Colin Klinkert Dot Com

Optimizing your pages for search engines is very important to get a chance to rank well and receive free traffic on a daily basis. This is called SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) but you should already know what this is. In theory, the process is rather simple: you optimize your pages and build inbound links to them to influence search engines in the way they rank them.

However, you must first determine the keywords your site, blog or squeeze page should rank for. Broad keywords are usually very competitive and pretty hard to rank for, and generally don’t send targeted traffic. However, narrow keywords are usually less competitive and thus easier to rank for, and most importantly, they send targeted traffic, which is a real advantage over broader search terms.

Don’t even think about starting to optimize your pages and build inbound links to them if you’re unsure of the keywords to target. Keyword research is vital when optimizing your online presence for search engines. If you skip this step, you’re likely to waste a lot of time on your way to online success. Effective keyword research is a key to enhanced results.

Make a list of keywords you think your online presence should rank for and use a free keyword suggestion tool like Google Keyword Tool or even better, a paid keyword research software like Keyword Elite to determine which ones you should target for maximum results. This kind of program will help you target the right keywords, which should ideally be high search, low competition, buying keywords.

Keyword Elite is truly a great investment as it will help you determine if a keyword is a browsing keyword or a buying keyword. A browsing keyword is a keyword usually searched to find information about something, while a buying keyword is a keyword usually searched with the intent to purchase something. This can make a huge difference to your business!

Highly recommended tools

If you run out of ideas, check what keywords your competitors use. Browse around and check the page source if you can’t find anything on the pages. You don’t necessarily have to target the same keywords but this technique can give you a few hints on which keywords to target.

Once you have a short list of high search, low competition, buying keywords, you may start optimizing your online presence on the pages (on-page optimization: title tags, headings, body content, etc.) and off the pages (off-page optimization: link building, social media marketing, etc.). Do not hesitate to do some further keyword research if you feel like you’re missing out on a potential buying keyword!

This blog post is part of a series of hot topics for making money online. Stay tuned for more and feel free to share your own experience on keyword research with us!

There is now a multitude of scripts that allow you to add all sorts of sharing buttons to your pages, so visitors can easily share them with their social circle. ShareThis and AddThis are two good examples of sharing services. If you visited my blog in the past, you may have noticed the WordPress plugin (SexyBookmarks) I installed. It displays a range of sharing buttons at the bottom of each blog post. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

However, most of these scripts create graphic links, often in the form of buttons, and not text links. No big deal, but you can’t place them wherever you want. Let’s say you want to place a retweet text link right in the middle of your blog post content, or in your email or forum signature… Have you been wondering how to do this? Here is how to create a retweet text link in under a minute:

Let’s break this down into two parts. First, use the following link part:

http://twitter.com/home?status=

Then, add your tweet text after the equals sign. In the following example I use a message that I recently tweeted on my Twitter profile @ColinKlinkert.

http://twitter.com/home?status=RT @ColinKlinkert – Colin showing you how to create a retweet text link for Twitter http://vurl.bz/s/retweet

Now hyperlink the text in your content. Here is the end result:

Click here to retweet

Pretty easy, isn’t it? Now you can place retweet text links wherever you want, including your page content, email signature, forum signature… This is very useful if you want your visitors to take action at a given time when going through your content.

By the way, you know that Twitter only allows messages of 140 characters or less. Well, if you want to shorten your links, make sure you check my 7 reasons to cloak your links with ViralUrl!

Have you ever wondered how YouTube video marketing can help you generate traffic to your site? Well, the answer is pretty simple. YouTube is a site that has one of the largest reaches in the Internet. It receives millions of visitors everyday and because it is owned by Google, video results for searches are generally featured at the the top of almost every Google search.

So, with all the traffic going through YouTube, why not try to get some of those people to your site? YouTube video marketing is actually a lot easier than you might think. First, you need to make a video. Pick one of the most popular articles or sections of content of your site, understand exactly what the content says, and repeat it, in your own words, in front of a camera. Limit the length to a maximum of five minutes.

Most modern computers have built-in cameras, but if you don’t have one, don’t hesitate to purchase one online or at a local store. Webcams are pretty cheap nowadays, and the fantastic Flip Video cameras are not only inexpensive and mobile phone-sized, but they come with a built-in USB connection that pops out the side and plugs straight into your computer.

Once you have the video recorded, head over to YouTube and sign up for a free account (if you don’t already have one). In the meantime, join my YouTube channel for great internet marketing and money money online video content. There are a lot of videos set to be released.

The uploading process is very easy and streamlined. All you need to do is select the file from your hard drive when prompted and enter a title and description for the video. Feel free to use the same title and keywords you already used in the source article you used to create the video. Very importantly, at the beginning of the description, make sure to include a link back to your site.

That’s it! The process requires little to no initial investment (depending on whether or not you already have a camera), and doesn’t take that much time. You may then repeat the process to make more videos using other popular articles from your site to increase the odds of generating views and most importantly traffic to your online presence. Don’t forget to share your videos on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc. If you don’t know about the latter yet, learn how Google goes social with Google Buzz!

Domain name research is of paramount importance when it comes to setting up an online presence, whether it’s a site, blog or squeeze page. That’s why I already published a blog post on how to find a domain name. As I previously mentioned, a good domain name can be a great asset for your online business. However, I noticed that too many tend to forget about domain name keyword research.

I strongly recommend you to use the keywords you want your online presence to rank for in your domain name. A keyword-rich domain name can give you a competitive advantage, helping you rank better in search engines and thus generating additional traffic to your pages. When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), domain names can be of great help, along with other on-page and off-page factors of course.

However, remember to avoid dashes and numbers when possible, and choose a common domain name extension like .com, .net or .org. In my previous blog post on how to find a domain name, I recommend a few domain name suggestion tools. However, there’s a major downside: they don’t mention anything about keyword popularity.

You thus need to combine keyword research (with Google Keyword Tool for example) and domain name availability checking (with 1and1 for example, or even NameCheap for bulk search). Not too sure how to proceed? I created a short video on how to effectively research keywords for a domain name. Check it out…

Sign up and Register Domains Through 1and1

I hope you find it useful! In addition to the two registrars I mention in my previous blog post, I would like to tell you about 1and1, which is a great domain name registrar for internet marketers and home business owners. It’s cheap, reliable and has a pretty cool affiliate program. They have great offers so make sure you check them out!

Last week I had the chance to be interviewed by internet business coach and trainer James Holmes for his Internet Business Blueprint podcast. This podcast is dedicated to internet marketers and home business owners in network marketing, affiliate marketing and direct selling so there’s a good chance you’re in the target audience!

The call went very well and I’m glad to be able to share the podcast with you today. James and I discussed several topics including viral marketing and my products ViralUrl, ViralHosts and ViralNetworks, which is about to be relaunched. James is an early user of ViralUrl and I was really glad to have his feedback live.

Listen to the podcast to learn more on my path to internet marketing, what makes viral marketing so appealing and of course how to get the most out of ViralUrl. My business partner Frank Bauer was also on the call so make sure you listen to it now or add it to your favorites to listen to it at a later time.

Click to play or
right click to download

The introduction is about 5 minutes long so feel free to go past the 5th minute if you don’t have much time. I strongly recommend you visit James’ website Ask James Holmes for lots of great blog posts on internet marketing and his radio blog James Holmes Radio for more podcasts. If you’d like to learn more on ViralUrl and ViralHosts, feel free to watch the MLM Lead System Pro Webinar Video I posted a few months ago.

This week I’m proud to release the revamped version of my help desk! I indeed just got it redesigned to make it look nicer and most importantly improve usability. Check it out now: Reply2Colin.com. I hope you like it! Thankfully this new design should help you get in touch with my team and myself more easily. It is now a little easier to find more information on my products and select the appropriate category before submitting a ticket.

As a reminder, you may contact my team for ViralHosts general and technical support, ViralNetworks general and technical support and iBlog.at general and technical support. If you have questions about my own blog (to report bugs and errors, to advertise on it, etc.) or want to send me a joint venture offer, feel free to do so! My team or myself will respond to you as soon as possible.

When submitting a ticket, make sure you select the appropriate category so your ticket doesn’t get lost and we can respond to you as quickly as possible. The knowledge base and trouble shooter are pretty empty at the time I write this blog post but will be filled with lots of useful information very soon. Thanks for your patience!

For ViralUrl support and ViralFollowers support, please submit a ticket to my business partner Frank Bauer’s help desk at Reply2Frank.com. Thanks for your understanding.

New Design for Reply2Colin.com

Feel free to comment this blog post. I’d love to hear what you think of this new design!

A few days ago Google officially announced the launch of Google Buzz, a social integration and messaging tool. Google Buzz is Google’s latest attempt to jump into the social networking wave. They already have Orkut and OpenSocial but let’s be honest… who really use them? If you use Gmail, you must know about this new social app already. Google Buzz is a mix of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare and Yelp.

With Google Buzz, you can share whatever you feel like, including links, photos and videos. It has a few others cool features such as an auto-following function, a public and private sharing function and the inbox integration. Because Google Buzz is integrated into Gmail, it quickly got a great exposure and a lot of internet users started to use it as soon as it was released. According to analysts, 9 million posts were published on Google Buzz within the 56 hours of its release! Wow!

Google Buzz integrates several platforms including Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, YouTube, Blogger and Twitter. No doubt Google is trying to catch up on social networking and microblogging platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The feedback I read on the web is pretty good so far, and I enjoy using this app myself. I had the feeling it was just another social app… but I quickly started to change my mind. The fact Google Buzz is integrated into Gmail really helps!

To use Google Buzz, you must have Gmail account. No big deal considering it’s one of the best web-based email platforms! Check out the Google Buzz website for more information. It’s pretty simple to use. Right below the link to your inbox, you will see a link to Google Buzz. Click it, start following people and you’re pretty much set up! You can then start posting messages. You can link your Twitter account to your feed so every time you publish a tweet, it will automatically show up on your feed.

If you want to check out my feed, please visit my Google Profile: Colin Klinkert. If you want to have a Google Profile as well, read this blog post: How to set up a Google Profile. Note that Google changed quite a few things to the initial version of Google Buzz as several users complained about privacy issues.

A few months ago I published a blog post about Google Wave. Well… if Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is definitely the present! Note that Google Buzz is also available on mobiles. If you want to learn more on this new app, watch this video:

A few weeks ago I was searching for a great affiliate WordPress theme for future squeeze pages and sites of mine. I just couldn’t find anything I really liked until I found a great theme called Squeeze Theme. As you can imagine, this theme was developed to help internet marketers and alike easily set up squeeze pages, sites and even blogs with WordPress.

Squeeze Theme was specifically designed to grab visitors’ attention and make them opt in, which is of course a must in our industry. As they say, if you aren’t squeezing the email addresses out our your visitors, you’re missing out on new customers… and profits! I couldn’t agree more. Your site may receive lots of traffic but if it doesn’t convert well (if visitors don’t opt in) all your traffic generation efforts are pretty useless…

Now you may think that this is just sales text after all… but if you test drive the actual theme and take a close look at how it is built, you will certainly understand why I picked this one and not another. This theme is considered as being one of the best converting themes in the industry, and when you remember how popular WordPress is… this is quite a fact!

This very professional looking theme is also very easy to customize. I’m not surprised Frank Kern and John Reese themselves recommend it too! It has an easy-to-use interface to customize your online presence almost as much as you want. The best part is that you don’t need to know anything about coding. If you already have a site or blog, you may simply want to use this theme for a single page of your site. Well, that’s possible!

Squeeze Theme design

As you can see the design is pretty neat, and you can of course change the appearance. You can for example change the colors, add your own background as well as widgets, ads, etc. Added to the regular WordPress features… it simply has it all! There is not much else you really need to start making money online!

Squeeze Theme interface

Another great advantage is the resource center. The members area is indeed full of videos, tutorials, etc. on how to set up your squeeze page, site or blog and most importantly make the most out of it. It also has a support forum, which is great if you’re a beginner as you will be able to find help very easily. They even offer a 12-week training course to learn how to set up an affiliate site and build a list.

To be honest with you, I really regret I only found out about this theme recently… This is certainly the best WordPress theme I have ever used. Period. And with all the support that comes with it, even total beginners can have a professional looking squeeze page, site or blog in no time! The most important aspect is actually the fact that the theme was designed to convert visits into opt ins. That’s truly priceless.

The people who developed Squeeze Theme also developed another theme called Affiliate Theme. While you can use Squeeze Theme for almost any type of make money online page, site or blog, Affiliate Theme is more specifically targeted at affiliate marketers. Both themes are available on Squeeze Theme’s site.

If you aren’t really familiar with WordPress, I suggest you to sign up to ViralHosts and take the one-time offer, so you can install WordPress in just a few clicks (with Fantastico De Luxe). For more information, check out why ViralHosts web hosting is so good for internet marketers!

Are you one of those struggling to find a good domain name? If you are, don’t worry too much… you aren’t alone. I already had several of my customers asking me how to find a good domain name for their site, blog or squeeze page. According to them, most good ones are already taken… which is partly true. Finding a good domain name for your site or whatever the type of online presence you’re planning to have isn’t easy. However, don’t just hurry to register a domain name but rather take the time to think about what you really need or want.

Some will say that a domain name isn’t that important… Well, a good domain name can definitely help your site rank better in search engines but most importantly it can grab your visitors’ attention and stay in their mind. A great domain name can even become one of your greatest assets! Don’t be too over excited though. A great domain name can help you rank better in search engines for example but isn’t necessarily a guarantee of success…

How your domain name should be:

- Short
- Memorable
- Easy to spell
- Easy to type
- Descriptive…

Easy to say but difficult to do… By descriptive I mean including keywords (as in viralmarketingmanuscript.com even though this domain name is a little too long), because they can help you rank better in search engines. You should avoid dashes and numbers as much as you can. Web users are now overloaded with information, so it MUST be memorable. Unless you target a specific geographic area, choose a common domain name extension such as .com, .net or .org.

Study the competition, ask around you and maybe use domain name suggestion tools like Domains Bots, Domain Tools or Dot-o-Mator. Once you have an idea of what you need or want, check the availability on a domain name registrar like GoDaddy or NameCheap. You will need to perform a search to check if the domain name you want, with the extension you want, is available or not. Feel free to perform as many searches as you want as they will help you find alternatives.

If you really struggle in choosing a domain name for your online presence, it’s still time to do a brainstorming. Most good domain names are already  taken, that’s right… but with some creativity you can find a great one that will perfectly match your needs. Try to think outside the box but always remember the characteristics of a good domain name.

You can purchase your domain name from a large range of websites but I tend to purchase mine from well established companies like GoDaddy and NameCheap. They are large companies that aren’t going out of business anytime soon… which is definitely a plus. Both GoDaddy and NameCheap provide good support. Now if you need web hosting as well, make sure you check out what makes ViralHosts web hosting so good!

At the time I write this blog post, Facebook has over 350 million active users. 50% of them log on in any given day and the site now counts more than 700,000 business pages. As an internet marketer or home business owner, this should sound like a great opportunity for you to strengthen the relationships with your existing customers and even maybe generate new leads. Out of 350 million active users, you’d be unlucky not to find any of your customers already on there.

A few weeks ago I published a blog post on how to set up a Google profile for yourself. This time I will show you how to create a Facebook page for your business. It’s dead simple but I also give a few tips… Creating a fan page only takes a few minutes so don’t miss out on this opportunity.

Having said that, I tend to use Facebook for personal use rather than business use. However, Facebook has made it so easy for businesses to create a page that I eventually decided to jump in. Feel free to check out my page now. I will be giving away some cool products for those who join and participate in the community.

To create a Facebook page for your business, log into your personal account and go to the page creation interface. If you don’t have a Facebook profile yet, you will then need to create one. You first have to choose a category: an area, a brand, product or organization, or an artist, band or public figure. Select the category that best fits your business and move to the next step. Enter the name you want to give to the page and tick the box if you don’t want the page to become public at this time. If you do so you will of course be able to make it public at a later time. Then click “Create Page”. Too easy!

You will then land on your newly created business page. You can start customizing it. You may add a picture for example, and edit the information. Click “Edit Information” and fill in the fields: when the business was founded, what the website address is, a short company overview, etc. Make sure you complete the profile comprehensively so it really looks professional. Browse around and check out all the features that you can use for your business page.

Now a few tips… Having a Facebook page for your business is a good thing… if you manage to make it successful. Well I just created mine but I already have a few ideas on how to get what we will call “fans”. For starters, make sure your page is complete (with a picture, basic information, detailed information, etc.). You may add a link to the page to your blog (check out the buttons on the right), email signature or anywhere you feel like. You may even tweet about it.

To attract fans you will also need to make your page engaging enough, so people actually want to join the community. Make sure you regularly add new content (news, videos, upcoming events, etc.) to your feed. To engage visitors you may even organize contests or reward those who participate (with freebies for instance). These are only a few techniques on growing your fan list. Feel free to share your own!