Archive for 'SEO and Marketing'

Do Free Samples REALLY Increase Sales?

May 6, 2008 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing

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Today we have another guest post. It’s written by BizyMoms.

When was the last time that you were given the opportunity to try a product for free? Did you like the product? Did you become regular consumer of the product after trying it? What is the purpose of giving away free samples?

Since the business environment is very competitive and volatile, almost all the firms in the market are trying their best to stay ahead of the competition. Due to this reason, they try various methods to gain the maximum market share in the shortest possible time period. Free samples can be identified as one of these methods that businesses try in order to win a higher percentage of the market share.

Now you must be wondering how this really helps to increase the sales volume of a particular business. Let me explain.

When we consider the market that exists in the …

Some More Love from the Big G

May 2, 2008 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing

As many of you know this site was penalized on Google in November 07. Luckily about 4 days after I bought it. (Wooohoooo). Did I quit? No.

The other morning I woke up and was pleased to see that this home business blog is now a PR3. Last update it was a PR2 which was a shocker was for the longest time it was just that lonely grey bar. They say the grass is always greener or in this case the PR bar is but I’m pleased with a PR3. The main reason I’m so pleased is in my mind this blog isn’t really at risk of being de-indexed. Being de-indexed is an online marketer or any webmasters worst nightmare.

Some of you may notice or comment that only the homepage has PR. You are right it does; why? I have a few guesses. Maybe the site is slowly regaining the …

Follow me on Twitter!

April 22, 2008 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing

Ever heard of Twitter? Twitter is a social media website that basically is like a giant IM. You follow people to subscribe to what they are saying and people who follow you get your updates. Dave wrote a great post on it here.

You can also reply to anyone using the @XXXX (XXXX is the username). The beauty is if someone you know you think is knowledgeable you can follow them as they post links and thoughts as the day goes through. Kinda like being on IM but way less personal so it’s easier to be on IM with hundreds or thousands at a time type deal.

Basically I’m new to twitter and trying to see how ths experiment pans out.  I became interested after hearing from a friend that they got “Tweeted” and a whole slew of traffic came. Since twitter is still relatively new it may be a …

Free Sponsored Yahoo Listings Huh?

April 21, 2008 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, we have another fun week ahead of us online and today I’m going to show you something which made me take a huge double take. I’m talking about seeing your site in the paid sponsored listings on Yahoo.com for free!

I was searching for Bloggeries the other day to see how it ranked in yahoo for a wide variety of terms. Then I just started searching the actual name to see which results came up. To my surprise I saw Home Biz Blogger as a sponsored ad in the footer and sidebar advertisements which I had *THOUGHT* were paid.

HomeBizBlogger as an advert in the footer; the one below shows HBB as an advert on the right sidebar near the top.

I’m glad I took a screen shot when this occurred as it’s not showing it now. One thing I did think …

Alexa Changes Rankings Criteria Announcement

April 17, 2008 | Author: Rob | Filed under: SEO and Marketing

You read it here first and now without further delay please visit the Official Announcement from Alexa.com.

Basically it appears as though they changed the algorithm to better display the internet habits of the average user over just the webmaster type user. Typically sites with high webmaster related traffic ranked very high on Alexa naturally as the average user of the toolbar was in fact a webmaster.

According to the announcement they will continue to make changes and not all sites were affected. How did I know about this so quickly you ask? Well Bloggeries went from 23,000 all the way back to 81,000. Doh! What else stinks is that it was 66,000 a year ago and I’ve been steadily working on it. I guess it is fair though and I’m still happy with the change despite it negatively affecting my rankings. I’ve said before that Alexa rankings were …