Every website owner out there needs there website on the first page of Google for almost every major keyword. I sometimes think of the funny part that there are only 8 positions in the fist page of Google and millions of websites want to be one of it for each and every keyword. If I get an enquiry that asks advice on “how to get to the first page of Google”, I simply reply them saying, it depends on several factors and not just off page search engine optimization. S we don’t offer any guarantee for getting a website in the first page of Google for targeted keywords. It has been so long, that I have been notifying about the factors to be taken into account to make it all the way to the first page of Google. And now it is high time for me to start explaining the factors.

Don’t Jump With Joy, I am not going to blog here about the factors to be taken into account to make your website appear in the first page of Google. I’d say that it is impossible to list and explain all the factors under a single post because there are 100+ factors to be taken into account. So this weekend I planned to start a dedicated blog just for explaining the factors for getting a website in the first page of Google search results. I cal the blog “Daily Google Tips” which will publish the first tip (post) on April 1st 2010. If will post one tip for getting in the first page of Google everyday. All the factors will be covered over time. So those who want to make it all the way to the top – wait eagerly till April 1st .. The expert advice is on its way.     

Enquiries about social media always make me interesting. Today I got an enquiry from a new client who wants to get into social media promotion afresh. He has a new site which does good in Google search results (In the 1st page of Google for some main keywords). As you know, any website that is not into social media is considered to be low class today and yes this client wants to get into the web 2.0 world. Now he asked my help to put together a social media proposal for him.

So what will you suggest someone who needs a fresh start with social media promotion? I planned a social media promotion strategy that included some of the basic but essential services.

Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter Promotion
What is social media promotion without linkedin, facebook and twitter promotion. And you guessed it – My first recommended service was business network development in Linkedin, Facebook and twitter. I have included creation of accounts in these 3 popular social networks (Ofcource with 100% profile completion which is indispensable for maximum visibility in the search engines). After profile creation, I have guaranteed the client to maintain these accounts with some set parameters for one month.
Maintenance For On Month Included
Facebook :

    * Creation of public FanPage for the client’s business
    * Adding new friends to the network
    * 5 Postings (content) in the public fanpage
    * 15 Photos+5 Videos added to the fanpage
    * Weekly updates posted to the wall

   
Linkedin :

    * 100% profile completion*
    * 15 QnA questions answered in Linkedin
    * Creation of a company profile and addition of 10 employees*
    * Establishing 15 Connections and 2 recommendations from other members of Linkedin
    * Membership in 5 Groups and initiation of 5 Discussions

   
Twitter :

    * Customized twitter account
    * Interlinked to Facebook and Linkedin
    * Twitter directory submission to get 100+ Natural followers
    * Achieve 100 Natural followers goal


Now I am sure that this one month maintenance will make these profiles popular enough and self replicate.

Creation of Customized profiles in top 25 social media blogs  
I don’t have to explain more about this. Everyone out there knows blogs are indispensable for social media promotion

Squidoo Lens And Hubpages Hub
Well I added setting up this for the client as well. I promised him to deliver a well written unique hub and lens for free along with profile setup.

So that’s it. I think this is what a startup social media promotion needs. Anything else I missed for a small budget starup?     

I still remember the first email that I opened on February 4th 2010. It seemed to be a challenging one. For the moment of truth, I will become quiet skeptical whenever I see a message that points to a problem in EzineArticles.com. Alright, now coming back to the email, the client has used our “Article Writing & Submission Service” before a week and now when he was about to order the next set of submissions, he noticed that all 3 articles submitted to ezinearticles.com were rejected. Now he won’t place the order till these old articles go live. Well, as the article was written by us it was our responsibility to get them live.

First Contact With Ezinearticles.com
I was pretty sure that the article was good (I wrote them after hours of research with optimum keyword density and following all the ezinearticles.com guidelines.). While logging into this client’s account at ezinearticles.com, the problem was not mentioned clearly but the articles were rejected (for no reason!!). One thing I hate with ezinearticles.com is that they won’t provide with the exact rejection reason of the article in most cases (Unless the article has grammatical or spelling errors). They always want the authors to contact them to know the reason.   I contacted the support immediately to know the reason.


Next Contact Next Week
I got the response for my contact from ezine after a week. According to them, the same articles were available in some other place attributed to a different name Charles Thomas (Name changed due to privacy issues). When I checked it, it was true. The same article was in docstoc under a different name (But was submitted by ourselves) with links pointing to the site as same in the rejected article at ezinearticles.com. I wonder why ezinearticles.com cares about the author name as long as it is linked to the same website. However, as the client needs approve article in ezine, I explained all these to the Ezinarticles.com team.

Yeah You Guessed it! Next Contact Next Week
I had to wait another week to get a response. Even after explaining all these, Ezinearticles.com team wants me to attribute these articles to the same name Charles Thomas  or else they WILL NOT approve it. I was suggested to all Charles Thomas as a pen name and resubmit the article. Unfortunately Charles Thomas was already taken a pen name by someone else and ezinearticles has an option to contact them and make a special request. I clicked on the contact us link which landed up in an error page. So I contacted ezine team again and admitted that I am clueless on what to do.

Quicker response in 5 days
Now they want me to add a middle name to Charles Thomas and resubmit the article and they assured me to make the articles live if I do so. I added Charles XX Thomas and resubmitted the articles. As usual I have to wait till the articles are reviewed by ezineaarticles.com team.

You Get 2 !
After 3 days 2 articles got approved and the remaining one article was again rejected stating the article was attributed to someone else and this time they provided a url where the found it. To my surprise it was the client’s website itself. I can’t explain this to ezine again which may take another month to get resolved.

Unfortunately I lost this client. But I learned some valuable lessons. 



Ezinearticles.com is the best directory and obviously you need to submit all articles first to ezinearticles.com and get approved before you submit it anywhere else.

In case of submitting an already published article, make sure to submit it under the same author name as in the original source.

It is always better to have a single author name to your article wherever it is distributed (This increases the authenticity of the article as well).

Though I lost one prospective client, I learned a great lesson of article submission through the whole month of February.

Well, this is a question in the mind of everyone who is into article marketing. Approval rate of the articles in the article directories is the deciding factor of the success of an article marketing campaign. Alright, now coming back to the query of a client:


The Answer / Story
So as you can see, this client is irritated because he thinks that there was a problem with the submission process. So I made a spot check with the article that was submitted to ezinearticles.com and my guess was right. The article was rejected by ezinearticles.com because of the use of promotional pitch in the last paragraph of the article. So now it is clear that the problem was with the article and not the submission.
I explained this to the client and  he understand WHO wasted the time now.

Moral Of The Story:
Before you start writing the article be sure to the read the editorial guidelines of ezinearticles.com. You will be well aware of the fact that an article that gets published in ezinearticles.com obviously meets the requirements of all the article directories out there. So read the guidelines atleast once before you start writing articles for the purpose of article marketing and follow it or else the strategy will be a complete waste of time.

It has been over a month since PayPal suspended withdrawing funds to bank accounts in India. Several personal payment made through paypal were reversed and online businesses in India were affected to the worse. As the previous talks with RBI failed to come to a conclusion, everyone where left clueless about the online transactions. This paypal issue has made several small businesses shut down. It has been like having a lot of money that can’t be spent. Thankfully, this issue has come to a positive end. Paypal has resumed its operations in India. However, they have realsed some new paypal instructions to withdraw cash to bank accounts. The paypal amendments state that Indian paypal users can get funds only through the following methods. No more personal payments can be received from customers (business transactions cannot evade paypal commissions anymore)

• Using the paypal services tab
• Processing the order through paypal checkout in the website
• Sending money to the ‘Request Money’ queries

Another addition to paypal rules is that you have to enter a purpose code for any transaction. Click here to see the list of Paypal Purpose codes, click here

Charity funds cannot be processed through paypal and obviously there is no purpose code for charity funds. However, online merchants can have a great sigh of relief as paypal has succeeded in working out this issue with paypal