it as a medium for direct communication with existing
as well as prospective clients or customers.

The increasing sales of mp3 players and continuous Internet
usage growth are contributing factors, in this regard, and point
towards the likeliness of increase in popularity of podcasts, in
the future.

Podcasting is expected to be a part of the mainstream soon, as,
in addition to the sales of iPods in millions, inexpensive
capacity for storage and tools for distribution that are fairly
simple to use, are now available with greater ease than ever
before. So, the possibilities that audio downloads can offer are
continuously being expanded.

There are some advantages that podcasting has over other means
for getting the marketing messages across to the potential
consumers. For instance, spam filters can often stop emails from
reaching the intended recipients. Then, people may not wish to
take the time to read newsletters or ezines or to visit a
marketer’s website and browse through its contents. However,
they can actually listen to podcasts while being engaged in
other tasks and, therefore, be able to make more efficient use
of their time. Content that is related to people’s interests can
further enhance their experience, thus delivering more value to
the target audience.

About the Author: When looking for more information and
resources related to marketing Private Label and Master Resell
Rights Products, viral marketing, e-book marketing, internet
marketing resources and ecommerce, visit
http://www.moneytreecentral.com for complete details.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=199956&ca=Marketing

By Brad Lessard

The process that is aimed at improving a website’s ranking
among search results on leading search engines is often referred
to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This may be targeted at
vertical search that is specific to an industry, local search or
image search, among others.

The efforts aimed at SEO include ensuring that the search
engines can index the content of the site easily and that the
content that is uploaded is unique and highly relevant. The
search engine robots should be able to access the site fully and
any problems that are likely to prevent these from doing so
should be removed. The site’s structure and coding might have to
be looked at, for this purpose. Improving the presentation of
the site could also make it more appealing for the users. Other
methods, which are not approved of by search engines, are called
spamdexing and include techniques such as reciprocal linking and
stuffing the site with keywords that are likely to attract the
desired type of visitors.

Since the source code of the website often has to be modified
suitably for SEO, techniques for optimization can form a part of
the design and development of a website. Therefore, companies
offering such services offer SEO services as well, nowadays.
Those shopping carts, site designs, systems for the management
of content and menus that are fairly simple from the point of
view of optimization, may be described as friendly towards SEO.

Ensuring that sites get listed on search engines:

Although it is not possible to guarantee the ranks that the
owners of a site may wish to specify, certain search engines
operate programs that ensure that the site will be indexed in
return for a certain amount of money. Otherwise, the sites have
to be submitted manually for crawling. Whether or not a page is
to be indexed may depend upon a variety of factors, including
how far away a page is located from the root directory. However,
some sites allow the submission of XML feeds that aid the
discovery of those pages that cannot be accessed by following
links automatically.

The programs that guarantee inclusion in lieu of payment have
attracted a considerable amount of criticism, of late.

Preventing specific content from getting listed:

A text file in the domain’s root directory can be utilized for
preventing specific directories or files from being crawled by
the search engines’ spiders, by the site’s webmaster. Meta tags
can also be used for this purpose.

Pages that are specific to logging in and that have content
that is specific to users are generally the ones that are not to
be crawled by the search engines.

Legitimate versus illegitimate techniques:

As mentioned earlier, the SEO techniques whose effects the
search engines try to minimize are known as spamdexing. On the
other hand, those techniques that are recommended by search
engines are considered significant towards ensuring excellent
rankings for the website in the long run. As and when the sites
that employ spamdexing are found to be doing so by the search
engines, these are excluded from the databases and banned.

The legitimate techniques, or those that are in accordance with
the guidelines followed by search engines, are free from
deception. This implies that the content that a user accesses on
the website is the same as that indexed by the search engine.

Therefore, to summarize, these techniques seek not to create
content aimed at search engines, but to create content aimed at
providing maximum utility to those who visit the website and
then making this content easily accessible to them, through SEO.

The illegitimate techniques include designing different pages
for search engines and for human visitors, besides including
text that is visible to the search engines and not to the human
visitors, among other methods.

Marketing through search engine optimization:

SEO may not be the best tool for achieving the marketing goals
for a website and may have to be combined with other tools,
techniques and strategies, in order to attain success. However,
something it can definitely do is to help increase the number of
visitors i.e. bring about an increase in traffic and, if
properly done, traffic of good quality, as well. Since people
are known to scan web pages, including those containing search
results, downwards from the top and from the left towards the
right, it is obvious that placement among the highest ranked
search results can dramatically increase the number of people
that are likely to visit the website.

About the Author: When looking for more information and
resources related to marketing Private Label and Master Resell
Rights Products, viral marketing, e-book marketing, internet
marketing resources and ecommerce, visit
http://www.moneytreecentral.com for complete details.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=199756&ca=Internet

 By Peter Carter

One way of quickly making money with a blog is to join a blogging network which will pay you to blog.

Dosh Dosh recently published a great article with a list of 17 such networks. Check it out.