Genuine Email Marketing Best Practices and Tips

When many people think about email marketing, they may think “What’s the big deal…” and not fully understand the role that email marketing plays in the entire marketing funnel or the psychology involved when it comes to getting subscribers to open, click through, and keep from wanting to hit “unsubscribe” or even worse “spam”….or even worse than that, replying to an email asking to be removed in which you then have to scroll down in their reply and click the “unsubscribe” link for them. It happens. I’m pretty sure that’s what makes my 2 month old baby girl cry.

Email marketing, when utilized “correctly” can be the most crucial part of your entire business as it can allow you stay connected to your customers and build solid relationships with them. Aside from actual in-person interaction or phone conversations, email is one of the strongest mediums to stay on customers’ minds and build yourself as an authority in your industry.

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23 Genuine WordPress SEO Tips

masonworld internet marketing podcastI recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on the MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast with Mark Mason where we discussed a number of internet marketing topics. I’ve listened to his podcast since it began, so it was a great experience being a guest and getting to share numerous strategies that I’ve used over the years. If you’ve arrived here after hearing that podcast, then welcome! If you haven’t heard the podcast yet, here is part 1 and part 2 of the interview.

During the podcast, I provided 23 WordPress SEO tips that I currently implement and personally recommend. The following is a rundown of the items I mentioned along with links to each plugin, framework, website, etc that was discussed. There is nothing “black hat” or “questionable” in these tips…just solid, legit things to implement and consider when creating a wordpress website. I know this list may leave out details, so please feel free to ask questions in the comments section and I’ll be more than happy to clarify anything for you!

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How to Grow Sales in a Down Economy with SEO

There has been a lot of talk the past few years about being in a “down economy” and using that to justify declines in sales and even failed businesses. Many businesses just haven’t been able to stay afloat and could not figure out how to “grow” while the market is “down”.

However, there is definitely an internet marketing strategy that can grow market share and sales during a down economy. Arguably, there are many strategies that could be used, but I’ll just focus on one foundational method that I have used with great success over the years.

Note – While the graphs below represent real data from one of my projects, I cannot reveal the actual numbers or keywords associated with them due to NDA’s…but the strategy used will be clear…I promise.

Ok, moving onto the good stuff.
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False Advertisement Through Dynamic Titles and Meta Tags

The practice of using dynamic page titles and meta descriptions & keywords throughout a website is common practice among very large websites. It simplifies the process of giving each page unique titles and descriptions.

For example, let’s say a website sells clothing. It may have a standard page title that says something like:

“[clothing article] available from Widget Clothing”

It may then have a dynamic meta description along the lines of:

View pricing and info for [clothing article] and see what sizes and colors are available to ship for free from Widget Clothing.

All of that is fine and dandy…if all of it is true.

Now let’s look at a popular website that incorrectly uses dynamic titles and descriptions that mislead potential customers with blatant false advertising.

Netflix.
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Lessons Learned from JC Penney

The recent story by the NY Times that exposed the linkbuilding tactics of JC Penney has created quite a stir among the internet marketing community. A whole gamut of opinions have been expressed by numerous people sharing their take on what is “right” and “wrong” when it comes to search engine optimization, linkbuilding, and getting to the top of search engines. If you aren’t aware of what has gone done, here is a basic overview of what unfolded:

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The Best Free Internet Marketing Ebooks

I’ve come across quite a few internet marketing ebooks over the years and thought I’d share some that I have gathered nuggets of info from along the way. All of these are free, but some require you to submit an email address before being able to download them…not a huge price to pay for what you get in return. Some of these are great to print out and take on a flight, outside on the porch, or download to your mobile to browse on the go. There are great pieces of info in all of these ebooks and I can fully suggest each of them.

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How to Make More Money with Adsense

If you have a website with Google Adsense and would like to make more money with adsense without increasing your daily visitors, then this article is money in your pocket. I recently stumbled through this and the results have been incredible. Lucky for you I’m going to lay out exactly what you need to do. These are some very simple steps that you can do today that can instantly increase your adsense revenue overnight…seriously.

Before we get rolling, I have to do the legal thing and say that this is for informational purposes only and your results may vary from mine.

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Review of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

I don’t promote too many “internet marketing” products and the ones that I do end up sharing are ones that I firmly believe in and have full respect for the author(s). I simply want to avoid wasting your time and instead offer you the best resources available to help you learn as much as possible in the shortest time possible. What I’m about to share with you packs a whole lot of punch and can take your blog to the next level…or numerous levels higher. If that interests you at all, then read on…because this has been an incredible resource that has helped to get me where I am today with my own blogs.

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How people steal your hidden files

One of the most common mistakes I see many websites make is trying to hide webpages and files from search engines while making it incredibly easy for people to discover those pages. Your eyes may start to glaze while reading this, but stay with me…this will save your booty at some point.

The first and most common mistake is the improper use of a robots.txt file. Basically what this file does is tells spiders (search engines) what files and directories to scan or ignore. You can usually see if a website has one by simply adding a /robots.txt after their domain name. For example, you could see Google’s by going to http://www.google.com/robots.txt, which reveals numerous directories they don’t want search engines to scan and index…interesting stuff if you’re into that sort of thing.

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The Internet Marketing Mindmap

One of the primary aspects of internet marketing is bringing people to a website or webpage…this is what is typically referred to as “traffic.” There are numerous techniques for getting traffic to a website and it can sometimes be overwhelming to know exactly where to start…especially on a brand new website starting from scratch! Over the years, I’ve tried to “simplify” this process and have come up with what I refer to as the “Internet Marketing Mindmap” to provide a visual reference for most of the strategies that I use.

This internet marketing mindmap has a foundation of “increasing website traffic”. While many would say that “making money” is the primary goal, it’s actually the traffic that leads to success. Also, “making money” may not always be the ultimate goal. It could be to win a contest or election, increase awareness to a cause, build a community of like-minded people, etc. Whatever the “goal” is, there is always the foundational requirement to increase website traffic. So, with that said, let me break down what you’re about to see.

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