The power of online marketing has enabled business owners to achieve their business goals in a speedy manner. Indeed, it is possible for businesses to spread the information about their products/services to a wider range of audience in a short span of time. There are also plenty of effective online marketing tools that you can use to ensure that you can avail of low cost business promotion on the web.

Here are some of the online marketing tools that you can use and get started with:

Article Marketing

This is a cheap way to advertise your website or business on the internet (unless of course you are outsourcing your articles). However, you do not need to be a highly proficient writer in order to come up with quality articles that can compel your readers. You just have to provide quality information on a subject that is written in an error-free and easy to read manner. Your goal is to write keyword optimized content that will be indexed by popular search engines. Hence, it will be easier for your target audience to find your articles during their search.

You can also submit your articles to top online article directories, such as Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Articlesbase, among others. These sites also generate a lot of traffic on a regular basis, which you can leverage to redirect your readers to your own website.

Email Campaign

This is a traditional online marketing tool that remains to be effective these days. However, it might be more challenging as you need to build your lead list first before you can send out email campaign. In addition, you have to make sure that the leads list is highly targeted to generate response from them. This is why it is important to include an opt-in form in your website so that individuals who are interested in getting information from your business can provide their personal contact information.

Keywords

Keywords are one of the most powerful tools in online marketing. It is what the search engines use to increase their ranking on the search results page. However, you need to focus on using targeted keywords to increase your conversions and ensure that you are targeting the right audience who are interested in the subject you are dealing with. If you can be more specific with your use of keywords, then do that to ensure that you get more results.

Blogging

Setting up a blog and writing content on a regular basis is ideal for businesses to grow. This is an opportunity for you to interact with your target audience, while also subtly promoting your business. This will serve as a platform wherein you can directly interact with individuals who might be your potential customers. Think about how you can use your blog to advance your branding and marketing efforts so you can get more results from it.

Forum Posting

There are lots of forums on the web that you can join in and take advantage of one of the most effective online marketing tools. The best part about a forum is that it is made up of members who actively participate in discussions and thus you can get immediate feedback on your posts. You can also generate a lot of traffic from forums, especially if you provide insightful posts. Make sure not to forget including a link to your site as your signature.

Social Networking

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are hugging the web limelight these days. But before you belittle the roles of these social networking sites, they can actually be one of the most potent secret weapons for your business. If you use the right techniques, it can help you quickly draw out customers to your business.

However, there is a fine line separating networking and socializing with your “friends” on these sites with that of spamming your contacts. Always focus on developing real friendships. If not, then people will see through your lack of genuine concern for them. Be a friend to them and they will find it easier to respond to your promotions later on.

What is Web Analytics?

Web Analytics simply refers to a tool that monitors your website’s number of visits, marketing efforts, bounce rates, exit points, effectiveness of contents and rates of conversions. There are two categories of web analytics. The first is the real-time software in which it gives you updates as they come in. The second category is the non-real-time software where you need to wait 24 hours to get the statistics.

How to Choose Web Analytics?

It is absolutely up to you if you’re going to use web analytics that can either be free or paid. There are some people say there is no difference between the two services. Free analytics such as Google Analytics is as effective and as useful as those paid tools. Either you choose paid or free, the final decision depends on what benefits you need and want. To help you decide, I’ll share to you the importance of using this analytics tool.

The Importance of Web Analytics

1. Depending on the size of your website, advance web analytics software with many features gives you accurate data if you have 2000 more pages in your website. This type of software is ideal for e-commerce sites that encourage many people to buy and sell products.
2. This has become a reliable tool for Internet Business, especially for those websites which accept credit card transactions. Using analytics, you’ll know what specific marketing strategy to use and consistently improve the rate of your sales.
3. The tool provides you exact and objective details you need for testing purposes. Let’s say you are selling books online and if you’ll use analytics, the information you receive from your tool helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign. These details must be studied thoroughly to figure out if your expectations are constantly met.
4. A number of web analytics such as Google Analytics are for free. This allows you to save a lot of money. Just decide for a change if your campaign is growing and you need more advance features.
5. You can make sure your past data are safely kept inside the server. This way, you can take some time to compare the statistics and to study the consistency of results.

Web analytics is the measurement, collection and analysis of internet data so that a web page can be understood and well optimized. This tool provides data on the number of visitors, page views, and a lot of other features to gauge the traffic and popularity trends which helps doing the market research. There are now a lot of paid and free web analytics tools in the market today to help us measure user behavior, search engine traffic, real-time visitor tracking and more.

This article will give you 5 popular, innovative and free web analytics tools widely used in the online world today.

Google Analytics – this is definitely the most known analytics package available for individual site owners. This enterprise-class web analytics solution offers you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Google Analytics lets you dig down deep into your statistics to see breakdowns of individual regions, states, cities and a lot of other valuable items to enable you to better determine your site visitors. By using Google Analytics, you will be more prepared to make better-targeted ads, enhance your marketing strategies and develop higher converting websites.

Yahoo! Web Analytics – as Yahoo!’s alternative to Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics is a highly customized , enterprise-level website analytics system designed to assist website businesses enhance sales and visitor satisfaction. This is also created to reduce marketing costs and gain new insight on online customers. With Yahoo! Web Analytics, both near real-time and historical data can be segmented immediately and visualized with advanced graphs to help marketers and web developers answer specific business questions and discover new insights to improve their business.

Piwik – a downloadable, open source real time web analytics software program that provides you with detailed reports on your website visitors. The information this web analytics tool offers include the search engines and keywords they use, the language they speak, your popular pages and many more. Piwik has a “plugins” system that allows for maximum extensibility and customization. This is also very easy and light to download – with only 1.9 MB.

Grape Web Statistics – one of the free web analytics tools allows web developers to have accurate statistics and visitors. Grape Web Statistics uses PHP for the backend and it will run on any operating system that runs PHP.

Woopra – an information rich, easy-to-use and real time web tracking and analysis application that delivers rich library of visitor statistics in the industry. This web analytics tool is written in Java and is divided into two parts which includes a desktop application for data analysis and a web service to monitor website statistics. Among its features include Live Tracking and Web Statistics, Rich User Interface, Real-Time Analytics, Deep Analytic and Search Capabilities and Live Chat.

Web analytics tools are really a breakthrough in the online marketing industry as these can help us in identifying factors that will make or break our website. It is evident that the importance of web analytics runs much deeper than satisfying curiosity. Before, web analytics could only be used to measure traffic to your website, but now, it can be used in many different aspects of advertising and web marketing alike.

What is Social Networking Site?

A social network site offers a number of services that are a means of sharing ideas, activities, events and interests with other individual networks.

What Social Networking Sites are good for your Online Marketing?

1. Choose a site that has high Alexa Page Rank. As of this writing, Facebook and Twitter rank number two and eleven, respectively.
2. If possible, join only those sites with a registration that’s open to everyone.
3. Make sure its description and their numbers of features meet your goals and expectations.

Top Five Pick

Of all the social networking sites, I personally recommend you to use:

• Facebook- Launched in February 2004, Facebook has newly become the biggest networking platform in Internet Web. Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook allows all members to chat, post messages on the wall, write short and long status updates, post links in other profiles, upload videos and photos, create notes (similar to blogging), give virtual gifts, post free classified ads, join and start a community or group discussions.

• Twitter- Jack Dorsey started this microblogging and networking site in 2006. That moment on, Twitter has officially become a craze by millions around the world and it in 2009 alone; it obtained projected revenue of $400,000. When it comes to business, Twitter is absolutely a good promotional tool. It drives traffic to your site and it also gives you a chance to use several nice applications such as Twitpic (upload images), Tweetie (update multiple accounts) and TweetDeck (desktop application for filtering others’ tweets).

• Stumble Upon- If you are seeking optimization, posting a webpage in Stumble Upon can make a difference. Depending on the relevancy of the topic, expect a lot of stumblers will immediately ‘like’ your post. Another good feature of Stumble Upon, you can hop through websites that match your interest with a click on a button.

• MySpace- Currently at twenty-two in Alexa Rankings, MySpace allows you to enjoy a profile with a striking appearance. Bulletins can also be posted for everyone in your list to see. Group discussions, instant messaging, mobile marketing and polling are also possible.

• Yammer- It’s still in his newbie stages but Yammer is certainly one of the networking arenas if you’re in search of enterprise social software. Having the same look and feel of Twitter, Yammer also allows you to post threads and replies, upload files and photos, send and receive messages via SMS, IM and Email, logo customization and other security features. Yammer offers basic services for free of charge while its Silver and Gold Packages kit out with additional controls cost $3 and $5 per month, respectively.

When you are talking about internet advertising campaign, you immediately think of search engine optimization (SEO). The tools and techniques in SEO improve your niche’s visibility in the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask etc.). The powerful your SEO tools are, the better traffic you get back to your niche and the credible you are as an entrepreneur. However, if these concepts sound complicated to you, better outsource an SEO expert.

The SEO Guru

Outsourcing an SEO professional absolutely helps your online business. These are the people who will monitor your site’s ranking. They understand how the search engines work and they can immediately decide what the most appropriate marketing strategy to use. These people are also well-trained and have been in this industry for a number of years. Therefore, these experts are the real deal and truly worth your investment.

Usually, it’s a good idea to hire more than one SEO experts. One will act as a webmaster, the other one is a content writer and the other one is a link builder. Consider yourself lucky if you found the one person who is willing to write and rewrite contents, will circulate your links anywhere in the superhighway and at the same, he can manage your websites in any scripting languages.

Who to Hire

1. Of course, you should hire an expert who loves his work no matter how stressful it is. An expert is expected to perform at his best and they are only worth your money if they are mature enough to accept responsibilities and challenges.
2. Never expect a perfect expert. You can’t solely rely the success of your online campaign to them. It all depends on what your visions and goals are. The SEO expert will simply design a marketing system for you. A system that is cost-effective and at the same time, profitable.
3. The expert can work for you on a full-time or a part-time basis. The decision to when you need them is completely up to you but it’s still best to hire a full-time expert. The one who can work for nine or ten hours every day and six days a week. Just a reminder: If you’ll hire the right person or a group of persons for the job, these experts will work hard to meet your expectations and your deadlines. Treat them right, they are rare to find.
4. If what they know does not satisfy you but you sense they are responsible, your role is give them time to study. These days, there are a lot of ways to become a SEO expert. They can download free e-books, read blogs and articles, watch videos or enroll in a short-term SEO training program.

Firefox is one of the most popular web browsers available today, in line with Internet Explorer. However, Firefox is faster, safe and fully customizable. It means a quick and easy way in getting to your desired websites.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons to Use Firefox:

1. Splendid Location Bar. Searches in the location bar provide good matches, a well as adapt as per your favorite. You can enter a tag and the bar remembers which you used it sometime, it will search for possible matches from your browsing history till date, as well as tagged and bookmarked websites in the dropdown. And the current enhancement gives the best control on the location bar including privacy settings, making Firefox faster and more efficient.
2. Authenticity. Firefox has a lot of original features used for years which other web browsers have only developed recently.
3. Extensions. It has W3C checking of current page, mouse gestures and more. Extensions are easy to install in Firefox without disruptive screens. It has numbers of extensions to make browsing more functional, in comparison to other web browsers.
4. Automatic Interface. It takes only very few minutes to get comfortable with the Firefox Interface. The menus are stored properly, and though it offers a lot of special features it won’t get you tangled up in complex web of choices just to get your settings changed.
5. Open Source. Great contributions from a dedicated Open Source community enabled Firefox to provide a wide range of extensions for users. The source code is freely accessible by users to open up the browser’s hood to see how it works.

There are still a lot of unmentioned reasons in using Firefox as your web browser, and it continues to grow. Quality and functionality would always be the best.

In the business of Search Engine Optimization, platforms for online marketers to advertise their products are substantial. This is where the service of a hubpage is needed.

A hubpage is basically a website where users register to post their contents like text, pictures, links and videos; for free, thus, enabling them to promote or share their products or services online. However, defining or familiarizing a hubpage is not enough to tag you as an expert in this online marketing tool. There is work to be done.

In order to get a business at the center of attention, one must realize how to optimize it to great worth.

Here are some useful tips on how to optimize your hubpages:

Choose Topics

One significant requirement in getting a successful hubpage is learning how to choose topics. Select topics that will generate traffic to your page, useful and informative.

Keywords

Always target keywords related to your niche. Be sure to follow the right keyword density on your articles, to avoid being flagged as spam. Have them in the title of your article, sub-headings and throughout the article body.

Include Hubpage Feeds

Including a feed in your article can encourage visitors or readers to explore your page more. After setting it up, you can submit your RSS Feeds to trusted and active RSS directories for promotion. This may bring a steady flow of traffic in your time.

Link Wheel

Basically, you will have group of sites that linked together, which link back to your hubpage. This would be the central site you are ranking highly for. You can also have internal links from your article body towards other pages.

Socialize

If you have profile pages in social media sites like Facebook or Myspace, you may add your page links to them. Submit links to major search engines or email your friends after adding your page link to your social media profiles.

Update

Frequently update your hubpage, at least once or twice a week. This will help your ranking in search engines and will draw more traffic due to its fresh and updated content.

Success for your hubpage does not limit with the listed tips here, because there are literally a lot of things and ways for you to improve or optimize your page. These are just guides you may want to look up to in venturing your chosen field.

If you are an online entrepreneur, you should know that there is no online advertising technique that will make you rich overnight. Several methods are available out there and if you are consistency using it to your advantage, your online credibility is given a boost.

Truth is; there are only two major types of online advertising, paid and free. If you want to become effective, there is no need to focus on only one type. As experts say, free advertising strategies are easy to learn but it’s time consuming. Paid advertising yields instant results but it’s too expensive.

So, which way you are going?

Smart online marketing do not expect instant results. A successful online entrepreneur knows and understands what certain methods are for free but its utilization is on demand. It does not need to be a method that shows instant results but it has the show the consistency of long-term productivity.

On-Demand Free Online Advertising

• Search Engine Optimization. Under this method, it includes techniques but not limited to legal optimization techniques (white hat), creating contents (article writing, podcasting, video streams), article submission, keyword researching, free website indexing, meta-tagging and cross-linking.
• Social Media Optimization. Under this method, it includes but not limited to free indexing, blog commenting, forum posting, status-updating and the use of RSS feeds.

• Facebook is the most popular social networking site today. Apart from the basic features (note-taking, chatting, uploading pictures and videos, wall-to-wall commenting, circulation your backlinks), the site also allows you to create free communities, send free invitations, play interactive games and hand virtual gifts. When used effectively, Facebook makes you a credible and trustworthy entrepreneur.

Paid & Productive Online Advertising

• E-Mail Advertising
• Contextual & Industry Advertising (Google Adwords)
• Online Classified Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing (a profit-sharing-venture between a website owner and an online dealer)

Adding keywords in a blog or article is a great way in driving traffic towards your website. Writing articles about a certain topic is better seen if you place keywords in it, then optimize it to something that visitors often search for.

Here are some basic things on How to Optimize Keywords in an Article or Blog post:

Pick keyword or phrase

Do some keyword research related to the topic you wish to have on your blog post. There are free keyword tools available online for this. It is not necessary to go for highly competitive keywords, but instead search for something that captures the interest of people in your niche.

Put it in your Title Tag

This is the most substantial piece of your article or blog. Your keywords must be included in the title tag. Don’t insert it multiple times on the title though, or it will look odd. Just make sure the title is interesting and makes sense.

Follow correct keyword density

Never overstuff your article or blog post with keywords, or it will be flagged as spam. Use a proper amount of keywords in your article, and focus in writing a content that provides useful information to your readers.

Integrate keywords in your link building strategy

Incoming links, navigational links, internal links and breadcrumb links in your article should all contain your optimized keywords in them. It is also essential to keep track and manage those links.

Online writing is not about sitting in front of your literature professor and you are forced to use all the creative juices inside your brain. Those are classroom days, forget about it. That’s why; I am writing this article to tell you the top five basic mistakes you usually perform in online writing.

1. Wrong Format- Stop thinking about those paragraphs and long sentences. If possible find a way to fine tune your writing style into bullets and numbers. For example, if you want to write an article on how to gain weight in four weeks, instead of getting into wordy details, it’s better to enumerating those reasons and ways on how to add body weight. This writing technique is easier to read and will not bore your readers.
2. Bad Grammar- Online writing does not require you to be an English Major. You only need to use correct usage and proper sentence structure. Bad grammar means bad writing and bad writing will only confuse your readers.
3. Too Long- Online writing must be fun. It follows the basic rules in grammar but it does not mean you’ll write a novel. I don’t know what other experts say but to me, the required amount of words in online writing is between 350-500 words. Beyond that, you already give your readers a reason to sleep. Writing too short article is also a form of bad writing. The relevancy of the topic is completely diminished when it is not adequately supported with words that paint a clearer picture.
4. Too Friendly, Too Vulgar- Online writing also requires you to sound like you are an expert in your field. To accomplish this goal, your writing style must not be too friendly and must not be too encyclopaedic. Write as if you are only talking to Mr. Average Joe. Use ‘You’ instead of ‘They,’ ‘He’ and ‘She.’ To make it more creative, make use of conversations or storytelling formats.
5. Not editing thoroughly- This is probably the biggest mistake any online writers has committed. Whether it’s a blog post, a news release, a newsletter or a simple caption, always take time to reread what you have written. The consistency of tone will be smoothly flattened-out once you read the entire content.

And if you can, insert an average-sized picture in your content. Very small or big images may only annoy your readers.