There is no end to internet marketing tools, gurus, companies, software packages, websites and the list goes on. It could cost you a lot of time and money to try and weed through them all to figure out what works. Unfortunately, there is no way around that. To add to the confusion, every person and every website is different. What works for one may not work for another. In the end, no matter what anybody suggests, you are going to have to take a chance on something.

What follows is a list of effective internet marketing tools that have worked or are working for me. Hopefully, they will work for you also. I am trying to keep this list confined to the broadest tools that I believe will work on most websites.

This particular article is a living document. The internet is always changing and this is a constantly evolving process. As new methods and tools come to my attention, I will endeavor to update this article. So you may want to come back and check it every now and then.

Without Further Adieu! Let’s start off with a good place to learn some internet marketing tactics.

The Keyword Academy

To be honest, I only subscribed to the Keyword Academy website because they have a $1 first month trial membership with full access. I thought that for $1 dollar I would join, see if there is any good information, take notes on that information and cancel my subscription. Of course, I never canceled and have no plans to anytime soon.

This site not only has some good information, they have two of the best internet marketing tools I have found. I will cover more keyword analysis tools later, but TKA has a great one that I use on a daily basis. It’s called Niche Refinery and I would keep my subscription if that was all they offered. The other great tool is called PostRunner. It’s a posting service between the members of TKA that allow them to share articles between their sites. Not only can you get great back links this way, you can also get some content for your own site.

I will write a full review of this site and post it, but for now let’s just say that I don’t agree with everything they teach, but I do recognize that they have a lot of useful information and a couple of great tools that are worth far more than the $33 a month price tag. You should definitely check it out for $1.

Update: I already have to update this post. Seems they no longer charge for the first month at all. It’s free! Check it out!

Internet Business Promoter

Search engine optimization is probably the single most important thing you can do to promote your website. That’s why it is such a popular a subject and why there is no end to the SEO tools available on the internet.

Not too long ago I would have just told you a long horror story about how they are all worthless and don’t waste your money. Then I ran across a free trial and, being the researcher that I am, I tried it. I have to say my tune has changed.

The Internet Business Promoter software is a great internet marketing tool for guiding you through the SEO process. The emphasis, however, is on “guide”. The strength of the program is that it does not try to be more than it is, and it guides you step by step through SEO (especially useful for new players in the business). This is definitely not a set it and forget it software solution. You will have to do work. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, get in a different business. You will fail otherwise.

IBP scans your web site and provides keyword analysis, optimization tips, link tracking, page rank checking and other analysis. It also has a PPC manager, ROI calculator, broken link checker, keyword density checker and many more tools. This is a pretty nifty piece of software and best of all it works! If you have read through this site you know that I’m not a salesman (at least not a very good one), but I cannot say enough good things about this program. The Optimization Report alone is worth the price. It has a 30 day free trial, so check it out.

Having said all that, it’s still not an all encompassing software solution. You could do a lot worse than just starting off with TKA and IBP though. If you do happen to be asking my opinion, read through my site, subscribe to TKA, buy IBP and get to work. You are on the road to success.

It is worth mentioning that I have recently added SEO Elite to my list of tools. It is still a bit early too say if it is better or worse than IBP. I have relied on IBP for some time and it has worked marvelously, so it is not going to be easy for another software package to convince me to switch. Having said that, SEO Elite is making a convincing argument thus far. At this point I utilize both programs for different aspects of my business.

SEO Elite is a little bit cheaper, so if you are on a budget, I feel comfortable telling you to go ahead and get it.

Article Marketing

This site is all about writing articles and ways to make money doing so. It is all about writing articles as a means of promoting your website. There is one place in particular that will help you get the most out of each article you write.

Go to Submit YOUR Article for a great means to get your article read by as many people as possible. This site is not about sales copy, so don’t try to sell anything. It is strictly a means to get your high quality informative articles read and generate positive attention (by means of back links and traffic!) for your website. I have been using this service for awhile and I couldn’t be happier with it.

What About Advertising?

Now that you have your site up and optimized, along with an article marketing campaign, you should already be seeing your traffic pick up. So why buy more? That’s simple, because it works!

For some reason, in the shuffle of email spamming, SEOing, blogging etc., good ole tried and true advertising is hardly discussed anymore. I think that is unfortunate because targeted advertising is still probably the best advertising solution for just about any website. Look at it this way. You spend all your time and effort trying to get to the top of Google’s search engine so you can get traffic. Google owns and operates the Google search engine, but you still see them buying advertising all over the place. They know what they are doing, and you should do it too.

What’s the best place to pay for targeted advertising? Well, think about it. You are trying to get to the top of Google. Using Google Adwords can get you there for as cheap as $.05 a click. There is no spending requirement, you set your budget, you specify how much you are willing to pay per click and you only pay when somebody clicks on your advertisement. It’s that simple. If you can invest $50 a month to start getting some traffic and grow your advertising budget as your income grows, you are setting yourself up for success.

I would wait until your web site is pretty mature before staring an advertising campaign. Make sure you have a lot of good quality content before you start buying traffic. Even if you are only paying $.05 per visitor, you still want them to have a reason to stick around and, more importantly, to come back!

But Wait, There’s More! And It’s Free!

That’s right. About the only thing I have left to add are free internet marketing tools. If you have followed my advice thus far in this article, then you will become very familiar with these tools. Going back to Google, they have the tools Google Analytics and Google Keyword Tool that work well with Adsense and Adword campaigns. The Google keyword tool will also be very useful in your keyword analysis also. You can get local and global search volumes, cost per click estimations and related keywords. I use it a ton.

Another great free tool comes by way of Microsoft. It is called the Online Commercial Intention tool and it is a great place to check out your keywords. It is a great way to test your keywords for commercial intention. Once you place your keywords in the tools and run the test, it returns a percent value on the intention of the people who search for that keyword. The more commercial the intention the more likely those people want to buy. Otherwise, they want information. My rule of thumb in most cases is that if it test highly commercial then you should write a selling article, and if it test highly non-commercial you should write an information article. That’s not always the case, but for the most part it holds true.

That’s All For Now

People seem to think that you need to have dozens of internet marketing tools in order to get anywhere with your site. You can if you want, but I do not think that is at all necessary. The tools I mentioned in this article are really about as far as I go with marketing applications. I do have a few others that I dust off now and then, but these are the ones that I rely on.

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