Spying and intruding into other’s privacy is a very bad habit and punishable by law in many states… but it is vital as well as necessary for your online business.

What does it mean by spying your competitors?

As we all know that to reach at the top there are two ways. First one is to follow the basics, input your hard work and wait for the time when you come at the top. Second way is to spy on those who are already at the top, find out their strategy and implement the same for your business but using better tactics.

Hard work and persistence is no doubt a sure shot way to get success and patience is virtue we all know. But if you ask me which route I will take. I will surely take the second one because life is very short and I cannot give 3, 4 years to visualize my success.

For all of you who are interested in the latter one, today I will discuss some points on how to spy your competitor and reverse engineer their strategy and get to position number one on the organic search( especially Google), overthrowing them out of the game.

Can you think what would be the value of keyword “weight loss” or “car insurance” at the first position of Google?

Let’s check… for the purpose I am using www.semrush.com

Let us take two examples, fist one is “weight loss”, if we check Google the number 1 rank for this keyword goes to website www.webmd.com , now check it in Semrush.

We get the following data. The average CPC for keyword weight loss is $2.63 and the search volume is 450k. Now do the simple math 450k x $2.63. According to Semrush the website is getting search engine traffic worth $15584k.

Our second example is “car insurance”. While I was checking the ranking I got www.progressive.com on number 1, now checking it with Semrush, it is receiving organic traffic worth $24967k.

The data from Semrush may not be perfect, but if we assume only 10% of the figures, you can easily calculate what the worth of being number 1 on Google is.

So I am quite impressed with your argument… now which things I would like to spy on?

Basically you would like to spy on keywords they are ranking organically, keywords they are using for PPC, their daily ads budget, sites which are linking to your competitor,

Organic keywords: find out the keywords for which your competitor is ranking organically and the traffic those keywords attract. After analyzing these keywords you can plan your long time strategy for SEO, starting with the long tail keywords of main phrases and gradually using the short tails.

PPC Keywords: The basic idea behind finding the paid keywords is if they are paying consistently for some keywords to appear on paid result then those keywords must be converting for them. After you compile the list of their paid keywords, view their landing pages. Then plan your strategy using those converting keywords and their long tail phrases. Design your landing page better than them and you will surely hit a jackpot. Also look their daily PPC budget, the more the better.

Backlinks: Find out how many backlinks your competitor have, which sites are linking then and what the anchor texts are used in their backlinks. For this purpose you can use www.backlinkwatch.com and you will know the anchor text of the backlinks, their PR and whether they are follow or Nofollow. You can also use Yahoo Site Explorer for getting the backlinks data for any website. Never depend on the Google backlinks for a website, as Google displays numbers much less than the actual.

Other online tools you can use:

Keyword spy

Spyfu

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You have done basic research for your new website, finalized your keyword list and booked a good domain name for your website. What now….?

Now the next main task is to plan different elements you will be using on your website like text, graphics, images, font and more… Let us take it one by one.

Choosing Text Font and Size: Choose fonts that suits best for your audience, for an example if your audience is young age group, you can chose any font with moderate size because they feel it easy to read to any font. If your audience is of older age group, make font size larger as they may find it difficult to read smaller sizes. Keep it simple and do not use fancy fonts until it is very necessary.

I have seen a website which was on the eye diseases topic and the font size was 8, which in my opinion the site users may find hard to read. So understand the need and act accordingly.

Choosing Graphics: Use graphics and images to clear your point but keep it as less as possible otherwise the webpage will become very heavy and other concerns may arise, from SEO point of view. Do not use images and graphics only for the sake of using it. Images which illustrate your point and gives clear message must be used.

Regard your audience, their age group and preferences: if you are targeting younger age group you can use flash or slides to make your point more clear. Similarly videos can be used for making your content better.

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Internet marketing in simple sense is the process of selling goods or services online using the medium of internet. Affiliate marketer is the middleman between the vendor of the services and the buyer.

So what do you think an affiliate marketer does in the whole process and what are the basic points to adhere in the process?

User or Buyer mindset: Have you ever thought what is in a buyer’s mind when he searches for any information online.

Basically a user search solutions for his problem. The problem ranges from “buying an engagement rings” for his loved one, buying a car insurance to finding solutions for his snoring. As there are many problems and needs hence the solution. This very phenomenon has given birth to number of info products and services marketed online.

So as an affiliate marketer, your first and the very important role is to find out the mindset of the people in your niche. If you have gained insight then half the battle is won.

From my experience I am presenting some points which must be followed irrespective of niche and the product you are selling (for which you are an affiliate)

Provide correct information: Always try to provide correct, accurate and to the point information to your users without bluffing. Do not mislead them as it will harm your authority over subject and you will loose them forever. If you are presenting any contradictory fact, you must provide the proof for the same. For an example we all know that AIDS is incurable, if you make any contradictory statement on this, you must give them proof from any authority over the subject. Users are generally a little aware on the topics they are searching about and if you present them wrong information, it will give a bad impression about you.

Always avoid sub-standard content and present them with high quality content. Do not always stick to textual content. Create content in a form (like video, audio, slide show etc) which is easy understandable and accessible to your niche users. It is better to create a 5 minute high quality video that creating a 50 page textual content.

Solving problems and Preselling: Basically people need solution for their problems, and your duty as an affiliate marketer is to solve them by presenting them with high quality relevant information and products. You have to instill confidence in them that their problem is solvable, when you have done this the next step is to present them the product and make them believe that it is the best solution available

As an affiliate marketer you are not doing any direct sale instead you do preselling, that is to warm up the visitor for purchasing your affiliate product and preselling can be done only by following the steps above.

Instill confidence, solve problems, Presell

Never Hardsell: Never try to hardsell because people like to choose and not to be forced in their buying decisions. So Presell and not hard sell. If you become successful in gaining confidence of your users you will never need to do it. If they are convinced that their problems can be solved and the product you are referring is the best one for the purpose you will ultimately make a sale.

So friends these are the points which are applicable for every niche and you must modify your mindset in the way to play a long game in affiliate marketing.

What are other points in your opinion which must be followed? Post here for all of us to know.

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What is image optimization: Image optimization is a process of sizing, naming and presenting an image in a way that it becomes feasible for search engines to find it, extract information from it and categorize it so that it can be presented in the image search results for a relevant query of a user.

There is a user perspective also which I will discuss in a minute.

As present, search engines are unable to read any information in an image or graphic and it will take the technology some time when automated bots such like of Google’s or yahoo’s can read the pattern or layout of an image and extract information from them.

So there are some elements which are used to inform search engines about the details and content of an image. Such elements are image name, image alt tags, image title attribute, image reference tag … and some more

So basically image optimization is done to inform search engines about the content of an image, it has become more important because nearly every search engines have lot of image searches and if your images are well optimized for a particular query of keywords, there are chances of getting a lot of traffic through image search alone.

Just have a look how many options Google offer for image search.

You can search for any type, any size or any color of image, guess how would be they categorizing these images… YES right by using all textual factors related to an image (This is my opinion, as I know with my experience, however actual elements considered is only known by Big G)

Now we will discuss some important points about image optimization.

Using proper name: Use proper and relevant names for your images. Many image capturing devices like digital cameras, webcams, scanners etc name images in their saving terminology like DSC302.jpg or scandl%12.jpg etc. This is an improper way to name images. So the correct way of naming is using relevant keywords. Example if you have an image of olive tree, name it like olive-tree-image.jpeg.

Using Proper Format: There are lots of image formats for images and graphics which are used for formatting images. It is better to keep your images in .JPG format and not in .GIF, as the former is standard for images and latter is the standard for graphics. Further discussion about image format is out of scope of this article and if you need to learn more visit here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_file_formats

Using ALT tags: Use proper alt tags which are relevant to your image, do not try to stuff your keywords. Just keep it simple and clear. If you are naming your image as discussed in point 1 above, you can simply keep the alt tag as your image name. But make sure to not use same ALT tag for two or more images on a single page.

Make your images folder accessible to search engines: Make your images folder, the folder where you store your images, accessible to search engines.

Using TITLE attribute: Title attribute add meaning to an image, so use it but here also follow the same old rule, do not stuff keywords and use same title in two or more images on a single page.

Using Image feed: if you have a very large number of images on your website (generally product based websites) then you can also make an image feed just like sitemap and submit it to search engines.

Wherever possible put images in between content.

Keep the number of images on a page to minimum.

While naming the images, in ALT tags and image TITLE attributes used words like pic, picture, photo or image along with the relevant keyword.

User Perspective: The points we have discussed above are mainly for search engines, now we will look some image optimization factors which is related to user experience.

Do not use big and bulky images on a page and it makes the webpage to load slower, which is very irritating from user point of view. An average user will not wait for more than 10-12 seconds for a webpage to load, in this way you are losing a genuine visitor.

The quality of the images used must be above average, do not use distorted or fade images

Always use images which are relevant to the page content.

Do not use scraped images; use your own or use stock images. If you use images from other website without their permission, you will dilute your authority and there are chances to hook in copyright infringement.

Image Optimization Plugins for wordpress: There are plugins available for wordpress users which they can use for optimizing their images. Below are some of them.

SEO Friendly Images

WP Smush.it

You can also try Google Image Labeler

Are some points left behind? Post here to let me know and I will include it in the post..

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If you are not new to internet marketing world, you would probably have heard the most popular saying in the internet marketing world “Content is King” and really it is the ace in a pack of card.

But an ill structured, non-targeted and information less content is similar to a joker between the aces and kings in a pack of card.

So what is essential, the content must be targeted to the audience, in the language the niche speaks and must be valuable.

Below are some points if kept in mind and taken care of, you can prepare very good content for your website, which not only your audience will like but will have high chances to become viral establishing your authority.

Know your targeted audience: The first and very important fact is “know what your audience needs”. I have seen many newbie and intermediate internet marketers and bloggers, who write in a way that resembles that they never tried to know the need of their audience and they write just for the sake of writing. So you please do not try the same and provide valuable inputs.

Basic problems of the audience: Try to find out the basic needs and problems of the audience of the niche you are concerned. Do not bluff and always do your best to solve problems or atleast provide simple steps to find solutions. Heyyyyy……. What does it mean …..? Let me try to give you an example.

For an example: if you do not know clearly about any specific topic, no matter, provide them various links to authority sites, where they can find solutions. Never think that you will loose your visitor forever, no not at all, rather you will gain trust in the eyes of your visitors as well as search engines because doing this you leave a message that you are committed to provide solutions.

So note a point in your mind that always keep the requirement of your audience handy before you write content. You can get a feel about their requirements by visiting different forums and blogs in your niche.

There are two very common things which will appear in your mind when you start writing (how I know it? Because I have also traversed the same route before I started to know all this) first is “what I am going to write is well known among my niche” and the second is “what I am going to write is not known by anyone” …..   Both these doubts are just myths. So never think of all this and always try to provide real solutions for the problems (problems doesn’t means to provide medication, it means to be informative on the subject you write.)

Age group, demographic factors: Age and demographic factors must be kept in mind while preparing content. Why? Because a concept which a teenager can understand in a simple way, an old age person cannot. So you need to find other ways to make the person understand.

So understand the demographics of your audience.

Targets of the niche: Targets in other words we can call “needs” must be kept in mind. Got confused….? No need to …..! A target of the niche means what your audience prefers – text, video or audio. So provide them with the solution which they can easily use.

Use easy ways to create content: use the most informative and easy way to create content. Content never means only chunk of text, it may be in many other forms e-book, audio, video, music. Slide show presentations.

Gone are the days when technology had limited capabilities and exposure, we are now living in such a world where technology has made every form of media feasible to common audience.

It is better to create a 10 minute audio or 15 minutes video, than to create 150 pages of content of text. The aim should be to give you message clearly to your audience. Also keep in mind your audience age group and their preferences.

So always think that which type of content would be most suitable on the topic you want to convey as well as your audience would like to read and then prepare yourself in the same manner.

Apply these points as I discussed with you in this post and you will realize that you were missing a lot in preparing content for your audience.

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