Almost everybody who knows anything about online marketing knows the importance of search engines – especially Google. In fact Google has become so dominant it is almost impossible to talk about the internet without immediately discussing the role of Google.

The process of systematically trying to get the search engines to drive (“free” not paid) traffic to your website(s) is called Search Engine Marketing. SEM, as it is often rererred to, involves different ways of trying to influence search engines – especially Google – to give you high ranking for searches done on your most important keywords.

For example, if your most important keywords are “Toledo Real Estate”, SEM involves trying to get high ranking in Google searches for the phrase “Toledo Real Estate”. This way people will click on your link in the Google search results and be taken to your blog or website.

Voila. Traffic.

The two most important techniques used in SEM are

• “Optimizing” your content for specific keywords. This is usually called SEO – short for search engine optimization. SEO involves choosing the most promising keywords, and then making sure those keywords show up in your web content in the most important places.

• Link building. Getting links from other sites pointing to your content is a good way to get the attention of the search engines. They consider inbound links as “votes” by other online bloggers and publishers that your content is worth looking at.

Generally speaking, the more your content focuses on your primary keywords, and the more inbound links you have, the better your website or blog will rank in the search engines.

But there are problems with SEM…

• It is indirect. You are relying on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. to determine who is or is not a good candidate to visit your site or blog. This can be a very frustrating experience – especially when you are in a competitive market.

• It takes a lot of time and effort (usually) to influence the search engines. Typically you will have to wait at least three months to see any lasting results from SEM and SEO.
• It is unpredictable. We have seen clients rise to #1 for their search terms, and we have seen other clients drop off the map. It is hard to know if this is ever the direct result of a concerted SEM/SEO effort. You do your best to give Google and Bing what they want, but you just don’t know for sure it is going to work.

SEM is just one part of the marketing puzzle

SEM is a valuable long term strategy which every serious online marketer should adopt. But don’t count on immediate results. Eventually as your blog gains credibility you will consistently draw traffic from the search engines. But it can often be a very long and tedious process.

Even more important, SEM will only take you so far. It is what we call a “passive” method of marketing. It is like Social Networking in this regard. Social networking – being active in Facebook, for example – will introduce you to many new “friends” and prospects. But it will generally not do much direct selling for you.

For example, if you own a restaurant and you want to run a one week lunch special, SEM will be almost useless. To generate traffic to your offer page you will need other promotional techniques. These will be discussed in future posts.

Here’s how the BlogEasy SuperLink program works – This is a program to help build inbound links to your blog(s).

1. Every time you publish 10 BlogEasy articles we will give you one SuperLink credit.

2. For every SuperLink credit we will create a special SuperLink article that will be posted only on your blog. Or we can use a recently published post of your own as a SuperLink post.

3. Then we will create a synopsis of that SuperLink post with a link pointing to your site and make that synopsis available to our members in the BlogEasy article list.

Can you see the potential here? Publishing BlogEasy posts not only gives you high quality relevant content, but it is an awesome way to build inbound links from just the kind of sites the search engines consider the most important – other active real estate sites.

Go ahead. Sign up for the free 5 day BlogEasy trial right now**

We begin by creating a series of short articles or "posts" which emphasize the keywords that you want to promote. Each of these posts is between 150 and 250 words long, and each contains keywords you want to be identified with. At least one of  these keywords is linked back to your site.

So as you can see, each post includes a live link to your website. When you subscribe to our  monthly program, we give you a minimum of twenty posts every month – each in a different blog.

This is the fastest and least expensive way to build valuable inbound links to your site.

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Linknet New Power Links + KICKSTART

Kickstart gives you the Linknet New Power Links monthly program PLUS:

1. One original professionally written article promoting your site, distributed to more than 700 article websites.
2. One original professionally produced Quick Web Video distributed to 30+ video and audio sites, including Youtube, Google Video, Revver,
   Metacafe, and many others.

   See samples of Quick Web Videos

One time price of $229 (1st month), then $59/mo