10 Free, Little-known Web Marketing Tools

Fine-tuning your web marketing efforts will likely increase their effectiveness. Here’s a collection of 10 free tools that can help.

Email Subject Line Suggester

MailChimp, the email service provider, provides a tool for suggesting subject lines for your campaigns. While it does require a free account to utilize the tool, the invaluable information you can glean from it makes it worth the effort.


Google Trends

Google Trends not only shows current hot searches, but it allows you to compare products, keywords, or ideas — displaying their popularity in comparison to overall search volume.




Browsershots

Whether you are completely redesigning a website, or simply making tweaks to the checkout process or lead generation forms, knowing how a web page will behave in different browsers is critical. Browsershots will show you screenshots of your web page in different browsers and versions.




AdWords Performance Grader

AdWords Performance Grader by WordStream, a pay-per-click management software creator, analyzes your Google AdWords account from top to bottom, attempting to show you how you stack up against competition in your industry. For the tool to work, you must provide Google account credentials.



Five Second Test

Studies show that people make decisions about a web site in less than 8 seconds. Your first interaction with visitors is critical to converting them to customers. Five Second Test lets you upload a sample of your site, have people view it, and then complete a series of questions about what they saw. To use the free version, you’ll have to return the favor, and answer questions about other websites as well.




Twellow

Twellow aggregates Twitter users and categorizes them by areas of interest. Dig in to their database to find tweeters that are relevant to your business, and follow them.




YouTube Keyword Tool

If you are implementing video into your web marketing, YouTube Keyword Tool can show you what kinds of videos are searched for on that website based on criteria you enter, such as themes and locales. It’s an excellent way to determine what is interesting to people at the moment.




Pingdom Page Load Speed Tool

The page load speed on your website has two primary effects: It can help or hurt your search engine optimization efforts, and, most importantly, it affects the experience your website visitors have. Faster is better. The Pingdom tool gives you a scorecard for your web page performance, and offers some analysis as to why your load speed is what it is.






On Page Search Engine Optimization Analysis

This free tool from SEO Workers, a search engine optimization consultancy, allows you to analyze key pages of your website for elements that are important to ranking well in Google and other search engines. On the report page, embedded YouTube videos explain what you’re looking at, and why it’s important.




Soovle Popular Searches

If you’re looking to understand what people are searching for across multiple search engines, Soovle will take a keyword you enter, and show suggestions for popular, similar searches on the engines of your choosing. You can even download the keyword ideas displayed into a CSV file for later use and analysis.

The Trader in Pajamas SCAM

Have you heard that the amount of money turned over in the forex market is $3 trillion every single day? That’s a whole lot of cash in most people’s minds. And you can get in on this action too. 

It’s easy. Just trade forex with binary options and use the Trader in Pajamas System. Thanks to invaluable insight from former stock broker Keith Anderson, everyone can be a part of this profitable currency trading phenomenon and make significant profits from home. 

You may be wondering, is this a scam?

No way. Keith has become an incredibly wealthy man, and he’s eager to share his secrets with the world about just how simple it is to make this kind of money by being your own boss and working from your own living room. His lifestyle is something everyone should be able to enjoy!

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Keith was called out as a remarkably promising broker, and one of the finest to have immigrated to Wall Street from the U.K. But he left this fantastically stressful job in order to relax, take it easy, and enjoy life a little by working from home. 

You can learn what Keith knows by checking out his Trader in Pajamas System for free: 

Click here to find out more

13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013

Internet marketing is now a critical piece of just about any company’s marketing mix. There are few marketing options with the speed, efficiency and reach as internet marketing. And so you should take the time to ensure you are focusing sufficiently on your internet marketing to maximize your revenue and growth.    

The year 2013 will prove to be another year in which the array of internet marketing vehicles, tools and techniques will continue to increase. To help you capitalize on the opportunities, here are 13 hot internet marketing trends for 2013 that you should consider when planning your marketing initiatives throughout the year:    

13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013 

1. Design Matters

Design matters, because design sells. Just look at the success of Apple, Pinterest, Desk.com or Nike. All four websites are stunning, and that’s no coincidence. Apple is the most valuable company of all time. It actually carries very few products, though. It’s the design that powers Apple’s value. Nike is a shoe and apparel company, yet pays just as much attention to the design of its website, videos and ads as much as to anything else. Focus on great design for all of your internet marketing in 2013.

2. Marketing Goes Visual

Similarly, communication through visual means is hot, and only getting hotter. Whether the explosion in infographics, or the dramatic rise in the popularity of Pinterest, or the redesigns of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, we are going through a visual revolution. Start figuring out how to make more of your marketing visual in 2013.

3. Parallax Design

Parallax website design incorporates special scrolling techniques whereby background images on the screen move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth on the screen. You can see examples at the following websites: Volkswagon Beetle and Activate (be sure to scroll down the page!). If you are planning a website redesign in 2013, consider incorporating elements of parallax design.

4. Mobile Mobile Mobile

Wordwide, there are over 5 billion mobile users and 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers specifically. The iPad was the fastest growing technology product EVER! Wow, if you need further convincing that you should start planning how to connect with your audience via mobile channels for your business, you’re nuts!

5. Video Video Video

More than 4 billion online videos are watched every day. Sixty-eight percent of video watchers share video links. So it’s clear your audience likes video. On top of this, consider that after 72 hours, a typical person can retain about 10% of text that they’ve read, 65% of an image they’ve seen, or 95% of a video they watched. Think that video might be helpful with communicating your message to your audience? Just a bit, huh?!?

6. Cloud-Based Tools

To be uber-efficient with your internet marketing efforts, you should be using cloud-based tools. For email marketing, you might be using MailChimp. For SEO, you might be using SEOmoz. For landing page testing, you might be using Unbounce. For heat map analysis, you might be using CrazyEgg. For website analysis, you might be using BoostSuite. Check out all the unbelievably useful options available to you.

7. The Multi-Screen World

With 86% of mobile internet users actually using their devices while watching TV, and with more than 10,901 Tweets PER SECOND being issued as TV viewers watched Adele win Record of the Year at The Grammy’s, it’s clear that we all live in a multi-screen world. Make sure that your internet marketing accounts for not just desktops, but ALL screens.

8. Social Media Gets Smarter

Facebook has more than 1 billion users, and Twitter has more than 500 million. Social media is an opportunity for your business, but it’s been difficult for many businesses to make sense of it all and to gain solid business value out of it. With a growing number of marketing platforms such as Wildfire by Google and ShortStack, and with more granular social media analytics as provided by tools such asSproutSocial, Followerwonk and PageLever, extracting clear meaning from your social marketing will get easier over time.

9. Retargeting Goes Mainstream

Retargeting is a means of placing your advertisements in front of your audience after they have left your website without converting. What many marketers fail to realize is that retargeting is one of the most effective internet marketing techniques available. If you are already investing in your site and your marketing campaigns for more site traffic, then it typically pays big dividends to remind the people who left your website without a conversion of your value in solving their needs. Your options for retargeting include Google Remarketing, AdRoll, Retargeter and also Bizo (for exceptional B2B retargeting). 

10. Email Remarketing

In lead generation campaigns or retailer email marketing, there are always going to be occurrences of form or cart abandonment. However, it’s a waste to just let the prospect go without reaching out and finding out if you might indeed offer exactly what they want or need. After the abandonment of a registration form or online shopping cart, through email remarketing you can send out an automated email to give your brand another chance at winning the heart and mind of the prospect. According to SeeWhy, 26% of those who abandoned an online shopping cart will return to complete the purchase in the case they receive a remarketing email. 

11. Search, Social & PR Collide

Organic search has been incorporating social signals for some time, and the integration of search and social has accelerated with the introduction of Google+ and the Google Knowledge Graph. With Google’s Panda and Penguin search algorithm updates, it’s become extremely clear that quality and value matter. That means high quality content, combined with sincere, transparent social marketing, combined with targeted PR is going to be a triad that’s hard to beat. 

12. Attribution Measurement

If you run multiple forms of internet marketing, such as paid search, SEO, email marketing, display advertising, and retargeting, then it can be difficult to assess the value of each piece of your marketing puzzle. If someone encounters your brand five times in a given week through the different marketing vehicles, who’s to say how much credit to give to each of the different pieces. That’s where attribution measurement services come in, whether Google, ClearSaleing or VisualIQ.

13. The Hispanic Market

Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the US population. And as they represent approximately 25% of new births, expect them to have an impact on your future business. Research points to Hispanics spending more time online than non-Hispanics and being more active online than non-Hispanics. If you have been ignoring the Hispanic market, perhaps 2013 is the time to start providing the market with the attention and customization that it deserves.

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free:

Optimize your site for search engines

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.

Frequently update the contents of your site

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO,content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

Take advantage of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.

Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

Get links with other sites in your niche

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

Use any chance to promote your site for free

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

Create a free product or service

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

Use viral content

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

Use offline promotion

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

Include your URL in your signature

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

The Best Way To Make Money Online Today In 2013

The best way to make money online today in 2013 in my opinion is to be building a list around a particular market and niche within that market. Making money online has come along away since it began some years ago with different strategies. Today in 2013 it is all about leverage. Working smarter, not harder. What exactly do I mean by this? In this example I would like to use affiliate marketing or creating your own product as an example of how you would go about this. One last thing before we begin and that is I want you to understand that despite all the fancy headlines you read there is no fast way to making money online especially if you are completely new. Not to make you upset or anything but to get you in the correct mindset. OK, lets begin.

Like I said, today in 2013 you want to be leveraging your marketing efforts and be building yourself a list. Understand why you are doing this and your conversions increase, you build trust with your subscriber base and you make more backend sales. So first you need to decide on a market and niche to get started with. You can use the Google Planner to research your demand for your market and niche. A market is something like "sports" or "health" or "investing." There are many markets you can get involved in today. Now a niche would be something like and lets use the "health" market as an example somebody looking to cure athletes foot. So your market is the health market and your niche is "how to cure athletes foot." Now what do we do? The second phase for the best way to make money online would be to create and set up a landing page. A landing page which is a squeeze page is simple a 1 page website that offers something of value such as a free ebook or a trial to a membership site. This can be anything but its need to be of value and what you would do is give this away in exchange for their name and email and start building yourself a list. Now part of the conversion process is of course getting people to sign up but more importantly how you can tie a "front end offer" to your funnel that will give you up front sales to help cover your advertising cost and time for your marketing efforts. Understand? Hope so. If not go back through and re-read this. This is hugely important to our success. Understanding what it is you are trying to do. The final stage for the best way to make money online is then to set up an email sequence inside your auto responder that does two things for you and they are build trust and product backend sales for you. It is that simple! It all just takes time to do but for those who put in the effort will be rewarded.

Well as you can see that the best way to make money online today in 2013 is really not that hard. It really isn't. There are many different strategies to make money online and I just covered one of them that's all. My biggest advice for those looking to get started in find yourself a couple of mentors both in the business and on personal development and start to follow both. Below I have a link to my website which goes more into detail how this whole process works and how to get started. Thank you for reading.

I hope you have found what I have told you of value! IM is not an easy game to get started with. If I had to start over I would start with developing the proper mindset first and understanding. Sound simple but so many people don't do it and wonder why they are not succeeding.

Content Thirsty? Content Marketing for 2013

The reality is customers don't care about you, your products, or your services. Sorry! What they really care about is themselves, their wants and their needs.

Content marketing is about creating interesting information your customers are passionate about, appealing to their wants and needs. It is the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable and engaging content with the purpose of increasing brand recognition and engagement. Great content marketing strikes a fine balance of communicating with your customers without selling products or services.

Content Marketing Is Set To Be Huge In 2013

But why is it going to be so important this upcoming year? For starters, the increasing amount of time that people are spending online and searching for information has placed more emphasis on the importance of content marketing, especially as search engines look to provide their users with the highest quality results. A recent survey conducted by Econsultancy states that more than 90% of survey respondents believe content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months. In addition, nearly three quarters (73%) of digital marketers agree that 'brands are becoming publishers'.

Source: Content Marketing Survey Report By Econsultancy, October 2012

How to Write Great Content

Content marketing essentially takes the form of written, visual and audio format. And although there are many variations, written content is by far the most popular method currently used. Everything from social posts and email newsletters to feature articles and press releases require great written content. Here's how to do it:

• Before creating content, you need to prepare. Think about your tone, style and general outline of content.

• Do something new. What is topical and relevant to your company? For instance, you could write a comprehensive article on an area that is very current in your industry.

• Great content needs personality. It's also good to add humour or take a provocative stance. Consider the popularity of your views and whether they will attract media coverage. Ideally, your opinions should be bold and popular.

• What does your audience want? Most likely valuable information, so give them what they want. Content marketing needs to offer practical advice that people can use.

• Content marketing is about mastering the art of storytelling therefore captivate your audience with characters that they truly connect with. Telling a story that will provoke ideas and conversations.

• Great content should be persuasive. Do this by providing informative, well researched content that generates interest. Include statistics to add credibility and have a clear call to action.

• And don't forget the KILLER headline to spark interest.

Ideally, you want your readers to engage with your content whether that is to comment, share, Tweet or Like... simply because it's amazing!

When words are no longer enough

Add visuals! Content is no longer entirely text focused, great content marketing should be multi-faceted using videos, infographics and internet memes.

2013 is set to be the year of visuals with growing popularity of visual social media channel such as Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram and SlideShare. Visual appeal will rule content creation and curation. To create maximum engagement, include creative graphics, photos, and videos in your written content to capture imagination and encourage social shares.

Images:
40% of people respond better to visual information than plain text (Source: Zabisco) therefore powerful online imagery will capture attention, spark imagination and drive engagement.

Video:
Great video content should aim to provoke, inspire or excite. It lends itself to social sharing and not only tells a story and conveys information, but can also trigger an emotional response.

How do I apply SEO?

Content Marketing may well be the new buzz word of the moment but it's important not to forget about correctly optimising your content for Google's search engines. Google is always thirsty for more content and you can take advantage of this by following these simple Search Engine Optimisation tactics when publishing content online;

• Frequently uploading new, topical content not only keeps your customer interested in your site but it keeps Google interested! If Google sees a site that has become stagnant with no new content, it will stop feeding it into its search engine results pages. Adding a blog/news section to your website can help with this. Even if it is only updated once every 2 weeks, your site will still reach the approval of Google!

• Google's Webmaster Guidelines recommend publishing content of a high quality stating the following 'Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single-most important thing to do'. Recent Algorithm updates by Google penalises worthless content and rewards highly relevant, meaningful and trustworthy content.

• Ensure the content is original! Not a copy and paste job from some other source on the internet. Duplicate content is penalised heavily by Google search engines and Google is putting immense pressure on producing original, high quality content.

• Make Google's job easier! Don't neglect the SEO basics - Complete meta descriptions, title tags, and image alt tags. All of these help Google read and process your content with ease. This in turn will be rewarded in the search rankings.

• Write naturally sounding content targeted to humans and not search engines. And forget the old SEO tactics of keyword stuffing.

• Increase web traffic by directing any external content back to your website and ensure that your website content is worth reading when they get there

Passive Income Opportunities for New Internet Marketers In 2013

Today a lot of youngsters are willing to quit their jobs and be their own boss working from home. The concept of making passive income has become so popular that the teenagers are aiming towards a professional career in this internet marketing industry. However, lots of newbie marketers struggle with the question - where should I start! Here, you will discover some startup ideas that can make you the first cash online in this 2013. No matter if you know nothing about online marketing, these methods will help you learn more and maximize the potentials while having fun!

Passive income opportunities for a new internet marketer in 2013

Most of these methods are already being used by thousands of marketers around the world. But these are basics of internet marketing and hence anyone should start with one of these ideas. These are newbie-friendly methods, can be adopted without a huge investment and have enormous potentials of generating passive income.

#1 Blogging:

You don't have to be a PHD to start writing on any topic on your blog. If you're interested about something and want to write on that topic, you can launch your blog overnight (yes, even with one post on the website) and initiate your IM venture. However, it will take some time to drive visitors to your site, but once you start generating views, you'll start making money! Just keep producing high quality, search engine friendly, relevant content and follow the basic marketing methods. Your blog will soon be listed on the first page of all major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

#2 Affiliate marketing

If you know how to sell a product, affiliate marketing is possibly the best online money making idea for you. You don't even need a website to make money from affiliate marketing. But you definitely need to prepare a plan and tell the product-owner about your plan. If the plan is something unique, effective and most importantly out-of-the-box, you can literally make millions promoting others products. However, affiliate marketing has become a competitive market-concept today. You should start making money, once you've learned the ins and outs of an industry.

#3 Cost Per Action (CPA)

This is another noob-friendly method of making money online. The concept is entirely based on generating traffic. If you know where to find targeted traffic and can drive them to a specific website, you're half way done. Once the traffic is directed to your website, you will need to get them engaged with an offer you're promoting. If they are converted, you will make something between $1 and $30. This method may sound not-so-promising, but trust me, thousands of new, inexperienced marketers are making $1K to $2K per month just promoting these CPA offers.

Passive income generation online: tips for new marketers

1. You might be struggling to bank the cash first time online! Don't panic, if you're working with a target, you will soon observe the changes and money rolling into your account.

2. Don't just stick to one over-saturated method. Think something unique, something out-of-the-box, something of your own. Brainstorming, trial and error will lead you to the right path making passive income online.