Photo sharing networks are kind of parallel in its effect to physical photo albums in which an individual can store pictures they take. What happens is an individual uses a digital camera, takes a picture, and then tags and uploads it to an online photo-sharing network… similar to the process in which you upload a video online, just using different mediums. This is another marketing technique that marketers continue to overlook. The most popular photo sharing n site is Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!

http://www.flickr.com/

http://www.photosite.com/

http://www.webshots.com/

http://www.smugmug.com/

http://www.fotki.com/us/

http://photobucket.com/

http://www.23hq.com/

http://www.picturetrail.com/

http://www.zoto.com/

http://www.tabblo.com/studio/

http://www.snapfish.com/

http://www.zooomr.com/

http://www.ringo.com/

http://www.picnik.com

Quick start marketing plan:

Step One: First thing first, if you have images that you have already uploaded then go back and optimize them with the keywords that you are targeting if you haven’t already.  This can be done by using the following code: <img src=”keywordofimagehere.gif” alt=”place keywords here” />.  This will output an image from your server that is named keywordofimagehere.gif and when the user put their cursor over the image it will output the alt text which in this case is “place keywords here.”

Step Two: If you have images that you own the copyright to then upload them to photo sharing networks and appropriately categorizes the images. For example, let’s say that you went to a marketing seminar and took pictures you can then upload the image to Flickr or any other popular photo-sharing network and appropriately describe it.  I find that by occasionally adding images to my blog entries I can make the reading experience more enjoyable for the reader. It’s probably a reason why children like picture books so much; an image can be worth a thousand words or maybe visitors at times

There are possibly thousands of classified ads networks online similar to the fashion of article directories. Classified ads is an aging marketing technique but it is still effective if used properly, and that is the thing most of its users don’t, they practice what I call “wishful marketing” and that is they just post a random add and then expect to get thousands of visitors.  Yeah, you may hear that from your everyday sales letter but it is far from the truth of what really happens.  I didn’t include of the networks has follow attribute because how most classified ads networks work is that you post content and after an x amount of time the content will expire.  So, even though you could get temporary back links from a site with a high page rank like Craig list, it will be temporary.  In addition, what I like about classified ads sites is that it’s quick traffic and you can use it to test and track your ads quickly.
What’s pretty neat about classified ads networks is I like to classify them as a free source of “sales page” traffic.  The reason for this is most of them allows you to advertise your sales page or even squeeze page and measure your results without any penalties.  If you try doing that at social media sharing sites then your site will get labeled for spamming. However, with classified ads networks this is all just fine.

http://www.classifiedads.com/

http://classifieds.yahoo.com/

http://www.usfreeads.com/

http://www.recycler.com/

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/

http://base.google.com/

http://expo.live.com/default.aspx

http://www.kijiji.com/

http://www.superads.com/

http://www.adtrader.co.uk/postcode_splash.php

http://www.lycos.com/

http://starbulletin.com/classifieds/

http://www.domesticsale.com/

http://www.oodle.com/

http://www.newsdirectory.com/

http://www.abyznewslinks.com/

Quick start marketing plan:

Step One: Find the appropriate channels to post your ad in! Believe it or not this is where a lot of marketers go wrong at.  For example, www.craigslist.com is the biggest classified ads network. However, where a lot of individuals go wrong at is by posting their offer in the wrong section. A lot of marketers will ask where should they post their eBook at and the answer is simple: “Post it where ever the individuals who are interested in your material will look.”  They complicate something that is really simple. So, if you have an information product dealing with “bad credit repair” then the best place to post it would be within the “financial” services section.

Step Two: Not all classified ads sites will have a category that ties into the theme of your site.
For example, if you have a site about “learning how to grow pickles” then I’m afraid there is not a section on craigslist that you can post an ad for, so you know what that means?  Cancel craigslist out as a free medium to advertise on because I’m not saying you can’t get traffic from it but the traffic that you get will just take up resources on your server.  Only use mediums that have established categories that you can easily plug your site into. Once you do that the traffic will be of a lot higher quality.

Step Three: Once you have found some classified ads networks that you can plug your site into, post your ads and record your results, test, improve ads, and then re-launch another campaign.

Article marketing is one of the most basic but yet effective free marketing methods out here today.  There are thousands of article directories out there wanting your articles submitted, but why waste your time when 95% of those networks will bring you a couple of random unique hits yearly, cover your content with their adverting, and pretty much do nothing for you? I’m thinking you’re better off without them. Here are the top article directories according to my research.  Most of these networks include the follow attribute so that means Google will count them as a link.

However, the thing about content marketing in general is that you don’t want your only link juice to JUST come from the directories you submit to.  The more links you have the better but you just don’t want links from directories or web 2.0 networks.  You want links from other sites that are related to your theme. If those sites get a lot of traffic then that’s even better for you because you can take a cut of those networks assets, a double winner for you… lots of targeted unique traffic flowing your way.

http://www.ezinearticles.com/

http://www.goarticles.com/

http://www.webpronews.com

http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl

http://searchwarp.com/

http://www.isnare.com/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.articlealley.com

http://www.amazines.com

http://www.buzzle.com/

http://www.ideamarketers.com/

http://www.promotionworld.com/

http://www.articledashboard.com/

http://www.articlegeek.com

http://www.selfgrowth.com/

Quick start marketing plan:

Step One: Always get the content indexed from your server first! This is just a theory of mines but I believe Google gives higher proximity to content that is first indexed in their system. The duplicate content myth is NOT really a MYTH. For example, if you have duplicate content coming from the same server then Google will punish your site for it by not showing some of the links in their system or will possibly de-index it.  However, the myth about copying content from other sites doesn’t have me convinced. If that was the case then sites that content got copied and indexed 100 times should be drowning in the dark green murky ocean of the Google search engine.  However, it’s clearly evident that a lot of sites are not and in fact swinging right on the top of that big green ocean.  However, one issue I have noticed with content marketing is that if I were to submit to an article to an article directory like ezine articles, and then wait for my content to be published, sometimes the article from ezine articles will rank higher than the same article I put on my site.  I believe that this has to do with some type of algorithm that Google has that gives proximity to sites in which content is reportedly indexed first at. So, to swim on the safe sides of water make sure that you put and index content from your site first if you do add the content to a site or blog.

Step Two: Define and then rotate keywords I prefer to edit my articles for every article directory that I submit to, and no this is not for duplicate content purposes as I previously

Explained my thoughts about this matter.  However, why I do it is so that I can rank for different keywords. I believe that a lot of webmasters should start doing this. They should collect at least 15 targeted keywords that they will optimize their site for. By targeted keywords I mean keywords that have an actual market for buyers because every keyword in itself is a market. Usually, targeted keywords are more of a long tail type which usually consists of two or more keywords and have less search volume as well.  The important spots to edit an article are at the title, the first couple of sentences in the paragraph, and especially the anchor text.

Article marketing is great because a webmaster will usually be able to input anchor text which looks something like this.  Search engines display high prominence to sites that have a lot of links in the form of descriptive anchor text, so keep that in the back of your mind when “seoing.”

Step Three: Make good use of SEO copywriting this is simple all this means is writing keyword relevant content. Don’t force keywords into the body of your content but do sprinkle them sparingly throughout the body of your content. It is also crucial that you place content in the key important spots on your website as indicated previously.

There is nothing better than a bunch of useful information that you can continually understand. First, to allow you know, I did all of the research myself. I couldn’t Delegate this task to a freelancer because I knew that I was the only One skilled of putting together such a quality resource that Webmasters can benefit greatly from and the time I invested into compile the data was worth it.  I have tested hundreds of free networks in 07 and let me tell you that contrary to popular belief, alexa rank is an important factor to determine which sites to send most of your time on while marketing. What this means in internet marketing terminology is that you CANNOT generate huge traffic from an online network that is itself not generating massive traffic.  This is such a simple concept but so many webmasters overlook it.
How many times have you wanted to submit your site to thousands? Of article directories?
However, here is my philosophy what’s the point of submitting to thousands of directories if less than 30 of them will bring you the most traffic? The same concept applies to search engine marketing but webmasters don’t even realize it.  What’s the point of being listed in 1000s of search engines in which 3 of them is responsible for 98% of the searches in the world while the remaining amount will generate less traffic then your site?  It doesn’t make sense at all, so that’s why alexa ranking can be a pretty good indicator of determining how much traffic a site is getting so that’s why I felt it was extremely important to include this data in this resource.

Let me warn you that alexa rankings can be inaccurate at times.  They can’t calculate the exact number of visitors a website is getting they can only guess because they don’t have internal access to the logs of one’s server (at least I hope not).

Secondly, like page rank and other website factors alexa ranking can easily be inflated with a couple of black hat tricks.

Third, it’s the internet and it’s a free tool– so it’s not the Holy Grail when it comes to determining how much traffic a network is getting, but from my testing it’s pretty accurate, especially with the popular online networks.

It tends to be more inaccurate with smaller websites, but with the bigger and more popular networks it is usually dead on.
For example, digg is a social media sharing site that generates the most traffic compared to related sites according to alexa because its “alexa number” is a lot lower compared to that of its competing sites.  The lower the alexa number ideally means the more traffic the
Website is getting.

So, last year I started testing to see if this was true by submitting several pieces of content that was exactly the same at the same interval in time for several of weeks and guess what? Digg always out performed them.   I also did this type of testing for article directories like ezine articles and it usually almost always out performs articles form sites with a much higher alexa rank.

However, don’t take my stats as gold either, I only tested this on a small area of niche sites so results could easily depend on your website’s theme and other variables and parameters.  However, I still thought that this still would be helpful information to share extra food for thought if you will.
However, having lots of traffic is one thing, but the quality of traffic is another valuable asset. Even though digg is an extremely popular social media sharing site, it traffic converts next to zip. That doesn’t neglect the benefits that the site can have because it can help your site for search engine purposes.  But, for immediate traffic through the digg network, the traffic is trash.  What is even more interesting is that there are other social media sharing sites out there that get so much less traffic then digg–I’m taking about a couple of decimal points lesser, but there traffic is so much of a higher quality which means it converts well.

So, even though traffic matters, what matters most for webmasters when it comes to monetary gains is if the network visitors are performing some type of action of a webmaster’s websites whether it is clicking on a contextual advertising ad, entering their name and email, or clicking on the buy right now button.  So again, traffic helps, but traffic that performs specific accurate actions on your site is what will put bread on the table.
Next, other important factors for judging the quality of a website is the page rank.  Yes, I know some seo professionals will probably fall out of their chairs if they heard this but let me tell you why.  According to Google, page rank is its system that it uses to judge the quality of a site it’s kind of like its quality score for sites. They rank sites on a scale from 0 to 10.

There are only a handful of sites in the world that has a page rank of 10, like Google itself, yahoo!, adobe, and some other highly regarded sites.  One of the keys to increasing page rank is collecting lots of links from other quality sites.  Well, other quality sites will usually have lots of traffic flowing through them.  Visitors comes to a site by way of links, so a site with more links pointing to it will usually mean a site that is generating more traffic which in return would probably mean a successful site. So, that’s why page rank comes in handy.

Also, I can personally vouch that getting links from sites with a high PR does matter.  I once got a link from a site with a pr of 9 and my rankings shoot up like a speeding bullet in minutes, so this experience has helped me learn more ways to gather links to my sites.   So, sites with a higher page rank could equal that it gets more traffic.

Remember, could not always, page rank can be inflated as well with some black hat redirects but this is not very common dealing with the bigger sites, usually with sites that are trying to sell links and inflate its value. For More info please visit categories of SEO Tips