There are ways to gather leads legally and respectfully. There is already a law against spammers and you must be aware of that since you are having an online business. Respectfully in the sense that you asked for the person’s permission whether or not he or she wants to subscribe to your updates or e-newsletter.

If you are using a splash page to gather leads, better ask for less information especially if you are just aiming to send out your e-newsletter. You must be sure that you are showing your splash page to your target market. A freebie such as an instructional video, e-book, or free membership may entice the prospects to sign up.

Do not neglect the ‘subscribe’ field on your home page. It will help if you also have the field on all the pages in your site. Your site visitors may think of subscribing at some point within your web page.

If you are already sending out e-newsletters, include a note encouraging your subscribers to share it to their friends. This will work well especially if your information are very interesting.

When you engage with the public like holding events or press conferences, make somebody in charge with gathering emails for e-newsletters. This will be efficient especially if you have certain advocacy or product that seems to be a necessity.

Be aware of the disadvantages of buying a list. There are more systematic ways of gathering leads but these are the basics. Refrain from buying a list. Be reminded that even you do not want to receive spammy emails and you would hate the sender instead of give some time reading through the email.

Content is king, and it is still true. Google wants to recognize web sites that gives invaluable content and is piloting author information display on the contents. It is called Google Authorship. It has been implemented and will be included in its algorithm, so it is important to understand how it works. What about the reciprocal links, what do they have to do with it?

The use of your Google profile and standard HTML5 links help Google identify that such content is written by one author. If the author has been writing good content, the pages attributed to have relationship with the author would gain credibility and would be recognized and seen on the Page Rank and SERPs at some time.

The reciprocal links will basically work as you add a rel attribute in your content page and author page. This shows relationship between the two. It is important that the reciprocal links are placed on both pages because this is how Google will identify that the content has been written by the same author. This prevents other writers to just link on your profile pretending that the content has been written by you without your permission, especially if you have already been recognized by Google as one of the great content providers.

Moreover, you must have a Google Profile in order to do this. It will be the basis of your Authorship. It will also be a part of your Google Plus Social Network. You will even be indexed by Google as one of the recognized authors. You may follow the following instructions on setting up Google Authorship. You will notice how search engine optimization seems to be connected with social media marketing.

We have started following this. You will notice a Google Plus button on the left column of this site. That will direct you to my Google Profile where I have added links to my other site and contents. I also placed this Google Plus link on my other sites to justify that I am the author of the pages.

Yes, it helped lessen if not eradicate spamming within the site. It went against poor content and unethical behavior. It is really a great goal, to keep the users happy. However, it also affected legitimate online businesses and Faceboook Developers. It also affected a lot of good content. There have been accounts and applications that were banned though they were not really spammers. There are personal accounts that suddenly lost their photos without any notice.

This is almost the same with the Google Panda issues, when Google had algorithmic changes to take care of the spammy sites that have poor or duplicate content. It also affected the legitimate online businesses, and Google really had tons of complaints about it.

It is not easy to be able to ban spammers or spammy sites without affecting the legitimate ones. It is a good thing that Facebook has taken its step to eradicate spams. If you have been affected by the Facebook Ban Bot, you may inform Facebook about it for some consideration.

Moreover, it is also sad to read about legit online businesses and developers being badly affected by this move to prevent spamming. But then, spamming has not been allowed within the site as stated in its Terms and Conditions. Hope there could be a way for these legitimates to be spared from the Ban Bot.

What more can we say? Since this is out of our control, let us just hope that the issues will be fixed and that the process of banning will improve. Well, what did they do it for? To make Facebook users, like us, happier, right?

What can we do? Report any violent reaction or any other issues related to it to Facebook. Then, prevent spamming and posting unethical or poor content. Does it sound better now?

People checking online do not really go for long contents. They usually want to read brief but substantial information online. It is important to keep your e-newsletters short and concise. If you really need to include long documents, it is best to have a summary that would just be a few lines and then a link to the full document on your site.

The purpose of e-newsletters is to give updates so it must not bluntly appear as a promotional material. It must contain invaluable information, catering to the news that basically affects your target market or email recipients. Press releases must also be disregarded, you must have a separate document for the media people.

Do not forget to have a link to your website. It is also the goal of the e-newsletter to lead your recipients to your web site. Since they will just have brief information, they must get more from your web site. This is one of the best ways to build trust and relationship with your target market.

Since e-newsletters are being sent through emails, they must have attention-grabbing subject lines. This will keep your recipients reading and even going to your web site for more information. Couple this with a timely and relevant content and you are surely in the right track.

It is good to have a schedule for your newsletters and it does not need to be so frequent so it will be treated as special. In doing this, people will perceive it as something important to read. It is also best that to have a ‘call to action.’ This will make it more personal.

You must have an archive of your newsletters that can be accessed on your web site. This will help your recipients check on previous newsletters that they could have deleted. It is also important to make it easy for your target market to subscribe and unsubscribe, and to stick to your privacy statement. This will help a lot in your credibility.

Up to this point, search engines still has a huge role in sending traffic to different sites. Their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is still being trusted by people when searching for web sites, products, and services online. The Social Media does not function like a search engine. It is an avenue to connect with people and share information about you, your business, or whatever you want to share. Thinking about it, it does not seem threatening to search engines.

On the other hand, you will notice something if you are a social media user. Let’s say you are in Facebook. Can you see that it has now been widely used on marketing? Since there is a huge amount of traffic in it and a huge number of users around the world that checks it everyday, advertisers have started promoting in social media sites. Do you notice the ads that are being shown in the site?

As an advertiser, you would of course want your ads to be shown to as much people as possible. Since social media like Facebook has been known to have a big number of viewers, it would be a nice target for ads. This is where the threat to Search Engines start.

We have discussed Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising. This is the way search engines earn through ads. If advertisers will be compelled to post their ads in social media instead of doing PPC, then it will be threatening to the search engines in this area of their business. However, this just posed as a threat and there is still no concrete basis that the search engines will be overthrown by the social media in this matter. It may affect a bit though.

At this time, search engines are still above social media in terms of traffic and advertising. I personally think that the search engines would not let themselves be overthrown by social media in this subject. Let us watch out for further developments.

1. Search Engine Results. When people search for information, products, and services, they go to search engines and enter a keywords. As we have discussed, it could be a word, a phrase, or a long tail keyword. The bottom line is that they will do it and then check on the first few sites on the list. If you are one of these sites, then the people will be directed to you. We have also discussed how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works for this.

2. Pay per Click (PPC) Advertising. The major reason for you to go for PPC is to send traffic to your site as soon as possible. SEO results may take some time to put you on top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and it is useful to have your site on top through PPC. It would also be best to do it with SEO so that you will have organic or natural results in the future.

3. Banner Advertising. This is placing banners on other relevant sites. People who look into those sites may be interested to go to your site. You just need to contact the site webmaster and ask about the ad placement rates for their site.

4. Social Networking. Think about Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other similar networks. These are social media sites. You can share your expertise on these sites in order to gain credibility and be trusted by your network of friends and others. Share your ideas and links to your site and people will be directed to it.

5. Social Bookmarking. This is almost the same with social networking. It is another social media site but focusing on sharing your favorite links. It helps your site be crawled by search engine spiders and it also allows people to go to your posted link.

6. Classified Ads. You may post on classified ads sites and have a link towards your site. These sites are recognized by the search engines and having your products or services posted there will also lead people to have a look at your site.

7. Article Directories. There are a lot of people looking for valuable content in directories. After reading your article, there will be some who would also spend some time going to your site to know more about you and your business, especially if you have written something interesting.

8. Blog Comments. If you give invaluable comments on relevant blog posts, people will find time to also visit your site and know more about you and your business.

9. Forum Posting. Forums are great avenues to share your expertise. People ask about their concerns and if you will be able to provide what they are looking for, they will surely follow you on your site as well.

10. Directories. It is easier for some people to look at directories when they are searching for sites that they need. If you are included in the directory under the category relevant to your site, then your target market could be directed to your site.

11. Link Exchanges. This may not be useful for SEO but it could be for traffic. If you exchange links with other sites that have relevant information to your sites, then you get greater chances of building target traffic to your site.

These could just be a few of the strategies on bringing traffic to your web site but they ate those at the top of my list and I really find it worth sharing. Hope this Internet Marketing Basics list will help you in your online success.

1. Use the proper keyword tools. Think of a word that basically describes your site or business then use the keyword research tools to know the volume of queries people make monthly as they look for a certain keyword. You may use the Google Adword/Keyword Tool, Word Tracker, Word Stream, and Google Insights.  You cannot just think of words that describes your site or business. You need to know what your target market usually looks for as they search for information or businesses related to yours. These tools will help you.

2. Check out synonyms. You may use a thesaurus for this. Know the synonyms of the major keyword that you have on your site or business. use the keyword research tools to know the search volume of the words or phrases as well.

3. Think like your customers. Remember to think like your customers while you choose your keywords. Identify the long tail keywords or transactional keywords that your potential customers will use. This is important because people who use long tail keywords are those who are most likely ready to make a purchase.

Do these when you start creating your site and set some time to do it and look for new trends or terms that your potential clients might use in search for the solutions that you provide.

1. Keyword. This is a word that identifies your site or business. For instance, you sell cars. It is natural to consider having ‘car’ or ‘cars’ to your keywords, thinking that your prospects will find you when they query the word in the search engines. A keyword would best fit information sites because most people using keywords just look for general information. A keyword usually has high search volumes and high competition rates.

2. Key Phrase. This involves a phrase that you can choose to be optimized with. From ‘cars’ as keyword, you may go for ‘cars for sale’ as well or ‘cars for rent,’ depending on your service or products. The basic difference between a key phrase and a keyword is the number of words that they contain.

People using key phrase in queries are also looking for more specific information. Some of them may be ready to make a purchase but they could still be gathering information still. It would be nice to see your site on the top places of the SERPs on these queries, provided that the phrase has a high search volume.

3. Long Tail Keyword. This is also know as ‘transactional keywords.’ As its title says, they are a group of words and are long. They are transactional as they are more specific. They say what the person exactly is looking for and most of the people using long tail keywords are those about to buy something or are highly interested with it. As a car dealer you may choose ‘buy mercedez benz AMG manila philippines’ if you are a dealer in Manila.

If your site is optimized for long tail keywords, you will have better chances on conversions and earnings since the queries are usually close to make a purchase or ask for service when they are already at this querying stage.

It is best to remember these terms because you will surely come across them as an Internet Marketer. Take note that keywords and keyword research is very important in a web site, especially for marketing purposes. It will also help you as you write blog posts or articles.

In contrast to promotion or marketing that builds trust, confidence, and  increases your credibility and conversions, negative publicity ruins your branding and decreases your credibility; which may also lead to a decrease in revenue. It is important to take action once you find this sort of publicity online. Here are the 3 basic processes in ORM.

1. Monitor. This involves thorough research. It is important to know how the public perceives a certain brand through online conversations, blogs, and forums. One of the SEO tools for this is Google Alerts that simply needs registration or logging in using your Gmail account. You then submit a keyword or phrase, actually as many as you want. It will send you an email to notify you when somebody mentions your keyword or brand name (if that is what you submitted) on the Internet. It is one of the best ways to instantly check your publicity, and take appropriate action if needed.

2. Investigate. If a negative publicity was found, investigation must be done. This is the process that involves analyzing how such online publicity affects your brand and reputation. You will be able to weigh the effects of it and if it really does damage your credibility, then you must proceed to control.

3. Control. This is when your business needs defense from the criticisms or false accusations. For instance, an angry blogger is bad mouthing your web site or business and posts false accusations. One strategy to control this is to promote or create web contents using articles, web sites, blog sites, press releases, and videos to defend your business. It is also important that these defense strategy would be properly optimized on the search engines so that it will pull down the negative criticisms on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Sounds easy but it is not that breezy; however, the good thing is that you can defend yourself from negative publicity. Chances are, if the culprit would be identified, legal action may even be taken.

Online Reputation management (ORM) may also involve joining online conversations affecting your brand or reputation like contributing to blogs, discussions, and forums that you find in the industry. Online Press Release is also a good way to influence your online reputation.

A lead consists of a person’s contact information. The usual data that would be important to gather online are the names and the email addresses. Demographic info are optional, it depends on your site goal or your products and services. You get a lead as one signs up for an advertising offer.

There are various marketing or advertising techniques in gathering leads. However, you must keep in mind that you must gather legitimate leads using legitimate process. Make sure that you comply with the US and Europe anti-spam laws or with your country or state laws regarding this. To avoid spamming, the person entering information would need to confirm whether he or she wants to subscribe to something or not. If a person signs up, he or she must also have the option to unsubscribe at a later time.

There are 2 basic ways to gather leads, the Email Signups or List Building and Email Marketing.

Email Signups or List Building. Majority of the web visitors do not make a purchase at the onset of viewing a web site. With this in mind, it would be necessary to have several points of contact before a prospect finally makes a purchase. So it is significant to establish an initial point of contact with the internet visitors. This initial point is to get their names and email addresses, commonly known as list building.

It is a strategy to offer some giveaways in exchange with the contact information of the users. The usual freebies that are currently given away online are e-books, trial software, free memberships, e-newsletters, free short courses, free reports, product trials, and service trials.

Email Marketing. This usually refers to sending scheduled emails to customers or potential customers, giving them relevant information or updates that they would most likely be interested in. It builds online credibility and helps gain the trust and confidence of your target market. It is also a good foundation in creating loyal “buying” customers.

Email Marketing is also one of the good ways to generate traffic to a site by adding or including a link within the email, leading to your site. the 2 basic models in email marketing are Opt-in Email Messages and E-newsletters.

Opt-in Email Messages are also called email advertising or permission marketing. Opt-in email is the online marketing term for emails that were initially requested through signing up in a web page form. These internet users were invited to signup for some online promotion or give away and also agreed to receive future emails. This is the way they “opt-in.”

E-newsletters are the online or electronic version of a news letter. Its purpose is the same as it also gives updates and information to clients and potential clients. It is just a little more complicated to do as you will need to have a template design for it and you will be giving info on various topics related to your site, products, and services.

These are the basics on Lead Generation. Having a good plan or outline in doing this campaign will surely help in building your loyal customers.